Borrowed Horses (21 page)

“Ah, but she got her husband to apologize, and even when she was gone, the house was still her dominion.” He shrugged. “I’ve never met her of course, so obviously, I could be wrong—probably am—but from what you’re telling me, she’s tougher than you’re giving her credit for.”

“Yeah, well, no man of mine better expect his dinner from me if he pisses me off,” I said.

Timothy looked at me with his laughing eyes. “But you never put your identity into your house. Your domain is in the barn, and I don’t see your boyfriend keeping you from it.”

I winced and looked to the curtained window before he could read my face.

Housewives and eagles—the comparison would have seemed laughable to me an hour earlier. I pictured Jenny, thin and wispy, leaning on Dave’s arm and looking at him reverently. There was no power in that portrait—not as I understood it. I couldn’t see her becoming fierce at the sight of a stubborn toilet ring. I couldn’t see her fragile hands forcefully gripping a soapy rag. And even if she did, could such a meager scope of power really be considered power at all?

But Jenny was getting a horse. She’d married the man she’d chosen and secured them both a decent income, even though her father had hated Dave. If strength was measured in goals met, then Jenny had me beat.

Dr. Rivers hovered all day, seemingly on the verge of speaking. I’d never known him to stay silent when he wanted to speak, and his quiet bumbling made me suspicious. Cheryl was forever raising a single painted eyebrow at any eye she could catch. He had no reason to be around. I waited for his pager to call him back to the ER, but it was unusually slow. It seemed like every few minutes, he was back in Imaging, fingering through filing cabinets, “making sure everything was all right.”

The straight-forward problems of the barn were a welcome relief: the teeth I knew were coming, the hooves sure to kick. Dawn was crossing the driveway as I pulled in, an unopened bale of alfalfa in the cart she pushed. A shit-eating grin stretched across her face when she saw my truck. She rested the cart as I got out. “Heard you’re riding Zephyr.”

“Yep.” I squinted off toward the pasture where the mare grazed peacefully. An Eastwood kind of stare. One meant to read, “This conversation is over.”

“That horse is wound up tighter than a gnat’s ass stretched over a skillet.” Dawn was clearly enjoying this.

“She’s a little tense.”

“A little tense? She charges me when I go into the pasture with her God-damned grain.”

I let the words drift into the warm silence of evening, unanswered. Foxfire, on hearing my voice, stuck his head out the stall’s outer Dutch door and nickered at me. “Speaking of tense, is there anywhere I can put Foxy during my lesson?” He threw his nose up and down impatiently, and I smiled. “He’s a bit jealous.”

“Shut the barn door and lock him in his stall run for an hour. That’s what I do when I clean his stalls, or else he paces all around me and drives me ’bout crazy.”

“I guess that would work, but you know he’ll still hear us in the indoor and pitch a fit.”

“If you want, I can throw him in Zephyr’s paddock once you get her out.”

“That might be better. Give him a chance to move, too.”

Foxy was listening to us, ears straining toward our voices. Dawn laughed again. “You’ve got the only horse who gets jealous of work.”

“It’s not the work he misses,” I said. “It’s the attention.”

“Because you spoil him?” Dawn was forever trying to get me to admit that point.

“I just treat him like he deserves. Anyway, it’s not
my
attention that he misses—he’s still got that. It’s the ring: the silence when he jumped his round and the applause when he went clean. All those admiring eyes. Work is just as close as he comes to that feeling now.” And as close as I came.

“Shit, you’re depressing.”

We stared at Foxy a moment longer. I said, “How much do you reckon it would be to get him cloned?”

“What, you mean like in a test tube? That’s fucking creepy, Joannie.” She looked at Foxy skeptically. “Not cheap, I bet.”

“They cloned some mules at U of I. Racing mules. Now they’re winning all these stakes and derbies.”

“Yeah, and I’m sure the guys that done it are getting flooded with requests from every rich bitch with a favorite cat. Can you make me a new Cleopatra? I simply can’t bear to part with this one.” Dawn drew her a’s long and round, as if all rich people spoke with bad British accents.

I should take her to Jersey and introduce her to some real money
, I thought, but said only, “You’re probably right. Still, if I could have him as a six-year-old now, imagine what we could do.”

“You don’t clone God’s fucking work, Joannie.” Dawn lifted her cart. “And I told you once already to stop being so God-damned depressing. I’ll get Foxy out for you. You go get Zephyr. Maybe that mare’ll knock some sense into you. Just as long as she don’t knock too hard.” Dawn muttered the last words as she walked away.

“Thanks,” I called to her back.

She lifted her middle finger and kept walking, not even turning to look at me. It was a gesture of love.

The grey of the mare’s coat had gained a faint luster after a week of the high fat, high protein grain Eddie had put her on. It gave her a sheen that, with the lightness of her coat, seemed almost ghostly, as if she was more air than flesh.

There was nothing ethereal about her viciousness. As I unlatched the gate, she spun and ran at me. I swung the halter in a wide arc, defining a boundary she could only cross by taking a blow. She halted just shy of it, tossing her head and rolling her eyes. “Easy now,” I said, throwing the lead around her neck to catch her, keeping my elbow cocked and ready in defense.

Zephyr came out of her pasture all hellfire and bone: the bone of each hard tooth, the coffin bone within each ironclad hoof pointing to its target like a driven spear. She danced on the lead rope with athletic grace and balance. I had to convince her to use that athleticism for rather than against me, but I had no clue how to pull that off. Already, the edges of my patience began to crumble. “Walk like a normal damned horse, please,” I said. No reaction.

Tugging her would be useless. Thin as she was, Zephyr outweighed and out-muscled me. If we fought a battle of physical strength, she would win. Our battle would be one of wits and strategic strikes. I gave the lead a modicum of slack and then yanked it hard, popping her on the nose to correct her poor ground manners.

Zephyr pulled back against the halter. I let her drag me a little, balancing like a water skier against the rope and raising the spare end of the lead threateningly when she tried to rear. The gravel rolled underfoot, then stopped. She stood, and we regarded each other, standing there in the parking lot, each waiting for the other’s next move.

After a moment, Zephyr’s head lowered almost imperceptibly as a measure of tension relaxed. “All right,” I said, going again to her side, her eye following me. “Let’s try again. Walk on.”

Zephyr took one step and then threw her body back, sitting on her haunches and tossing her head high.

Again, I held the rope against her struggle, giving nothing. I thought of Clint in the final showdown of
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
: the dizzying camera work, the increasingly claustrophobic close-ups, the dirt, the burning cigarillo, the watching eyes. The wait, the wait. The quick draw, the response.

She stood; the dust settled. Again, we watched each other. “You done?” I said. She merely stood, her head stretched high, her breath coming in snorts like some dragon that couldn’t get the fire to come but kept trying nonetheless. Behind me, I could hear Dawn chuckling inside the barn door, and behind her the distant mumbling of Eddie’s voice directing Jenny’s lesson. I said, “I can wait all day, horse.”

Truth was, we had twenty minutes to tack up and I needed to get her in the cross ties. I’d timed this as if I was getting out Foxfire. Each fallen dust mote was a second hand ticking. Zephyr’s nostrils flared and relaxed, flared and relaxed. Her ears unpinned, flicking forward to catch Dawn’s laughter.

“She’s laughing at you, you know,” I told Zephyr. We continued to stand another moment. When her head dropped a little again, we walked on. For a moment, she was a picture of good manners, but her rebellious eye was on me. We almost made it to the barn door when she spun against the halter, the lead rope burning across my hand as I clamped down on it to stop its slide. I cursed myself for unconsciously relaxing. I dropped my guard; I’d forgotten to put on my gloves. Everyone was right—I was spoiled by Foxy.

Dawn stood at my shoulder and patted me on the back. “Good luck.” Her voice was light with choked-off laughter. Zephyr relaxed as Dawn walked away.

“What the hell happened to make you so ornery?” I whispered. Zephyr’s eye rolled white and she pulled her head high again, but it didn’t last. We walked into the barn.

She managed to grab a piece of my forearm as I snapped her into the cross ties, hard enough to pinch and bruise and graze the flesh. I pulled a jumping bat from my brush box and dealt her one good pop on the shoulder.
Quid pro quo
. The thwack of its broad leather topper was loud and startling, though it had no real sting. The sound was enough. Zephyr shuffled in the cross ties, looking for an out. I aimed the crop at her, like Patton delivering a point. “Don’t bite and you don’t get hit.”

She quieted slightly as I tucked the bat into my tall boot where it would be close at hand. She stayed well back, the cross ties straining in their bolts. I caught hold of her halter and moved her a step forward. “We’ll be O.K., as long as you learn some basic manners. Biting me is no good. That’s rule one: no biting, no kicking. Got it?”

I glanced at Eddie and Jenny in the ring, but neither appeared to have noticed Zephyr or me. Eddie had laid poles out, and Jenny was trying to coax Zip into a more forward canter so that they’d make it from pole to pole in three strides instead of four. She was getting about three and a half, and that half an ugly bumpy little stride Zip snuck in just before the rail. Under his ever-present cap, Eddie was frowning. “Tempo, tempo,” he said in a deep steady voice which tried to mask exasperation as he clapped his hands in the rhythm he wanted to see.

I smirked and grabbed a dandy brush, full of memories of Eddie and me. Zephyr pinned her ears at each stroke, the tossing of her head synchronous with the movement of my arm. When she tried to kick again, I called her “bitch” and swatted her, once, with the bat.

Our lesson was composed in endless circles. One direction, the other: figure eights, voltes, serpentines. Transitions to trot, to walk, to canter, to halt. It was simple stuff, but not dull—Zephyr made sure of that, worming and wiggling under the saddle. Circles, if done well, take the full concentration of both horse and rider. There were glimmers, moments when she actually stretched for the bit. Then she’d remember herself, throwing her head up and back so far it was practically in my lap. Eddie’s voice droned through it all, steady and calm. “Half halt. And again. Little more leg. Relax those shoulders, Joannie. Relax. You’ve got to trust her.” His watching eyes never left us. And suddenly, she’d be there again, a horse I’d want to ride. And then it’d be gone, her head up and trot jarring.

“More of this, all week,” Eddie said when we finished. I nodded from the saddle, accepting my homework assignment. Zephyr turned and grabbed the toe of my boot between her teeth. I yanked free, inadvertently kicking her hard in the side as my foot sprang loose. She grunted with the force of the kick, but she neither reeled nor reared nor bolted. The mare had guts; I’d grant her that.

Eddie tilted his head, watching it all. “Maybe next time we’ll add some trot poles, but for this week, I want transitions. Let’s see if we can’t get her to trust our hands a bit more and accept the bit.” I nodded again and swung down from the saddle. My toes ached against the pressure of my weight and the soft footing.

Eddie walked me to the cross ties. “Short rides, still. No more than a half hour while we get her fit. And
your
job is to focus on your elbows and shoulders. I want much more relaxation out of you. You need to learn to trust her as much as she needs to trust you.”

“Whenever I give, she bites my toes.” My voice was low, but I knew he heard.

“Give, but watch out.”

I sighed. “Constant vigilance.”

“Right. Constant vigilance.”

I looked at her. “I hate to admit it and Dawn certainly never would, but she actually looks better already. She’s got a long way to go, but she’s a little less … hollow.”

Eddie nodded. “She’s getting stronger, too.”

“Great. That’s just what we need.”

“Once she gets some muscle over that topline, she might not shrink from the saddle like she is now.” He watched me as I removed the old hunting bridle and Foxy’s saddle and began to brush her down. His gaze was soft and wise and amused. I picked Zephyr’s hooves out and moved to clip her lead on.

“No carrots?” he asked.

“You want me to put my hands near that mouth? Those teeth?”

Eddie laughed. “You need to treat her like any other horse. Treat her like you treat Foxy.”