Breeding Ground (4 page)

Jo's house needed work done too; the house they called the “big house,” to distinguish it from the tenant house, and the remains of the first pioneer cabin built on the same ridge. It still wasn't more than a modest farm house, Georgian-bred and handmade, built in 1801 by the colonel one of her distant great-granddaddies had fought under through the Revolution.

Jo thought about the kitchen fireplace she'd have to rebuild before winter, and how to re-arrange her Mom's room so Toss could move in while she was gone. Then, as she started walking home again, watching the wind twist tree branches together, she decided she'd go to Virginia first, before it got too hot.

She'd see the houses lived in by Jefferson, by the Lees, the Randolphs, and Washington, and the rest. And drive north to Maryland and Massachusetts to see historic houses there, then home through Pennsylvania. She'd stop at Wright's Falling Water too, to let the twentieth century blow through and sweep away older assumptions.

Once she got home, she'd get herself to Europe to see the architecture she'd loved there in books. And she'd never again design a drive-in beverage center, or a fake colonial tract home. She'd restore old houses and public buildings with architecture that deserved it. She'd design homes that fit the local landscape instead of cluttering it up. She'd take a job in a Five-&-Dime rather than build junk.

The day she'd quit her job in Lexington – the day after Tom's real funeral at their church outside of Versailles, Kentucky – she'd felt as though she'd been freed from a life of squalid prostitution. The two weeks after that had been the worst – knowing how close it was to being over, working round the clock, trying to finish projects she'd detested from the start.

Now, having had eight days of freedom, she could think about things that were fun. Like how to thank Toss for moving in while she was gone. She'd almost decided on stud fee money for a good stallion to breed his best mare – when she started thinking about writing a journal to help her come to grips with losing Tom and her mom. She was wondering how to start, and what to say about Nate – when she heard hard soles crunching gravel.

“Is that you, Miss Josie?”

Whoever it was was jogging toward her, coming up the hill in the drive, angling up on her right from McCowans Ferry Road, almost half a mile off.

“Can I help you?” Jo kept on walking, the wind scouring her face, watching a tall, thin, sandy haired man trot up to her and stop.

“I'm Buddy Jones, Miss Josie. You and me went to grade school together till me and the folks moved on.” He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans, and leaned back on his boot heels. “We was next door, when you lived over to the tourist court your daddy used to run.”

“You were three years behind me in school. Right? And when we'd swim in the water tank, you liked to be the one to throw the rocks in to make the snakes scoot out of the way.”

“Yep. You got that right. Sorry about Tom.”

“Thanks. I remember your mom really well. She helped me clean the rooms in the motel sometimes, and we'd rush so we could play canasta. Where'd you folks move? Is that your dog?”

A small puppy had appeared at the top of the driveway hill, and had run up to lean against Buddy.

“No, ma'am. He followed me up the drive. Clear from up by the road. I reckoned he lived here and got himself lost.”

“Herself.” Jo was holding the puppy, about the size of a loaf of bread, a caramel tan, like a fawn-colored boxer with a little bit longer snoot, shivering slightly as Jo held her in the crook of her left arm. “So where was it you moved?”

“Louisiana. My dad had kin down there. We liked it pretty fine. There was all these Sunday horse races that kids got to ride in, and Laverne and me, we raced a whole lot. We could earn good money, for just bein' kids, and we learned a lotta 'bout horses you cain't learn but by doing.”

“That's the way it is, don't you think?”

“Yeah. I surely do. We been back six years now, living over to Paris. Ma died before we come back. You remember Laverne? He was younger than me.”

“I remember he rode really well.”

“Laverne's been doing some hot walkin' and exercise ridin', trying to get to be a jockey. He's gettin' some rides, but you know how it is, it's a hard business to break into. 'Course, I got too tall, as you can see. I want to be a trainer, myself, but that's a long ways off.”

“Walk on toward the house with me. The storm's moving in quick.”

“I heard there was hail up to Louisville.”

That was followed by an awkward silence. That Jo decided to end. “So what can I do for you, Buddy?”

“Well, Miss Josie—”

“Just call me Jo, okay, Buddy, please?”

“Sure. Jo. I guess you'd say I'm in kinda a bind. You remember Becky Carter? Her pa works over to Calumet Farms. Her sister's over to the fabric shop in Versailles.”

“I think so. Why?”

“Well, she and me, I'm gunna tell ya the whole truth here, we had to get married, and she's six months along. She's working at the 7-11, but she cain't too much longer. We're havin' twins, and it's gittin' hard for her to stand that long. I was working over to a real good barn in Paris, stable hand, some groomin', some hot walkin', and like I say, I'm gunna tell ya the whole thing here, I got to drinking last Friday night, and I showed up late to work on Saturday, and Mr.—”

“How late?”

“Little over an hour. Six-fifteen 'stead a five, and the barn manager let me go. It was the second time I done it in a year, but the manager, him and me, we never got along real good, and he let me go. Can't say I blame him. I had it comin', I know that. Horses gotta eat on time. 'Specially ones in training.”

“Yeah.”

“We was livin' in a tenant house there, and we're over to her folks now, but we gotta find a new place. I thought maybe you folks could use some help, and maybe there was a tenant house we could move into. I'll work real hard. I will. I—”

“I don't know, Buddy. We don't hire much help. I'd have to—”

“I learned my lesson good. I swear to you I have. I took my last drink. I walked up front Sunday, and I meant it. I got babies comin', and I wantta be somebody they can be proud of. I wantta take care of Becky too. And there ain't nothin' else I ever wanted to do but work with horses. I been doing it my whole life, you know that. You remember when we was kids.”

“Let me think about it. I'm not promising anything. I don't think Uncle Toss needs help right now. He's got somebody part time at night already, during foaling. But I'll talk to him tomorrow. Don't you get your hopes up though, you hear?”

“I do. And I thank you, Jo, for even thinkin' about it.”

“Give me a number where I can call you.”

“Whatcha gunna do with the puppy?”

“Keep her for now till I find her a home. Though Toss may want her. I lost my dog in the fall. But I'm leaving town in a week or two, and won't be around to raise her.”

The puppy was asleep in a nest of towels in a cardboard box under the dining room table when the storm hit hardest two hours later, the wind and rain tearing across that high ridge, tossing the trees like ferns in a gale, while lightening lit the night sky from one end to the other.

It made Jo flinch, as she sat beside the puppy, choosing architecture books to take on her trip – when she heard something else in the storm that might've been a knock on her door.

She stood up and listened, past the lashing of the wind and rain, and heard the same muffled thud, louder this time and more insistent.

Jo walked through the archway into the front hall across wide heart-pine floors, then turned on the porch lights, and opened the left side of the white double doors.

A stranger stood there, thin, pale, drenched and shivering, cuts on one hand that were bleeding, a half-grey six-inch beard dripping on his flannel shirt, on a shapeless canvas jacket too, his hair plastered slick on his head, an army pack on one shoulder.

Jo closed the door part way, while she asked how she could help.

The man tried to smile, but coughed instead, before he said, “Don't you know me, Josie?”

Jo looked at him harder, and still didn't recognize him.

“Tom brought me. During training. Christmas of '45 too.” He coughed again, harder and louder.

And Jo said, “You look familiar, but I… Come on in and get warmed up.”

“Jack. Freeman. I taught you some French.”

“Oh! Yes, of course.”

Jack Freeman swayed in the doorway, and Jo grabbed him before he fell, easing him toward the stairs. He sat down on the second from the bottom, and Jo pulled the pack off his shoulder as he clutched the collar of his coat tight across his throat.

He looked twenty years older than Tom had – skin gray and sagging, eyes half-dead in a ragged face, mouth hanging loosely open, teeth stained and chipped.

“I'm not drunk.”

“I didn't think you were. Sit there a second. I'll be right back.”

“Tom here? He still lives here. Right? Thought he'd stay close to the horses. Didn't mean to bother you. I just have to talk to—”

“Wait just a minute.”

Jo heard Jack cough, and not be able to stop, as she grabbed clean towels from her bathroom, then rummaged around in a box of Tommy's clothes and grabbed a T-shirt, and a pair of sweat pants, and a heavy woolen sweater.

Jack had slumped against the wall by the stairs when she got back, his hands hanging between his thighs, his head braced on the plaster, his eyes closed while he coughed.

“We've got to get you dried off. Can you take your coat off, and your shirt? Here, let me help. Just… Geeze, you're burning up. How long have you been sick?”

Jack Freeman didn't answer.

And Jo waited till he caught his breath, then rubbed rain from his tangled hair, and pulled off his coat and shirt. He was so thin, and so pale, and he looked ashamed for her to see him.

“Sorry, Josie. Imposing on you, when—”

“No! No, it's okay. Where'd you come from?”

“Michigan. Upper Peninsula. Up near Canada.”

“Is that where you're from? I remember Michigan—”

He shook his head and said, “Camped. Walked.” Then coughed again, a deep, tight, painful cough, rattling his ribs till retching sounds started he didn't know how to stop.

A minute passed, and he quieted down, and took a shuddering breath. “Phoned here. Last month. Nobody answered. Had to come, once I started. I have to talk to Tom.”

“You walked all this way?”

Jack Freeman nodded, shivering now, while he coughed.

“Put your arms over your head, and I'll pull the T-shirt down.”

He raised one arm, and then the other, while Jo tried not to show that she'd noticed the grime or the smell. “I'll help you get the sweater on too. You need to get warm.”

He dropped his arms on his thighs and leaned against the wall.

“Jack, I hate to tell you this. I wish it weren't true, believe me, but Tommy died last month.”

Jack Freeman opened his eyes wide, his head still propped on the wall. A crushed look, anxious and hopeless, that had started out as disbelief, took control of his worn white face.

Then he started to laugh. He closed his eyes and laughed uncontrollably, a high, tight, excruciating laugh that turned to a fit a coughing.

“Let's get you to the hospital. Then I'll tell you what happened.”

Jack Freeman had pneumonia. And yet it was almost midnight before they got him cleaned up and settled in his own bed on oxygen and penicillin.

Jo told him she'd be back in the morning and said she hoped he could sleep.

“Sorry. Dragging you into this. Don't want you harmed.”

“Harmed?”

By then Jack's eyes were closed, and he wasn't able to answer.

Sunday, April 15th, 1962

Jack was too sick to talk the next day. He was too sick for visitors too, and Jo spent a lot of that day cleaning out her pick-up truck, and getting the cap attached to the back, planning how she'd pack it for traveling in for weeks.

She rode Sam, then turned him out with Maggie, and walked over to the paddock close up to the broodmare barns where Toss had put the mares who'd foaled with their new born babies.

Toss was leaning on the top rail, one scuffed flat-heeled cowboy boot planted on the bottom, wearing the old straw cowboy hat he'd had since Jo was a kid. He was 5'9” maybe, a hair shorter than Jo, stringy and strong, with a stillness about him that stuck even when he moved – his hands, forearms, neck and face the color of cured tobacco. It always came as a shock to Jo when she saw him take his shirt off and realized how white his skin was in the parts that never saw sun.

Toss asked, “How's the fella in the hospital?” when Jo was twenty feet off.

“I guess he's doing okay. They won't let me see him today. How 'bout you? You get any sleep last night?”

“Slept on the cot in the barn some. Ruby was actin' ready, and sure enough, she foaled about three. See the little fella with her over yonder, the good looking bay colt in the single paddock? I'll put 'em in with the rest later in the week.”

“He's getting around well.”

He was all legs and angles, all ears and knobby knee joints, swaying under his mother, sucking as fast as he could.

Jo told Toss about Buddy Jones, and asked what he thought.

“His brother's a real good worker. I see him over at Claiborne. Bull Hancock seems to like him, and Bull's a real good judge. I pro'bly could use some help, with the foaling still goin' on, and you fixin' to leave.”

It wasn't an accusation. More a bewildered lack of understanding. And Jo let it go. “Buddy's worked with horses since he was little.”

“I remember over at the motor court thinking Buddy was a real good kid. I reckon I could meet with him, and tell him the facts of life around here, and see how he takes it.