Breeding Ground (5 page)

“You could scare the pants off anybody if you set your mind to it.” Jo was smiling at Toss, leaning on the fence beside him. “It goes along with your name.”

Toss at four had been thrown by Runner, a small cantankerous Welsh pony, only to dust himself off and climb on quick, telling his dad, who was watching from his own horse, “Runner's gonna get tossed next, 'cause it ain't gonna be me!”

“So when you fixin' to leave, sister?”

“Next week, I hope. I've got to go talk to this guy in the hospital again, and see if he wants to tell me whatever it is he wanted to tell Tommy. Then once he's on the mend, I'll go on to Virginia.”

“You listened to Tommy's tape yet?” Toss was looking at the mares and foals, not making too much of what he'd said, but the concentration in the stare itself told Jo what he intended.

“You think I should've by now.”

“Ain't up to me. I'm just kinda curious.”

“I listened to a few minutes. I don't know why, but I guess I'm not ready.” She was too raw, and too bruised, and too afraid if she started, she wouldn't be able to stop herself from breaking down while she listened – but she wasn't about to say that to Toss.

“Looks like Sam's shaping up pretty good. Don't he remind you a whole lot of your Jed?

“Some, I guess. Yeah.”

“I reckon we'll find him a good home somewhere. Though, Lord only knows, there's too many horses for sale now, here in Woodford County. That's if you don't wantta keep him.” Toss kept staring up at the sky, looking non-committal.

“You think I should, don't you?”

“I ain't Tommy's sister. You got the choice to make.”

“I don't want anything else living, and breathing, and waiting for me that I've got to take care of.”

“Right.” Toss pulled out a Lucky Strike and struck a match on his belt buckle.

“Don't look at me like that.” Jo laughed when she said it, and poked the hard-muscled brown-flannelled shoulder closest to her.

“I ain't lookin' at you no way. I'm just standing here minding my own business.” He was smiling, holding his Lucky cupped in one hand.

“How come you never got married? I hear there's a woman in Midway who claim's she's got a right to you. Works over at—”

“Don't you start!” Toss laughed and pulled her pony tail, as he walked away toward the bigger of the broodmare barns, whistling Shenandoah almost as well as her mother had.

Monday, April 16, 1962

Jack Freeman looked better the next day. They'd been giving him I.V. antibiotics, and keeping him on oxygen, and he seemed glad to see Jo.

They made how-are-you-feeling conversation for awhile, till Jo got around to what she'd come to say. She told him how Tommy had died, and they talked about that till there was nothing left to say.

“So.” Jo leaned back in her chair and crossed one leg over the other, and tried not to stare at Jack. “Why did you come to see Tommy?”

“I knew I had to make a start.” Jack stopped and stared at his hands.

Till Jo said, “I don't understand.”

“Living the way I was. Alone in the woods, summer and winter. Drinking too much the way I did. Tom was someone I could talk to, who'd been through what I'd been through.”

“In the war?”

Jack nodded, as he scratched a patch of shaving rash on his newly scraped chin. He struggled to push himself higher on his pillows and slowly exhaled.

“Would you want to talk to me, since you can't talk to him? If you get too tired, I'll leave and come back later.”

“It's nothing I can talk about with someone like you.”

“Could you tell me how you met him? Was it basic training? He left me a tape that—”

“Training we went through later.”

“O.S.S.?”

“How do you know about that?”

Jo told him about Tom's letter and tape, and asked if it'd been like MI6 – behind the lines, helping the Resistance. In France, and other countries.

“I'm not allowed to discuss it.” Jack coughed then, and drank some water, before he spoke again. “Of those I trained with, I respected Tom the most.” Jack took two shallow breaths and exhaled slowly.

“Why? How did he seem different?”

“He had guts. And intelligence. And could think on his feet. He wasn't the only one, of course. They picked us for those traits. But there was more to Tom. You knew you could trust him. Nothing changed who he was. He stuck to what he was willing to do, and wouldn't do what he wasn't. He was the only non-official at the end of the war I was willing to talk to about my…” Jack reached for his glass of water, and drank slowly from the bent glass straw. “My experience in France.”

“You feel okay? You want anything else?” Jo was watching him closely, wondering again if talking was too much for him and if she ought to leave.

Jack shook his head, and adjusted his oxygen tube, before he spoke again. “Tom knew who I was, and I trusted his judgment. I wasn't always like this.” Jack stopped and swallowed as though it hurt.

“Like what? You don't mean the pneumonia—”

“Tom understood what it was like, and he would've wanted to help me… to make some kind of change. To find a job. Perhaps in Lexington. Not inside. No. Outdoors. I can't get trapped inside.”

Jo wasn't sure what he meant by that, or why it was so important to him, and even her eyebrows looked surprised, tucked together contemplatively toward her dark blue eyes. “I know he would've tried to help. Though without living here himself…”

Jack coughed as though a lung were on its way up, and Jo stared hard at her long thin hands holding each other in her lap. She could see Jack was sweating. His forehead looked pale and clammy, his eyes sunken and circled. “You're sure you're not too tired?”

He started coughing again, and a nurse came in to check his vitals. When she left, he drank more water, and rested quietly for a minute, without trying to speak.

Jo waited, shifting in her chair, till she couldn't stand the silence. “Would you want to talk to someone else who was in the O.S.S.? His name's Alan Munro. He was a good friend of Tom's in Virginia, and he's just moved here.”

“Have you read
The Count Of Monte Cristo
?”

“Yes, of course. Years ago now. Though I—”

“I was wrongly accused too. Much the way Edmond Dantès was. And like him, his first years in prison, I don't know who was responsible.” Jack looked away toward the window.

And Jo studied the pain on his face – the frustration, the anger, the private humiliation – seeing then for the first time the suffering he'd gone through. “I'm sorry, Jack. I don't know what to say.”

Jack didn't answer, and turned his face even further away – till he finally sighed and closed his eyes. “That's what led me to find Tom this March. I was in the hospital at Christmas, and saw the handwriting on the wall. If I was ever going to stop drinking and start again I had to do it soon. I should've faced the truth then, but didn't. And it wasn't until March that I saw I couldn't do it alone. Tom told me in '45 that if I ever decided I needed help, I should come to him.”

“I'm sure he would've wanted you to.” Jo was watching Jack carefully, thinking it was time to go for his sake. Yet the intensity she'd seen when he talked, the pain and shame that had swept across his face, kept her from saying anything, and made her stay where she was.

Jack blew his nose, and leaned back on his pillows before he spoke again. “When I sobered myself up this March, I phoned Tom's house – your house – in Versailles, and started walking, even though there'd been no answer. I knew I had to get moving before I changed my mind. I assumed that even if Tom didn't live here, you, or your mother, or someone else in Versailles, would know where he was.”

“I wish he'd been here for all of us.”

“Yes. For sadly, and against my better judgment, I've now burdened you. With me. Here. With pneumonia. I'm sorry for that. I am, Josie. Tom would have my hide.” His eyes looked terrible, bloodshot and exhausted. The skin around his mouth, where they'd shaved him before giving him oxygen, was papery white and drawn. His lips were dry and cracked too, bleeding in the left hand corner.

“Once I get out of here, I'll find a job. I'll make myself a nest egg and see what I can do.” Even Jack didn't look as though he believed that, not with much real confidence, as he wiped his forehead with the last of the tissues. “I'll have the hospital bills to pay too, though they shouldn't amount to much. According to what the doctor says.”

Jo handed him a new box of tissues from the drawer in the bedside table. “You don't have to make plans now. Just concentrate on getting better.”

They were both quiet for a minute, looking at nothing in particular, letting the words sink in.

Then Jo asked Jack about his parents. And watched him turn toward the window again.

“It's a complicated situation. I don't wish to speak of them now. If I find a job, and make a new start, then perhaps I'll go see them.”

“Why? If you were my son, I'd be frantic to know where you were, and how you're doing, and I'd be worrying that—”

“They're not like most people.”

“No? Come on, Jack. It might do you good to talk about them.” Jo Grant had stood up and stretched, and was plumping Jack's pillows, helping him sit up straighter the way she had her mother.

The nurse came in then, and told Jo she ought to go soon, while she checked Jack's oxygen and changed the I.V.

When she left, Jack drank more water and stared for a minute at the foot of his bed. “I can't talk about my parents.” He was coughing hard while he spoke, looking gray and clammy, lying exhausted on his pillows.

“Would you tell me why you said the other night that you didn't want me harmed?”

“Harmed? Did I? I wonder what I meant.” He coughed again and sipped his water.

But Jo didn't altogether believe that he didn't know, or remember. “I'm going to go and let you rest. Do you want me to talk to Tom's friend?”

“Yes. Thank you. But don't make him feel obligated. Only if he wishes to. Then I'd be pleased to speak with him.”

“Good. I'll give him a call tonight. Is English your first language?”

“No. How clever of you to notice.”

“You don't have an accent, but—”

“I do thank you, Josie. For what you've done. And though I know I've asked too much of you already, I wonder if you'd be willing to do me one more favor?”

“Probably. What?”

Jack was smiling, looking just as gaunt and ill, but lighter somehow and less tense. “Smuggle me in a pack of Camels.”

Jo laughed and said, “Yeah, that's a great idea, it'll help your cough no end! You'd blow yourself up with the oxygen.”

“There is that risk, yes. Even so, I thought it was worth a try.” He smiled again and closed his eyes.

“You could bum a cigarette from one of the doctors. They all smoke at the nurses' station.”

Jack didn't say anything.

And Jo gathered her things together and slipped out of the room.

Excerpt From Jo Grant's Journal:

…So here I am without Mom and Tommy feeling like the floor tilted and I'm trying not to trip.

It's not like I thought I was safe growing up. Horses teach you you can't be. You hit the ground and get back up, and stop gripping with your knees. (Which probably applies to more than riding.)

Dad died. Tom went to war. The mortgage sat at the dinner table and haunted the dark of the night. The whole world bled and died from '39 to '45, and the future felt like it was blowing away, and all we could do was pray.

Once Tom was back, I thought I could tie it all down, for some reason. Then Nate treated me the way he would, and I put myself on the sidelines. I can look back and see him for what he was. But I couldn't then, and it scares me.

I had Jed to ride and play with, though. And Mom to help keep me steady and talk to about books. I had Tom teasing me and guarding my back, and work too, spread out ahead as far as I could see.

That's what's left. Work. If I can figure out how to do it so it's worth doing…

Tuesday, April 17, 1962

T
he next morning, Toss Watkins filled the last water bucket while he watched Buddy Jones clean the next-to-the-last stall in the yearling barn.

The manure spreader was in the aisle-way and Buddy was forking wet straw and manure into it with an old heavy-duty pitchfork, working fast and well.

When he'd finished that stall, he moved to the one next to it, but Toss said, “Let's go take us a break.”

Toss walked out of the dark brown creosoted barn around a curve in the driveway toward what was left of the Grant's first log cabin, and sat down on a log bench that backed up to a four board fence. He pulled out a Lucky and lit it with a kitchen match, while Buddy lit his own, hunkering down on his heels.

“See that stallion there?” Toss pointed at the opposite paddock to a sixteen-hand, big-muscled bay with one white rear foot. “Tuffian. Picked him up this week. Belonged to a friend who died of a heart attack. The wife couldn't handle him, so I took him off her hands like her husband wanted.”

“He's good lookin'.”

“Tuffian's made real well. Moves real well too, but he was no great shakes on the track. He don't have the heart. Don't have good ground manners neither. He got taught, and he's smart enough. He just don't want to do what you ask. You'd put up with it if he was Man O' War, but for some six-year-old also-ran like him, maybe not.”

Buddy nodded as though he'd been there before.

“He's real dangerous in his stall. Protects his food like all get out and don't want nobody in there with him. His breedin's good, and he's thrown a couple stakes winners. But I reckon in the long run, he'll end up at the killers, behavin' like he does. You can't just give him away. You'd be worryin' who he'd hurt.”