Breeding Ground (7 page)

“To Toss, or you?” Alan smiled when he said it.

But Jo didn't look as though she'd noticed. “I'm really sorry this happened to Toss. I am. But we've still got mares foaling. We're trying to get yearlings ready for the July sales. And how can Toss even live on his own if both legs are hurt? He'll probably be in a wheelchair for weeks. Though that's hard to imagine, for anyone who knows Toss.”

“Miss Jo?” Buddy was back from calling his wife, standing in front of her chair.

“Thanks for taking care of Toss, Buddy. Did you drive him, or get an ambulance?”

“Drove. You want me to take his truck on back and do the late-night rounds, or you want me to wait for you?”

Alan said he'd be happy to drive her home.

So Jo asked Buddy to check every mare and baby the way Toss did at night, then fill buckets and feed more hay. “Is Walter coming in to help, in case somebody foals?”

“Yep. Oh, I meant to tell ya too, some lady come after supper, and rode Sam, and she's gunna buy him. Her and Toss made a deal. She's from over to Louisville, and she seemed like a real nice lady.”

“I see.” Jo was looking at Buddy as though that had been completely unexpected and might not actually be welcome. “Let Emmy out too, okay? Walk her around and make sure she pees, and then put her back in the pantry.”

“Sure.”

“Thanks, Buddy.”

“I'll get goin', and talk to you later.”

Jo got up and followed him down the hall, then came back and paced some more, before she sat back down.

“You didn't look too happy about Sam getting sold.” Alan was smiling at her like an older brother who knew something she didn't.

“It's not that. You just never know how some stranger will take care of your horse. Sam deserves a good home.”

“That's what Tom thought too. You want a cup of coffee?”

“I do. Thanks.”

“Could I see Sam one more time when I drive you home? I don't know anything about horses, but I'd actually like to learn to ride. It comes from watching Tom and Sam. You take your coffee black, right?”

Five minutes after Alan went off, a tall, bony, tired looking doctor with a surgical mask hanging around his neck walked down the hall toward Jo. “You're here with Mr. Watkins?

“Yes. I'm Jo Grant, his niece.”

“He came through surgery fine, but he's got a compound fracture of the left tibia. That's the larger bone in the lower leg. We had to put in screws that we'll take out later. The right femur, the thigh bone, is cracked too. He should be fine in the long run. He's strong as an ox, but recovery's going to take awhile. He's got casts on both legs.”

“When do you think he'll come home?”

“Maybe tomorrow, or the day after. He'll be in recovery most of the night. You might as well go on home and call us in the morning.”

Alan parked by the house so Jo could change before they headed to the barns.

It was a clear night, and the sky was endless – the half moon milky and soft, the stars burning crystals, the breeze warm on their skin.

They walked slowly, both of them looking up in amazement – till Alan asked Jo what bothered her most about Toss getting hurt.

Jo stopped in her tracks, and Emmy the puppy, being led on a lead to keep her from the horses, ran into the back of Jo's paddock boots and fell right on her nose. “That's an odd way to put it.”

“Possibly. But still. What about Toss?”

“I feel sorry for him. It'll be miserable getting over this, but Toss is tough, and he won't complain once. The trouble will be holding him down.”

“But?”

“I don't want to stay home and run the farm, and not go see the architecture I've been wanting to see for years. I was going to be gone for a month or more. But now there's Toss needing help, and a puppy he wants he can't take care of, plus Jack Freeman to worry about.”

“What've you got against dogs?”

“Nothing. I love dogs. I want one again, just not right now.”

“I can help with Jack some, but not much with Emmy. I'm gone all day long.”

“You don't even know me. Why should you go out of your way at all?”

Alan laughed and said, “Aren't we supposed to?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I also know you better than you think. I told you Tom talked about you. I could even retell some entertaining anecdotes from your earliest youth. Like the time he jumped out from behind a tree when you were riding—”

“Don't. Please.” Jo didn't laugh the way she usually would have. She just walked on in silence.

“So what else is it? You're put out about something.”

“I'm tired of being everybody's nurse! I nursed my old horse for ten months, hours everyday. That was fine, I wanted to. I loved him more than I can explain to anyone who hasn't had a horse like Jed. But I was taking care of Mom as well, part of that time. She was a great mother, and father too, for a lot of years, and my best friend by the time I was in college. But she wasn't herself, and she was sick for two years. Then Tommy died, and I was still reeling, and Jack appeared with pneumonia. I feel like I'm a hundred years old, and I've never gotten to live my own life!”

Alan said, “It must've been hard when—”

“I want to educate myself better than I can with architecture books, and then do work that's worth doing!”

“You
should
want to do work you care about. It'd be a waste if you didn't.”

“I ought to be thinking about Toss, I know that, and I will do everything that needs to be done, but I really wanted to get out of here and do something
I
want to do!”

Alan looked at her sideways for a minute as though he were considering how much to say. “There've been times in my life when I had very definite plans for the future. For something that was really important to me that I thought was worth doing, and one thing after another kept me from doing it. But when I've been able to look back on those times, I've seen that what came out of that was what should've happened. That for some good reason, it was worth it. That real good came out of it that
I
think was intended.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that the lesson for the day?” Jo was hurrying faster than she had been, and Emmy had to run to keep up. But then Jo sighed, and looked at Alan, as she switched on the barn lights from just inside the door. “That was a snotty thing for me to say, when you—”

“No, don't worry about it.
There
he is! Even I can recognize Sam.”

Sam was blinking, trying to adjust his eyes to the light, looking from Jo to Alan – until he saw sugar cubes on Alan's palm and picked them up, one at a time, carefully, between his lips. He crunched the cubes quietly, with a far away look in his eyes, while Alan stroked his neck and talked to him about Tom.

Emmy was in her box in the pantry, whining pathetically, when Jo finally got into bed. Emmy settled down in five or ten minutes, but Jo couldn't shut her brain off and make herself sleep. She got up at two, took Emmy outside to avoid accidents, made herself a large cup of cocoa, then sat at the kitchen table and turned on Tommy's tape.

“…Then we were sent to an abandoned boys' camp outside of D.C., where we did extensive training. It was called Area B then. Today it's known as Camp David. That was where I first got to know Alan Munro.

“Alan was a chemical engineer, and they attached him to the Research And Development branch that invented gadgets and special weapons needed for covert warfare. It was a safe job State-side that plenty of guys would've wanted.

“If you ever get to know Alan, Josie – and the day finally comes that he's free to talk about what we did – ask him about his work on the gadgets called ‘Casey Jones' and ‘Aunt Jemima.' Most of what they did didn't require what he was best at, though, at least in his opinion, and after not very long, he talked the muckety-mucks into letting him switch to an Operations Group. The O.G.s were basically commandos, and Alan parachuted into France shortly before the invasion. He blew up bridges, took out railroads and phone lines, and used the Casey Jones he'd help invent to blow up enemy trains. It was dangerous work, believe me, that he's rarely talked about since.

“He speaks French really well. Why I'm not sure. Anyway, after the invasion, he was attached to a U.S. Army unit in France to help referee the process of setting up local governments.

“There was armed conflict still going on between the political factions in the Resistance in whatever area he was in. I don't remember which now, but this I do know. Some French woman, who, as it turned out had been wrongly accused of being a collaborator, someone who'd actually worked undercover for the O.S.S., Alan saved her from a live grenade. He threw himself on top of her when he saw what was happening, and that's how he was wounded in the leg, the shoulder and the head.

“I know he nearly died, but he's only mentioned it once in passing. I know what I know from a buddy of his. Alan spent a year or two in U.S. hospitals getting put back together. And something else happened in the hospitals that affected him significantly, though I don't know what that was. Alan's quiet to begin with, and rarely talks about himself.”

Jo thought,
There speaks the pot, calling the kettle black.
And turned off the tape.

Her face was hot – though the rest of her felt icy – as she heard herself telling Alan why she wanted to do what she wanted, and not stay with Toss.

There was a hard, heavy weight in her chest that shifted painfully when she thought about Alan and what he must think of her. Which irritated her too, as she sat and held Emmy in her lap – till Buddy knocked on her kitchen door and made her jump in her chair.

“We gotta call the vet out. Brown Berry's water broke, and the foal's stuck good.” Buddy's face was smeared with blood and manure, and his eyes were tense and tired.

“I'll call Woodford's, and meet you at the barn. I'll make us a pot of coffee too.”

“Thanks.”

“When's the lady coming for Sam?”

“Tomorrow, from what Toss said. What time I don't know.”

Excerpt From Jo Grant's Journal:

…And now an unrelated question: Why do Tom and Alan, and Jack too, despite his troubles, seem more interesting than the men who stayed home? It's something behind their eyes, no matter how different they are from each other. You can see the danger, and the suffering, and the hard edge that got them through it. The peace they want is niggling at them too, that some seem to make for themselves. That others seem afraid of.

I wonder what WWI did to Dad? He never talked about it that I remember. But memory's a strange thing. I can see Gabe trotting home without Dad – and Daddy lying dead in the woods with an arm flung wide. I know he would've wanted it just that way. A heart attack on the back of a horse, not in some cold white hospital room. But why that comes to mind every few weeks, but not Mom's death nearly that often I can't begin to explain…

Wednesday, April 18, 1962

E
ven though she'd gotten very little sleep, Jo was in the kitchen early, in one of Tom's T-shirts and her softest sweat pants, looking for whatever information Toss might've left – while Emmy leapt and scooted around the side yard.

Jo found his note on the office desk, then walked out into the yard from the kitchen, and sat on the old wooden swing Tom had made her after her dad died. As soon as she sat, Emmy flew straight at her, tan ears flapping, and threw herself in Jo's lap.

They sat there for quite awhile, Jo's bare feet sliding through the grass, her long legs straight in front of her, the small white-chested boxerish puppy quietly watching the view as they gently swayed three feet forward, then three feet back.

“Well, Emmy…” Emmy looked up at Jo, as Jo sighed and rubbed her chest. “I better go get it done.”

“This is Jo Grant, Mrs. Johns. I wanted to catch you before you left Louisville. I'm sorry to inconvenience you, but I've decided not to sell Sam… I know. Yes… If I change my mind I will. Thank you for being understanding.”

She'd actually sounded irate. But Jo stood in the brick-walled kitchen after she'd hung up, her back to the big brick fireplace, and smiled without noticing, before she went off to get a shower.

Alice Franklin sat at her desk at Blue Grass Horse Vans and read the letter for the third time. She tucked it back in its envelope, then slipped it into the safe behind her desk, carefully twirling the heavy black dial to reset the combination.

She stared out the window for a minute – her blue-gray eyes worried, her wide mouth tense – till her secretary rang to tell her she'd gotten her a doctor's appointment early the next morning.

Alice thanked her. And picked up the plans for the booth she was designing for a national horse equipment convention where all kinds of equine products were showcased every year, and their company would use the booth to promote their vans and trailers.

Her reading glasses were on her nose and her whole face was concentrated, the classic oval, fine-boned face of a woman somewhere around sixty who must have been beautiful when she was young, and was still striking now. She laid a sheet of tracing paper across the booth elevation, and was beginning to draw a different kind of counter – when her older son, Richard, walked through her door.

“Can I speak to you for a minute?” He'd already sat before he asked, as though it never occurred to him that the answer wouldn't be yes.

“Of course.” Alice took her glasses off, then smoothed her salt-and-pepper hair toward a large oval chignon, considering the tension radiating from Richard, the tightly crossed legs, the jiggling foot, the hands gripping the arms of his chair, the weak chin set hard, the forehead wrinkled above sandy brows – before she said, “So what's on your mind?”