Horse Heaven (91 page)

“Okay, I understand that,” said Joy.

“And?”

“Relaxing, isn’t it?” prompted Elizabeth.

“Well,” said Joy. “Yes. Yes.” She sighed again.

“Oops,” said Elizabeth. “There’s call waiting.”

“How much did they give you?”

“A million pounds.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Start a boutique publishing house in England, specializing in futurology. Plato is going to be the editor-in-chief. I want to try my system against the bookies there. We’ve had enough of Fresno. Got to go.”

———

Mr. Tompkins sat back and read over the letter he had written, then turned to the page beside it and crossed off number five. Two to go. He began another one,

Then, as hard as it was, he signed his name and wrote the check.

I
T WAS ALL VERY EASY
for Deirdre to say that she just had to be honest with herself, that she did not want to see Tiffany, and best admit it, but as soon as she was honest with herself and admitted it, well, then, Mother of God, she wanted to see Tiffany more than anything. The thing that she did want to see about Tiffany was her beauty and her friendliness and her enjoyment of life. What she didn’t want to see about Tiffany was her own conflicts about that very beauty, friendliness, and enjoyment of life. And so, to be honest, she wanted to see Tiffany more than anything else in the world, and so, to be honest, she didn’t want to see her at all, ever again. Selling real estate was ever so much easier. She was a contrary person, she fit sideways into a contrary market, and she didn’t feel nearly the qualms of conscience consigning an innocent, well-meaning domicile into the hands of knavish owners as she had selling horses.

She turned into Ellen’s access road, and glanced into the big front paddock just in time to see a large black horse canter toward the paddock fence in a leisurely manner, fold his legs, and come down on the other side. Then he turned and headed directly for her car, only sliding to a halt as she herself skidded to a halt. Horse and car were now nose to nose. Deirdre sat back and adjusted her seat belt. It had happened so fast that she hadn’t had time to react, but now she did. Her heart was pounding, though whether from the sight of the horse jumping or the possibility of hitting him she did not know. The horse, however, did not look startled. He put his nose down to the hood of the car, then turned himself about and trotted away from her, tail up like a flag, head swiveling this way and that. Deirdre laughed. The thing that she was
laughing at was that the fence in this front paddock was five feet high. She had built it herself. She was enough of a horsewoman to know even without having paid close attention that the horse had jumped it effortlessly from an easy canter. She followed him as he turned and headed toward the barn. She saw Ellen come out to receive him, followed by Audrey. Ellen sent Audrey back in. Then Deirdre saw that he had a halter on, and that dangling from the halter was an eight-inch length of rope, which Ellen caught and held on to, though the horse tried to pull away from her. Difficult beast, she thought.

A half-hour later, Deirdre, Ellen, Tiffany, and the horse were in the arena. Audrey had strict instructions to stay out of the way. The horse’s name was Sudden Intuition, or Toots. Ellen was riding him, Deirdre was standing in the middle of the arena, and Tiffany was sitting with her feet up in a plastic chair. The horse was huge and strong—seventeen hands and twelve hundred pounds or more, and still a three-year-old. You might worry for his future soundness, but he had ten inches of bone—his legs were like telephone poles and perfectly correct. He was, no doubt about it, a prize.

Of course, he ground his teeth, jerked his head around, wrung his tail, got behind the leg, did not care to participate or cooperate, a story as old as man and horse. Ellen was a good rider, and strong. She got him on the bit—which wasn’t hard for him, since he was built well—and she moved him into a big, expansive trot. No problem. He went five or six paces like a metronome. Then he used his big strong old neck and jerked her forward, and no power of human arms or back was going to hold him. And she already had a fairly severe bit on him—anything harsher would eventually inure him to pain and make him worse. Only when he was jumping did the horse behave. Then he galloped forward over the jumps, and responded almost entirely to balance and seat. Deirdre said, “What are you planning to do with him?”

“Make a jumper out of him.”

“He’s good at it, but you don’t have much control. You’ll be tempted to take him to A shows and all that.”

“Why not?”

“Because the courses are getting more technical all the time. There isn’t so much room for just a big jumper. He’s got to make a tight turn over a spooky vertical on flat cups to a giant Swedish oxer, then turn again to a big triple combination. He’s not adjustable like that.”

“But—”

“Never will be. He’s a brute. It’s global with him. You’ve got to watch out for him in the stall, he’s not friendly or eager to please. The things he likes to do he likes to do for himself.”

“He’s so young—”

“He’s had a whole career, darlin’, and he busted out of it. I see the whole thing. He’s a gelding now, and he’s still opinonated. He must’ve been a force of primal fear when he was a stud colt. You know, Gunther Gabel-Williams said he would rather face a roomful of tigers than an angry stallion, and I always thought he was the one who should know.”

“What can he do, then?”

“Go for a ’chaser, that’s what I think. You just point him down the course and let him run till he’s tired, two or three miles later. I see him at Cheltenham myself, eating up that valley with those big feet.”

“Do you think so?”

“It’s a dying sport, love.”

“Every horse sport is a dying sport, except there are more horses in the world being ridden for pleasure than ever in the history of mankind. Who’s going to train him?”

“Jonathan Sheppard’s good. Someone like that.”

“You,” Ellen said.

“Me? I never trained a ’chaser.”

“Don’t you want to?”

“No, of course not. No more of that.”

And then Ellen turned the horse in a circle, put him into a gallop, and jumped all the fences along the side of the arena, jumped out of the arena, crossed the road in one stride, jumping into the pasture, galloped, or rather swept, across it, jumped the far fence, turned, galloped down the road, and disappeared. Deirdre turned to Tiffany and said, “What in the name of all the saints is she doing?”

“Showing off, I guess. She’s never jumped him like that before.”

“She used to have one grain of sense, doncha know. She’s lost it now, though.”

“I’m glad you came out, Deirdre.”

“Are you? I’m sure it’s horses all the time with you now, darlin’.”

“Can’t stop, can’t turn around, can’t go backward, can’t think about anything else.” They looked at each other, and Deirdre saw that Tiffany was deadly serious. Her life was full, no room for anything else. Deirdre sighed, then realized that it was a sigh of relief. She said, “Och, what a shame.”

“I wish you would help me again.”

Horse and rider returned, not down the road but across another set of paddocks, jumping in, jumping out, jumping in, jumping out, and then they jumped right back into the arena and came to a halt in the center, in front of her. Over by the barn, Audrey was shouting, “Yeah! Yeah! Wow! Yay, Ellen!” Ellen was panting. The horse was blowing. She said, “I’m the rider. You’re the
trainer. Tiffany’s the owner. What do you say? You can’t say he’s not good enough for you or that Tiffany can’t afford it or that it won’t be fun.”

“Did you plan this?”

“No. No, though we wanted you to see him. But it wasn’t until we were all sitting here, right in place, that I saw how it would work.”

“It’ll work,” said Tiffany.

“Me, too!” shouted Audrey. “I want to do something, too!”

“You can be the cheering section!” called Tiffany.

“It’ll work,” said Deirdre, and after saying that, she knew it would—jumping, steeplechasing, friendship, and all the rest of it.

S
O THIS GUY
Angel Smith knew, named Horacio Delagarza, trailered five of the seven horses over to the auction yard and put them with the other auction horses in the corral. Then he went back for the last two, the two in the pen. They were the sorriest pair, one hardly able to walk and the other one just skin and bones. When he got back with them, it took a while to get the cripple off the trailer and into the corral, and he saw the guy watching, the guy with the double-bottomed livestock trailer parked in the back of the parking lot. The guy with the double-bottomed trailer was the slaughter guy. He came every week, and he always had enough money to go off with a full load, horses on the top shelf and horses on the bottom shelf, all bunched together, their heads down by their feet. It was a sight that Horacio hated to see, even though he wasn’t otherwise a pussy. After he unloaded the cripple, he untied the skinny one and let the bar down behind him. The skinny one backed right off the trailer and pricked up his ears and looked around.

The other five of Angel’s horses each had something going for them, but these two, well, who was going to buy them? thought Horacio. He sighed.

This skinny one was a friendly sort. He rubbed his head on Horacio’s shirt, and then, when Horacio turned around, he bumped his head into his back. Mostly horses ignored you if they didn’t know you. And then, when Horacio turned around, the guy looked right at him, right in the eye. “Yeah,” said Horacio, “ ‘Save me’ is about right. Except you should have gotten someone to do that before now. It’s too late now.” He put the horse into the corral, and the guy went over to the crippled horse and stood beside him. Lots of horses were milling around. The dust was unbearable, so Horacio got himself a Coke, found a seat, and wiped his face all over with his handkerchief. He had told Angel’s wife he would stay until the horses were sold and bring her back the money. She kind of hoped there would be several thousand dollars, even seven thousand dollars for seven horses, but Horacio couldn’t see it. Two or three maybe.

From where he was sitting, he could see all of Angel’s horses. The skinny one wasn’t knocked out like the cripple, nor was he scared or agitated like most of the others. He was looking around. He was right there, looking for a good home, thought Horacio. Good luck, buddy.

The buyers, even the ones who weren’t buying for slaughter, were a hardbitten, unpitying bunch, Horacio thought. They were looking for useful animals who could get down to work right now. No pets, no projects. Horacio looked away from the corral. It was a bad lot in the corral. The slaughter man would fill up his truck for sure.

The auctioneer came out and started peeling off the horses like cards from a deck. The lots were random. Good ones came after bad ones. They were led in, walked around, trotted around a few steps, then stood up. The auctioneer said something about each of them that was obvious to anyone looking on—here’s a nice palomino, this one trots good, three white stockings on this one, pretty head here. It was just patter, didn’t mean anything. Every horse had a buyer, and half the time the buyer was the slaughter man, whose voice rose out of the silence at the end of any bout of unsuccessful bidding and offered a couple hundred dollars. Bang, down came the gavel, and the slaughter man’s boy walked in and led the horse out to the double-bottomed trailer.

When they brought in the chestnut who could barely walk, it was so obvious that he would go to the slaughterhouse that there was only a moment of silence while the auctioneer looked at the slaughter man and the slaughter man said, “Ten dollars,” and the auctioneer said, “Anyone got fifteen?,” and no one said anything, and the horse went for ten dollars, and as they led him away, the skinny one, Horacio saw and heard him, let out a loud whinny, and so, on the principle of the squeaky wheel, he was next.