House of Mercy (11 page)

“Don’t trust me, huh?”

“I’d trust you with my firstborn child. It’s divine messages by thunderstorm that I don’t bank on.”

See there? He
had
told her about the broken window. Right?

“But you don’t got
any
kids, Cat.”

“What’s that? You’re slurring, Garner. I hope this isn’t a stroke. You just rest. Let me figure out what’s going on with you and how we’re going to make it right.”

Garner returned to the sleep that his pain demanded, seeing no point in waiting for the good doctor to get him onto the bed. He didn’t have to be awake for that process, anyway.

A stroke. Honest to Pete.

9

F
or more than a week, that pronghorn antelope haunted Beth. Twice she thought she saw it in the parking lot behind the feed-and-tack, pinned under the front bumper of someone’s truck. She caught glimpses of it bleeding in the aisles of the grocery store as she passed through with boxes of vegetables piled on wheeled carts. In each case she took a tentative step toward the vision, unable to tell her mind it wasn’t real. The mirage reacted to her approach as mirages do: the antelope recovered and rose, dashed away, and then collapsed once more in a heap.

What on earth was the point? She chewed on the question for days while frustration over non-answers seeped into deeper questions about the pending outcome of the lawsuit and the future of the ranch. Was it a message from God, a preview of her imminent punishment? She half expected God to help her family escape Darling’s snare only to lead them all directly into an even worse fate.

That wasn’t God’s nature, to be so mean. Was it?

Her job at the grocery store chafed like a wool shirt on a hot day. She endured her shifts yearning to be back outside, in the dirt, with the animals, so that she could start thinking straight again. At least at the feed-and-tack she was surrounded by the proper scents.

August arrived, the hottest month of the year. After several gut-wrenching conferences and hearings, Beth finally had been slated to receive a judgment. Mr. Darling had wanted his time in court, and he got it. The light did not shine favorably on Beth, in spite of her attorney’s agile mind and tongue. The judge would settle the lawsuit on Monday. The Borzois’ counsel was not optimistic. Beth looked down the barrel of the longest weekend of her life.

Saturday afternoon, she left King Soopers the second her shift was officially over. She was sweating from the heat trapped by the mountain ranges, and she figured she could grill sausages on the dashboard of her old truck. She sat in the cab with both doors open and the fan on high, her cell phone balanced on her knee while she dug through the glove box for a ponytail band and waited for the steering wheel to cool. She planned to call Jacob, because she needed the kindness of his voice and the reassurance of his words to carry her through the afternoon.

Considering how long Beth had known him, she ought to have found her place in his story as a surrogate little sister. For a long time after his arrival, Jacob was blind to nearly everything but his role as Roy’s right-hand man. He was polite to Rose but rejected her attempts to mother him. He openly disliked Levi and gave Beth no more attention than he gave to the cows. He worked hard, studied responsibly, spoke little, and never played. Even his participation in rodeo events was more rigor than fun. At least as far as Beth saw it.

Only the birth of Beth’s little brother exposed Jacob’s capacity for affection. Rose had some bleeding complications that for a few days sat over the family like the grim reaper perched on their roof. Jacob was still sixteen then, still very close to the accidental death of his own mother. He hovered over the baby to the point of skipping chores and usurped Levi’s role as big brother. If Levi cared, he gave no sign.

Later, when Beth was old enough to diagnose Jacob’s aloofness as the pain of having lost his mother at a young age, she thought—in her expectant adolescent way—that all he needed to be happy was a woman who loved him, and when she was just a little older he would see her as exactly that. Her hopefulness grew until she was twelve, which was when Jacob put a stop to Levi’s unmerciful big-brother pranks by dropping a scorpion into one of Levi’s boots. After that, her interest in Jacob blossomed into full-blown adoration, and Levi, distracted from her, turned to Jacob as a more interesting and worthy adversary.

Beth eventually realized that Jacob had diverted Levi’s attention because he disliked Levi, not because he cared in some special way about her. For six months he dated a rodeo queen, a modelesque woman with platinum hair and a voice like Carrie Underwood’s. Beth teased Jacob about bringing home an older woman. In one of the most embarrassing moments of Beth’s life, Jacob pointed out that the woman was two years his junior—an understandable misjudgment for a girl Beth’s age.

The phone rang. Jacob Davis, the ID announced. This pleased her, even though he wouldn’t be calling her for the same reasons she had wanted to call him.

Beth put the phone to her ear while the hair band was still between her lips. “Mm-hm?”

“Come have a look at Gert before you run off with Hastings tonight?” Jacob asked. Gert was the pretty snowflake Appaloosa, his horse, and she’d been at the Blazing B only a few months. Beth took the band out of her teeth and wrapped it around her hair.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s lethargic, really hot to the touch. Tongue’s hanging out of her mouth.”

“Is she sweating?”

“No. She never sweats.”

“All horses sweat, Jacob.”

“Not this one. A lady all the way.”

“What kind of work were you doing today?”

“Irrigating,” he said.

“That shouldn’t have strained her.”

“She’s a brilliant cow horse, but she hates these summer outings. Next time I’m taking Hastings. He can dig his own ditches—did you know that?”

Beth smiled. “I assume Gert got plenty to drink today, if you were irrigating?”

“Evian and bonbons.”

“That’s your problem right there: bonbons will slow a girl down every time.”

She expected Jacob to laugh and wasn’t sure what it meant when he didn’t.

“What’s her rectal temperature?” she said.

“You
know
the reason I’m calling you is because that’s your department, Beth.”

“You need to take her temperature.”

“That would be a gross violation of our professional relationship.”

“Yours and mine?”

Now Jacob laughed, and Beth realized he was talking about the horse. She felt stupid, always the kid who was shorter than the punch lines.

“So call the vet,” she said, blushing.

“But we’ve got you.”

“No, ‘we’ don’t.” She’d snapped at him without meaning to, the way a wounded dog would bite the person trying to be kind. An uncomfortable second passed between them.

She spoke first. “Wow, the heat’s making me testy today. Maybe I should go cool off.”

“Stop in to see Gert first,” Jacob said. “It’s no extra trip for you. We’re right here by the barn.”

“You’re at the horse pasture?” Gert was as welcome there as any other horse, but Jacob usually kept her closer to the Hub. “What are you doing there?”

Jacob didn’t answer, and she thought of Hastings, already saddled and waiting for her. She thought of that silver show saddle and wondered why he hadn’t confronted her yet.

His refusal to call a real veterinarian caused her concern for Gert to grow. Jacob put too much confidence in Beth to benefit any horse in real danger.

“Where’s Gert now?” she asked.

“Right here next to me.”

“At least put her in the barn. Or in the shade.”

“You think I’m standing in the sun?”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she said. Then she hung up and called Dr. O’Connor’s office, but the real professional was out on a call. The next closest vet was some distance away.

Beth’s hands were vibrating with a mix of dread and anticipation as she went through the motions of closing up the truck, putting it in gear, and pulling out onto the highway to head home. What would she do if Gert’s fate was about to mimic the antelope’s?

Beth drove several miles without noticing her surroundings. She was wondering what might have become of that antelope if Levi hadn’t shot it—would the wolf have taken it down a second time?—when a swallow swooped across her windshield and smacked the glass, leaving behind a small greasy smudge and a few tiny gray feathers before tumbling over the hood of her cab.

Beth stomped on the brakes, then swerved to the dusty shoulder of the road and jumped out. She knew when she did it that she was hoping for an opportunity. In her swift imagination she found the bird, fixed the bird, freed the bird, and as it took flight once more, all the answers to her questions came floating down from heaven and into her mind as a kind of reward.

Could she have healed the break in Java Java Go Joe’s leg and averted the lawsuit? What if she had been given a supernatural gift that might save them all? What if she was about to become a vet who could work healing magic in animals?

All her financial worries would disappear. For that matter, none of this trouble would have started. She could have waved her blessed fingers over Marigold’s melting cornea, and voilà! Eye restored. Silver saddle back in the barn.

An old cottonwood provided comforting shade that covered her vehicle and the road. She found the crumpled bird in the bed of her truck, and she saw that it wasn’t a swallow as she had first thought, but a house sparrow with dark brown and gray features. She picked up its body gently and noted that its neck was broken. The bundle of crushed feathers was disordered and weightless. Its back still held the warmth of the hot summer sun.

Beth cradled the tiny carcass and stroked its feathers with her forefinger, hoping for the impossible: a quickening of its heart and lungs, a sudden fluttering of wings. She tried several heartfelt prayers. She tried several songs. She closed her eyes and buried her nose in the little body just as she had done with the antelope. She had such expectation!

She waited a long time, walking circles around that cottonwood tree.

Jacob’s waiting for you. Gert’s waiting
, her conscience muttered as she clutched the dead bird to her pounding heart.

What can I do for Gert?

More than you can do for this little guy
.

More than nothing? That doesn’t promise to be much
.

Beth could usually accept a creature’s death. Animals lived and died on the ranch, in spite of the most experienced vets’ efforts to save them. But today the fury of powerlessness overcame her. Rotten luck and the whims of God would hold her responsible for the death of Joe, of a pronghorn antelope, and now of this tiny bird. She would never have the opportunity to be a licensed vet, let alone a supernatural one.

Beth let loose a yell of frustration that came up from the bottom of her belly, and she hurled the dead bird like a baseball into the cottonwood’s thick trunk. She wished the bird back the moment it left her fingers. This was not the behavior of a compassionate human being. But the airborne body was beyond her reach in an instant.

The sparrow bounced off the grooved bark, and then after a shocking, flapping, noisy tumble through the air, it flew away.

Beth watched a feather float down onto the exposed roots of the tree and didn’t believe what she had seen. She must have startled another bird out of the branches overhead. That was all.

When she finally uprooted her feet from the earth, she searched for the evidence of her involuntary birdslaughter. She examined the nooks of the cottonwood’s roots. She ran her hands up and down the rough trunk. She covered the ground in a widening spiral.

She couldn’t even find any dead leaves on the ground.

When the path of her spiral took her to the base of another tree, Beth stopped her search. She placed her hand on the grooved bark because it was real and tangible. Above her head, a bird chirped once. She looked up and was not surprised to see a brown house sparrow.

Beth tried to read nothing into it. The common birds flocked together. They all looked the same to her. Avian species were not her specialty. Still she couldn’t stop sweat from breaking out across the palms of her hands.

The bird chirped again and eyed her with a cocked head. She had no idea what this might mean.

But her heart said,
Go. Gert’s waiting for you
.

She had to figure out how this worked. She left immediately.

10

T
he horse pasture and the house where generations of Borzois had lived since the late eighteen hundreds were on the north end of the Blazing B. Here the property tapered to a narrow boundary between the county road and the creek that poured out of foothills littered with black volcanic rock. Several horse shelters protected the animals from the stiff weather of the wider landscape. A horseshoe-shaped line of ninety-foot cottonwood trees offered further protection and privacy.

Beth hurried to the barn, her head full of flying sparrows and elegant antelope and expectations for Jacob’s horse. God would make everything clear. He would do it before the family lost everything, in the nick of time. Miracles always came in the nick of time.