Summer Winds (24 page)

“I’m an oldies freak. You like Gogi Grant?” Suddenly a scratchy rendition of “Wayward Wind” began to play. Cash stepped back and offered her hand, pulling me up. “Let’s see,” she said, daring me to prove I could follow her.

Slipping her right arm around my waist, she held my right hand in hers, keeping about six inches distance from my body, saying this was her formal-distance stance and exactly how she’d danced with Verta. Before I could say something rude, she twirled me around the living room to the plaintive descriptions of the restless wind and the lover who was born to wander. At one point I tripped and she laughed. I was a good dancer and knew it, so her amusement rankled me.

Perhaps to elevate my dancing above Verta Olan’s or merely in defense of my gracefulness, I said, “Dancing is like riding a horse. To follow effectively your bodies have to be in close contact so you feel every move the other person makes.” I stepped in and pressed myself to her. She held me so tight I could barely breathe and could feel every muscle as she stepped or turned. I could have simply stopped dancing altogether and she would continue to move me as if I were glued to her body. The sensation was overpoweringly sensual and my head was spinning far faster than my feet. Both of us were warm and ebullient.

The record looped and replayed the same song. This time we danced more slowly, as if the act itself meant something, as if the music was speaking only to us. Every inch of me in contact with her body as we slowed to a mere swaying, so as not to cause the slightest separation of our flesh, which seemed to be pulsing through our clothing. When the music ended, we both stood very still, wrapped around one another, breathing for perhaps thirty seconds, not knowing what was next.

“She’s right. You’re a mean dancer.” I stared up at her, feeling that riverbank moment, that sensation that had returned on the porch in the rain and was now haunting me again. Gazing deeply into her eyes, for a second I thought I saw the depth of what she was feeling for me, but she regained control and the expression quickly faded.

“You’re a wonderful dancer. Thank you for that.” She broke the mood and gave a little mock-formal bow. “And here I thought the only thing I was going to get from the living room was a peanut-butter sandwich.” She picked up her sandwich, toasted me with it, and headed off to her room.

Whether to honor my demand that she leave me alone, or to protect herself emotionally, Cash Tate had obviously determined to move on with her life, leaving me to mine, and I felt suddenly foolish. I
was
push-pull, as she’d accused me. Only this time as she pulled away from me, I pushed forward…and now, all alone, I was falling.

August was upon us. Summer would be ending soon, and a sadness had begun to shroud my thoughts because Cash would be leaving. Maybe nature was simply trying to cheer me up and remind me that every season has its rebirths, when two nights later my cell phone rang.

I checked my watch and it was already ten, so I couldn’t imagine who was calling. Hiram’s wife, Betsy, was on the line, and I thought she might have heard about my foray into the lumberyard and wanted to tell me something about Stretch’s reaction to my threatening him, but her need was more immediate. She was alone and her favorite mare, Annie, was in labor. She’d been unable to reach Hiram, and she needed someone to come right away. I couldn’t help but wonder if Hiram was in town seeing his girlfriend again, something no one spoke of but everyone knew.

As Cash and I ran across the field in the dark to the small barn east of her house, I told her what was happening. We jogged into the aisle between the four small irregular stalls that housed equipment rather than horses, and at the far end where metal farm implements used to lie rested a distressed white mare on a bed of straw.

“We may lose her” was the first thing Betsy said as she looked up at us, her round face perspiring. She squatted next to the mare, herself bloodied, and patted the poor horse’s bottom gently. “I can’t get that foal out for the life of me. Been at it awhile.”

“Did you call the vet?” I asked.

“I’ve left word,” she replied.

Most people would have wanted assistance right away, but sometimes country pride kept neighbors from calling for help until it was too late. The mare’s sides were heaving up and down. At the business end of all of this lay a pool of liquid; the mare’s water had broken.

“Getting weak from the contractions. She’s in a lot of pain.”

Betsy was fretting, and it crossed my mind that everyone was in pain: Cash longing for a relationship, me repressing lust, Betsy losing her husband’s affection, and the mare losing her foal. Every female in this damned barn was hurting.

“Let’s get her up,” I said, and yanked off my shirt, ran to the barn hose, and washed up to my armpits, shivering more at the task ahead than the cold water. “Okay, Annie girl, we’re getting up, let’s go!” I pulled on her halter and her head rose off the straw, her eyes rolling wildly. “Let’s try to rock her from the far side.”

Betsy and Cash got on the opposite side of her and pushed, and I pulled, and the poor animal made piteous cries and tried to get up.

She wasn’t getting it done, and I knew if we had to use a crop then we had to, in order to assure that she stood up; otherwise she and the baby would die. And they might anyway.

“Again, let’s go!” I ordered, and the mare got to her knees as the three of us shouted at her. We all gave a huge hoist and she staggered to her feet, rocking against us all and knocking us around.

I feared at any moment that she would just sag to the ground and die, taking one of us with her.

“If she walks, there’s a chance the foal will fall back into the womb and get turned around,” I told Cash, then spoke to Betsy.

“You got any lard or mineral oil?”

She ran back to the house to see what she could find while Cash and I kept dragging the exhausted mare around in circles. She was screaming and wrinkling her upper lip in a pinched fashion.

Occasionally she gave a tortured kick with one hind leg.

“It’s coming out!” Cash shouted. “One leg. No nose.”

Bad news. The little foal’s face—rather than coming out between its legs, pointing toward the ground, in a swan-dive position—was pointed in the wrong direction, most likely facing back up toward the mare’s chest, causing its hind leg to come out first: a dreaded breech birth, where almost certainly the mother or baby or both would die.

“Lead her.” I handed Cash the halter rope and ran around to the back of Annie. “She’s breech. We’ve got to try to get the baby turned around. Keep her moving.” While Cash walked her, I gently inched the little leg back inside the mare, then reached into the birth canal and tried to right the baby, pushing back at the little creature resting inside its mother, but no luck. Hoping the rhythmic walking would turn the baby around, I reached inside again as far as I could, but my arm wasn’t strong enough and, with her water broken, the mare was dry now, all fluids out of her. I was fearful of the hideous decision looming—destroy the mare to save the foal. Betsy reappeared carrying a can of lard.

“If we have to put her down, have you got anything?” I asked, and both Betsy and I knew I was asking for something intravenous versus just a bullet. Our only hope then would be to rescue the foal. “Don’t talk about that yet, give it a chance.” Cash’s voice was reprimanding.

“I found Hiram, he’s on his way. And the vet returned my call, if he can just get here. I can’t bear to lose Annie. She’s been a real good mother and takes such care of her babies.”

Something about Betsy’s plaintive cry that Annie had been a good mother seemed to ignite Cash, who had never had one.

She handed me the lead rope, stripped down to her bra, scrubbed her arms at the sink, and slathered herself up to the elbow in lard.

“Do you know what you’re doing? Have you ever done this?” I asked nervously.

“Actually, no, but I know I can do it. I’m strong enough if someone will walk me through it.”

“You’ve got to be careful with the tissues inside her and don’t puncture anything, because you could kill Annie,” I said, which wasn’t exactly walking her through it but more like warning her against disaster, and I made a mental note to settle down and try to be more instructive.

Betsy led the mare while Cash went to the animal’s backside and put her face up against the mare’s left hip and her hand inside the weary animal as she continued to drag Annie around. “Okay,”

Cash said. “I’ve got my palm up against the baby, I can feel it.”

“That’s good. As she contracts, you have to go with it. Slide your hand in and around the foal very gently and slowly, as deep as you can. You’ve got to be patient or you could hurt her,” I said.

“And don’t pull the baby out,” Betsy instructed. “That happened once with a cow man down the road and it destroyed my other mare.” Her minute-by-minute coverage was making me nervous and the mare must have felt the same, because her eyes rolled and she looked like she wanted to give up and die.

“Okay, I’m working my way kind of underneath.” Cash panted, her arm inside the mare now as the mare kicked one more time and screamed and Cash hung on to her.

“Don’t jerk around, Cash, you could injure her,” I said.

“Just trying not to get my ass kicked off back here,” she replied. “Wait, wow, I just felt something move.” Cash momentarily extracted her arm and stepped away from the animal. Betsy held onto the lead rope.

“Keep walking her, maybe something shifted,” I said. Another minute of walking and sweating and praying, and suddenly I heard Cash’s voice an octave higher than usual. “I see its head. It’s coming out!” “Okay, reach in gently and help guide it.” The first little hoof became visible under the head. She reached inside and carefully located the second, protecting the membrane around it so as not to puncture anything vital. Moments later, exaggerated moans came from the mare as she contracted and the baby launched itself at our feet.

“You did it, Annie!” I ran around and hugged the mare’s neck as Betsy dropped to the ground and began to pull the placenta back and clear debris from the little foal’s nostrils. “And
you
did it,” I said with admiration to Cash as we stood there, gazing at the little guy who looked skinny and wobbly and spaced out, as if he’d landed on the moon.

I looked up at Cash and tears had gathered in her eyes. She tried to wipe them away with her forearm.

“I guess Annie got Buck’s money’s worth on your animal-husbandry stint,” I said.

“Yeah, you can go years never knowing why you experienced something, and then suddenly it all becomes clear,” she whispered.

As we stood side by side, watching the mare lick her foal and the tiny little fellow twitch all over from his sudden arrival into the world, it seemed like a new beginning, certainly for Annie and her foal, but also for Cash and me. A physical birth had taken place tonight, but somewhere inside me was a yearning still unborn.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it, to see him stand up and walk around after only minutes,” I managed to say.

“It’s unbelievable how the whole thing went from critical to a miracle. That’s how I want my life to be,” Cash said softly, almost to herself, and I didn’t have anything to add. I wanted my life to be that way too.

Betsy took over now like a midwife, coaxing the colt into standing steadier, talking to the mare about what a fine job she’d done, cleaning up around the stall, and checking every now and then for Hiram. I was exhausted from my ER duties and believed Cash must be in the same condition.

“Guess we ought to name him after one of you,” Betsy said, smiling at us.

“You should call him Maggie, after her, but put a C on the end for Cash. That makes him Maggic.”

“With your help, he popped out like magic, that’s for sure.”

Betsy grinned.

Hiram and the vet pulled into the drive, their headlights flashing up on the wall of the barn, and Cash and I headed outside to a hose bib to wash up and stay out of the way of the vet, who would be examining the mare to make sure she was okay.

The water splashing on us was cold and we stood shoulder to shoulder getting cleaned up, which was no small task.

“Hey, Maggie, thanks for what you did.” I heard Hiram’s voice before he rounded the corner of the barn and quickly told him Cash did most of it. “Betsy said she’s turned into quite a hand. Better go see if I can help the vet any. Hurry him out of here so I’m not paying for more than one hour of his time.” He chortled at his own stinginess.

As Hiram disappeared, having given the most effusive thank-you a country fellow could muster, I turned to Cash. “You were great. You should be very proud. You didn’t panic.” Both of us dried off on our shirts before putting them back on, and in that moment I contemplated that Cash Tate had, in addition to all her visible attributes, an underlying confidence and courage that was perhaps even more sexy than her high cheekbones and gorgeous curls. She’d stuck with it, out there in the barn, when I’d tried and failed and was nearly certain we would lose the foal or have to put the mare down.

She’d stepped up and said she could save them, not knowing if she could, but willing herself to the task. She was, in a strange way, more adapted to this environment than I, because she was unafraid.

“I don’t think horses should be named after people. Being that intimate with someone named Annie makes me feel like I’ve been on a really bad date,” Cash said wryly, breaking my thoughts and making me laugh.

“Where else can you have a wildfire, a propane explosion, and a breech birth all in the same week to liven up your summer?” I was ebullient over our success and loved being with Cash and talking about it.

“You’ve provided a lot of excitement, believe me.” That sweltering look that would melt metal had started to coalesce in her eyes, when she suddenly turned away.

I glanced down at her lime-green boots covered in God knows what after tonight’s emergency. “Kind of got ruined.”

“No, just broken in. I look like a real rancher now.”

“You do indeed.” I admired her tall, strong frame and the confidence she exuded, and I was not only proud of her but drawn to her.