The Girl in the Window (2 page)

Idly, he wondered,
What color are her eyes
? He would have bet they were doe-brown.

He’d never gotten that close to her, though. The one time he’d tried, he’d come around the corner of the barn only to find she was gone like the breeze. He might have imagined her.

When the irascible old man who’d lived next door had finally died, Josh had resigned himself to the idea that the house would remain vacant as so many old houses hereabouts did these days. Abandoned to slowly turn into even more of an eyesore than it had, the weathered gray of the boards and rickety fence becoming shabbier with time.

Some folks who acted as his neighbor did, distant and ill-natured, only needed some warming up.

Old man Winters hadn’t been one of them.

He’d been a tall, handsome man until the day he’d died. Proud, with hair that was still dark well into old age, although it had thinned. No amount of idle conversation had ever warmed him, he’d just glanced at Josh dismissively each time Josh tried and then walked away – if he didn’t give Josh an outright disdainful look.

The wife hadn’t been much better when she’d been alive.

Josh had heard them of a summer’s day shouting at each other when the windows were open and neither had had a kind word to say to the other.

Some people were just that way, happy in their misery, and you had to leave them to it.

Then the old woman had died.

No more choleric arguments, instead the house had become darkly silent, hidden behind its curtains.

Even so, Josh had known when the old man began to ail.

It was hard not to notice. Where once he’d been fit he’d become bloated, with deep bags under rheumy eyes. Judging by the bottles that bulged his trash bags when they were set out by the road, the old man had found a solace common to many.

In an odd way, Josh had grieved for him, knowing the old man was coming to the end of his days even as at the same time a part of him had been relieved. At last, the man would be eased of his now long, lonely misery.

After the death of his wife, it clearly had been misery. The old man’s shoulders had slumped on the rare times he’d stepped out of the house to mow the lawn or do basic maintenance.

Josh hadn’t seen the day when the ambulance had taken him, Josh had been out testing the horse to find out how much training it had. To his relief, he’d found it had been at least schooled to the harness, if not to the bike – what laymen called the sulky or cart. That had been a relief. He wouldn’t have to start at the beginning.

Sadly, it had taken a few days before Josh had realized the old man was gone. Even more sadly, there’d been no one left to write his obituary. What had been in the paper had been scant, little more than a notice with his name, where he’d worked, and the prior death of his wife.

Afterward Josh had resigned himself to watching the house deteriorate even further.

Instead, after a short time, it had slowly begun to blossom. There were small signs of care.

Someone replaced the battered old aluminum mailbox, picked up the yard and mowed the grass. The grimy, hazy windows had been washed so they sparkled. Flowers were planted, bunches of inexpensive bright yellow daisies, along with purple and white coneflowers, bright and cheery.

He never saw anyone do it. For all he knew it might have been the pixies or fairies from the fairy tales his mother had once read to him doing the work.

Then one day he saw her.

The girl stood in the window, looking out wistfully.

Just a flash, and then the shadows swallowed her up again. He might have imagined her.

The daughter
? some folks around town speculated. There’d been rumors.

Who knew there had been a daughter
?

No one, it seemed, was sure.

It hadn’t been mentioned in the newspaper obituary.

Certainly, the signs had never been there. The old man had never had a single visitor over the years.

Suddenly, there was this girl. No one knew her name.

If she was the daughter why hadn’t she ever visited?
Josh would’ve remembered if she had.

He’d definitely have remembered her.

He watched from his kitchen window as she approached the fence to the paddock, a sheaf of winter wheat in hand. Barely a mouthful for the horse, but better than the straw or grass it cropped from around the edges of the paddock.

It was more than Josh himself could coax the animal to eat from his hand.

The horse watched the girl in turn.

She stood at the fence patiently, and watched in return.

Deliberately, she stepped up on the bottom rail, put an arm across the top and held out her offering of rich green grain with the other.

Abruptly, the horse charged across the paddock away from her, and then came to a sudden stop, blowing, watching her from first one eye, then the other.

She never moved, she just watched.

Then, as graceful as a dancer, the horse paced around the paddock, his gait steady, even. A trotter’s gait. Beautiful, even, each hoof striking out neatly, perfectly, as if he were between the shafts of the bike. Pure magic. It tried pacing, tossed its head, and shifted back to trotting.

In that moment, Josh knew what it was he had.
Lightning in a bottle
. A shiver ran over him. His heart caught.

Breathless as he watched, Josh saw the girl smile, just the faintest curve of her lips.

She was succeeding where everyone else had failed.

Wild, everyone had said. The horse was wild. Some just were.

Well, Josh knew that, but there was something about this horse Josh somehow knew was reachable. There was more to him, to this horse. Something had happened to make him this way.

But that gait, that smooth flowing stride was something to see. So perfect, so effortless. Some horses were trotters. Some were pacers. And then there were those rare few who were poetry in motion.

Josh couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

Even as young as the horse had been on the day Josh had bought him – the smooth flow of muscle beneath the glossy hide, the tilt of the horse’s ears, and the intelligence in the animal’s dark eyes had caught Josh’s eye. There was just something about it that called to him.

Sometimes there was just that magic.

At that moment in the back of his mind, Josh had heard his grandfather’s low, deep, gravelly voice, say, “That’s the horse you’re looking for, son. He’s got it all, this one. Just look at those legs, that chest. But it’s that look in his eye that will win it for you. He’s got heart, that one.”

Josh could see his grandfather in his mind’s eye – the grizzled, seamed face, the strong features, black eyes and straight dark hair that showed his native heritage in the way Josh’s own thick brown hair and brown eyes didn’t.

It was there though, that legacy. One he hoped to meet, to live up to.

Like his love of horses and horseracing, it ran in his blood.

Josh’s father had died before he could remember him – an automobile accident.

For Josh, surrounded by women – as much as he loved all of them – his grandfather had been the man in his life. Someone to emulate. He couldn’t think of a better role model.

Would he be half the man his grandfather had been?

He hoped so.

His grandfather had introduced him to racing, shared his love for it with his grandson.

It wasn’t the betting, it was the horses.

Even then, the sport had been fading from the headlines, dying slowly by greed, by the bigger and sometimes corporate stables with their need for fame and their demand for bigger purses to offset the cost of raising the horses and bragging rights. That had forced ticket prices up and driven away those who’d once come to fill the ‘cheap seats’, the folks who’d bet a dollar or two a race, who’d come for a day of fun at the track.

And for the love of it.

Smaller stables had been forced to the edges of the sport, to the county fair races. They simply couldn’t afford to compete.

It had been and always would be a gamble to find the right horse, to raise and train it, and only one in each race would take away the big money.

As much as he missed him, Josh was almost glad his grandfather had died when he did, because he didn’t live to see his beloved sport driven almost to extinction, to the point where many tracks had to offer slot machines and gambling to get people to come.

It was a devil’s bargain.

The casinos offered to keep the tracks alive in order to get their foot in the door. Once in, though, they didn’t want to invest in the facilities – in the stables or tracks. That remained to the owners, trainers, drivers, and the racing public. The last of which was growing smaller every year in the face of the video poker and slot machines which offered a quicker thrill.

But Josh still loved racing, he loved the thrill of seeing the horses run, of watching that smooth gait, of sitting in the bike, the rush of closing on the finish line.

Only the best drivers could make any kind of a living at it and most in harness racing made barely enough to get by. Like so much else, you did it because you loved it, not because you wanted to get rich at it. Few did.

Josh was a good driver, but he’d wanted more. More control, a better life. He wanted to be the one making the decisions, choosing the horses. And racing them.

So, with his carefully hoarded savings, he’d bought the farm and put it to work. The money his grandfather had left him though, he’d used to buy horses. It hadn’t been much, he’d had to invest it carefully, choose just the right horses.

He had a few others, all with good bloodlines on paper. They were good if not great runners, still trying to find their potential. One a trotter, one a pacer, and one still in training.

Then he’d seen this one in the distant paddock at the horse sale and he knew he’d found his horse. The one he hoped would make magic.

There was a music to the steady thunder of the horse’s hooves as it ran, a rhythmic pounding as the horse paced around the paddock, before turning abruptly as he drew too close to the girl on one side. Turning, he went back the other way around before he got too close there as well.

It reminded Josh of training a horse to harness.

First, you put the traces on them to let them get used to them. Some just looked around, clearly bewildered. Others tossed their heads. Once they got used to the harness and pulling a little weight, you put them back out to pasture to grow and build muscle. Hitching them to the training bikes was another thing entirely. Some just stopped, startled by the change, and the sudden weight, before they figured it all out.

The girl laughed at the horse’s antics, the sound surprisingly clear in the early morning silence, and a music in itself.

Josh had the sense that she didn’t laugh much, and wouldn’t have at all, if she knew he watched.

The horse stopped.

His ears swiveled to the unfamiliar sound and his head turned even as he paced away from her to look at her once again.

It was a game now, Josh sensed. The only question was who would win.

Around the horse went, to turn and pace away in the other direction once more.

In her hand was the sheaf of fresh green grass she brought every day.

And he refused every day.

The sun shone on her pale hair – the color of new wheat – as the pretty blue dress blew against her legs in the soft breeze.

Something caught the girl’s attention and her head lifted, as alert and wary as the horse.

Distantly Josh heard the sound of a big diesel truck engine.

Russ, on time as always.

Josh fought the urge to swear, and almost wished the man could have been late for once.

Looking back to the paddock, he saw the sheaf of grass lying on the top of the rail.

A flash of blue dress fluttered around shapely legs and ankles, the girl’s feet bare as she ran. Her hair flagged in the breeze like the horse’s mane as she raced lightly across the sparkling dew-soaked grass to the house next door.