The News in Small Towns (Small Town Series, Book 1) (15 page)

“Down in the far stable.  Go on down there if you want.  I’ll be down presently.”

We decided to drive down rather than slosh our way through the various mudholes in the driveway.  Gina and I were both silent.  As we passed the house I noticed a woman’s face peering through an opening in the curtains.  The curtain drew closed when she saw us looking.

These stables were similar to the first, only rougher. The flies were fiercer and the smell worse.  The stalls were made of what appeared to be wood salvaged from an old tobacco barn and reminded me of Eskimo driftwood houses Jack had once taken pictures of when on assignment in Barrow.  Only a few of these stalls were occupied, and I saw several geldings searching for browse in the adjacent pasture.  We started walking down the row of stalls and I felt Gina’s hand on my shoulder.  The first horse we saw was old and almost white.  She looked up, but the film over both eyes told me that she was hearing us, but not seeing us, as we passed.  She gave a low nicker.  A louder, stronger whinny, familiar after many months, came from across the aisle.  I hurried over—too quickly because the animal inside backed up in fright.  The stall was boarded up almost like a casket, with scrap wood nailed everywhere and the door bolted shut and secured with a crossbar.  I looked through a small opening and started to cry.

Inside, her eyes almost hidden by gnats and with manure residue covering every inch of her hide, stood Alikki—my mother’s pride and joy, who had been a premium filly, had been Oldenburg Horse of the Year as a two-year-old, and who, under saddle was worth many times what all of Moon’s horses put together were worth.  Looking closer I saw that her water bucket was empty except for a film of algae, she had rubbed her rump almost raw on the sides of her stall, and her hooves flared outward from neglect. 

And, although she was grossly pregnant, she was so bony that you could have almost hung your hat on her.

She put her ears up, looked at me closely, and nickered softly.

I didn’t know what to say.  I just sobbed and sobbed.  I even tugged at the bolt, trying to unfasten it, but I couldn’t get my fingers to work right.

“Don’t be doing that, now,” came Moon’s voice.  He had come up noiselessly in his electric cart.  “She’s a wild one.”

“Why do you have her locked up like this?” I asked, as casually as I could with tears streaming down my cheeks.

“She gets out.  Jumps over the door.”

“She gets turnout, right?”

“Not after she kicked over my fence for the third time.”

“Will you sell her back to me?”

“Maybe.  After she foals.  But if it’s a nice foal, reckon I’ll keep her.  This is an expensive horse, worth a lot.”

“If she’s so valuable, why haven’t you done her feet?  Has she been groomed since you’ve had her?  Does she know what fresh water tastes like?”

“She’ll get it when I get to it.  I got over thirty horses and I’m a busy man.”

“You’re a peabrain,” I corrected him.

“What did you just say to me?”

“You ought to be strung up by the balls for what you’ve done to this horse,” I told him.

“I don’t like to hear profanity in no woman, no I don’t.  This horse’s not for sale after all,” he said.  “unless I take her to an auction and sell her to the knackers.  Why don’t the both of you just git the hell out of here.”

I put my fists out and stepped toward him, but Gina somehow got between us, edging me back a little.  She faced him instead.

“Raht. Okay, Mr. Man,” she began.

“Moon,” he corrected her coldly.

“Raht.  Now ah’d
really
lahk it if you’d sell us this hoss.  Sue-Ann’s jist upset an don’t know what she’s sayin.  Do ya remember whatcha paid for this hoss?”

“Forget now.  Must’ve been round about fifteen hundred dollars.”

“Gina, damn it!” I shouted.  “He never paid more than—”

“Be quaht, Sue-Ann.  All raht.  And how much couldja get for the foal?”

“Five hundred, at least,” said Moon confidently, giving me a smirk.  “And you ought to pay me board for all the months she’s been here.”

“Ah guess that maht be fair.  And what about the vet bills and the times you had to have her feet trimmed and her teeth floated?”

Moon answered unsteadily.  “Well, yeah.”

“Hmm, Mr. Man, that’s quaht a little bundle of money you want.  Ah mean, if you’ll let us bah her.  Maybe if we make an offer you cain’t refuse?”  Gina was being charming, almost flirtatious, and was wildly exaggerating her accent.  I would have been livid at her but I knew her well enough by now to suspect that she was up to something.

“Every horse has its price,” Moon said.

“Raht,” said Gina.  “Now here’s the thang.  Jist in mah head, it seems lahk you want somewhere round four thousand dollars for a hoss that nobody cain’t rahd and that nobody else wants.  Here’s what ah figger.  We’ll jist ast Sue-Ann’s daddy what you really paid for this hoss, but ah’ll guess no more’n two hundred.  The price of all the feed for a year would come to bout the same, seein as you get it so cheap and all.  The vet and farrier and dentist bills would add just a lot of nothin, so it seems we’re pretty far apart on the price raht now.”

“What the hell—”

“Ah’m not through talkin, Mister Man,” she said calmly, looking him in the face.  “Remember what mah friend here said bout you bein strung up bah the balls?  Well that’s way too gentle for what you’ve done to this hoss—and all the other hosses you’ve got here, ah suspect.”
“Fuck—”

“Shet!  Up!” Gina shouted.  “First of all, you can take your four thousand and shove it up your be-hahnd.  Ah’m gonna wraht you a check for two thousand dollars for this hoss and her foal and you’re gonna deliver it to Sue-Ann’s place.  To-naht.”

“You must be—”

“And in return, Sue-Ann’s not gonna wraht about Horse Hell for the next five issues of
The Pine Oak Courier.
  What, you mean you don’t know that Sue-Ann McKeown is the main reporter for
The Courier? 
And here’s something else she’s not gonna do: she’s not gonna call every rescue service in Florida to come in and take away all your beat and starved and neglected hosses.  Bah the tahm she gits through doin all that, ah don’t think many people in Jasper County are goin to be comin here to do anythin but throw their garbage.”

“Get out of here or I’ll call the sheriff,” was all that Moon could come up with.

“Not raht, Mister Man,” Gina corrected. 
“Ah’m
the one that’ll be callin im.  The officer on duty raht now would be Mr. Bill Dollar, who ah used to date, bah the way.  Or, we could call his Sergeant, whose name is Joe Bickley.  Now he and I—”

“Give me the money and take the damn horse.”

“That’s not quaht the agreement.  Ah’ll get mah checkbook while you hook up your trailer and load up this hoss.”

“Damn horse will kick me to death if I try to load her.”

“And serve you raht, too.  But Sue-Ann and I’ll trah to keep that from happenin this tahm.  That sound all raht to you, Sue-Ann?”

I nodded dumbly.

“One more thing, Mister Man,” Gina said a few minutes later as she handed him a check.  “This money is for more than Alikki.  It’s to pay somebody to come in and clean these stalls and tend to these hosses.  Ah’m gonna make sure that some kinda inspector comes out here every week for the next year to see if you’re doin it and doin it raht.  Raht?”

“How am I supposed to—?”

“Just fahnd a way.”

In the car on the way home I sat in almost stunned silence as Gina drove toward home.  Moon was pulling a rusty one-horse trailer behind us, a check in his pocket for more than he had ever received for a horse before.

“I can’t believe you did that,” I finally told her.

“Did what?”

“Took over that way.  Cowed that bastard.  Got my horse back.  Everything.  No one has ever done anything like that for me before.”

“Sue-Ann, I jist sound the part better’n you do.”

“I was fixing to get my bow.”

“Ah thought you maht.  After ah got back to the office, Cal asked me if ah knew that you used to be on the Olympic archery team.  Whah didn’t you tell me?”  

“You never asked.”

“You told Cal.”

“He asked,” I explained.

She sighed.  “Jist something else ah can be jealous of,” she said. 

“Quit,” I said.

We drove along in silence for a while, both aware of Moon’s headlights behind us but lost in separate thoughts.  I broke the silence. 

“Did you really used to date Dilly?”

“He wishes.  Wasn’t a complete lah, though.  He ast me lots of tahms.”

I smiled.  “Me, too,” I said.  There was another half mile of silence, then I spoke again.  “I don’t know how I’m going to pay you back,” I told her.

“Then it’ll be the best present ah’ve ever given anybody.”

I thought about how special Gina had become to me.  How indispensable.  I thought about the half-starved and pregnant mare following in Moon’s creaky trailer.  I thought of the recovery of my mother’s equestrian library.  I thought about my improving health and I began to cry again.  I wish I could say that this was the last time I’ll cry in this story, but it’s not.  But at least it wasn’t a loud sob, just a gentle tearful interlude.  Gina glanced at me sideways.

“What’s wrong now, Sue-Ann?” she asked.

“Nothing.”  I smiled through my tears.  “Nothing.”

“Whah all the tears, then?”

“All my things are coming home,” I cried.

There was another thing, though, that I couldn’t get out of my mind: the image of Mrs. Moon’s face in the window, the curtain closing over it like a veil.

Chapter 10

It wasn’t a long drive, but I was frantic by the end of it.  Frantic to see if Alikki had made the three- or four-mile trip alive, frantic to get her out of the trailer and into the paddock, and frantic for Moon to get out of my sight.

But Alikki backed out of the trailer as if she had been doing it all her life.  Her nostrils flared as she recognized the smell of the place where she had been born.  When I unclipped the rope from her halter she whinnied loudly and took a couple of hesitating trot steps.  She stopped and whinnied again, then pawed at a soft, sandy indention, circled it once, then lay down and rolled gloriously, as if she were trying to rub off the layers of filth she still carried on her coat.  When she had enough, she struggled to bring up one foreleg, then the other, then hoisted her bloated and emaciated body back to a standing position and shook like a dog just getting out of water. 

Moon left without a word.  Gina stayed as long as she could, but she had promised to go somewhere with Cal, so I gave her a ride back to
The Courier
office where she had left her car.  I was aware of her in the car beside me like I might have been aware of a winning lottery ticket, but I was so preoccupied with my horse that I drove with my eyes on the road, responding as well as I could to her questions about feed, vet, farrier, equine rescue organizations.  I hated to leave Alikki even for an instant, but the paddock had plenty of grass and the board fences that surrounded it were high and secure.  In the parking lot, I gave Gina a brief, heartfelt, hug, and watched her drive off.  Then I ran across to the Piggly Wiggly and bought five large containers of Quaker Oatmeal, several bottles of molasses, some sugar cubes, a bag of apples, and all the carrots they had.  Then I broke the speed limit getting back home.

I stayed with Alikki all that night.  I spent an hour talking softly to her in the paddock until she let me get close enough to get a rope back on her halter.  Then I led her slowly into her stall, which I had raked clean.  I scrubbed out her water bucket and filled it with fresh water, and put a handful of oatmeal into her feed bucket, mixed with a little of the molasses.  By the time I had given her half a carrot for dessert, she seemed almost at home again.  She was skittish, but eventually she let me curry and comb her in the stall, but my attempt to untangle her tail fell short.  I sat with her and told her about what a great dressage champion her mother was turning out to be.  I told her all I remembered about the times I had watched Cindy ride Trifecta at Third- and Fourth-Level tests.  And when I ran out of those memories I told her about my own flimsy attempt to ride a Training-Level test on Facilitator years before—how I had somehow gotten through the whole test despite the fact that my legs were telling Facilitator to go forward while my seat was telling him to stop.  I segued to some of the archery contests I had won and told her that when she had her foal and got her health back we—she and I—were going to build an archery range for mounted shooting and that I was going to ride her every day; that when we got tired of shooting we would pack a couple of saddlebags with apples and sandwiches and ride out in the woods where she could graze while I read a mystery under a shady cedar.  And I told her how I was going to name her foal Afterburner and call him Bernie and how, after he was weaned, we could put a rope on him and pony him out with us and maybe we would see deer or wild turkeys.

Early the next morning, I showered off the paddock dust and called every veterinarian in three counties before I was able to get someone to consent to make an emergency call around noon.  That left me several hours to run errands. 

The first place I went was to Meekins’ Market.  Not only was it the closest place, but I trusted Clarence to either have what I needed, or know where I could get it.  Clarence was behind the counter eating breakfast with Gladys when I walked in.  When he glanced up and saw me rushing in like an arrow with a purpose, he looked as if he had somewhere else he wanted to be.  “God’s balloons, Sue-Ann,” he blurted out.  “Are you still mad about—”

“I need some straw,” I told him without preamble.

“Straw?”

“Wheat straw, not pine straw.  And I need some hay and feed.  I have a pregnant horse and she’s poor.”  I was in a hurry and my words came out in a rush.  Gladys had finished eating and was arranging tomatoes in small baskets near the front of the store.

“Where’d you get a horse?” he asked, looking relieved that I seemed to have forgotten our last conversation.

“It was one of my mother’s horses.  I just bought her back.  I mean, Gina did, but I’ll tell you about it later.  I’ve got to pick up supplies for her and get back home before the vet gets there.”
“Who’s Gina?” he asked.

“I mean Ginette.  Never mind.  What about the bedding and stuff?”

“I got some bales of straw out front under the canopy,” he said.  “But you’ll have to go into Forester for feed.  I can probably get some hay delivered here by this afternoon if you want it, but they’ll have good hay at Freddy’s.”

“What’s Freddy’s?” I asked.

“Freddy’s Feed and Seed.  Just off the highway on Jefferson.  That’s the best place for horse supplies unless you go into Dothan or Tallahassee.”

“I’ll take a bale of your straw, but I have to leave room in the truck for some hay.  How much do I owe you?”

“You have ten dollars credit for, um, you know, the snake,” he said.

“I guess you know a lot of the hay growers around here,” I ventured.   “My mother had all this stuff covered, but I wasn’t around.”

“Plenty of hay farmers in Pine Oak.  I buy square bales for the market from a couple of em, but mostly in the winter.”

“Can you call someone you trust that has good hay and tell them to deliver about 25 square bales and a round bale to my place?”

“I don’t know where your place is, Sue-Ann.”

“Here,” I told him.  “Let me write down the address.”  I scribbled it out, then added a simple map.  “Any time after noon.  My phone number’s there, too.”

“I’ll sure do it, and I hope the horse gets better.  Is there anything else you need while you’re here?”

“Maybe a couple of boxes of corn starch,” I told him.

Clarence’s eyes widened.  “Corn starch.  What could you want—”

“Just kidding.”

I drove to Forester and found the place Clarence had mentioned: Freddy’s: All the Feed and Seed You Need.  I spent a busy half hour looking with new eyes at shelves of horse supplies.  I bought several bags of Seminole Mare & Foal feed, four bales of hay, fly spray, Fure-a-Zone ointment for cuts, a couple of mineral blocks, and a dozen other things I probably already had in the barn but got just in case.

Back at the house, I coaxed Alikki back into her stall with one of the bales of hay and fed her a couple of handfuls of feed, which she ate ravenously.

The veterinarian arrived a few minutes early and checked her out thoroughly.  Moon had given me only a general idea of when Alikki had been bred, but the veterinarian informed me that she could foal at any time and described some of the signs to look for.  Alikki was malnourished, weak, rubbed raw in places, but steady on her feet despite not having had her hooves trimmed for who knows how long.  Other than that she was healthy.  And the foal was healthy, too, as far as he could determine without an ultrasound.  He wormed Alikki, put some salve on her raw places, and told me he wanted to hold off on some of the other treatment until after the baby came.

I’ll spare you the descriptions of the rest of the day—as well as the next—because it was just more of the same.  I had a horse and I was going to keep it alive and if my father ever came back to Pine Oak I was going to take him to Horse Heaven and lock him in one of Moon’s stalls.  With Moon.

Gina came to visit for a few minutes after work on Thursday and Friday but I was so focused on my horse that I couldn’t give her the attention I would have liked.  She, too, seemed a little preoccupied, but it wasn’t anything I could put my finger on.  I know I liked having her there—even more so when she told me that she knew a little about farrier work.  She spent half an hour each day working on Alikki’s feet, rasping down the worst of the ridges and flares while I watched and learned.  Then she would leave, telling me only that she had things to take care of. 

I spent much of the rest of those two days searching through my mother’s books for tips on delivering a foal, treating cuts, trimming hooves, and whatever else I might have to know.  I set up a cozy chair and table in the barnyard where I could read and still watch Alikki as she roamed the pasture, coming in every few hours for long gulps of water from her water bucket. 

Once a day I closed her in her stall so she wouldn’t wander into my target area, and practiced my archery.  First I used a light recurve, then I took out my large yumi bow and practiced my thumb release.  I brought out stacks of Cindy’s papers and spent hours studying and refiling them.  I found Facilitator’s registration and breeding papers and mailed them to Myra Van Hesse, along with a note about my recovery of Alikki.  I also found deeds to several pieces of property which Cindy had purchased as investments years before.  I kept these out—I knew I’d have to sell some of them to pay my new debts, and it was a heavy load off my mind to know that Mike had been in too much of a hurry to clean me out completely.  As I stood on the target range, bow in hand, with Alikki munching hay in her stall and watching the arrows fly across her field of vision, with Gina sitting silently close by, I knew I had never been happier in my life.  I, too, had come home.

In the midst of my happiness, there was more than a pang of regret that Cindy was not there to share it.  You can understand that; she was my mother.  What you might not understand is that I wished that Crookneck Smith could have been there too.  That’s right—he was the old hunter that sold me my first bow.  But my first visit to his shop wasn’t my last, and as I shot arrow after arrow in the bright sunshine, I let my mind travel backward many years.

When I bought my first Martin Mamba recurve, there was no eBay; you couldn’t go on the net and type in different weights and stiffnesses of arrow shafts and locate half a dozen suppliers in a few seconds.  So after I practiced at the university shooting range for a month I drove back out to Huckleberry Spring to ask Crookneck Smith for some advice.  The old hunter had hinted that he had used wooden bows when he was younger, and he had been kind to me when I had ordered my Mamba from him. 

It was a Saturday, I think, windy and rainy and way too cold for the middle of April. A bad day for shooting; a bad day to be outside at all.  The wind was strong enough to rustle the leaves off their branches, strong enough to blow the water out of puddles.  It was noon when I arrived.  I zipped up my red pullover and hurried inside the metal building.  Crookneck was with a customer, but when he looked up, he greeted me with a boisterous, “There she is!” and a big smile.  I was flattered that he remembered me and, with time to look around, I studied some things along the far walls that I had missed on my first visit, when all I had to rely on for light were the flickering fluorescent bulbs.

Below a small rack of deer antlers, I discovered a row of kernels from the tails of rattlesnakes, some were as long as a dozen rattles; others only two or three.  Underneath was a rude, hand-painted sign that read: “WE BUY RATTLESNAKES,” and I presumed that Crookneck had obtained the rattles from his customers rather than having shot the snakes himself.  Nearby was a freezer, presumably to keep them from spoiling, but I had no idea whether he kept them to harvest the skin, to eat, or both and my stomach got a little queasy.  Taped to the door of the freezer with yellowing tape was a dusty, dog-eared poster that announced “Archery Exhibition.  Kansas City Auditorium, July 4, 1975” in large type.  In smaller letters beneath I read the surprising words “Featuring former World Champion Jim ‘Crookneck’ Smith.”  The man whose photo took up the rest of the poster did not greatly resemble the one who had sold me my Mamba.  For one thing, the man in the poster had a dark mustache, trimmed beard, and hair falling halfway to his shoulders.  He was wearing an outfit that looked half cowboy, half hippie.  But his buzzard’s neck was unmistakable, as were his bright eyes and winning smile.

His voice from just behind me nearly made me jump.  “That was a long time ago,” he said.

“You were world champion?” I asked, trying not to sound too incredulous.

“Waal, there was a time when I wasn’t too bad.”

“What are you shooting in the picture?”

“That’s a Wing Presentation.  Wing sponsored me, so I shot their equipment.  I tried to get Harold Groves to sponsor me, but Groves already sponsored Jerry Harris.  I made him sorry, though; I went out and beat Jerry six times running.”

“Why did you stop shooting recurves?” I asked.

“Oh, my eyesight got bad, my nerves got a little messed up from drinking too much.  And I started huntin, too, and didn’t want to leave a wounded animal sufferin out in the woods.  A compound is more like a rifle.”

“I noticed that when you let me shoot yours.”

Crookneck glanced at the bow that I was clutching.  “You ain’t still shootin that Mamba are ye?”  Outside, I could hear the wind pounding the metal roof and sides of the building.

“I am,” I responded vigorously.  “I . . . I really like it, but I don’t know anything about how to shoot it.  I mean,
really
shoot it.  I thought you could show me how to tune it and figure out what kind of arrows I should shoot.”