Author: Heidi Vanderbilt
Category: Other
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Buchanan Books
PO Box 535
Tryon, NC 28782
[email protected]
Copyright © 2020 by Heidi Vanderbilt
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-0-9995430-8-5 (paperback)
ISBN-13: 978-0-9995430-9-2 (ebook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019956591
Buchanan Books, Tryon, NC
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is purely coincidental.
DEDICATION
FOR MY SON
Jack Harris
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I’m grateful to the owners and trainers who opened their farms and barns to me.
Thanks to Pamela Reband, Pamela Uschuk and William Pitt Root, Dan B. Dobbs, Kate Christensen, Steve Cox, Liz LaFarge, Joan Weimer, Donley Watt, Linda Griffith, Cynthia Knox, Franci McMahon, Annina Lavee, G. Davis Jandrey, Cornelia and Mel Carlson, Barbara Atwood, Jose Arizpe, and Jane See White.
The art community of Rancho Linda Vista in Oracle, AZ gave me a space to write when I needed it.
Sue Day, Jessica Harrison, and Diane Samsel and Hans Picard fed me, advised me, and put me up for long periods in their guest rooms. We are still friends. I love them.
Thanks to Molly Fisk for her skills as a life coach and her fantastic laugh.
FOSH, Friends of Sound Horses, encouraged me early in the project. Readers looking for more information about soring can visit their website: www.fosh.info.
I am beyond grateful to Brad Buchanan, publisher of Buchanan Books, for his insights, attention to detail, kindness, and courage. He’s a dream to work with.
Special thanks to Bernard Fierro for being there.
To the late Pam Nelson: I wish you were still here.
I hope that I’ve thanked everyone who helped me with The Scar Rule. If I missed anyone, I’m sorry—and grateful for your help. All errors are mine alone.
PROLOGUE
FIFTY YEARS EARLIER
A YARD-WIDE SWATH of daffodils bloomed on each side of the circular driveway that led to the huge barn at Angel Hair Walkers, an hour south of Nashville, Tennessee. Driving in for the first time, Jared Frederick admired the welcoming effect of the windblown yellow flowers. He parked his truck at the open barn door and got out. A lanky man, hardly more than a boy, greeted him, hand extended.
“I’m Dale Thornton. This is my barn. Thanks for filling in for Sam.”
“No problem. He’s filled in for me a few times.”
“Have you shod performance Tennessee walkers before?”
“No, sir. But if they wear shoes, I can shoe them.”
Dale Thornton led the way into the barn, dark and chilly out of the sun. A child of about eight sat astride a saddle rack, pretending to ride.
“Charley,” Dale said. “This is Jared. He’s come to shoe Field Marshal.”
The kid ignored the introduction.
Jared saw horses looking out at him from their stalls. Only one stood in the aisle near the door. Cross ties were attached to each side of its halter. At first glance, the horse looked huge then Jared realized it was standing on massive, stacked shoes.
“Him,” Dale said, gesturing at the animal’s feet. “He only needs a trim and a reset.”
Jared nodded, understanding that Dale wanted him to remove the shoes, shorten and shape the hooves, then replace the old shoes rather than make new ones. It was common to alternate full shoeings with resets, and more economical than paying for a new set of shoes before needed.
He stepped in close to the horse’s shoulder and bent to pick up its foot. He looked at the shoe, the complicated layers of wedges, and the metal strap holding it on in addition to nails. He could get the job done. When he set the hoof down, before moving to the other foot, he felt his palm tingle then start to burn. He looked at it. The skin was reddening.
“Where are your gloves?” The speaker was a tall young woman wearing jodhpurs and boots. He hadn’t noticed her before.
“I don’t use gloves, ma’am,” Jared answered. He couldn’t keep his attention off his burning hand.
“Dale,” the woman said, “he’s bare-handed.”
“Sam didn’t tell you to bring gloves?”
“I brought them,” Jared said. “But he didn’t say why I should. I never use them when I work. God this hurts.”
“Eudora, get him some water.”
Cold water helped for a second, but the burning spread up his thumb and between his fingers. “I can’t stand it. I’ve got to leave and find a doc.”
Charley dismounted from the saddle rack and came over to look. “My dad says go to the hospital for chemical burns.”
“Chemical?” Jared asked.
“You should wear gloves,” the kid said.
“I’ll take you,” Eudora said. “I just need to get my handbag.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I can’t wait.” His hand screaming in pain, he ran over a stretch of daffodils on his way out.
At the hospital, Jared’s hand was treated and bandaged, but for a long time, the pain wouldn’t quit. The burn left a scar he carried through his life.
PART I
CHAPTER 1
BILLIE SNOW SLID to the ground, her back against the wall of the horse show office building. She pressed her forehead against her bent knees, weary from waiting. Her neck itched with dried sweat and her teeth felt gritty. When she reached into her pocket for her cell phone, she found an envelope folded double. Her bank statement. She’d cry but she was all cried out.
At home on the ranch, she had nine horses to feed, land taxes due, the electric bill, and car and ranch insurance. Pet insurance, too, for her dog, Gulliver, in case he got kicked by a horse, hit by a truck, snakebit. She paid the monthly charge for the pet insurance, too scared of what could happen to him if she didn’t. If she was careful about spending, and if nothing went wrong with the ranch, her truck or the animals, there was just enough money to last to the end of the month. Then she’d need to buy more hay.
Billie had spent most of the day hanging flyers:
HORSES BOARDED — DEVOTED CARE
typed in large maroon letters over a photo of her gray gelding, Starship, standing in front of the mountains north of the ranch. In the bottom left corner was her name, Billie Snow, with her phone number and email address in the right corner. She had hung the flyers in a dozen feed and tack stores in and around Tucson, at the local rodeo arenas, the auction lot, and finally she’d remembered the Rio del Oro showgrounds, which was almost a half hour from her place and always bustling with horses.
Over her head, an air conditioner groaned, dribbling water into the dirt. The office door, closed against the wind and late afternoon sun, finally opened. Two girls and two boys in polished boots, sleek breeches, and white shirts scuffed past her. She lifted her head to watch them and listened to their excited chatter as they passed.
“Wait!” Billie called. When they turned, she held out a flyer in her raised hand.
They looked at her, uncertain. She might be a panhandler, a beggar, or a crazed religious zealot about to proselytize salvation and the end of the world.
“What do you want?” asked one of the girls. Her blonde ponytail protruded beneath her bowler hat. Expensive-looking sunglasses covered most of her face above a pointy nose and cleft chin.
Billie could tell that there was almost no chance these kids would be helpful, but exhaustion drove her to at least try. “I’d like you to post this flyer for me. It’s for my place. I board horses. I rehabilitate injuries, and I take care of sick horses.” She was talking too
fast, babbling like an infomercial. But she couldn’t stop. “I do some rescue work too. And there’s great trail riding at my place.”
The girl said, “This is a gaited horse show for Tennessee walking horses. We are totally not into trail riding.” She turned away, ponytail swinging.
“But wait!” Billie called, as if she were pitching hair dye on the Home Shopping Network.
The girl looked back at her as the kids moved away. “You won’t get any takers during this show.”
“So when’s the next one?” she called.
“Check the board,” the girl yelled back. “Duh!”
Billie felt thirsty, the kind of crazy thirst that came from hours in 105-degree heat with the humidity below ten percent. There was no moisture left in her body. She stood, feeling light-headed. At the far end of the office building, she spotted a refreshment stand with SODAS hand-printed on orange poster board taped to the side of a freezer. She pulled a dollar bill from her pocket and headed that way.
“You got water?” Billie asked the wizened man behind the white folding table.
He opened the freezer, rummaged, brought out a frosted plastic bottle, and handed it to her. “Dollar.” It sounded like, dolor, Spanish for pain.
She handed him the bill.
“You ride here?” His accent was south of the border.
She shook her head. Between gulps of icy water, she showed him her flyers. “I’m putting these up,” she said.
“There’s boards inside the barns. But they won’t let you inside unless you’re one of them.”
“One of who?”
“Them who shows these horses that are here at this show.” He leaned closer. “They don’t let you inside the barns when they’re here with their horses. Not like other shows here where it’s all open. There’s some barns that people can’t go into at those shows, but they’re just roped off. These walking horse people close and lock the doors. I’m here for all the shows, selling food, selling drinks. This one…” He shook his head.
Billie looked over his shoulder to the nearest barn. If she hadn’t been so focused on drumming up business, she would have noticed the closed doors and shuttered stall windows that ran the length of the buildings. There were other oddities too. Normally at a horse show, there were horses everywhere. Horses being walked, groomed, saddled, and ridden. But at this show, she didn’t see any. And, except for three or four snazzily dressed riders lolling on chairs in lengthening patches of late afternoon shade, the place looked and felt deserted.
“So, why are the barns closed?” she asked him.
“Stuff they don’t want you to see.”
Stuff they didn’t want her to see?
Fine. She had enough going on that she didn’t need to dig into the secrets of these strangers. She had given that up when she left New York and investigative journalism. No more snooping for her. No more digs into the archaeology of human wickedness. Now her life was her ranch, her horses, and her pitiful, dwindling bank account.
At least that was what she tried to tell herself, but her fascination with secrets was ingrained—immediate, profound, professional. Secrets had paid her bills. For nearly a decade, her life revolved around secrets she exposed for the magazine Frankly. She’d even married Frank, its founder and editor. They had eaten secrets for breakfast, digested them for lunch, and regurgitated them at dinner. Stuff they don’t want you to see tasted better than caviar. She forgot the flyers, forgot the bills. She was transported back to her old life, searching for secrets buried like ticks in flesh.
“What kind of stuff?” she asked.
Before he could answer, another couple of riders in their mid-teens wandered up on foot, wallets in hand. They reminded her of Mutt and Jeff as they ordered hot dogs and cheeseburgers, chips, corn on the cob, kraut, chili, french fries, onion rings, and an assortment of condiments. Billie’s stomach growled so loudly the taller boy guffawed. She assembled a smile on her face and managed not to slap him.
“Hey,” she said. “I’d like to get these posters up on the message boards in the barns.”
She sensed him hesitate so briefly it was almost imperceptible.
“Give them to me, ma’am,” the short boy said around the onion rings he’d stuffed into his mouth. “I’ll put them up.”
The wall she was running into made her all the more determined not to back off. “I can do it myself. Just tell me where to hang them.”
“You can’t go into the barns,” the tall one said.
“I’ve never been to a show where I can’t go into the barns.”
“Well, you’re at one now.” He extended a mustardy hand. “I’ll be happy to put those up for you, though, ma’am.”
Billie handed the flyers to him. As she walked away, she felt eyes on her back, heard the kids’ silence as they watched her. Once, she had written an article about an evangelical church with a charismatic leader, a church so guarded and selective it amounted to a cult. She had the same feeling now as she’d had back when she’d left the church’s meeting house. Watched.
She should be heading home. It was almost time to feed the horses their supper. Of the nine she cared for, eight were her own and one she boarded for a client. Gulliver also needed to be let out of the house for a run before he got desperate.
Billie turned to see the boy with her flyers walk to the trash bin and throw them in.
He and his friend headed off between a row of barns whose entrances were decorated with embroidered banners. Folding chairs arranged in conversation groups on ersatz emerald mini-lawns matched the banners’ colors—red, royal blue, kelly green, and gold. Card tables served as bars stocked with diet sodas, bottled water, and booze; but no one was hanging out.
The first rays of sunset turned the whitewashed barn walls shades of tangerine. Shadows striped the ground. Billie looked around, wondering where to go, what to look at, what to look for. Nothing, probably. Horse shows were horse shows. Maybe she was just inventing a story worth following. But, still, where were the horses? She had to at least look before she left. She moved in closer and worked her way down the row of barns farthest from the arena, buildings so quiet they seemed almost deserted, hoping no one would notice her.
The door to the last barn stood ajar. She stepped quickly inside, the step more a reflex than a considered choice, and stood still, listening, smelling. The building reeked of dry manure heated by the long day’s sun. A tiny breeze pushed through the opened doors at each end, and she was grateful for it. After baking all day in the early summer sun, the temperature inside must have been close to 120 degrees.
She didn’t hear anything that alarmed her, so she wandered down the aisle, making herself look relaxed, checking out the empty stalls on either side. Some had been raked bare, others left uncleaned, mounded with dried manure and strands of hay and straw. She counted twenty-five stalls to a side, fifty altogether.
At the far end of the barn, the stalls had been enclosed, walls built, and doors hung to make tack and storage rooms. In one, a gray metal bookcase stood empty except for stacks of old magazines and newspapers. A dinged-up Bakelite radio sat unplugged on a gray metal desk. Beside it, an alarm clock lay face down. A calendar two years out of date hung askew from a nail. She opened the door opposite the one she had come in and stepped from the sweltering building out into the evening’s cooler air.
She prowled between the buildings, trying to see into the stalls, hoping to spot some horses. But the windows were shut tight with shutters closed over them, which was strange because in the heat all the doors and windows should have been left open to give horses and humans a breeze. It didn’t make sense. Horse shows were public events, implied by the word show. All her life she’d gone to horse events every chance she got—shows and rodeos, gymkhanas, barrel races, team penning, and horse races. Billie had never encountered anything like this.
Halfway down the row, she stepped up to the double doors of the barn with vehicles parked outside. A huge photo portrait showed an
elegant older woman standing between two men—one white-haired, with a goatee, dressed in a maroon riding suit; and a man in work clothes who held a brush and lead rope in his hands. Cautiously, Billie pulled the door open.
Inside, she smelled horse sweat, human sweat, and fresh manure. She heard a horse snort, hooves on dirt. Almost blinded in the dark aisle, she stood still, listening, waiting for her eyes to adjust. She heard some sort of engine, voices indistinct beneath the roar. Just as her eyes got used to the gloom, the door at the far end of the barn opened, and figures passed through it as horses and people left. The door closed, and the barn went dark again. She squeezed her eyes shut then opened them.
There was nothing to see, just an ordinary aisle in a barn like hundreds of barns in Arizona. This barn had wooden walls, stall doors scalloped by decades of horse teeth, wheelbarrows heaped with filthy straw parked at intervals, and shovels and mucking forks leaning against the plank walls nearby.
Thinking of her own hungry horses and uncomfortable dog, she turned to leave.
“Quit!” She heard a man’s voice, annoyed, resigned. “Quit, damn you.”
She crept toward his voice. A stall door stood open. His back to her, a man crouched, shirtless. His skin had the texture of parchment, thin and wrinkled under striped, threadbare overalls. Billie recognized him as the man in work clothes in the portrait outside.
He squatted beside a palomino filly, just a yearling, judging by her stumpy foal tail. The groom wore latex gloves covered in a glistening greenish gel he must have scooped from the tub beside him. One of the filly’s lower legs was already covered in the stuff. As he tried to smear some on the other leg, she stamped and pulled away.
“QUIT!” He yanked on her lead rope. When he reached toward her, she backed away, tossing her head, her eyes rimmed in white.
Billie couldn’t stop herself. “Can I help?”
He twisted toward Billie and rose stiffly from his squat, his hand drawn back into a fist.