Author: Heidi Vanderbilt
Category: Other
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“Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m Billie Snow. Who are you?”
“Charley. I work for Dale Thornton. He’s the trainer of the horses in this barn. He won’t take kindly to you being in here.”
Released from the man’s grip, the filly backed into the far corner of the stall.
“Is something wrong with this horse?” Billie asked, keeping her voice neutral, curious, encouraging—a technique she had refined as a reporter.
“Ma’am, you better get yourself out of here before you get yourself into serious trouble.”
The filly shook the smeared leg, tapped it on the ground, and snatched it up so it hung in the air.
“Why would being here get me in trouble?” Billie moved toward the filly and touched the backs of her fingers against the quivering neck.
Charley stepped between them. She sensed powerful muscles beneath his sagging skin. He was old but strong, his arms covered in keloid scars that disappeared into the gloves. He used his body to block her view of the horse and stepped toward her.
Billie spread her hands in a gesture of submission and backed out the stall door then down the barn aisle, careful not to stumble over anything, watching him as she went. Her heart slammed around in her throat like a caged lizard. She didn’t know what she’d just seen, but it felt as wrong as if she’d witnessed a murder. Get out of here, she told herself. Go! NOW!
But she forced herself to stand still, to count her breaths, to slow them. Finally she eased out through the barn door. She stood alone outside, her heart slamming into her throat, terrified, but of what? She glanced back toward the door but no one came after her.
Bracing herself against the wall with one hand, she stilled her breathing even more and listened intently. Maybe she should just keep on going now that she was outside. Maybe not. She had seen all kinds of horsemen during her life. Some blindly fell in love with what horses could do, unaware or uncritical of how they were trained. Others saw abuse everywhere and ran to the nearest phone to make senseless trouble. She was neither, but what she’d just seen made her horrified and angry.
The groom, she figured, had even more years with horses than she did. He would recognize that she was a horseman. He would know from the way she moved around the barn, in the stall, the way she looked at the animal, knowing with a glance its age, sex, conformation, and temperament. He would know by the way she modulated her voice to let him know her anger, while not further alarming the young horse, and by the way she had pressed the backs of her fingers against the filly’s neck…he would know damned well that was a promise of some sort—to come back, to bring help.
Billie thought that Charley would probably report her, maybe right away. He could be on the phone this minute letting his boss know that some woman named Billie Snow had seen him messing with the filly in the barn and that the woman was steaming mad.
She glanced over her shoulder, looking into the dark, but she didn’t see him. She went to her truck, opened the door, and got in. She slammed the door shut and sat there, her left arm hanging out the window, jiggling her keys in her hand before inserting them and starting the engine. It was an old Chevy Silverado single-axle one-ton, white and boxy. For a moment she just sat there, listening to the throaty rumble of the idling engine. She leaned back against the seat and tipped her head back. Then she straightened and put the truck into gear and headed out toward the highway.
As she drove, Billie tried to make sense of what had just happened. Before she reached the highway, she began to feel angry at Charley for scaring her.
At the next intersection, she wrenched the truck into a U-turn and headed back. She drove down the far side of the showgrounds, circling toward Charley’s barn, and parked in the shadow of a huge dumpster filled with trash from the show. She got out, quietly shut the truck door, and slipped inside the barn.
Bare bulbs hung from the ceiling, throwing cones of light that flickered with moths. Charley was gone from the stall. The filly stood tied to the wall, sweat-drenched and trembling. Her front legs were covered in bandages, and Billie saw the glisten of plastic wrap below and above the fleece. The filly had tucked her hind legs far up under her, taking the weight off her front feet. The position screamed of agony.
Billie heard footsteps limping down the aisle and slid into the empty stall beside the filly’s and crouched down.
Charley hobbled like his knees hurt, like he had a new pair in his future, like he might need some new feet too. He lurched into the stall, balancing himself with the crook of one arm hooked on the door jamb. He held a small bottle with a dropper. The filly pulled harder against her rope. He bent toward her front hoof, lifted the bandage with his index finger, and squirted something onto her leg. She squealed and reared, thrashing. Calmly he went to the other side and bent to do it again.
“Stop!” Billie didn’t remember getting out of her crouch and stepping forward, but there she was, at the door to the filly’s stall.
“You’ve got no business here!” Charley shouted, limping toward her.
“What’s wrong with this horse?”
He grabbed her shoulder hard, pushing her back. She struggled against his grip, trying to pry his fingers off.
“You. Are. Trespassing.” He squeezed harder. “Get on out of here or I’m calling the cops.”
“I’ve already called them,” she lied.
Reflexively, his eyes flicked past her. She wrenched out of his grip and spun to face him. They stood glaring at each other. Charley didn’t look any surer about what to do next than Billie. Sweat she hadn’t been aware of coursed down the middle of her back and under her arms, slicked her cheeks and her upper lip. When she wiped it away, her hand shook. When she tried to swallow, she couldn’t. Her tongue wouldn’t move. He shoved her again, forcing her down the barn aisle and outside. Then he bolted the double door in her face.
CHAPTER 2
IF BILLIE DIDN’T get going home she would be feeding her horses after dark. She’d be walking around on ground she couldn’t see among spiders, scorpions, and rattlesnakes that might or might not give a warning buzz before striking. Even if they did warn her, there was no guarantee she’d jump the right way to escape. More important was the fact that she tried never to make her animals wait for their meals and that she checked each one several times a day to make sure they were all healthy.
She pulled her cell phone out of her hip pocket and made a call. It rang a long time, and she was about to hang up when he answered. “Doc here.”
“It’s me. Billie.”
“Howdy, m’dear.”
“I know it’s late, Doc. I’m sorry. But can I talk to you about something?”
“Anything.”
She heard wind through the phone, and cattle. He was outside somewhere, in the near dark.
“I can call back if this is a bad time,” she said.
“Couldn’t be much better, Billie. I’m waiting for the folks here to catch the bull I’m supposed to castrate.”
He was almost laughing, but she heard the years in his voice. Somewhere in his seventies, he was still out on the range, working into the night.
“I’m at the showgrounds, Doc. I came out here to put up flyers for my place. And I saw a horse being hurt in one of the barns.
His voice turned serious. “How was it being hurt?”
“Something was put on her front legs—on the pastern, just above the hooves. Then they were wrapped in fleece bandages with plastic wrap under them. The groom left her tied to the wall. She was trying to pull away. He came back in with a dropper and squirted something more onto her legs, under the wraps.”
“Were you at a Tennessee walking horse show?” Doc sounded incredulous.
“Yes.”
“I’ll be darned. I didn’t think we had any of those gaited horse shows way out here. In the Southeast and Midwest, even in Oregon and California. But not here. What they’re doing is illegal.” A crescendo of lowing drowned out his voice. “It’s called sori
ng,” he said when things quieted down.
“Soring? This horse wasn’t just sore! This horse was in agony!”
“Soring’s what they call burning a horse’s legs to make it step higher, do a gait called the Big Lick. It’s one of the cruelest practices in the world of horses. Illegal, inhumane. I’m sorry it’s come here.”
“What should I do?”
“Nothing you can do, Billie. Lots have tried.” He told her about a federal law against it. There was even a reward being offered to try to get people on the inside of the industry to turn in their bosses. But so far nothing had come of it. And the law itself made no difference. “It’s damn near useless,” he said. “Almost never gets enforced, and what little enforcement is done doesn’t amount to even a slap on the wrist.”
Through her phone, Billie heard men shouting and the bellow of an irate bull.
“Gotta go, m’dear. They’ve found my patient.”
Billie thought that Doc had hung up when she heard his voice again.
“Billie? Those folk are dangerous, no different from the mafia. It’s organized crime, and people have died trying to stop them. You stay away, you hear?”
“I do, Doc. I hear you.”
She was headed back toward the barn when the door opened and a tall, heavy man in dusty black pants turned up at the cuff and a sweat-stained white shirt stepped out. Billie realized he must be Dale Thornton, the trainer Charley worked for. He was a lot older and fatter than he looked in the photo, but the white hair and beard were the same. From his shirt pocket, he pulled a pack of cigarettes, tapped one through his beard into his lips, and lit it with a match he slid from between the cellophane and the box. He shook out the flame, wet the match end with his tongue, and slipped it into his pocket. His first drag burned almost halfway to the filter. He closed his eyes, held the smoke a long time, and exhaled long and slow through his nose. He took a second drag and held in the smoke.
The door opened again, and the woman from the photo stepped out and stood beside him. She too looked much older. With ruby-painted fingernails, she pinched a cigarette from his pack. He lit it for her, and they stood close together, pulling smoke deep into their lungs, holding it, easing it back into the air. Dale paused when he spotted Billie, as if trying to decide if he knew her, then nodded a casual greeting.
Billie watched them walk away. Ignoring the nagging tug to go home and feed her animals, she stuffed her hands in her jeans pockets and followed them.
At the arena turnstile, she handed five dollars to a girl dressed all in black. The girl stamped Billie’s hand with something illegible and said around her tongue stud, “Thow this if you leaf and want to get bag in.”
Scuffed wooden stairs led up to the bleachers. Billie climbed, wondering what acid green lipstick like the goth girl’s tasted like—key lime pie?—and if it was true that a tongue stud enhanced oral sex. She sighed. Maybe she’d gotten old, but if she met a man with a tongue stud she’d run the other way.
The sky was almost black, with a vivid swath of orange at the horizon. Billie climbed the bleachers in the open-air arena. Luna moths and June bugs flickered through the vapor lights that illuminated the stands, hammering themselves against the fluorescent rods. A large mow of hay, stacked between the barns, glittered in the lights.
There were only a few dozen people scattered through the tiers of benches, sitting alone or in small clumps—boys and girls in tight dark riding pants and white shirts, sleeves rolled up to cool their forearms. They clutched paper cups of soda between their knees and smartphones in their hands, texting with their thumbs, giggling and sighing at their palms.
Organ music coming from somewhere Billie couldn’t see swung into “East Side, West Side.” She leaned forward, elbows on knees. The in-gate opened and the announcer’s bass voice floated over the PA system.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is class 104. Horses four years and older ridden by our outstanding junior riders!” When the applause died down, he announced, “Riders, let’s have a flat walk, please. Do the flat walk!”
Billie counted as seven horses, already lathered with sweat, entered the ring. Massive, stacked black blocks attached to the bottoms of their hooves weighted their front feet. Chains circled their ankles.
She wanted to shout, “What the fuck is this? STOP!” but she kept her mouth shut and her hand over it. And watched.
She spotted the slender girl with the blond ponytail she had seen earlier. The kid rode well, quietly, poised, her long legs almost straight, her hands raised to waist height, her eyes looking forward. She smiled as if she were the happiest, proudest equestrienne on the planet. The horse beneath her roiled along the rail, his front hooves thrown fast and high, his hind feet reaching unnaturally far forward. He looked like a huge insect, a praying mantis.
Dale, the trainer, took up a spot on the railing a few feet down from where Billie sat, a walkie-talkie in his hand, cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth.
“There you go, Sylvie,” he spoke into the handset. “Come on, kid. Use your legs! Kick! Kick! Set your hands!” He seemed about to say something else when Charley, talking into a handset of his own, moved over next to him.
“Ride him, Bo!” Billie heard Charley say to a weedy teen. “Don’t quit! Think blue ribbon!” He grinned at Dale. “We’ve got some hot kids here, don’t we?”
Dale nodded toward Sylvie. “Wish I had a dozen more like her.”
“Her brother’s good too,” Charley objected.
“Bo doesn’t give a shit. I can’t believe they’re siblings. She’s the one and you know it.”
Sylvie guided her horse to the inside of Bo’s and flew past him, catching the judge’s eye. Bo quickly flashed his sister the finger as she pulled away from him, navigating her way through the other horses, keeping herself in front of the judge. Billie recognized the boy as the charmer who tossed her flyers.
The announcer asked for the running walk, and the horses moved around faster, laboring, foam dripping down their necks and flanks. A big chestnut mare ridden by a skinny girl in a bowler hat stopped suddenly, hopping a few strides on three legs. The rider looked down and cursed. The mare stood like a woman who had broken the heel off her high-heeled shoes. On the ground behind her lay the black stacked shoe she’d been wearing, still attached to part of her hoof. Billie gasped but no one else seemed concerned. Kids still texted. Adults continued their conversations as if nothing remarkable had happened. The announcer called for a veterinarian and farrier to come to the arena out-gate. The rider dismounted and led the hobbling mare out of the ring.
“And again, the flat walk, riders, please,” the announcer asked, and the horses and riders resumed circling in front of the judge.
Billie scanned the young riders’ faces. No one seemed upset or even concerned. It appeared to be normal that one of these horses would tear off part of its hoof, but in her entire life, Billie had never seen this happen.
Dale and Charley spoke into the handsets to coach their riders until the announcer asked for a halt and reverse.
As the riders got their horses to stop and turn around, lumbering and cumbersome in their huge shoes, Billie overheard Dale tell Charley, “I told Eudora the sand’s so deep it’ll pull the hair off the horse’s legs.”
Billie looked down at the arena. The sand was nothing exceptional as far as she could tell. Just normal arena footing. She couldn’t imagine why it would remove hair, unless it had something to do with the stuff she’d seen Charley put on the filly’s legs in the barn.
The announcer called for the flat walk in the new direction, then the running walk again. Flecks of white foamy sweat flew off the horses. When he called for the riders to line up, the horses stood panting, their sides heaving. They shifted their weight off their front legs onto splayed hind legs.
Sylvie won and, to the sound of flickering applause, spurred her horse into a victory lap. She and Bo dismounted at the out-gate and led their horses toward a truck parked under a vapor lig
ht.
Billie followed as they approached a sunburned man in khaki pants, a white shirt, and a wide-brimmed hat, lounging on the truck tailgate. He sipped on a can of Dr Pepper, his feet propped on a folding chair with a flimsy striped umbrella attached to its back. A sign propped against the truck fender read, INSPECTOR: All horses, all classes. She had never seen inspectors at horse shows and wondered why he was here, but by then a string of horses and riders had lined up behind Sylvie.
She watched Sylvie bend and unbuckle the chains wrapped around her horse’s legs, preparing to show him to the inspector. Billie thought she spotted a trickle of blood running down the back of the pastern, over the bulb of the heel and into the dirt. Charley appeared beside Sylvie, bent to scoop a handful of sand, and tossed it against the horse’s leg. The blood disappeared.
“Howdy,” Charley boomed at the inspector. “Hotter ’n hotter ain’t it?”
Billie listened to them chat as the man glanced at the horse’s lower legs and feet.
“You headed to Tennessee for the Big Show come August?” Charley asked, his tone relaxed and friendly. “Dale’s taking the whole barn so I’ll be coming along too.”
“Me too,” Sylvie smiled.
The inspector nodded. “Yep, I’ll be there. High point of my year. Wouldn’t miss it.” He lifted one front leg, examined it, and set it down. When he tried to lift the other, the horse pulled away. The inspector bent over for a closer look. He glanced up at Sylvie then at Charley, shook his head and straightened. As he reached for the clipboard on the truck’s tailgate, Billie saw Charley’s hand come out of his pocket, fingers extended, thumb folded under, like a magician doing a card trick. The inspector set the clipboard back down and reached out to shake the groom’s hand.
“Always a pleasure to see you,” Charley said. “Thanks for a job well done.”
CHAPTER 3
NIGHT HAD FALLEN by the time Billie got home. She fed the horses under a thick blanket of stars, dropping flakes of hay on the ground and scoops of pellets into buckets hung on fences. Starship had his own corral, as did Hashtag, the only horse who boarded with her. The rescues she’d taken in who were now hers shared a pasture. Her small terrier, Gulliver, who viewed the world as an unruly place that could be barked into submission, ran in looping circles around her, yapping at invisible threats.