Author: Heidi Vanderbilt
Category: Other
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“Hush,” Billie whispered.
Lame on both front feet, the young horse stayed close to her, obedient.
Billie expected to be stopped, but no one came. No one shouted at her, no one grabbed her.
She loaded the filly into the trailer, amazed by how easily the baby stepped up and walked into the dark metal box. Billie closed the trailer door, got into the truck with Gulliver, and drove out of the Rio del Oro showgrounds a horse thief.
It was nearly dawn when Billie pulled into her barnyard. The sky was turning ashy, but the barnyard was still dark. She didn’t want to unload the filly, asking her to step into an unfamiliar place on her painful legs, so she left her loose in the trailer so she could move around as she wanted. Billie hung a hay bag stuffed with alfalfa and a bucket full of clean water from the trailer wall. Exuberant whinnies greeted them, and the filly called back.
Billie climbed onto the haymow. Alfalfa stalks stabbed her hands and the backs of her legs as she sat. Gulliver curled up in her lap. She fell asleep with her feet dangling, leaning against a bale, listening as the horses settled down. She slept until the sun pierced the eastern sky. Gulliver still dozed on her lap, stirring only when a coyote—skinny, lame, and mangy—trotted across the barnyard and passed beneath their perch. The little dog whined, and the coyote glanced up to see who had made that sound, then trotted on about his business.
As the searing sun split the horizon, Billie pulled out her phone and called.
“Doc,” he answered, already awake.
“It’s Billie.”
“What can I do for you?”
The glare of the sun spreading across the flat grazing land to the east felt Saharan. “I went to the show again last night,” Billie said. “I saw that filly I told you about.”
He didn’t say anything.
“I went into her stall, and I undid her bandages.”
She paused, waiting. Still he didn’t say anything.
“I tried to take them off but her skin came off too.”
Silence.
“Wads of it,” Billie said. “In my hand.”
He sighed. “Nothing I can do about that, Billie. That horse’s owner would have to call me.”
“Why would her skin come off like that?” She stepped up on the bumper of her horse trailer and looked in at the filly through the bars, waiting for Doc to answer. “I think I can see holes so deep her tendons show, Doc. Maybe I’m imagining it?”
“The chemicals they use cause terrible burns,” Doc said. “They’re supposed to be put on so that the burning isn’t visible and you can’t see that the horse is being hurt. Scars build up over time but that takes months to develop. What you’re describing sounds like someone did it wrong, used too much.”
“If the filly’s owner did call you,” Billie asked, watching the filly shift her weight and lower her muzzle to her damaged leg. “What would you tell her to do?”
“Listen to me, Billie. You can’t do a damned thing for this horse. She’s not yours, and if you try to interfere, you’re going to get yourself hurt.”
“But what would help her, if I were able to help her?” Billie asked. “Say I bought her or something.”
“By God, you are the dumbest girl I ever met. Do you have any idea what it takes to get this stuff off a horse’s legs?”
“No.”
“Weeks and weeks of working to get it off, to get it out of their skin. It’s not just lying on top; it’s gone way in deep. Once a chemical gets its teeth into flesh, it can devour everything—muscle, tendons, even bone. But if you do get that filly, give me a call and I’ll come look at her.”
“Come now.”
While she waited, Billie drove the trailer into the shade of the hay barn where the filly would catch a breeze until Doc got there. Then she fed the other horses. The bag of Equine Senior was almost gone already.
By eight the heat had climbed to ninety. In another couple of hours, it would reach ninety-five then climb higher. Billie loaded hundred-pound hay bales into the wheeled cart, pushing it from corral to corral, cutting the bright yellow baling twine with her pocketknife, separating the thick flakes from the bales and throwing armloads over the fences into the feeders on the other side.
In the feed shed, she scooped the dwindling senior feed into buckets for Starship and Hashtag. Grabbing one bucket handle in each hand, she pushed open the door with her hip and stepped out into a morning turning white with heat.
Fingers dug into her shoulder. “Set them down.”
CHAPTER 6
BILLIE SLOWLY BENT her knees until the bucket bottoms rested on the ground then she released her grip on the handles. As she rose, Charley turned her to face him. He still wore the same threadbare overalls he’d had on when she’d first seen him hurting the filly, and the hand digging into her shoulder was the same hand she’d seen two days ago covered in a latex glove, smearing chemicals on the filly’s legs. Incensed, she twisted her head and sank her teeth into his hand, biting down hard on a fleshless, bony knuckle. His other hand balled into a fist and he swung wildly, socking her in the side of her mouth and breaking her hold. Billie’s head snapped back then forward. Pain shot down her neck. She tried to bite him again.
He slapped her hard across the face. This time the pain in her neck made her scream. He let her go.
“Much as I’d like to just leave you here to deal with the trouble you’re making,” he said, “we need to talk. You’re going to get me killed. And yourself.”
“Fuck you.” Billie reached for her neck.
Charley pushed her ahead of him to the open feed shed door. She tried to grab the jamb, but he pried off her fingers and shoved her inside then stepped up behind her and closed the door. He looked around then pushed her onto a stool.
“Now sit still and listen.” He leaned against the wall beside her, both of them panting. “Don’t you have an air conditioner?” he asked. “Some water?”
Billie wanted some too. Badly. Slowly, keeping her eyes on him, she crouched and reached under the table to the door of the mini fridge she kept there. He shoved her aside, reached in, and brought out two icy bottles. He handed her one and wrenched the cap off the other. He took a couple of swallows then waited, his chest heaving, before taking more. Watching him from the stool, she drank hers.
When he finished, he screwed the cap back onto the bottle, pulled the bottom of his T-shirt out of his overalls, and wiped it all over before setting it in the trash. He’s going to kill me, she thought. That’s why he’s getting rid of his fingerprints. She glanced around the familiar shed, looking for a way out that didn’t exist.
“Where’s my horse?” he asked.
Neither of them moved. She thought about what would happen when he found the horse in the trailer, which he almost certainly would. Flies drugged with heat stumbled across feed that had spilled on the floor, climbed the window screens, and landed on her hands, arms, neck, lips, and eyes. And on his.
Gulliver scratched at the door. Charley opened it, and the dog trotted in to flop on the floor, panting. Charley’s eyes returned to the little fridge under the table, and Billie knew he was still thirsty. She bent down, got two more bottles, looked at them, and put one back. She opened the other, poured some water into a bowl for Gulliver, and slowly drank the rest, expecting Charley to shove her aside, to force his way to the refrigerator and take another bottle.
Instead, he reached into his pocket. She tensed, not knowing if he was after a gun, but his hand reappeared holding a leather billfold. He flipped it open with his thumb and held it toward her. She glimpsed a card behind cracked plastic.
“What’s that?” she asked.
He snapped the case closed. “I’m working with the Department of Agriculture,” he said.
“And I’m Annie Oakley.” She didn’t want him to know how badly her neck hurt, how much she wanted to escape back to the casita and lie on her futon with a bag of frozen corn under her head.
“We’re on the same side
, Billie.”
“No, we’re not. I saw you with that filly.”
“You mean the one you stole? I can get you prosecuted for that,” he said.
“Really? You’re going to call the cops and say you can identify her by what you did to her legs? No one’s going to try to get her back and we both know it.”
He sighed as if exhaustion had overcome him and pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead.
“I’ve worked for Dale’s family since I was a kid. I learned the tricks from them. I’ve been doing it all my life.”
“How in hell can you stand yourself?”
“I can’t,” he said so softly she almost didn’t hear him. He shifted his weight, and she recoiled, but he just extended his hand toward Gulliver then bent to scratch him. “I can’t stand the things I’ve done all my life.”
Gulliver rolled onto his back, inviting further rubs, but Charley straightened up.
“I had thought that I could just call the 800 number,” he said, “and collect the reward the Humane Society is offering. Ten thousand dollars! I’d just name some names. It was going to be my way out of this life.”
Billie massaged her neck.
“They said my word wasn’t enough.”
“Imagine that.”
“I’ve been taking pictures and videos most of this past year. I’ve got enough now. I can turn them in and apply for the reward.”
“I got news, Charley. Ten thousand won’t get you much in the way of a fresh start.”
“It’s ten thousand per conviction. I can give them a lot of other people besides Eudora and Dale. I can take them all the way to the top.”
“Who’s at the top?” she asked.
He shook his head. He wasn’t going to tell her. “That’s going to be my money, not yours. I want it to get started with my own farm.”
“You shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a horse for the rest of your life.”
“Horses are all I know.”
She thought she heard a swarm of bees outside, but the sound grew until it became more like a train headed for them. She and Charley peered out the shed window. Branches slapped against each other. Dirt swirled upward into a dust devil and roared toward them. Gulliver whined as it passed the shed, lifting objects in its path—a currycomb and brushes, a light plastic chair—then dropped them. In a minute it was over, the devil diminishing as it reached the bamboo grove by a horse trough. The air returned to its summer stillness.
“How could you do that to the filly?”
“It wasn’t supposed to happen.” He rubbed his palms along his overalls. “I’ve cooked horses’ legs all my life and never had that happen. You want heat and pain, not damage.”
Billie wondered if the irony of what he’d said had occurred to him. “Could someone else have messed with what was in the bottle?” she asked. “Could it have been tampered with?”
“I’ve been gathering information for months, doing it the way the Ag folks want it done…” He faded out, thinking. “Maybe someone could have done that.”
“But why?” she asked.
He started to say something but stopped. Blinked. Swallowed. Wiped a mustache of sweat that had beaded his upper lip. His hand shook. He stuffed it deep into the pockets of his overalls.
“You’re going to turn in your bosses? Is that it?” Billie prompted. “Would that have made someone…?”
He reached into the bib pocket of his overalls and pulled out a red flash drive. “I want you to take this. Everything’s in here—the photos, the video, recordings. I don’t think… I think I’ve been found out. Take this.”
“You’re setting me up. I have no idea what’s really in there.”
“I’m not. I need to get rid of this, in case…”
Billie turned away from him, glimpsing herself in the mirror of the medicine cabinet, its glass spotted with years of her own fingerprints along its edges, prints that were stained with iodine, greasy with ointments. The face that looked back at her was flushed from the heat, bruises forming at her mouth and on her cheek where Charley had hit her. And her neck still hurt.
“You won’t help me?”
“You’ve spent your life torturing horses. Now you want to make a killing from turning in your pals. No, I won’t help you.”
He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand then slipped the flash drive back into his overalls.
“You’ll have to destroy that filly,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“She’s suffering. That filly can’t make it. You’d do her a kindness to put her out of her misery.”
“Did you say ‘kindness’?”
“If you try to save her, she’ll just suffer more.”
“Get out! I don’t give a shit about you.”
“Listen, tonight Dale and I pack up and go back to his new farm in Sonoita. I’m offering you a chance to find out what really goes on in a Big Lick barn. Behind the scenes where no one else has gone. I checked up on you, and with your background as a reporter, that’s got to appeal to you. A chance to write about this? Right up your alley.”
He took a lopsided step toward the door. Gulliver wagged his tail.
“I don’t suppose you’d give a lame old man a lift down the road to his truck, would you? I parked on the far side of that wash and hiked in when it was a lot cooler than it is now.”
“You trespass, you beat me up, you threaten me, and now you want a lift?”
He looked at her, asking, not pleading. “Angel Hair Walkers is the name of the place. Take the left fork toward Rain Valley, go a couple miles. You’ll find the sign.”
“Get out of here. GO! Think of that filly while you’re roasting out in the desert.”
He nodded and left, limping across the shimmering barnyard and out onto the road.
A few minutes later, feeling guilty, Billie followed in the truck with Gulliver. Two bottles of water jiggled on the seat beside her. She drove to the wash and beyond, but didn’t find Charley. When she got out to look for his tracks, all she saw were the maze of daily tire crossings left by ranchers on their way to check livestock.
CHAPTER 7
JUST AFTER NOON Doc’s truck bounced over the washboard road and parked in front of the barn. He slid out, holding his left arm close to his body, in a sling, his face tight and gray.
“It’s nothing,” he said, his voice breathless from pain. “That bull just wanted to keep his balls. Understandable, but I got ’em. Then he got me back. Busted my collar bone. Not serious. Hurts like hell though.”
“And you’re working today?”
“You sound like my daughter, Billie.”
“I do?”
“Molly and I couldn’t have kids. But I imagine if we’d had a daughter she’d have been a lot like you.”
Billie looked away, confused by his compliment.
“Maybe you’re lucky you didn’t have kids,” she said. “I can’t have any. I used to wish I could… But I can’t and that’s that.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Billie shrugged. She wanted him to say more to her, tell her what he liked about her, what made him feel she could belong to him, even remotely. It had to do with what she did rather than who she was, she was sure. Still, she wanted him to explain the goodness he seemed to see in her.
“What do you want me to look at?” he asked.
Grateful to move on, Billie pointed. “Behind the barn.” Her voice sounded high and childish to her, the words coming too fast.
They scuffed their way around the barn, Billie adjusting her stride so Doc could keep pace with her. The last time he’d been out he had hiked around the corrals like a young man. Today, aged by exhaustion and his broken collarbone, he seemed old.
“She’s still in the trailer,” Billie explained as they approached. “I parked it in the shade.”
Doc glanced at her but didn’t say anything as Billie unlatched the groom door at the front of the trailer and half stepped, half pulle
d herself inside.
The little horse stood with her head down, her eyes half-closed. She didn’t startle when Billie appeared or flinch as Billie clipped a lead rope to her halter. Billie thought she looked like she hurt too much to move.
Billie leaned down to give Doc a hand as he negotiated the high step up into the narrow trailer door. Having his arm in a sling made his balance uncertain, but in no way diminished the power of a lifetime of physical work with big animals.
“You shouldn’t go climbing into trailers with injured animals,” he told her. “Way to get yourself hurt.”
“She won’t hurt us, Doc. She can’t even move.”
“I can see that.”
Slowly, in the cramped metal horse trailer, he examined the filly, first with his eyes, then with his one good hand, his fingers light and careful over her burned legs.
“The man I got her from says she needs to be put down.” Tears surprised her. Quickly she wiped her eyes.
“Who’d you get her from?” Doc asked.
“A guy named Charley.”
Billie figured that Doc knew she wasn’t telling him the whole truth but had decided not to press it. Knowing what had really happened wouldn’t change his diagnosis or prognosis of the horse.
“I’ve been doing this for fifty years,” he said, turning to Billie. “And I’ve treated horses burned by fires and hurt by stupidity. And I read about this soring stuff, but I’ve never seen it for myself. Until now.”
Looking back at the filly, he said, “She’ll be scarred, Billie, but she could recover.”
“Really?”
He picked up the filly’s hoof. “Oh, those sons of bitches.”
“What?”
“See this?” With the index finger of his damaged arm, he pointed at the bottom of her hoof cradled in his good hand. The filly squealed and tried to pull away from him. While Billie leaned against her shoulder, gently stroking her neck, murmuring reassurances, Doc explained that someone had rasped her hooves until they bled then cut into the laminae, the tender quick. “Their next move would have been to stick something up in her hoof—a screw or something like that—then nail on shoes so it wouldn’t be seen. Good thing you got her when you did.”