Author: Heidi Vanderbilt
Category: Other
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Doc released her leg, and Billie winced as the filly set it gingerly on the ground then tentatively eased some weight onto it to relieve her other foot.
“I won’t have anything to do with these people,” Doc said. “They maim their horses for a rayon show ribbon.”
“I was thinking I should write an article about it,” Billie said.
He placed his stethoscope against the filly’s heart. “You won’t be the first.”
There had been articles about soring for decades, he told her, watching the second hand of his Timex. “Pulse is seventy-eight,” he reported. “An elevated pulse means pain.”
He placed the head of his stethoscope against the filly’s flank, listened, moved it lower, listened again. “Diminished gut sounds,” he said, sliding around to her rump on her other side. Before he placed the stethoscope on her right flank, he said, “A couple of years ago a national veterinarians’ association wrote a white paper calling for the end of soring.” Looking at Billie over the horse’s back, he shook his head. “It didn’t do any good. Nothing stops these people.”
Billie felt sweat running between her shoulder blades and down her back. She wiped her forehead with her palm, pushing damp hair up her forehead, then wiped her upper lip on the inside of her shirt. It was cooler in the trailer than out, but it had to be over a hundred degrees.
Doc looped the stethoscope around his neck and looked in the filly’s eyes and mouth. He stroked the side of her face.
“Poor girl,” he said. “You didn’t deserve this.”
Billie backed out through the groom door on the side of the trailer, followed by Doc. “Want some water?” she asked. “I’ve got some in the feed shed.”
The walk back was even slower than the one to the trailer, and Doc’s fatigue was palpable. Billie shortened her stride to stay close beside him in case he needed her. In the shed, he accepted the icy bottle, and they leaned against the side of the building to drink, grateful for the bit of shade.
“Did you know there’s been a movement back east to get soring stopped?” Doc asked. “It’s had some success, so it’s harder now for Big Lickers to get away with what they do. The inspections are a little tougher, the fines are a little bigger.”
“So, that’s good?”
“As far as it goes, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. I hope you decide to write that article, Billie. I don’t think it’ll stop them, m’dear, but it could help some.”
Billie fetched two more bottles of water, handed him one. “Do you think that’s why they’ve shown up here? In Arizona?”
“I don’t know about that. If you ask me, you should stay away from this whole thing. But if you do decide to pursue it, well, that might be a worthy effort.” He looked around. “Where’s your little dog?”
“Up at the casita.”
Doc nodded and finished most of his second bottle of water before screwing the top back on.
“Doc, what will it take to fix the filly?”
“Luck. Plus a lot of time and some money, Billie. And a lot of pain for her. Some might say it’d be a kindness to put her down.”
“Let’s try to save her.”
As they walked back to the barn, Doc outlined a course of treatment. Medicines, salves, months of specially made shoes and pads to protect her damaged feet until they could grow out and she could again walk without pain. Billie wanted to ask how much it would cost, but what difference would the answer really make? Money aside, what was the best thing for the horse? Try to save her or euthanize her? As Doc talked, her mind wandered into the world of grotesque abuse the horse had suffered. Her article might make a difference to the horses suffering in darkened barns. Or maybe it would just help this one horse here, standing in misery in her trailer. If Billie could sell it, she’d have money for vet care. She couldn’t wait to start.
“How widespread is it?” she asked Doc.
He blinked at her, uncertain. “How widespread is what?”
“How widespread is soring?”
“It’s done to show horses and horses that might show. Thousands and thousands of them over the years. It’s a multi-million dollar business.”
“Well,” Billie said, “that has to stop.”
Doc started to laugh, first a slight chuckle, then a big deep rumble. “You’re really something!” he gasped, holding his arm tightly against his body to stop it from moving with his laughter. “Oh my, dear. You are right. It has to stop. It won’t, but it has to.”
He loaded Billie up with medicines for the filly and started to write her bill, leaning against the side of his truck.
“What’s her name?” he asked.
Until this second Billie hadn’t thought about a name.
“Hope,” she said. It would do for now.
When Doc drove off, he took with him a good chunk of her remaining money.
She started to imagine what she’d write. Not the details—she didn’t know them yet. She didn’t know who was involved, beyond Charley and Dale and Eudora and Sylvie, if you could count a kid. She didn’t know the extent of the problem. She couldn’t even fully define the crimes being committed. But the structure of the piece, its rhythm and form, she already knew.
CHAPTER 8
BILLIE STRETCHED OUT on a hay bale under the Milky Way, searching the sky for shooting stars. Alfalfa stems prickled her shoulder blades. She wriggled to avoid them, but each time they just got stuck someplace else—in the small of her back, the back of her neck, the backs of her knees.
She lay there anyway, waiting for the perfect star. Then she would go up to the casita and write. Somewhere in the words she would find a way to feed her animals, find a way to stay on her ranch.
She should have taken Charley’s thumb drive, should have given him a lift, should have thought of what he could do for her instead of just getting angry.
I bolted like a spooked horse instead of staying to figure it out, reason it out, fight it out, she thought. I’ll never learn.
She closed her eyes. Night sounds filled her mind. The horses lipped hay off the ground, a sound like water flowing over rocks. She heard them shift their weight, sigh, shuffle, snort. A screech owl started its predawn call. When she opened her eyes to look for it, the star she had been waiting for arced directly over her, a streak that shrank to a soft astral sizzle then disappeared.
Gulliver lay on his back on her stomach, all four feet in the air. She played her fingers over his belly—single notes, chords. When she sat up, he leapt off and shook himself.
As she hiked back up the hill to the house, Gulliver trotting beside her, Frank’s voice played in her head. Come back, he said. Work for me again. Pick your project or take on mine.
She let herself into the casita and settled cross-legged on the futon. She could have reached for her computer, but she had a favorite pen, a fine-point steel-bodied ballpoint, and a notebook whose pages sagged beneath the pen’s pressure.
Where to start? She had a pile of worries—about her writing, about what her life would be if she went back to writing. Would she solve the problem of income at the cost of this life she had chosen? By making money to feed the horses, would she have to leave them, even lose them? If she agreed to write for Frank, she would have to leave, if not right away, then after a while.
She looked out the kitchen window over the barnyard, into the barely lightening sky, and started to outline the article. “The Plight of the Tennessee Walking Horse” by Arabella Snow. Arabella! A name branded onto her by her parents, who named her for fame. “No one will be able to forget it,” her mother had told her. “It’s the name of a heroine, a star.” Billie wrote under it as a way to save her private world from what became the high profile, high danger life of Arabella Snow, journalist. It had worked for a while, but her nickname had eventually gotten out. It hadn’t been a big deal to her at the time, but it did allow curious people—like Charley—to find Arabella the journalist by Googling Billie. The former journalist, she corrected herself.
She set the notebook on the futon beside her. That old life had been so urban. Exciting. Well-paid. She could have bought tractor-trailers stacked with bales of Bermuda grass and alfalfa hay. Tons of oats, Equine Senior, vitamins, and supplements. She could have paid for veterinary ultrasounds, radiographs, surgeries…whatever the horses needed.
The sky turned pearly grey then coral. She stood and went to the kitchen window to look out, searching the land that stretched for miles before her, looking for just one lone rancher out riding fence, or dust from a truck on its way to check the dirt tanks where the cattle drank and the miles of pipe that carried water to them. She saw a spiral of vultures riding the day’s first thermals, searching too.
While the air was still crisp and the coffee had filled her with energy, she hiked back down the hill to check on the horses. The filly stood with her head lowered, shifting her weight, trying to ease the pain in her legs. Billie injected her with the medicine Doc had left then moved her to a shady stall under the hay barn roof. She had not eaten her hay from last night. Billie scooped oats into a feed bucket to tempt her, but she ignored them too, her eyes small with misery.
Billie chewed the inside of her cheek, wondering what she should do. Charley had suggested she go to the farm where he worked. Maybe that would lead her straight to her next exposé. Charley might be a gift horse, and who was she to look him in the mouth? If she got a job there, she’d get paid while she researched by the people she was investigating. Was that ethical? Why not?
The sun rose as she drove, blinding her as she headed east over the mountains into a valley bisected by a crisp blue stream. The road dipped from mountain pass to river’s edge, and she followed it, her windows rolled down. The stream’s banks were furred with cattails and bamboo. She knew the valley, not a half hour from her own place. She had driven through it a few times, just for the scenery.
The humped black shapes of cattle freckled the pale pastures. Ranch land stretched as far as she could see. No power lines, no pavement, no houses. Just miles of land that looked as it had for generations. She passed a couple of cowhands riding the edge of the road, a blue heeler dog trotting behind them. She raised her hand in a small salute. They nodded in return.
Billie turned off at a ranch sign featuring a walking horse strutting over the words: Angel Hair Walkers. She stopped the truck to look at it, incongruous in the midst of a cattle ranch. On the sign, the horse’s right front leg was lifted almost as high as its muzzle, while its hind feet stretched way under its belly in what she now knew was the classic Big Lick pose. A stride that couldn’t be come by naturally, that only happened through pain. Of course the sign didn’t show the leg chains.
She restarted the Silverado. The driveway curved between thick white eucalyptus trunks. Through a mist of sprinklers, she peered at a Spanish hacienda. Raked and graveled paths led to benches placed invitingly against the building’s stucco walls. Red clay tiles created a graceful, Mediterranean-style roof.
The circular drive was crowded with parked cars. She wedged her truck into a slot between a royal blue Mercedes and a white Chevy Tahoe. She parked and got out, breathing the aromas of baked earth and watered grass. She heard the creek behind her, and when she turned to look, she saw a stand of trees and grasses, dusty but thriving. Two coyotes trotted out, one silvery red, the other dark, fringed in black. They saw her, stopped, and faded back into the scrub. A raven fluttered to the spot where they disappeared, landed hopping, pecked at the ground, and took off toward the whitewashed building.
White walls, green grass, red roof, blackbirds. Billie wished she could stand there, listening to running water, smelling moist earth, and looking at the ranch house forever. But the rapidly rising heat mobilized her.
A sign reading Office was screwed into the wall to the right of a massive, carved oak door. She decided that the sign meant she didn’t need to knock or ring, so she opened the door and stepped from the heat into a room so cold icicles could hang from the curtain rods. Heavy green drapes blocked the sun. One mustard-colored wall was covered with ribbons presumably won by the horses of this farm. Multicolored streamers fell from blue and red and gold rosettes. Championship ribbons, all of them. Photographs slathered another wall. A mahogany drop-leaf table held silver trophies, overflow from the collection lined up on shelves behind an ornate wooden desk. Eudora, the older woman Billie had seen at the show talking to Dale, sat behind it.
“Yes?” she asked.
“I’m looking for a job.”
“Didn’t I meet you last weekend?” she asked. “At the show?”
Billie stuffed her hands in her jeans pockets, ducked her head, tried to look embarrassed, and said, “Right. I’m Billie Snow. I met a guy at the show named Charley. He offered me a job.”
“Charley offered you a job?” Eudora sounded incredulous. “I’m the owner. My name is Eudora Thornton. I decide who gets hired.” Eudora drummed the end of a ballpoint pen against the glowing wood of the desktop. “What kind of job are you looking for?”
Billie felt as if a stuck door just opened a crack.
“I’ve got my own place with my own horses and I board some, but I’m struggling.” Frank had taught her the finer points of successful lying. Tell as much of the truth as you can. The truth sounds like truth, and you’re less likely to forget what you said.
“I need more business,” Billie said. “Or I need a job. I was putting up flyers at the showgrounds when I met Charley. We got to talking, and he said I could come ask for work here. I really need it.”
Eudora settled back and her chair squealed.
“What can you do?” Eudora asked.
“For a start, I could fix that squeak. A few squirts of WD-40 would do it,” Billie said.
“I’ll call maintenance for that,” Eudora said. “What else?”
“I can do anything with horses. I can ride, school, exercise. I can start colts, handle foals…”
“Will you muck?”
“You bet!” She hoped Eudora would figure that Billie’s enthusiasm for this menial job had to do with the hourly wage, but she was thinking: I’m in! Not far in, but this was how every piece of research started, with a small widening of the view.
“I’ll do whatever you need done,” Billie said.
“You can start right away?”
“You bet,” Billie grinned.
“Good.” Eudora nodded. “All right, I’ll show you around.”
She stood up, stylish in a white silk blouse and tailored skirt. Her high heels clicked as she led Billie under a shady archway into a courtyard with whitewashed barns on three sides. Hitching rails lined each wall, interspersed with more benches. The center of the courtyard had been raked into a pattern of swirled white pebbles. The place practically glittered. Through an archway in the farthest barn, Billie saw a dirt exercise track, and beyond the track, desert stretching to serrated mountains.
“Wow!” Billie said and meant it.
“Nice, isn’t it?” Eudora asked.
“Beyond nice.”
Eudora took Billie through the massive door into the first barn on the left and then into a small storage room. She handed Billie a mucking fork and showed her the wheeled cart she should fill.
“Empty it on the manure pile outside. I’ll show you.” She led the way to the back of the building, to a mound of manure, soiled hay, and straw. “There’s a pile behind each barn, for convenience. You won’t have to walk far, no matter where you’re working.” She showed Billie where the bedding
was stored in its own shed adjacent to the building, bales of straw and bags of wood shavings stacked neatly.
Inside the barn, she opened a door. “Tack room. Any questions?”
You bet, Billie thought. Where was everyone? Where were the owners of the cars and trucks she’d seen parked outside? Where were the horses she had seen at the show? The animals in this barn weren’t standing on stacked shoes. They looked like any other horses.
“Just muck this broodmare barn today. We’ll see how it goes. Come see me when you’re finished.”
The horses looked well-cared for. Their weight was good, their coats shone, their eyes were soft and friendly.
After Eudora disappeared, Billie settled into the rhythm of stall cleaning. Each horse she tied to a ring in the wall farthest from the door. She left the stall door open, the cart outside, and with the fork, she removed the bedding the horse had soiled during the past day. She closed the stall door behind her and wheeled the cart out to the manure pile, dumped it, and returned to the barn. She loaded a bale of straw and a bag of shavings, wheeled them to the stall and spread them out on the floor, fluffing with the rake. She checked to be certain each horse had water in its bucket that hung from the wall beside the door. Then she removed the halter and let the horse loose. It was simple work that she had done all her life. Different details in different barns, but the swing of the fork into bedding, the heft and lift, the twist to dump it into the wheelbarrow were the same everywhere, every time.
She worked down one side of the aisle, ten stalls, and started up the other side cleaning each stall with its broodmare shaded and cool under ceiling fans in the thick-walled barn.
A stall at the end of the row had drapes pulled across it. Billie glanced around to be certain she was still alone, and pulled the drapes aside, finding a closed door. She tried the handle and opened the door into a big room. Harnesses hung from hooks on the walls. A table held medical instruments. In the middle of the space, parallel iron poles created a chute in which a chestnut mare had been tied. A solid gate closed off the front of the chute. Its back gate stood open. The mare wore a set of breeding hobbles—straps around her hind legs to keep her from kicking the stallion during breeding. She turned her head and looked at Billie, her eyes wide. It was dangerous to leave a twelve-hundred-pound animal, capable of explosive thrashing, tied and alone. The breeding hobbles indicated a nearby stallion, ready to mount her. But there was no other horse in there and no stallions in this building that Billie had noticed.