by Kit Ehrman
* * *
I lay awake for hours. When the clock radio switched on at four o'clock. Saturday morning, my skull felt as if it had been squeezed in a vise. I walked over to the window and rubbed my eyes. Light had already begun to seep into the eastern horizon.
Despite a lack of enthusiasm on my part, the clinic started without a hitch, and by lunch time, both barns had been mucked out. I walked behind barn B and stood by the pasture gate. The school horses were exiled to the field for the duration of the clinic, and any change that interfered with a horse's normal routine could wreak havoc with its digestive system. In the past two years, though, the practice hadn't caused any problems. Unexplained colics, like last night's, were the norm.
Two years. It was hard to believe I'd been at Foxdale that long. I rested my forearms on the fence. I ought to stop feeling sorry for myself. Waste of time.
The sun felt warm on my shoulders. The clatter of Mrs. Hill's voice over the P.A. system was an indistinct murmur. I looked over the horses. They were content, relaxed, happy to be outside. Farther down the hill, a bay pony pawed the ground in front of the automatic waterer. I hopped the fence and walked down the slope. She turned her big, old head and watched my approach with a calm eye.
"Hey there, girl. What's wrong?" I patted her neck, and she nuzzled my arm.
Her coat hadn't completely shed out, and I could smell the sharp odor of sweat and damp horse hair. I looked at the waterer and frowned. The lid was closed. I flipped it back onto the main housing. It wasn't easy to move, but if she'd been fooling with it, I supposed she could have managed it. She pursed her lips and drank greedily from the bowl.
I turned to leave. Movement in the implement building caught my eye. As far as I knew, Dave hadn't come in, and no one else should have been down there. I cut across the pasture.
Brian was sitting in the chair alongside Dave's workbench, his head bowed, elbows propped on his knees. A crumpled paper bag and an empty Miller's can lay on the ground by his feet. A second can dangled from his right hand. When I stepped into the shade of the roof overhang, he looked up and squinted at me through a haze of cigarette smoke.
"Well, if it ain't Sherlock Holmes." Brian gestured to a six-pack on the lower level of the mow. "Want some?"
When I didn't respond, he said, "Oh yeah. That's right. I forgot. You don't drink, don't smoke." He gulped some beer. "Let's see. You don't cuss. Not much anyway. You're polite as hell. Work like a dog."
He peered at me and rolled the cigarette filter between his lips. "Just what is it you do for fun?"
I gritted my teeth. "Get up."
"'Get up.'" He chuckled. "Get it up, you mean?" He took the cigarette from between his lips and spit, like he'd gotten a piece of tobacco on his tongue. "You do do that, don't you? Get it up with Mrs. Elsa 'if it moves, fuck it' Timbrook."
I lunged forward, twisted my fingers in his shirt, and hauled him to his feet. His chair toppled backward, and beer sloshed down the front of my jeans. His eyes were bloodshot, and he was having trouble focusing on my face.
Brian smirked. "So, I guess you're not so special after all."
I spun him around and leaned into him so that my mouth was close to his ear. "Fuck you." I shoved him outside.
He stumbled when his shoes hit the gravel in the lane.
"Pick up your check in the office," I said. "And don't come back."
"You gotta be kidding? Who'd want this job anyway, working for a self-righteous bastard like you? Slingin' shit all day long 'til you smell like it." His gaze drifted from my face to what was left of his six-pack. He looked back at me, his pale eyes wide and unblinking, and flicked his cigarette into the building. It landed on the ground behind me.
The skin on the back of my head contracted.
He gestured to the west wall where the graffiti had been. "Maybe they'll fix you."
I watched him start toward the office, then I spun around and searched for the cigarette. It was smoldering under the hay elevator. A couple more feet, and it would have landed in the chaff that littered the floor at the base of the mow.
I ground out the butt with the toe of my boot and exhaled breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding.
Brian hadn't wasted any time. By the time I got to the office, he'd already left.
The room was crowded. A thin woman with tanned, wiry arms and mousy brown hair held back with a bandanna was leaning on Mrs. Hill's desk with her fingers splayed across the bare metal. ". . . couldn't come, so one of my other girls wanted to take her place, and . . ."
A young girl had borrowed the office phone. She covered her ear with the palm of her hand and hunched forward while, behind her, three riders debated whether the times posted for their rides were running to schedule.
Mrs. Hill frowned at me, then waved me off. Though I knew she'd be irritated because we were short an employee on such a busy weekend, she wouldn't want to talk about Brian then. I cut through the lounge and bought a Coke, then went outside and sat on one of the benches that were positioned down the length of the arena. Several clinic participants and a handful of boarders were working their horses in the sandy footing. On the far side of the judges' stand, a group of spectators were watching the clinic up close.
Someone sat down next to me. The wooden slats moved under my butt. I glanced to my right and was surprised to see that that someone was George Irons.
"Hey there, Mr. Irons. How ya doin'?"
"Not bad. Be a lot better if I was out on the bay, kickin' back a few, instead of watchin' a bunch of fancy horses trot round in circles." He gestured toward the dressage arena. "Got half my barn here today."
I turned the Coke can in my hands and pulled back on the tab.
Mr. Irons waved at a large gray that was being walked along the rail on a loose rein. The gelding's nose almost touched the ground, and his back looked supple and relaxed. "My daughter's up next. That's her new horse. Got an overstep you wouldn't believe."
"Nice looking animal," I said.
Irons nodded as a bay horse walked in front of us. "Paid too much for him of course, but . . ." His attention drifted from the bay to its rider, and he seemed to lose his train of thought. "Well, lookit that. Ol' Vic's gone from bad to worse. I know they don't care what jumpers look like, but really, that one's got a knot between its eyes, makes you think somebody'd hauled off and whacked it with a ball bat."
"You know Mr. Sanders, do you?"
"Yeah, I know 'im, all right. I'll tell you one thing, though. He sure as shit wishes he'd never heard of me. When those bastards stole my horses, they took his, too."
Mr. Irons continued speaking, oblivious to the fact that I'd become still or that my breathing had slowed even though my heart was pounding faster than a freight train, the blood swooshing past my eardrums.
"He'd hauled in his gelding," Irons continued, "looking for someplace temporary to keep it while he was waitin' to get in somewheres else. Then it goes and gets stolen. Only had a week to go before he was plannin' on movin' it, too."
I cleared my throat. "What was the gelding's name?"
"Portage something or other. Don't remember now. Some big ol' gray. Part draft, part thoroughbred. Ugly head, but not as bad as that." He gestured after Sanders' bay gelding.
"Light gray?" I said.
Irons shook his head. "Dark gray with dapples."
Sanders guided his horse between a pair of jump standards and circled toward us. Steel had been a dark gray, heavily dappled. A draft cross of some sort. His theft from Foxdale had netted Sanders twenty grand.
Sanders looked down his nose at us as he rode past. My face felt stiff.
"Was the horse insured?" I asked, though I expected I already knew the answer.
"You bet he was." Irons scowled. "Better'n I can say for myself."
"By chance," I said, "do you recall which insurance company?"
"Sure do. Same company that handles my liability coverage. Liberty South. He told me he was thinking 'bout gettin' his horse insured a
nd asked me who I used and was I happy with 'em. I introduced him to my agent. Lucky timing for him, huh?"
I asked Irons if the gelding had any distinguishing marks or blemishes, but his description was vague and could have matched a thousand horses in any given county.
"Did the horse have any unusual behaviors," I said, "any quirks, weird habits?"
Irons squinted at me. "What you wantin' to know for?"
"Did he?" I said.
"Well, now. Let me think." He rubbed the bristles on his chin. "He was tense for his breedin'. Mouthy, too. Couldn't leave nothin' alone."
"What about when you handled him? Did he do anything out of the ordinary?"
"Now you mention it, he wasn't happy unless he had part of his lead in his mouth. Always had to have something to chew on."
A steel gray draft cross with a fetish for lead ropes, who just so happened to belong to Victor Sanders, gets stolen from George Irons' dressage barn only to show up at Foxdale two years later where he's stolen again. Even when Steel had been in the trailer that night, he had fooled with the chains the entire time. They had to be one and the same.
I wondered if he was still alive. If any of the others were. Were they being masqueraded somewhere else under different names, waiting for their turn to be "stolen?" I didn't know what Sanders did for a living, but it took a hunk of change to board a horse at a facility like Foxdale and keep it active on the show circuit. Sanders never wore anything that wasn't top-of-the-line, and the Mitsubishi 3000GT he owned had to have cost him a bundle, not to mention the money he shelled out entertaining the string of young women he brought to the farm. Then again, maybe they didn't cost him much.
"So, what you wantin' to know all this for?" Irons said.
I looked at the tightness around his eyes and the heavy lines crinkling his face. "I'll tell you when I know more."
"Tell me now."
I shook my head. "When I know more."