Turning For Home (Alex and Alexander Book 4)

by Natalie Keller Reinert

  “Don’t stop,” Kerri said urgently. “Keep driving.”

  “Where to?” We were almost to the driveway, and I was letting the truck coast now, losing speed without jerking Tiger around by braking. My turn signal was on; so were my high-beams. I left those on, because blinding the news crew seemed like the least I could do with all the trouble they were about to cause me.

  “Someone else’s place. Lucy Knapp’s place.”

  “She’s all the way out in Williston! No way.”

  “Margaret’s place. She’s just down the road.”

  “Margaret goes to bed at eight thirty every night. It’s an hour past her bedtime. She’d be furious, and anyway, I bet her gate is locked. Come on, Kerri. We can deal with these pricks.” I took a deep breath and summoned all the bravado that I could muster. The news vans loomed up. They were parked along the verge before the driveway. Just three—the local Gainesville and Ocala stations, no one from Orlando or Tampa, thank goodness. This is a non-story, I reminded myself. And this just proves it.

  I pulled the truck into the driveway with the same care for my horse and my rig as always, my eyes on the rear-view mirrors to make sure that the trailer followed along without taking down the mailbox or ending up in the culvert. I wasn’t looking ahead, and I was concentrating so hard that Kerri’s short scream barely registered. I glanced over at her to see what made her yelp, and that was when my truck hit the reporter.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  There was a moment of perfect silence. Then all hell broke loose.

  Kerri was screaming, the reporter was screaming, the other assorted reporters and drivers and producers and whatever other people who work in the news business were screaming. Tiger was outraged at the way the trailer had come to a sudden, jarring halt when I’d realized the truck had knocked down a human, and was kicking the trailer walls with abandon.

  I sat very still and stared straight ahead for what felt like a lifetime, but was probably only a few seconds. My foot was against the floor, the brake pedal down as far as it could go. I hadn’t put the truck into park, a realization I came to hours later, thinking about how much worse things could have gone.

  The reporter got up, clutching her elbow, and looked at me with loathing. Her neat little skirt and suit jacket were smudged with dirt from the asphalt; her careful helmet of blonde hair was standing up on one side as if she’d just gotten out of bed. She rubbed at her elbow and then bent down and picked something up. Her microphone. She advanced on the driver’s side door as if she still meant to attempt an interview with me, even if I had just tried to run her down.

  (I hadn’t.)

  Bang bang bang!

  We both looked around for the source of the gunfire. The reporter included. Kerri was the first to figure it out.

  “Tiger,” she whispered, her voice gone ragged from screaming. “Kicking.”

  “Goddammit,” I snapped, and I threw the truck into park (thank heaven for habits), popped the door open, and hopped out. The reporter jumped back as if I was going to finish the job with my fists, but I ignored her. I had more pressing issues than some small-town reporter who wanted to put me on the eleven o’clock news. Who the hell was even awake at that time anyway? This was a farm town! Everyone I knew was fast asleep, only a few hours away from their alarm clock. This chick was delusional if she thought anyone had ever seen her face on TV.

  But that was just inconsequential stuff, floating through my mind while I made for the horse trailer. I stepped up onto the wheel-well and pulled down the drop-down window. Behind the steel bars, Tiger’s bright eyes were on mine immediately, wide and angry at the delay in his trip. He kicked again, his hind hooves connecting with the trailer wall with a resounding crash. I slapped the bars with my open hand, and he jumped back, startled.

  “You knock that off,” I hissed. “You rotten bastard.”

  “So that’s how you talk to your horses?” The reporter was right behind me, her voice horrified.

  “When they’re busy trying to get themselves hurt and acting like they have no manners,” I ground out, not bothering to turn around. Tiger turned in a quick circle, the trailer rocking with his movement, and put his nose up to the bars again, snuffling at my palm. I stuck my finger in and gave his muzzle a little tickle, and he wiggled his upper lip in response. “Stupid jackass,” I told him affectionately. “No breaking yourself. We’ll be at the barn in a minute.”

  I jumped down from the wheel-well and the reporter had her microphone in my face immediately. “Lisa Roberts, Action News Nine. We’d like to hear how you respond to reports that one of your horses was found abandoned in the Everglades.”

  “And I’d like to get this horse back to the barn before he injures himself.” I brushed at some sand in the microphone’s foam cover. “Sorry about knocking down your toy here. But I have to go.”

  Lisa Roberts, Action News Nine, narrowed her eyes and got snippy. “You know, for a person who just ran me over, you don’t have nearly the moral high ground you might think.”

  “If I’d run you over, you wouldn’t still be in my way right now,” I pointed out, and shoved past her. Behind me, Tiger kicked again. “Knock it off, you stupid brat! I won’t have it!”

  Lisa Roberts, Action News Nine, wasn’t impressed by my elegant logic or my eloquent words. She followed closely, pressing on with her demands for a useful quote. “You’re accused of owning a horse who has ended up abandoned and half-starved. What do you have to say to that?”

  “Who is accusing me? You?” I reached the truck door and jumped back in. Kerri was studiously ignoring another station’s reporter, who practically had his nose against the glass of the passenger window, entreating her to open up about her boss’s disturbing pattern of abuse and lies. Her cheeks were bright red, but her gaze never wavered from the wrought iron horse decorating the front gates, tantalizingly close.

  “Sources tell us that the horse in question was trained here at Cotswold Farm.”

  “I didn’t own the horse.” I slammed my door shut to signal an end to the conversation, but Lisa Roberts Action News Nine actually slapped her free hand against the window and started shouting just as loud as the reporter on the other side of the truck.

  “Ms Whitehall, some people are saying that you have set yourself up as a champion of responsible racehorse retirement even as you are allowing horses once in your care to end up in deplorable situations—”

  I put the truck back in gear and gently touched the gas pedal. I would have loved to screech off and leave the perfume of melting rubber in their smug faces, but Tiger’s safety came first, no matter what they thought of me and my attitude towards my horses. Besides, truck tires were expensive. The truck crawled slowly forward, and neither reporter, to their credit, chose to throw themselves beneath the truck or allow their toes to be run over by the tires in some sort of bid for a newsworthy report to send to their studio. Instead, they stepped back and watched sullenly, their cameras following our stately progression to the farm gate. I watched them to make sure no one was following, then reached up and clicked the gate opener. By the time we reached the big black gate, it had slid back on its wheels, admitting us.

  I kept driving after we passed through the gate, trusting that it would close with the reporters on the correct side. Kerri looked back nervously. “Aren’t you afraid they might follow us?”

  “I wish they would,” I replied calmly. “I could call the police then.”

  “How are you so calm?” Kerri’s voice cracked dangerously. “That was insane. And you hit that woman. Oh my God, Alex, you could have killed her. Then they’d be calling the police. That guy was banging on my window and saying he was going to—”

  “She got in front of my truck and it bumped into her. She was totally in the wrong. Any sheriff would agree with me. The last time the sheriff’s department argued in favor of a pedestrian, we still had horses and buggies on the streets. And it’s my driveway, besides.”

  “But you’re acting
like nothing happened.”

  “How else should I act?”

  “You should be a little freaked out, that you knocked down a TV news reporter with your truck. Just a little.”

  I looked in the rearview mirror. The lights and vans were still there, but the gate had closed with all of the reporters on the other side. The driveway curved sinuously and the trees behind gathered thickly, blocking them from sight. I fastened my eyes on the driveway ahead and sighed. “Kerri,” I began, “of course I am freaked out. But there was no way I was going to let any of them see that. That’s what they want. They want me rattled and saying any little thing that comes to mind. Then they’d edit it all to get the quotes that they want. They’d have me saying that horses die every day and there’s no protecting them and I’m not responsible for every horse that ever set foot on this property, and they’d put that on TV and it would get picked up by PETA and be a national scandal. Is that what you want?”

  “No, of course not. I just…”

  “What?”

  “Let’s just say I’m really glad you’re the one that has to deal with them,” Kerri said ruefully. “Because I don’t think I could hold my composure as well as you. Or at all.”

  “Well, they think I’m a soulless witch already,” I sighed. “So I guess in a way, I gave them what they want.”

  Kerri considered this in silence, and I watched the headlights lead the way through the driveway, picking out the live oaks and fenceposts, the eyes of passing armadillos and creeping barn cats, the phantom shadows of grazing Thoroughbreds in the broodmare pasture. I looked up the hill towards the house as we passed its turn-off, but of course the windows were dark. Alexander was in Tampa, or he was driving home after me; there was no telling what he’d decided to do about me once he’d gone back to the barn and found that his wife and his racehorse had flown. He’d be mad.

  Let him be mad, I thought. I’d dealt with the media in my own way.

  By running over someone? My husband would not be impressed.

  In the trailer, Tiger kicked the walls. I resolved to turn my mind to the important things: horses.

  Kerri was too rattled to stay the night with someone as clearly insane as me, so once we pulled Tiger off the trailer and had him set for the night in the training barn stall he had called home for years, I told her to head on home. Farm work was the ultimate relaxation, though. After filling water buckets and a hay-net, she was composed enough to wave goodnight cheerfully as she climbed into her little car.

  “Won’t you be worried about running over a reporter?” I teased, and she smirked and said she’d call the police if they got in her way, and ask for the sheriff’s permission before flattening anyone. Just to be sure.

  “Always thinking ahead.” I watched the red tail-lights go bouncing down the lane, glad she could laugh at the incident at the gate. For me, the enormity of it was just beginning to catch up. Accosted at my own farm gate by television reporters, expected to take the blame for this poor horse I hadn’t seen since he was a colt, a horse that hadn’t even belonged to me… Mary had done her job telling tales very well, once again, and someone could have gotten seriously injured.

  I could have killed someone, with just a tap on the gas pedal, and be spending the night in jail. Maybe quite a few nights. I turned back to the half-lit training barn, to the alert eyes watching me from the stall doors. All of my responsibilities… I couldn’t do them any good from prison.

  Mary had gotten inside my head, too. Or maybe it wasn’t just her and her nasty little smile. It was Market Affair that was haunting me now. He had just put a face on the horror that had been haunting Florida for a few years now. The truth was, scandals like this were nothing new, and it would be yesterday’s story to all but a few passionate souls in just a few days. South Florida had more than its share of horrific horse abuse cases. Horses were found abandoned, dead, even butchered, their carcasses dumped in the swamps or found tied to trees, locked in stalls or wandering highways. It was unbearably sad when it happened, and it was infuriating, too, because there were people in my business doing this. Maybe people that I saw at the races, or at the sales. Maybe someone, although I could scarcely believe it might be true, that I’d had a cup of coffee with one morning, leaning on the rail and watching works, or killing time in the track kitchen.

  To actually know one of these horses, to picture him in this state… that hit home. Hard.

  I was tired, and I wanted to go to bed, but I knew my brain wasn’t ready for that. So I set off along the driveway, leaving the truck and trailer by the training barn. That could be dealt with in the morning. Now, I needed a walk, to think about the horses that were in my possession, the horses that I was responsible for, and would be for as long as they lived, in some degree or another.

  It wasn’t the handful of racehorses in their little paddocks outside the training barn that I stopped to contemplate. I went on, down the driveway, to see the next generation.

  By now the winter-brown grass was wet with dew, and a north wind that tasted of fog and cold rain was sighing through the live oaks, sending little spirals of dripping leaves all around me. One landed on my face like an icy tear; I swiped it off and wiped my palm on my dirty slacks. A few steps more, my boots glistening with the damp, and I was leaning against the black-painted top board of a wire mesh fence, gazing down the gentle slope of the broodmare pasture. The scent of creosote was sharp in my nose; this fence had been painted recently. My eyes roved the dark field, searching, and then the clouds parted to show them to me.

  There they were in the moonlight, a dozen mares clustered close together, some grazing, some napping. Stretched out in the grass a few small shapes: the early foals, our pair of January babies, fast asleep in the cool Florida night.

  There was a rustle from above me, somewhere up in the ancient oak trees, and then a great horned owl called out: Hoo-hoo-HOO-hoo, Hoo-hoo-HOO-hooo! The trumpeting call was loud enough to make me jump, more like a recording amplified from a loudspeaker than a sound any living animal could have made, and I hoped the new litter of barn kittens were locked in a feed room for the night. The owls of north Florida were no joke—they’d been known to fly away with rabbits, cats, even at least one (smallish) Jack Russell Terrier.

  Despite our orderly pastures, our black-board fences, our meticulous barns, our measured racetracks, I supposed Ocala was still a wild place at heart. As our well-trained racehorses were born wild, kicking and quivering and full of run, on these chilly winter nights.

  A sleeping foal startled at the whoop of the owl, his head shooting up from the ground where it was pillowed on soft Ocala sand. The white blaze on his face shone like a luminous gem in the moonlight—it was Crow’s foal, a tiny little brother to my big-hearted Shearwater. He nickered, a tiny, tremulous sound, thin in the foggy-wet air, and his mother neighed in return, her deep voice rumbling across the field. There was an ensuing chorus of whinnies and whickers, nickers and neighs, as all the dozing horses awoke and immediately sought verbal confirmation that everyone was right where they had left them. A few sharp neighs from the training barn, on the other side of the farm, pierced the night air, and then it was still again.

  Satisfied that the herd was all around him, Crow’s foal went back to sleep. The other foal got up and headed for her dam, in dire need of a quick snack.

  I laid my cheek against the dark wood of the top rail, breathing in its creosote smell, and watched them. They would only be so little for a little while; soon Crow’s foal would be sleeping in a bed of straw, not sand, and he would be poking his white-blazed face over a webbing in a racetrack shed-row, not peering up sleepily at the laughing moon.

  Where were they all going to go? Was the world big enough for them?

  Little lives I was responsible for, whole existences that were dreamed into life and coaxed into being because I and my associates had wanted them to happen. But I wasn’t a deity. I was a breeder.

  It had been a bad day for news. I could recogn
ize that. I could blame my nerves and worry on everything that had happened today: the poor race, the racetrack gossip, Alexander’s temper, Mary Archer’s venomous attack, the reporters at the gate. They’d all made for one sucker punch after another. I was dizzy with it all.

  A gray mare shook her head; her silver mane flew out in a parabola from her arching neck, catching sparkles in the moonlight. She hadn’t foaled yet, and her midsection was round as a barrel, skin stretched tight to accommodate the little life form inside of her. Not so little—the foal in there, nearly due, would be a couple hundred pounds of muscle and bone and sinew when he finally greeted the world.

  Another horse in a crowded world.

  Today every horseman at the track had been buzzing about the horrific news from south Florida. Every one of those abandoned horses had had tattoos inside their upper lips. Every one had raced at Calder the previous meet. Their trainer would be known. But maybe their trainer had left the state; it wouldn’t be the first time horses had been dumped and the trainer had dashed. Maybe he had signed papers selling them to a dealer who could not now be found; maybe the state would not file abuse charges, maybe nothing would ever come of this but more bad press for horse racing. The only certainty was that charities would have to plea for the thousands of dollars it would take to rehabilitate and retrain the horses for new lives. We’d send money, even if it looked like a gesture of guilt. Of course we would, but that wouldn’t fix the problem.

  If the entire backside had turned out carrying torches and demanding a lynch mob gather to march on Miami and find the bastard responsible for dumping these poor horses straight out of their coddled racetrack life and into a wilderness unsuitable for any animal that could neither swim nor fly, I wouldn’t have been out here staring at my babies, wondering what their futures would bring. I would have been hoisting a torch with the rest of them.