“Sounds like these friends will be looking for bargains,” I huffed, wriggling into a yellow dress that was a carbon copy of the brown one. It had a delicate pattern of white daisies scattered across it in a way that I did not hate, which was saying something. “Sounds like half-off stud fees and comped mare boarding.” The friends and family discount. “I can’t think about stallions and breeding right now, Alexander. I’m too worried about the horses we’ve already made to deal with the possibilities of all the horses we’re going to make.”
Alexander came back into the bedroom and put his hands on my shoulders. I studied his tie, the stripes of yellow and blue, until he tipped up my chin with one callused finger and made me look him in the eye. I gave him a mutinous glare. His own eyes were quiet and content. Alexander, as always, was a man who was exactly where he wanted to be, doing exactly what he wanted to do. I wished I could be so steadfast and confident in my decisions. Someday, I promised myself, I would be as rock-solid as my ridiculously self-assured husband. In a few decades. I’d catch up.
“Listen to me,” he said gently. “You are going through a rough patch with all this retirement nonsense. But you’re in the right here. Not them. So don’t let them get to you.”
I smiled weakly and brushed a hand across my eyes. They were burning a bit. Allergies. In January. Right. “I’m trying. But it’s hard to see the community turn against me like this.”
“It’s the Antis, Alex. Anti-this, anti-that. It’s the animal rights fanatics that want to set all the horses and dogs and cats free. You can’t listen to people like that. You can’t let them get in your head. I know I gave out to you about that interview, but still—you were right. You stand for everything good in racing, you know that? Look at your principles: your horses get turn-out, your horses get time off to be horses, your horses are retired sound and sent on to second careers. You’re doing everything right—Alex, of course people are going to hate you. Certain racehorse people because you’re going to cost them money in the long run; animal rights activists because you are proving them wrong every single day.”
Now my eyes were more than burning; they were spilling over. I fell forward into Alexander and his arms closed around me, strong and warm and oh-so-reassuring. He held me there while I indulged in a good cry, soaking the front of his shirt, overcome with his reassuring words. I could handle anything, I thought, as soon I was done crying I’d be right on it. I was doing all the right things. Alexander was right—I was making people on both sides of the aisle nervous. I was changing the status quo, one horse at a time. I was a pioneer! An advocate! Why on earth was I still crying? I used his soft oxford shirt to mop up my tears. He had more, he could change.
Then, when I was finished at last, he gave me a little push towards the bathroom while dropping a soft kiss on my head. “Now please, go get ready.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
I was charming.
Okay, I wasn’t the belle of the ball, nor the life of the party. I was Alex, after all, shy of strangers and happier in a barn than in a ballroom at the local Hilton, twenty years younger than most of the so-called “young people” in the room, with the exception of a few upstart trainers who had been making names for themselves at Tampa this winter. The realm of breeding racehorses, though, that belonged to the senior members of the racing community, and they made me downright uncomfortable. I still felt, after five years here, that my presence at Alexander’s side amused them.
Tonight I was feeling a little more chipper than usual, thanks to my newfound role as the great innovator of horse racing, the harbinger of change, the mover of mountains, the despised of the status quo. I slipped on an argyle sweater of Alexander’s over my sundress because I knew it looked like I’d gotten dressed in a vintage store and it would be a marked difference from the silks and paisleys that the other ladies would be wearing, and every time I found myself without someone to talk to, I simply made my way through the crowded little ballroom with a glass of champagne, a determined look on my face, as if I was going somewhere very important.
Usually I was: the table with all the cheese on it, for example, was very important. Then someone would waltz up and start a conversation with me, and I would be spared the uncomfortable wallflower feeling I had at most of these events. I talked with a lot of the Rodeo Queens, since we had worked together to claim a mare for a Christmas make-a-wish back in December, and they all wanted to relive the glorious heady moments when they’d descended to the winner’s circle while I was still trying to figure out what the heck was going on. The fact that I wasn’t in on the scheme at all didn’t deter them from congratulating me on such a wonderful surprise.
“And how is dear Christmasfordee?” Tracy Apogee was asking, her silver cross trembling on her astonishing bosom. She reached out a boney hand bedazzled with turquoise and silver rings and plucked a square of cheese from the plate at her side. I watched her deftly put the cheese in her mouth without stabbing herself in the face with her inch-long talons and admired her dexterity. Fifty-five and a barrel racing champion, Tracy Apogee had a flair for the dramatic that was in perfect opposition with my desire to disappear into the woodwork, but I was finding out that she was awfully nice despite all the feathers and Native American affectations.
“She’s fine. Out with our other open mares, enjoying some pasture time before she goes for training. She likes to eat entire salt blocks, so that’s a thing. The vet ran bloodwork and couldn’t find anything weird.”
“I had a dog who ate salt blocks,” Tracy reminisced. “When he licked you, if you had any cuts, it burned. He was practically made of salt.”
“That’s crazy.” I was seized with a desire to know more about the salt-eating dog, and to eat more cheese. I put down my empty champagne glass and went for a wedge of white cheese speckled with cranberries. “What breed was he?”
“He was half Catahoula hound and half—” Tracy trailed off and her gaze became fixed on a point just beyond my left shoulder.
I turned very slowly, expecting Alexander to be doing something ridiculous, like holding a wine glass over my head and pretending he was going to pour it all over me. Of course, he would never do that. I was wearing his sweater.
But it wasn’t Alexander. There was a woman there, standing just inches away, a woman with her face twisted in rage, a woman in sweatpants and sweatshirt stained with farm work, a woman who had most obviously not come to the fundraiser for champagne and cheese and smalltalk about racehorses or salt-eating dogs, and in her hand, her fingers clenching the edges so tightly that it was crinkling within her grip, was the photo of Market Affair.
I took a step backward and collided with the cheese table. I heard a metallic clink as my champagne glass toppled and hit the cheese platter. Thank God it didn’t shatter, I thought, as if that would have created any more of a scene than Tracy Apogee’s startled shriek, echoing around the high ceiling of the ballroom. I could feel the silence descend over the room of gossiping horse trainers and breeders, and I knew all eyes were on me.
Especially hers.
Her lips spat out my name with a vicious hatred. “Alex Whitehall, you lying bitch. Whaddya think happens to them once you’ve used them up and passed them on? This is what happens. This!” She pushed the photo towards my face and I leaned away backwards, trapped against the banquet table, its folding legs quivering beneath my assault. Market Affair was in my face again, his defeated gaze directed towards the ground, his devastated hooves turning up like elven slippers, his gaunt body and ruined coat living reminders of what could happen to any of my horses once I let them go—
“Where d’ya think they all go when you’re done with ’em?”
I should have been stepping around her, pushing down her trembling hand, looking around for security, a frown of calm displeasure on my dignified face for the audience, slack-jawed and astonished, that surrounded the two of us.
Instead I looked at Market Affair, and tears welled up in my eyes for the second time that n
ight, and guilt was written across my face for all the world to see. Or, at least, for my accuser to see, and that was plenty enough for a crazy person.
She crumpled the photo and dropped it on the carpet at my feet. Then she turned her back on me. She was a wide, short, waddling little woman, lank brown hair falling in kitchen-sink curls over sagging shoulders, ankles wobbly over dirty sneakers the color of horse manure. People got out of her way, no one wanted to touch her, even for the sake of security—was there no security? A mall cop, for crying out loud, to shove into the ballroom and take her by the wrists and haul her out of here and make a lot of empty threats about what would happen if she ever came here and accosted hotel guests again?
Apparently not. She pushed open the heavy metal door at the end of the ballroom, the one with the sign that said Do Not Open — Emergency Exit Only — Alarm Will Sound and the door’s alarm started shrieking and it blended oddly with the excited wasp’s buzz of chatter that was sweeping over the ballroom about the trailer-trash redneck who had just silenced that upstart Alex Whitehall.
Alexander’s hand was suddenly there, on my back, hard as iron, and he was propelling me through the open path through the crowd left by the woman. I went where his hand dictated, walking on numb feet, past curious men, past women clutching their pearls. He wants to catch her, I thought. He wants to chase her down, make her apologize, admits she’s a liar and I did nothing wrong, absolve me for myself if no one else. But when we got outside into the biting cold Ocala night, the traffic on 200 buzzing by, she had already disappeared into the dark parking lots that surrounded the hotel.
Alexander’s hand propelled me directly to our car, and into the passenger seat, and he closed the door once I was secured there.
I looked out the window as he drove in silence, the country mixture of rusted trailer and imposing mansion flashing by behind the pastures and riding rings. Was she out there in one of those trailers, in one of those barns, laughing to herself that she’d done what none of the letter-writers and the tweeters and the emailers had managed—she’d gotten in Alex’s face and made Alex cry? She must feel amazing right now. She must feel like a heroine.
While I was left, once again, with that question: where did they all go?
For all my record-keeping and barn checks and “this horse has a home” stamps on the Jockey Club papers of every Thoroughbred we sold, how could I ever protect them once they were out of my hands? Horses disappeared. People did what they wanted with their property, and for some reason abandonment and auction houses were somehow easier options than a phone call to a breeder, asking them to send a truck for a horse before they ran out of grain.
That wasn’t my fault. I knew that.
But their existence—their very existence—that was my fault. The children I had brought into this world, and then set adrift, to live or to die, to prosper or to suffer, to be the property of fickle, unpredictable, mercenary humans—they were my fault.
We drove up the lane and I saw the mares in foal, and the light in the barn where the night watchman sat over the ones heavy and ready to lie down in the straw and bring their colts and fillies into the world, and bit back a groan.
In the house, Alexander went to the kitchen and began pouring things. I heard the clink of glasses, the rumble of the ice maker, the heavy sound of some bottle raised and returned to its shelf. I sank into the couch and slipped off my silly little Payless flats and pulled a racehorse-patterned throw around my shoulders. He’s bringing me more wine, and I need it, I thought, but when Alexander reappeared in the living room it was with two tumblers of the brown stuff.
I guess he thought he’d better bring the big guns to deal with this particular attack of Alex-hysteria. It was a shame I was so predictable.
Lowered onto the couch beside me, glasses set gently on racehorse-emblazoned coasters before us, Alexander tucked one of my cold hands into his and gave it a squeeze. His hands were big, engulfing my own sturdy fists, and tanned and spotted and hard as any good farmer’s hands must be. I traced the curves of old scars with my eyes, the hook-shaped ridge of white around his thumb knuckle, the mark of a rein buckle as a horse being led to the starting gate had wrenched free from his grasp, years ago in England, where there were no ponies to escort horses onto the track. The puckering scar at the back of his index finger, where a half-mad colt had tried to take off his finger but only closed his teeth on skin. The fissures that ran along each fingertip like canyons, the mark of hay and straw tearing at the skin in cold dry air, making winter a special torture for those of us who toiled outdoors.
My fingers were hidden within his grasp, but I knew they looked much the same. Tan and freckled, scarred and cracked, sinewy and tough. I’d never had a manicure in my life, and if I went into a salon now, the entire staff would surely burst into tears. If you prized soft, elegant fingers, and polished perfect nails, then my hands were a horror, an atrocity, a victim of long-lost war.
I only valued horses, and every callous and every scar was a badge of honor earned in my fight to keep horses happy, healthy, well-trained, fit, desirable.
A horse that was desirable was never in danger, never wanted for a home, after all.
Alexander started to speak, changed his mind, reached forward and picked up the cut glass tumbler before him, studying its flashing rainbows in the soft yellow light of the table-lamps. He took a slow sip, savored, then another. And thus fortified, he turned to face me, forehead wrinkled, blue eyes concerned.
“You can’t let one crazy person torpedo your entire life, Alex.”
I furrowed up my own brow. This wasn’t exactly clear. Chiding, or sympathetic? What was it going to be tonight, Alexander? “One crazy person? You think that old bat is behind all of this?”
“Of course not. I think Mary Archer is behind all this, to be perfectly candid. I think she fed the story to the Antis and they lapped it up. But I also think you’re lapping it up, too, and that’s my problem.”
Mary Archer didn’t care where the horses went when she was done with them. But she knew that I did, like thousands of other horsepeople out there. We cared. She told them that I didn’t, and she was wrong. Right now, it was all that I could think about.
“Are you saying that it isn’t a valid question, though? Where do they all go? If you and I were to die tomorrow, the horses would go to a sale, right? Who protects them then?” My voice was rising, and I could feel my face flushing, the blood stealing across my cheeks to burn at the corners of my eyes and the tips of my ears. All those luckless horses I had willed into this world— “Their lives are in my hands. The lives I made. Shouldn’t I look at what we’re doing and evaluate and make sure I’m doing the right thing?”
Alexander’s lips had grown narrower throughout my impassioned speech, and he was now looking at me with much the same expression that crept across his face when he was watching an unsound horse jog on hard ground. Trying to find the problem at its source. Was it the anti-racing activists, he was wondering. Was it the state Market Affair had been found in that had truly set me off? Was it simply the annual exhaustion that came riding on exhilaration’s coat tails every spring, as the new foals simultaneously delighted us and sapped every last bit of strength and sense from our bones and brains?
It was all of that, I thought. But most of all, it was me. I was the problem. I had done this to myself, painting myself neatly into a corner, smiling at an earnest young reporter over a latte at Starbucks, conscious of the red light on her iPhone’s recording app as the device was set gently onto the table between us. She had nodded and she had encouraged elaboration and the iPhone drank up all of my silly notions and grand ideals. Then, once I had explained my ambitions to keep all of the horses Alexander and I bred and trained sound and happy for life, she had thanked me and taken the phone and driven home and cobbled together a rosy picture of another earnest young woman much like herself, determined to change the world of horse racing completely. She’d gotten that from the caffeinated babble I�
�d spilled into the silently listening phone. Alex the picture of Responsible Retirement, the visionary of a racing industry free of culls and abuse and abandonment, the spokeswoman for a new age of horsemen and horsewomen who took pride in all the talents of their horses, whether they had speed or not.
I’d read it in the pages of New Equestrian and I’d believed it.
I didn’t know if that was better or worse than the fact that other people had, too.
The New Equestrian article went unremarked upon along the backside, probably because the magazine was aimed at English show riders, and most of the horse racing community held themselves steadfastly apart from those show people. Granted, it could be disorienting, after a day spent in the pursuit of speed and purse money, to converse with people equally passionate about five-stride lines and fifty-cent ribbons. But truly, we all wanted and needed the same things: healthy horses, sound horses, safe horses. The difference in our performance goals shouldn’t present such an insurmountable gap between us.
Plenty of show horses went lame and disappeared without a trace as well. They bucked off the wrong kid and got bundled off to auction without name or papers. Even responsible retirement was a burden we shared across the disciplines, although to hear some people tell it, every racehorse died horribly in a slaughterhouse, and every show horse died fat and happy under their favorite apple tree, aged thirty-five, with friends and family in loving attendance.
Even if only a small percentage of New Equestrian’s readership believed such gaps in treatment existed, though, I had wanted them to know that racehorses could have happy endings too. So I’d talked and talked about my success stories and best practices, about my training partnership with Lucy Knapp, about my files with last-known addresses and phone numbers of people who had purchased retired horses from us.
Turning For Home (Alex and Alexander Book 4) Page 6