At five years old, Zelda was the veteran of thirty races and had seen the inside of a winner’s circle eight times, but the next fifteen years of her life would be spent between pasture and deep-bedded straw, the changing seasons punctuated by yearly foals and a visit to whatever loverboy was residing in the little stallion barn on top of the hill. It would be a fairly peaceful life after the hustle and bustle of the racetrack, but at this moment, she found it nothing short of terrifying.
“It’s hard with the good racemares,” I said as Zelda pawed at the straw, throwing bedding through the air. “They don’t know how to give in and just let things happen.”
“Save the philosophy,” Kerri groaned. “And tell me.”
“It’s boring,” I warned.
“Tell me!”
“Okay.” I slipped out of the stall and slid the latch home as the rampaging mare went barreling past me. Her hip knocked against her water bucket and water went flying everywhere, including on her hindquarters, and she squealed and kicked out. I narrowly missed losing my head, but that was normal around here. “So here’s the deal. Cassidy Lehigh lives down near Jupiter. Kind of close to West Palm, but her farm is no fancy show barn. It’s basically a falling-down ranch.”
“Typical Florida barn, got it,” Kerri grinned.
“Yeah, you know the type. Half walls, sheet metal roof, perfectly serviceable, but Wellington it ain’t. Or—” I waved an arm around the aisle of the comfortable broodmare barn, “—Cotswold Farm. And Cassidy has been training Thoroughbreds to event, but she doesn’t get really far. Most of them go Novice level and then she sells them for a couple grand. She hates racing with a passion, thinks it ruins good horses, but she loves Thoroughbreds… maybe because they’re cheap for her to get and show? I don’t know.”
“So she’s not the greatest Thoroughbred advocate.”
“Well, I mean—that’s fine. But judging from how active she is on the horsey forums, Cassidy wants to be famous. And she hasn’t managed it from her training skills yet, so she’s going for another route.”
“Tearing you apart?”
“Being an advocate,” I corrected. “Although the tearing me apart factors into it. It’s publicity, as far as I can tell, for the horse show she’s putting on. The South Florida Thoroughbred Makeover.”
Kerri laughed. In the foaling stall, Zelda pricked her ears and whinnied at the sound. We both watched her for a moment. “She’s nuts,” Kerri announced.
“The horse or Cassidy Lehigh?”
“Well… Cassidy Lehigh might be on to something. The makeover competitions are getting pretty popular, I think. She’s putting one on down here?”
I nodded. “Near Gulfstream at the county equestrian center. Mid-April. For retired racehorses who last raced in the past twelve months, with no other show records. I guess the idea is they should all have been on lay-off since they left the track, without any additional training. Level the playing field.”
“When’s the closing date?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Hey—is her tail wrap slipping?”
“How dare you? My wraps never slip. And why don’t you know? You need to get on this right away.”
“Why?” The tail wrap was definitely slipping. I unlatched the stall door again and started to slip through.
“Because you and Tiger have to win it.”
I had to hand it to Kerri, the idea was so brilliant and so perfect and obvious that I stood stock still in the doorway for a minute, imagining the joy and glory of winning a Thoroughbred competition, making my Tiger a star at last and putting down this Cassidy Lehigh with one bold stroke, and I didn’t even get mad when Zelda slashed her tail and slapped me right across the face with a thousand stinging strands of hair. I was dreaming of bringing down my enemy and giving Tiger the accolades I had always wanted for him in one fell swoop, and the dreaming was sweet indeed.
Of course, it was only a dream. Aiming for a horse show less than three months away, with a horse who had been racing just a month before? Insanity. I wouldn’t ever do anything so irresponsible in real life. It was bad enough that I was already starting Tiger back into training. I reassured myself that he was already looking brighter and happier after that first day’s work; this morning he hadn’t even run away from Luz when she’d turned him out, just stepped away from the paddock gate like a gentleman. That was nice to see.
But I was curious anyway, and I resolved to look up the Thoroughbred Makeover closing date and classes later that night, once Zelda’s foal was out, up, and nursing. What harm could it do? Maybe I’d missed mention of another one, later in the year. Maybe there was one this fall that we could enter. By fall Tiger ought to be a well-adjusted member of show horse society, I figured. Or at least trot around an arena without killing anyone.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get the chance to look things up until late that night, and by then I wished I was dreaming in truth, asleep and dreaming to be exact. Princess Zelda, true to maiden mare form, managed to hang onto the foal for hours and hours, all through the long afternoon. The sun had disappeared below the hills and the sky had gone from golden and pink to a luminous deep blue before she finally stopped her pacing, arched her back, and cocked her tail. Her body was steaming with sweat and her nostrils were pink-rimmed with exertion, but I clapped her on her wet neck and told her she was a good girl as her water broke and poured into the straw. “You got this. Next stop, motherhood.”
Of course she didn’t have this. She was still a maiden who had no idea what was going on. She didn’t want to lie down to have the foal, and Kerri had to come and take her by the halter after some anxious moments in which the delicate little hooves were nearly smashed against a wall as she took careless turns around the stall with a baby trying to be birthed just under her tail. Alexander had come by then, bearing pizza and beer (we weren’t allowed to have beer until after we’d gotten the foal out, so it was sort of an incentive to look forward to), and he rolled up his sleeves and came into the stall with me to help tug the newest member of the family into the Ocala night. We had one of the broodmare grooms, Erica, stay late after feeding, sending Martina, home to feed her children. Erica was unmarried and had no children, an ideal state for a groom in foaling season. But it was her first year and this was her first maiden mare, so Alexander and I took the wheel while she hovered nearby, watching everything with wide eyes and an expression halfway between horror and wonder.
The foal was halfway out when Zelda decided her legs couldn’t hold her up for another moment and went crashing to the ground knees first. The foal slid out another three inches as we jumped back to avoid her flailing hooves and I dove into the straw to stop its head from slamming into the ground beneath the bedding. Alexander was on his belly beside me. “Time to draw out the hips,” he grunted. “Got a leg?”
“Got it. Three… two… one…” We tugged with all our might every time we saw the mare pushing, pulling along with the contractions. I winced when I saw the foal’s hips were a tad wider than what the mare’s body had counted on. “Gonna need stitches,” I panted.
“Tomorrow,” Alexander agreed. “After the swelling goes down. Ah—pull!”
There’s no position harder in the world to exert all your strength and energy than flat on your stomach, tugging on the slippery leg of a foal that doesn’t want to join the outside world. My shoulders were screaming by the time he came slithering out, feathery hooves pushing against the amniotic sac, soaking the straw beneath us with blood and fluid. But oh God, what a beauty, what a dark little beauty he was. Alexander busied himself clearing the sac and I was free to let my eyes rove over the wet heaving sides, the ribs pressing through the damp foal fuzz, the long legs with their great boney joints. Two white stockings that ran up the inside of impossibly long hind legs; two dark black forelegs that lightened to mahogany by the time they ran into massive shoulders. A tender seahorse head with blinking dark eyes and a white blaze that would show the way down the homestretch, a beacon for others to fo
llow but never to pass. “Oh God, what a beauty,” I whispered aloud, and Alexander smiled, and Kerri nodded, and Erica, who was still young and tender-hearted, sniffed noisily.
Now Zelda realized she was a mother, and went lurching up hastily, nearly trampling the gorgeous young prince. The cord broke and there was blood and Kerri was snapping at the mare to knock off her stupid tricks and Erica was being sent for the iodine left just outside the stall door to treat the foal’s brand-new belly button, and the havoc of birthing foals was back in full swing.
I was tired when I made it back to the house, but the pile of mail waiting on the kitchen table woke me up. There was a mountain of envelopes there, every one of them addressed to me, every one of them so slim they couldn’t contain more than one folded sheet of paper. I supposed that was a mercy, and sat down to confirm my suspicions. I slid on calloused finger, still smudged with sweat and horsehair and blood and other various body fluids, under the envelope’s flap and tore the paper open.
The letter that fell out was another form letter, no doubt written by CASH. I skimmed through the diatribe, which suggested that I crawl back into the swamps where I had come from instead of dumping my unwanted horses there, and which indicated that my comeuppance was approaching when the mainstream media took up their cause and crucified me for the horse murderer I was, and then pushed back from the table, face thoughtful.
Alexander came in just then. He saw the pile of letters and the single opened one discarded beside its siblings. “Fan mail?” he asked with a wry smile.
“Something like that.” I started past him, giving him an absent kiss on the cheek as I went.
“You have somewhere to be? I was going to heat up some dinner.”
“I’ll be right back,” I promised. “I just need to look something up.”
Upstairs, my computer took its sweet time loading up. I stripped out of my filthy foaling clothes with one eye on the screen, waiting for the beach ball to stop its annoying spinning. Finally, down to my underwear and in dire need of a shower, the laptop announced it was ready and willing with a triumphant little trumpet sound, and I threw myself across the bed to do a quick search.
South Florida Thoroughbred Makeover, coming late Spring. “Well, that was easy,” I muttered, clicking through the participant guidelines. I found the closing date and whistled softly. Two days left. “Skin of your teeth, Alex.” If I did it. Which I wouldn’t. Of course.
Alexander was in the doorway then, arms folded. “You didn’t invite me to the pajama party.”
“Do you see me wearing pajamas?” I laughed and closed the laptop. “I just needed to check something. I’m ready for supper now.” The pizza had been a very long time ago.
“It’s in the oven,” Alexander said, looking me over. “I think we have time for a shower.”
“Too tired,” I sighed, flinging a hand over my eyes and lolling on the bed. “I must sleep in my filth, for I cannot make the walk to the bathroom.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” he rumbled, and with a leer he stooped and picked me up, throwing me over his shoulder.
I always had been rather lightweight.
Somehow, in all the fuss, I’d forgot to tell Alexander about our delightful new neighbor, Mary Archer, until the next morning. Alexander listened gravely to my story while we rode out to the training track. He waited until I was done. He did not interrupt. Then he said:
“Alex, my dear, I’m starting to think you’d benefit from a vacation away from horses altogether.”
I stuck my tongue out at him. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”
“Oh, I believe you. I believe everything you said except that there is a conspiracy against you being led by Mary, and that she rented the place next door solely to make your life more difficult. Mary rented that farm because it is centrally located but ridiculously cheap, so she gets the benefit of a Millionaire Mile address to show to prospective owners on paper. Which will work for her for as long as they are willing to be absentee owners. If anyone takes it in their heads to visit, well, I don’t think they’ll like what they see. But if the groom told Kerri that’s the only flat piece of land on the property, that’s where she has to gallop. We’re all better prepared and know to watch for the horses, and we’ll just have to be vigilant.”
“Alexander, a horse died.”
“In a terrible training accident. Not murdered.”
I gave up that tack. Alexander was no fool, and he’d seen racing rivals do insane things. I’d heard his old stories of ringers, of drugged horses, of fixed races. Galloping horses in a field? Hard to prove the criminality in that one. Even Rational Alex, making a rare appearance, had to admit that.
But I didn’t ride anyone on the track that morning. I sat decorously on Parker and watched the sets go by, and commented when the Icarus filly didn’t change leads three times in a row, and suggested to Alexander that the Viewliner colt needed some time off to grow. “His ass is six inches higher than his withers,” is how I put it, and when we got back to the barn, following the steaming young horses, I dismounted and wrote “turn-out” under his name on the tack room white-board. One more out of rotation. With the eight horses headed to the first of the sales in two weeks, things were going to get quiet around here. We might have to let a rider go.
Besides me.
Alexander didn’t say anything when I got through the morning without trying to get a ride in a set, but I could tell that he approved. He gave me a dry kiss on the cheek as I stripped Parker’s tack, and I made a mental note to slip lip balm into his jacket pocket.
“Will you ride Tiger today?”
I nodded. “I put him in the round pen yesterday—no, two days ago.” Yesterday had been a blur with Zelda’s extended foaling adventure. I pulled the saddle and blanket off Parker’s back, flipping the girth over top of it, and heaved the pile of tack out of the pony’s stall. “But I didn’t get on him.”
Alexander was pleased. “Glad that you two are going to get moving on this. Clearly, turn-out wasn’t right for him. He’s a horse that needs a job.” He followed me and we filed out of the stall, leaving Parker to his hay-net. “I’m going to south Florida tomorrow,” he added conversationally.
I bit my lip and waited until I’d gotten into the tack room, placed the saddle on its stand, and hung up Parker’s bridle on its hook. Then, I took a Diet Coke out of the refrigerator, pushing aside a bottle of penicillin, several syringes of encephalitis vaccine, and a jar of pickles in order to reach it. “We need more Diet Coke,” I said carelessly, and flipped the can lid open. I took a long sip, facing him, waiting for him to go on. Tell me I’ll be missed. That was all I wanted right now—to know that he knew that I ought to be there. That I was wasted here. That I belonged at the races.
“Alex…” Alexander stood in the doorway, heedless to the grooms and riders who needed to get in and out of the tack room but didn’t want to bother what was clearly another domestic dispute between the bosses. I saw Manny peek in, bridles over his shoulder, and I started to tell Alexander that he was disrupting the morning routine, but then I heard the cheerful honk-honk of the Taco Lady’s minivan heralding the arrival of brunch, and everyone dumped their tack on the ground and went out to see what her coolers held today. The Taco Lady waited for no groom; she had dozens of barns to visit. What timing! “Alex, you know I’d take you with me if I could. But it’s like we’ve talked about. I don’t want you in front of all the media down there, to say nothing of the activists. It’s not like here, you’ll have a whole lot of city people who don’t know a thing about horses and they’ve been told you abuse horses and they’ll make trouble. You know this.”
I did know this, and it had been decided already, and I had agreed.
I smiled mutely and pushed past Alexander to retrieve a bucket of water cooling in the center aisle, and then back again to snatch up a bar of saddle soap and a sponge. I went to work scrubbing Parker’s bridle, dirty foam rising up and dripping to the concrete floor below. A
chorus of whinnies was going up from the shed-row outside, so someone had opened the feed room door, probably in search of someplace to eat while Alexander and I went on frightening everyone away from the tack room. I heard Tiger’s high-pitched neigh sounding distantly from his paddock. Luz had brought him over early today. He would get a nibble of lunch, just a taste, so that he wouldn’t fuss at being skipped over while the training barn ate, but not so much that he’d gain weight or build up even more excess energy than he already had. He was in the waiting room right now, not a racehorse, not a show horse, just being told to stay put and wait, and suddenly I knew just how disconcerting and disorienting that must be for him. With Alexander, however wisely, barring me from the racetrack, after I had finally thought I’d found my place there, and being told to go back to training a retired racehorse instead—I got it. I get it, Tiger. I get you now.
I found myself laughing.
“Alex?” Now I was worrying him.
I wiped the foam off of the bridle. “Nothing,” I chuckled. “I have plenty of work to keep me busy here. Foals. Maiden mares, always a party. Two-year-olds to ship to the sales grounds in two weeks that need to be prettied up and on their best behavior. Tiger. February is packed. I can keep myself occupied.”
“We are also fully staffed,” Alexander reminded me. “Perhaps over-staffed. Don’t let the other work crowd out Tiger. Build up your good name again—do it with Tiger.”
Alexander was leaning over my computer when I came out of the shower later, dripping water all over the carpet. “What are you looking at?” I asked, and he whipped around with a guilty face like a toddler caught in the pantry. “What did you do?”
Turning For Home (Alex and Alexander Book 4) Page 17