“What’s her name again?”
“Jean. Tall and blonde and thin. Young. Scary. Too scary for how young she is, really. Like it’s something she has studied and mastered.”
Kerri thought, then shook her head. “Don’t think so. Elsie used to show all her own horses. I guess she’s slowing down with age.”
“Like you, huh mama?” I tickled the mare’s chin again, but she kept her attention focused on her filly. Old mares knew their jobs, and they knew our jobs too. A maiden mare would have been standing on her hind legs right now, demanding that Kerri unhand her precious little prize. Seastar knew that first comes baby, then comes the vet. And the vet, and the vet, and the vet.
She also knew that if she waited it out, she’d spend most of the next year out in the pasture, grazing with her herd. Seastar was a wise mare, and she’d teach the little runt in the corner to behave, with teeth if necessary, so that someday she’d be a wise old broodmare too. Kerri, lacking teeth big enough and sharp enough to give the filly a lesson, was simply holding her against the wall.
The vet slid the door open and came in, a syringe already between her teeth. “Oh good,” she mumbled around the plastic wrapping. “Hang on tight. I know this mama’s baby is always a problem.” She gave Seastar an affectionate pat on the neck as she passed us.
“Your demon babies are known far and wide,” I told Seastar approvingly. “You bring honor to our farm.”
“Where’s last year’s?” Kerri asked. “The bay with the spotty ermine on her hind? She’d been weaned by the time we came back from Saratoga, but I never make it up to the yearling barn.” It didn’t sound like a worthwhile excuse for never walking into a barn that was just across the farm, but I knew what she meant. Working in the training barn and the broodmare barn didn’t leave much room for visiting yearlings. The constant needs of mares, foals, and horses in training was a definite contrast to the yearlings, who went over to the yearling barn and its two big pastures after weaning and stayed there, grazing and growing, until, one-by-one, they were led over to the training barn to begin their careers. Last year’s Seastar foal would be out there in the pasture now, still at least seven or eight months from my attention.
“Just hanging in the yearling pasture,” I said with a shrug. “We should go visit, see how she’s doing. She’s probably leveling out nicely now.” All of Seastar’s babies had been exemplary in training, in contrast to the insanity of their babyhood.
“All done!” the vet announced, stepping away from the struggling filly with a vial of rich red horse blood. “I’ll check the blood cell counts and make sure but… she looks pretty healthy.”
To demonstrate her extreme good health, the filly reared up, and Kerri began illustrating her knowledge of racetrack cursing. The vet jumped out and closed the stall door, and Kerri stepped back to let the bucking, plunging little horse-demon fling herself away from the nasty stupid human. The filly did a circuit of the big foaling stall, grunting and flapping her brush of a tail, before she went in for a nose-dive straight into mama’s udder. Seastar pinned her ears and lifted a hoof warningly, but her baby didn’t pay her any mind. The stall filled with urgent sucking sounds from beneath the broodmare.
“Sorry mama,” I told Seastar, slipping off her halter. “I’ll bring you some alfalfa to make up for it.”
The vet was already climbing into her truck, talking into her bluetooth. Kerri went to the hose outside the barn and gave her hands and arms a good once-over, wincing at the freezing cold spring water. It was another chilly February day, the sky ice-blue, a few traces of wispy cirrus far to the north. “That filly is going to leave me black-and-blue,” she fumed. “Next one, you hold.”
“Yeah, okay.” I could wrangle a foal with the best of them… but none of the others would be as bad as Seastar’s. I felt a momentary pang of guilt at making Kerri deal with the little bugger. Bad boss. But, well, she wanted to run her own farm someday… she had to be able to handle the bad as well as the good. I smiled to myself, already reassured that I’d made the right decision on passing the rotten foal off to her. I’d do it again in a few days, when the foaling heat diarrhea settled in and baby needed her bottom washed a few times a day. Ah, foaling season. A magical time. “So tell me what I’m supposed to do, Kerri.”
“About what?”
“About everyone in the horse world thinking I’m evil?”
“I thought we agreed we were ignoring everyone in the horse world. I mean, we’ve seen evil. We’ve been to Otter Creek bush track and we’ve gone up against Mary Archer.”
This was true. The little illegal racing ring we had discovered last fall was probably just as dangerous for a failing racehorse as dumping them in the swamps. “And both times we’ve gone up against Mary Archer we’ve won,” I mused.
“We’re unstoppable!” Kerri dead-panned. She turned off the spigot and sat down on a folding chair by the barn door. “I think you already have your game plan right. Beat them at their own game by winning the Thoroughbred Makeover. Stick to that plan. Ignore that crazy Jean person. Show up late, when she’s gone. When they’re all gone. And don’t forget, Elsie believes you, and it’s her barn. You’re not going to get kicked out or anything. Concentrate on Tiger.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I concentrated on Tiger.
It wasn’t easy at first. Alexander was always disappearing for two days at a time, driving down to south Florida to run a horse, staying overnight at the beach condo, then returning the next afternoon full of excitement (if there was a win) or morose grumbling and introspection (if there was a hard loss). Luckily, most of the time there were wins, or at least places and shows. My horses, who had been solid workmen at Saratoga, were turning into superstars at Gulfstream. As February began to wane and March grew larger on the horizon, Alexander and I were both thinking the same thing.
Personal Best. Three-year-old colt. The first Saturday in May. The thoughts invaded when I should have been thinking of Tiger, or when I should have been concentrating on getting that stupid gray colt into the starting gate without tearing the thing down, or when I should have been paying attention to traffic while driving to town, or when I should have been sleeping.
Of course, it was so silly, I told myself in more lucid moments. It was silly to think that our chestnut colt was that good. “I mean, I love him, but the Kentucky Derby? We’re just getting carried away now,” I told Tiger, slipping the bit between his teeth on a blustery spring afternoon. A big cold front had blown through the day before with wind and lightning and rain, and left us gleaming blue skies, washed clean and shiny, framing a brilliant golden sun without a trace of heat in its laughing rays. The temperature was in the fifties; the wind gusts made it feel closer to forty degrees. It might as well have been a blizzard as far as I was concerned, Florida-bred and Florida-blooded. But Tiger, like most horses, thought the frigid air was a treat. He threw his head as I led him out of the stall and danced a little in the barn aisle, his steel-shod hooves ringing on the concrete.
In the office next to the tack room, a yellow light glowed through the door’s window. I led Tiger right on past hoping that no one would come out and begin a conversation or start asking questions. Elsie and Jean were closeted in there, I knew; I’d seen them go inside while I was hiding in the tack room, waiting for them to go away. I had found through trial and error that Jean more often than not finished her riding by one and was usually gone after that. Then there was a quiet period until five thirty before the evening riders showed up to take out their horses or take a riding lesson.
I tried to be at the barn to ride Tiger between two and four, no earlier and no later, and managed to avoid everyone most days, even Kelly, with whom I’d gotten along so well. I missed her cheerful conversation, but I’d seen the nervousness on her face after she’d stood up to Jean for me. She knew then she was creating trouble for herself. I’d seen barn politics go too far before; boarders got thrown out, cruel tricks were played on horses. I wouldn’
t put it past Jean to bang a horse’s tail above the hocks if she thought it would teach someone a lesson. I’d met her kind before.
Well, if Jean wanted to be Queen Bee at Roundtree, that was fine by me. I was only here for Tiger. Ninety minutes a day, six days a week, at most. Let her rule the roost all the rest of the time. I’d stay out of her way, as she’d commanded me to in that cold voice of hers. In two more months’ time I needed to have Tiger ready to win the Thoroughbred Makeover, and after that, maybe I’d just bring him back to Cotswold, maybe stick him up in the half-empty stallion barn after all. Even if Alexander got his wish and turned Personal Best and Virtue and Vice into new stallions, they had years more racing to do. (He’d shut up about Kevin Wallace and wouldn’t tell me if he was still trying to do business with the guy).
“I hope that’s the case, anyway,” I told Tiger as we exited the barn and his hooves quietly padded on the mulch path leading to the arenas. “I miss them, but I don’t want either of them back in a hurry.” Tiger flicked his ears at me, listening to my hushed tones with interest, then turned them forward again, looking out at the tossing trees, the scattering leaves, the jump standards that had been blown right over in the gusting wind.
I eyed those flattened jump standards myself. I’d been planning on riding him in the jumping arena, criss-crossing and circling around the jumps to add a little variety to his day. Tiger got bored easily, just as he had in training on the track. There, he’d acted out with sunfishes and bucking, and if he got even close to unseating me, everyone had a good laugh. Here, if anyone caught sight of his nonsense, there’d be widespread panic because Alex couldn’t control that crazy racehorse. I wasn’t here to perpetuate bad-racehorse stereotypes.
If we were ever going to get anywhere in the show-ring, of course, he’d have to give up that silliness for good.
The best way to stop him from acting out was to keep him from feeling the need to do it. He needed his mind occupied at all times, sorting out problems, figuring out what I wanted from him next. Endless loops around the arena while I posted trot and fiddled with his head carriage were not the answer, although it certainly seemed to be the preferred riding style for most of the boarders here. I had to get more creative if I was going to keep his interest on the job.
The voltes and figure-eights and serpentines around the colorful show jumps had proven to be a sure-fire way to keep him thinking. I was able to put my legs behind his girth and gently push him around turns, showing him how to round his body. He definitely thought about bending now—after three weeks of this, he wasn’t always a tank in his turns. We were making progress. Sadly, with the jump standards toppling to the ground one after another, it looked like today would require a Plan B.
I didn’t have a Plan B.
Thunk!
I started, and Tiger nearly jumped out of his skin as another winged standard hit the clay. The poles came down and went rolling across the arena, rattling and banging together. I held him together with hands and seat and cast one longing glance back at the jump-strewn arena before turning for the dressage ring. We didn’t have a choice now. It was off to the boring arena.
The wind was roaring through the pine trees that lined the farm’s northern boundary. Tiger went dancing into the arena, his feet slipping on the wet clay. He apparently loved the dangerous footing, because every time he slipped, he jumped around that much more.
“I refuse to wear that crap, so stay on your feet,” I told him, gritting my teeth, and pushed him into a trot. The most balanced of gaits, it was the easiest one for us to get connected in. I’d put him together with some serpentines, I decided. “We don’t need jumps to tell us where to go. You can figure out your body without guidelines.”
For a while, he really could. Despite the wind and the occasional distant clatter as another jump fell face-first into the mud, Tiger thrived on the changes in direction and the steady nature of his own trot. He even rounded his neck once or twice and acted like a nice polite horse instead of sticking his head either between his forelegs or straight up in the air. “Figure out how to round your neck more often and you’ll be less like a banana and more like a nice comfortable horse,” I instructed.
He flicked his ears back to listen to me, dropped a mouthful of white foam on his chest, and rounded his neck like a Grand Prix dressage horse. I sighed in contentment. His gait floated, his hooves were not touching the ground, his back was lifting into my seat and his mouth was light as a feather. I closed my eyes.
BOOM!
The world was rocked by a deafening explosion. Bomb, I thought. The end of the world, I thought.
Ears ringing, I looked around in wild confusion, my body tense, my hands clenching the reins—
—Tiger threw himself hard to the left, and I went soaring hard to the right, the reins wrenching from my hands, and I was landing on my shoulder in the mud before I even knew what had happened. My head snapped back and hit the wet clay, which was still firm beneath its watery top layer. My jockey skullcap took the brunt of the impact, but it didn’t stop me from closing my eyes against the rattle in my brain. It was a long second before I felt like lifting my head to see where my horse had ended up.
Muddy water was already seeping down the collar of my coat when I picked my head up and looked around. There was Tiger, at the end of the dressage ring, staring at something with his head high and his tail flagged. I looked in the direction of his gaze, towards the barn on its little hill, and saw what had caused the explosion.
My eyes widened, my blood turned to ice, and I scrambled up out of the mud, ignoring the protests from my shoulder and hips. I had to get to Tiger.
Just outside the barn, Jean stood with a shotgun in her hands, looking down the slope at the two of us.
“It was trying to get warm in the sun.” Jean had laid the gun across the desk instead of putting it away, wherever that was. I couldn’t quite take my eyes off it—all that shining barrel and gleaming wood. It was a shotgun, the sort of thing that a farmer might have on hand to fend off coyotes or wild hogs. Jean had used it to kill a snake. It turned out that Barbie Doll Jean was actually a redneck at heart. Her daddy had taught her how to shoot when she was just a half-pint on the hog farm up in Alachua County. She didn’t word it that way, of course, but that was how I translated her unrepentant explanation of firing the shotgun while I was riding Tiger. Now I had my suspicions about her stiff, precise speech. She was hiding something she thought might get in her way—a Southern accent. Jean was a young woman on the move.
If Jean didn’t offer a single “I’m sorry,” Elsie was profusely apologetic on Jean’s behalf. “Alex, I’m terribly sorry. I promise you, we had no idea you were riding. Jean and I were just having a little meeting to go over show plans for next week, and then she glanced out the window and said there was a huge snake coming out of the pond. We’ve had a water moccasin problem before, I’m afraid. And to be quite honest, there’s rarely anyone here this time of day. I’m sure Jean just assumed we were alone. This was just a terrible, terrible mistake. Are you quite sure you are not hurt?”
“I’m fine, thank you.” I was covered in mud and my custom helmet cover with Alex embroidered on the back would have to be thrown away and replaced, but I wasn’t hurt, and neither was Tiger. “I know it was all a mistake. No hard feelings, Jean.”
Jean smiled sweetly, but I saw the malice in her glittering eyes. Jean was a seriously disturbing human. I wanted away from her, and quickly. I took a step back into the aisle, my hands still on Tiger’s reins. “I’m just going to put my horse up and I’ll get out of your hair, then,” I said thinly. My hands were still shaking, and my calves were cramping inside my tight dress boots. I’d never run so fast as I had across that arena, sliding and slipping in the treacherous clay, thinking of nothing but getting to Tiger before Jean shot him. Ludicrous, of course. I could see that now. But at the time, all I’d seen was my enemy on the hillside. My enemy, with a smoking gun, looking down at us.
“Of
course, but there’s no need for you to go,” Elsie began, but I was already walking away. Then I pulled up Tiger and turned around.
“Where’s the snake?”
Jean was still smiling. “Would you like to see it? I’ll leave it out for you. I was just going to cut off its head and throw it in the burn barrel.”
Bluff, called. “No, that’s okay. I’ve seen snakes.”
Back in Tiger’s stall, I wrapped my arms around his neck and gave his reassuring bulk a squeeze. I felt his teeth grazing my backside and picked up one heel to knock him away. “Just let me cuddle like you’re a normal horse for one second, okay?” I snapped, and then I felt bad, because I’d just said he wasn’t normal. That he was a racehorse, and somehow different, less well-adjusted, less cuddly, than a riding horse. Than a warmblood, or a quarter horse. As if you couldn’t just hug a Thoroughbred.
Tiger didn’t mind. He strained his neck against my hug and managed to pick up a few strands of hay without dislodging me, and that was good enough for him. I stayed there for a long time, hugging my horse just like he was normal, and after a while, I knew that he was. That no matter what Jean said, no matter her threats or her attempts to get us to leave Roundtree, Tiger was, utterly and perfectly, just another horse.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
March came to Florida with a roar of wind and lightning and flooding rains, and left us on the third day of the new month with a flooded training track, a downed tree that had stood for hundreds of years in the broodmare pasture, and three foals who came all in a rush one after another, while Kerri and Alexander and I ran from stall to stall, checking on the progress of the laboring mothers.
On the first sunny day in March I crawled back into bed after the morning training, which had consisted of riding the first set out to the track, seeing that the sweeping turns were watery lakes glinting with the first light of the coming dawn, and turning around to shed-row everyone.
Turning For Home (Alex and Alexander Book 4) Page 22