by April Smith
“No, but I heard the names from that other little girl lives over there.” “Sara?”
He is latching up the doors of the Silverado.
“That’s right. She’s the one I was teaching how to shoot.” “How do you know Sara?”
“Seen her around town. Told her my sorry story, just like I told you.” He shrugs. “And she says she wants to learn about guns.” “She say why?”
“I never asked.”
“We’re…political, you know.”
“Not my business. So maybe we’ll meet up again. Stranger things have happened.” I hesitate. “Did I say thank you, Sterling?”
“For what, Darcy?”
“Saving my life.”
“Back at the corrals? Nah, you were fine. Horses don’t generally want to kill you, if they can avoid it.” McCord’s got the door open and one boot up on the running board.
He waits. Again, the patience as one wrist in a tight copper bracelet rubs at the back of his sweat-stained neck. His hair is spiky and dirty blond; his eyes, like the bracelet, are rimmed with copper, green at the centers.
“Can I give you a ride?” he asks as someone shouts, “Sterling! Wait!” Sara Campbell, in a pair of cheeky cutoffs and a scant top, charges around the curve in the road, running in her awkward knee-knocking gait. Her face is flushed persimmon. She falters.
“Sara!” he calls. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh my God!” she sobs.
We both run toward her. I’m thinking, Dehydration! And, with a jealous edge, Something’s going on between these two.
She is panting. “I was hoping you’d still be here.” “What’s the matter, hon?”
“On my way back, I saw a baby horse. It’s in the bushes — hurt really bad — and there’s sickening blood just pouring everywhere.” “Blood where?”
She screws up her face. “Coming out of his eyes.”
“Get in the truck,” says McCord.
Twenty-one
The terrain rises and the vegetation becomes sparse as we roll out of the power station toward the mountains. Looking back from higher ground, you can see the cat’s cradle of high-tension wires and transformers enclosed by manzanita, like an alien marker on a planet made of sand; only in America could there exist a sanctuary both for birds and bullets.
Wheeling the vehicle with the palm of one hand, McCord swerves off-road to the riverbed where Sara saw the foal, east of where I crossed the wooded stream. The bulky black machine raises veils of dust as it lurches over the sandstone grist of an ancient floodplain, no doubt fertile as a jungle a million years ago.
“What does it mean if a horse bleeds from the eyes?”
“Snakebite,” says McCord. “The venom is an anticoagulant. They bleed out from everywhere.”
“Can they die?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Down there!” cries Sara.
McCord brings the truck to the edge of a ridge. We scramble out, into the kind of baking heat you feel with all the skin on your body all at once. A sun-dark lizard skitters at our feet. Below, a stand of cottonwoods marks the trail the river took, but since the drought, it has not passed this way in years. Birds with different voices are hidden everywhere; some sweet, some warning.
“Look! Underneath the branches.”
A slender tree with a network of smooth willowy branches, bending to the ground like an old woman where the water used to flow, seems to gesture toward the body of a white baby horse lying on its side. All four legs kick out in a spasm that breaks my heart.
Coils of heat bake the sweat off my bare shoulders. The foal, where it lies, is fully exposed to the sun.
“Let’s see what we got,” says McCord. “Quietly. The wind’s comin’ that way. Don’t want him to smell us and get aroused.”
He motions that we get down into a squat and crab-leg it slowly toward the animal, stopping every ten feet to test the wind. Finally we are close enough to see it clearly in the lee of the branches. Its muzzle is swollen twice the normal size and bright red blood has covered its face, attracting glittering swarms of greenflies.
McCord reaches toward the chalky, almost translucent coat. It is not pure white; you can see dark clouds of pigment underneath, like a stormy desert sky. He runs his fingers along the neck, below a two-inch strip of bristly silver mane, and down the long and fragile legs, rosy with sores. In response, the baby tries to lift its head. Its face is long and delicately etched. The eyes are crying tears of blood. Pink-rimmed, with thick white lashes, they are opaque spheres of shiny blackened indigo.
“Shh now, just lie still.”
Sara, whispering: “Was he just born?”
McCord is checking the scrawny ribs. “He’s one month old and just about starved.”
“Is he wild?”
“Probably got loose from a ranch. Looks to be part Arab. The mom either took off somewhere or she’s dead. Anyone have a cell phone?”
Sara and I stare at each other, helpless and ashamed.
“We’re not allowed to have cell phones on the farm,” she says.
“Why’s that? So you can’t talk to your boyfriends?”
“We just can’t.”
I look at the ground and say nothing. My fingers clutch the Oreo phone in my pocket.
“Will this little guy live?”
“Depends if the toxin’s already in the bloodstream. We got to call the vet.”
I am about to curl up and die with guilt. I cannot make the call. To pull out the tiny phone now would be to expose myself.
You cannot blow a half-million-dollar operation on one stray horse.
“Don’t get near his face. It’s sore and we don’t want him to move or raise his head. Damn. Everybody in the world has a damn cell phone. I left mine at the damn house.”
“Why don’t you get in the damn truck and get help?”
McCord holds his answer. He climbs up the embankment with long strides.
The girl is standing with her arms and feet all crossed up. She looks anxiously toward the truck. “Is he just gonna leave us here?”
I’m running my hand down the thin, pale throat of the foal, feeling the shuddering nerves.
“Touch him. He’s soft.”
“I don’t want to. It’s disgusting.”
“Scary, huh?”
“Not at all,” says Miss Nothing Affects Me. “I just don’t enjoy watching something die, okay?”
“Then why were you taking shooting lessons?”
“Shooting lessons?” she says, as if she’d forgotten. “I don’t know. He was coming on to me at the ice-cream store, so I said to myself, ‘Okay, this is different.’ He’s cute, but kind of old.”
McCord skids back down the hill on his heels, carrying a bottle of water and an old shirt.
“Keep him quiet. Sponge him down to cool him off. The rattler’s most likely still around, so watch where you step.”
“Shit,” says Sara, jerking her feet.
“What’s wrong with his eyes?” Flies are walking on the darkened pupils.
“Oh,” says McCord matter-of-factly. “This little baby is blind.”
My stomach lurches. “Are you sure?”
McCord replies, “Yeah,” and passes a hand before the dark violet eyes of the horse, which do not blink. “Could be why he was abandoned. I’m going for the vet.”
McCord turns, but Sara grabs his arm.
“Just shoot him.”
The world goes silent, except for the clicking of crows and the dry maraca rattle of insects in the grass.
“Shoot him,” she insists.
McCord is astounded. “He’s not my horse to shoot.”
“He’s nobody’s horse. Scary, isn’t it?” she taunts, mocking me. “Why not? You have guns in the truck.”
McCord and I find each other’s eyes, if only to affirm that we’re the grown-ups here, not about to be manipulated by an overly indulged runaway brat. What, exactly, does she wish to kill? And what does she know about the a
crid smell of the aftermath?
“Taking a life is serious business,” says McCord, and then I am certain of what I have suspected: that he’s been the places I’ve been.
“The horse is going to be blind the rest of its life,” says Sara with disdain. “What’s the point?”
The look between us deepens, not over the suffering of the child or the animal, but something much more tender and sad. McCord and I both know that way out here in the wash there are no landmarks beyond a yellow fire hydrant and a concrete bunker with some pipes in a mesh cage. This is where your heart is exposed, or where it’s buried.
He does not wait, but climbs the ridge.
“Sara!” I am giving orders now. “Get in the truck and go with Sterling.”
McCord looks down from the top of the embankment.
“Sara? Come on now. Come with me.”
And he holds out his hand patiently until she finally scrambles up. He pulls her over the top and the truck disappears.
Space unrolls in every direction. I take a breath full of sage. I sit beside the foal and sponge the blood off its face. Please don’t be in pain. Please forgive me.
The bees hum like a plucked string. I sit beneath a dead oak, against a mud bank where the broken root system is exposed. There are holes and burrows in the mud and it is stained with dried-out algae, like the cross section of a melted civilization. The smell of deadness is rank. The sky is white and far away, the sun a burning locus. Here at the bottom of the riverbed, the lives of the foal and I are as inconsequential as the flash of a mirror in a very great plain.
Hundreds of miles to the north, across a harsh volcanic basin, wild mustangs forage freely, fight, and play — until they are betrayed by the Judas horse for a bucket of grain. I remember how the captured mares would circle the corral, lost in silence, all the subtle scent and body messages with their babies and the stallions snapped.
Beneath my hands, the tiny horse is laboring to breathe. I stay with him, dabbling water with the blood-soaked cloth, as if I could accompany his sightless soul into the greater darkness. I feel a deep and wordless kinship, as if we are bound by some transparent force of kindness. I will not abandon you.
Am I the Judas horse, cynical and beaten? Or the innocent foal?
After a very long time, the amber lights of the veterinarian’s truck show above the ridge.
Twenty-two
July. Intruders are everywhere.
False dandelion invades the perfectly swept orchard floor, no matter how often Stone drives the flail, or makes us rake by hand. We are halfway through the development of the hazelnuts, and tiny larvae of the leaf-roller moth have appeared on the new clusters. Bad news. The larvae cause nut abortions, not a pretty sight. In the still heat of the afternoon, I am up on a ladder setting insect traps, using the work as a cover to check in with Donnato.
I have discovered that poking around the topmost branches of the hazelnuts is an excellent way to conduct a covert conversation. For one thing, it’s great up there. You see things differently, like opening a secret hatch to a world of sky. Rooftops and mountains become your ground — and unlike hiding out in Sirocco’s stall, if Dick Stone ventures into the orchard, you would be the first to know.
“The fifty-caliber casings you found are a match to the slug that killed Sergeant Mackee,” Donnato is saying from L.A. “The shooter is the same as the one at the BLM corrals.” “What about the Native American we took into custody?”
“He had a pretty good alibi. At the time of the shooting, he was in a local emergency room being treated for ulcers. Now we need the weapon.” “The sniper rifle that matches the casings,” I agree, watching a white butterfly skimming perfectly through the leaves.
“Stone has it somewhere. Make a search,” he tells me, “room by room.” “Got it,” I say without enthusiasm.
“You should be ecstatic.”
“About the casings? Yeah, it’s cool.”
“What’s up?”
“Just be straight, okay?”
“Always, buddy, you know that.”
“Do you have an agent tailing me? Because I can’t function that way, and frankly, I resent the hell out of it.” “A federal agent?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”
“The cowboy? Come on. Good-looking, mid-thirties? He shows up at the corrals, working on the gather? Then he appears again, a mile from the farm, hitting targets like a pro?” “At the same shooting range? You’re kidding. What kind of gun?” “Don’t get excited. It was a hunting rifle, a.308.”
Your handler doesn’t tell you everything. While you’re alone and isolated undercover, the Bureau will be working things from the other end, putting operatives in place you don’t know about. They’ll say it’s for your safety, but it can make you paranoid fast.
“If you don’t like this guy, check him out,” Donnato says.
“I don’t like him,” I reply.
“Search his vehicle, for a start.”
“That would be difficult,” I say. “He’s riding a horse.” Because there, in the heaviest torpor of the day, when stubborn fever becalms the air and the stringed vibration of the bees hits an even riper pitch, Sterling McCord is riding slowly down the sun-soaked lane on a bay, leading the white foal on a halter rope.
It’s the bay mare who rescued me, loaded up with the same silver-encrusted western saddle, but this time walking leisurely at loose rein with head low, flicking her ears at the flies. McCord’s posture is identical to when they were at full gallop, head tipped forward and shoulders relaxed, as if he is half-asleep.
He is wearing the high red-tooled boots and spurs, jeans, a clean white shirt, and the Stetson with the vintage cowboy crease. As the lazy clomping of horseshoes passes below me, I can see the tight copper bracelet on one strong wrist, a braided leather one on the other, and I have a clean downward angle of vision on the squarish hands with wide finger pads resting on the horn of the saddle — manly and competent hands you would entrust to complete the mission.
Whatever the mission might be.
I stay silent until he passes. Does he know without looking that I am here — the way Dick Stone knew when I first arrived?
“There’s something about this guy,” I tell Donnato. “He’s not who he appears to be.” “What name does he use?”
“Sterling McCord.”
“We’ll check him out.”
I cannot tell if my partner of twelve years is telling the truth.
That is what I mean by paranoid.
Megan and Sara have gathered around the horseman in the shaded driveway.
“Look at that sweet thing,” Megan says, crooning over the foal. “You’re our new baby.” McCord tips his hat. “Good afternoon, ladies.”
His eyes remain hidden in the shadow of the brim, but his skin seems to have acquired a darker tan, with deeper leathery lines, and the blond sideburns have grown long and rough. It occurs to me that in his outdoor life, he, too, is a creature of transforming elements, same as the eroding granite outcrop; unlike city folks, he wouldn’t try to put the brakes on aging, and he wears it well. He’s dropped the reins and the horse dozes beneath him. I like this touch: a knife in a leather sheath buckled to his thigh.
The foal has gained weight. Its sculpted head is up and alert, the bristly mane long enough to flop over, and the small pinkish hooves strike the dirt inquisitively. But the dark violet eyes are empty as mirrors.
“Does he have a name?” Megan asks.
“Geronimo.”
“You are cute as the dickens!” she tells the foal, and actually kisses it on the nose.
“Sara,” McCord calls from the saddle, “look at your boy.” “He’s not mine.”
She is wearing skintight jeans that hit below her slack hipbones, and a gingham top somewhere between a bra and a bib.
The foal’s dark muzzle has shrunk to normal size, small enough to fit in the palm of my hand, which it explore
s with eager lips.
“Sorry, big guy.” I laugh. “I don’t have anything for you.” “He wants to suck,” Megan explains plaintively.
McCord’s attention is still on Sara. “What do you think?” “He looks all right.”
“He is all right,” McCord replies, cheery.
Megan: “Will he ever get his sight back?”
“Afraid not, Miss Tewksbury. The vet says it’s difficult to determine exactly the cause of the blindness, but the corneas are permanently scarred.” “Poor sweetheart.”
“He’ll do fine with the right care. You’d have to keep his environment consistent, in a corral where he always knows where’s his water and feed. But his other senses will become more accurate, and he’ll be able to get around, maybe as a companion animal to another horse.” “Like Sirocco?” Megan gazes up at McCord with the expectant look of a wife who really wants that washing machine.
“That’s what I was thinking. How long since she lost her baby?” “She had that accident on the track and came to us…maybe three months ago?” “Then she could still lactate.”
“Really? Nurse Geronimo?”
“It’s possible.”
He slides off his horse.
“So, Sara, do you like him?” he asks.
She shrugs. “He’s cute.”
“Like to keep him?”
“Keep him?”
“Look after him awhile, you and Sirocco, help him along. He needs a lot of TLC, and Dave Owens’s barn is full.” Sara blushes. Her shoulders collapse with doubt. “Me?”
“You’re the one who found him. In my book, that gives you claim.” McCord offers the rope.
Lifelong skepticism does not allow me to believe that Sterling McCord has traveled down the road this dusty summer afternoon simply to give Sara Campbell exactly what she needs, but as he patiently holds the lead out to her, whatever dark possibilities I conjure just don’t seem to hold. Whether McCord is an FBI agent on my tail or a cowboy doing a job, he is offering the girl what has been missing from her life.
Something to love.
Sara reaches out and her fingers close around the rope. The blind foal’s head comes up to her chest and his spindly legs match hers. She tentatively strokes his neck and fingers the fluff hanging off his chin.