Dark Horses

by Susan Mihalic

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  For Penny and Janet

  Wish you were here

  - one -

  THE PILLS WEREN’T working yet.

  My shoes echoed in the corridor as I hurried to the girls’ room and pushed open the door. Cherry-scented antiseptic stung my throat as I ran into the first stall, pinned my knees together, and shot the bolt in the door. I hadn’t had a bladder infection in ages. I’d hoped it would go away on its own, but yesterday I’d been forced to tell Mama about it when I passed blood. Without comment, she’d given me one of her old prescriptions of antibiotics. The pills were expired, but they were helping. Still, I was way below peak performance level, with Daddy picking me up in five minutes to take me to a three-day competition.

  I willed myself to pee. Not a trickle. Not a drop. Just the urge to urinate and the inability to do so.

  The restroom door opened and sighed shut with a soft bump.

  “Seniors can’t even go off campus for lunch anymore and that horsey little eleventh-grader leaves every day at one? What is it now, eleven-thirty, and she’s out of here? We earned this.”

  “I know.”

  I didn’t have to see the dimes in the penny loafers to recognize Sass Stewart and Annabelle Hardy.

  Lots of people wanted to be Sass’s friend, a preemptive move to avoid being a target, but we’d been at odds since elementary school. I was the horsey little eleventh-grader.

  “Why does she get special privileges?” Annabelle said.

  Sass expelled a sustained fart from a stall down the way.

  “Gross,” Annabelle said.

  “No, gross is Horse Girl’s mother with her legs wrapped around Mr. Dashwood at the overlook.”

  She hadn’t even finished the sentence before my face prickled and sound became more acute. Annabelle squealed.

  Down the row, toilet paper twirled on the spindle.

  “Leda’s mother saw them in the back of his station wagon, and her legs were in the air. Can you imagine?”

  “Sick.”

  “She was probably drunk. But it explains why Roan”—Sass flushed the toilet—“gets special privileges. Her mother’s screwing the headmaster. Shoot. I broke a nail.”

  “I have a file,” Annabelle said.

  The door to Sass’s stall banged open and her navy loafers clopped past, dimes glittering.

  In Daddy’s words, the only way to take a ball-busting fence was head-on.

  I pulled my panties up, jerked my kilt down, and yanked open my door. “Excuse me.”

  Annabelle’s eyes popped. Sass’s smile died. I was taller than they were, my back ramrod straight from years of riding.

  I approached the sinks and turned on the tap. “First, you’re both stupid cunts.”

  They gasped as if I’d slapped them. The C word was all-powerful, a line they’d never dare cross.

  “Second, my mother didn’t want me on this schedule, so there goes your narrative about special favors.” I soaped my hands. “Third, she’d never fuck a man who wears a toupee.”

  I rinsed and dried my hands, tossed the paper towel in the trash, and went out into the corridor, anger and adrenaline propelling me down the hall to my locker. Had Mama lost her mind?

  The door of the girls’ room opened and closed. Footsteps came toward me. I reached for the fattest book I could put my hands on, ready to hit Sass upside the head if she said another word.

  As they passed behind me, Sass stage-whispered, “A whore for a mother and a horse for a daughter.”

  I heaved my biology book at her, but she dodged and the book hit the floor with an ungodly loud smack.

  They ran down the hall to the computer lab. From the door, Annabelle flipped me off. Sass made a hole with one hand and poked the index finger of her other hand in and out of it a few times. Then they returned to class.

  Cunts.

  As I retrieved my book, Mr. Griffin stuck his head out of the chemistry classroom, frowning.

  “I dropped it.”

  He regarded me skeptically and ducked back into his room.

  Outside, in the thin November sunshine, I sat on one of the marble benches to wait for Daddy. If he hadn’t heard, did I warn Mama? No, never side against Daddy. He always won. Should I warn him? No, he’d be in a foul mood all weekend. Best to feign ignorance.

  Plan of inaction in place, I settled enough to think beyond a strategy. My parents didn’t have a happy marriage. Mama’s infidelity surprised me less than her carelessness. The overlook sat on a ridge at the side of the narrow, winding road to our house. It was a known make-out place for kids but too public a spot for legs in the air, and Mama and Mr. Dashwood weren’t kids. What was she thinking? She baited Daddy all the time, but this went beyond baiting.

  I couldn’t let Mama distract me. I had to focus. The Middleton Cup was a small but prestigious invitational show. I’d be sixteen next month, but at fifteen, I was the youngest competitor ever invited to participate.

  Daddy regularly led me through exercises in which I visualized success. I imagined each problem as a horse, and one by one I led them into stalls in a barn. Mama was having an affair. Daddy would find out and might know already. Gossip was raging. My bladder was twanging and stabbing and burning. I rolled the stall doors shut.

  By the time Daddy turned the Land Cruiser through the filigreed iron gates, I was confident I was conveying the keen anticipation of competition and not my desire for a slug of bourbon.

  “Ready to ride?” he asked as I got in.

  “Ready.”

  “You feeling better?”

  “Yes, sir.” I searched for something to stretch my answer into an acceptable length. Daddy perceived short answers as rude. “The antibiotics are working.”

  “Good. I told your mother you were well enough to ride. Right?”

  “Yes, sir. I feel much better.” Not true, but it didn’t matter. He’d mentioned Mama without sounding as if he were fixing to kill her, which meant he didn’t know yet. He sounded condescending and superior—one hundred percent himself. He’d been conditioned to superiority since conception. Montgomerys were exceptional. He’d grown up hearing that from his own father, and I heard it from him all the time.

  He navigated through the heavy traffic in town. With Thanksgiving one week away, Sheridan was especially crowded, catering to leaf peepers here to take in the fall color in the Shenandoah Valley. Indian corn wreaths hung on the doors of the antiques shops lining the square. In the windows, avalanches of pumpkins spilled around scarecrows.

  Daddy threaded the Land Cruiser around a man who was loading an old milk-painted table into a van.

  When we were on the parkway that led to the interstate, he said, “You really feel better, darlin’? You’re pretty quiet.”

  “Just thinking about the dressage test.” That was what I should have been thinking about, but my mind kept straying to Mama.

  “What comes after the lengthening trot across the diagonal?”

  I answered with relief. Dressage made sense. “Ten-meter half circle returning to track at B.”

  “What comes before the flying lead change over the centerline?”

  “Twenty-meter half circle.”

  Jasper and I had practiced the individual movements, including the transitions, but we’d ridden the complete test only a couple of
times so he wouldn’t anticipate what was coming. Also, I’d imagined our entrance hall as a scaled-down arena, and I’d walked, trotted, and cantered my way through the test on my own two feet a dozen times.

  “Last show of the year for you,” Daddy said.

  “I wish I were competing this winter.”

  “The horses need the break.” He glanced over his shoulder and merged onto the interstate.

  Middleton was only ninety minutes south of Sheridan, near enough to make the trip easily but far enough to merit staying the night. I spent the rest of the drive riding the dressage test stride for stride in my mind, turning in a perfect performance each time.

  At the show park, we drove through the competitors’ gate and trundled slowly past rows of stalls.

  Competitive riding was a small world. I had ongoing and serious rivalries with a number of the riders unloading their horses and milling around. I waved at Michael Elliot, who ignored me, nodded at Daddy, and led Charlatan, his rangy gray Thoroughbred, across the path in front of us.

  We parked behind Barn H. Daddy pointed at our trailer, parked nearby in a row of similar high-dollar rigs, and handed me his keys. “Get changed and meet me back here. Jasper’s in H-6.”

  I took my duffel from the back and walked across the grass to the trailer.

  The first thing I did was use the toilet. The urge to pee was less critical than it had been earlier, but a weak stream of urine came out, which was an improvement. I shed my school uniform, put on jodhpurs and boots, pulled my hair into a ponytail, and pinned it into a bun. When I was ready, I checked the mirror on the back of the bathroom door. Look like a winner, feel like a winner, Daddy said. I looked professional, competent, and as capable of winning as anyone else.

  My head was where it should be as I crossed the soft, spongy grass to the barn, where Daddy stood under the shed row talking to Frank Falconetti.

  “He’s turning into a hell of a horse,” Frank said. “Should’ve kept him.”

  “He has a lot of promise—right, darlin’?” Daddy raised an eyebrow at me.

  “He’s more than promising,” I said.

  A throaty nicker came from inside H-6.

  Frank smiled. “Don’t suppose you want to sell him back to me.”

  I didn’t smile. “Not funny.”

  He laughed. “All right. Well, go get ’em, kid. Best of luck to you.”

  “You, too,” Daddy said.

  I slipped into the stall and put my arms around Jasper’s neck. Daddy always warned me not to get attached to my horses, because they came and went, but Jasper was special. I inhaled his clean, horsey smell and rubbed his ears. He stretched his head toward me. He was ridiculous about his ears.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” I whispered.

  Daddy interrupted our lovefest. “You drew number one.” He held up a round white disc with 1 on it.

  Riding first was a disadvantage. Dressage was the only subjective phase of eventing, and judges graded the early riders more harshly to leave themselves room for higher marks as the competition continued.

  He read my expression. “You’ll be fine. Orientation is in ten minutes. We need to get going. Let’s head over to—where is it, Ed?”

  Eddie’s voice came from the neighboring stall, which we’d commandeered as a tack room. “The meeting room under the stadium.”

  At home I mucked stalls and groomed and tacked my own horses, but at shows, Eddie and Mateo took care of that. Eddie had been at Rosemont a lot longer than I had. He’d never competed, but he’d been by Daddy’s side forever. Both of them understood horses in a way I was still trying to learn.

  I finished rubbing Jasper’s ears and joined Daddy outside the stall as Eddie emerged from the tack room, a program in his hands. He pointed to a map on one of the pages. “There.”

  “Thanks,” Daddy said. “Do you have the measuring wheel?”

  Eddie disappeared briefly and returned with the wheel.

  “We’ll be back for the jog, and then Roan can hack him around one of the warm-up fields.”

  Eddie nodded and ran a hand through his short, thinning gray hair. “Y’all will do good here. I feel it in my bones.”

  Eddie’s bones were always optimistic.

  Other riders and trainers were filtering into the meeting room when Daddy and I arrived. Jamie Benedict, who had trained with Daddy for years before moving to Frank’s barn, sat beside me. One of us often came in second to the other’s first, but I’d rather lose to Jamie than to someone else. Even though he was older than I was, he’d always treated me like an equal. Other riders tried to intimidate me because I was young.

  “You riding Psycho Pony?” he whispered.

  “Jasper. You?”

  “Luna. Hi, Monty.” He reached across me to shake Daddy’s hand.

  The show park officials joined us, and the meeting started with announcements. Daddy jotted down notes in the margins of the program.

  “How’d you do in the draw?” Jamie asked.

  “One.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Someone has to go first.” I never admitted to nervousness.

  After the meeting, we headed to the cross-country course for the official walk. We started off in a large group, but gradually we spread out. Daddy used the wheel to measure the exact distance between jumps. The course covered three miles, but because it was shaped like a horseshoe, the finish was only about a hundred yards from the start.

  He dug his heel into the turf by a jump at the edge of the woods. “Good ground. But watch out here. You’ll take off in sunlight and land in shadow.”

  I wrote sunlight/shadow on the course map.

  We returned to the barn in time for the jog. I put on my jacket and buttoned it. Daddy brushed nonexistent lint from the lapel.

  The jog took place on an asphalt path lined with pots of flowers; spectators were kept at a distance by ropes strung between stanchions. A panel of officials, including a veterinarian, assessed Jasper’s soundness as I trotted him away from them, toward them, and back and forth in front of them. My legs were long but his were longer, and I had to run to keep up with him. He shone with good health and excellent care, and he was passed with smiles and nods from the panel.

  Back at the barn, Mateo saddled him while I shed the jacket and downed a bottle of water from the cooler in the tack room. I might have been running a fever, but the late afternoon felt more like midsummer than fall. Sheridan was still warm, too, but at our altitude we’d been getting frost. The leaves hadn’t even begun to change here.

  When Jasper was ready, Daddy boosted me into the saddle. I gathered the reins and tried to compartmentalize my discomfort. He walked alongside us on a path to one of the warm-up fields bordering the parking area. The field had a circus-like atmosphere, with different riders in various stages of exercising their horses. In the center, some riders were practicing the movements for tomorrow’s test.

  “Walk-trot-canter around the field,” Daddy said. “Both directions.”

  Jasper and I stuck to the perimeter fence, walking around it once, then trotting, then cantering, and then reversing and doing it all over again in the opposite direction, and at some point I became so absorbed in riding that I forgot about my UTI pain.

  Daddy and Eddie waited at the edge of the field, watching us intently.

  “That’s good,” Daddy called. “He’s stretched his legs and had a look around.” He glanced at his watch. “We’d better check into the hotel.”

  Mateo and I groomed Jasper and bedded him down while Daddy and Eddie went over tomorrow’s schedule. I took a carrot from the cooler, broke it into pieces, and dropped them into the feed bucket. Jasper vacuumed them up, frothing pale orange around his lips, his black eyes luminous. One of the old books in Daddy’s study maintained that the first consideration in choosing a horse was a kind eye. There were more important things to look for, but I always remembered that phrase when I looked into Jasper’s eyes.

  On the drive to the hote
l, I reclined my seat back. I’d hardly slept the past two nights because I’d been so uncomfortable, but I dozed now, rousing only when we stopped and the engine shut off. I sat up and blinked in the sallow light under the awning.

  “Wait here,” Daddy said.

  The hotel was a couple of miles from the park, so a lot of other horse people were staying here, too. I waved at a group of them and tried not to look tired. Good thing I was only competing on one horse. In the summer, I sometimes rode two or three horses at a single event. I didn’t have the energy for that this weekend, especially with midterms next week. School always overlapped the beginning and end of the season.

  The thought of school was more unwelcome than usual, and after a moment I remembered why. Sass. Mama.

  Compartmentalize, I told myself in Daddy’s voice. All that could wait. I was in Middleton, and I had a job to do.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING Daddy called me before dawn. I showered, slicked my hair into a bun, and dressed in my dressage attire: white riding pants, shirt, stock tie, black dress boots, blunt silver spurs. I had just put on the shadbelly, the special cutaway black jacket, when there was a knock on my door. I peeked through the peephole and opened it.

  “You look like a winner, darlin’,” Daddy said. “How do you feel?”

  “Like a winner.”

  The sun rose as we drove to the park. I loved early mornings, and on competition days I could have taken on the world.

  Eddie had left coffee brewing in the trailer, where he and Mateo had stayed the night. Daddy poured a mug for himself, black as tar and twice as strong, and half a mug for me. I added cream from the tiny refrigerator, and we walked together to the barn.

  Eddie had braided Jasper’s thick black mane and sewn the braids into perfect rosettes. I drank my coffee and wolfed down an energy bar as he tacked my horse. Daddy checked the girth and the bridle. Jasper’s ears were alert, and he mouthed the bit, but there was no eye-rolling or head-tossing. Horses had more than a dozen facial expressions, and Jasper’s was bright, interested. He was practically smiling. I grinned myself.