Dark Horses

by Susan Mihalic

  He slapped me, his hand cracking against my cheek. His strength was stunning. My jaw felt unhinged, my eyes loose in their sockets.

  For an instant I saw remorse on his face. Then his mouth crushed mine. My teeth cut the inside of my lips. I tasted blood.

  With one hand he held my wrists against my chest. He lifted his hips. With his free hand he opened the thick hotel robe and pulled up my nightgown.

  “Stop,” I hissed, knowing he wouldn’t.

  I turned my head to the side and tried to bite his arm. I kicked until it seemed wiser to clamp my legs together, but he pushed his knee between my thighs, pulled down my panties, and forced his way inside me.

  The friction of flesh on unlubricated flesh seared and tore, and in the violence of his assault my aching bladder let go. Pee ran hot between my legs, saturating the covers under me, and the fight left me.

  He held me down with no effort, his fingers so tight around my wrists that my hands throbbed from lack of circulation. His face was suffused with blood, and he went from scarlet to nearly purple when he came.

  I lay in piss and cum.

  After a long time, he went soft.

  “If I let you go”—he sounded odd, as if he had a cold—“no scratching, no biting, no hitting, no kicking, no screaming. None of it. Agreed?”

  I nodded shortly. He released my wrists and rolled off me, and I filled my lungs. I’d lied—I was going to scream—but when I tried, only a whimper came out. I staggered up, hobbled by my panties. My nightgown and robe were wet. The gown stuck to the back of my legs. I tottered into the bathroom and pushed the door shut.

  I got out of the wet clothes and ran water in the sink but didn’t wait for it to warm before I held a washcloth under it. I squeezed out the excess and pressed the cloth between my legs. The pressure hurt, but the cold was soothing. When I took it away, it was stained with blood and pale yellow pee and the shine of semen. I rinsed the washcloth and wiped myself down and touched the raised red handprint on my cheek.

  The door opened. I was so dazed I’d neglected to lock it.

  “Get in the shower.”

  Indecision kept me standing still. I wanted to wash him off me, out of me. But right now, I could prove what he’d done, and he’d be arrested, and the future he’d predicted for Will would become his future instead. He’d go to prison once I told the police all the things we’d done.

  He turned on the water. From four impressive parallel scratches, blood trickled down his neck, down his shoulder, into his chest hair.

  “Get in.”

  I reached for the doorknob. He caught my wrist, pulled me to him, scooped me up, and set me on my feet under the stream of water, all in one smooth move, a clip from a dance number in an old black-and-white film.

  He got in, too, and started to wash me, his fingers thorough and invasive. The soap burned like acid. Not for the first time, I saw us together as if I floated above. The dirty old man stuck his soapy fingers inside the bleeding girl. I held on to stoicism as if it would save me.

  “You need to know something. You’re mine. If you don’t want Will Howard to get hurt, stay away from him. A word to the wise, darlin’. Don’t threaten me. And don’t underestimate me.”

  It was a mistake I’d never make again.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING we sat in the stands and watched the first riders set off on the cross-country course. He wore a rain jacket zipped up to his neck, which covered the scratches. I’d broken four nails so short that my fingertips hurt. My eyes were puffy, the inside of my eyelids lined with sandpaper. My lower lip felt tender.

  None of that matched the pain between my legs. I wasn’t bleeding, but physically and mentally, I was in no condition to compete. When I’d told him this morning I needed to withdraw, he’d said, “You want to keep your horse?”

  I told myself last night wasn’t any different from any other time, but even thinking that way set me on fire with shame. Whether he was gentle or rough, whether I was complicit or not, I finally understood that what he did was always a form of violence. He’d been hurting me forever.

  Something was different, though. The man who’d raped me last night was no longer Daddy. Whatever had tethered me to that childish name for him had been severed.

  A light rain began to fall midmorning, and the horses thundering over the turf dug a muddy path. Horse after horse fell at the second water jump. All of them scrambled to their feet unhurt, but every time a horse went down, I flashed on what it would be like to take a fall. My rioting mind didn’t need that particular image taking hold.

  I stood up.

  My father broke off his conversation with Frank, who was sitting on his other side. “Where are you going?”

  “To the barn.”

  “I’ll go with you. Later, Frank.”

  “Good luck, kid.” Frank winked at me.

  What would it be like to train with him? I liked him, so long as he wasn’t trying to get Jasper back. He was hard on his riders, but I’d bet he’d never raped anybody.

  My father escorted me through throngs of riders, trainers, grooms, spectators. I imagined telling all these people what he’d done. I imagined telling even one of them.

  “How long do you plan to keep me under surveillance?” I asked.

  “You violated my trust. You have to regain it.” He was too close, crowding me.

  “What about the ways you’ve violated me?”

  “Not the time. We’ll discuss this later.”

  This, I knew, was my behavior, not his.

  Eddie was sitting on a hay bale under the shed row, buffing Jasper’s bridle.

  I could tell Eddie. He’d never invited me to open up to him the way Gertrude had, but we’d had some good conversations in the past, and I trusted him—but assuming he believed me, what did I expect him to do, go to the police? I could do that myself, if I were willing to lose everything.

  My father pulled up a canvas folding chair beside him. “Getting muddy out there.”

  I retreated into Jasper’s stall and rested my forehead in the wide, flat space between his eyes. Rain dripped off the roof. He dropped his head lower, pushing it gently into my torso. I gave him what he wanted, an ear massage.

  He watched curiously as I stretched in an effort to work some elasticity into my muscles. It wasn’t the strangest thing he’d ever seen me do. He’d seen Will and me in the back of the pickup.

  A giant hand squeezed my heart.

  Don’t think about it.

  I bent over, touching my forehead to my knees, palms flat in the straw. Blood rushed to my head and made my lower lip hurt.

  Outside the stall, my father and Eddie chatted amicably. Mateo joined them with coffee from the trailer.

  I couldn’t work out the soreness everywhere, but after a while the only remaining discomfort was in my private parts. I couldn’t fix that, but I could compartmentalize it. Jasper deserved my best effort, and he’d compensate for my shortcomings. Together, Jasper and I were magic, and we always had been.

  “Almost time to warm up,” my father said.

  I left the stall and held out my hand for the key to the trailer.

  He gave me a look that told me I’d never have another moment alone in this lifetime. “I’ll walk with you.”

  We walked to the trailer, where he waited outside the miniature bathroom while I changed into jodhpurs and a black polo shirt, in which I neither looked nor felt like a winner. It was damply chilly in the trailer, but the rain was letting up.

  He rapped on the door. “Let’s go.”

  My chest protector, gloves, helmet, and armband were back at the barn. Mateo had saddled Jasper, who looked magnificent.

  We warmed up in a practice arena and took some easy fences, and I started to think I was fit enough not only to ride but also—maybe—to hold on to my lead.

  Eddie walked with us to the starting box. I listened to my father’s instructions and tried to compartmentalize the coach and trainer from the man
and father.

  “You know the course. No one’s blazed through it, but there are some decent times. Keep a steady pace. Save something for the end.”

  Two riders were ahead of us when we got to the box. The horses were sent onto the course two minutes apart, so I had four minutes before I rode. Jasper nickered and pulled at the reins as each of them left.

  My father turned on his heel and walked away without a “Knock ’em dead, darlin’,” his customary send-off.

  Eddie looked after him, puzzled, and then up at me. “Everything all right?”

  Not the time, as my father had said.

  “Fine.”

  “Well, you’re the one to beat.”

  “You mean it’s mine to lose.”

  He frowned and smiled at the same time. “I mean you’re going to win this thing. I feel it in my bones.”

  Eddie always had been my number-one fan.

  “More guts than brains, right?” I said.

  “You’re not completely deficient in smarts.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. It amazed me that I could.

  I collected the reins and nudged Jasper into the box and watched the rider ahead of me take the third jump, a simple rolltop. The hills and valleys of the course hid the remaining obstacles, but I knew what lay ahead. Bluegrass was heavy on novelty jumps. Spectators liked them, they looked interesting on camera, and they tested a horse’s courage in a way natural obstacles seldom did. On the trail, no one in their right mind would jump anything resembling the novelty jumps.

  Beneath me, Jasper was taut with anticipation.

  “Ten seconds,” the timekeeper said. He began the countdown.

  When he reached zero, we broke from the box.

  The first fence was a split-rail vertical, and Jasper took off in an explosion of speed and power that almost left me behind.

  Shit. I was riding a rocket.

  As we galloped uphill, the terrain checked his speed a bit, but when he flew over the stone wall and the rolltop, I still hadn’t caught up to him. Across level ground to the first water jump, I tried to settle him. He jumped two giant wooden duck decoys, splashing down into the lake after each one. Then we shot over the third duck and onto the bank, and once again we were in sync.

  The rain had subsided into a warm mist. The air was filled with the scents of damp earth and grass and pungent horse. My pelvis hurt but pain didn’t matter right now. Neither did my father. What mattered was riding this course.

  We jumped a ditch, a hedge, an elaborately haphazard pile of whiskey barrels.

  I checked my watch. We were about a third of the way through the course, with a time of two minutes, fifteen seconds, slightly ahead of our target time, but we had some hills coming up.

  We galloped through the woods and jumped from the broad shady path down a two-meter drop onto open ground. The landing jarred me so badly that I cried out. What would viewers make of that? It was a spectacular obstacle, certain to be on camera.

  We pounded up a low hill, taking an in-and-out and a broad Swedish oxer along the way. The incline brought Jasper down to a more sensible pace. At the top, the terrain leveled out again. We took a brick wall, the terraced jump, a pair of wishing wells, an oversized coal cart, a fence under an arch of girders. Jasper never hesitated. He soared over the Churchill Downs jump, and as we approached the second water jump, where so many horses had fallen, his energy and enthusiasm showed no signs of flagging. A stride from the hedge, he gathered himself for the effort.

  He pushed off, launching us over the hedge and landing in the water, then leaping over the brush pile onto the grassy bank on the far side. We raced toward the next-to-last jump, a skinny with a narrow face. Jasper sailed over it. Twelve strides later we took off over the final obstacle, a rustic split-rail fence, clearing it by more than a foot. My horse could fly.

  His front hoofs struck the ground. An audible double snap traveled through his legs and into my body, and he pitched forward. I somersaulted over his head, my right shoulder hitting the wet grass. The blow knocked the wind from me, and everything hurt more than it should have, but I had enough momentum to roll to my feet.

  A few yards away, Jasper heaved on his side, raising his head and rocking his big body back and forth, trying to get his forelegs under him. Then Mateo was lying across his neck to immobilize him and Eddie was squatting next to my father, who was on his knees, removing the protective boots from Jasper’s forelegs, revealing jagged, bloody bone protruding between the knee and the ankle of both legs.

  My father sat back on his heels. “Ah, God.”

  “No.” That despairing little cry came from me.

  He got to his feet and intercepted me, his hands on my shoulders. “Darlin’, no.”

  He couldn’t hold on to me in public the way he did in private. I threw off his hands and staggered over to my horse and dropped to my knees beside him. His eyes were glassy, the irises rimmed by white. His nostrils flared as he huffed out short, irregular breaths. Sweat poured from his body, not the healthy sweat of physical effort, but thin watery rivers of it, a response to pain and shock.

  “I’m here.” I took off my glove and put my hand on his muzzle. “I’m right here.”

  He trembled and exhaled with a sound of pure agony that went right through me.

  Two large vans, equine ambulances, had pulled up at right angles. I recognized one of the course veterinarians. The air wouldn’t go all the way to the bottom of my lungs.

  My father spoke to the vet. I didn’t hear what he said. I didn’t need to. The compound fracture of two legs wasn’t a survivable injury. My broken horse couldn’t be fixed.

  I began to rub his ears. “I’m here.”

  He made that horrible sound again. Mateo, crooning a steady “Easy, boy. Easy, boy,” met my eyes.

  My father squatted beside me. “Darlin’, you don’t have to do this.”

  The knot in my throat was strangling me. “I’m not leaving.”

  Eddie put a hand on Mateo’s shoulder. Mateo closed his eyes but never stopped saying, “Easy, boy. Easy, boy.” Eddie’s cheeks were wet.

  I doubled over and whispered in Jasper’s ear. “You’re the best horse, Jasper. There’ll never be another one like you.”

  The vet probed Jasper’s neck to find the jugular vein.

  My father put his arm around me. My right shoulder hurt, but I didn’t move, except to keep massaging Jasper’s ears. “Don’t be afraid. You’re magic.”

  The vet inserted a needle into Jasper’s neck and drew up some blood to make certain it was in the vein. Dark red blood swirled into the clear pink poison. Slowly, the vet pressed the plunger, and the contents of the syringe fed into Jasper’s vein.

  His rapid breathing slowed, he released a lungful of air, and he didn’t inhale again. His eyes were open, but the life had gone out of them. A kind eye.

  The vet withdrew the needle, held a stethoscope to Jasper’s side, and listened. After a moment, he said, “He’s gone. I’m sorry.”

  I stopped rubbing his ears. I wanted to curl up in the curve of Jasper’s neck and stay with him. I turned my head toward my father, who stood up and helped me to my feet.

  Screens had been set up to block the accident from spectators’ eyes. Red and blue lights flashed. Another ambulance, this one for humans, waited for me. Two paramedics approached us, snapping on latex gloves.

  “Let’s get you checked out.” My father walked me to the ambulance and climbed into the back behind me, followed by one of the medics. The other one closed the doors. Through the windows, I saw the slides and pulleys that would be used to load Jasper’s body into one of the vans. I felt him galloping, flying over fences, landing without missing a stride. Snap-snap.

  Everything got smaller as the ambulance pulled away. It was close in there, warm. My father started to unzip his jacket and then stopped. The scratches on his neck remained hidden.

  The paramedic unbuckled my helmet and removed it. He set it on the gurney beside me, unf
astened the straps of the body protector, pulled it over my head.

  “What will they do with him?” I asked my father.

  “We’ll take him home.”

  “All of him?” Rosemont traditionally buried a horse’s head, heart, and hoofs, which had never seemed gruesome before, but I’d never contemplated Jasper’s dismemberment before.

  “Sure. All of him.” My father pulled his phone from the pocket of his jacket.

  I hugged myself.

  The paramedic put a hand on my shoulder. “What hurts?”

  “Ed,” my father said, “bring home the whole body.”

  I put my hands over my ears and squeezed my eyes shut.

  “Did you hit your head?” The paramedic felt my skull for lumps or dents, and had me follow the tip of his finger with my eyes, and shined a penlight into them. He made me windmill my arm backward and forward, but I hadn’t broken any bones. All the ways I hurt were always invisible. I was fine. I’d be sore. That was all.

  My father signed a release declining transport to a hospital, and the paramedics gave us a ride to the parking lot.

  My father tossed the body protector and crash hat in the backseat of the Land Cruiser and opened the passenger door for me. He was in auto mode, too.

  This was unreal. It hadn’t happened. I was asleep, and I’d wake up, and Jasper would be alive—and my father wouldn’t have raped me last night, and since I was making things up, we’d just be a normal father and daughter.

  It was real. It had happened.

  He got behind the wheel. “It’s after five, and we still have to check out of the hotel. We won’t get home until four in the morning.”

  I didn’t care about our itinerary.

  He started the car. “We’ll stay the night.”

  Then I cared. Staying another night meant sharing the bed.

  “I want to go home.”