Taking the Reins

by Carolyn McSparren

  “How come?” Hank asked. Charlie had warned Gail that Hank would be the one to push boundaries.

  “Main Street down here looks quiet in the evening after the trolleys stop running and with no people on the sidewalks, doesn’t it?” Jerry said. “But the trolley tracks are barely wider than the carriage wheels. You get a wheel trapped, and it may take all of us to lift it out, even if we don’t break a shaft. And that’s at a walk. These guys are well trained and quiet, but if they break into a gallop, all the carriage brakes in the world aren’t going to stop them.”

  “And if you get caught in the turntable at this north end where the trolleys turn, you could flip the carriage,” Gail said.

  Mary Anne moaned.

  “Won’t happen tonight,” Gail assured her. “We’ll all be waiting for customers beside The Peabody Hotel and driving the same route. There’s safety in numbers, even against macho idiots.” Gail looked around the group. “Now, here’s a copy of our pre-drive checklist.”

  “Look at all that stuff!” Hank said.

  “We have to carry water for the horses,” Gail continued, “and liquid solvent to clean up the street if they decide to piddle.”

  “What about the manure?” Sean asked.

  “They all wear a ‘bun bag’ to catch that.” She continued to check off the equipment the carriages required, from first-aid kits to buckets and scrub brushes. “See, it’s not all fun and games,” she told them when she finished. Mary Anne raised her hand. “We won’t actually have to drive, will we?” She wore her makeup and wig, black slacks and a black silk shirt with sleeves that reached down to her brown driving gloves. In the illumination from the old-fashioned streetlamps, she looked totally scar-free.

  “You’re with me,” Gail said. “You don’t have to take the reins unless you want to, and only for a few minutes with an empty carriage. Maybe on our way back to the stable for the last time you can drive.” She turned to Charlie and whispered, “You were right. They will hit on her. Don’t worry. I’ll handle it. How come I get her and not the gorgeous one?”

  “Hank?”

  Gail shook her head. “I meant the tall, thin one with the crazy blue eyes and the floppy hair. Him I could go for. The man positively exudes sex appeal. It’s that Heathcliff thing.”

  While Charlie had never thought of Jake as Heathcliff, not one of her favorite heroes, Gail was right. He looked incredibly sexy. Tonight he’d dressed in black jeans and a black long-sleeved T-shirt. If his plan was to fade into the background, it hadn’t worked. He hadn’t wanted to come along any more than Mary Anne had, and now he gave Charlie an accusatory glance. She felt a jolt that had nothing to do with electricity and everything to do with hormones.

  He stood silently beside his driver, a happy elf of a man named Darrell, while he finished his pre-drive checklist. She felt a stab of jealousy that she had no business feeling. Gail was younger, slimmer, had tighter abs and was better looking than she was.

  Gail climbed up on her driver’s box without bothering to use the mounting block. Sean had to lift Mary Anne into the left-hand seat.

  “We’re lead carriage tonight, so off we go,” Gail said. Mary Anne made that whimpering noise as the gray Percheron, Sammie, walked south down Main Street.

  It took some time to get Mickey securely fastened into the left-hand seat of the Cinderella carriage. “It’s gloriously tacky,” he crowed. “I love it.”

  Sean and Jake were the last of the students to climb into their seats and depart. Charlie crossed her fingers and settled beside the radio in the office to intercept their calls.

  Five minutes later the receiver crackled. “First client,” Gail said. “Nice couple from Detroit.”

  “How’s Mary Anne doing?” Charlie asked.

  “Fine, so far. She’s so scared she can’t move or speak.” Gail chuckled. “Come on, girl, say something.”

  “Urk,” said Mary Anne.

  “Good enough. Evening, folks. We’re about to give you a taste of what it was like before cars, when travel had some class. First, we’ll swing down Second Street and around Court Square. Let me tell you about...”

  Charlie switched to another carriage.

  Ten minutes after they reached the carriage stand at The Peabody, all the carriages had passengers and were on the move. The drivers knew the history of the area and could tell a bunch of stories about everything from the original settlement through the Civil War, known here as The War of Northern Aggression. That always tickled the Yankees. The drivers regaled their customers with ghost stories, tales of the yellow fever epidemic, Beale Street in its heyday, all the way up to the present. The passengers got a history lesson as well as a pleasant ride.

  Since the drivers left their radios on while they had customers in case they needed to call for help, Charlie listened in.

  She’d been right about Hank. Jerry, the second-year law student who normally talked nonstop, had turned over the patter to Hank. If there were such a thing as “carriage bunnies,” Hank would have a coterie by closing time.

  Sean concentrated on finding out about the customers and talking to the children.

  Jake, on the other hand, left the talking to his driver. Since Darrell’s store of funny stories about Memphis was never ending, that worked fine.

  Mickey’s first customers were an elderly man and his small wife.

  “Son, I just realized you’re wearing leg braces. You a veteran?” the man asked.

  Charlie heard Mickey’s soft groan. “Yessir. Iraq.”

  The man wanted the entire history of Mickey’s army career and his background, where and how he’d been wounded.

  “Now, Carl, you leave the nice young man alone,” his dumpling wife said.

  “I was in ’Nam in sixty-eight,” Carl said. “Now that was a screwed-up mess, let me tell you...” And the war stories flowed.

  Back at the office Charlie wanted to interrupt, but there was no effective way to shut the guy up. The customer might not always be right, but he was always the customer.

  Mickey managed well. He kept up a running patter of gee, how about that, must have really been bad. After the couple were deposited back at The Peabody, Mickey leaned over and whispered into the mike, “Hey, Charlie, I just picked up a hundred-dollar tip. Pays to be a crip, am I right?”

  “He’s splitting it with me, aren’t you, Mickey?” Walter, his driver, said. “That is, if you don’t want to stay in that seat for the next twenty-four hours without a potty break.”

  Still not a word out of Jake. Darrell kept up his patter, too, but Jake might as well not have been on the box with him.

  “Hey, man, if it ain’t ol’ Jake! Can I take a ride? You done come up in the world.”

  Big guffaw.

  * * *

  “EVENING, ROTGUT,” Jake said amiably. He shouldn’t have been surprised to run into someone he knew from the shelter. “Sorry, this isn’t my carriage. Can’t offer you a ride.”

  The man gave another rough burst of laughter. “You gonna get a job with these folks? We’ll all come down and take a ride with you.” His speech was slurred, his voice high and his accent placed him from somewhere in Louisiana.

  “Ain’t seen you down to the shelter long time. You gonna buy ole Rotgut a drink, you bein’ so high-and-mighty?” His tone dropped to whiny.

  “Buzz off, buddy,” Darrell didn’t sound so happy now. “Jake, you know this guy?”

  “He knows me, all right,” Rotgut said.

  “Don’t give him any money, Jake,” Darrell whispered. “He’ll tell every bum on the street we’re an easy touch.”

  “Hey, I don’t beg!” Rotgut was getting belligerent. “I’m asking to borrow some money from my old friend Jake here.”

  Jake reached into his hip pocket, pulled out a twenty and handed it down to Rotgut. �
��Nobody else, Rotgut.”

  “Yeah, we’ll call the cops on you all in a heartbeat,” Darrell said. “Walk on, Ranger.”

  “Good to see ya, Jake, and thanks for the loan.” Rotgut faded back into the shadows in Court Square.

  “Why’d you do that?” Darrell demanded. “You know he’ll go drink it up.”.

  “He’s got a steel plate in his head and a Bronze Star to go with his Purple Heart. His wife left him and he can’t hold a job. So I know.”

  “Oh,” Darrell said.

  The night was busier than they’d expected. Several times customers had to wait in line until another group was through with their tour. Jake and Darrell took their turns in the rotation without meeting Rotgut or any of his buddies on the lookout for them.

  “Looks like we can wind things up by ten o’clock,” Gail said at nine-thirty, as the group lined up outside The Peabody.

  “Thank the Lord for an early night occasionally,” said Walter, “Although I’d drive with Sean anytime. The kids love him.”

  “Uh-oh, I spoke too soon,” Gail said. “Here we go, people. Look sharp.”

  “Those bridesmaids should have shot the bride for making them wear those dresses,” Walter whispered to Mickey.

  Mickey snickered. “Vomit-green with ruffles. Ew!”

  “Mickey, hush.”

  Jake watched as the entire wedding party, a dozen ruffled green bridesmaids and their tuxedoed groomsmen, erupted from the Union Avenue door of The Peabody, rushed the carriages and demanded rides for everyone.

  “Leave the champagne with the doorman,” Gail said, “and you’re on.”

  After the fee was negotiated and the bottles and glasses turned over to the doorman for safekeeping, the crowd swarmed noisily into the carriages.

  They switched seats and carriages and jockeyed for position for ten minutes before they finally settled who would sit where and with whom.

  Jake shook his head. This definitely wasn’t the job for him.

  One man called, “Home, James.”

  Gail’s voice carried over the noisy group. “Everyone, for safety’s sake, once you sit, stay seated in the same spot. You can get hurt if you don’t. Okay?”

  She carried sufficient authority to earn a chorus of uh-huh and yes, ma’am.

  Jerry whispered, “Please don’t let anyone throw up in the carriage.”

  The drive began calmly enough. The passengers were noisy, but happy noisy.

  Five minutes into the drive after they had turned down Main Street, empty now that the trolleys had stopped running, one of the men in Darrell’s vis-à-vis shouted, “Hey, you cowards! I got fifty bucks says our horse can beat y’all’s horses!”

  Jake tensed and glanced back at the young man, who’d obviously had too much to drink.

  “No way!” The cry rose up from the folks in Gail’s victoria. “Fifty bucks says you can’t!”

  “No bets allowed and no racing, either,” called Darrell. “Y’all sit down and behave now.”

  Fortunately, Jake thought, it took a lot to get the horses to move faster than a slow trot. They preferred to amble.

  They could, however, gallop like oversize racehorses if provoked enough.

  The young man who had started the betting stood up behind Jake, uttered a piercing rebel yell and grabbed Darrell’s long buggy whip.

  “Hey, you,” Darrell shouted, “Sit down and give me back my whip!”

  “Yee-ha! Catch us if you can!” The man leaned across the front seat of the carriage, raised his arm high over his head and cracked the whip hard against the big Belgian’s rump.

  Ranger’s explosive leap forward threw the man into the lap of one of the bridesmaids and Jake lurched sideways. Just in time he managed to grip the side of his seat and brace himself.

  The girls shrieked, the man yelled and the carriage rocketed down the center of Main Street behind the galloping Belgian, who was determined to reach the stable as fast as possible.

  Gail shouted. “The rest of you, hang on to your horses! Darrell’s got a runaway.”

  “I’m standing on the brakes,” Darrell shouted. “Whoa! Ranger, walk!”

  “Whoa!” Jake’s baritone rose above the muddle of sound as though he had a bullhorn. “Ranger, Whoa. Now!”

  The Belgian reacted to the command and stopped. The shouting had ended and the only sounds now were the sobs of one of the bridesmaids.

  “Aw, man!” said a very drunken voice from the floor of Jake’s carriage.

  Darrell pointed at the man and snarled, “You! Off!”

  “Man, you can’t do that. I paid for this—”

  “You heard the man,” Jake said gently. “Off.”

  Something in Jake’s tone penetrated the idiot’s fogged brain. He was assisted to the street by the young women, who had progressed from terror to rage at the instigator.

  Standing beside the carriage, he whined, “How ’m I gonna get back to the hotel?”

  “Walk!” came a chorus of drivers and riders alike.

  “Ranger, walk on,” Darrell said. The passengers had sobered up fast and sat without speaking for the remainder of the ride. Back at the hotel they piled out in silence, very subdued. Not too subdued, however, to remember to take possession of their remaining glasses and bottles of champagne.

  “Sorry about that,” one of the passengers said to Darrell. “Guy’s a jerk. Here, hope this’ll make up for the trouble.” He handed up a sheaf of bills. Darrell saw the denomination on the top bill and raised his eyebrows. “Thanks for taking care of us,” the man said, and shook Jake’s hand. “You got some voice on you.”

  On the way back to the stable, Darrell said, “Thanks, Jake. Ranger’s a good horse, but he’s young. Hasn’t driven his share of idiots yet. When that guy grabbed my whip and whacked Ranger, I knew we were in trouble. Ranger’s never been lashed in his life.”

  “The carriage brakes would have stopped him eventually.”

  “Not before we hit the trolley turntable up at the north end of Main. Catch a wheel at a gallop, and we’d sure as shootin’ turn over.” He began to laugh from relief. “Ranger sure listened to you. Talk about the voice of authority.”

  Back at the office, Charlie heard Darrell’s words and nodded.

  Jake. Even animals trusted him to look after them. He must have been an incredible commander.

  She wondered, though, what had happened to his team when they followed him?

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THURSDAY AFTER THE carriage drive was spent dissecting the evening’s events. Mary Anne had hated the experience, while Hank and Mickey loved it. Both Sean and Jake were noncommittal.

  “I could get used to that,” Hank said. “Pay’s not bad, the tips are great and it’s not hard work.”

  “And you can hit on the pretty girls,” Mary Anne said. He gave her a sharp glance but didn’t respond otherwise.

  “I couldn’t do it alone,” Mickey said. “Not until I was secure on my pins. But I could sure drive weddings in the Cinderella carriage with somebody along to ride shotgun.”

  “As in shotgun weddings?” Sean said. “Not too many of those any longer.”

  When Jake brought his dishes back into the common room and added them to the trolley, Sarah, who had come over for lunch, touched his arm. “Jake, can I talk to you?”

  “Sure. What’s up?” He was surprised that Sarah had approached him. She hadn’t seemed to pay much attention to him. Only Mickey and Hank appealed to her. He led her down to the tack room.

  Sarah sat down behind the rein board and began to play with the reins attached to the wrought-iron horse’s head. “Mom said you left home when you were my age.”

  “Not by choice.”

  Sarah’s eyes widened. “They kicked you out? Mom s
aid you ran away. I figured you couldn’t stand it at home any longer.”

  “You aren’t considering doing the same thing, are you?”

  Sarah avoided his eyes. “I knew a couple of girls on post who ran away, but they both had drug problems. The cops eventually found Patsy and brought her home. Her parents tossed her into rehab, but we had to leave before she came out, so I don’t know whether it took or not. Nobody knows what happened to my other friend Shelley.”

  “You didn’t answer my question. Are you considering running away?”

  Sarah avoided his eyes.

  “This may sound like a stupid question, but what would you be running from.”

  “I hate this place!” She yanked on the reins so hard the iron horse head bounced. “I don’t know anybody, I never go anywhere, there’s nothing to do. I haven’t been to the mall except with Mary Anne to get her wig. I don’t even have anybody to go to the movies with. All I do is sit in my room all day and play video games and talk to people who are miles away doing stuff that I used to do. This is the only vacation I’ll get this year, and I haven’t even had my bathing suit on.”

  “Have you considered visiting some of your friends from the base?”

  Sarah rolled her eyes. “They don’t want me. I’m like—who’s the guy who got swallowed by the shark?”

  “Do you mean Jonah? I think it was a whale.”

  “Whatever. They pitched him overboard because he was bad luck. That’s me. After Daddy got killed everybody was so supportive.” She made a face. “Right. That lasted about a week. Then I could tell every time they saw me, they thought about how the same thing could happen to their dads. Or moms. A couple of my friends’ mothers are on their second or third deployment. The father of one of my best friends is deployed for the fifth time, would you believe?”

  Now that she’d started, Sarah couldn’t seem to stop talking. She paced the tack room, pulling steel bits off their hooks and putting them back, batting the iron heads of the horses on the rein boards so that they bobbled like dolls.