All God's Creatures

by Carolyn McSparren

  By the time Sarah and Morgan came back downstairs, Sarah's eyes were suspiciously red and swollen, but she seemed perfectly fine. "Thanks, Mom," she said and hugged me. "Can I go ride him this afternoon?"

  "How about 'I'm sorry I behaved like a total jerk?"'

  She opened her mouth, probably to say something jerky, then she thought better of it. "I'm sorry."

  Later I asked Morgan what he'd said to her. "I told her that she had a choice. Lease Patsy's Pride or sit on the sidelines and watch her friends ride. I also told her that she'd damned well better get over her feeling of entitlement. We're not rich, we'll never be rich, and if she wants to be rich, she'd better start learning how to make her own money. And change her attitude." He shrugged. "She shed a few tears, but she's okay."

  "Why did she act that way?"

  "One of her friends told her we were actually buying her the horse. She was surprised, that's all. She still got her dream horse, just not the way she thought she would."

  I escaped to the clinic as soon after breakfast as I could, ostensibly to check on the few animals we were boarding over the holidays. Morgan took Sarah and Nathan and Eli out to Patsy's.

  At that point I didn't even want to look at Sarah. I didn't mind for myself, but I knew how hard Morgan had worked on that lease and how thin we were stretched financially. I don't believe in using violence against children, but that day I wanted to smack her. There. If that makes me a bad mother, then so be it. The important thing is that I didn't do it.

  By dinnertime that evening, all four of them came in aglow and Sarah bubbled about her horse until she went to bed.

  I cried myself to sleep, because I realized that although I loved my daughter, I didn't like her very much.

  Chapter 21

  In which a tragedy strains a relationship

  By the time Sarah turned eighteen, she and Patsy's Pride were winning junior jumper championships all over the southeast. I couldn't always travel with her, but Morgan was usually at ringside to cheer her on. Since the horse shows were on weekends and Nathan's soccer matches were mostly on weekday afternoons, Eli, Morgan and I could be there to cheer him on as well.

  When the horse shows were in Germantown, Eli or I was generally on call as the veterinarian on site. That suited me fine. I could watch Sarah ride without feeling guilty that I was avoiding work.

  The McLain Scheibler Clinic had started by marketing our services to horse shows and still found them a good revenue stream, as did any new large animal vet who moved to the area. Although horse shows officially started on Friday and ran through Saturday, riders and horses nearly always moved to the showgrounds to school over the fences Wednesday and Thursday. Eli and I were seldom on call for schooling days.

  Patsy's Pride had made a remarkable improvement in Sarah's attitude, especially toward me. Nathan had always understood when I had to leave one of his soccer matches to treat an animal emergency. He'd been born easy-going and self-sufficient.

  Sarah, on the other hand, still had not forgiven me for the time I walked out on her piano recital to rush to an emergency when she was only halfway through Clare de Lune. Sarah had been nine at the time.

  Now, for the first time, she seemed to accept my professional commitments. She'd always loved animals, but she was jealous of the time I spent with them. Now, I was actually employed by the show, so she could count on my being there. I loved cheering her on, but I could also comfort her when she or Pride screwed up. Losing was hard for her, but she was learning that one loss was only a blip, not a major disaster.

  Sarah was a truly talented rider. She'd always made good grades, but they meant nothing to her. Now, her self esteem soared with every blue ribbon. She was even thinking of attending one of the colleges where she could take Pride and continue to ride.

  In the early nineties, the first show of the season in Germantown took place in early April. Wednesday, the first schooling day, I was dipping a herd of sheep outside of Oakland, while Eli held down the office.

  A new young vet named Kevin something-or-other was on call at the schooling. He had been hired by Rodney Armbruster 's practice and had been in town a month. I had met him only once at a meeting, and he seemed competent enough. He was good-looking and tall, so all the female junior riders were tripping over their own feet to get his attention.

  Sarah was no exception.

  I was really looking forward to getting back home that Wednesday afternoon so I could hear how the schooling went. Patsy called me on my new car phone when I was about twenty minutes from the clinic. I knew it wasn't good news from the tone of her voice. "Is Sarah all right?" I asked. "Was she thrown?"

  "Pride's dead," Patsy said.

  I gasped. "Sarah?"

  "Sarah wasn't riding him when he died."

  "How? What?"

  "Just come, Maggie."

  By the time I reached the show grounds, the grounds keepers had removed Pride's body. Not a good idea to have competitors see dead horses.

  Patsy was waiting for me when I drove up, and opened my door before I'd shut off the ignition.

  The atmosphere around the stables was much too quiet. Several of Sarah's friends ran up to me in tears to say how sorry they were.

  But where was Sarah?

  Horses do have strokes and heart attacks, just like people. I figured that's what had happened to Pride. I'd have to explain that to Sarah and give her what comfort I could. I knew she'd be devastated.

  "Maggie, she got in her car and drove off," Patsy said. "She didn't say anything to anybody. She didn't speak. She wouldn't even look at Pride. You know how sensitive Sarah is. I expected her to cry, screamsomething. Maggie, I'm frightened for her."

  The last place she needed to be was behind the wheel of her car. I dialed her car phone and got that horrible message about the caller being out of service.

  Patsy's normally ruddy face was ashen except for the red rings around her eyes. "She was completely calm. Dry-eyed. She just walked away." Patsy spread her hands.

  "She must have been in shock. Patsy, what happened?"

  "Pride had the sniffles this morning. He hadn't improved by this afternoon, so when I couldn't get you, I asked the show vet-that Kevin person," she spat his name. "That Kevin person to give him a shot of penicillin..."

  I closed my eyes.

  "That's right, Maggie. He pushed a whole syringe of penicillin straight into Pride's vein. He was dead before he hit the ground."

  I leaned back against the truck. One of the first lessons any vet learns is always to pull up a syringe to check for blood before pushing medicine that should be given in the muscles. If there's blood, you're into a vein or an artery, and penicillin in a vein will kill a horse before you remove the needle.

  "Call Eli and Morgan," I said. "Call Nathan's school and get him to call me. He'll know where to look for Sarah."

  "Where are you going?"

  "To find my daughter!"

  I finally found her two hours later standing by the pond on the back of our property. I tried to put my arms around her, but she shrugged me off. I would have preferred hysterics.

  "I'm never getting on a horse again," she said as she walked away from me and back toward the house.

  "You'll change your mind, baby," I said as I followed her. "I know this is a tragedy, but..."

  As she stepped up onto the back deck, she turned to look at me.

  "You're always there for everybody else," she said. "Why weren't you there when Pride needed you?"

  A moment later the door to her bedroom slammed. I sank onto the patio. I was still there when Morgan and Nathan came home and found me.

  The young vet fled after he realized what he'd done. Rodney's clinic tried to avoid responsibility, but in the end they paid Patsy for the loss of Pride.

  Nobody and nothing could pay Sarah.

  Chapter 22

  In which Maggie has another sow problem

  Sarah withdrew from everything and everyone except her friends at school and h
er studies. Eli, Morgan, and even Nathan tried to convince her she needed to get back on a horse again, if only to keep from losing her nerve.

  Every time I tried to talk to her, she insisted she was fine, she had no intention of taking up drugs or alcohol or prostitution. She was simply moving on with her life to more adult pursuits. She informed us that she had been accepted at the University of Southern California. With her grades, she could have been admitted to Harvard or Yale, and with the trust funds Morgan's father had left for his grandchildren's education, we could have paid her expenses to an Ivy League school.

  She preferred USC. It was as far from home-and by extension from me-as she could get.

  Morgan and Eli both counseled me to give Sarah some time. I tried to talk to her about seeing someone-a psychologist. I knew she was in pain. Lord knows I was. She refused. Every time any of us tried to talk to her about Pride's death, she said, "I'm fine."

  I did what I always do in times of personal crisis. I worked. And as much as possible, I worked in the field rather than the office. I tried to fall into bed exhausted. I volunteered to see clients who were on the outer fringes of our area, or who had the largest herds.

  At that point we still had some substantial pig farms in Hardeman County, the next county over from us. Even now that the agricultural conglomerates have driven most of the small pig farmers out of business, some still raise hogs to show and to butcher for country ham.

  Country ham is not Smithfield. It is not cured with sugar. It is nothing like the canned variety from Denmark or from Virginia or the spiral cut hams. We are talking salt cured, smokehouse-hung hams that mature over months, not days, that come out encrusted with salt and looking on the surface as though they died sometime in the previous century.

  Country ham is never injected with water to plump it up. It may not be pretty, but a slice of real country ham served with red eye gravy and hot biscuits is as close to heaven as breakfast can come. Red eye gravy, by the way, is pan drippings with a little coffee added.

  Pork is big in Memphis, which is home to the granddaddy of all barbecue contests, held down at Tom Lee Park on the banks of the Mississippi River over a weekend in mid-May. Two out of three years it rains, but the contest so far has never been cancelled. Sometimes the cookers and visitors have to run for cover to get out of the way of thunderstorms that roar across the river straight at the Memphis bluffs. We've even had the occasional tornado warning that sent everybody scurrying. But the cooks go right back to baby-sitting the coals on their cookers. If we ever did have a tornado hit during the contest, the cooks would probably stay at their cookers until they were sucked up like Dorothy and Toto and be plumped down in Oz still holding their sauce mops aloft.

  We do not barbecue beef. The country folks still barbecue the occasional possum or squirrel, but to the rest of us, barbecue is pork, pure and simple.

  I like pigs for their intelligence and their'screw-you' attitude. You can train a pig to do tricks, but only if the pig sees some benefit in taking orders. They give affection the way cats do. If they like you, they like you. If they don't, watch out.

  At that point, the best country hams in our part of the world came from Lynn and Doug McCabe. They raised long, lean Derbyshire whites and Durocs so red they made the ladies in Titian's paintings look drab. I met them first at the Mid-South Fair where they often took home multiple blue ribbons for best sow or best boar. I hung over their pens and lovingly scratched the ears and backs of their exhibition pigs. We got to talking, and I wound up driving forty miles a couple of times a year to do their testing and vaccinations. Not only did they pay their bills on time, but Eli and I both wound up with the lagniappe of country ham to go with our biscuits.

  Doug volunteered at the local animal shelter in Brownsville three afternoons a week, while Lynn still worked full time as a nurse anes thetist. I knew my way around their farm whether they were home or not, so when Lynn called me to say that they had a sow that had been attacked and had her tail bitten off by another sow, I was happy to go take a look at her.

  The trip would take me most of the afternoon and keep my mind off Sarah.

  "She's close to farrowing," Lynn said. "We were planning to move her from the gestation barn to the farrowing barn this evening after Doug gets home. Then this morning she gets into this ruckus with one of her own daughters that's also close to her time. You know how sows get when they're close to farrowing. Real bitchy."

  "Did you isolate her?"

  "Sure did. She's in a separate pen closest to the door to the paddock. You know her. It's Peaches. She's a good of girl."

  She was indeed. An experienced brood sow, she weighed over two hundred pounds, and was intelligent and friendly.

  "I'm sorry to hear about her tail," I said.

  "We should have separated her last weekend, I guess. Just didn't get around to it."

  "I'll drive out, clean up her wound and give her a shot of antibiotics."

  "If you have time, you mind moving her to the farrowing barn?" Lynn asked. "It's just across the yard."

  "Sure. No problem."

  "Just open the door of her pen. She'll follow you over to the farrowing barn like a dog. She's done it often enough."

  I always enjoyed the drive out to Lynn and Doug's place. It was close to LaGrange down narrow roads with trees so thickly planted on either side that they had interlocked arms through the years.

  I pulled into the McCabe's yard and parked beside the gestation barn. Everything was immaculate as it always was. No mess, no odor.

  I found poor Peaches in her stall in the gestation barn quickly. Her tail had ceased to bleed and looked clean. She let me treat it. Unlike most animals, she seemed to realize I was there to help her.

  If you've ever been around pigs that are used for show and breeding, you'll have seen little notches cut into their ears. One notch stands for three-so a pig with one notch in its ear was the third piglet born in his litter. Two notches-the piglet was the fourth, fifth or sixth, and so on.

  Peaches had been born in a large litter. Instead of clipping half a dozen notches into her ear, Doug had simply popped a red ear tag through the ear itself. Sort of like a woman with pierced ears wearing a red plastic tag for an earring.

  After six months or so, the ear tag fell out, leaving a small hole. As Peaches grew, the hole grew with her. It was currently half an inch across. As the sunlight hit her ear, a small dot of light would be reflected across her pen and onto the wall. As she flapped her ear, the dot would move back and forth like a wobbly laser pointer.

  She wasn't thrilled when I stood over her and shot her with the antibiotic, but she merely waved those ears and snorted.

  I opened the door to her pen and stepped back. "Come on Peaches. Time to move house."

  She wrinkled her snout at me, but she trotted out cheerfully and followed right at my heels. I closed the door to the gestation barn behind me, walked across the small grassy area between the barns, and opened the door to the farrowing barn. "Okay, girl, inside you go."

  Peaches walked up to the door and stuck her snout inside. Farrowing barns are kept relatively dark and quiet so the sows won't be disturbed. This one was no exception.

  Peaches stuck her head in, looked around into the semi-darkness, saw no other members of her own species, and decided there must be monsters inside instead. She backed out, turned around, walked half a dozen steps, and began to nibble grass.

  "Peaches, doggonit, come on. Git in there."

  I gave her a hefty shove toward the door. She trotted up to it and walked her front half inside before she stopped, sniffed, and backed out again.

  I looked at my watch. I was and am fond of pigs, but I had dinner plans that evening. Barbecue. Pork.

  "Peaches, honey," I wheedled, "Go on in there unless you want to be tonight's menu."

  She blinked up at me. She didn't trust me. I was attempting to force her into the Black Hole of Calcutta, and she was entirely too smart to fall for that gimmick. She was
n't annoyed. She simply had no intention of doing what I asked.

  "All right for you," I said under my breath. I had two choices. I could go back to the gestation barn, find some rope and drag her into that barn. That would take time and a bunch of energy.

  Or, I could stick my index finger through that hole in her ear and pull her into the barn in about six seconds flat. I had no doubt she'd come willingly once she felt the pressure.

  I reached down and pushed my index finger through that hole.

  I realized I had just forced my finger into a Chinese finger cuff at the same time she realized I had my finger through her ear.

  The more I pulled with my right hand, the tighter that hole clamped down around my finger.

  I had also transgressed some piggy rule of privacy about which I was unaware until that moment. She didn't mind my pushing and shoving her. I could not, however, put my finger through her ear.

  She snorted, squealed, bucked, and ran straight across in front of my legs in a body block worthy of Refrigerator Perry.

  I struggled to keep my feet as she galloped in a tight circle around me.

  I had to keep twisting with her. If I didn't I'd either dislocate my shoulder or tear my finger off. I didn't dare fall. I tried to concentrate on her snout so that I wouldn't get dizzy.

  It didn't work.

  For a sow in the last stages of pregnancy, she was a real sprinter. She dug in with her piggy little hooves and corkscrewed around me again and again while she squealed at the top of her lungs. I revolved with her and kept yelling for her to stop. I yelled some other things, too. I used cuss words I hadn't used since high school.

  I'd stopped counting revolutions when without warning she sat down and fell over.

  I fell over her. My heart was racing and my head was spinning. I didn't think I'd been that drunk since I graduated from vet school.

  For a moment I was scared she'd had a stroke or aborted. Then I realized she was as winded and probably as dizzy as I was. I collapsed against her bulging belly with my right index finger still trapped in her left ear and her fat little trotters sticking straight out on either side of me.