Chapter 50
In which Maggie has an epiphany
Orville tossed the reins of his filly to Sanchez and walked across the arena with us. As we passed by his office, Ramon called out, "Telephono."
"If its Jim Bob, tell him I'll call him back." Orville grinned at me. "Got to figure out how to cook all that crow I got to eat."
"No, senor, for Doctor Maggie."
"Oh, nuts," I said. "Sarah, you can wait in the truck. I won't be a minute. Probably Eli asking me to pick up something at the grocery."
I was wrong.
When I climbed into the truck, I said, "Mike Rasmussen's Percheron stud, Big Jake, is down in his stall. Mike thinks it's probably a mild impaction. We'll have to stop by there on our way home."
Sarah sat up. "Should I call home? We promised we'd be back before lunch."
"We will be. A little mineral oil and a shot of tranquilizer and Jake'll be fine." I turned the truck around, leaned out my window and yelled, "Merry Christmas!"
She sat quiet for a few minutes, then said, "Mother, you had no way of knowing you were right about those two fillies."
"It was logical."
"You weren't wearing a hard hat either. How many times did you drum into my head that you never get on a horse-any horse -without a hard hat?"
I didn't want to hear it. "It worked out, didn't it?"
"It might not have." She didn't have that accusing tone I was used to. This was what my mother used to call 'more in sorrow than in anger.' I'd have preferred anger.
She was right about the hard hat, drat her. I had been cavalier because I was showing off.
"You could have broken a hip or cracked your skull open back there. "
"You could have gotten bit by a cobra in Thailand," I snapped. "Did it stop you? Or me from worrying about you?"
"It's not the same thing."
"It is too." I pulled up to a four-way stop and motioned for an eighteen-wheeler to come across. Poor bastard, working on Christmas Eve. At least he didn't have to listen to his children bitch at him.
Having seized the reins of this conversation, I had no intention of putting the spotlight back on my failings. "You better hope Evan will look after you the way Morgan looked after all of us. Otherwise, you're going to have to give up your cute little trips to Thailand and Katmandu and Zamboanga, unless you intend to take any stray baby you may have along with you in a back pack while you're scouting locations in the jungle."
I floored the truck. We spun gravel and narrowly avoided the ditch on the side of the road.
We didn't say a word to each other the rest of the trip.
Mike was waiting for me outside his bam. When I realized Sarah had no intention of getting out of the track, I left the keys in the ignition so she could run the heater and the radio if she liked. I grabbed my bag and followed Mike down the hall to Big lake's stall.
Big Jake had been my patient since he was four years old. I'd wormed him, vaccinated him, treated him for diaphramatic tympani, and even once for a mild impaction. We had grown old together. Now he was over thirty.
He still looked young and strong, although he'd been semi-retired for the last six years. Mike gave him a small band of broodmares to bully and herd in his very own pasture, and at night he came into a palatial stall fit for a king his size.
This afternoon, however, he was obviously in great pain. He lay like a small black mountain in his stall. His dark maw had long ago turned gray. So had the hair around his ears and eyebrows.
"What have you been feeding him?" I asked Mike as he opened the stall door to let me in.
"Same as usual. Oats, hay, pasture."
"You think his gut's impacted?"
He shook his head. "Not any more. I felt of his pulse in his ankles, Maggie. It's stronger than what it should be. Can't you give him one of those shots like you did when he was a youngster?"
I shook my head. "This isn't diaphramatic tympani, Mike. He could be foundering."
Ponies and draft horses are prone to founder, the layman's term for laminitis. But not generally in December. Usually founder occurs during spring when the grass is fresh and green and the horses gorge on it after a winter of dry hay. The gut begins to produce poisons, and those poisons travel throughout the body. The body pumps blood to its vital organs-heart and lungs-and leaves the extremities like the legs and hooves to look after themselves as best they can.
Only they can't. A horse that founders badly may even slough an entire hoof wall because of lack of circulation. Even a mild case can so distort the coffin bone in the sole of the foot that it rotates down and leaves the horse lame for life, even if he survives.
In an old horse like Big Jake, and definitely a horse that was too miserable to stand, the prognosis wasn't good.
Mike knew that. I knew it. I suspect Jake knew it.
I felt my heart sink. Another loss at Christmas time, even if only the loss of an old friend like Big Jake, was almost more than I could bear.
I went to work at once, pumped him full of antibiotics and electrolytes and saline solution and painkillers.
"We need to get him on his feet," I said to Mike. "If he can't walk, we need to keep him standing until we can get his hooves into buckets of ice water."
"Don't look good, does it, Maggie?" Mike said as he stroked Big Jake's neck. "He's done been a good ole horse. Be like losing a friend."
I blinked back my tears. Wouldn't do Big Jake any good for me to cry. I took a deep breath, straightened my shoulders. I was still smarting from that blasted cow butt. "You go get your tractor and some heavy rope. This time I think we're going to need them."
"Uh-huh."
"We'll try to force him to stand, then slide the ropes under his belly and snub them to the posts at the comers of his stall. If he starts to go down again, we can winch him upright with your tractor. It's a long shot, but it's all I've got."
He nodded. "I'll go get the tractor."
He ducked out of the stall, and I heard the thud of his feet down the aisle toward the front of the barn where his big tractor stood.
I'd pulled off what Mike Rasmussen thought was a miracle once before.
Today I was fresh out.
Big Jake was going to die, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do to prevent it. I didn't want Sarah to see me put him down. I prayed she'd stay in the truck.
As if to prove me wrong, Big Jake surged to his feet and stood shivering with pain. But he stood.
I had to check his heart sounds and his gut sounds and his lung sounds while he was standing. Then I had to pick up his hooves one by one so that I could test the soles for signs that the coffin bone had begun to rotate downward.
I leaned against Big Jake's side with my head toward his tail and placed my stethoscope just forward of his loin.
That's when he fell on me. He didn't sit down on his butt the way he had when he had the tympani. He collapsed flat out on his side.
Mike couldn't hear me yell for help and neither could Sarah.
Big Jake and I might die here together before anyone realized there was a problem. Sarah had already berated me for taking chances. She and Nathan had lost Morgan last year at Christmas as much as I had.
I would not die on my children.
I kept thinking that I had a hundred bucks worth of rib roast in my refrigerator. If I died it would spoil. Crazy.
I wriggled, managed to pull my face out of the shavings in Big Jake's stall, and tried to yell for help, but all that came out was a croak. I could hear Mike's tractor start up. If I could just shove Big Jake over a few inches...
I pulled my right arm out from under him, balled my hand into a fist and began to hammer his ribs. "Get off me, horse. I know you hurt, but for the love of God, get off!"
He groaned and fought to roll away. I squirmed a few inches forward before he subsided once more and trapped my legs and hips again.
I was having trouble catching my breath. I closed my eyes and saw stars. I couldn't pass out. My fac
e would fall back into the shavings and I'd suffocate.
"Mom! Oh, God, Mom!"
Sarah's voice. It seemed a long way away.
"Grab his halter," I croaked. "Pull!"
"Sweet Lord, Maggie," Mike added his voice to the mix. Big Jake strained away from me. A moment later I felt Mike's callused hands grasp my free wrist-absolutely the wrong thing to do if Jake had fractured my spine, but at that point I didn't much care. I wanted out of there fast.
I felt as though I were being stretched on a rack. Big Jake rolled forward and back, steamrolling a ton of horse against me. I could hear Sarah's gasps and sobs.
"Leave me, Mike," I gasped. "Help Sarah with Big Jake."
He didn't ask questions. He went.
What seemed like an eternity later, Big Jake rolled onto his chest. I dragged myself into the comer of the stall. If he stood up, he wouldn't have any idea where those hooves of his would land. I didn't want them landing on my head.
He surged upright as I covered my head and rolled into a ball.
Sarah and Mike jerked me to my feet. Sarah threw her arms around me. "Mom! Dear God, Mom!" She started to drag me around Big Jake toward the front of the stall.
I could stand. My legs felt like over-stretched robber bands, but they felt. As a matter of fact, as the blood surged back into them, they burned as though they'd been dipped in kerosene and set afire.
Sarah put her arm around my waist. "Come on! He could go down again any minute." I let her pull me out into the aisle where Mike grabbed hold of my other side.
"Guys, guys, I'm fine," I said. As blatant a lie as I ever told. "Mike, Sarah, we've got to snub those ropes crossways under his belly to the stall supports. He mustn't go down again."
"Leave him, Mom," Sarah was sobbing. "You're hurt."
"Not hurt. Quick, Mike."
"Hell, I'll do it," Sarah said. She shoved me at a hay bail and grabbed one of the heavy lines from Mike's tractor. "Don't you dare move."
"Sarah, be careful," I wheezed. I leaned back against the wall behind me and took deep breaths. No stabbing pain, so I hadn't punctured a lung. I poked my ribcage. Sore, but not agonizing. I struggled to my feet in time to see Mike and Sarah slip the last bull line under Big Jake's belly and take several wraps around the six by six at the back of his stall.
"There," Sarah said. Then she turned and saw me. "I told you to sit down and stay sat! We have to call an ambulance."
"I'm okay, Sarah, really I am. No broken ribs, nothing but a few braises. Go on back to the track. I'll be there in a minute. I promise I'll be out in a minute. I need to speak to Mike."
She looked from one of us to the other. "One minute. You don't come out, I come in and drag you, clear?"
"That's some girl you got there, Maggie," Mike said. "She got here before I even heard you. Scared the pee out of her, I'd guess."
"Mike, I've done all I can do," I said as I stroked Big Jake's nose. "I don't think it's going to be near enough. Do you want me to take care of it?"
He ran a hand down his grizzled face. "We got him on his feet. I'll keep an eye on 'em. I'll stay up with him tonight. If he ain't no better by momin', well, I've got my forty-five. Won't be the first time I've had to put a horse down."
"No! You'll do no such thing."
"Maggie, tomorrows Christmas."
"If I have to come out on Christmas morning to give him a shot of barbiturates, I'll do it. He deserves to die peacefully and with dignity. We all do, dammit. Don't you dare put him down yourself. You promise?"
He signed. "Yeah, all right. What're the odds we can save him? I don't give a hoot whether he's sound or not."
"Best guess? At his age? Eighty-twenty against us." I touched Big Jake's forehead and then Mike's arm. "Call me at the crack of dawn. Let me know. I'll come." I stroked the horse's shoulder. "He's a dear old boy."
I managed to walk out of the barn without limping and with my head held high.
Sarah satin the driver's seat of the track with the motor running. "You are not driving, Mother. I ought to take you to the emergency room."
"I'd wind up sitting in a room with sixty people with communicable diseases. I'm not hurt now, but I'd sure as shootin' have pneumonia by morning. I've got a roast to put in the oven."
As we drove toward home, Sarah said, "You could have been killed twice today."
"But I wasn't."
"You can't keep doing this." She glanced at me and I saw her eyes were brimming with tears. "You're all the family Nathan and I have left, Mom. For the first time in my life, it looks as though I might actually find a good guy to marry and have kids with. They/11 already miss out on the best grandfather they could ever have had. I don't want them to miss out on the best grandmother too."
Chapter 51
In which Maggie announces her decision
I popped that rib roast into the oven the minute I saw Sarah, Evan and Nathan and Lisa off to the movies. I had sworn Sarah to secrecy about the Big Jake incident, and although she offered to stay and help with dinner preparations, I really wanted the house to myself.
I dragged myself upstairs followed by three cats at my heels. They knew I was in pain. Times like this I was glad that we had put in a whirlpool tub when we built the house. By the time I was pruny, I felt passable, although when I looked at my rump in the three-way mirror I could see more purple than pink. Long sleeves would hide the scrapes and scratches. A hot patch in the middle of my back would keep me moving. I lay down for an hour with all three cats pressed hard against me, and when I dragged myself out of sleep, I thought I really could get through the party.
Most of the preparations for dinner had already been made. I turned the lights on outside and on the tree, put out ice, checked to see that the table was set and that the serving dishes were ready.
Then I made the trifle. It takes a quart of whipping cream and is so rich that I usually don't dare to make it except at Christmas. I had considered not fixing it this Christmas, but that was part of our lives through the years with Morgan, and should remain part of our lives without him.
By the time the children came back, I was dozing in my recliner in the den in front of the fire with the cats. The four of them were arguing amiably about the movie. Evan thought it was pretentious, and Sarah agreed with him. Big surprise. Lisa and Nathan liked it. They rummaged around in the kitchen searching for drinks and snacks until I called, "You mess up my food and you don't get any supper."
"Mother?" Nathan came into the room with a lite beer in his hand. "I figured you'd be over at the clinic."
"We're closed."
"You need any help with dinner?" he asked.
"All done. Shoo, scat. "
"Then I'm going to grab a nap," Sarah said. "I don't suppose you'd agree to Evan's joining me?"
"You're right. I wouldn't. Sorry, Evan."
"No problem."
Sarah made a face at me and shut the door of the guest room behind her. "Us too," Nathan said. He took Lisa's hand and led her up the back steps. "You can't stop us. We're legal."
Evan sat on the sofa across from me with a tall glass of what looked like cola in his hand. "If you want me to go to Eli's and leave you alone, tell me. I won't be offended."
I shook my head. "Glad to have you." I leaned forward. He grinned.
"This is where Sarah and Nathan say I get the third degree, right?"
"Does that bother you?"
"Your Southern third degree can't come close to my Iowa mother's third degree."
"Tell me about yourself."
"Unto the third and fourth generation?"
"If you know back that far."
"Fair enough." He took a deep swig of cola.
"One ex-wife," he said. "No children, no alimony. She sells real estate and makes more than I'll ever make. But I make a decent living and I like what I do."
"Where does Sarah fit in?" I asked.
"I want to marry her, have babies, the whole schmeer."
"So you came this Christmas
to ask me for Sarah's hand?"
He gave me an answering grin. "Sarah talks about you all the time. I wanted to meet you. See if you and Sarah were as much alike as I guessed."
"Alike? Sarah's Morgans child. We've never been on the same wave length, not since..."
"Since her horse died?"
"You know about that?"
"I know her side of it. According to her, you weren't there when she needed you."
"I wasn't, but I had no way of knowing about Pride. Sarah thinks I've failed her all her life. Every time we have a fight, she reminds me that I walked out in the middle of her piano recital at the good part of Clair de Lune to stitch up a basset hound that had been hit by a car."
"About the horse?"
I told him the story of Pride's death.
"In her heart, she knows it wasn't your fault."
"News to me." When I set my diet cola down on the table beside me and started to stand up, I caught my breath.
Evan reached for me. "You're hurt," he said. "Let me help you."
I pulled myself erect. "Just a little stiff. I'm fine. Now, I have to go check on dinner."
"What can I do to help?"
"Not a thing. In my kitchen I do not play well with others."
"Understood. I'm going over to Eli's to get ready for dinner."
"Have a drink with Shep. You'll like him." After he left, I called Patsy to find out about Mariah. I left a message on her answering machine asking her to report on the mare's progress. I assumed I would have heard bad news. That must mean Mariah was still progressing satisfactorily at Mississippi State.
I nearly lost it when I counted the places set for dinner. One less than last year. But Morgan used to say that nothing could hurt Christmas, and that lives well lived should be celebrated, not mourned. "So, love," I whispered. "We'll celebrate."
Susan and Lanier arrived first that evening. Susan looked very grown up with her long caramel-colored hair in a French twist. She wore a long red velvet dress with a scoop neck that showed a pair of burgeoning breasts. In a couple of years, she'd be as beautiful as her mother. Pumpkin was enduring a big red bow on his collar.
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