Brotherhood of Gold

by Ron Hevener

  “You’ve done well for yourself, Theodore,” friends said. “Office in the city…beautiful home in the country…beautiful wife and kids.” Even Ezra said it. What more could a man want? What a man could want…is freedom.

  “It’s my birthday,” Ruthie purred one night after her performance at the new club. “I’m eighteen now,” she had said, though nobody would guess a day under thirty.

  “I know,” he said.

  “Look at me! I’m doing what I want. I have my own place to sing. And everybody loves me.” She looked him in the eye when she said that. “Everybody.”

  It was easy to think everybody loved you when you paid the bills, he thought. “So, what about you, Theodore? I’m not a kid anymore. Don’t you love me?”

  Love her? He had held that one, constant, thought in his mind since the day he first saw her in his office with Ezra, so grown up for her age, so eager to prove herself. So much like himself.

  And now, Stacey was kicking him out. Fine! I’ll go! I’ll get out of here, you cold-hearted man-hater! Take the house! Take the bank account! Turn the kids against me. I don’t know why I settled for you when I could have done a hell of a lot better!

  “You SETTLED because the one that’s so much BETTER than me wasn’t even BORN yet, you idiot!”

  Pack the suitcases…start the engine…Bon Voyage!

  Nice knowing ya, Stacey.

  Divorce: It’s such a trip.

  It can go for miles. It can go all the way from Connecticut to Steitzburg without skipping a beat…or even without being necessary. Divorce can find its opposite in the most unlikely of places.

  * * *

  Pennysylvania Dutch Country

  Just how love happens isn’t always as important as where. For Ezra and Sarah, it happened at an abandoned farm on a narrow dirt road, forgotten by maintenance crews now, wished off by constables and not cared about by snow fences to save it from storms. Nestled in the woods near the edge of The Ridge and the Pennsylvania game lands—its fields and streams carved by horsemen long forgotten—the farm once brimming with life lay waiting as the silver-grey Buick breezed past the white birches and hemlock trees covered with Virginia Creeper vines and poison ivy still lining its lane.

  “When you said you wanted a farm, I thought of this place right away,” Ezra said.

  “Doesn’t anyone live here?” Sarah asked.

  “Not for a long time,” he said. “It belongs to the bank.” He had thought Ruthie might settle here one day, in the old stone and stucco house. But that wasn’t very likely now.

  “It’s got character,” Sarah said, as a flock of goldfinches scattered into the bushes. “How come I never knew about this place?”

  He wanted to be wise. He wanted to be mysterious. “Maybe it’s the woods,” he said. What he really wanted to say was, sometimes we can’t see what’s ahead until we’re ready.

  His heart took in the weathered, abandoned buildings, boarded-up windows and crumbling stone climbed by tangled vines of poison ivy running all the way up the side of the weak and blackened barn. The field over there, the flat one, could be a training track for her, he thought. If she wanted it. The pond, if someone could dam up the stream, could be a lake. If she wanted it. And the hill? Broodmares and their foals belonged there. It was a great place for horses: secluded pastures, water and plenty of privacy. If…she wanted it.

  Sarah, herself, was a tree fingering her way into new soil. “Horses would love it here!”

  He breathed easier. “I was hoping a horse woman might,” he said, offering a hand.

  In that moment, she searched for his eyes, but they quickly darted away. Something about her was brighter today than the first time they had met, brighter than the second when they met for coffee, or the third time…when they talked about their dreams and his eyes went shy. Was it the man’s shirt and jeans she wore so comfortably today? They were, of course, Arden Miller’s. Was it her hair, swept away from her face like that, showing a neck so frail it might catch cold? Without asking, he reached for her shirt collar and lifted it as if he had done so a thousand times before, and she made no resistance. “Would you like to see the barn?” he asked. “I would offer the house for you to see first, but something tells me the house doesn’t matter to you.”

  He dared the walls of a banker’s professional conduct to crumble as she walked beside him now, quieter than what he was sure was usual for her. Climbing a gentle incline, they circled the barn to reach the great doors where tractors had come and gone, and teams of horses before them.

  “Fenstamacher. 1856,” she said, reading the cornerstone of the barn. “Where did I hear that name before?”

  He smiled and said, “Old legends and stories, maybe.” He said nothing more.

  “No, really,” she said, taking hold of a rusty metal latch on a door and trying to slide it sideways. “It rings a bell.”

  “Maybe your father mentioned it,” he said. “William Fenstamacher was president of the bank when the Crash hit. He was my boss.”

  Her face went serious. “He took everybody’s money and disappeared.”

  “When the bank opened again, it took over his property,” Ezra said. “And put me in charge.”

  Gently, he stood behind her, wrapped his arms around hers and pulled the door open to a world of dusty rafters, flapping pigeons and sunlight peeking through warped boards like laser beams in a museum of treasures.

  Searching for honesty, she said, “That’s not the only thing you want to be in charge of, Ezra. Is it?”

  A pigeon fluttered and his knees with it. “I can be a good manager,” he smiled, glancing at a loose mountain of hay filling one end of the barn.

  “Show me,” she whispered.

  Slowly, they crossed the bridge of steel hearts as he placed one hand, then the other, on either side of her face. “Mary’s the only one,” he said to this woman who surely must sense his threads to Mary breaking; their foggy memories evaporating under the sun of a new hope. “Until now,” he whispered—falling into the hay with her, rolling their flesh and pressing his soul into hers as if he had waited all his life for this. As if nothing could matter more, now or ever again!

  Tenderly. Urgently. Furiously, they kissed…tasted…sliding over each other and into each other’s body, mind and spirit as only lovers—real, unashamed lovers—know how to do.

  Kissing wasn’t enough. Mouths weren’t enough. Rubbing clothes until they burned wasn’t enough.

  Breathing, choking for life! Sighing off a denial held too long, they rose, coasted and fell together—over and over and over again—knowing it was right! It was wrong! It was right and would never be wrong again.

  “I belong—here—with you!” her voice. Powerful! Husky! Her legs—squeezing the air from his chest. Her hands pulling his hair. His tongue sliding over her neck. His teeth biting a trail to her navel. His hands rolling her butt in ways only the most sinful dare to….

  Ezra, with his legs almost womanish, his body not lean and hard like Arden’s had been. Sarah, so much smaller than Mary could ever be. Wetter.

  They danced—man in woman, woman in man—until the smell of the barn was filled with the smell of them. Until dry tobacco leaves hanging from the rafters had loosened the last of their spicy dust, and soft, forgotten feathers of owls, pigeons and swallows drifted weightlessly into stillness.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked, as they lay on their backs staring at the ceiling.

  “About dust,” he said, seeing it spin in the laser beams. “Ashes to ashes. Who do you think those specks were?”

  She considered this, and said, “I don’t know. All the people we ever knew, maybe?” then she asked him, “Do you feel wicked?”

  “Wicked because of what those people think?” He grinned. Then in the slow-motion way of lovers saying whatever comes to mind, he said, “We’re taking a gamble, and gambling is the devil’s work, Sarah. Or don’t you read the Bible?”

  “Gambling on us? Or gambling on hors
es,” she sat up, brushing straw from her hair and gathering her clothes as his silence confirmed her guess…or made her guess even more. “Well,” she tossed him his pants, “I don’t know if racehorses are covered in the Bible. But I do know what we just did is. And I feel like a winner.”

  He relaxed. It had been just as good for her, and he knew it. Smiling, they kissed. “Is this really your dream?” he wanted to know.

  “Completely,” she answered him. “And we might need that old plow over there if we’re going to sow a good hay field.”

  He laughed at the thought. “I haven’t been a farmer since I was a kid,” he said. “But I think we already started without that plow over there.”

  Loving the idea, he threw a look toward the door. “I see a pile of baler twine over there. It might come in handy, if it’s not too rotten.”

  “OK. Now we just need a tractor,” she smiled, standing up and offering him her hand.

  “In the old tool barn,” he winked. “A little rusty maybe. But I think it still works.”

  He reached for his shirt and handed her a paper.

  She laughed, crackling bright and held it like a ticket to a dream. “You had this with you all along? You’re a man of many mysteries, Ezra Hoover. I like that.” She unfolded the lease and read out loud. “A thousand a year, and improvements deducted for the rent…OK. But you know the kind of improvements I have in mind are going to be a lot more than a thousand.”

  “I hope so,” he said. “I’d hate to think all the work I could do around this place would come without a price tag.” He smiled big.

  “You want to help?”

  “Find me a broom,” he said, handing her the house keys.

  It was crazy. He was old enough to be her father. He worked in an office. He had a respected position in town to think about. What made him think he could satisfy a lusty woman like her? What made him think somebody else might not try? A lease…a few pieces of farm equipment…room to breathe. It was a start.

  Hair flying, Sarah was back in an instant with broom, bucket and sponge. “Mattison Farm,” she said, as they swept together, like sweeping away the past. “For a name, I mean.”

  “I like it,” he coughed, from the tractor engine. “By renting, you save enough money to get better horses, like you want. By the way,” he asked somewhere between a wrench and a spark plug, “they sound special. Where do you get such horses?”

  “I’d have to go to Poland for racehorses. Or Russia, if I could get there,” she answered.

  “The Soviet Union? I don’t think it’s possible. Hand me that engine belt.”

  She draped it over his head like a hoola hoop and stuck out her tongue. “How do you know what to do with a tractor?”

  “I asked what it wanted and it said, just some love and attention.” He put an arm around her. “Like somebody else around here.”

  Slapping his arm, she grinned. “I’ll show you some attention!” and just those words washed away years of neglect, as she started rubbing his neck. “Nothin’ like a good rub-down to get the motor started,” she said in a way like they had been easy with each other for years. “You know,” she said, sponging the tractor clean, “I won’t be the only one trying to get stock from behind the Iron Curtain, Ezra. I know of a few other Americans wanting Russian horses, too. Ever heard of Dr. Armand Hammer?”

  “The pencil man? Of course.” Mentioning that The Brotherhood was doing international business with him would have been indiscreet.”

  She looked at him with a twinkle in her eyes. “You don’t take Arabian horse racing seriously, do you?”

  “Well, as a banker, I look at things from a profit point of view,” Ezra said.

  “Why would somebody like Armand Hammer—who does business with the Soviet Union, by the way—be involved with anything that doesn’t have a future?” Sarah asked.

  “Maybe he just likes horses,” Ezra said.

  “Or…maybe there’s more to it, Ezra. I mean, maybe he sees what Arden did: Potential. Arden always said if Arabian horseracing got off the ground here—really got a foothold on legitimate racetracks—then right now’s the time to get ready for it.”

  “Is that the plan?” Ezra wondered.

  “Ezra, Man-o-War was a Thoroughbred, but if you had the chance to own a horse like that, wouldn’t you grab it? Arabian racing’s small enough right now that the bloodlines haven’t been proven yet. They race Arabians in other countries. But here, it’s just getting started. If I can get my hands on the right horses, and prove them on the track, I can build a dynasty!”

  “Other women build their dynasties with children,” he said.

  “I’m not like other women, Ezra. You should know that now. Anyway, kids’ll break your heart. I need something I can count on.”

  “The empire builder,” he said, seeing again the woman who had first impressed him as he turned the key to the tractor and it came to life.

  “Power, Ezra!” she said above the clacking roar of the John Deere. “The only aphrodisiac!”

  * * *

  The Arabian Horse Breeding Farms of Poland

  Although it was the beautiful horses of Egypt that caught her breath with their huge eyes, dished faces and arched necks, it was the athletic, steam-rolling power of Russian- and Polish-bred Arabians that Sarah couldn’t shake. “A horse doesn’t win a race on prettiness,” she could hear Arden saying in the back of her mind. “Go for heart. That’s what you want. Heart and drive. You can breed for size, Sarah. A big horse and a small horse carrying the same weight? You want the big horse with the long stride and lots of heart and lung room. Lots of energy.”

  She kept looking. “If you have the kind of horses I want, I’ll show you good American cash,” she told them at Poland’s stud farms. At Michalow, Kurozweki and Bialka, with horses entirely different from what she had come to know as Arabians until then, she asked, “Are you sure they’re purebred?”

  “Koheilan is the purest of the pure.”

  “But weren’t you forced to use other breeds to save your stock?”

  “You insult us, Miss Mattison,” said a gallant old man dressed in turtleneck and government khaki. “We breed only the purest blood to the purest blood. But each horse proves itself on the track first. Or at least we hope for that.” She noticed his hands, scarred and proud. Someone had told her this was the man who saved a great stallion by using his bare hands to put out the fire on the horse’s burning tail during the war.

  “I like what I hear,” she said, when you tell me you breed the fastest to the fastest. But I’m looking for beauty, too.”

  “The track is our proving ground,” he said. “But a horse must always look Arabian.”

  “Roomier chests for lung power, rounded croups for getting under themselves, bigger leg joints.”

  “Yes! Yes! You do see! Nature gives whatever you breed for,” he smiled.

  “And plainer heads than I like,” she still had to say.

  “Are you bargaining for a better price, Miss Mattison? Because if you are,” he assured her, “I can show you why our government will never allow that to happen.”

  She understood. “A great horse is in the eyes of the beholder. You’re right. But the desire to win is something nobody can breed for.”

  “You think so?” the old man asked. “You sound very sure of yourself. And how long did you say you have bred successful racehorses?”

  “Well,” she said, not really answering his question, “I know physical things are inherited. I mean, anybody can see what you’ve done with the horses here. But how do you breed for heart and drive? How do you breed for…desire? Desire isn’t something you breed for. It’s something you hope for!”

  Patiently, he smiled. “But I have already told you. And, now, you are ready for what no one else can see.”

  They drove to another stable, farther out than the main barn usually shown to tourists, and Sarah noticed a group of what appeared to be businessmen, not farmers, standing at a paddock. “You’
re not the only American here today,” the old man said. “Dr. Hammer and his friends.”

  Her eyes settled on a white-haired gentleman transfixed by a beautiful horse filled with energy—a horse as exotic in Arabian type as any she had ever seen, and coupled with a power and drive far too rare in the breed. “The doctor and his friends love to move money around with our Arabians,” the man said. “But this horse will stay with us always. No matter what anyone offers.”

  Sarah waved to the other visitors and they waved back. “I’ll take three of your best mares,” she said as she watched the Americans with a sense of curiosity about what her host had just said. “Safe in foal to this stallion.”

  From Poland, to Belgium, to the United States…the seeds of Mattison Farm were planted.

  * * *

  Pennsylvania Dutch Country

  “Well, if it doesn’t pay off,” Ezra warned, “you’ve just spent most of your fortune on a rented farm, a vacation in Poland and three skinny mares that look like they’re not long for this world.”

  “I’ve never met a skinny horse I can’t fatten up, darling. Remember that, in case anyone ever tries to hurt you about it. And, trust me, that day is coming. A long way off, maybe. But, mark my words, it’s coming.”

  “This is America, Sarah. People don’t think that way.”

  “Not yet, maybe. But watch out for anybody who figures out how to make laws that use animals as a way to get into our homes and lock up anybody they don’t like.”

  “Pretty far-fetched, if you ask me,” he said.

  “We’ll see. Until then, I’ve got riding lessons to give and I can sell off some of the horses Arden left me. That’ll give me enough for groceries and feed. We live the life we love for as long as we can, that’s how I see it. And I love horses!”

  “I respect that,” he said. And he meant it.

  “Do you respect me?” she asked. “That’s the question!”