by Lincoln Cole
“Good job,” her father said, stepping back to appraise her work.
“Should I put him away?”
“Yeah, for a bit. I’ll call the blacksmith. I’m going to have the driver’s blow the other three out one last mile and then call it a day,” he said, reaching out and mussing her hair. “Then we can get dinner.”
“Sounds good,” Bethany said, grinning. She loved feeling included when he talked about training the horses. He was in charge of the drivers, and she was his assistant.
Calvin turned and disappeared into the drivers lounge. It was a small cramped room with a couple of cabinets and tables. Bethany took the lines off Noble Land Sam and guided him to his stall. She turned him around so he was facing the front—her father told her to never let a horse go if his butt is facing the gate—and let go of his halter.
He stared at her for a moment, tossed his head, and then lowered his mouth down to her recently applied wrap.
“Hey!” she said as he bit the edge and started jerking. “Stop that!”
She stepped in and grabbed has halter, yanking his head away from the wrap. “Don’t chew that!”
He stared at her lazily for a second, snorted, and then tried to bite her on the shoulder. She dodged back out of the way, and he immediately dropped his head to the wrap again, chewing away.
She sighed, glancing back for her father. She was at a loss about what to do, but knew without a doubt he wouldn’t want Noble Land Sam chewing on his recently applied leg wrap.
A few minutes passed with her holding his halter. The horse stood calmly, every once in a while butting his head against her arm or nipping her shirt. Finally Calvin reappeared in the doorway. He saw that she was still in the stall and raised an eyebrow.
“He’s biting his wrap,” she explained.
“Then don’t let him.”
“I’m not.”
“Good,” he said. She waited, but he didn’t say anything else. He just stared at her, smirking slightly.
“Should I stay here all night?” she asked finally, a little angry.
“Do you want to?”
That sounded a lot like a ‘smart-ass comment’ to her. She decided not to point that out.
Instead, she said: “Should I take the wrap back off?”
He shook his head. “We want the wrap on. Here,” he said, walking to a nearby tack trunk and taking out a canister of petroleum jelly. He walked over and handed it to her. “Put this all over the front of the wrap.”
She opened the canister with her free hand. It was reddish and had something else mixed into the jelly. She sniffed it. “What is it?”
“Cayenne pepper.”
She scooped out a dollop with her fingers and knelt down, rubbing it across the front of the wrap. Distracted, Noble Land Sam finally managed to get a hold of her shirt with his teeth.
He gripped the cloth between his teeth and then jerked. Bethany fell off balance onto her butt. The horse snorted, shaking his head. She looked up angrily, and she would swear he was grinning at her.
Her father laughed.
“Gotta watch him,” he said.
She stood up, brushing the straw off her butt. “Apparently.” She swatted him on the nose again.
“Come on,” Calvin said, holding the gate open. She slipped outside and he latched it. Together they watched the horse bend down again and grab the wrap with his teeth.
This time he immediately let go, jerking his head up and curling his lip in surprise. Apparently he wasn’t a fan of the hot pepper jelly. He shook his head, snorting again, and looked at Bethany. His eyes were full of accusation.
“I had one horse,” Calvin said, stepping back from the stall. He took his hat off and wiped the sweat from his brow. “And only one that cayenne pepper didn’t work on.”
“Really? Why not?” she asked.
Calvin shrugged. “He must have liked spicy food. Come on, let’s head back to the track.”
He pulled the watch from his pocket. “Can I time them?” Bethany asked. Calvin shrugged, handing it over.
“Do you know how it works?”
“I can figure it out.”
They walked back to the stand. She fiddled with the dial and button, stopping and starting it, and then taught herself how to reset it. “Simple enough.”
She watched the three horses walk to the track, practicing her newfound timing skills. “Who do you think will win?” she asked, picking a spot on the third row.
“They aren’t racing,” Calvin replied, sitting down next to her.
“Yeah, but if they did,” she said. “Who would win?”
He shrugged. “Golden Anchor and Deborah’s Dream are both pacers. Deb is a little faster in a sprint but Golden Anchor has better endurance. In the stretch Deborah’s Dream would blow him away.
“But if I were a betting man, and if you put a good driver behind Golden Anchor, then by the time they reached the stretch she’d be too tired to sprint. He’d just run her into the ground.”
“What about Maribeth’s Dream?”
“She’s a trotter,” Calvin explained. “There’s a reason we don’t race them against each other.”
“So she isn’t as fast?”
“Not as fast. But prettier to watch. There’s a grace to trotters that pacers could never match. But when trotters get tired or frustrated they break stride and start running. And when that happens, they lose all of their speed.”
“Maribeth won’t break and run,” Bethany said, absently clicking the watch.
He shrugged. “She hasn’t yet in any of her races. Part of why she keeps winning. Get ready. They are about to start.”
She stood up, clearing the time on the watch, and waited. The three horses started picking up speed, heading for the pole that denoted the start of the mile.
“Okay…alright…and…now!” her father said. She clicked the button.
She alternated her eyes back and forth from the watch to the horses. They hit the first quarter in just under forty seconds, gradually picking up speed. They were going to need to pick up the pace a bit to hit the two-ten mark.
She clocked the half-mile marker at just over a minute-eighteen. “They’re a little slow,” Bethany said. Her dad nodded. As they came around the grandstand he shouted at them:
“Pick up the pace!”
Whether they heard him or not she couldn’t tell. However the lead driver, the one on Golden Anchor, laid the whip against his rump and the pack picked up speed. She imagined what it would be like in the driver’s seat, feeling the wind whistle past. Her father told her that she could drive a horse…just as soon as her feet could reach the stirrups. Right now her legs were too short and she would just fall through the frame.
“Don’t forget to stop the watch right at the finish line,” her father said.
She was too focused on the horses to really hear him though. She watched, thumb wavering over the button, and clicked it just after they passed the finish pole. Two minutes twenty-one seconds.
He looked at the watch, then nodded at her. “Good,” he said, “good job.”
She beamed. “How’d they do?”
“Much better this trip. Come on, let’s head on in and start cleaning them up for the night.”
They jumped off the bench and headed back toward the barn.
“How’s school?” her father asked as they walked.
She shrugged. “Fine.”
“You always say that.”
“I know,” she said, “but it’s always fine.”
He smiled at her, then turned his attention back to the drivers. She watched him give orders, first to strip the horses down and then clean the gear. It took a good forty-five minutes to finish, but she didn’t mind. All good things took a lot of time, she knew.
Jarod didn’t return for another half-hour with the recovered shoe for Noble Land Sam, and he only beat the blacksmith to the barn by a few minutes. Mr. Rhodes came in with the blacksmith and they negotiated a price to fix the shoe.
Neither man wanted to give an inch on the price.
Bethany and her father sat on a tack trunk and watched them argue. Her father leaned toward her and whispered: “You know how to tell when a good deal’s been struck?”
“How?” she whispered back.
“No one’s happy when it’s done.”
She giggled. A few minutes later they finished the deal. The blacksmith began angrily banging the shoe back into position and Mr. Rhodes strode angrily out of the barn.
“Come on, let’s go get dinner.”
They headed back out to her father’s truck. It was a beat up old Ford, faded blue with dirty seats. It smelled like burnt metal and hot leather. She jumped in and they headed down the road to her father’s favorite restaurant: Road Kill Café.
It was a small restaurant on the corner out in the middle of the country. The place looked dirty and was old, but the people who worked there were some of the friendliest she’d ever met. She debated between the Possum Burger (freshly scraped!) and the Skunk Sandwich (now only half as smelly!) and then decided to go the Chicken-That-Didn’t-Make-It salad. She liked their Italian dressing.
They shared a plate of French Fries too.
“Thanks,” her father says as they finished eating. She cocked her head to the side and stared at him. “For coming with me today.”
“I love going to the barn,” she replied.
He nodded. “You’re a damn good kid, you know?”
She beamed.
“Come on, let’s go home.”
Edward White
The Middle Ground
Present Day
“One of my favorite memories,” Calvin says as he finishes his story, “with Bethany. It wasn’t long after that when I couldn’t go to the barn anymore.”
“When you got sick?” I ask. I want to check my watch and see what time it is, but I know it hasn’t been too long.
Maybe I should call Bethany?
…not yet, I decide. I’ve got him talking, so I don’t want to push my luck just yet.
Calvin nods. “For a few months. Stress, the doctor said. I think I was just getting older. My body couldn’t handle it anymore.”
I can’t help but smile at the memories. I wish like hell I’d been able to work with horses. I don’t know if I would have been any good at it, but that isn’t really the point. The point is that it’s just something I never got to do.
Calvin did. I’m jealous as hell about that.
I mean, I’m good at what I do. Computer engineering. I was lucky to go to a good school. Not many high schools teach languages or coding. I personally think every school should focus on computers, and not just how to use them for social networking.
Not anything too complex. I’m not saying teach kids machine code or C, but something higher level. Java or Ruby. Or maybe Python for good mathematics scripting. And SQL. Everyone should learn at least the most general pieces of a database.
That’s the problem with this new generation. Kids are masters at using their phones. They can navigate the menus, play games, send messages, and do virtually anything…as long as it’s part of the interface.
But ask them how the phone works to send a message through satellite routing, or how a battery powers the circuit board and they stare at you like you’re crazy. This new generation of kids just isn’t interested in understanding how stuff works.
We think we’re smart as a nation. As a world. Advanced well beyond anything this planet’s ever seen before. But I’m not so sure. In the grand scheme of things, we live balanced on a knife’s edge. Almost all of our food is genetically engineered, so what happens if suddenly our bodies can’t process these new super vegetables anymore? It would take barely weeks to have mass starvation.
Don’t get me wrong. I know about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s seed vaults, but that’s beside the point. That won’t save us all. We, as humans, are not making a conscious effort to ensure our food supply.
And that’s because we are selfish and want to impose our will on those around us. We just do things without thinking about them. Like developing a fossil-fuel based economy without ever caring how much it will hurt us later on. Or pumping harmful chemicals into the atmosphere without caring that they make it difficult to breathe.
If we even miss one generation of education and technology, we would lose it all. The ability to make computers, our knowledge of medicine, our scientific advancements. Just imagine the effect on our libraries: if they are purely digital and we lose our power supply we would lose all of our texts.
Computers think in strings of binary digits we can’t comprehend, perform calculations in seconds that would take us years or lifetimes. There would really be no recovery for thousands of books.
I love hearing people talk about how we’re harming the planet, and that we need to change so we don’t destroy Earth. If we all died tomorrow, do you think in two thousand years the planet would give a damn about how ‘advanced’ we were? In a million years, would the next civilization look back and applaud us for our computers.
No, I think it’s kind of arrogant to think we’re special. Or that we’ve done something amazing by discovering new technologies. The math behind computers exists even when we aren’t here. Gravity doesn’t need our help to keep us on the ground. We barely even understand what science is capable of.
And we definitely don’t know what happens when we die. Religions offer us answers and demand faith in return. Most beliefs are based around fear. I’ve met Christians who tell me every single day that God will provide for them. They’re the first to run to the doctor and demand that she save them from any health related issues.
We want to be comforted. We want people to tell us we are okay and that everything will be okay. But that’s the thing. We can’t have the answers. We can’t possibly know the truth about life and death, so we base all of our social norms off of our own selfish decisions.
Who the hell am I to tell Calvin he has to go on living?
…
Shit, I hate when my mind does that.
“Edward?”
“Yeah,” I reply, forcing my mind back into the moment.
“I asked if you were hungry,” Calvin says. “It’s about lunch time.”
I check. It’s past two, actually. “I’m starving,” I say. “I only had a yogurt for breakfast. You hungry?”
Calvin chuckles. “No. I can’t really think of the last time I felt hungry. Or thirsty.”
“So how do you know when to eat?”
He shrugs. “Habit. Same thing with pissing. Sometimes I don’t really know I have to, so I just do it when I remember.”
I shake my head. I am not looking forward to getting old.
“I think I have some bread inside. And peanut butter.”
“Jelly?”
He shakes his head. I shrug. I suppose I’ll live.
I start to stand up, then hesitate.
He looks at me, then chuckles. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“You aren’t?”
“No,” he says. “I give you my word. But you’re still my guest, and it would be remiss not to ask you to eat something.”
“How do I know you’ll stay put?”
There’s a flash of anger in his eyes, bright hot, and I realize I touched a nerve.
“I gave you my word, Edward,” he says. I bite back a wince and nod my head, regretting the comment. I shouldn’t have said anything. Calvin came from a generation where his word was his bond. The days when a hand-shake might as well be a signed contract.
There weren’t many worse insults than asking if he meant it.
But nothing I can do about it now. I head inside and put together a plate with three peanut butter sandwiches and two glasses of water. It is white bread, not wheat, but it’ll have to do.
The kitchen is sparse and almost empty. There’s a can of soup about three years old tucked in the back and eggs in the fridge, but not much else. The only beverage is tea: Earl Gray
and Irish breakfast. I’m more of a green tea man myself, or white when I want caffeine, but to each his own.
When I bring the sandwiches outside Calvin’s eyes are distant. He looks tired and old, staring at a tree in the yard. He jolts a little when I set the plates down, and turns his attention to me.
“You’re turn,” he says.
“Hmm?” I ask, biting into a sandwich. The peanut butter isn’t bad, but I prefer crunchy.
“To talk. Unless you were planning on leaving.”
“No chance.”
“Then start talking,” he says.
“About what?”
“Your family. Your brother. The man that married my daughter.”
I swallow and then sip some water. “You know basically as much as I do.”
He shakes his head. “Bethany doesn’t really talk a lot about her family. Just little things. She never was one for spilling intimate details.”
I can’t help but laugh. That sounds about right. Bethany is a closed lip person if there ever was one.
Which is exactly the opposite of Adam. My brother is what I would call an ‘over-sharer’. If one of his kids scored well on a test you’d bet I got a call about it with all the deets.
I always looked up to Adam. He was a good brother. He was the one who took care of Jenny when my parents couldn’t. And he loves Bethany unconditionally.
“I didn’t think she would marry him,” I say, taking another bite of the sandwich.
Calvin is silent for a long minute, chewing…
“Neither did I,” he said. “But, when I heard they were engaged it was one of the proudest days of my life…”
1981 - Bethany Greenwood
You’re asking me WHAT?
“Was she your favorite?” Edward asks.
“What do you mean?” I ask. I finish the sandwich and dust the crumbs off my shirt. Mellie always teased me about how many crumbs I would get on me after eating.
The sandwich tasted fine, but to be honest I barely enjoyed it at all. I can’t help but think of it as a last meal. Will it be the last thing I ever eat?
“Your favorite child,” he clarifies unnecessarily.
I play with the idea. “I don’t think I had favorites.”
“That’s what everyone says,” Edward says with a shrug, “but it’s difficult to be completely neutral.”