“I said to split it up. They’ll kick the crap out of each other!”
I let the horses rip off clumps of hay and drag it off to eat.
“They’re scary!” Ruthie looked down at her filthy clothes. “Can we go in now?”
“We gotta pick out all of these horses’ feet or they’ll get thrush. They been standing out here in the mud for two days.”
“What’s ‘flush’?”
“Thrush. It’s a nasty fungus. Smells awful.”
“Yuck!” Ruthie looked at Sub, who was covered in manure stains.
“And we have to soak that red horse’s foot.”
I called to Sub.
“Why’s he called Sub?”
“Short for Submarine ’cause he likes to swim in the river. One time my daddy . . .”
I choked up. Everything was falling apart.
“Your daddy what?”
“One time my daddy and I were riding him together, crossing the Jackson River, and Sub put his head down and went underwater like a fish. So we changed his name to Submarine. He got us soaking wet.”
I could tell Ruthie wanted me to keep talking.
“If my father came back tomorrow, he’d drag Donald out by his hair. And he wouldn’t be too happy with my mother, either.”
I looked at Sub for a moment, and he looked back. He walked over to me, rested his head on my shoulder, and closed his eyes. His cheekbone sank into the top of my shoulder, and I thought he was going to push me over with that big head of his.
“Aww—look at him. He’s so quiet,” Ruthie said.
“He is. And it’s catching.”
I scraped some of the dried mud off his cheek. Then I turned my back and walked away.
Ruthie and I cleaned up the barn without talking for a while. I could tell she was thinking about something.
“You know, Sid, I wasn’t sure if I should tell you, but I heard Daddy saying some things about Donald.”
“Like what? Like that he’s evil incarnate?”
“Like he used to hit his girlfriend over in Elkins. Daddy’s worried that he might hit your mom.”
I turned and faced Ruthie. “Ruthie, he hit me.”
Once the words came out of my mouth, everything changed. It was real. It was out.
“You have to tell your mother and Wayne. If you don’t, I’ll tell my father, he’ll call Wayne, and the shit will hit the holy fan,” she said.
I almost wished I hadn’t said anything, but it felt good knowing she cared so much that she actually threatened me. I didn’t know who else I was going to tell or what I was going to do, but I had to do something. I knew Ruthie would do what she’d said. That was how Ruthie was. She left without saying anything.
Melinda and I picked up Wayne from the hospital, and she drove us to his house in her car. I thought about telling her then, but I couldn’t. I was scared she would pick Donald over me—that was why I had kept it secret in the first place. I was scared she wouldn’t believe me or that she would believe me but not really care. Sometimes I didn’t know what went on in her head, but I knew I loved her no matter what.
Melinda helped Wayne inside and made him some tea, and then she went home. Wayne’s neighbor Marlene Watson came by with a hot dish of food and talked for a while. She lived down the road and ran a cattle farm with her husband, who used to work at the mill as a pipe fitter but had retired. She had a cheerful face, like a daisy, and it made me feel good just looking at her. After she left, another neighbor, Pete Carter, a used-car dealer in Hot Springs, came by to say hello. He was a round and neatly dressed man with his pants pulled all the way up around the top of his giant belly, and he looked at you out of little slit eyes behind his metal-rimmed glasses.
Pete and Wayne told stories about when they were young. The first one was about the time they were out of work when they were eighteen. They tied a long rag to a fox’s tail, dipped it in kerosene, and let the fox run through the woods. They said it was rigged so the rag would fall off and the fox wouldn’t get hurt. They started a big forest fire, so they would get hired to put it out. When they were twelve, they tied a lit stick of dynamite to a buzzard to see what would happen. It crawled under Wayne’s uncle’s brand-new Cadillac and they thought the whole thing was going to blow, until they found the fuse lying there limply by their feet. Pete told one about how he and his brother-in-law got drunk and used a coffee can to spray-paint big red polka dots all over their boss’s new truck.
They laughed until they coughed. Then it got real quiet, and we listened to the fire.
“Yeah. I ain’t had a drink in ten years,” said Pete.
“Is that so?” asked Wayne.
“Ain’t got no use for it,” Pete said. After a few moments, he got up. “You need anything, you call me.” He put his hand on Wayne’s shoulder, as if he knew it was serious.
I’d been waiting to talk to Wayne about Donald. But I didn’t know how to bring it up. I felt bad that he was sick and that I was going to upset him. I didn’t know what to do.
I sat in the armchair by the wood stove. Wayne put another log on the fire and lay back down on the couch.
“Ruthie’s daddy said Donald used to hit his girlfriend when he lived over in Elkins,” I said.
Wayne’s neck snapped around so fast that I almost jumped out of my chair.
“Earl said that?”
I nodded, scared. Was it really such a surprise? I couldn’t make myself tell him the rest.
Wayne took a deep, long breath. “I tried to tell her he was good-for-nothing. But she don’t listen,” he said.
Right about then I wanted him to say that he would go over and take care of that son of a bitch.
“You know, Sidney, it might be time just to let your mama go.”
I sat there, biting my lip, trying not to say anything or cry, and he fell asleep.
TWENTY-NINE
ABOUT THREE HOURS later, I woke up and Wayne wasn’t there. I jumped up and looked out the window, and he was standing by the riding ring. He’d rigged up lights to illuminate the ring in the dark. It was a heck of a splice job, with wires sticking out and lights teetering on ladders.
I ran outside. “You’re supposed to be in bed!” I said.
“Now we’re a twenty-four-hour facility,” he said proudly.
“You’re going to electrocute all of us.”
“We can train in the dark, after work. Get the horse used to lights.”
“What horse?”
“You’ll see.”
I looked at him.
“I made a couple calls,” he said.
I wondered what he was up to. Beezie didn’t have any eq horses, and she wouldn’t let him borrow something half-baked to take to the finals, just on principle. But he had a network of moonshine buddies, horse traders, mule skinners, farriers, tree pruners, blacksmiths, bricklayers, roofers, cattle farmers, deer hunters, bear hunters, fiddlers, banjo pickers, trout fishermen, you name it. And then there were the good old boys who did just about everything. It didn’t matter if he’d talked to them in the past twenty years or not. He could call old So-and-So and talk for half an hour, then ask, “Do you got old So-and-So’s number?” and he’d be on the phone with whoever he wanted in a day or two.
We went back to the house as it was getting dark.
“You wearing your heart monitor?” I asked.
He pulled up his shirt and showed me the wires. “I’m the electric horseman.”
We fell asleep by the wood stove.
THIRTY
HEADLIGHTS FLASHED BY, and I woke up and looked out the window. The car passed. The clock said 2:45. I closed my eyes again.
I didn’t know how much time went by. Then bright lights flooded the room again.
Wayne woke up.
A pickup truck pulling a cattle trailer came crunching down the driveway, its headlights bouncing off the mist and sending the cat tearing under the porch.
Wayne got up and looked out the window. “There he is.”
But Wayne was already out the door.
A big man got out of the truck—clean coveralls, round face, beard. Hunting season was coming, and the hunters had stopped shaving.
“Howdy there,” he said.
“Sidney, this is Chew-Gum.” Sure enough, he was chewing gum. “Chew-Gum’s from over in Lewisburg.” West Virginia. The Other Side.
Chew-Gum looked at the lights Wayne had rigged up. “Boy, that’s some contraption you got thar.”
“You can see, canchyee?” said Wayne. Chew-Gum’s thick accent was catching.
“I reckon.”
Wayne looked at his watch. “You sure ain’t in no hurry, Chew-Gum.”
“Sorry ’bout that. Had to replace the carburetor on the truck. Had the horse all loaded up and ever-thang.”
“What you waiting for? I want to see the horse.”
Chew-Gum unlocked the trailer and swung the door open. He climbed in, went around behind the horse, and pushed the horse off the ledge, like he was unloading a steer. No fancy ramps here. The horse jumped down. He was a big, light bay with two white socks, shaggy around the feet and ears, and sweaty. He had a friendly face with a white strip. Equitation horses were usually solid colored without any white even on their feet, so as not to distract the judges. He was not broke, no way, and I knew he was no equitation horse.
I knew it would be like that. I knew it. But I hadn’t known it would be quite this bad.
“This here is Mystical Tour. After that old Beatles song, “Magical Mystery—”
“I know,” I said.
“This here is the great-great-grandson of Secretariat. But they lost his papers.”
“Bullshit,” I muttered.
“He’s one hundred percent sound, levelheaded.”
“You’re telling me this is an equitation horse?”
“Well, here’s the thing, Sidney. This horse will jump any dang thing you put in front of him. We done tried it. He jumped over a tractor. He just loves to jump. And he ain’t got a wee-kid bone in his body.”
Chew-Gum said “wee-kid” instead of “wicked,” so he must have been from down near Clinch Mountain. A tractor? He was lying and I knew it. Wayne kept a stone-cold poker face and chewed on a toothpick. I could see he wasn’t buying this one bit, either.
“I seen him jump out of the field,” Chew-Gum said. “He sprang my pony and they ran all the way down to Route Twelve damn near Piercys Mill before I caught them. But here’s the main thing. He’s a smooth ride, got the easiest jump you ever saw—a little flat, maybe, so he wouldn’t make a jumper. He’s got a rocking-horse canter, and he’s got a background as a show hunter but no papers. Wayne tells me you’re looking for a equitation horse, a horse that you can count on and that makes you look good. Well, here you go.”
Good equitation horses went for around a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And here I was looking at something off a cattle trailer without any papers. Maybe we’d fix him up and sell him. I ran my hands down his cannon bones, feeling for splints or anything else.
“Oh, he’s sound,” Chew-Gum said as I looked at the bottom of the horse’s hooves and in his mouth. He had a bad wolf tooth—a useless tooth that about half of all horses get right next to their premolars—but we could pull it. He seemed clean otherwise.
“Trot him out for me, Sidney,” Wayne said.
I jogged alongside the horse away from them. Wayne studied the horse’s trot. Then Chew-Gum trotted him so I could see.
“Well, he ain’t lame,” Wayne said.
“Of course he ain’t,” said Chew-Gum.
Somebody had to ask. Better if it was me. “You didn’t give him anything, did you?”
“Hell no,” he said, offended.
“He paddles with his front left,” I said to Wayne. Paddling is what it’s called when horses overcompensate for being pigeon-toed.
“A little.”
“A little? He paddles like a duck,” I said.
“Probably his shoes,” Wayne said. He picked up one of the horse’s hooves and inspected it. “Hey, you got this horse shod to plow a field or what?” he said to Chew-Gum.
“Yeah, I threw on some big steel shoes I had. Not the best, I reckon.”
Wayne thought, chewed on his toothpick. “His heels aren’t trimmed evenly on his front left. I reckon that’s why he’s paddling.”
“Yeah, I reckon.” Chew-Gum eyed Sub, who was standing in the paddock half-asleep. “I’ll give you a thousand for that pinto.”
“He ain’t for sale,” said Wayne.
“So, what do you think of this fella?” asked Chew-Gum, nodding toward the new horse.
“We’ll try him out for a week.”
“All right. But don’t turn him out in the field with anyone—they’ll be mincemeat by morning.” We said goodbye, and Chew-Gum got into his trailer and left.
“He was lying his ass off,” I said.
“Don’t worry. I known him all my life.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I said.
Wayne shook his head. “A thousand dollars for Submarine. That boy’s so cheap, he wouldn’t pay a nickel to see Jesus Christ ride a bicycle.”
I put the new horse in a stall and gave him a flake of hay.
“He paddles like a duck,” I said. “He’s got a wolf tooth. No one’s seen him jump. His head is so high, he’ll give you a bloody nose if you’re not careful. This ain’t the horse.”
“Not if you talk about him like that,” Wayne said.
“You’re the one who always said, ‘You can put your boots in the oven. That don’t make ’em biscuits.’”
Wayne put on his heavy blacksmith’s chaps and grabbed a set of farrier’s pliers. He picked up the horse’s front left hoof, pulled the shoe off, started to trim and file. “We’ll see how he goes with some better shoes.”
I looked at the shoes he was going to use. “Where’d you get those?”
“They were throwing them out at the barn.”
“They’re aluminum.”
He handed one to me. “Feel how light they are.”
I felt the shoe. Light as a feather. “Throwing them out, huh?”
“And they got ridges on them so he don’t slip. Probably cost a hundred bucks each. Hey, how’s that tooth?”
“We need to get it out before we can put a bridle on him,” I said. “That must hurt, rubbing up against the bit.”
Wayne looked at the tooth and got me some pliers out of his tool bag. “Yank that thing on outta there. Real quick.” He grabbed the horse’s top lip as hard as he could to distract him and braced himself against the wall with the other hand. The horse snorted and his eyes popped open wide.
“Got him?” I asked.
“Yep. Get in there.”
I reached into the horse’s mouth, clamped the pliers down on the tooth, and ripped it out. The horse sat back on his haunches and slammed into the wall behind him.
Wayne looked down at the pliers in my hand with the horse’s brown tooth.
“Good girl.”
The horse shook his head hard when Wayne let him go.
“You can rinse now, mister,” I said.
We decided to let him spend the night in a paddock by himself, resting and getting used to things. He’d be mad after having his tooth pulled. I’d get on him the next day.
He had good enough manners not to pull away from the halter as I unbuckled it. I turned him out in the paddock and he trotted away. We watched him sniff the ground and check out the other horses. “Wayne, you can’t teach a horse to jump a three-and-a-half-foot fence in a few weeks and then compete in a national championship.”
“Sure you can.”
“This might be a good horse someday, but he ain’t our horse.”
“We’ll see,” he said.
I decided to sleep the rest of the night at home. Driving away from the farm in the dark, I looked
at the horse one last time in the rearview mirror. He was trotting back and forth, trying to get out. I glanced at the road in front of me, and then I glanced back, and damned if that horse didn’t jump a four-foot fence out of that paddock!
I slammed on the brakes and got out to see Wayne frozen in midstep, watching the horse trot to the barn.
“You see that?” he said.
“Yeah!” I said. “He snapped those knees up so tight, you couldn’t even see his feet.”
I walked right over and caught him standing by the barn. We tacked him up, and I climbed on while Wayne set up a couple of fences. The horse tossed the bit around, waiting for it to hit his wolf tooth, and then he let it rest against the bars of his mouth and ignored it. I trotted him around, cantered him in a circle. You could tell that he was a little fresh and hadn’t been worked in a while, but I just couldn’t believe how smooth he was. I aimed him at a jump in the center of the ring and he cleared it with a foot to spare.
“Well, goddamn, Chew-Gum!” Wayne said, and laughed a loud “Ha!” that I hadn’t heard in a long time.
We kept jumping. His jump was a little flat, meaning he didn’t toss me out of the saddle too hard, so my form looked better.
“He don’t even raise an eyebrow,” Wayne said.
“He ain’t paddling with those new shoes, and he snaps his knees up real tight,” I said.
We kept jumping and, I swear, that horse just got better and better.
Finally we quit and let the horse out for the night.
We went inside, and I lay down on the couch and turned out the light. Wayne fell asleep by the stove. I looked out the window and watched the horse in the moonlight, shuffling around the paddock, and I hoped he’d still be there in the morning.
THIRTY-ONE
SINCE CHEW-GUM HADN’T told us the new horse’s barn name, we decided to call him Sonny after Sonny Osborne, Wayne’s favorite bluegrass singer. The next day, I fired up the big Oster clippers, oiled the blades, and clipped Sonny from head to tail. That way, if we did wind up going to the finals, his hair would have time to grow in. If we cut it too close to the show date, he’d have clippers marks and would look ridiculous. As the strips of brown hair slid off, his cuts and scrapes looked a lot worse. I brushed off all the loose hair and rubbed mineral oil into the scars. Wayne and I decided to feed him a mix of protein sweet feed with some mineral oil for his coat and some pellets. No corn, though, or else he’d get so fired up that he’d jump over the damn barn.
Catch Rider (9780544034303) Page 13