Ashes To Ashes

by Gwen Hunter

  "Okay," Jas clapped her hands, attracting the attention of my small group. "Let’s talk about rules. Number one: until Big Dog and Cherry get used to you, no petting. Big Dog is at the vet’s but he’ll be back in a few days. Cherry has new puppies and might snap for no reason. Number two: you never go into a stall unless I’m with you. Number three: never ever walk behind a horse. Number . . ." Her voice trailed away as she led the little band to the barn.

  I wouldn’t need to go to Nana’s tonight after all. My grown and capable daughter had found her own Chadwick’s to help out at the barn. I could put off for another day the resumption of another part of my life. The barn cats followed Jas, tails waving slowly, leaving me alone, always alone. A breeze flirted with the new yellow-green leaves on the trees overhead. A bird called. Laughter echoed up from the barn. The warm, musky scent of horse lifted to me. Fleas chased one another in the dust at my feet. It was nearly summer; flea time. The dogs were treated, but it was never enough. I’d have to spray the yard, the gravel drive, and beneath the deck where the dogs slept. Jack’s job. So many things I needed to do now that Jack was gone, and only Jas, a drunken Jimmy Ray, and two children to help.

  I sighed and went toward the barn. There was a day’s work to do there, and only us few to get it all done. I didn’t mind work. I didn’t mind the fleas, the smell, the heat of summer to come or anything else about living on the farm. It was the place of my youth, the place mama and daddy had left me each spring when they took off for Europe or China or Africa for the year’s three month long tour. It was home as no other place ever would be. But it was no longer safe for Jas and me. And I didn’t know why. I looked up. Sunlight dazzled my eyes, a glistening brightness capped by the Carolina blue skies of a perfect, cloudless afternoon. It was an old cliché, this wondrous shade of blue. Poems had been penned about it, songs sung about it, and still the color could astonish and astound. A buzzard circled to the east, the jerky dip and curl of its flight pattern identifying it even in the distance. A mourning dove called once. Had things been as they once were, Big Dog would have trotted up from the barn, followed by Hokey and Herman, cats at their heels. But nothing was the same. Melancholy crept through me.

  Yellow-green poplar leaves fluttered with the breeze. Smaller, greener oak leaves shivered in the warmth. Hickory and pecan, the last trees to leaf out, swelled with life, forming tight buds at branch tip. A horse in the yearling pasture called a challenge and stomped, another reared and bounced down in protest. A mock battle ensued, viewed piecemeal in the spaces between trees. It was a perfect day, except for the litany still sounding in my mind. What will you do with the years ahead? What will you do all alone? How will you keep your daughter safe? How? Awful words. As ugly and necessary as the buzzard in the distance.

  Because there was nothing else I knew to do, I threw myself into mindless work, hoping something would come to me, some plan, some cerebral map to show the next step I was supposed to take. I worked up a physical sweat, but my mind stayed blank and paralyzed, as useless as a piece of farm machinery rusted in the rain.

  At dusk, I took a break from hauling manure and rested my head against the white painted fence at the back of the barn to watch Jas work Mabel. Assuming the pose of cowboys in countless, I propped one foot on the lowest rung, arms draped along the highest, chin in hand. Dusty, dirty, exhausted, I was no closer to knowing how to protect my daughter than I had been.

  Macon Chadwick could help against legal maneuvers and Wicked could make the house safer to hide away in, but knives in utility rooms were another matter entirely. I sighed—I had been doing a lot of that lately—and smelled horse, sweat, dog, and the potent aroma of dung. I could go to the police about the threats, I reminded myself, but then, Jasmine might find out too much about her father. Things I wanted to protect her from having to face, especially if Jack’s crimes were felonious. And then again, perhaps these threats were something relatively minor.

  A soft voice whispered in the back of my mind, Knives against your throat aren’t minor, my girl. The voice, ironically enough, sounded just like my Nana.

  Jasmine, lithe and graceful, fluid, and balletic, turned and turned in the ring before me. Her long, lean legs and sleek frame seemed to dance in the center of the practice ring, her arms held up and out with long line. Jas used no whip, but seemed to control a horse solely with her voice, the rhythms of her speech, the gentle pressure of her hands and the passion in her soul. She was so unlike me, this wonderful daughter of mine.

  Jas was working the barn’s newest mother on the long line, the foal at Mabel’s heels. The young horse was dancing and prancing on unsteady legs, sniffing at everything, shying at most and generally getting in the way of Mabel’s post delivery, slow, easy, workout. He wore a red halter that contrasted elegantly with the black sheen of his coat, and he rolled his big eyes as he took in the world, trying to decide if he would conquer it or fear it. Mabel was docile on the line, an old, feisty mare, ready for pasture or for young riders who wouldn’t strain her aging joints. But Jas would never sell Mabel; Mabel was part of her earliest memories. The sole survivor when Equine Infectious Anemia swept the stable, Mabel had been in Texas, being covered by a Friesian stud when the other horses had been put down. Mabel was Davenport Downs.

  The breeze shifted, cooling my sweaty neck. Tendrils of hair moved back from my face as night began to fall. Mabel snorted suddenly, arching her neck back, rolling her eyes, shifting to one side against the pull of the line. She wasn’t looking at the foal still gamboling at her feet, but back at the woods on the other side of the ring. Upwind.

  A low pitched growl rumbled beside me. I looked for Big Dog, but found only Cherry. Scant protection, her maternal instincts notwithstanding. I pushed away from the supporting fence. Mabel pawed the soft dirt of the practice ring floor, her nostrils flaring. Ignoring the long line. Ignoring Jasmine.

  The remembered stench of rancid meat filled my head. I felt the cold steel of a sharp blade at my neck.

  Cherry lunged like a big rat, teats dragging, her growl instantly frenzied barking. Mabel went up, raking the air with her front feet. Tangling Jas in the line she had been struggling to remove.

  I whirled under the fence, stumbled into the barn through Mabel’s stall door, the smell of death, sharp in my mind. The barn was dark and close, and the other horses were restive, picking up Mabel’s alarm. By feel, I found the tack room and the light switch. The sudden illumination was disorienting, my eyes stinging with tears.

  The cherry-wood finish of the 20-gauge gleamed, throwing back the light. I was surprised at the shotgun’s weight. Remembered Jack’s furious voice so long ago. "Brace it, damn it, Ash, or you’ll knock your shoulder out of joint." Clicking off the safety, I ran for the practice ring, the screaming horse, and barking dog, smelling the foul scent I knew wasn’t there. I hate guns.

  No too-tall evil man stood at the ring, threatening my daughter. Nor at the far side of the ring where Cherry bounced up and down, the tenor of her bark proving she had cornered . . . whatever it was. A man on the ground? Too low to see?

  Running, I circled the ring, halfway around recalling Jack’s warning about the safety. I clicked it back on as the breath came hot and tight in my throat. My hands were sweat-slick on the stock. And still I couldn’t see him. Where was he? I stumbled, nearly fell. The sunlight was almost gone. I shouldn’t have switched on the light in the barn, it had stolen my night vision.

  Mabel charged the fence beside me. Screaming. A black shadow with white-ringed eyes. Jasmine yelled, which I had never heard her do around a horse, her words unintelligible.

  And then I saw it, bloody and frothing and clawing the air. Not a man. An animal. Black and white and fierce in the darkness. Cherry, teeth bared, ran at it and back, ferocious, frenzied.

  "Cherry," I screamed. "Back. Get back." She hadn’t been with us long enough to understand, and she ignored me, intent on the thing in the grass. My mind blanked out as it charged Cherry. She yelped, whether fro
m pain or fear I didn’t know.

  I braced the stock as Jack had ordered and pulled the first trigger. The weapon was silent. The safety. The safety. Oh God, the safety. Fumbling, I found it, shoved the polished wood against my shoulder and fired.

  I hit the earth, my head jarring hard against the fencepost behind me. A red haze misted at the corners of my vision, broken by sharp spots of white light. The thing on the ground turned and charged me.

  Spreading my legs in the dirt, I sat up, aimed, and fired. The weapon kicked up and back, slamming into my shoulder. The animal flipped up and away. Spinning and twisting in the air. Landed beyond the verge of grass in the edge of woods where it first appeared.

  "Mom! Mama! Mama! Jasmine’s voice, so far away. A thin, muted sound in my damaged ears. And then she was there, beside me, knees in the dust, her voice still seeming to come from far off. A flashlight was on the ground beside her, beam shining off into the dusk.

  "Mama! Mama!" She shook me and the pain was almost more than I could bear. I stopped her with a hand, cold fingers on her hot flesh. Rolling to the side, I retched. Nothing came up. Nothing but a bit of burning fluid, vaguely coffee flavored. I hadn’t eaten all day. Forgot. "Is it dead?" I croaked.

  The light beside me disappeared. A long moment later it returned, plopped to the ground beside me again and rocked before it steadied. A nauseating motion of light and dark. Hokey or Herman, or perhaps both, licked my face. I shoved at them, then at the ground and sat up. And gagged again. Not Hokey or Herman. They’re dead. It was Cherry licking my face, grateful and proud, yipping like an untrained dog, ardent in her affections. Jack would never have tolerated such abandon. Jack isn’t here. Jack too, is dead.

  Jas was beside me, her hands again moving on me. "Where does it hurt," she demanded.

  I laughed suddenly, an agonized cackle. It was the question I had always asked her when she was tossed by a horse or kicked or crushed against a stall wall. Where does it hurt? "All over," I said. "And you know what? I saw stars. Honest to God, I saw stars." And I laughed that crazy cackle again, breathing in with the pain. Broken shoulder? Maybe cracked ribs this time? No ribs could withstand so many assaults without breaking.

  "I gotta get it away before Cherry takes it. Can you sit here by yourself for a few minutes?"

  "Oh, sure," I said, breathy. "I’ll . . . stay right here. After all, it wasn’t rotten meat, was it?"

  Jas touched my face like a mother checking her child for a fever, and then she was gone, taking Cherry with her. I did smell the scent of death then. The fresh scent of the animal I had shot. Typical scent under the circumstances. Not a danger scent. I lay back, my head on the ground.

  I wasn’t sure how Jas got me into the Jeep. I didn’t remember the ride. I just woke up at Wallace’s, my cousin and his wife Pearl helping me out of the Jeep and into a kitchen chair. My ears were still ringing, my hands white and shaky in the too-bright kitchen light . . . and I was hungry. So unbelievably hungry.

  Dinner was on the table at my elbow, two small roasted birds and some roasted vegetables, and long strands of grass. Probably roasted fresh herbs. Pearl had been to cooking school, two of them, one in Paris and one in Hong Kong. She liked to cook with stuff she found in the woods. The smell was heavenly.

  Wallace shone a bright light into my eyes and looked into my ears and pressed me all over as Jas had, and listened to my heart and my abdomen. Pearl bustled around getting an ice pack for my shoulder which was turning an alarming shade of lavender and black.

  I would rather they just left me alone, or let me eat, or both. I was ravenous. And then I was sick again, retching up nothing, and the food didn’t smell so good anymore. I ended up at the hospital, making a nuisance of myself, being X-rayed head to foot, having blood drawn, which I thought was a stupid precaution, and my urine checked, which was almost as bad.

  Hours later, as Jas was tucking me into bed—my bed, thank God, not some sterile, too-hard hospital bed—she murmured, "All this for a damn raccoon."

  A raccoon? A raccoon. I could have laughed, but my chest ached, and I really wanted to cry, not laugh. It had been a raccoon, masked, furred, inches high. Not a man who mistrusted dentists. Not a man. Not. A. Man. "Rabid?" I murmured, too tired to comment on her language.

  "Probably," she said.

  "Rabies boosters for Cherry tomorrow."

  "Taken care of," my little girl said equably, "and the shotgun’s reloaded, back in its place in the tack room."

  Of course it was. All taken care of. Just like all my problems. Jack had once promised that he would take care of all my problems. Problems like the man with the breath of maggots who’d threatened me in the Soiled Utility Room with a knife at my throat. Jack had promised. Jack had lied. He had left me with an attacker who had a miasmatic case of halitosis. The slapstick aspects of it all weren’t lost on me. And I hated my husband in that moment.

  I fell asleep with Jasmine’s hand in mine, knowing she was safe, aching like I’d been hit by a truck, though nothing was broken, at least according to the X-rays. My body claimed otherwise, but pain wasn’t a reliable indicator.

  I had to replace that shotgun with something more manageable. It was too big for me. Entirely too big.

  In the hour before dawn, with a faint light graying out the windows, I sat up in bed, the motion slowed by pain. Three thoughts, occurring simultaneously, had wakened me, drawing me from the drugged darkness of morning dreams.

  The man smelling of rotten meat was real. Flesh and blood real. His grammar proved that he wasn’t the same angry man who’d threatened Jack on the phone. And he wasn’t the man who had written the letters, those polite, well worded, calm letters. How many threats were there? How many problems?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Less than twenty-four hours later I was curled up on my bed, braced on pillows supporting my arm and shoulder. I was in too much discomfort to consider the satins and tapestries of my bed linens a luxury. At the moment, they were essential props, holding my body steady, and keeping me from falling over from the medication and muscle relaxers, helping me to breathe without pain.

  I had been injured this badly before. On a farm that bred two-thousand-pound workhorses, there were always injuries. I’d been crushed against a stall wall, a full grown Friesian using me as a rump pillow. I’d been kicked more than once. I’d even fallen out of the loft one particularly silly day years ago when Jack and toddler Jas and I had played hide and seek in the barn. And, of course, I had lost my last baby here, slipping on the back deck and dropping the eighteen inches or so to the ground. It hadn’t been a bad fall, but I was three months pregnant, and considered a high risk after two miscarriages.

  When the pains started and the bleeding couldn’t be stopped, my OB/GYN had taken the baby and my uterus. It was an accident I couldn’t have prevented, but for which I’d never forgiven myself. I had wanted a large family. Jack had wanted a son.

  This pain wasn’t debilitating, but I’d learned to take time to recuperate. My body couldn’t bounce back as it once had. Thus the day in bed—but it wasn’t turning out as I’d intended.

  Jasmine and Topaz were plundering my closet, emerging every few minutes with dresses held up against their bodies for my inspection: sequins, silk, gauze, floor length, tea length, and cocktail short. Dresses I hadn’t worn since Jack died, and had no intention of wearing tonight, if ever again, though I hadn’t convinced them of that fact, yet.

  "Ohhh, Mamash, you would be positively delectable in this one."

  I lifted a brow at the off-the-shoulder lavender silk Topaz held against herself. The floor-length gown stopped six inches from her ankles, demonstrating once again my limited height and proving that petite was just a polite way of saying short.

  "Not bad, Mama. That shade harmonizes with the bruise on your shoulder. Like a tattoo or something."

  I rolled my eyes, determined not to contribute to this ridiculous conversation, afraid that anything I said might aide them in their charade. I
didn’t want to spoil the moment. The two girls, friends again, were chattering away, giggling as only teenage girls can, and Jas had not a trace of grief on her face.

  My room was littered with dresses and pantsuits draped over every chair-back, hung over all the open door tops. It looked like Mardi Gras and Halloween rolled into one, all because Jas had finally listened to the personal line’s answering machine which I had ignored now for days.

  Monica Beck—she had been Monica Schoenfuss when we attended Providence Day School, a private academy in Charlotte—had left a total of twelve messages reminding me about the special performance of the Charlotte Symphony tonight. And though I was so sore that I could scarcely move my right shoulder, and so loaded with medication that the room swam every time I moved my head, my girls were insisting that I attend.

  They had called Monica, accepted in my name, made me stand in a pounding shower for almost an hour, dried and styled my hair in a tasteful chignon, and given me a makeover. I had to admit I looked fabulous. The weight I’d lost had trimmed my belly and upper arms, and the makeup the girls applied gave me a wan, delicate sort of beauty, unlike my usual tanned and wholesome looks. In spite of their makeover, I had no intention of attending the concert.

  Jack had been a benefactor of the arts in Charlotte, donating more money to the symphony than some local families made in a year. He had been well known and well liked. And some of those casual acquaintances would not know that Jack had died, the obituaries not being mandatory reading among the moneyed crowd. I simply didn’t want to go through an evening of torturous explanations.

  "This one." Topaz held up a pantsuit I hadn’t worn in years. Its wide legs camouflaged my rounded thighs and long flowing sleeves hid my upper arms, two "problem areas" I had worked to conceal all my life. The outfit was lovely, the rich fabric the dark sheen of peacock feathers at twilight. And I still had the mother-of-pearl necklace I had once worn with it.