Ashes To Ashes

by Gwen Hunter

  The next involved good ol’ Bish of the tight buns and trim waist. Jas came upon him holding an unexpected prospective horse buyer in a headlock, while the man’s hysterical wife pulled a pretty little pearl handled, snub nosed .38 and prepared to shoot out Bish’s left kidney. The couple from North Carolina had arrived four hours early to look at Charisma—Jack’s best, long distance, prizewinning mare—and her foal.

  At my urging, Bish finally released the stranger. He even apologized to the man when Jas explained that buyers often arrive because unethical breeders would drug a half-wild or mean-as-sin or sickly horse before a customer arrived. It was an unethical practice to unload an unsalable animal off on an unwitting buyer, yet, the old saying said it all. Let the buyer beware. Thankfully, the couple was not the type to hold grudges. Once I explained that my daughter’s life had been threatened, and groveled a bit, and we’d consumed some of Jack’s best Glenfiddich scotch, they bought the mare, her young foal, and two geldings. And left happy.

  The next crisis was based on a previous one. Jas took a flat-bladed manure shovel to Bish, hitting him first in the face with the business end, then poking him several times with the rounded-off handle in the center of his rippled, muscular belly. My daughter told her bodyguard in no uncertain terms that this was her barn, her customers, and her—expletive deleted—horses. And if he laid a hand on anything or anyone without her prior express approval, or without her life being in danger, she’d shoot his—expletive deleted—testicles off. Trust Jas to use proper medical terms even in the midst of a heated temper. The expletives were the only surprise, and I wondered how much their use was due to the other heat flaring between her and Bish.

  Assorted minor crises popped their devilish little heads up during the rest of the day. Petty little difficulties like Esther’s old-fashioned adding machine blowing the small rubber belt that turned the roll of paper. The machine was outdated, and the office supply company had to order the part. A five day wait to replace a twenty-five-cent part. And of course, Esther didn’t want a new one. She liked the old one.

  Then her computer had a glitch and she was unable to open the employee payroll file. Two hours later it changed its mind, but by then Esther—dressed today in vibrant blue—had calculated all the employee’s weekly paychecks using Jack’s old handheld calculator. Esther wore bifocals and wasn’t particularly happy about having to read the tiny numbers on the minuscule LED screen. Stressed from the close work, she was in a snit, slamming things down on her desk, answering the phone in frigid tones to suppliers and customers alike, and even wearing shoes, a bad sign to those of us who had seen her in a fury.

  I left her to Macon, wondering how much of her bad mood was due to the recorded "love talk" Wicked had reported. I might know nothing about business, but I knew when to give Esther her space.

  And then Monica showed up. She had never been to visit me, except for the annual Christmas party given by DavInc. She brought the plaque that I should have picked up at the Patrons’ Party, a long trip she could have avoided by simply mailing it to me. I didn’t know what to make of her presence, but I was too busy to deal with her today. I had Esther tell her I was out at the job site. Just a little white lie.

  Late in the day, Nana decided it was time to bush-hog the front forty. The old John Deere had other ideas. It kept belching great clouds of gray-black smoke that had nothing better to do than infiltrate the office and choke us all. The smoke was less offensive once she got the stubborn tractor going, but then we had to contend with the noise—a mighty roar up close to the house, a more tolerable growl when she turned the tractor the other way. A slow, rhythmic intrusion on our busy afternoon.

  On top of all that, and in the midst of the sale of Charisma and the other horses, Doc Ethridge brought Big Dog home. Limping, shaved, stitched, tongue lolling happily, he bedded down on the porch with Cherry and her pups. He had his own water and food bowl, perched on top of the box used as a birthing den by the feisty mother, positioned so none of the smaller dogs had access to his medicated food and antibiotics. It was a perfect setup for the recuperating dog, except for the fact that I had neglected to have the doggie door enlarged. There was no way Big Dog could squeeze through the small flap in the screening. Every time he whined, someone—me—had to go to the porch, open the door, escort Big Dog out into the yard, and reopen the door when he was finished. Doc had been able to save Big Dog’s kidney, and considering the number of times the shaggy mutt needed to go out, the kidney was working perfectly.

  It was a relief to have Big Dog home. I hadn’t been aware how much I depended on his fierce bark to warn me of approaching strangers. I had missed his gentle attention and protective presence, his warm snout thrust into my fist, his liquid eyes and lolling tongue. But Big Dog had changed. He was still the easygoing, gentle giant of old for Jas and me, but now he hated men. All men. Macon, Wicked, Bish, and Duke included. He lowered his ears and tail, growled in the back of his throat in warning and barked his fool head off when they came near. His main concern was Cherry and her new family. So long as all males stayed away from the screened porch, Big Dog was okay. If they got too close, he got noisy. And I got a throbbing headache.

  I shooed the DavInc crew out early, telling them to take the rest of the day off, canceled target practice, didn’t mention self-defense moves to Wicked, and gave myself a break. The gesture seemed to mollify Esther somewhat, but did little for Macon. He left complaining that the EPA permits weren’t satisfactory, the survey maps provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency didn’t match the maps drawn by Wood Blankenship, and the Storm Water and Sediment Erosion Plan hadn’t been approved by the Corps of Engineers. And we still hadn’t found the permits allowing Davenport Hills to exist. "Don’t worry about it, y’all," Esther said as she sailed out the door. "If there was one thing Jack Davenport always kept up to date, it was the permits. They’re all here somewhere. You just have to keep looking. RailRoad the Third probably hid them somewhere just to spite you. Or maybe he filed them under ‘mud’. Hah!" Esther’s idea of a grand joke was somebody burdened with a problem she didn’t have to handle.

  Finally the house was vacant, with Wicked and Bish out in the barn looking after Jas, Big Dog’s bladder empty, and Cherry happily nursing her puppies. If only Nana would find some other acre of pasture to mow, it would be perfect. The smoke and noise were awful.

  Pouring myself a glass of wine, and cutting off a hunk of jalapeno pepper cheese, I sat down to take my first break of the day, and to nurse my headache. The cheese was tangy and soft and hot on my tongue, just the way I liked it, and the wine was crisp and dry with a sharp, sweet aroma. I unstrapped the gun from my chest and dropped it on the table, leaned back and stretched. My groan echoed through the empty house. And Big Dog whined.

  "You just went," I yelled through the wall. Big Dog’s bladder wasn’t impressed. I took a sip of wine. It was a Riesling Jack had kept for clients and investors, but Jack wasn’t here. I decided if investors couldn’t drink colas and coffee, they didn’t need to do business with me. "No," I shouted at Big Dog again. I knew he could hear me. And I knew the Vet hadn’t taken him out every few minutes. Big Dog was acting spoiled. "No, Big Dog! No!" Big Dog answered by putting his huge paws up on the sliding glass door and scratching like mad. He really did need to go out, it seemed.

  Out front, Nana had decided to be a pest as well, interrupting her usual pattern of up and down mowing. She hadn’t moved from the house-side of the pasture in minutes, ignoring the rest of the half-mile-long field. The noise and smoke roiling past the windows were thick and stinky.

  Big Dog whined. The John Deere roared. My head pounded.

  I sighed, closed my eyes, and placed my glass on the table, creating my own little crisis. I hit the edge of the plate of cheese, broke the fragile stem and spilled the overpriced wine. Glass and pale wine ran together across the wooden top. "Damn." Tears gathered at the corners of my eyes. Hot, salty tears like the ones I had cried when the muffi
n got stuck in my throat and cut off my air. And Robyn held out her arms.

  I threw myself from the kitchen chair and wrenched open the sliding glass door. Big Dog was scratching at the yard door, whining. A tear fell and I wiped it, hot on my shaking hand. "Okay, okay. We’ll go out." My throat spasmed, the words low and dull. I wiped my face again. "But we have to come to some kind of understanding, here, Big Dog. I am not going to be at your beck-and-call for the rest of the week. You—" Big Dog licked my face, cutting off my tirade. He was standing before me, up on his hind legs—his injured hind legs—his face on a level with mine. He grinned at me, liking the taste of my tears as he lathed my cheeks. My tears fled. I put a hand on Big Dog’s head and scratched behind his ears. He whined with pleasure once, then the tone changed and he looked toward the yard, his whine a soft, desperate sound. I laughed.

  "Okay. Okay, okay, okay." I squatted, helping the huge canine drop to all fours. He licked my face one last time, waggled his shaved tail and walked back to the yard door, the one Cherry could have gone through with no effort, but was inches too small for Big Dog. My fault. I could have, should have, had it cut to fit, and maybe Big Dog knew it. I walked to the door, opened it and followed Big Dog out into the yard. He looked at me once, lifted his injured hind leg close to his body in a protective position, and took off at a hobbling run.

  "Big Dog, you get back here! Now! Come!" I demanded. Big Dog hobbled toward the front of the house, looking over his shoulder at me like we were playing some kind of stupid game. Even injured and moving on just three legs, Big Dog could cover some ground. I ran after him, into the tractor exhaust, shouting. My voice was too low to reach the disobedient dog over the roar of the John Deere. Rounding the corner of the house, I spotted Big Dog, waiting, impatient. He was either feeling frisky enough to play tag, or he was trying out a Lassie imitation. The one where Timmy has fallen down a well, and Lassie goes for help . . .

  My irritation mutated into fear. Nana. Nana was in the front field. Mowing the front forty with an ornery tractor. One that hadn’t circled the pasture in minutes. Long minutes.

  I sprinted past Big Dog, rounded the front corner of the house, and ran into a blue fog of exhaust. Dropping my head lower, I ran for the noise, Big Dog at my side.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Just inside the fence, half visible through the small saplings lining the pasture and the haze of tractor smoke, was the John Deere. It was traveling in a circle covering perhaps half an acre, the bush-hog’s fierce steel blade churning up dirt and debris from the well-mowed ground. No one was driving. Nana was nowhere in sight.

  "Nana," I whispered, and stopped. There had been cases like this before in the county. Just last year, an old farmer, driving an even older tractor, had been clearing an overgrown field when the rusted metal tractor seat broke off. He had fallen behind the tractor, landing in front of the attached bush hog. Like being run over by a giant lawn mower, he had been pulled under and devoured by the heavy-duty blade. Marking the spot where he landed was a damp, bloody strip of land. A twisted belt buckle, part of a shoe, a few pieces of bone and a scrap of hair was all the Rescue Squad collected on their foot-by-foot search of the accident site.

  Big Dog limped into the cloud of engine smoke. I could see only a vague outline until the John Deere moved downwind, completing its counter-clockwise arc. The injured dog was standing over a body. "Nana." I must have shouted. My throat closed up again, this time in panic. The body moved. The tractor headed back again.

  I ran for the two forms in the path of the tractor. My heart pounded, an uneven rattle in my chest. I don’t remember climbing the fence. But I was suddenly there, standing over them. No blood. No body parts missing. Nana was shouting, her words lost in the rumble of the big diesel. One arm stuck out at an obtuse angle from her body. She was trying to crawl from the path of the tractor, trying to point with her chin. Grabbing the hand holding her weight, and having no idea what internal injuries I might be affecting, I half dragged her from the pasture, back to the fence and the scant safety it afforded. A bush-hog blade can chew through small trees in seconds, reducing them to chips. If the tractor decided to head this way, the fence didn’t stand a chance.

  Carefully, I eased her to the ground. Nana was gasping, blue around the lips with what I hoped was emotional shock and pain, not blood loss or severe oxygen deprivation from an MI or a punctured lung or. . . . The tractor roared by.

  I reached for my gun, intending to fire it to attract attention, but I had left it on the kitchen table. Great. Some hero. "Big Dog. Go get Jas. Go get Jas!" Big Dog turned yellow eyes from me to the tractor and back again before glancing in the direction of the barn. He didn’t move.

  Jack and I had expected to spend weeks teaching Big Dog the all our names, but it was an easy process; the smart mongrel had learned each name in only minutes. Jack would say, "Go to mama. Go to mama." And then I would call the dog over. We would repeat the process by saying "Go to Ash. Go to Ash," so he would know who was being searched for no matter which name was used. What a bizarre memory to be having in the midst of an emergency. I never had problems focusing on a patient in the ER. Of course, I’d never had my Nana to take care of there, either. "Go get Jas. Go!" Big Dog didn’t want to leave Nana, but he was a working dog, not just a pet. He dropped his skinned tail low and headed for the barn in a rough three-legged run.

  The tractor reached its farthest boundary and began its curving trek back. It was really moving. I watched it a moment, trying to determine if its circular motion was fixed or changing. The wind shifted, taking the fumes and dust away. I could hear Big Dog bark, back at the barn. Good dog. Steak for supper tonight. The tractor’s path was a widening circle, the steering wheel apparently stuck at an angle, though I couldn’t understand how that was possible.

  Nana was still talking, her words rough and broken, as if she had screamed and screamed alone and in pain and no one had come. Her voice was nearly gone. Stooping down, I concentrated on my patient. She was lying on the ground, eyes wild, breaths far too rapid and shallow, her color ashen. A trickle of blood seeped from her upper lip. Her right arm stuck out from her body at an abnormal angle; a conspicuous hump was situated between her collarbone and shoulder tip, deforming the shoulder. An anterior dislocation. Painful, but easy to repair.

  Standing, I put my foot in her armpit and pulled the arm steadily out and forward. Beneath my instep, the bone bumped back into place. Nana made a strangled sound as I folded her arm across her stomach and tucked her fingers into her waistband to stabilize it. She was suddenly breathing easier, and she made little mewling noises of pleasure.

  I checked Nana’s pupils, which were a little slow to react but were equal in size. I counted her pulse, which was irregular and fast, but slowing, even as I counted the beats against the second-hand of my watch. Her respirations were slowing too, growing deeper. Moving my fingers gingerly through her dirty, disheveled hair, I found a bump above her left temple. Not the best place for a blow to the head.

  The tractor went by again, throwing dust and grass shavings into the air. Even with all the rain of the last few days, the bush-hog could make dust. Moments later, it headed back, its course wider than before. I wondered how I would get Nana to safety if it headed straight for us. I couldn’t pick her up, and doubted I could drag her. I couldn’t leave her to call for help. Maybe I would get lucky and the tractor would run out of gas.

  Big Dog stuffed his wet nose into Nana’s face and whuffed. "Mama!" Jas shouted. I stood and waved though the trees. Jas, Wicked and Bish were approaching at a run, Wicked in the lead, Jas in the middle, and Bish bringing up the rear, his gun drawn. Great. Maybe he could shoot the tractor, like a rampaging buffalo. I had a mental image of a tractor on its side, bleeding gasoline and various fluids into the pasture. Idiotic laughter gurgled from my throat, my Nana in pain at my feet and an out-of-control tractor bearing down on us.

  Wicked vaulted over the fence and bent over Nana, started to lift her.

/>   "No." I put a hand on his arm. "Don’t move her. She may have internal injuries."

  "But—"

  "You think you can catch that tractor?" I asked. Wicked focused on the runaway piece of heavy machinery. "Remember how to shut it off?" Wicked was a city boy, but he was also a Chadwick, and every Chadwick had done two things: ridden a horse and been taken on a tractor ride. It was a childhood tradition. Wicked’s eyes grew wide as he understood what I was asking.

  Jas and Bish reached me, Jas dropping down beside Nana and repeating my nurse’s routine. Bish looked for targets.

  "I think so, but—"

  "Be careful when you jump on, Wicked Owens, "I interrupted, and nudged him away with my hip. "The fall might hurt you but the shave afterwards will kill you." I laughed again.

  "Yeah. Right," he muttered, watching the huge machine rumble past. Reluctantly, he jogged for the John Deere. Seconds later, a blessed silence descended over the farm.

  "Jas, go get some blankets. She looks shocky. Call for an ambulance."

  "I’m not going to no hospital," Nana said, her voice raspy and stubborn.

  "‘Fraid so, Nana. You got a bump the size of a small squash on your noggin," I countered, matching her Southern lingo. I slipped a hand beneath her work shirt and prodded her ribs.

  "All I need is a little rest. Stop that. It tickles." She pushed at my fingers exploring her sternum. No bumps, lumps, or obvious malformations. I moved to her abdomen.