by Brad Smith
Not that Billie would have recognized her. Her hair was now straight and blonde and cut short and spiky. She wore suits to work, with very tight skirts and high heels. She was brisk and authoritative and seemed to want to impress upon Billie that she had achieved much in life while Billie was still slouching around in jeans and work shirts, out of work and mired in inherited debt. She had a point in all that, Billie had to admit.
“If it was up to me, we would demand payment on the mortgages today,” Kellyanne told her point-blank. They were sitting in her glass-walled office at Kentucky First National.
“Then I guess I’m glad it’s not up to you,” Billie said lightly, hoping to inject a little humor into what Kellyanne had obviously decided was a humorless situation.
“Mr. Brock is pretty soft on some things,” Kellyanne added.
Billie didn’t know who Mr. Brock was but didn’t ask. Presumably he was somebody who held Kellyanne in check up to a point.
“So you’ve been here all this time,” Billie ventured. “Are you married with kids and all that?”
“This isn’t a social.”
“No, I see it’s not,” Billie said.
“The clock is ticking.”
Billie told that to Luke when she got to the track later. It was noon Monday and she and Luke were sitting on the tailgate of his truck along the shed row, drinking take-out coffee. Tyrone had just left; he had two mounts later that day in Keeneland. Billie had remembered to pay him. He was working the colt for twenty dollars a day, on the agreement he would get the ride come Saturday. Billie was getting a bargain, both with the jockey and Luke himself, and she knew it.
“How are we going to know if he’s ready to run?” Billie asked.
“He’s ready to run today,” Luke said. “Running is the easy part. Hell, a toddler can run. It’s all the rest we got to keep working on. I had a horse once, the starting gate opened and that animal just stood there. The rest of the field was in the back stretch before that horse finally wandered out of the gate. Never ran again. Never ran then, come to think of it.”
“You said the colt was breaking well,” Billie said.
“He is. I’m just giving you an example of how things can go sour.”
“It can be depressing, talking to you.”
“You want sunshine and lollipops?” Luke said.
Billie wouldn’t mind a little sunshine and a few lollipops but she didn’t say so. “What about Tyrone?”
“What about him?”
“Is he the right jockey?”
Luke looked at the horse in the stall. Jodie was feeding the animal bits of carrots and he was leaning his neck out over the door, reaching for more.
“Tyrone will be okay,” Luke said. “Keep in mind he’s got his bug and that helps us. He’s a little green but he gets along with the colt well. Sometimes a jockey just needs to keep out of the horse’s way, let him do his thing. But I figure he knows that. Shit, he was probably on a horse before he learned to walk. It’s in his blood.”
“There’s that word again,” Billie said. “You sound like Reese Ryker.”
“Well, there’s a reason that Saguaro gets a quarter million dollars to mount a mare. And that’s the same reason I’m sitting here. That colt there feeding his face on carrots is a good-looking animal, but if he wasn’t by Saguaro I’d be up in Indiana right now, racing my bay on the flat track. So you can’t come down too hard on Ryker, not for that anyway.”
“I wasn’t talking about horses so much.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s just say that Ryker has some political views I don’t agree with.”
Luke shrugged. “Well, I can’t comment on that. All I know is horses.”
“And honky-tonks and poker games and pretty girls.”
Luke laughed as he tossed the dregs from his cup onto the grass. “I’m a goddamn Renaissance man and I didn’t even know it.”
Billie and Jodie left shortly after that. As they were driving through the gate, the girl looked over at Billie.
“What’s a bug?”
Billie turned onto the highway. “Something that crawls in your ear at night. Lays eggs inside your head and makes you crazy.”
“Be serious.”
“An apprentice jockey gets a five-pound weight allowance. They call it a bug.”
“How come they call it that?”
“They just do.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I got, kid.”
On the drive back to the farm, Billie decided she wouldn’t go to the track the next day. She was worrying over the colt like she would over a child being sent off to school for the first time. She needed to trust Luke and Tyrone and stay away for a day or two. If she wasn’t going to the track she might as well drive back to Chillicothe. She needed to give up her apartment and empty her meager bank account. She could probably do the banking over the phone, but she wanted her clothes and her laptop and a few other things.
She drove the truck into the lower lane and parked by the barn. Shutting the ignition off, she glanced over at the silent little girl. She was still wearing the worn sneakers. In fact, Billie hadn’t noticed a single purchase she might have made with her wind-fall—not a shirt or a bell for her bicycle or even a goddamn ribbon for her hair.
“I’m going to Ohio today and I won’t be back until tomorrow. Can you look after things here?”
Jodie glanced around. “What things?”
“Feed the stock. Muck the stalls. Make sure everything has water.”
“The mares are out to pasture and they have water in the pond. And I always take care of my animals. You don’t need to tell me.”
“Just look after things, okay?” Billie said. “And I thought you were going to buy new sneakers. Did you open a bank account?”
Jodie said nothing.
Let it go, Billie thought. Why do you want to get involved with something that’s none of your business?
“What did you do with the money?” she asked. “Blow it at McDonalds?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
The girl exhaled. “My mom needed help with the rent.”
Shit, Billie thought. This is what happens when you ask questions you don’t want the fucking answers to. Not that it would stop her, not now. “How much did you give her?”
The girl looked away.
“All of it?”
“She needed help with the rent,” Jodie said again. “The house where I live, okay?” She opened the door and got out.
Billie got out, too. Jodie was already on her bike, eager to be gone.
“Just look after things,” Billie said. “I’ll be home tomorrow. I’m going to pay you.”
“No. I owe for hay.”
“When my father was alive, who was the boss here?” Billie asked.
Jodie wouldn’t look at her. “He was.”
“And who’s the boss now?”
Watching the little girl, with her eyes fixed on the road out front and her jaw tight, Billie remembered that her father used to say that there was nothing in the world more stubborn than a child. Not that a person became less stubborn as they grew up (Billie was evidence of that), but they learned how to manage it better, how to disguise it as something else, whether it was feigned indifference or even ignorance of certain facts. But nine-year-olds didn’t hide behind disguises. They were too pure for that.
“You are,” Jodie said at last.
“Okay,” Billie said. “I’ll see you when I get back.”
Luke had been staying at Nick Hartwick’s farm on Knob Hill Road, west of Junction City. By luck, when Luke had pulled into his drive, Nick was just a couple days away from heading out on a six-month contract as a pipefitter in Alberta. He had arranged for a neighbor to look after his place while he was gone. He had ten acres of pasture and was grazing two paint quarter horses and a half dozen yearling steers. The horses actually belonged to Nick’s ex-girlfriend Becky, wh
o had left a few months earlier, returning to her sad-sack husband who had promised her that he was a changed man. One reason Nick was going to Alberta was that he didn’t want to be there when she found out that the ex-husband was the same mean prick he’d always been. Then she’d be back on Nick’s porch, her suitcases and guitar in hand, and it would start all over again.
So the timing was right when Luke arrived. He offered to tend to things on the farm in exchange for lodging. He also hit Nick up for five hundred dollars, seed money, as Luke had put it. Nick didn’t mind; he’d been willing to pay the neighbor kid fifty a week to feed the stock, so in the long run he would be saving money, even if Luke didn’t pay him back. And Nick knew that Luke would eventually repay him, although it might take a few years. Not only that, but with Luke on the premises full-time it would discourage thieves or druggie nesters looking for a warm place to crash.
The house was a frame building, story and a half, and Luke took the front upstairs bedroom as his own. He passed his mornings at the track, training Cactus Jack. Afternoons he tended to the ex-girlfriend’s horses and the Hereford steers. If needed, he fixed fence and cut grass. In the evenings he usually headed to the Junction Tap House, on the highway a few miles away. The food there was edible and he could usually hustle up a pool game. Thursday was euchre night and Luke considered himself an expert at the game.
He drove there around six o’clock on the Tuesday before the race and settled in at the bar. He asked for a large draft and a corned beef sandwich. The place was mostly empty but slowly filled as Luke ate the sandwich and talked football with the bartender until he found out the man was a Patriots fan.
By nine o’clock he was playing shuffleboard with a guy who looked like a golfer on TV—polo shirt, khaki pants. He’d come in an hour earlier with a young woman wearing tight jeans and a sleeveless black T-shirt. She had short hair under a Cubs cap. She was good-looking. The guy couldn’t hit a rock if his life hung in the balance and Luke beat him easily three games in a row, two dollars a game. Then the girl challenged him. She was better than the guy but not by much. She was very friendly though, which more than made up for her lack of skill. Luke was surprised when the guy announced that he was leaving, saying something about work in the morning.
“What are you going to do?” he asked the woman.
She looked at Luke. “Another game?”
“Sure.”
She turned to the guy. “I’m going to hang here for a bit.”
The guy had no problem with that, it seemed, and off he went. The woman went to the bathroom and while she was gone Luke went to the bar and bought beers for them both.
“He your boyfriend?” he asked when she came back.
“Fred?” she asked. “No, we’re just buddies. We went to high school together.” She smiled at Luke. She had a nice smile. “Fred’s not my type.”
“You look like you could still be in high school,” Luke said.
“Give me a break, man,” she said. “I get that all the time. Shit, I’m twenty-five years old.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a teacher. And it’s summertime so I get to stay out as late as I want.”
“What’s your name?”
“Rachel.”
“I’m Luke.”
Rachel picked up the fresh draft and had a drink. “I want to tell you something, Luke. Before I leave here tonight, I’m going to kick your ass at this game.”
“A woman needs a goal in life,” Luke said.
They played the first end, with Luke making three points. He wasn’t taking it easy on her, not yet, but he might just do that if it looked as if it might work to his advantage.
“You say Fred’s not your type,” he said. “What is your type?”
She threw the first rock and it skidded to a stop inside the single line. She smiled without looking at him. “I kinda like cowboys.”
When Luke woke at dawn the woman was gone. The first thing he did was reach for his jeans on the floor to make sure his wallet hadn’t been cleaned out. His money was safe. Thinking that maybe she was still on the property, he looked out the window to the yard below and saw that her car was gone. She’d followed Luke home in a red Mustang convertible that looked brand-new. Apparently schoolteachers made good money.
He had a slight hangover but it wasn’t debilitating. He had stuck to draft beer even when Rachel had tried to talk him into doing shots. He knew he had to be at Chestnut early. He wondered if he was maturing at long last; in the past, whenever a pretty girl suggested shots, Luke was all over the idea.
Still, he felt wrung out and it wasn’t hard to know why. It had been quite a night. The room was in disarray, the sheets twisted together, both pillows on the floor. Luke had no idea that school-teachers were so adventuresome. This schoolteacher anyway. She was into everything he suggested and had a few ideas of her own. At some point she took out her phone and asked Luke to take pictures of her in different poses. Luke hadn’t been too interested in the idea; he didn’t quite understand the obsession kids had with taking photos of everything they did. He didn’t get Snapchat and Instagram or any of the rest of it. He had a flip phone he’d bought in South Dakota ten years ago. He didn’t know how to text and didn’t want to learn. Tweeting was, quite literally, for the fucking birds.
But of course he had obliged the woman. She was beautiful and naked and horny. So he had taken a few pics and then they fucked. Then she took some pics and they fucked again. Boy, did they fuck.
He was surprised that the woman was gone. She seemed like the type who might want to stay for breakfast and have a serious conversation. Luke would have no time for the first notion and not a lot of interest in the second. He had no idea when she left. He wondered if she woke up feeling sheepish about her actions the night before. Maybe it was something she’d never done before and she was guilty about it. Luke hoped not; guilt was a useless emotion as far as he was concerned. He wondered if he would see her again.
He had a quick shower and got into his truck and headed for Chestnut. He hadn’t gotten any more than about three hours’ sleep, he guessed, and he was weary, his head fuzzy. They were stretching the colt out to a mile today. Tyrone was there, waiting, as he always was. He was working horses for other trainers too— Luke suspected he was short on money—but he said that Cactus Jack was his first priority. Billie was not anywhere to be seen and so neither was the little girl.
The colt’s numbers at eight furlongs were as impressive as they were at the shorter distances. After they galloped him, they worked him breaking from the training gate for a time. Returning to the stall, Luke rubbed the colt down and fed him before heading back to the farm. When he got there, he found a black Pontiac Sunfire by the barn. Luke parked alongside and got out to walk around the building. A woman with curly brown hair to her shoulders was in the pasture field with the two paint quarter horses. She was feeding them something from her hand—sugar cubes or the like, Luke guessed. He had never seen the woman before but he knew who she was. He leaned on the fence and watched her. When she finally turned, she feigned surprise at seeing him there. Unless she was stone deaf, she’d have heard his exhaust when he pulled in.
“Hey there,” she said, walking toward him. She had some curves to her and was pretty sexy, wearing a tank top and jeans. Brown suede cowboy boots. She had an abundance of freckles on her arms and shoulders and everywhere else, Luke guessed. “Nick around?”
“Nope.”
“I’m Becky.”
“I figured that.”
“Where’s he off to?”
“Alberta.”
That gave the woman pause. “Canada?”
“That’s the only Alberta I know of,” Luke said. “Something I can help you with?”
“Who are you again?”
“Name’s Luke. I’m looking after the place for a bit. He said you might come around, depending on your circumstances.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Yo
u know. How’s things working out with the hubby?”
The woman Becky was immediately offended. “Why is Nick telling you my business? I don’t know you from a load of hay.”
“He asked me to look after his ex-girlfriend’s horses,” Luke said. “It was only natural for me to ask him why the hell he was taking care of them, you being gone and all. I wasn’t aware that the information was top secret.”
Becky looked away. “When’s he coming back?”
“Not sure,” Luke said. “I do know he has a woman up there in the tar sands. I believe she’s a wealthy oil tycoon.”
“What?” Becky demanded. “He’s shacked up with somebody already?”
“Nah,” Luke said. “I made that up, just to see what you’d say.”
“You think you’re a funny man.”
“I’m kinda hungover so I’m not really thinking that much at all.”
“That’s obvious,” Becky said. “If you’re looking after the place, you should know that I’ve advertised my paints in Ranchers Monthly. So there might very well be people coming by to look at them. I’ll try to be here when that happens but if I’m not I’d appreciate it if you could show any prospective buyers the horses. And if you could do it without being an asshole, that would be a bonus.”
“Nick never told me what a sweet talker you are.”
“You started it.”
“I guess maybe I did,” Luke said. “All right then, I’ll do my best to accommodate you, Becky. And if Nick calls I’ll tell him that you came around, just like he said you might, looking all mopey and full of regret and such.”
“Did you already forget the part about not being an asshole?”
“Shit,” Luke said. “I need to write that down somewhere.”
Becky left then, getting into her beat-up Pontiac and throwing stones as she accelerated down the driveway. Luke watched her for a moment and then turned to have a look at the two quarter horses in the field. In the house he scrambled three eggs and washed them down with a beer before heading to the couch for a nap. He told himself he was getting too old for this shit. He drifted off thinking about the schoolteacher.