Four Dead Horses

by KT Sparks

  “Have you thought about resurfacing this?” Bev gestured at a constellation of blotches on the concrete, most of which were motor oil but one or two of which might have been blood.

  “No,” said Martin.

  “Never,” said Julie.

  “We tried kitty litter a long time ago,” said Martin.

  “That’s an urban legend,” said Bev. “I think redoing it will get you your investment back and then some. The oil stains interrupt an otherwise yummy street-to-ingress eye feel.”

  “That’s not happening,” Julie said. “It’s not oil, not all of it. It’s blood, and it needs to stay there. Like a memorial.” She looked past Bev with wide eyes, and Martin knew she was seeing the truck, the horse, Dottie, him. And blood.

  Bev’s smile reversed to a frown, and Martin thought he could hear her cheeks creek with the unaccustomed unfurling. “Someone died here?” she said.

  Martin and Julie spoke at once: “No.” Then Julie: “A pet did, a cat. The family cat. Martin’s brother, Frank, he ran it over. Tragic.” She blinked, as if trying to wake up from a nap she hadn’t meant to take.

  “Our beloved cat,” said Martin, shaking his head.

  Bev put a hand on his arm. “I understand. Stephen and I have four kitty-babies, and we love them like they were real live babies. What was your kitty’s name?”

  “Chopo,” said Martin.

  “Dottie,” said Julie. “I loved her like a mother.”

  “Dottie,” said Martin.

  “Say no more,” said Bev. “Let’s go inside and talk about the diminishing role of mullioned windows in the twenty-first century.”

  After two hours of searching for fuse box labels, counting rings on ceiling water spots, and scouting a location for a future basement bar, Bev left Julie and Martin at the kitchen table to mull over the listing agreement and a pamphlet titled “Motivated Seller, Monetized Asset.” As soon as Martin heard the front door click shut, he shoved the paperwork away and cracked open the Christian Brothers. He took a slug from the bottle and leaned back, head swimming in nostalgia and the burped-up almond aroma of heavily fermented grapes. Julie lifted the bottle from Martin’s hands and poured a good five inches into a Starbucks to-go cup she had retrieved from the Chevy.

  “So you can drop the papers off?” Julie said. “And mail me my copy. I’m going back tomorrow, early.”

  Martin frowned. “I was going to take you to Tommy’s for brunch. It’s new downtown, with a chef from Chicago who was on some reality show about circus freaks and pâtissiers, though I don’t think he’s either. But bottomless mimosas and the crab cakes are good.”

  “I got a job, starts Monday,” said Julie. “A vet in Conifer. Also, the Inn at the Lake is almost $300 a night. Gluten-free muffins for breakfast and five o’clock wine-and-nibbles. In Pierre, who would have thought?”

  “Money’s bad?” Martin said.

  “The settlement’s mostly gone, except for my half of your house,” said Julie, then buried her nose in her cup and slurped. For the last decade, she had lived off the lump-sum payment Frank had offered to avoid a family court fight. She rented a converted loft in Denver’s LoDo neighborhood, blogged about breast reconstruction, founded a feminist beer tasting group, volunteered with the ASPCA, and occasionally made noises about upgrading her vet tech BA from Colorado State into a VMD. Martin assumed she was content. He probably should have checked on that assumption once in a while, but they didn’t have that sort of friendship.

  “I could give you a loan,” said Martin. In truth he couldn’t, so he pursed his lips hard and tried to signal to her subconscious that she should refuse. He had recently put Final Paws into substantial debt to purchase a top-of-the-line pet incineration system.

  “It’s okay,” said Julie, her cup in front of her face, her voice echoing mournfully in the paper chamber. “Like Bev says, the house will sell. And the job at the vet’s isn’t bad. Housing’s cheaper in Conifer, and I get health insurance.” She put the cup down and poured another measure. The bottle was a quarter gone, and Martin had only had one sip.

  “Fuck, I need this,” she said and gulped at the brandy. “And I’m sorry about that freak out in the driveway. I’m not sure why it got to me. I’ve been looking forward to coming here again, which wouldn’t have been true not that long ago.” She stared into her brandy. “I used to have nightmares about being in this house, worse after I got cancer. But they stopped in the last few months.”

  “Maybe you’ve moved on?” said Martin, who still had those nightmares.

  “No. It’s because I’ve been trying to figure out what the hell I’m going to do with the rest of my life. I realize that living here, well, that was a good few months for me. It was a happy time, right?”

  Martin folded his hands and stared down at his knuckles a full minute before answering: “I’m not sure happy is the word I would pick.” He thought about Julie back then, what a disaster she’d been. A motherless anti-waif, drinking, eating, and keening her way around the sick-smelling psych ward that had been this house.

  “We were doing something,” said Julie. “I knew who I was, even if I was a mess. We got that Dewitty story. We pulled off the Chopo heist. That might not have gone as planned, but it was grand, like the end of a Shakespeare play, or an X-Men movie, or one of your poems. For a while, I was really good at being me. I was good at taking care of your mom. I was good at being a reporter. I was good at veterinary science. I was even a good wife for Frank. And then the fucking cancer.”

  “Just like my mom,” said Martin, remembering Dottie’s brief heyday with the Fuzzy Balls. He put the bottle to his lips, thought better of it, set it back on the table and kept his hand around its neck.

  “Not just like. She got to die. I got to become a survivor.” Julie said it as if she were Gregor Samsa complaining of becoming a cockroach.

  “Isn’t being a survivor the point?” Martin said.

  Julie shook her head, then made a sound in her throat like she was winding up to spit. She reached across the table, wrenched the bottle away from Martin, filled her cup almost to the top, and began to rail against the “breast cancer industrial complex,” the barbarism of current medical treatment protocols, and all things pink. Martin would have many chances over the next eight months to rehear her rant, and it would always contain the same premise: that breast cancer survivors were the lepers of the twenty-first century, isolated on rose-tinted islands of infirmity by the cruel compassion of those who walked for the cure, ran for the cure, sang for the cure, stood up for the cure, but never actually cured anything.

  “The cancer’s gone, though, right?” said Martin. “You look great.” She did look good, if not great, even in her borderline hysteria. Certainly better. Her hair was a little thinner, but still blond and long again. She had none of the pinched demeanor that Bitsy Newport had had, with less excuse, at the same age.

  “They’ll never tell you it’s gone,” said Julie. “The few nice docs will give you a thumbs-up and a NED, no evidence of disease. Most of the others don’t say anything, just check over your file to make sure your advanced medical directive is in order. They want you to thank them for your survival, wear your goddamn pink ribbon like it’s a purple heart, and they were the ones who provided the covering fire while you crawled into the machine gunners’ nest. But surviving is worse than dying. It’s spending your days doing full body mole checks and reading WebMD. It turns you into a narcissist at the cellular level, on constant guard against that one allele that will betray you. I’m done with it. I want to reset to the Christmas I showed up here. I want to be of use again, feel what it’s like to take care of someone else, to accomplish something. I want to have a plan for my life, like you do, Martin. I want to help you like I helped your mom.”

  “But I’m not dying,” said Martin. In fact, he had recently had an annual physical during which Dr. Broad’s replac
ement, Dr. Bonnie Sun, informed Martin that he might be the only man in the U.S. of his age and weight class not required to be on HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors.

  “Of course not, you ghoul,” said Julie. “I didn’t help your mom die. The cancer did that all on its own, with that little last nudge from Chopo. I’m talking about helping you reach your dream, get to your poetry thing. The cowboy poet compadres.”

  “The Elko Cowboy Poetry Confluence,” said Martin.

  “Right,” said Julie. “Anyway, when we were in Cabo, you said you thought this was your year. I want to help you get there.”

  Martin didn’t remember saying that to Julie, but he probably had. Since Mrs. Trinkle’s funeral, he’d felt optimistic about his chance of capturing a spot at Elko next May. In Cabo, he had recited “Men in the Rough” with such verve that it left tears in the eyes of even the waiters passing the light apps to the mourners on the beach in front of the Hacienda Cocina y Cantina. He sensed that, finally, his voice was strong enough to impress the Elko Cowboy Poetry Confluence Selection Committee—strong enough to ring among real cowboy poets and to be heard by the champions of his youth and his still youthful heart: Beaufort and Ginger.

  But that had nothing to do with Julie, not anymore, not for a long time. Cowboy poetry was his quest, his obsession, and now it would be his victory. He was sorry she had had cancer. He was sorry Frank had ditched her. He was sorry she was lost. She was a good friend, probably his best friend. But why was it always he who had to step aside, alter his course, to clear the trail for another? Why did he always have to share?

  He picked up the bottle, took a sip, and pushed it back to her. He wanted to say no but in a way that honored their past, preserved their future, and kept her from screaming at him. He didn’t have those words yet, and he hoped his silence would speak for him. After a few minutes of Julie drinking and chattering, he realized she was taking his stony negative for a humble positive. She had come prepared with a list of ideas on how he could improve his application to the selection committee: a professionally shot test video; an article or two on cowboy poetry in Western-themed literary magazines; some cowboy resume-building activities like lessons in rope braiding or horseback riding.

  Though he answered her only with grunts and nods, her enthusiasm didn’t flag, even as her voice slowed and slurred. With about an inch left in the bottle, it occurred to Martin that, since Jimmy Sneedle’s, he had not had a discussion about cowboy poetry of this length with another human, certainly not a discussion in which he listened more than he spoke. And he liked it. And her ideas were pretty good. Maybe this was one of those situations so rare in Martin’s life that he had thought the breed extinct: a win-win.

  About the time Martin was ready to agree outright to Julie’s proposed alliance, she put her head on the table and began to snore. He gathered up Bev’s paperwork, placed the empty bottle in the sink, and shut out the lights. He dug Julie’s keys out of the chaos of lipstick and paper wads at the bottom of her purse, half-carried her to her car, and drove her back to the Inn, wrangling her up the wide plank stairs and depositing her in the foyer. He was halfway to the sidewalk when she cried out his name:

  “Martin. Martin, wait. I need this. I really need this.”

  He didn’t turn, just gave one finger a wave above his head, a head wrangler’s salute to the greenhorn bringing up the rear.

  Three weeks later, at his desk at Final Paws, Martin clicked off Skype and waited for Julie to blink to black. Since she had declared herself Tonto to his Lone Ranger, she had taken to calling every day during her lunch hour to check on his application video, which was not due for another three months, and his attitude, which was uncharacteristically upbeat. Along with her practical suggestions on how he should prepare his package for the selection committee, she’d been offering advice on how to apply mindfulness and positive thinking to the task. Plus she sent gifts. Just the week before, a package from Sheplers.com: Lucchese cowboy boots; a size 4XL Scully rose and horseshoe Western shirt in turquoise with black cuffs and yoke; two pairs of relaxed fit, prewashed denim Wrangler jeans in indigo; and a Nocca belt with multi-tone calf hair set on genuine leather. The note on the bill of lading said: “You gotta look the part, but I thought a hat was too much. Love, Julie.” The final bill was $683.79.

  Today, over the squawks of the recovering budgies in the Conifer Veterinary Associates’ break room, he and Julie had discussed NPR’s announcement that, in seven months, the Cowboy Poetry Hour would end its thirty-year run with a live broadcast from the Thirty-Second Annual Elko Cowboy Poetry Confluence. Devastating news, of course, but softened by Martin’s firm conviction that he would be there for it and as a performer. Even without the aid of one of Julie’s affirmative visualization exercises, he could see it so clearly that he believed for a moment he’d already gone and felt around his desk for a memento: a performer’s name badge, a backstage pass, a swizzle stick from Stockman’s Casino. He found instead a receipt for Anyone Can Ride!, beginners’ horseback riding instruction at the municipal park stables for which Julie had signed him up. As she had reminded him ten times during their twenty-minute chat, the first lesson was that afternoon.

  The intercom crowed, and the voice of his assistant, Annie Treehorn, inquired whether there were any more copies of his eulogy for the last of the lingering mourners from the funeral luncheon for Mrs. Pinehurst’s tabby. He told her to run off twenty extras and that he was leaving soon for the day. He gathered his riding togs from a plastic Walgreens bag under his desk and left a note on top about the only other appointment of the afternoon: a client discussion of the funeral arrangements for the McDows’ whifferpoo puppy-mill puppy, gone too soon, as the stone in the Final Paws Memorial Garden would soon read.

  Martin ducked into the Grieving Guardians restroom, changed into his Shepplers.com outfit minus the Scully creation, which he had swapped out for a plain black T-shirt, and admired the result in the mirror over the sink. With the little lift the boot heels provided, he looked okay. If he squinted, he could even say badass.

  He exited the mortuary through the back door so as not to disturb any mourners left in the chapel area with his inadequately somber getup. He headed to the Pierre Historic Trolley whistle stop directly outside Final Paws and waved down the free conveyance run by the city. He was pretty sure that at no time in Pierre’s past had trollies like these traveled the roads. The vehicles were bright blue, open, outfitted with train whistles, and operated by grumpy retirees in striped conductors’ outfits. But his transportation options were limited. The 2000 Lincoln Mark VIII that Carroll had bequeathed Martin had been in the Bitner brothers’ back lot for the last two years with a blown head gasket. The trolley and proximity of Martin’s downtown apartment to Final Paws had weakened his resolve to save up the $1,500 it would take to get the car rolling again.

  He boarded and greeted the driver, Sam Earhardt, a retired tractor and chainsaw salesman who had told Martin, more than once, what he thought about a grown man who did not have his own working vehicle. Martin had refrained from replying, more than once, what he thought of a grown man who dressed up as a train conductor to supplement his Social Security.

  The trolley travelled past the Wal-Mart, the Jiffy Lube, the Five Guys Hamburgers, the All You Can Eat Chinese Good Luck Buffet, and the mini mall with the women’s golf wear shoppe. As they turned into the historic downtown and bumped along the cobblestone streets, Martin shut his eyes. A church bell rang twice, paused, and rang again, as if the hunchback needed to check his watch. The breeze carried the scent of autumn in Pierre: grass clippings rotting in green municipal trash bags at the curbs, which city workers were supposed to have picked up last July; coffee roasting at the café where out-of-towners had taken over the space from recently bankrupted feng shui consultants; naan burning in the tandoori oven at Taste of India, where Martin ate dinner every Sunday night.

  Sam blew the whistle again and announced: “Boz
ho—‘hello’ in the language of the Potawatomi, for whom Potawatomi Municipal Park, and this stop on the Pierre Historic—”

  “Save it,” Martin said, exited the trolley, and headed for the stables.

  Martin looked over the crowd of chattering schoolgirls in ponytails and English riding pants. He had figured he might be one of the oldest in the class, which began right after school let out. But he had hoped for one or two other adults. Having Julie back in his life made him realize how sorely he had missed having a trail partner.

  The instructor entered the corral from the barn, clapping her hands and leading a knock-kneed, mustard-brown pony. “Okay, girls, gather round,” she said. “My name is Kim, and I’m going to go through some basic safety information with you.”

  Cooing and squeaking, the little riders-to-be swarmed Kim and reached for the pony’s nose. Martin held back. When he had imagined the class, he had imagined horses like the ones in Jimmy Sneedle’s barn. Twitching, snuffling, stomping at the dust. Terrifying to be sure, but Martin had prepared himself for that. What he wasn’t prepared for was a pony that could have been a healthy version of one of Dewitty’s nags. What he wasn’t prepared for was Chopo.

  “Gentle,” Kim said. She batted what looked like a toddler away from the pony’s leg just before it shot a hoof back. The animal craned its head around, then drew back its lips and bared yellowing teeth. Martin thought it looked disappointed that there were no brain bits or lifeless child bodies in the dirt for its efforts.