Dark Horses

by Susan Mihalic

  He hit the steering wheel with the flat of his hand, a violent gesture that startled me. “We’re staying. It’s not safe to make the drive.”

  It hadn’t been safe for me to ride, either. Jasper was dead because he’d made me.

  I huddled close to my window. Traffic was heavy, horns blaring. Louisville was one huge post-Derby celebration. Restaurant parking lots were full, and the people going in were laughing, as if they’d all backed the winner.

  My father’s phone rang. He pressed a button on the steering wheel to dismiss the call. “Vic.”

  In our hotel room, the red light on the telephone was blinking. While he checked messages, I crawled onto the bed and lay down on my right side, pushing my shoulder into the mattress and making it hurt more. The comforter on the bed smelled starchy and clean. Housekeeping had made the soiled bedding and bathrobe disappear.

  Through my eyelids the room went dark.

  He touched my ankle. My body jerked painfully.

  “I’m taking your boots off.”

  I neither resisted nor helped. Gently, he removed both boots.

  “Now your watch and your armband.” Bugs scurried under my skin when his fingers brushed my wrist and upper arm. “I haven’t forgotten anything you’ve done, but let’s set it aside right now.”

  I hadn’t forgotten anything he’d done, either. I wouldn’t set it aside.

  He sat on the bed behind me. “Come on, darlin’. Let it out.”

  Tears clotted my throat, but I would not give him the opportunity to touch me on the pretext of comforting me. I’d choke to death before I let myself cry.

  He sighed. “I’ll get you some aspirin.”

  Through a narrow gap in the blackout curtains, sunset became dusk. I thought of Eddie and Mateo taking Jasper home.

  My father went in and out of the bathroom—pee, flush, wash hands, brush teeth. His wallet thumped on the dresser, his belt buckle clinked, his clothing landed somewhere as he stripped. He got in bed. I lay on my side, far away from him. If he touched me now, I wouldn’t stop fighting until one of us was dead.

  Who was I kidding? I’d fought last night. He was a thousand times stronger than I was.

  He didn’t touch me. His breathing grew slower. Dusk turned to night, but night wasn’t dark here the way it was at home, where the only light pollution came from motion-detector lights at the barn. A barn blazing with light at night inevitably meant bad news. A horse had colicked or was injured or was having trouble delivering a foal. If the barns weren’t yet lit, they would be in a few hours. By now everyone would know Jasper was dead. Will would know, too, if he’d watched the live feed. There would be endless replays and analysis.

  Bluegrass was over for me. I no longer needed to compartmentalize. I could think about everything that had happened here, except I couldn’t bear to.

  But I felt every moment of it. I felt it in my bones.

  - twenty-five -

  WE LEFT LOUISVILLE when the morning was still dark.

  I had slept, physiologically incapable of keeping my eyes open. In my dreams he’d assaulted me again and again, and Jasper kept dying, and I’d think I was awake only to find myself in another version of the nightmare, none of which was as bad as real life.

  I’d slept in yesterday’s cross-country clothes, but this morning I’d put on jeans and a nylon jacket, which I tried to disappear inside, turtle-like, as the last stars faded and the morning turned gray and sunrise began to bloom. Daybreak brought mile after mile of interstate bordered by rest stops and oversized gas stations and low hills. The land was gentler in Kentucky than it was at home, but the hills were such a bright green that the color hurt my eyes.

  After a couple of hours, we exited the interstate and pulled into a fast-food drive-through. A stomach-turning eggy smell wafted from the window.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “Coffee.” My voice was grainy from disuse.

  “And?”

  I was silent.

  He turned to the window. “Two coffees and two breakfast burgers.”

  “Breakfast burgers” sounded experimental on his tongue.

  “Eat,” he said as we drove back onto the frontage road.

  I dug into the grease-splotched bag and found two tiny cartons of half-and-half. I took the lid off my cup and considered dumping the contents on his crotch.

  With a sound of exasperation he retrieved the bag and put it in his lap, shielding himself from the emasculating coffee burn I imagined. I added the half-and-half to my coffee. It sank to the bottom.

  He drove one-handed while he fished out a burger for himself, unwrapped it, and bit into it. Maybe he’d choke to death. Or contract food poisoning.

  He swallowed. “Not bad. You should eat.”

  He was alive and showing no ill effects from the breakfast burger when we crossed into West Virginia. I wasn’t accustomed to drinking that much coffee. My stomach felt like it had been eaten away. Caffeine pumped through my veins and made my heart race.

  “I’ve given some thought to this situation with Will Howard,” he said. “Whatever you feel for him, it isn’t love. You’re infatuated. I understand that. An older boy pays attention to you, it’s flattering. But he only wants one thing from you.”

  “The same thing you want?”

  “I would never take a chance with your future. Can you say the same for him? Can you tell me you used protection every single time? I know how a teenage boy thinks. Condoms aren’t high on his list.”

  They’d been high on Will’s list. Except for the first night, we’d used them without fail.

  “You’ve taken more chances with my future than Will and I ever have,” I said. “It wasn’t safe for me to ride yesterday, and you made me, and now Jasper’s dead, and it’s your fault.”

  “You were the one on the horse.”

  When he’d said it after the dressage phase, he’d been giving me credit for a strong performance; now he meant I’d ridden Jasper to his death.

  Whether the outcome was good or bad, I was responsible for the way I’d ridden, but I said, “I asked you to let me withdraw.”

  “There was no reason to.”

  “You raped me.”

  “How was Friday night different from any other night?”

  Yesterday I’d tried—so hard—to convince myself it wasn’t. I’d wanted everything to be the same; I’d wanted to be the same. I’d wanted to compartmentalize what had happened and focus on riding and winning and a straight road to Olympic glory.

  “It was different because I told you no,” I said. “I told you not to touch me or kiss me or fuck me.”

  “Or you’d tell everyone?” He sounded as if he’d laid a trap for me that I’d walked right into. “If you were ever going to tell anyone, you’d have told the social worker at the hospital. You didn’t say a thing. You never do, because you know what’ll happen as soon as you breathe a word to anyone.”

  I’d thought about the scenario he began to describe, but as he spoke, I could see it coming to pass.

  “I’ll hire the best lawyers money can buy, even if I have to sell Rosemont to pay for them. And your name might be kept out of the media, but mine won’t. Everyone will know who you are.”

  He could have stopped there.

  “The police will take you to the hospital for a rape kit. Some strange doctor will examine you—put a speculum in you, take swabs, make photos. And those photos aren’t private. People will see them—police, attorneys, the judge, jurors, even the goddamned bailiffs.”

  I was as humiliated as if a whole courtroom of people were looking at the photos right now.

  “After that, the police will start asking questions, and when they’re through with you, my lawyers will just be getting started. When did it begin? How often does it happen? Did you ever tell anyone? Why not?”

  “I told Mama.”

  “Your own mother didn’t believe you, darlin’, or she’d have confronted me.”

  The reve
lation was like being thrown—fleeting weightlessness, and then gravity slamming you into the ground. All these years I’d assumed Mama had tried to make him stop. Her lack of success hadn’t surprised me—but my question the day after Thanksgiving had been on the mark. She hadn’t tried. She wasn’t in my life anymore and she’d still found a way to hurt me.

  “She knew the truth,” I said.

  “No one wants to hear the truth. You don’t even want to hear it, and you sure as hell don’t want to tell it. You want people to know you like it? You want Will Howard to know? Think hard, darlin’. If I go down, you do, too.” He paused. “I always win.”

  West Virginia went by in a nauseating blur. At one time the mountains must have looked like the landscape around Sheridan, but they’d been decapitated by mining. The spaces where the peaks should have been reminded me of myself. Stripped of some essential part.

  We reached Rosemont in the early afternoon. From the driveway, I saw Jasper’s grave, a mound of fresh rust-colored earth on one of the hills overlooking the farm. Burying his entire body had required a massive grave. My father had picked the spot, the hill Jasper and I had ridden up countless times. From its crest, Rosemont was my toy farm, and everything was perfect.

  Now it didn’t even look perfect. The grave was like a canker, and underneath the soil, Jasper was rotting.

  My father braked in front of the house but didn’t turn off the engine. “Do you want to walk up to his grave?”

  Seeing it at a distance was like a body blow. I wasn’t ready to see it up close. Tears glazed my eyes. I tilted my head back to keep them from spilling over. “No.”

  We rolled slowly past the house. I assumed he was driving around back to the garage, but he kept going down the hill to the barn.

  “Jasper’s death is tragic,” he said, “and it’s a huge loss, but you will not turn it into a disaster. Arlington is in two weeks, and we’re going to be there. I’m not letting you sabotage your career. You have to toughen up. Understand?”

  I understood that I hated him.

  “Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  The pall over the farm went beyond the quiet of the afternoon lull in chores, but in the barn, Diva was tied in the wash rack, and Mateo was running water from the hose over her right foreleg. He pulled more hose from the reel. She lurched back against the crossties, her hoofs clattering on the concrete.

  “Easy,” Mateo said. Then he saw us. “Hey, boss. Roan.”

  “She worse?” my father said.

  “Some heat in the leg.” Mateo bent the hose in half to cut off the stream of water while my father ran his hand down Diva’s leg. She blew a long rattling snort through her nostrils.

  Across the aisle, Jasper’s door gaped open. His stall had been swept clean.

  “We kept her out of the turnout this morning,” Mateo said. “I’ve been giving her thirty minutes of hydrotherapy every two hours. It’s cooler each time. Should we call Glenn?”

  My father straightened. “Not if it’s getting better. Why isn’t somebody else doing this? You and Eddie drove all night.”

  “Eddie drove. He said it kept his mind off… it’s better if I stay busy.” Mateo looked at me. “You all right?”

  I started to nod but my head bobbled. “How about you?”

  “Not great. He was special. Oh, I have something for you.” He reached in the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a thick coil of something black and shiny—a length of hair cut from Jasper’s tail.

  “Thank you.” My voice broke as I put the coil of hair in my own pocket.

  “Someone else will clean your stalls tonight,” my father said to Mateo. “Get some rest.”

  We drove back to the house, parked in the garage, took our bags in through the screened back porch—and there was Gertrude in the kitchen, holding out her arms.

  I dropped my garment bag and backpack and embraced her. She rubbed her hand up and down my back.

  “I’m sorry, sugar.” She would have let go, but I clung to her. “I know how torn up you must be. Those horses are like family to you.”

  “You’re like family, too.”

  “Eddie okay?” my father said.

  “He took a sleeping pill and went to bed. I thought I’d see what I could do up here. There’s ham in the fridge. How about sandwiches?” She spoke over my shoulder. I had to let go of her now, but I didn’t.

  “We can make our own sandwiches,” he said. “Go home. Take care of Eddie. He needs you more than we do today.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that.

  “All right. I am worried about him. Sugar…”

  Reluctantly, I let go.

  She laid her hand against my cheek. “I’ll be back in the morning. That’s spinach lasagna thawing on the counter, and—”

  “Go.” My father smiled. “We won’t starve.”

  “Tell Eddie I’ll come see him later,” I said.

  “Now, darlin’,” my father said, “he needs to decompress. You’ll see him tomorrow.”

  He followed me upstairs.

  “I’m warning you, don’t drag Eddie and Gertrude into this. It’d be a shame if they lost their jobs.”

  He’d made Bailey and Jasper and Will disappear. Mama, too, for whatever that was worth. Gertrude and Eddie would be easy to get rid of. All he had to do was fire them. Then I really would be all alone. Why hadn’t I ever talked to Gertrude? If she knew the truth, she’d never have left me alone with him. She’d have done something, and I wouldn’t be here now.

  In my room, I dropped my bags on the bed. He left my duffel and his suitcase on the floor, took my arm, and led me down the hall to his room, where he closed and locked the door.

  Sickening chills made me start to shake like I had a fever as he walked all the way around me.

  “Who else?” he said from somewhere behind me.

  “Who else what?”

  “Mateo? You fuck Mateo?”

  I turned toward him, openmouthed. “Have you lost your mind?”

  I stepped back in time to avoid the full force of his backhand, but because I was off balance, it knocked me to my knees. I tried to curl into a ball to protect myself, but he hauled me to my feet, his face distorted.

  “You made it a point to thank Mateo and Eddie in your first interview with Vic—but did you thank me?” He pushed his face into mine, breathing me in, and I screamed loudly, wordlessly, shredding the tissue in my throat. He put a hand at my neck, his thumb and index finger lifting up on my jawbone, the flat of his palm pushing against my throat and choking off the sound. He backed me toward the bed. I grabbed his fingers and tried to pull them from my neck, but he squeezed tighter. If he didn’t let go of me, I was going to puke or pass out. He shoved me back on the bed. I coughed, gasping for breath.

  I hadn’t recovered when he got on the bed with me, and though I had no air, I fought, because even if he choked me to death, anything was better than this.

  He spooned around me, clamping my arms down, holding both of my legs down with one of his. Both of us were breathing hard. His bedroom had been closed up for three days and was stifling, but the chills and trembling wouldn’t stop.

  “All I have to do,” he whispered, his breath hot, “is loosen the hold that boy has on you, and everything can be the way it was before.”

  “Nothing will be the way it was.” My voice shook, strained from screaming or being choked or both.

  He didn’t seem to have heard me. Through the long, hot afternoon, he kept me wrapped in the cocoon of his arms, murmuring in my ear from time to time. He had plans for me. My infatuation with Will had nearly ruined them, but we could make this work again.

  Under my clothes, drops of sweat rolled across my skin. I was slowly suffocating—struggling to breathe in his constrictor’s embrace, my throat so sore that it hurt to swallow. My jeans were too tight and cutting into my crotch. Unlike last night, he slept, but he woke at the slightest movement. I couldn’t ease my way free of him, and I couldn’t fight
him.

  The afternoon lasted a lifetime, but finally evening came on, and the house began to cool.

  “Time for chores,” he said.

  I didn’t see how I was supposed to go to the barn and muck stalls and act like everything was ordinary, but at least at the barn I wouldn’t be alone with my father.

  “I need a shower.” Speech hurt, too.

  He let me up. I went into his bathroom and closed the door, and the thin slab of wood between us was more distance than I’d had from him all day. He could walk in any second, but I felt the scum of sweat all over me, and I wanted out of these jeans. They were damp and hard to pull off because they stuck to my legs, but I undressed and stepped into his shower.

  For the longest time, I let the water needle my skin. It stung my nipples, which had bled Friday night, and down below, I’d been turned inside out. I washed gingerly, wrapped a towel around myself, and reluctantly opened the bathroom door.

  He followed me to my room. If he went for me now, I was at my most vulnerable, but he only waited while I took clean clothes from my dresser into my bathroom. Still, I leaned against my bathroom door while I dressed so he couldn’t open it and come in. I put on a T-shirt and my oldest, softest jeans, which didn’t cut into me the way the sweaty jeans had.

  Some of the grooms were already mucking when we reached the barn. Even though Mateo and Eddie and I had mostly been responsible for Jasper, everyone had liked him, and they were somber as they offered their condolences.

  Fernando looked at me with sympathy. “You don’t look so good.”

  I was sure I didn’t.

  “Is hurting you here?” He touched his chest.

  Diva began to bang on her stall door.

  “Bring her out,” my father said, “before she undoes all that hydrotherapy.”

  Do you see him as different people?

  He was different people, and I was beginning to see myself as different people, too. Even more than I hated him, I hated who I was when I was with him.

  As I led Diva from her stall, I could feel through the lead rope that she still favored her right foreleg.

  My father frowned. “Hold her.” He felt her leg. “It’s not that bad. Run water over it. We’ll call Glenn in the morning.”