“She give you good mileage?” Wesley asked.
For a moment Hank thought he’d meant Chloe. “I beg your pardon?”
“Don’t get riled. I’m talking about your car, son.”
“Decent.” Its smallness was made more obvious alongside the king cabs and double-axled trucks. Fuck them. None of these men was taking her home. He was. That counted for something.
She came out of the bathroom in an old T-shirt of his that didn’t cover much. The triangle of pubic hair showing was the tail end of a heart. It glistened with water from her cat-bath. She limped over to the bed, yawned, and stretched her hands above her head. He looked at her belly, the breasts that defined the T-shirt in profile.
“I had a good time tonight. Why didn’t you? Tell me, Hank. I know you’re mad at me, but I don’t know what I did wrong.”
“Nothing. We’re just extremely different people.”
“On the surface, maybe. Inside we’re a lot alike.”
“Hardly.”
“You’d better help me out here. I think I’m losing you.”
“What a funny way to put it.”
“Now you’re scaring me.”
He pushed her back onto the mattress, kissed her hard, pressed her legs apart, inched two fingers inside her, bent close and whispered in her ear. “You like this?”
She gasped. “I might, if you give me a minute to catch up.”
“You like it. You like it more than any woman I’ve ever met. You want me right now?”
She pushed at his wrist with her hands. “What is the matter with you? It’s late. You’re drunk and you’re heavy. Get off me.”
He wrestled her down, jabbed at her with his cock.
She went limp. “Go on, if that’s all you’re after. Be my guest. Treat me like landfill. Dump your load and drive off.”
His erection immediately went limp, and he jerked away from her, pressed her knees back together with trembling hands, and stood up.
Her voice punctured the dark. “I don’t understand. You’re curious about my friends, you kept on saying you wanted into that world. So I take you there. Why’s three old buddies of mine dancing me through my troubles so goddamn threatening? I’m here in your bed, aren’t I?”
“Our lives are too different, Chloe. I don’t see how we can make it.”
She was quiet. “If that’s what you believe, no amount of argument from me will convince you.”
He watched her get up and pull on the yellow sweatpants he’d brought to her in jail. She said, “You want me to sleep in the other room? I can be gone tomorrow.”
“I don’t want that.”
“Then what? You have to tell me where this is going.”
What did you say when you were a soon-to-be-unemployed teacher, when your own jealousy made you turn on the person you loved best? Once said, words didn’t fit back on the tongue. Like devils set loose, they ran from one conclusion to the next, fearless of the havoc they wreaked. “I know you slept with that vet.”
She turned back the covers and got into the bed, patting his space for him to join her. When he settled down onto the pillow, she nestled herself inside his arm, the length of her body flush with his, the cast making a tent of the sheet and blanket. He felt her breathing, even and calm, though her skin was tense. She laid her head across his heart, and he could feel each beat sending its rampant code of testosterone defensiveness into her cheekbone. He smoothed her hair with his other hand. It was soft and thick under his fingers in the darkness.
“I slept with Gabe, all right, but not for the reasons you think. It was a while ago. Sometimes we do stuff to get by, Hank. It shames me to say it, but Gabe was one of those times I had a choice that wasn’t much of a choice. I won’t deny it.”
If he had been less drunk, less guilty, he might have taken her in a close embrace and told her for the first time that he loved her, that he didn’t care what her past held, then sealed what the saying of those words meant with lovemaking, but he didn’t—couldn’t.
The first phone call came at three-fifteen, waking them both up from a sound sleep.
“My mother,” Hank said, lurching for the phone.
“Absalom,” Chloe said, climbing over him.
But it was no one, no one who would identify himself, either to Hank or to Chloe, who tried Spanish, thinking it was one of the stable hands with bad news, the shy boys who spoke deferentially to anyone they didn’t know well, fearful of immigration at every turn.
The line was too quiet, as if somebody on the other end needed to hear one of them say a frantic hello to get through the rest of the night. After they hung up, Hank and Chloe lay together in the bed, too jittery for sleep, too tense for speculation. Chloe gave up around four and went downstairs to make coffee. Hank followed.
“You want some toast?”
“Am I forgiven for last night?”
She turned from the counter and pointed a finger. “You promise to stay out of the tequila?”
“I do. I feel awful.”
“I’m glad.”
“Thanks so much.”
“Well, you brought it on yourself.”
“What do you make of that phone call we had last night?”
“One of your old girlfriends?” She handed him a cup. The streetlights shone outside the windows, and it was still too early for the newspaper.
CHAPTER
17
You look like you’re in a real bad mood. Are you on your period? I get horrible right before my period. I cry and eat way too much chocolate and then I throw up. Oh, my god. Are you not on your period?”
Chloe gripped the steering wheel. “Kit, honestly.”
“Listen, how am I supposed to know if you’re being conscientious? People get pregnant all the time.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“Still.”
“Trust me, it’s not that. Some jerkoff is getting his kicks by calling Hank all hours of the night. I can’t sleep and it’s pissing me off.”
“How weird. Who do you think it is?”
“I don’t know. One of his old girlfriends, most likely. Jesus, I hope he gets a new phone number soon. I’m about done in.”
“You could move. Me and my dad have two extra bedrooms. If you lived with us we could be together almost all the time.”
Chloe stopped the truck in front of the box stalls a little quicker than she had planned to. Ropes, boots, and Kit’s purse slid to the floor. “You’re not the one who’s calling, are you?”
Kit’s face turned red. “Of course not! Fucking A, Chloe! How could you even think it?”
“Sorry. I’m so tired I suspect everybody. Hey, what’d you get on your interview project? I’m dying to know.”
Kit stayed tight lipped. “Hasn’t been graded yet.”
“Will you let me know when it is?”
“Maybe.” She opened her door.
“Goddammit, Kit, wait.” The girl flew out of the cab in a huff, biting the tips off carrots before passing them randomly through the open stall doors. Chloe could see a dozen muzzles lean out hopefully. The horses knew Kit. Her gentle hands and quiet talk had won them over; the carrots were frosting.
Chloe bent to the truck’s floor and loaded up her arms with the newly purchased ropes and a packet of herbal salts Wes included. It was some kind of neon pink appetite enhancer, and he bet her a longneck Coors it would work on Absalom. Just mix it in with his chow and stand back, he said. Ab had eaten yesterday, but only a quarter of his feed, then looked sour again. Maybe it was time to call Gabe.
“Chloe!” Kit’s scream echoed through the barn.
She dropped the ropes in the dirt and ran as fast as her plastered leg would allow.
“He’s cast!” she cried, unlatching the stall door.
“Quiet down, Kit. We’ll get him up. Won’t do him any good if we start getting hysterical.” She gently eased the girl out the stall door, took a quick inventory of the entire situation. Ab was down on his left side. Th
e feeder was full of hay cubes. There were two piles of manure, easily hours old, nothing so odd looking about them that it should cause the dark horse to colic. Moreover, he wasn’t writhing like his gut hurt, he was lying still, his breathing labored, his chest lathered as if he had been run hard and not cooled down properly. She checked his vitals, nothing too off the mark. She tried all her usual tricks, but he didn’t want to get up. As a last resort, she felt the laminae of each hoof, but just as she expected, they were cool.
Kit’s voice trembled. “In my horse book it says they can die from laying down. Is that right?”
Chloe nodded.
“Here, boy, have a carrot.” Kit waved one in front of Ab’s face, but he was past carrots.
“Over by the pay phone there’s a list of telephone numbers. Dr. Hubbard. Can you call him for me, Kit? Tell him to drop everything and come right away. And tell Francisco I need him to help me get Ab up.”
“Sure. I’m already there.”
“You need a quarter?”
“I got one.”
When Kit was gone, Chloe settled herself down next to her horse. She lifted his head, brushed it clean of shavings and dirt, and cradled it in her arms, touching the fine bones and cartilage that formed the Roman nose she’d brushed nearly every day of her life for the last seventeen years. His nostrils, lightly tinged on the edges with pink, flexed open and shut as breath sieved in and out of his lungs. She knew the anatomy of a horse so well she could have taken a stick and drawn the respiratory system in the dirt, but she didn’t know what was wrong with him.
Last night he’d been a little twitchy in the forequarters, but not overly so. She’d haltered him and walked him up and down the breezeway. He’d seemed nervous—he was a thoroughbred—sometimes all it took to get him riled was the wind changing direction. He’d managed to get out of his stall once or twice, rip his chest up good on barbed wire, founder in the grain shed, but never before had he taken this kind of dive. She looked up. All around them his neighbors stood watching. Animals knew. Their senses weren’t daunted by human convention. If one of their species was headed for the exit door, they either gave him a wide berth or formed a circle of support. She stared at their questioning muzzles and wished she could ask them what had taken place in the last twelve hours. As soon as the excitement of Chloe’s arrival subsided, back they went to eating their cubes, drinking great draughts of water, and snorting out morning greetings.
Kit came running back, her red hair streaming out behind her. “He’s on his way right now. I told them it was you and he got on the phone himself.”
“Thanks. Francisco?”
Kit frowned. “He’s down at the gelding pasture. They tore the fence out last night. But he’s coming.”
“Good.”
Kit pressed her face into the stall bars and kicked the dirt with her riding boot. “Chloe? Can I come in there and sit with you?”
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, honey. We don’t know what might happen next.”
“I just want to hold a hoof.”
“All right. But as soon as Gabe’s truck gets here, you have to stay out of the way, okay?”
“Okay.” She brought a dandy brush in with her, and ran it lightly over the horse’s flank, then gathered his tail in her lap and untangled the long hairs, brushing them until they were shiny, separating them into smaller bundles to make dozens of tiny plaits. Chloe watched her stubby fingers work, heard her humming some Top Forty tune to her self like a lonesome five-year-old playing with her dolls. Even without a vet’s diagnosis she knew that her horse was dying, that no matter what trick Gabe pulled out of his truck, it was happening. Absalom was twenty-one, old for a thoroughbred. He’d had a full life, the navicular disease was pressing on her to make a decision anyway. Maybe it was a myth, that business about childhood being a happy time, hers wasn’t; Kit’s could serve as proof that things weren’t getting better. This time she didn’t have to ask Hank what the gods had to say about that, she’d looked over his shoulder and read enough of his lecture notes to know. Half the time the sons of bitches were changing their kids into goats, the other half burning them up in the sun. Hubris, he called it. He said that was what separated mortals from gods. At some point she’d have to call to let him know what was happening. In a couple of days they were going to court. He’d badgered her all week about getting a dress, and she agreed to go shopping tonight just to get out of the few hours she spent in the house. The phone calls were driving them both to screaming fits; if they took the receiver off the hook at night, it would ring first thing in the morning like a knee-jerk reflex. Nobody there, just the listener, the two of them taking turns blaming each other for some twisted fool’s shenanigans—and she’d accused Kit, well, that wouldn’t be forgotten in a hurry. None of this would. She missed her shack in Hughville. Running water cost money, and solitude exacted its own price, but it had been a rare and fine time. She guessed Hannah was dead now, it had been so long. Funny, she didn’t feel dead to her heart, not the way Fats did.
Here, next to the horse he’d broken and trained, she was flooded with memories. Fats was back, right here in this stall, squatting down on the heels of his worn black Justin Ropers, examining a horse he’d birthed, gentled, and seen master third-level dressage, been offered ten thousand dollars for on more than one occasion, but saved to give freely to Chloe, whom he once loved.
Tell me what to do, she begged. You’re the expert. Horses die all the time, you used to tell me. Make my heart believe it. Beyond the breezeway she could hear crows calling to each other. Bright sunshine cast long shadows angling down from the aluminum roof. Rangy hens passed silently through the stalls looking for dropped grain. She reached over and picked some shavings out of her grimy cast.
Gabe’s truck eased slowly through the breezeway, and the hens scattered. He had the door open before he came to a complete stop.
She saw him grab a batch of syringes and a box of medicines before he came inside. At the stall door, he looked at Absalom before he looked at her. He was never more gorgeous than when he was humbled by work. Tending a mare through a difficult delivery, his face would focus inward, determined to set aside any notion of statistics just to see that baby into the world. Putting down an aged horse, his hands were quiet and considerate, soothing; the honest portion of his soul shone through no matter what a bastard he was with women. This morning he wore a dryer-rumpled, clean white T-shirt stretched over his muscular chest, Wrangler jeans pulled on with no belt, probably no underwear beneath that. For a rich man he was simple. His work boots were muddy. He met her glance shiftily. He knew something she didn’t, something that confirmed her worst suspicions without him saying a word.
He nodded hello. “Chloe, Kit.”
“Hey, Dr. Hubbard.”
“Gabe.”
“I’ll get us some Cokes,” Kit said, and slipped out the stall door.
“Just tell me right out, Gabe. I can take it.”
“Let me get this in first.” He found a vein and started an IV of Ringers. He went back to the truck and gloved up, took a plastic sack and dumped all the cubes from the feeder into it, removed his gloves and tossed them into the sack, sealed the top, tagged it, and set the sack inside the truck. When that was done, he came over and sat down next to her, taking her arm and freeing her splayed fingers from the horse’s neck. He stroked her hand.
“We have to get him up,” she said. “Francisco’s coming.”
“I’ve had a busy couple of days. We lost one at Serrano the same way, there’s two down at the fairgrounds and one out in Norco I heard of that died before the vet could get there. Rumors of places as far away as Bakersfield having the same kind of trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
He shook his head. “Nobody’s sure. Could be a virus. There’s some speculation about contaminated feed. As of today all the hay cubes are being recalled.”
She waved a hand toward the other horses. “Nobody else’s sick, and
they’re all eating the same shit. I don’t buy it.”
“The early necropsies show some evidence that way.”
She looked down at the horse’s head in her lap. His eyes were shut; he breathed, but not as easily as before. “Save my horse, Gabe,” she said quietly.
He showed her a vial. “This stuff’s worth more than my truck. I got it Air Express from the CDC this morning. If you’re willing to gamble, I’ll give it to him, but it hasn’t worked on anybody yet.”
“What is it?”
“A hurry-up antiserum to a trace strain of botulism found in one of the dead horses.”
“If it’s an antitoxin why won’t it work?”
“Because it seems like by the time the horse goes down it’s too late for it.” He drew up several syringes and injected them into the tubing of the IV.
All day people gathered, stood silent outside the stall, came and went, nobody saying anything beyond a soft hello. The grooms hurried wheelbarrows from stall to stall, taking back the hay cubes and replacing them with flakes. Somebody brought Chloe a hamburger, but she set it aside and Rabbit, the curly-coated stable mutt, finished it and spent the rest of the day guarding the stall as if it were his personal duty. The stable owners raced back and forth talking on cellular telephones, baled hay was unloaded and stacked into a twenty-foot square, and the hens immediately tried to roost on top. It seemed as though nearly everybody had gotten the news about the feed and had come out to check their horses. People Chloe hadn’t seen in years came by. Some young girls, students she’d taught, and their friends were crying. That was okay, they were just putting a voice to what everyone felt. Kit herded them off, looking fierce. How she could have accused her of the phone calls was beyond reasoning.
“I’m here for the duration, Chloe,” Gabe said. “We’ll sit this through together, but when he’s had enough, I want your promise you’ll let me send him home, not let him suffer.”
She nodded, her fingers numb from the constant stroking.
Hank & Chloe Page 21
