by Ann Self
Jane snapped her head up and locked eyes with Lucinda, causing the smaller woman to blink and freeze in her sparkling halo of gold as she sensed the depth of Jane’s anger. Lucinda, for once, was almost speechless, and Jane could see the mind behind the crafty metallic eyes shifting gears, reassessing the path to dominance. She could also see the cameraman slowly closing in.
The mental dueling was cut short by a shrill scream—raising the hackles on Jane’s neck and causing Charmante to rip the lead from her hands and gallop away across the ring.
Mean Chicken!
“That damn rooster is loose again!” someone gasped.
In one smooth motion, Jane hitched herself up and over the partition, swinging her boots smartly to the floor as she muttered her momentous first words to Brian: “Excuse me...” She sprinted across the cement apron to grab the broom. Screams and cries were coming from all directions as the big white rooster darted at people randomly, flapping and striking at will, trying to anchor his sharp spurs in flesh.
Allison’s jaw unhinged and she began a loud, top-of-the-lungs shriek, drawing the television camera like a bee to honey. A distant news control-room exploded to pandemonium as other stories and commercials were dumped in favor of Rooster terrorizes movie star Allison Paget, live on the scene...
Hysteria ripened quickly; women screamed and dashed in all directions like a school of fish from a shark. Men tried haplessly to shoo him away, but the rooster had no fear of flailing arms. The camera pointed in every direction, panning, zooming in tight and dragging out wide to catch it all, with the same immediacy and drama as an unedited police documentary. Roger scooped the tiny Gladys off the floor and held her out of harm’s way. Allison Paget was clinging and clawing at Brian, jumping and screaming as the man tried to free himself from the actress to help.
The cameraman swung the glass back on Allison, advancing closer. Cecily collided with a fleeing woman and they tripped over each other and fell to the floor. Cecily struggled in her voluminous gown to regain her feet and the camera did not spare her.
The rooster had been merely toying with the guests, however, and quickly shot across the cement to the target that brought out his full raging temper. He launched himself at Lucinda and sliced her exposed leg with sharp spurs before she even knew what hit her. Lucinda shrieked like a banshee, grabbing her father and tearing his pleated shirtfront and pearl buttons, yanking him off balance and dropping them both hard on the floor. They cracked heads and Lucinda split her lip on the unyielding cement. The glass eye was on her in a heartbeat, up-close-and-personal, recording and bouncing her image off the satellite and back to the newsroom, and then into millions of living rooms where people sat gape-jawed in their pajamas.
All this passed in seconds. Jane grabbed the broom and ran towards Lucinda and Elliot as they thrashed around on the cement floor. Lucinda’s bare back was the next target and the rooster raked her again with his spurs and claws, gouging the skin on her back and ripping the tiny straps of her dress, while Elliot tried to bat him away.
“GET HIM OFF ME! GET HIM OFF ME!” she shrieked. Elliot kept trying to get to his feet, but Lucinda was flailing and kicking and screaming so much that he couldn’t get his balance. Brian was working to disentangle himself from Allison, who was clutching at him, clawing his face in a panic and trying to stop him as he approached Lucinda and Elliot.
“Watch out!” Jane yelled to Brian as she held the broom over her shoulder like Mickey Mantle. Brian backed off and dragged Allison out of the way. The rooster flapped to land on his prey once again to set the spurs and shred skin, and Jane swung for the bleachers.
WHAP! Mean Chicken soared without wings.
Home run...
“Jesus, let go!” Jane heard Brian mutter quietly as he peeled Allison off his neck.
The bird landed several feet down the cement apron, rolled to his claws and ran off, the camera widening and following expertly, as if the rooster really was a baseball or a tee-shot at the Masters.
“Mean Chicken has left the building,” Jane whispered.
Finally disentangling himself from Allison, Brian helped the struggling Elliot and whining, crying Lucinda to their feet. Cecily awkwardly fought in her gown to get up off the cement and then ran to the aid of her husband and daughter.
Charmante was tearing up the arena, snorting loudly as he raced back and forth, the lead shank flapping around his neck. The cameraman grabbed a quick shot of that to round out the action. Jane set the broom back against the wall and then caught her breath at the sight of Lucinda. She had stopped screaming, but was wracked by little squeaks and gasps. Her hair was a rat’s nest—still winking gold sparkles, but now matted with dust and stray shavings. Bits of hay stuck out at bizarre angles.
Even the cameraman was stunned, but not enough to stop filming. He wisely kept his distance and made good use of the powerful telephoto for an in-your-nostril close-up. Lucinda’s right cheek was grazed from the cement floor, and her lower lip suffered mightily from the contact. It was split, bloody and swelling rapidly like a balloon. Dirt and shavings were pasted to the blood on her back, and some of the tiny straps were torn and dangled at her waist. Her bare leg was streaked with several gashes, and lines of bright red blood pooled into the Jimmy Choos. The golden Whitbeck princess now looked like a gilded tart caught in a barroom brawl.
“I...I...I w-want you t-to kib thab bird!!” She screamed with a fat lip, and into thousands of television sets. She clutched at the front panel of a gown that was ready to fall away like a hanky.
“He’s gone! Don’t worry about it,” Elliot snapped through gritted teeth. “I’ll wring his neck myself!” He tried to smooth the silver hair back over his bald head, but most of it still waved to the side, dangling shavings and hay like ornaments. Elliot then fussed at the bow tie and shirtfront, but it was hopeless, most of the pearl buttons lay at his feet. He spotted the cameraman and rushed at him, screaming about lawsuits and trying to cover the camera with his hand, getting into a nasty scuffle.
Allison stood cowering against the half-wall with her hand over her mouth, wide-eyed in shock and trembling from head to toe. Brian went over to comfort her. Cecily tried to help Lucinda, but she pushed her mother away and stalked across the cement to Jane, still grasping the front of her gown with both hands. One of her stiletto heels had broken in half, making her bob up and down like a broken mechanical toy. Blood saturating the shoe linings squished and sucked with every step.
The cameraman shoved Elliot aside and moved in on Lucinda as she stomped over to Jane. He trotted backwards to keep the lens tight on her face, recording every sound and image. No way in hell he was going to miss this. Lucinda was in too much of a black rage to notice and her words burst out in ragged, hysterical gasps, her swollen lip thickening and distorting consonants as she screamed at Jane: “You! You bebber run thib barn bebber!! Thish ib inexcubable!” Blood and spittle flew from her damaged lip as she screamed, full-framed, tight closeup, into the television lens: “You couldeb rub a dob kenneb!!”
Lucinda dissolved into wracking sobs as Cecily ran over to her. Roger escorted an angry Gladys to Lucinda’s side, while a few remaining guests looked on in astonishment. Owen jumped off the partition, slapping dust off rented pants. Elliot ran over and yanked the camera off the shoulder of the cameraman, and the man now threatened Elliot with lawsuits. Elliot then darted to Lucinda’s side, instructing Roger to block the video camera.
“Lucinda...” Elliot tried to shield her, “Let’s get you up to the house and take a look at those wounds, you may need stitches.”
Elliot looked at Jane with murder in his eyes, yanked his head with its damaged hairdo toward the ring, and snarled, “get that horse!”
Lucinda blubbered and wailed about not wanting stitches. Cecily grabbed a handful of paper towels from the restroom to protect the seat of the limo since Lucinda was bleeding from a dozen scratches; then they all streamed out of the indoor arena to a line of waiting vehicles. Scurrying g
uests in sequins and suits jumped into limos before anyone else could be waylaid by deranged poultry, accompanied by the sound of quickly slamming doors. Gladys followed the group, but she stopped first to glare at Jane with a look so venomous that it shocked her. Roger walked behind, ready to deflect the cameraman if he followed.
Jane stood for a moment, shook her head, and then walked into the ring to retrieve the horse.
Brian was trying to calm Allison, she was shivering and cowering against the partition, ranting and raving about leaving immediately; for once oblivious to the fact that she was being filmed on live television. “I want to get out now Brian!! Right away! That stupid fowl could’ve ended my career. The close-ups are murder, the camera lens sees every damn imperfection..!” The camera was in fact, at that very moment, crawling over her face, registering every pore and tooth of her hysterical blubbering; a clip that would be trotted out on news and entertainment shows for some time to come.
“Okay, Allison, all right. I’ll drive you back to Rhode Island.” Brian turned her away from the invasive camera and led her out with his arm around her, glancing back over his shoulder at Jane stomping away with the stallion on a loose lead.
The cameraman grabbed a long-shot of Jane and Charmante and then ran after the movie star, but somewhere in the barn his cable was suddenly hacked clear through with an axe, effectively blinding the glass eye.
FOUR
A warm June breeze feathered boughs of century-old oaks, and made a soft sushing murmur like the rustle of starched petticoats. Sunlight danced through leaves and dappled over Jane’s features as she leaned backwards against a paddock fence at the top of a hill; draping her arms on the top rail and enjoying the spreading view of pastures, paddocks and barn. She hooked her riding boot over a lower rail, tipped her head back and swallowed a long, cool drink of orange soda, grateful to be resting after hours of teaching. The delicious breeze ruffled her bangs and hummed over the mouth of her soda can. It was the third week in June and haying was going on full tilt; nearly perfect spring weather had brought on an early first cutting. Far-flung fields resembled a rolling quilt laying under a sky so blue it almost hurt to look at it. Tractors were pulling gangs of giant discs fingered with steel tines, fluffing and raking the hay into rows for baling. Another large machine followed to convert the stacked hay into bales. Jane observed Dylan plucking the bales from the fields in a giant hay truck. The front of the truck was equipped with a mechanism that lifted bales over the cab and deposited them in the bed. The bales were then driven in from the fields and loaded onto a conveyor belt that ferried them into the old south wing hayloft. Closer by, Jane noticed a FedEx truck pull up and park in front of the west wing of the barn. She watched with curiosity while Sam left the hay operation and helped the FedEx driver carry cartons into the barn.
She took another leisurely sip of soda and turned her attention to a different direction, to a horse and rider in an outdoor dressage ring near the barn. Lucinda was schooling Charmante under Lars’s direction. Jane hung her head back as far as it would go and looked into the wide blue sky. “Ple-eease God, let her get better!” she prayed. They had missed two shows already. Lucinda said she just wasn’t ready, and on that point Jane agreed with her. Lucinda had lost some practice time after the party disaster, but her cuts and scrapes had healed amazingly fast. Most of them looked worse than they were, except for one that did need some stitching on her lower right leg. She should’ve been ready to show...but she wasn’t.
It was Monday, they were entered in the upcoming weekend show—and Jane prayed they would get there. She desperately needed more qualifying scores on General to be eligible for the Regional Championships. The qualification was based on a horse/rider combination, and General was the first horse she’d had access to for her personal use that didn’t top out at first level. She trained and schooled horses with staggering price tags for other riders, but when it was time for the limelight, she was usually replaced by the owner. Jane had spent years patiently schooling General, the racehorse cast-off, and he had surprised everyone with his ability to beat far better horses in upper-level classes. She might have been replaced in the show ring on this horse too, but no one else, it seemed, could bring out anything but a lackluster performance on General.
All this was moot though if Lucinda didn’t show. If she didn’t show, no one showed, unless they had their own trailering equipment and grooms; and only the astoundingly wealthy Bergstroms and their twin daughters fit that category.
Jane took another long gulp of her orange soda and reflected on the awful evening of the party. No reprimand had been issued, not even from Elliot. The family had been strangely silent. Elliot had vented his rage on the TV station, launching a battery of his lawyers on them and threatening to sue if they ran any more tapes of the evening. There was nothing he could do about the live transmission—that was over and done with, no way to erase it.
Madeline had been one of the millions of people in the greater Boston area who settled in for the evening news when she saw live coverage of the rooster-movie-star-disaster. Jane had returned to her room that night, after depositing the agitated Charmante in his stall, to find her phone ringing off the hook. She and Madeline yakked for an hour, reliving every moment.
“Well,” Madeline had said to her, “I finally got to see your nemesis. Boy, was the camera unkind to her!” Jane explained that Lucinda looked a lot better before Mean Chicken rearranged her looks, to which Madeline had exclaimed: “One chicken did all that!?”
“One extremely large and psychotic rooster!”
“Allison Paget didn’t look so great either—whining and screaming.”
“Well, to be fair to her, I wouldn’t want to face that thing in a gown and six-inch heels...and I don’t have to worry about my face being 20 feet high on a movie screen…”
Jane found out from Madeline she had been on camera only twice. Once as she batted the chicken away from Lucinda, looking like Mickey Mantle in a pony tail—a clip the station tended to play over and over—and then again leading Charmante out of the ring.
Jane snapped back to the present and took another drink of soda. She idly watched tiny bales of hay in the distance traveling up the belt to their new home in the hayloft.
Keeping the tabloids off the estate was difficult—they were almost as hard-nosed and determined as Elliot and willing to use guerrilla tactics. But Whitbeck was a match for them. He hired an aggressive security company whose employees easily got carried away with commando-style maneuvers, and practically ran the press off the roads. The reporters eventually quit and made up whatever was necessary to fill in their story; using grainy, telephoto shots of the barn. Jane had almost laughed out loud when she shopped at a local supermarket and saw the tabloid headline:
VICIOUS ROOSTER ATTACKS ALLISON PAGET
LIVING WITH VOODOO CURSE.
Jane focused on the distant Lucinda for another moment, hoping to see improvement. Lucinda had stayed away from the barn for a week after the broadcasted public humiliation. When she did finally return—after much bullying from Elliot—she ignored everyone but Lars. Mean Chicken avoided execution by the skin of his chicken teeth, although he was now banished to the pen that Reggie quickly finished until a new home could be found. So far, no takers.
Jane hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Brian Canaday since the ignominious evening. No surprise there, she thought. He was out of the place like a shot, right on the heels of his actress girlfriend. She swirled her soda in its can and made a choked-off laugh. “Running, as it were, from the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party!”
Draining the last drop of her drink, she tossed the can into a large barrel chained to the fence and was about to investigate the FedEx delivery when she spotted Owen trotting down the lane between paddocks on General. Jane frowned at his choice of mounts; there were many other available rides besides the one she was primarily training and showing, but to say so would only make Owen choose General more often. It was like telling a child
not to put beans in his nose.
Owen reached her quickly and swung down from the horse in one smooth motion, landing with boots smartly together. He removed wrap-around sunglasses, eyes slanting at her as dust from the dirt lane puffed airily away on the breeze. He smiled pugnaciously at her obvious irritation. After a second he turned away and held the sun glasses up to his eyes so he could observe Lucinda. “So, the whiney little brat is actually practicing?”
Jane made no comment, and he dropped his hand and swung back to look at her, khaki brown eyes roaming insolently. His shirt was open almost to the belt and the gold chain around his neck blinded her when it winked sunlight into her eyes. “I guess,” he said, “she’s healed from the poultry attack. Wasn’t that a hoot? I really got to hand it to that rooster for providing the best entertainment of the evening.”
Jane flicked a sharp glance at him. “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
“No? Not even her? Get real—I know you enjoyed it.” Owen was covering himself again, in case she tried to repeat his words. In his version, Jane would somehow be the one who thought the Chicken episode was entertaining.
General lowered his head to graze, his dark brown hide and black mane gleaming in the sun. Owen clamped tight on the reins and jerked the horse’s head back up, making Jane wince. Rough treatment could easily hurt the soft fleshy bars of the horse’s mouth and make him resent the metal bit; possibly ruining years of training—but what did he care? The little curve of Owen’s thin mouth let her know he was still pleased with his ability to agitate her.
“I can’t believe you bothered rescuing that brat,” he said, as he slipped a riding whip under his arm, put the earpiece of the sunglasses in his mouth, and gathered the reins tightly. General was munching determinedly on the hunk of grass he’d managed to grab, working up a green foam, and keeping a large, wary eye on Owen, at the same time trying to step closer to Jane. Owen yanked the horse back. “Must be,” he continued talking around the sunglasses hooked on his lip, “you were just trying to show off for that rich guy that Lucinda says you’re obsessed with.”
