Something Most Deadly

by Ann Self

  Jane looked at her watch again. She wanted to fit in a schooling session on General before the mercury rose any higher. The next show, if she actually got to it, would clinch her qualifying for the Regionals.

  “I better get my horse before Owen appropriates him. Where is he anyway?” she inquired after Dylan.

  He turned slowly and walked backwards, balancing the sheet load. “Owen? Oh, probably bothering somebody, somewhere. Now there’s a guy just the right age for you.”

  “Oh, pa-lease...”

  “Dylan chuckled as he swung back around and moved swiftly down the corridor. “Makes me look good.”

  Jane heard the last remark, and cupped her hands to yell after him.

  “HE MAKES REGGIE LOOK GOOD..!”

  General outdid himself, moving even smoother than his last ribbon-winning show performance; and Jane returned him to the stall feeling hot and exhausted but jubilant, as she unsnapped the chin strap on her riding helmet. She placed the whip under her arm, stripped the horse of his bridle, and then followed him into his stall so that General could munch on hay in the back corner manger while she took care of the saddle.

  Jane ran a stirrup up the leather of the right side of the saddle, to keep it from dangling, and then walked around the horse’s rump to take care of the other stirrup. A shadow fell over her, and she looked up sharply to see that Owen had followed her around the horse; neatly trapping her in a triangular wedge of horse, man, and wall. The stall was instantly stifling.

  “Owen! You startled me!” She hadn’t even heard the stall door open and close. Owen’s pale brown eyes seemed to be lit from behind, and they traveled over her like a lizard getting a bead on a fly. His sand colored hair was raked and sprayed straight back as if he’d just emerged from a wind-tunnel.

  “I just wanted to apologize for some of the things I said before. I mean about you and that Canaday guy,” he stated mildly.

  “Forget it Owen, I have.” She ran a second metal stirrup with its rubber tread up the back of the leather strap, looping the remainder of the strap through it; trying to be very busy. Jane’s eyes darted nervously over General’s saddled back to look for help, and Owen casually followed the direction of her glance; seeing for himself there were no rescuers handy. A sly grin tweaked the corner of his mouth. He was at his best when he sensed weakness, and quick to take advantage.

  Dylan, where are you? Jane prayed to herself, her ears straining for sounds of his jangling key ring. Owen stepped right into her face. “You know, I don’t see why we can’t be friends—go out sometimes for coffee. That sort of thing.”

  “When are you ever going to understand Owen, that no means no?”

  His face dissolved into a sneer. “Don’t give me that feminist crap!”

  In desperation, Jane tried to dart under the horse to escape, but he grabbed her arm and snatched her backwards, throwing her against the stall partition, then pinning her left wrist high above her head. Her riding helmet banged against the stall boards and twisted off, falling into the shavings. She gasped and General twitched and stepped back to look, but after studying them for a moment, went right back to his hay; stretching a little further to reach it, so he didn’t have to get too close to the unruly humans causing a ruckus and interrupting his snack.

  Owen cruelly mashed the back of Jane’s hand into the rough planks, still keeping it awkwardly high over her head and making the hand throb with pain. When she tried to struggle, he leaned sideways against her, and forced his other arm across her throat, pinning her against the wall. He was an expert in subduing women without suffering any injury himself.

  “Owen, damnit, let me go!” she croaked, trying to breathe.

  “When I’m good and ready...”

  She tried to swing at him with her free hand, but it was useless and he laughed at her pitiful attempts at defense; he fully enjoyed his ability to cause fear, and had no reservations about using strength to overpower. Overpowering and dominating were tactics he used in almost equal measure with horses and women whenever possible.

  “Why are you giving me so much grief!” he growled in her face. “Just who do you think you are? Cinderella waiting for prince charming to come back for you? I bet you really thought he would, didn’t you? That’s why you’re holding out on me. When are you going to wake up?” he screeched. “Canaday has less than no interest in someone like you, except as a teacher for his kid. You’re a nobody, a dime-a-dozen barn tramp...damn lucky I would even consider taking out a two-bit stablegirl.”

  “And what does that make you!?” she gasped at him, still struggling to breathe with his substantial weight pinning her against the wall.

  “I’ve never been a rootless welfare case and I never clean out stalls!” he shot back.

  “I’m not on welfare and I don’t clean stalls anymore! I have the same job as you do, you obnoxious oaf!”

  He shoved her hand harder into the rough plank making her gasp and cry out. “Don’t you even try to elevate yourself to my level,” he snarled in a nasty whisper. “Like Lucinda says—cleaning stalls is what you were born doing, and you’ll do it when and if we tell you to. In fact, you’ll soon be cleaning a lot more things than just stalls and attic rooms. Once you’ve cleaned the restrooms a few times it’ll take you down a peg or two...nothing like scrubbing toilets to make a woman more reasonable.”

  “Problem in here?” Dylan asked as he entered the stall.

  Owen held on to Jane’s hand in a vice-grip, but yanked it down behind him as he turned to face Dylan. Jane stumbled forward, behind Owen, and almost fell over her helmet as she was pulled away from the wall. The horse chewed and watched, pressing against the side partition to check on his buddy in the next box. The other horse looked through the bars with interest, ears trained on the commotion.

  “Mind your own business—get out!” Owen yelled at Dylan, keeping himself in front of Jane.

  Dylan pulled the stall door shut behind him. “Let her go right now Owen or I’ll rip your head off. You all right Jane?”

  “She’s just fine!” Owen yelled at him, crushing Jane’s wrist harder and harder behind his back, sending shooting sparks of pain up her arm. “Go back and muck out your stalls...”

  While Owen was shouting at him, Dylan watched Jane grab the leather Dressage whip out of the shavings with her free right hand. Using all the strength she could muster, she slashed Owen a nasty crack against the side of his neck and ear. He yelped, dropped her left hand and spun around to face her with murder in his eyes. Jane was now poised with the crop in both hands—low and twisted to her left in a back-hand stance. In the same instant Owen turned to face her, she planted her right foot and uncoiled in a wide upwards snap against the side of his face as if she were executing a two-handed backhand, using every muscle developed in ten years of shoveling stalls. Owen screamed as his face jerked sideways and he lost balance, falling face-first into the shavings.

  Dylan jumped out of the way and General crashed against the front wall; trembling and shivering with hay cascading from his mouth. His equine friend ran to the far corner of his own stall, no longer willing to offer moral support.

  “Game, set, match...” Dylan joked, standing lightly like a cat, with an arm outstretched to steady the horse. He whistled through his teeth, “Good job—great follow-through!”

  Owen struggled in his stiff boots like an overturned beetle wallowing in sawdust, swearing a blue streak.

  Dylan patted the frightened horse. “Whoa General, easy boy,” he laughed. “Just a little dinner-theater for you.” The animal was still trembling, haunches dropped and twitching—he wanted desperately to bolt, but didn’t know where to go.

  “Goddamnit...” Owen glared at Jane as he struggled to stand up. He crawled toward her. She gasped and flattened against the wall. “You stupid little...” he raged, his face beet red, with an even redder line across his cheek.

  “Shut your mouth Owen, before I stuff my fist down it!” Dylan threatened, making General wild
-eyed again. “And why don’t you clean up a few buns while you’re down there on your hands and knees. A little real work would do your sissy ass some good.”

  Owen was now nearly purple with rage and for a moment looked as if he would fly at Dylan as he gained his feet.

  “Go right ahead...stand up and come after me,” Dylan goaded him. “Leave the girls alone.”

  General whinnied with anxiety, causing the horse in the next stall to call back from the shadow he was hiding in. More whinnies echoed down the row of stalls. Owen staggered to his feet, his sandy hair all askew, looking like an abused Ken doll. He took a good look at Dylan and thought better of attacking. The soon-to-be-twenty-year-old wasn’t the same gangly teenager Sam hired two years earlier. Dylan had spent many months at hard labor, not playing in Elliot’s gym, and he was lean and tough, with muscles rippling down tanned arms and bulging under the tank-shirt. His large fists were tightly clenched, and he was just itching for a fight. Owen belatedly realized he was no match for Dylan, and getting into a fist-fight with him would be disastrous. He touched the swelling red welt that ran like a plowed field diagonally across his face from cheekbone to jaw. It even showed an outline of tassels and the texture of leather.

  Owen shot a vicious look at Jane, then slapped shavings from his breeches and shoved past them, muttering curses and threats about Dylan’s job. They watched him run out of the stall, trailing a wake of sawdust. Dylan caught the door and pulled it shut so General couldn’t escape.

  “Did you catch his hair-do?” Dylan laughed.

  Jane brushed dust from the boards off her white shirt and retrieved her riding helmet. She smiled in spite of herself. “Yes, that was pretty funny.”

  “Are you okay—did he hurt you?”

  “Just my hand,” she said, rubbing the back of it. “Thanks to you I’m all right.”

  “What’d the perv do—stalk you like Mean Chicken and then trap you in here while you were trying to unsaddle your horse?”

  “Exactly. I didn’t even hear him come in the stall.”

  “What a weasel he is.”

  Jane patted the trembling horse, then made her way out of the box, shaking almost as badly as General. Even her teeth were chattering. “I hope this doesn’t cause you any trouble,” she called back to Dylan while brushing wood shavings off her riding helmet.

  Dylan undid the girth on General and pulled the saddle from the horse’s back. “How’s the twerp going to tell anyone about this, without admitting he was trying to molest you? That creep touches you again...he’s going to end up with his butt stuck on the business end of my pitchfork.”

  Jane worked her sore wrist as she watched Dylan exit the stall with her saddle. “I hope he’s given up, so you won’t need to chase him with a pitchfork.”

  “He’ll never give up.” Dylan nudged the stall door shut, slid the bolt home, and rested the saddle on a trunk. General made a couple of nervous circles in his stall to see if all the obnoxious company was gone. “I’ll probably still have to beat the crap out of him one of these days. Would’ve done it right now, but you took such a shot at him I figured it was enough for the time being. Temping though—me and my friends often joke about beating Owen senseless. Not that he’d have far to go...”

  Jane set her helmet and crop down, and pulled the elastic band out of her hair. Her low pony tail was wrecked in the scuffle with Owen. She tried to smooth the tousled mess, just as Travis sauntered by them. His beady eyes leered at Jane as she struggled with her hair, standing there with her shirt all twisted and hanging out of her breeches. He raised his eyebrows and smiled nastily, swaggering on down the aisle and out of the barn, whistling to himself.

  “Oh great. I can just hear his report to Gladys,” Jane stammered, her face flushed with embarrassment.

  “I think I’ll pencil him in for a beating too, he’s such a goddamn snoop!” Dylan yelled at Toad’s retreating back.

  After a hasty freshening up in the washroom; including brisk hair-brushing, adjusting clothes and thoroughly scrubbing her hands and face, Jane quickly drove off the estate to eat her lunch in peace and quiet. Or mostly peace and quiet, at the local McDonald’s. She sat at a tiny table, in a tiny plastic seat, sucking in air-conditioning and looking out through mullioned windows over the shoulder of a seated, plastic Ronald McDonald. She watched kids running around a plastic playground as thoughts roamed aimlessly through her head.

  Most lessons had been canceled because of the onset of relentless heat, and Jane was in no hurry to leave the cool restaurant. She leisurely picked at fries and chicken nuggets, sipped a strawberry milkshake, and gobbled a handful of aspirin that she’d picked up at the drugstore next door, trying to forestall the headache she could tell was coming.

  After eating, she just sat for awhile; totally immune to people staring at her unusual outfit of boots, breeches and a white riding shirt—the back of which still held a few tell-tale smudges of a scuffle. She heard the occasional whinny and “Hi Ho Silver” that her outfit usually elicited in restaurants.

  Jane dribbled another little ketchup packet over the last of her fries and tried to ignore the throbbing in her temples and slightly haloed vision that signaled the headache was still in the picture, hoping aspirin would overcome it. She wondered when Elliot would return from New York, and whether he would try to stop her from showing at the next big show—two weekends away. She was sure that Lucinda wouldn’t enter a show ring in the near future on Charmante; she was probably just sitting in the mansion fuming, and plotting to blame everything on Jane. This was great fodder for Gladys too. The nasty old woman would be waiting to land on Elliot, waving Monday’s newspaper and screaming about how it should’ve been Lucinda and Charmante in the photo, if Jane had done her job right. And as soon as Travis got to Gladys with his gossip, she would be piling it on with tales of Jane cavorting in stalls with the stableboys.

  That last thought made the headache say “hello” to her skull, and she pressed her temples and frowned. Jane sighed and hoped the New York business would detain Elliot for a long time. Cecily would be back the next day—Thursday—but Cecily was so preoccupied with helping Elliot and Lucinda that Jane never knew what to expect from her.

  She drained her milkshake with a hollow slurp, and winced at the noise. It was definitely going to be a migraine; even the tips of her fingers were numb, and the food that had tasted so good suddenly wasn’t setting well. She was also starting to feel very chilly after spending so much time in air conditioning. Jane loaded her trash on the brown plastic tray and made a vow to herself: I am showing, come hell or high-water! I haven’t traveled this far to give up a chance at a Regional Championship—I’ve spent of years of hard work, and no one is going to rob me of it. That decided, she dumped her tray, and drove slowly back to the estate, making a major effort to keep her eyes focused, fighting the migraine that threatened to pull apart her vision.

  Back at the barn, she found Sam, Reggie and Dylan standing around Winter Smoke’s stall with the top grille opened, concerned about her hugely pregnant condition. Dylan took note of Jane’s ghastly pallor as she joined them at the stall door, and decided that Owen really did deserve a thrashing.

  Smoke was unconcerned about the anxious faces peering over her door. She munched casually on the last wisps of hay in her corner manger, pulling them out with a wiggly lip from between two wide boards that ran up to the loft. Occasionally she would glance up at the dark triangular hole in the ceiling to see if more hay was being offered from on high. The mare seemed unfazed by the heat, but would regularly gulp down huge amounts of water from her rubber bucket hanging on a snap in the corner.

  “She should have her own zip code,” Dylan declared, observing her massively swollen belly that stretched out silver dapples to the size of baseballs.

  “Think there’s twins in there?” Jane asked.

  “No,” Sam answered, shaking his head. He was wearing a fresh cotton shirt that was blue, but still made his eyes glow. His cornsilk
hair was plastered to the back of his neck and damp tendrils stuck to the sides of his tanned face. “Bill Welsh said he only detected one heartbeat the last time he was out to check her. Says she just carrying one hefty foal.”

  Dylan left them, and walked out the garage-sized doorway at the end of the wing. They all turned and watched in amusement as he used a garden hose to thoroughly soak himself down.

  “How handy,” Sam said. “Wash your clothes and body at the same time.”

  “He’ll smell better now,” Reggie joked.

  “Yep,” Sam agreed, “get rid of dust, dirt and sweat in one fell swoop. Oh, to be a teenager.”

  Dylan turned off the hose, shook his head like a dog, and pulled excess water out of his hair; unaware at the joking at his expense. Then he went to stand in front of the giant floor fan placed in the doorway.

  “Air conditioning,” they all laughed.

  Jane winced at the laughing, and turned to lean with crossed arms on the stall door, looking back at Smoke. “She doesn’t show the slightest sign of labor,” she mused.

  “Just doesn’t want to let go of that foal,” Reggie agreed, mopping at his flushed apple-cheeks with a large hanky. His normally fluffy white tuffs of hair were limp and drooping in the heat. “I think we ought to get that vet out to check her over again.”

  Sam backed away from the stall door and shoved his hands into jean pockets. “I think you’re right, Reggie. Bill’s so busy, I hate to pester him. But better safe than sorry. I’ll try to get a hold of him.” He pulled a cell phone off his belt and walked away to get better reception, cowboy boots echoing on the old plank floor.

  Jane turned from the mare and watched Sam exit the south wing. Then she leaned back against the stall door, rubbing her aching temples in a slow circular motion. Reggie studied her closely, alarmed at the lack of color in her face, especially in the kind of heat they were stewing in.