by Lynne Hugo
Lecturing, Cal looked plain ridiculous, still shirtless, slack fat resting on top of the waist of his denim cutoffs. The rake-handle legs under the heft of his torso were bad enough, but, worse, he’d stuffed his feet into Louetta’s scuff slippers, very pink, with fluff over the top.
Eddie wanted to stay worked up for the energy to get himself and Carley back home to Jewel on some sort of schedule. He was the engine of this operation.
He just couldn’t. Laughter began from inside him, and, once started, his laughter took hold, gathering up and smothering his every other thought. Cal’s eyes widened, then narrowed as Eddie completely lost control, tears coming from his eyes. Shaking his head, he took a step toward the barn.
“No way. Leave her alone.” Cal blocked his way.
Head down to wipe his eyes on his shirt, Eddie got a fresh look at Cal’s feet and broke up all over again. Hardly able to speak, and with Cal still glowering at him, Eddie choked out the words. “Okay, man. You go in there. Tell Carley … tell Carley I said I’m sorry. Tell her t’ take the time she needs with the horse. I’ll call Jewel like she said and make something up about why we’re late. Tell her I’m sorry.”
“Idiot,” Cal muttered and went into the barn. Eddie headed to the house, still chuckling. If he left a message on the answering machine at home instead of calling her cell phone, then he could avoid talking to Jewel directly. He mopped his face with his hand and was surprised to find how wet it was. He’d intended to go into the house to snag one of Cal’s buried beers, but when he realized he was crying and could no more stop his rough sobs than he’d been able to stop his laughter, he was too embarrassed to risk Cal or one of his in-laws seeing him and continued to the far side of the house to hide.
The herd was happier for the attention but unsettled. Someone was coming every day, someone who looked and sounded like Her but wasn’t. Charyzma best remembered the girl who came, though Red remembered her, too. They took to her most easily, even though she’d touched the others, and each of them had carried her in the past. But the girl hadn’t been around in a long time, and, suddenly, before the grass was dry every morning, the heavier, different sound on the gravel was there, and so was she. Moonbeam was calmest because the girl brought the old man to her. The first day, the old man laid his head on Moonie’s withers, an arm over her black-over-white-spotted back. Moonie felt the frail weight and didn’t step until the girl moved the old man to a chair.
But She still didn’t come, and the girl had taken Spice away. The herd grazed behind the corral in the front pasture because Spice called to them and they to him. The pasture was sun-eaten there, nothing tall or sweet. Often the girl brought them into the corral to hose them with cool water. She filled buckets because they weren’t near the small pond and rode them all except Spice in the big ring. Spice whinnied to them from where he was kept, and they answered, yes, I am still here, yes, here I am too, yes, yes.
Carley hadn’t worried about whether she remembered how to take care of the horses. No matter how long it’s been since you mucked a stall, cleaned hooves, wielded a curry brush, tightened a girth, and threw your leg over the seat of a saddle, how isn’t something you forget. What she had forgotten was the why. By September every bit of it had come back.
“Hey, good girl, come on sweet stuff, open your mouth for Mama,” she said. No need to feel foolish when no one but Charyzma could hear. The mare’s ears flicked, listening, as Carley’s fingers pressed on the sides of her mouth. “There’s my girl. I saved the best for last today. We’ve got time to do a little jumping. Have some fun, you and me.” The bit slid into place over Charyzma’s tongue, and Carley slid the leather bridle over her ears. Hack was already waiting for them at the riding ring; after he checked Spice each day, he wanted to stay out in one of the chairs she’d set up for him in the barn, by the corral, or just outside the ring, and Carley was amazed at how much her grandfather knew.
She’d already spent an hour working with Spice, walking him. He could be turned out in the corral now, her grandfather said. No sign of any lameness, but they’d have to be careful for a long time. A strained tendon was nothing to fool with. Since Crazy Eddie had nixed calling a vet, she’d spent the weeks meticulously cold hosing and wrapping his foreleg, and if she’d taken her grandfather in for his nap, she’d talk to the horse while she did, which was strangely comforting. Even though her grandfather couldn’t see what she was doing, she cleaned the gelding’s stall daily and put down fresh straw. Once he said, “Jewel couldn’t do a better job with that horse herself,” and she’d tucked the words away to examine later. Did he really mean such praise for her?
“Your mother send you to take care of things?” he said. “Your grandmother’s been sure she’ll come back herself. You know anything about that happening soon?”
“Not really, Grandpa. But remember, she’s had me come take care of chores before. It’s, you know, it’s Cal. Don’t worry, though. Between you and me, we’ve got everything covered with the horses.”
Keeping Spice stalled meant they’d had to buy hay and a hundred pounds of grain because the barrel was nearly empty. “We’d have to buy it by November anyway,” Carley said to Eddie. “How long do you think they can live off pasture? There’s this little thing called winter.”
Eddie paid for the hay and grain because Spice was Jewel’s horse. When the others needed it, too, Hack would pay for their feed, but starting one horse on hay and grain was a harbinger of the time all four would need grain, hay thrown twice a day, their stalls mucked when they couldn’t be out, lunge exercise when weather wouldn’t permit riding. The damn winter. Carley knew Eddie was brooding on it, too, and she knew why. “Your mother will be fussing about the horses,” he said. “Well, she already is. Except I tell her I’m checking on them for her, and she likes that. But winter’s the thing. She’s tryin’ to figure out what to do about the horses, y’know, while she’s got her boycott thing goin’ on. I gotta figure out how to head her off. Fresh outta ideas.”
They were in Eddie’s truck on the way home at the time, Carley sweaty, her hair escaping from where she’d pinned it back. She’d changed back into the clean clothes she’d worn that morning, but not left herself enough time to wash the horsey smell off herself before Eddie picked her up. Now she kept barn clothes at her grandparents’ house, and Cal put them in the wash at night. Some things would have clued Jewel in right away. She’d been wearing a pair of her mother’s boots to avoid manure on her shoes; there were two pair, stiff and cobwebbed, in the tack room. Carley had picked the pair with the least cracked leather, cleaned and softened them with saddle soap. Putting on broken-in boots gave her a sense of going to work—a sense she remembered from her childhood—but besides dodging her mother’s eyes and nose, no self-respecting horse person wore shoes in a barn.
Carley stared out of the passenger side window for a minute then, trying to wrap her mind around what her stepfather was saying. October was announcing its arrival; yes, pastures were still green, and horses out everywhere, their heads down to the grass. Charyzma’s flying lead changes were much crisper and more balanced since they’d been working. That horse could do anything: go Western or English, and Carley had started her jumping again. Carley’s grandfather was teaching her advanced training techniques now; the horses were sharpening old moves, learning new ones. The herd hated being separated. She wanted them fully reunited, and Spice nearly ready for light workouts. She didn’t know if her mother would accept it if she trained him, but Carley was sure she could. Still, look how much earlier twilight came, and all this yellow and burnt orange splashed onto the treetops.
Eddie was saying he didn’t see how to keep this going, wasn’t he? Carley twisted sadness to irritation. “What are you gettin’ out of this, Eddie?”
“I’m trying t’ keep a family together.”
She narrowed her eyes and nodded, “Right,” she said, drawing the word out like taffy.
He’d been at work all day, and he didn’t smell the best. His T-s
hirt had dirt on it. He looked older than Carley thought he was with those circles under his eyes and what looked like sprinkles of silver in his buzz cut, but that could have been the light.
“Jesus. Cut me some slack, Carley. I’m keeping your grandparents out of a nursing home.”
“Okay,” she answered, with a shrug to cut him off. She wanted a shower and something to eat, not to listen to Eddie blather. She just wanted to get back to her horses tomorrow; taking Charyzma over low jumps as part of her workout was exhilarating. She wasn’t in rehab, but she was rock sober, which was turning out all right. Fine, in fact. She still loved Roland, and she hadn’t forgiven her mother, but there wasn’t anything she could do to get him out of jail without money or a car. She should be chomping at the bit, working on some elaborate plan to help Roland—who must still think she was in rehab—but in truth, if this arrangement went on forever it would be dandy with her. She didn’t want things to change, which felt like a dirty, disloyal secret. She and Cal had settled in, weird as it was, each with fenced-off areas of responsibility. He was sober in the mornings, and that was when she talked to him. Even her grandfather thought she was doing a good job. She’d take him out to the barn, and he’d run his gnarled hand down Spice’s leg and listen intently for any irregular sound as she led her mother’s horse around the paddock to keep good blood circulation to his legs, her grandfather said. Then he’d want to stay to help brush each horse and clean hooves while they talked about the horses and he gave her training advice and warning signs of colic, ringworm, mud fever, sweet itch, laminitis. “Make sure you’re always checking for cracked heels,” he said. “I drilled that into Jewel.”
“Yeah, I remember that, but I want to organize it all,” she said and asked Eddie to buy her a notebook when he did the shopping.
“Not bad. Not bad at all,” her grandfather said to her one day after he’d sat by the ring listening to the tempo of hoofbeats, her own voice woven between them, as she worked Charyzma. “Well done. Maybe we should think about buying a yearling.”
“What? Really?”
“No. Gotta be at least eighteen months, goin’ on two. But you need to know how to train up a baby.”
It was Friday, a week after Eddie had said the business about keeping your grandparents out of a nursing home, and the land was an ache of beauty. Too dry still, but a midweek cold snap had come and gone, and the burning bushes to the side of the house had ignited scarlet. The trees edging the back pasture were holding two thoughts, summer and full autumn, and seemed to love them equally under an intense blue sky.
In jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and a cowboy hat she’d last worn in 4-H, Carley saddled Red for an afternoon trail ride. Red deserved it, she rationalized, because he was the most reliable, though she knew she loved him and Charyzma specially. The barn chores were finished, and the other horses, except Spice, were turned out to graze. Spice was in his stall, outfitted with a cold pack that would last about thirty minutes as it warmed to air temperature. When he checked the tendon yesterday, her grandpa confirmed that she should start to exercise him a little more. They decided that for the first week of that unless she cold-hosed the leg for twenty minutes, she’d stall him and put a cold pack on the leg after the exercise just to be over-cautious. Probably that was more than a vet would have had them do, her grandfather said. “I’ve treated these mild strains myself for years, y’know. Don’t get why Eddie wouldn’t have Summer come check him, though. She’s a good vet. I’d have thought he’d have called her. Just ’cause it’s your mother’s horse.” Exactly the problem, Carley thought. My mother.
Carley had loved the old trails as a child. One, wider than the rest, was the remnant of an old wagon lane that the first settlers had created. “Sure, this was pioneer land,” Carley remembered Jewel telling her years ago. “Probably they brought our bluegrass, honey. But it spreads so fast, it might have beat the settlers here. Lotta people think it’s native to Kentucky, but it’s not. Your grandpa told me.” Jewel used to drop tidbits like this all the time, ones that lately surfaced in Carley’s mind at the most unexpected times. “The seeds were on horses’ hooves and then on wagon wheels, and it spread as the travelers came. Some people even spread bluegrass seed along the trail so that when their relatives followed them west, their horses would have something to eat.” Not many people had woods with old pioneer roads anymore; a lot of land that wasn’t active pasture had gone to developers. Long ago Jewel had told her that when her grandparents died, the house and barn and land might have to be sold, something she hadn’t cared about at all when she’d heard it but now it gave her a sick feeling. Sometimes Carley had a brief sense of what had been lost and the losses to come. Then a flat heavy river rock of sadness and desire pressed on her chest, and she did not want to think about it.
The other horses had been edgy when Carley kept Red in the corral to saddle him, and they stayed nearby in the front pasture. When Red was under saddle and Carley rode out, all of their heads were up, watching, ears ticked toward Red. Charyzma nickered to him, and Red gave a quiet answer. It wasn’t enough. The horses trailed them to the back pasture. They’d stay there, probably near the big pond where the grass was tall and deep green, until she and Red returned, then follow them in again.
The trail was obscure. Carley didn’t know if it was from disuse or because more leaves had fallen than she thought; they were still soft, yellow, not brown, and the light in the woods was yellow, too. Red’s hooves made a soft swishing thud in them, his tail flicking occasionally. “Good boy, you know the way,” she said, patting his neck frequently, carrying on a conversation to which Red attended, tipping his ears back to pick up her voice. “What do you think, boy? Wanna cross the creek? Have you missed our trail rides? Oh God, remember that time we tried barrel racing? Fourth place wasn’t that bad. Okay, so there were only five kids in it. Yeah, that last one was disqualified, but it was our first time. We should’ve tried again. Kentucky’s not exactly a rodeo state, but it was cool. That’s what you’re built for, not that sissy dressage stuff. Let Charyzma do that, huh?”
Carley reached to stroke Red’s neck, the wound on her hand healed over but still outlined in a slightly puffy pink. She saw it, isolated that way, and chose not to think about it, instead talking on to Red as she rode the downhill trail to the creek, letting him stay in a leisurely walk. Carley automatically leaned back in the saddle to distribute her weight whenever there was a steep decline. Red’s white socks flashed above his hooves, steady, picking his way. “Roland’s never even been on a horse,” she confided to Red. “He’d call me a certified redneck right now.” Her sex with Roland had been bawdy and fun, except the times one or both of them had been too wasted. One time his mouth and hands had been tender—none of the rowdy ass-slapping and devouring teeth—after he’d told her things from his childhood that he’d not put into words before—and he’d cried. She’d held him and he’d cried.
“But I don’t see him ever getting a real job, Red. Talk about making reservations. He’ll be high twenty minutes after he’s out.” Carley shook her head. “God, listen to me, boy. Do I sound like one of those rehab suck-ups or what? Like Miss Pamela Goodie-Goodie.” Carley tried to laugh at herself as she leaned forward to caress Red’s neck with her free hand. She rode a Western saddle, long loose reins in her left hand, and her back was supple as she leaned far over the saddle horn in an expansive, affectionate gesture with her right.
She overreached just enough to affect her balance in the saddle. Her heels came up, and she pitched forward, upper body over Red’s withers and crest, face into his mane. She had a decent grip with her thighs and knees, so though her butt pitched up, she stayed on. But Carley knew she’d made a dumb mistake that could have been dangerous with a less reliable horse, one that would have startled or bolted. She tightened up on the reins as best she could with her left hand but had to rely on Red’s recognition of voice commands. “Whoa, boy, whoa. Stand,” she said, keeping her voice calm, and Red did, stopp
ing dead on the trail. Carley, the saddle horn digging into her gut, laid her head on Red’s neck and cried.
“It’s a damn good thing you’re not a druggie, Red. I’d be flat on my ass. With a broken leg. And you’d have run a mile ahead by now. I love you, boy,” she said.
She gave herself perhaps three or four minutes to cry, repeating “stand” once when Red took a questioning half step, and, responding, the horse remained in place. Carley’s feet were out of the stirrups, and she’d wrapped the reins loosely around the horn, no pressure on the bit.
“Okay, boy, I’m okay now,” she said finally, sitting upright in the saddle again, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “I just want to be as good as you.” Carley took up the reins and signaled Red to walk with the pressure of her calves and heels. “Walk on.” She reined him around toward the trail to the creek, where this time of year the water would shine clean as light. When Red turned, the long white blaze on his face was visible and the reddish-brown forelock against it that was beautiful to her. “Walk on, walk on,” she whispered to the horse, the first command she’d learned when her mother taught her to ride. Then she’d learned those words in a song in sixth grade, and the words reminded her of the creek, how the clean hopeful water always came to them from somewhere unknown and mysterious and then kept on its way, again and again and again.
After Red had a drink in the creek, there was a flat area on the way back where they could canter together, which is what it felt like to Carley, more than asking the horse to run. It was always what they did together: she’d signal him which lead to pick up by leaning ever so slightly toward his inside shoulder and pressuring lightly with the opposite heel. Her thighs would cling, and then their motions would mirror one another.
Maybe they’d flatten out into a brief full-out gallop. Then he’d have plenty of time to cool down on the way home. She knew what to do.
The sun was a skirt over the treetops when Carley reached the back pasture gate. She was fine for time; all she had to do was ride Red to the barn, unsaddle, brush him down, pick out his feet, and turn him loose. She’d still have time to clean herself up and be ready when Eddie came to get her. She dismounted and dragged open the ancient gate, led Red through, and latched it behind them. Remounted, she let Red pick up a slow jog toward the barn, scanning pasture, pond, and run-in shelter for the other horses as they went along.
