Other People's Horses (Alex and Alexander Book 2)

by Natalie Keller Reinert

  He switched leads joyously, that precarious moment of skipping, flying airborne, without so much as being asked when we rounded the top of the stretch, and we went hammering down the lane into the orange morning light, the sun gleaming above the dark tree-studded ridge that humped down the middle of all these Florida horse farms, as hundreds and thousands of other riders on hundreds and thousands of other Thoroughbreds were doing right this moment right here in Ocala’s horse country, and I thought that you never enjoyed your home so much as right before you left it. Then we were swapping leads again and winging into the turn, and with a rush we were upon Alexander and Betsy, waiting for us in the center of the track.

  I galloped past them and pulled Tiger up near the turn, standing in my stirrups and leaning back on the reins. He pulled on me for a few strides and then acquiesced gracefully; older horses who know their job can be easier to ride than babies, but they’re also strong and smart and try to shove you around sometimes. But my Tiger was never malicious. Like his dam, Erin’s Princess, and his half-brother, Red Erin, Tiger was brimming with good temper, just clever and utterly obsessed with running.

  I was a little breathless as I trotted him up to Alexander; I wasn’t as fit as when I'd been the head rider a couple of years ago, riding ten a day. “I know we planned on giving him the summer off,” I panted. “But he’s really peaking right now. It seems a shame not to send him to Calder and give him a chance.”

  I didn’t really want to send Tiger to Calder; we generally shipped horses down to race and brought them home again afterwards, but since we were supposed to be in New York all summer, we had given a few of our other horses to a nice trainer who slept in the barn when she heard so much as a cough from one of her charges. I just wanted to hear Alexander say that might not be a bad idea, wanted him to admit that we wouldn’t be able to run him ourselves as we had in the past. I wanted him to confirm that we’d be in New York, and be reassured that he wasn’t thinking of scrapping the whole deal.

  But Alexander just looked the horse over and nodded once, a stiff little nod. It was not a shrugging nod, not a “maybe you’re right” nod, not a “that’s nice, dear” nod. I knew, because he used all of those with me, and frequently. This was a nod that said he wasn’t ready to discuss anything with me. Still? “Bossy son of a bitch,” I murmured, to make myself feel better, and instead just felt like I was behaving like a child.

  I frowned and turned Tiger away from his pricked-ear study of the incurious Betsy, walking him over to the inner rail and halting him with his head facing the grass of the infield. I looked fixedly at the infield while Tiger, a mouthy horse, fiddled with the PVC rail with his upper lip. The grass needed mowing, I thought. Alexander is going to have to tell me what he is so upset about, I thought. I am not staying here this summer, I thought. I stroked Tiger’s hot neck and picked up the reins; he tensed and arched his neck in preparation for a whirl and a bolt, his signature move after he’d been backed off after a workout, and so when I had sufficiently convinced him that we were going to turn to the left, I hauled the reins hard to the right and made him turn in that direction, too off-balance to put on the squeal-and-rear-and-spin show he had been prepping for. He dragged his feet, disappointed, and I couldn’t help but laugh. “Still smarter than you,” I told him.

  Alexander fell in alongside us, and we walked quietly back to the training barn. The sun was well up now and the day was heating up. The mockingbirds were watching us from the live oaks that lined the gravel horse path. To our right, the land sloped down to a round sinkhole pond, its mirror shimmer reflecting the unheralded high clouds in the sky. A great white egret, nearly four feet tall and dragging long black legs, flapped down from above, unfolding his sinuous neck as he reached the water. I gestured in the direction of the wading bird, a little motion of my hand that was still gripping the reins, and Alexander nodded without interest, not turning his eyes more than a moment from Tiger’s steady walk. He watched Tiger for signs of unsoundness; I watched Alexander for much the same. At breakfast, I decided, he was going to give me the whole story.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Family Calling

  The Taco Lady turned up just as the riders were turning their horses into the barn from the last set. A few unlucky hot-walkers got busy leading wet horses, casting longing glances at the paper bags set along the railing. Everyone else gathered upturned buckets or snatched one of the few coveted folding chairs in the center aisle of the barn and began chowing down on the foil-wrapped concoctions that came out of the Taco Lady’s big old Cooler of Health Violations. What she lacked in Department of Health permits, she certainly made up for in business acumen; the Taco Lady’s old Dodge Caravan went rattling around the farms in the neighborhood every single morning, doling out homemade Mexican food and bottles of water and Jarritos soda to the mostly migrant farm workers. Her arrival marked the unofficial end of training for the day. Occasionally she arrived too early, when there were still horses to ride, but the quality of a gallop around the track was generally negatively impacted by the presence of a half-pound burrito in the rider’s stomach.

  Today, however, her timing was outstanding. We took our leave, climbing into the golf cart and waving our good-byes to the riders for the day. I’d been an ardent fan of the Taco Lady from my first morning on the farm, but I'd quickly realized that there are people who can eat jalapeño-laced steak tortas at ten a.m., and there are those who can't. So breakfast was with Alexander, sitting up like the gentry at our breakfast table overlooking the paddocks and barns, with coffee and toast and eggs and bacon. It had become a tradition for us, and so had the conversations about the farm and the future that we had over second and third cups of coffee. This was the time to get a clear answer out of him: What exactly was his goddamned deal this morning?

  I went to wash my hands and face, tingling with sweat from the oppressive humidity. He didn’t look up as I came into the kitchen. I bit at the inside of my cheek, pulling at an old scar. Once I’d come off under a horse and a hoof had come down, pressing my cheek into my molars and tearing the skin. The ragged flesh had healed over but never smoothed out again.

  So there Alexander sat, so content with his Thoroughbred Daily News fax freshly printed by the secretary down in her little den next to the garage, his back to the great bay window that opened to the broodmare pasture, where the dark mares mingled with their foals beneath a sky that seemed to be growing increasingly obscured by high clouds. The wrong sort of weather for June, I thought again. How disconcerting. It was like looking at a clock at sunrise and seeing the hands point to twelve. It was an error in the natural order of things.

  “The weather is funny,” I said, pulling out my chair and sitting across from him.

  “Tropics, I shouldn’t wonder,” he replied absently. His eyes flicked over the maiden reports, looking to see which stallions were producing early winners.

  “It’s early for that.”

  “Climate change.” He flipped a page, reading the international reports.

  “If the tropics are starting already, it’s just as well we won’t be here all summer.”

  He sighed, setting down the paper as if it had disappointed him, and went to sawing at his eggs, spilling yolk across his toast. The lurid yellow bled into the dark wheat bread and its brightness was leached away, soaked into the brown and consumed utterly. Alexander, who liked his toast crisp and his yolks cooked through, ignored it all, as he was ignoring everything, and went on cutting the sloppy eggs into bites, smaller and smaller triangles, meticulous and absorbed in his handiwork. I wondered if he would even eat it, or if ritual mutilation was the only mission on his mind.

  Outside, a foal galloped up the fence line, brush tail high and eyes wide, and swerved away from the corner at the last moment. His mother whinnied after him from farther down the pasture, her high-pitched neigh carrying through the glass windows. I watched him turn his head frantically, looking for his nervous mother. He wheeled and went full tilt down the gent
le slope, where the mares had already gone back to grazing. There was a noisy reunion and then the foal dove for the comfort of his dam’s udder, his brush tail slamming up and down like a pump handle while he nursed.

  Alexander set down his knife and fork and picked up the paper again.

  “What’s new in the world?” I asked.

  Nothing.

  “Tell me what's going on,” I insisted. I reached across the table and snatched the paper from his hand. Rudeness tended to get Alexander's attention, I had learned, and this morning’s dark mood did not change things. It was crude but effective. He sighed and laid his hands flat on the table.

  “That was rude,” he said with great gravity and self-righteousness, like a headmaster with an unruly pupil.

  “You’re being rude,” I replied. “You’ve been completely ignoring me.”

  He pursed his lips, and then, unexpectedly, he nodded. I could have fainted dead away.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “I’ve gotten a few worrisome emails from Tom,” Alexander admitted, and I felt a sinking feeling.

  Tom was lovely. A sweet and handsome horseman of about forty, he was Alexander's much more easy-going little brother. He had a massive breeding operation, much bigger than Cotswold Farms, somewhere in Australia, with something like thousands of acres of pasture and hundreds of mares and, during the breeding season, as many as twelve different stallions. Most of the stallions were only temporary residents, American and European top sires and champion runners shuttled to the Southern Hemisphere for their September-December breeding season, which brought along their own challenges of transportation and quarantining. The farm was also a major quarantine site for horses leaving and entering Australia.

  Alexander flung the international section of the TDN at me. He tapped an article with one calloused finger. Australian breeding in jeopardy: Wessex operation may be closed due to owner’s illness.

  I put a hand to my mouth. “Oh, Alexander.”

  He just nodded, mouth a thin line.

  I’d never been to Tom’s farm; we’d talked about going last year, but soon after the conversation, Marcy Wallis, some big-time football player, bought ten two-year-olds and sent them to us, and the Candlewick fortune sent us thirty broodmares they’d snapped up from a Kentucky dispersal as a lot, and we suddenly found ourselves back in the boarding and training business, with no free time to speak of.

  We also had a nice collection of Candlewick merchandise. The house had never smelled so good, it was so littered with scented candles. There was one on the table between us right now. Sugar cookie scented. It made you long and long for sugar cookies. I flicked it with one finger and then reached for Alexander’s hand. “How long have you known?”

  “Only a week, that’s the thing. I hoped at first it was nothing, didn't want to worry you, but…” He shook his head. “It’s moved so quickly, I’m afraid it’s quite serious.”

  “And what is it?”

  His voice was low, as if he was afraid of the word. “Cancer.”

  “Somewhere nasty?”

  “All over,” Alexander choked. “My baby brother.” He looked into his coffee cup as if he wished it were something stronger.

  “And Polly,” I remembered. It wasn’t just Tom down there on the other side of the world. I’d met them just once, but I always had the same picture of them in my mind: Tom, with his shining blonde hair and deep Down-under tan, laughing uproariously, the very life of our wedding reception, holding hands with his wife, a dark-haired little beauty named Polly. A horse girl like me but vivacious and outgoing where I had always felt mousey and retiring. She had charmed every man at the wedding, and had laughed at them when they’d fallen over themselves to keep her drink filled at the reception. She wouldn’t be laughing now. What must she be going through, with her athletic, still-young husband suddenly gravely ill? And all that responsibility falling on her shoulders…

  What would I do, if something like that were to happen to Alexander? Certainly I had managed the farm, but always with his input and guidance. What would Polly do if she were alone on that massive spread? “Alexander, what do they have, four hundred horses?”

  “Not so many as that.” Alexander shrugged. “About two hundred. Just more acreage than us. You need more land down there. And all those other extras they have. Tom has always been more ambitious than me. They have the quarantine center, the rehab facility.” He took a deep gulp of coffee and turned, looking out the window at our own spread. The pastures were a rich forest green under changing skies as the gray clouds rolled in from the northwest; Alexander must be right and the tropics were riled up early this year, dark and wet skies spilling over from the Gulf of Mexico. Grazing broodmares were studiously ignoring their foals who, growing big and burly with their four- and five-month birthdays, were flinging themselves around like broncos as they felt the change in the weather. While we watched, a solid looking bay colt tried a spin-and-kick maneuver he’d no doubt show off next year for some poor exercise rider, but he failed to get all four legs underneath him on the landing and skidded to the ground. A moment later he was up and running for mother; she looked over at him with mild interest, swished her tail, and went back to grazing while he shoved his muzzle under her flank for a reassuring suckle of milk.

  The foals were lovely, but the work that went into them was crippling. “It’s almost breeding season there,” I said thoughtfully.

  Alexander looked at me and nodded. “That’s what this article is about. The timing couldn’t be worse. Tom going into hospital just when they’re ramping up for the season.”

  “How many stallions will they have this year?”

  “Six. Plus four shipping in from Kentucky and England. Shuttle stallions. They fly out soon; they’re done working here.”

  I went for more coffee, and to make more toast. Away from the table, with my back to him, I could speak more easily. “Is it really serious, Alexander?” As if cancer “all over”could be anything else.

  “He’s going to be sick for a while.”

  He didn’t say what sort of cancer it was; I didn’t suppose that it mattered. The c-word was the c-word. I found myself overly frustrated by the toast. The Irish butter was too cold to spread nicely; I flung chunks of it on the hot bread and waited for it to melt, glaring at it all the while as if the butter were the source of all my troubles. “Who will help Polly run it? She can’t do it all.”

  “I’m sure she thinks that she can,” he said approvingly, and I remembered that he was very fond of Polly. “But she has to take care of Tom as well. He’s going to need quite a lot of her time. When he’s home from hospital.” He paused. “Whenever that is.”

  The butter was dissolving into golden oil, soaking into the wheat bread. I shoved it around with the knife, trying to speed its demise. I thought about running the farm alone and taking care of a sick Alexander at the same time. I thought about the sleeplessness of breeding season: client mares shipping in and out all day, vet visits at all hours, mares foaling at two and three o’clock in the morning, twelve hours of labor and three hours of waiting for the healthiest of foals to get up and nurse and have a nice poo before anyone could even think of going back to bed. I couldn’t do it alone. Polly couldn’t do it alone. No one could. “Who is going to run the farm, Alexander?”

  There was quiet.

  Bread on plate, bread on plate, plates in hand, one foot after another, back to the table. “Who is going to run the farm, Alexander?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Decisions

  I wouldn’t have called it a fight. No one raised their voices and no one stormed out and there weren’t any tears or broken dishes or anything like that. It was merely a difference of opinion, followed by a stony silence. We both went on with our day as if nothing had happened. It’s not as if we had a choice. There was no time for whining or grudges or hurt feelings, at least not outwardly. The horses came first, the horses demanded every second of our time, the horses could not
be neglected. We did what we always did: finished our coffee, put our boots back on, and went down the front steps to where the golf cart was parked neatly in its little carport. I climbed behind the wheel, Alexander settled into the passenger seat and went to flipping through his metal clipboard of notes and forms and checklists, and off we went rattling along the gravel roads of the farm, stopping at the various barns and paddocks and pastures, peeping in on the lives that we had created, and the lives that we were responsible for.

  When you’re irritated with someone, though, you notice things that wouldn’t bother you ordinarily. And sometimes you see things that you had been blind to before, and they rankle and curdle in your belly long after the initial disagreement has been forgiven and forgotten.

  Those strange tropical clouds were thickening over, filtering a blazing hot noonday sun into air so steamy it was hard to breathe, and we were standing out in the broodmare pasture, surrounded by the sunburned, sweaty matrons of the turf, their long manes tumbled and tangled around their lean necks, their eyes dark and patient in their sand-freckled faces, the hair on their faces thinned by the constant heat and damp. There were foals here and there, big bold babies of three or four or five months old, with coats growing slick with impending maturity, manes already starting to fall over from that baby mohawk they were all born with. A chestnut colt blinked at us through black spectacles; he would shed out the red coat and reveal himself as a gray before the summer was over.

  It was his dam, a big flea-bitten mare white with age that we were frowning over. Chatterley’s Lover (whoever named her had clearly forgotten her noble rank) was seventeen years old and had borne ten gorgeous foals for us here at Cotswold. Before that she’d run like a demon and won twelve races in twenty starts. She was a lovely mare who had “done enough,” so to speak, but she was also healthy and loved being a mother, so we’d decided to breed her back this year.