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

by Natalie Keller Reinert

  “Oh God, yes.”

  Birdie grazed, pulling up short blades of grass in little jerking motions. We watched without seeing, horsewomen who had been in the presence of horses for so many years and months and days and minutes that their desires and idiosyncrasies were more obvious to us than those of other humans.

  “So who you gonna take?”

  “Can I have Jenny?” I laughed ruefully.

  “You must be able to find a girl like Jenny,” Lucy said thoughtfully. “This town is full of girls waiting for their chance.”

  I remembered sleeping in my car, seeing Alexander in a restaurant parking lot, running up to him and begging for a job.

  “I might have someone,” I admitted. “I never looked at her like that, though.”

  Lucy smiled. “Why don’t you have Jenny show you the kids before you go talk to this girl of yours?”

  ***

  “Thanks for holding Birdie.” Jenny came over and took the lead rope. “She was yours, right?”

  “Born and bred. But she was never quiet like this. Not from day one.”

  Jenny laughed and gave the mare an affectionate rub on the neck. “She was a ball of nerves. She needed therapy and a stiff drink just to walk through the barn. It's been fun working with her.” She slid open a stall door, toned muscles standing out on tanned arms, and let the mare walk in alone. “What on earth happened to her?”

  I glanced at her, suspecting an attack, but her face was guileless. She wasn’t accusing me of any sort of crazy abuse. That was nice. Some sport horse people thought my training racehorses was one step away from putting on a good old-fashioned horse-tripping at a Mexican rodeo.

  We started walking down the concrete aisle, horses on either side of us watching our progress from the shadows of their stalls. Lucy had always hated how dark this barn was, and loved to talk about putting in translucent ceiling panels when she had the money. She never did.

  “Have you ever been in a training barn?” I asked, hoping to make friends. Lucy said Jenny hated racing, but she also said this girl was good. I wasn’t above trying to lure her away. What was a little petty theft between old friends?

  “I work in one now,” Jenny replied crossly.

  “Oh… that’s not what I meant… sorry, it’s just… it’s just racing terminology, I guess.” I back-pedaled frantically; this girl was prickly. “A training barn, we just mean where we keep our horses in training, near the track. It’s not like this, a horse going out for an hour at a time, just a couple of people, the radio playing… it’s like being in Grand Central Terminal every morning.”

  “Mm-hmm.” She was not appeased.

  I plowed on, trying to at least explain Birdie’s quirks. “Some horses just don’t work out with the racing lifestyle. In the… in our training barn, it’s fast-paced all morning. Horses coming and going. The sound of hoofbeats from the track, so there’s always someone galloping past, and you know how that makes a stalled horse feel. Young horses neigh a lot, so it’s noisy, someone’s always worried over something and setting the whole barn off. There’s just so much activity. With a sensitive horse like Birdie, it can just be too much. She was never mistreated, just miscast. She was in the wrong job.”

  Jenny shrugged away my explanations. “Birdie likes peace and quiet,” she declared. “She gets annoyed if the radio is too loud. She’s just a country girl, I guess. And then this guy---” Jenny stopped in front of a stall. There was a grunt from inside.

  I peered through the bars and laughed when I saw the familiar roan gelding with his sideways lop ears, cribbing away at his window sill. “Windy! You look great!”

  Jenny looked at the roan without pleasure. “Now, Alex, what’s his deal? He never stops cribbing. He cribs between bites of hay. And Lucy won’t use a collar to stop him because she says it irritates his throat and stops him from flexing into the bridle. The sound of him all day… it’s annoying. Wind-suck, wind-suck, wind-suck.” She glared at Windy, who studiously ignored her. “Is this a symptom of the training barn, too?”

  Aren’t we looking for an argument? I shook my head. “Why do you think he's called Windy?” The roan looked over at me, fluttered his pink nostrils in greeting, and took another gulp of air. “Started when he was three months old. Still in the pasture with his dam. No stress, no one to imitate, no reason for it at all. Broke my heart. But that’s why we always called him Windy McWinderson, ‘cause he’s sucking wind all day long.”

  “I was always told cribbing was a behavior horses learned from watching other horses.”

  “He was the only one in the field that ever did it.”

  Jenny looked at Windy with new appreciation: He was an enigma, a mystery horse, a puzzle to be solved. I thought that was her thing, trying to sort out a horse’s damages and traumas without actually knowing the horse’s history. Perfect for retraining racehorses as show horses, or just plain training racehorses. If she didn’t hate it so much. All these prejudices, based on stories other people had told her! I bet she’d just die if she found out that Alexander and I turned our racehorses out in paddocks, instead of locking them up in stalls 24/7.

  We looked at our last horse, Simple Bill, who was doing a good job of living up to his name, sleeping flat on his side, which he had always done at two o’clock in the afternoon since the day he was born, and which he clearly saw no reason to stop doing just because the scenery and the job had changed. Jenny explained that he was jumping little cross-country courses and Lucy was planning on eventing him this fall, and maybe selling him for a Pony Club horse. Everyone was doing splendidly. I looked at my old kids with pleasure and relief, and almost managed to stop thinking about the chestnut filly with the funny blaze, lonely in her battered stall.

  Jenny excused herself to get back to work, grooming the next horse Lucy would ride, and I went outside to the dressage ring, picking my way around puddles, to say my good-byes.

  Lucy was sitting the trot in her typically elegant fashion, scarcely letting the bouncing gait move her body in the saddle as she put Mohegan through a series of serpentines. I leaned on the fence and watched, admiring her form. I’d ridden dressage once. I’d been passionate about it once. It felt like a very long time ago. I wondered if I could still trot a horse without hunching my back over his neck and resting my clenched fists on his withers. Race riding was more about staying on the horse and out of his way, less about beauty and perfection. The beauty and perfection bit was all up to the horse. But there was an awful lot of education left out that way.

  She sat deeply, bringing her shoulders back nearly imperceptibly, and Mohegan came to a square halt, a leg at each corner like a bronze statue. I clapped, as much to get her attention as to praise the beautiful ride. Lucy looked over at me and smiled. She dropped the reins and let the mare walk over to the rail of her own accord.

  “How long have you been watching?” she asked. Mohegan dipped her black muzzle into my cupped hands.

  “Just long enough to see your serpentines. She’s a lovely mare.”

  “Came from George Barnes,” Lucy said. “Ran six times, came in dead last each time.”

  “George is good people,” I said. “Knows when a horse just doesn’t want to be a racehorse.”

  “He’ll get a commission if I get more than ten thousand for her. We have a deal.”

  I raised my eyebrows. I didn’t have any such deal with Lucy.

  She shrugged. “I do what I have to do to get a good horse before it’s broken down. If I see a horse I want, I have to jump, or else they’ll keep running them for fifth-place money every week. The economy’s rough on racehorses. But you know that.” She rubbed Mohegan’s neck. “So what do you think?”

  “Kids look great.”

  “And Jenny?”

  “Hates my guts.”

  “That’s my girl. I won’t be losing her to a training center anytime soon.”

  I laughed. “Happy to help you ease your mind, Luce.”

  “Can you blame me? I need t
hese girls to run the place, and Jenny’s the best. I don’t need her running off to someone who’s going to pay her.”

  “If I offered Jenny money she’d tell me I was vulgar and throw it at my feet, right?”

  “She runs my barn for room and board and riding lessons, what do you think?”

  “I’d pay her good money. Tell her. Girl knows her shit.”

  “Oh yeah, she knows her shit,” Lucy assured me emphatically. “She comes from my barn. After all.”

  Lucy could say that without boasting; she had a reputation for turning out girls who knew their shit. She always had some working student or another who was starting to think about looking for a paying job, or whose parents were done covering their daydreaming asses with their student loans and car insurance, and they were always impeccably trained and ready to run the most exacting barn. Lucy had placed grooms all over Wellington and at Ocala’s most prestigious barns. Penelope Miller worked for Lucy for a year and now she was an Olympic medalist’s head groom. They were little horse care machines.

  “But she won’t do it,” I said, just to confirm.

  “Not a chance. But Alex?” Lucy nudged Mohegan into a little circle, letting her walk to cool off. “That girl you have?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Talk to her.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Parting Company

  Alexander was asleep on the couch. On the TV, a horse racing commentator was talking about all the fillies in contention for the big races this year. The fillies were beating the colts. The very air was Amazonian. All I seemed to hear anymore was the word filly, filly, filly. It was starting to lose its meaning, as words did when you examined them too carefully, when you broke them down to their letters and saw what a strange combination of shapes and sounds they really were. I had fillies on the brain before the news even got to me. That chestnut filly at Dennis Perry’s haunted me. She’d been so happy to see me. She’d been so excited. Like she expected me to take her home as opposed to leave her in a dark stall, filthy and ignored, waiting for the truck to come and drag her off with the other back-barn culls.

  I’d passed Littlefield on the way home from Lucky Lou Farm and had to force myself to keep the truck straight, to avoid swinging left into the driveway and immediately investigating the once-hidden barn behind the perimeter trees. I had to keep my sights on the road ahead. Saratoga was looming in the distance, growing closer every day. I forced the word filly out of my head, pushed the chestnut’s funny spotted blaze out of my mind’s eye as best I could. She was still there whenever I closed my eyes.

  “Alexander, listen. Wake up. Alexander! I found the girl I want to be my assistant.”

  Alexander opened his eyes. “I don’t like the word ‘girl,’” he said, contrary as he had been all summer, from the moment he woke up.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Sounds young.”

  I sat down on the couch, picking up his feet to make room, and set them on my lap. There was straw chaff on his socks. “You’re getting straw all over the couch! Take off your socks next time. Listen, there’s no seasoned trainer coming with me. That little scenario isn’t going to happen. You saw the way Mary Archer reacted … and she works for Perry.” Alexander sighed. He knew I was right. “They all hate me for marrying you. I didn’t pay my dues. Okay, fine. Whatever. But this girl’s been working with racehorses of all ages. She’s competent and she’s smart and she can handle four times as many horses as we’re going to have to look after. She’s perfect.”

  Alexander rubbed at his eyes. “What is she, eighteen? Fresh out of high school?”

  “No … and is that such a bad thing?” I poked at him. “How short is your memory?”

  “You were very mature,” he said, with an attempt at dignity.

  “Anyway I don’t know how old she is. She almost has a B.S … equine studies. Twenty-two, twenty-three.”

  He yawned and looked as if he might consider getting up. “Still younger than you,” he observed. “Not what I was hoping for.”

  “It’s what we got. Let’s go get dinner.” I felt nervous, wired, excited. I wanted out of the house.

  “Did we check on the horses this evening? What time is it?”

  “Heidi came over to do it. Better get used to letting her run the place without us peering over her shoulder all the time.”

  Alexander looked at the ceiling. “I don’t think I can ever get used to that.”

  ***

  Kerri practically fell over herself accepting the job. She spoke more in the five minutes after I asked her if she’d come to Saratoga with me than I thought she had said in the entire two years she’d been working at Cotswold.

  “And I’ll be there first thing in the morning, get everything all set for you, make the coffee, feed the horses breakfast, and you won’t have to worry about a thing—”

  “Easy, easy, easy,” I told her. The other patrons of the quiet little Starbucks near the Thoroughbred sales pavilion were starting to glance over in our direction. Kerri’s enthusiasm was not a quiet phenomenon. “I don’t need you do to do all that. And you don’t have to beat me over to the barn. We’ll be bunking together, first off; Alexander rented us a little house there already, when we decided we were going. It’s not some fancy Victorian with a name and a racetrack view, but it’s close by. And —”

  “That sounds amazing!” Kerri breathed, and I wondered if she was going to stay so excitable for the entire summer. Possibly she’d just had too easy a day at work. I’d work her harder in Saratoga, when it was just the two of us and a hot-walker to take care of the horses seven days a week.

  “It will be fun,” I said cautiously, and her smile grew even wider.

  “It will be amazing,” she confirmed. “We’re going to show everyone in New York how it’s done. Thanks, Alex. This is just the chance I was looking for, honestly. I was wondering how I was going to get out of the broodmares and down to the training barn.”

  “Well, you could have asked.” I smiled. “You asked for the broodmare gig.”

  “I thought you needed training barn experience for that sort of thing.”

  “Handling horses? You got plenty of experience doing that, Kerri. A broodmare and a foal trying to kick your head in are pretty good practice for a two-year-old.”

  She laughed. “Alex, be straight. Am I going to get killed?”

  I pretended to consider the question seriously. “Counter-question: Are you still on your parent’s insurance?‘Cause I know you’re not getting any from me, and you might want to check your deductible.”

  So Lucy was right. We drove back to the farm in high spirits, plotting our assault on the greatest racing meet in America.

  ***

  Alexander and I decided to leave Cotswold on the same day. It would just make the whole separation easier to deal with. No one would have to face the empty house. No one would have to rattle around the farm on the golf cart all alone. We’d all go to the airport together and we’d part ways there, in public, where we couldn’t have the luxury of breaking down and making a scene.

  Coming inside on the last night before we left, I felt so depressed that I decided to break down and make a scene at home instead.

  Weeping on the couch was so luxurious, I took the party upstairs to my feather pillows and made it that much more luxurious. I was in a total abandon of tears and cushions and Egyptian cotton when Alexander noticed that I’d disappeared and came upstairs looking for me. I heard him standing in the doorway and ramped it up a little, plunging my face into a down pillow and howling like a broken-hearted beagle. To his credit, he didn’t pretend he’d never been there and creep back downstairs.

  “Darling,” he murmured, slipping into bed next to me, smelling of horse and hay and leather, all the good things in life. “You mustn’t get so upset. Alex. Alex, it isn’t forever. Just a few months, come on now.”

  He still had his boots on. I wriggled up against him and kicked at them. “I don’t wan
t to go alone,” I wept dramatically, still shoving his boots off the bed sheets. Love was love, and muddy sheets were muddy sheets. “I want to be with youuu.”

  “Now, Alex, that’s exactly what you wanted,” he said, maddeningly reasonable. That stiff upper lip of his! “You still do. You’re going to have a wonderful time. You’re going to make your name.”

  “To hell with my name, Alexander, I want to be with you. And you don’t care.” It was time for a temper tantrum. I was sending him to the other side of the world and, as I recalled, Polly was beautiful. And funny. And clever. And a fine horsewoman. And lonely with her husband away. Where was I going with this? Nowhere good. “You’re going to Australia and you’re going to have a wonderful time and I will be miserable in Saratoga.” My voice collapsed back into sobs.

  “You’re a mad girl, do you know that?” He spoke against my back, his words muffled, and I could feel the depth of his voice from his chest. “You’re a mad girl, and you make me crazy. I love you, so go and be amazing.” He kneaded at my shoulders, pressed his mouth close to my neck. I went on weeping. “Go be amazing,” he said again.

  ***

  But it wasn’t easier in the end to drive to the airport, our secretary dour and silent in the driver’s seat, silently annoyed at being dragged away from her desk and her computer, while Kerri sat beside her in the passenger seat and played with the satellite radio, and we sat morosely in the back seat, staring out the windows at the pine woods and prairies of Central Florida sliding past. I-75 to the turnpike, the turnpike to the Beachline, the Beachline to the airport. Past the Disney buses and the airport shuttles and the rental cars that outnumbered native drivers. And then to that final parting, he for international departures, Kerri and I for domestic. I didn’t want to cry in front of Kerri, but I did. A little.