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

by Natalie Keller Reinert

  He walked into the airport in his usual imperial way, the sliding doors opening and closing behind him, the skycaps fumbling with his abandoned luggage, and I threw my head back against the seat and shut my eyes tight. The car pulled out into traffic and went on, occupants silent.

  I didn’t snap out of my funk all the way through security, on the monorail out to the gates, on the walk down to the seating area. We had an hour before boarding, according to the monitor above the attendants’ desk. Orlando International Airport was long corridors, floor-to-ceiling windows tinted against the Florida sun, white tiles and beige carpeting. And bars. Kerri got us both a beer without being asked, bringing it back to where I had flung myself in a chair in an orgy of self-pity.

  “This should help a little,” she said, passing me the Newcastle, and I looked at my quiet little broodmare groom with new eyes.

  “So Rainbow Brite knows how to party,” I said drily, taking the beer. “Thank you, honey,” I added in a softer tone. “This is exactly what I needed.”

  “I know.” She took a dainty sip from her own bottle. “I’ve left people behind, too.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  Kerri examined the label of her bottle. “When he told me it was him or the horses,” she replied smoothly, without a trace of regret in her voice. “We’d been together three years. Since senior year. We went to prom together. He was jealous of the horses every single day of those three years. I’m better off without him.”

  “Yeah, I’d say so. Still tough, though. First love and all that.”

  “Yeah.”

  A plane went by the windows and we watched its stately progress, making its way toward the runway so that it could slip the bonds of earth, go back up to the heavens where it was meant to be. “Did you always know you were going to be a horsewoman?” I asked after the plane had passed by. “I mean, whether it was trainer or farm manager or rider or what?”

  “Oh yes.” Kerri didn’t even pause before answering. “There was never anything else on my mind. I rode hunters when I was a kid… I’m from Lutz, you know, outside of Tampa.”

  “Another Florida girl.”

  “The tan and the proud!”

  We both giggled. Then I hiccuped, and we giggled some more, and then Kerri started asking what it was like to stand in the winner’s circle. Describing that indescribable feeling of putting your hand on your horse’s bridle while he pranced and kicked, waiting for the photographer to take your picture, I found myself watching Kerri’s eyes grow starry, and I let her optimism take me away. And so I managed to stop thinking about Alexander on the other side of the airport, and think about the future, and success, and chasing glory, and all of that. And it was a very nice thing.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Spa

  Kerri learned from her success, and managed to keep me in a cheerful state of mind all the way to Albany, right through the luggage carousel, up to the rental car desk, and on the drive to the hotel where we’d spend the night before we tackled Saratoga and set up horse-keeping – and housekeeping – the next day. She plied me with alcohol, ordered me pizza, and whispered girlish confessions into my ear with all the dedicated silliness of a freshman back at the University of Florida. And because I was enjoying the distraction, I went with it, and had a good time despite myself.

  And too, just driving into Saratoga was enough to lift anyone's spirits, even someone who had just bid her husband adieu for an open-ended trip to Australia to safeguard his brother’s wife from harm in the Outback (when did I start thinking of this as about Polly, instead of Tom? This was for Tom, after all. Tom was sick. Tom needed Alexander to help out at the farm. Not Polly. Not dark, beautiful, witty Polly.) It was about nine-thirty in the morning when we exited the interstate and drove past the racetrack-themed motels with their weekly rates posted on their old signboards (not unlike the ones in Ocala, really,) past the entrance to the casino and harness track.

  And then I had to slam on the brakes, leaving a little slick of rubber on the country road. A uniformed guard walked right out in front of the car, stop sign in hand, and looked at me very meaningfully. I took my hands off the steering wheel to show my unquestionable respect for the law, and he turned and nodded to some invisible audience waiting in the wings, behind the dark trees that loomed on either side of the road.

  Suddenly there was a cavalcade of racehorses streaming before us, seated by exercise riders loose-limbed and joking on their backs, crossing the asphalt and walking down the slope on the opposite side. We were slack-jawed with astonishment, Kerri actually clapping her hands with pleasure at the sight. The tide of horses went flooding down the slope on the right side of the road and the horse-crossing guard gave me another hard look and went stomping back to his post at the right of way. I pulled forward and then the trees ended, concluding dramatically and giving way to a swath of shaded grass. And then we both saw it.

  Sited at an angle to us, the long low grandstand of Saratoga sat just ahead, its storied gables and white cross-posts glowing with the golden sunrise, and before it, the brown and green of its galloping ovals, concentric rings encircling a bird-filled lake, whimsically shaped shrubs, the black bulk of the twenty first century tote board with its back to us, the provincials on the backside gazing blankly at the empty stands.

  And the horses.

  Horses everywhere. Horses to our left, lining up to replace the herd that had already crossed the road a moment before, queued in a driveway next to a long white barn and an old wooden farmhouse, their riders pulling them up and waiting for their crossing guard to take another death-defying leap into traffic. Horses to our right, walking the shedrow of an adorable little U-shaped barn hung all about with potted flowers, nestled beneath great trees like an enchanted forest in a Walt Disney fairytale; horses exercising beneath the knotty limbs of massive pine trees, jogging along a narrow little pony track, and, of course, galloping and jogging and standing up and backing off and rearing and plunging and hopping and doing everything racehorses do in the morning on the great dirt oval that loomed a short distance beyond.

  “They’re everywhere.” Kerri’s mouth was still open; she had a tourist face on. “There are horses everywhere.”

  “And you thought there were a lot of horses in Ocala.” I pretended I wasn’t as amazed as she was. I pretended I wasn’t as enchanted and astonished and beguiled as she was by the sheer devotion to racehorses I was witnessing. The place was heavenly, that was all. It was heavenly.

  “There are,” Kerri conceded. “But those horses are spread out over a whole county. These are all in one place. I can't believe how many horses there are, right here, all crammed together.”

  A car beeped encouragingly from behind. I’d been blocking the road with my gaping. I turned the car right, into the driveway that led toward the racetrack, judging it to be the horseman’s entrance to the backside, and we bumbled along the gravel until I reached a guardhouse. Horses passed on either side; horses danced with their forelegs in the air, horses steamed on their way back to their barns for showers and walks, and I lowered my window as a security guard approached, still flush with the excitement of so many horses. I smiled at him with all the glory of the morning in my face. I hadn’t been so happy since the first day I’d driven my car through the gates of Cotswold.

  But the security guard was unimpressed. His face was grave. “You have a badge?”

  “Oh … ” Oops. “Not yet. I’m Alex Whitehall? I need to find my stalls. I have a shipment coming—”

  “No entrance without a badge,” he interrupted, his voice thin and weary from repetition. “Go back out to this road here and turn right after you pass the grandstand. Follow the signs.” He stepped back from the car, clearly done with me.

  “Can I pull forward and turn around?”

  He frowned at me. “You got to move that car. Horses coming.” Hands on hips, he blocked the road with his own bulk. I guessed I couldn’t pull forward and turn around.

  “Go on!”<
br />
  Well. This was a nice welcome. I studiously ignored Kerri’s look of dismay and backed the car up until my way was blocked by the predicted flood of racehorses crossing the street. We sat and let them flow around us, the river of gray and bay and chestnut bodies, eddying and flowing around our rented sedan, a boulder to be studied, snorted on, spooked at.

  Finally the traffic cop on the street noticed my lit reverse lights and waved us back onto the road. I waved to him as we went past, but he had already turned away, watching the stopped cars lined up behind him. He was very focused on his job, that horse crossing guard.

  “The Guardian of the Horse Crossing,” I suggested to Kerri, and she snorted.

  “The God of Horse Transit,” she offered.

  The road took us past a restaurant with a huge parking lot and enough outdoor bar space for a Daytona Beach spring break party. “The Horseshoe,” Kerri read from the sign. “That could be fun.”

  I just shook my head. Not my style.

  I was more interested in the Victorian houses appearing beyond the bar. Lining the road, antique and eccentric, they were lace-trimmed ladies with elm boughs for parasols, their upper-stories providing permanent box seats for the premier racetrack of the Gilded Age. Amidst their bright flower boxes and eccentric color patterns, swinging wooden signs declared their names. “Track View,” I read aloud. It was not the most creative of names, to be sure, but … “Anyone would want a house they could call Track View.”

  Kerri nodded, speechless. It was all so beautiful, a picture of what a racing town should be and never, ever was. Where were the slums, the falling-down shotgun shacks where grooms and hot-walkers threw their bikes on scabby lawns and drank Coronas on collapsing porches? Where were the pawn shops and the cut-rate liquor stores? The train tracks and the airport traffic? Modern racetracks were consigned to industrial wastelands. One hundred and fifty years ago, Saratoga decided to make it the centerpiece of their town.

  “I think I’m in love,” Kerri breathed, and I nodded.

  We went past the red and white awnings of the clubhouse entrance, heads turning to soak in the sight, and hung a right at the next intersection. The trees crowded the road and hung heavily over the grass parking area to our right. Ahead, to the left, there was the white rail of a track, and more barns marching off into the distance. “Oklahoma,” I said.

  “Hmm?”

  “That training track is the called the Oklahoma track.” I turned at the next entrance, passing another entrance, more turnstiles, more red and white awnings gaudily showing the way.

  “Oklahoma? Why?”

  “No idea. Find out while we’re here, though. We have the whole summer, Kerri!” I was getting excited all over again, the way I had felt before our plans had collapsed, before Alexander announced he was going to Australia. I didn’t even mind the gruff security guard at the backside entrance. He was doing his job. I wouldn’t have let me in, either.

  The first entrance to the empty grass parking area appeared, and I swung the car in. An elderly woman swathed in shiny red windbreaker and grubby white visor looked up from her lawn chair, folding one finger inside her paperback. “You have a badge?”

  Of course. “On my way in to pick one up.”

  She pursed coral pink lips, showing off an impressive canyon of smoking wrinkles, and laid her book across her lap. Fabio bared his white teeth at me, a corseted damsel with anachronistic sea green eyeshadow swooning against his broad shoulder. “You have any racing credentials?” she asked doubtfully.

  “My Florida trainer’s license. My owner’s license.” I pulled my wallet from my backpack and slipped out the cards.

  She peered at them, lifting the heavy rectangles of her black plastic sunglasses. There were pinched red marks on her nostrils. She sighed over the laminated cards, shaking her head regretfully. I steeled myself for bad news. Then she handed them back. “Okay. You can leave the car here. It’s a slow morning. One hour, though. After that I’m having it towed.” She fixed me with a stern glare, as if someone very like me had spoken out of turn in her English class forty years ago.

  Jesus Christ. These New Yorkers were a serious bunch. “Hopefully this won’t take that long. I have horses coming.” She picked up her book, unimpressed. “Thanks,” I added, and grabbed Kerri’s arm. We hurried away.

  “Um, Alex?” Kerri whispered as we slipped inside the iron fences of Saratoga. “Is everyone here old and insane?”

  “It’s the horse business, so probably,” I said.

  ***

  “We just don’t have the space. I’m sorry, Mrs. Whitehall, but you’re going to have to stable off-property. We can offer you stalls at Aqueduct, but that’s the best we can do.”

  I really needed some privacy, somewhere dark and quiet where I could scream and maybe throw something and work out all this anger and frustration, but of course I was just in another fluorescent lit office, the third of this long and lengthening morning, my back literally against a wall, while a portly little man with yesterday’s stubble on his chin and this morning’s egg on his shirt sat at his chipped laminate desk, banged a few times at the filthy keyboard connected to his ancient PC, and then told me that all my plans made months before were for naught.

  “I have the stall approval right here,” I said bleakly. “It grants me six stalls, a tack room and an office.”

  He reached over and took the paper, gazing at it with a sort of wonder, as if he had just arrived in the twenty first century from some distant past where crookedly Xeroxed forms did not exist. It would have been a lovely time, I thought. Then he shook his head regretfully, hands-tied-I’m-afraid-there’s-nothing-I-can-do. “This was issued to Mister Alexander Whitehall.” He sighed mournfully. “If there was a typo in the name, you should’ve had that fixed immediately. I can’t do anything about that now. And even if I could, we don’t have the space. We lost four barns to flood damage last month. It was in the papers. Really limits us.”

  “Sir,” I began, voice tight, willing myself to stay calm, ignoring Kerri trembling beside me. “I have six horses arriving tomorrow. I was assured I’d have stabling. I need your help in finding them stalls. Can I ask that of you?”

  He rubbed at his stubble. “I offered you Aqueduct. We have two vans a day. You got a race, you ship up and run.”

  Four hours by horse van and a charmless expanse of asphalt next to a highway and an airport in New York City. I’d turn the van around and ship those poor horses straight back to Florida. “I need it to be up here.”

  “Well … I could call my sister. The fella she rides for stables across the street. He might have space. Or know of some.” He looked doubtful, out of his league.

  “That would be really helpful. Would you mind doing that?”

  “She’s ridin’ now. I'd have to wait a bit.”

  I took a deep breath. We had arrived before the break, and now training hours were long over. “It’s nearly eleven. She must be done. I would appreciate it so much.”

  “Is it that late?” He made a great show of consulting his watch. “All right then. Let’s see.”

  He picked up the receiver of an astonishingly antique phone, a beige dinosaur which could only have been more antediluvian had it possessed a crank, and Kerri and I shifted nervously on our feet, waiting.

  “Doris! Got some girls here lookin’ for stalls! How’s the barn doin’?”

  The end of the conversation we could hear was not promising: a lot of ohs and uh-huhs and too bads. Then he uttered his first full sentence: “Well, he’s a good horse and I’m sure he’ll win sooner or later,” and I realized they hadn’t been talking about the barn at all. I didn’t know whether to laugh or scream, but I supposed both would be socially unacceptable, so I sat tight and waited.

  Eventually, he got to the point and asked if there was anything available in the barn. We leaned forward. He smiled. I sighed. Kerri sighed. We waited. Uh-huh. Oh. Too bad. I ripped off the tip of a fingernail. Kerri rubbed her face over and ove
r, a gesture that was sure to give her a breakout.

  He hung up with an industrial clatter and smiled at us. “Well girls, you’re in luck. Weston will rent you one end of his barn. He's just across Nelson Street and down a few blocks, so you have to ride down the street. But your rider can probably just tag along with one of the other sets. Shouldn’t be no problem.”

  I didn't like the idea of riding my horses down streets.

  But I liked the idea of shipping them up and down from New York City in the miserable heat of summer even less. “That’s great,” I said. I decided I was going to have to mean it.

  “Great,” Kerri echoed, sounding genuinely happy, and I thought she might be an asset in more ways than one. Kerri Pearce, Barn Optimist.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Friends and Enemies

  Every now and then, things turn out much, much better than you could have reasonably expected.

  The little backyard barn I had been expecting without pleasure turned out to be a gracious thirty-stall training barn, with roomy shedrows overhung by a full sixteen feet of roof, giving plenty of room to walk and ride horses, a high open ceiling to accommodate sizzling summer temperatures, and plenty of hanging flower baskets overflowing with waterfalls of impatiens and petunias, no doubt providing tasty-looking temptations to walking horses making their tedious way around the shedrow after workouts. There was a walking ring of mulch in a lovely square half-acre of lush green grass if anyone felt crowded in the barn, and a few lawn chairs and a grill artfully scattered beneath some massive northern tree in a corner of the lawn. The whole thing was corralled by eight-foot-high chain-link fence in a neighborhood so bizarre I had only seen its equal in Ocala: training barns interspersed with suburban houses on two-acre plots.

  The barn was quiet – it was noon and training was long over – but there was a man sitting in one of the lawn chairs when we pulled up; he raised a hand and beckoned us in. I found the catch on the fence gate and ushered Kerri through. As we walked past the barn, the equine residents, worrying at their hay nets, whinnied hopeful greetings. That was a nice sign, too. These guys were clearly used to getting treats from visitors, so there must be friendly people boarding here.