The Scar Rule

by Heidi Vanderbilt

  The boy appeared, ribby and wet in his bathing suit. “What?”

  “Get your sister up on Morning Glory, okay?”

  “But, Dad—”

  “Just do it, okay? You can swim more later.”

  “It’ll be dark.”

  “The pool has lights, Bo. Take your sister to the barn, okay? Where’s Sylvie?”

  “She already went to the barn. Can’t Alice Dean…?”

  “She’s too little to go by herself. You take her. Now.”

  Alice Dean left her toys on the kitchen floor and took her brother’s hand, smiling.

  Richard turned to Billie and said, “At least I can make one of my children happy.”

  She wondered what he meant by that, if he was talking about the little tussle she had just witnessed between him and Bo or if he was referring to something bigger.

  After they left, Richard started getting food out of the fridge and cabinets. Hamburger, rolls, pickles, mayo, onions, and lettuce. Billie watched without offering to help.

  “You quit?” she prompted him.

  He looked startled, as if he’d forgotten what they were talking about. Then he got himself another beer and poured her more wine.

  “She made me,” he said.

  “Your wife?”

  “No, Alice Dean.”

  “Alice Dean? How?”

  “Just by being born, I guess. She came late. We didn’t think we’d have any more kids. Alice Dean was a surprise. One day after she came, I was thinking about how I’d introduce her into the family business, how I’d tell her why her pony pranced and why she was winning blue ribbons. I couldn’t do it.” He shook his head. “I just couldn’t do it.”

  “Even though you had done it with your other kids.”

  “Right. I don’t know what changed in me. Maybe it was just getting older. I don’t know, but I didn’t want this baby to be any part of that world. So I quit.”

  “Just like that?”

  He barked a laugh “Not quite. My wife was furious. My parents felt betrayed. My kids hated me. Sylvie still hates me. I don’t know what to do about her. She still rides sore horses. I won’t let her sore mine, so she rides for other people. I don’t know that it would be worth it to really fight with her about it. She’s nearly an adult, so she can do what she wants.” Billie started to say something, but Richard kept on talking. “Bo hates horses and horse shows, so he’s mostly glad I gave it up.”

  “You don’t show at all anymore?” Billie asked.

  “I only show sound horses now. By ‘sound’ I mean horses that haven’t been sored. I can’t undo what I did, but I can live my life differently from now on. That’s why I’m here in Arizona. I left the scene back east, left all of it. It wasn’t easy…”

  He moved closer. Billie could smell the warm cotton of his shirt, a tantalizing hint of clean skin. He took a big breath and visibly forced himself to relax.

  “You really don’t do it anymore?” she asked.

  “My barn and pastures are filled with animals I train to compete…” He made quotation marks with his index fingers. “‘In compliance with federal animal cruelty laws.’ Unlike just about everyone else in this business, I’m not watching for the USDA inspectors to catch me with sored horses. I don’t need to worry if I’m in compliance with the scar rule, because my horses don’t have scars.”

  “What’s the scar rule? I see it mentioned as a reason for disqualifying a horse at a show: scar rule violation.”

  “Haven’t you looked that up yet? It’s the rule that spells out what scars are not permitted on a show horse’s legs. The rule that dictates what can and what can’t be done to them. Of course, since I don’t sore, I don’t win. No wins, no customers. No income. No marriage. Mary Lou’s born and bred into that world, as I was. She couldn’t leave it behind—leave her folks, her brothers and sisters, her grandparents. They’re all there, all involved with these horses. It’s her life. And when I left it, I betrayed her. All of them.”

  “Dad?” Sylvie’s appearance in the doorway seemed to startle her father. She had a pink cell phone pressed to her ear and a huge T-shirt over bare legs, dripping water.

  “Sylvie, hi.”

  “Dad, I’m talking to Dale. I’m going to ride for him in the show next week, okay?” Her voice vibrated with excitement. “So can Bo take my rides on our horses?”

  “You have to ask him yourself.”

  “I will, but I wanted to clear it with you first. Please, Daddy?”

  “It’s up to you.” Billie heard the disapproval in his tone, but it seemed to wash over his daughter.

  “Great!” She disappeared back out the door, leaving wet footprints behind.

  “Sylvie is going to be the top junior rider in the country,” Richard said.

  “She is?”

  “Now that she’s riding for Dale.”

  Bo appeared at the door.

  “Where’s your sister?” Richard asked.

  “I led her around for a bit. Now she’s putting her bridle away and playing with her toy ponies.”

  “Don’t just leave her alone!”

  “Jeez, Dad. You and mom left me and Sylvie alone plenty.”

  Richard sighed. “Still. Go to her.”

  “In a moment,” Bo said. “I want to get my fiddle first and take it out there.”

  “Really?” Billie asked. “You play?”

  Richard answered for him. “He does. He’s actually quite good.”

  “I’d like to hear you,” she said.

  Bo shrugged and picked up a violin Billie hadn’t noticed propped on a chair in the corner.

  “Sylvie wants you to take her rides,” Richard told him as Bo started to leave.

  “I know. I saw her. It’s not like we have a chance anyway,” Bo mumbled.

  “Do the best you can, Bo. That’s all I ask.”

  “Sylvie’s going to beat me on Dale’s horse.”

  “She’s a better rider. She’d beat you anyway.”

  “Sad,” Bo said. “Want to come watch me get whopped by my talented sister next weekend?” he asked Billie.

  “Sure,” she said. “I’d love to.”

  She and Richard ate silently, sitting on stools pulled to the kitchen window that overlooked the swimming pool. Red-tailed hawks hunted in cottonwoods that screened the pool from the barn. Billie was relieved he didn’t need to talk anymore, and she didn’t need to entertain him or answer him. When they had finished eating, he cleared the dishes, refusing her feeble offer to help. He carried everything to the sink, filled it with water and soaked the plates. Then he poured her another glass of wine and opened a third beer for himself.

  Billie filled her mouth and swallowed.

  His shirt mesmerized her, teal-colored cotton tucked loosely into jeans so it bloused at the waist. The button-down collar was unbuttoned, exposing a triangle of rusty curls flecked with grey. She could so easily have reached up to adjust that collar, to brush that hair with the backs of her fingers. She focused on the short whiskers he had missed when he shaved, the edge of his jaw softened by middle age.

  He ran his index finger down her forearm and circled her wrist with his hand. She closed her eyes. He leaned forward and kissed her, pressing his lips harder against hers. Then he pulled away. “Is this all right?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You want me to stop?”

  “No.”

  He stopped kissing her when the phone rang but let it go to voice mail. Billie heard a woman’s deep Southern accent. “We need to talk, Richard.”

  Billie pulled away, watching him as he listened.

  “I’ve got tickets for the kids’ trip home, and I want you to arrange for them to be picked up at the airport. Beau Pa’s in the hospital getting his pacemaker adjusted, so I don’t think I can get to the airport to pick them up myself. You can call Hacker’s Hacks…” She left a phone number for him to call. “So you call me, hear? By tomorrow noon.”

  Richard sighed when she hung
up. “The kids’ mother,” he said.

  “I thought you were divorced.”

  “I never said that.”

  “You’re right. It’s just what I thought.”

  “I will be divorced. We’re separated, obviously,” he said softly, his fingers hot little branding irons on her forearm. “She’s in Tennessee. I’m here. We’ll probably get divorced.”

  Billie pulled her arm away. “Probably? Separated? I’m heading home.”

  “Wait! Don’t you want to see the barn? Meet the horses?”

  “Maybe some other time.”

  He sighed. “Well, suit yourself.”

  Three children, she thought as she finished her drink. Separated but not divorced. God, I’m an idiot. All she needed in her bed was a married father of three with a history of torturing horses.

  “I’ve got a lot of work to do at home.” Billie slung her bag on her shoulder, fished out the keys to her truck, and headed for the door.

  Richard caught her wrist in his hand, pressing the keys into her palm, and turned her to him. His hands massaged her shoulders, her neck. He kissed her forehead.

  “We’re looking for a venue for the next horse show,” he said. “How about if we have it at your place?”

  Billie shrugged although she was seeing images of trucks and trailers pulling into her barnyard, unloading potential customers who might want to board their horses with her.

  “You’d get an admission fee percentage,” Richard said. “And a use fee per horse. It could add up. Think about it.”

  She didn’t need to think for more than a minute.

  “Sure,” Billie said. “But I mean this. No soring.”

  He kissed her lips, opening the door for her to leave. “No soring.”

  CHAPTER 13

  BILLIE DROVE HOME from Richard’s without turning on the truck’s air conditioning, just rolled down the windows and let the night air blow over her. She had had enough to drink that she was grateful to be on dirt roads, nowhere near the highway. She noticed that she was driving pretty well though.

  In the casita, she poured another glass of wine, folded herself onto the futon, looking out the window at the sky. Gulliver curled up on her lap. A full moon slipped from behind the clouds. Her fingertips beat a soft tattoo on Gulliver’s back, soothing him.

  She ignored the blinking red light on the answering machine. Unpaid bills again, or something else she didn’t want to deal with. If it was Richard, he could wait until tomorrow. If it was Frank, he’d probably ask where she had been when he’d called, which was none of his business anymore. Still, she wanted to hear his voice, even if they argued. Talking to him made her feel tethered, even if it shouldn’t.

  She almost reached over to push the play button but held off. Breathe, she told herself, just breathe. In her lap, Gulliver sighed. She ran her fingertips over his back until he yawned and curled tighter, falling asleep. Billie leaned over and kissed the top of his head.

  Was this a hopeless situation with Richard that she had better quit before it got worse, or could it work? Three children! She liked Alice Dean and Bo. Sylvie not so much. But did it matter? The girl was almost out on her own, as her father had said. So Billie’s opinion of her—and hers of Billie—didn’t really matter. Since he already had three children, most likely Richard wouldn’t want more, if things got that far between them. Maybe they wouldn’t even need to discuss it. She had been pregnant once when she and Frank were married, but she miscarried. Frank was as sad as she when it happened, but the sadness clung to Billie long after it became the past for him.

  To distract herself from the impulse to call him, she reached for a bag hanging over the back of the futon’s black metal frame and pulled out a smaller bag that held a ball of variegated yarn. A circular knitting needle hung from the yarn with a half-knitted sock attached. Settling back against the pillows, she wrapped the yarn around her left index finger and with her right hand, slid the stitches toward the needle’s point, ready to be knit.

  She had been working on this sock for six years. Frank had bought the yarn when they were on vacation in Maine and had asked her to knit him a pair.

  “I’ve never made socks,” Billie had told him.

  “You can knit anything.”

  “Sweaters,” she’d said. “Scarves. Hats. Mittens.”

  “So, make mittens for feet.”

  She didn’t tell him that socks were the last thing she wanted to make. The thin yarn, the complicated shaping, those tiny needles felt too fussy, too domesticated. She knit with worsted and bulky yarn. Things that she could start one day and finish the next, things she barely had to think about, let alone concentrate on.

  They split up before she had mastered the first heel and divorced at the instep.

  I should have thrown this damn project away, she thought, cupping it in her hand.

  Instead, the day the divorce was final, she had ripped out the stitches, re-wound the ball, and started over. This time she made the leg differently, in a knit 2, purl 2 ribbing, not the stockinette stitch the pattern had called for. She had thought the ribbing would help the sock stay up on whoever’s leg she eventually gave it to. She had struggled again through turning the heel and headed into the long, dull foot. She knit sporadically, with stitchless months interspersed with intense bursts of attention to those fine needles. First in New York, then on the plane to Arizona, she imagined the man who’d wear the socks when they were done. Each time her mind wandered away from the fantasy mate, and she saw Frank.

  “You ever going to finish my socks?” he still asked her once in a while.

  Sometimes she thought she would finish them. She imagined surprising him with them one birthday. A slim box in a padded envelope, no note. He would open it, startled by his feelings as he looked at the familiar yarn he had chosen, made into the socks he had asked for.

  But most of the time Billie hated him and his feet. She hated him for the way he had pushed her, using her past to hook her to crimes he wanted her to write about, crimes against children who were suffering as she had.

  Frank’s “You can do it” gradually morphed into “You’ve got to do it. You can save these kids. You have to.”

  The exposés she wrote for him made her career, and won her awards.

  Then one night, beside a warehouse in a garbage strewn street, she stood frozen, notebook in hand, while a man held a pistol to the head of a toddler. “Leave!” he’d screamed at her. “I’ll shoot!”

  She ran to their apartment, threw her notebook on the kitchen counter, packed her suitcase, and flew home to Arizona.

  Frank had apologized over and over, but she never returned. Eventually she forgave him enough to let in bits of fondness, bits of yearning, which she sometimes regretted.

  Her fingers, thickened and coarse from years of ranch work, snagged on the yarn and needles for another few rows.

  She held up the sock to check on her progress then slipped her own foot through the ribbing, down the leg, past the heel and out through the needles. It was too big for her. It bagged around her ankle and flopped over her arch.

  She pulled her foot out and set the sock and yarn on the pillow beside her. Then she lay back, pulled the sleeping Gulliver against her chest, and closed her eyes.

  When she woke, she found the knitting tucked under her chin. When she stretched, her joints squeaked and popped. Gulliver lay frog-like, awake, his chin on his paws, tail wagging an invitation. Get up. Get going. Open that bag of kibble!

  She was pouring cream into her coffee—wondering about Richard, the kids, their mother, their horses—when she heard Starship bang his feeder. She opened the door and yelled, “Coming!”

  He banged it again.

  On her walk down the hill to feed the herd, Billie wondered how Richard could justify allowing Sylvie to ride sored horses, to compete for a trainer like Dale—especially now that it was not only illegal, but the laws were starting to be enforced. Hadn’t it occurred to him that if Sylvie were caught
, she could be prosecuted? Ethics and morals aside, the kid might go to jail.

  She was wondering if the horse in that last stall at Dale’s was a mess of burned flesh and stacked pads when she reached the barnyard and Gulliver started to bark. It took her a second to register that something was wrong. Starship stood at his feeder, lifting it away from the fence then letting it go, the way he did every morning and evening at mealtimes. The horses in the corral beside him looked fine too, peering at her, waiting for her to serve them breakfast.

  But when Gulliver’s sharp barks became frenetic and he dashed away around the barn, Billie followed him.

  Hashtag stood with both forelegs stuck through the twisted wire fence. Billie hoped she would stay that way until she could find wire cutters and get her out.

  “Steady, girl!” Billie called, backing toward the feed shed where she kept her tools.

  Hashtag stood still for a moment then she thrashed, heaving herself up and back, trying to break free. Sweat drenched her shoulders and flanks, and her eyes went white with panic.

  Billie returned and approached with the cutters, speaking soothingly while the mare struggled, the wires tightening around her forelegs. Pain and fear made her pull even harder. The wires cut deeper. Blood spurted from the leg closest to Billie.

  “Easy, girl,” Billie cooed. “Oh, God, easy.” She tried to angle her way in close enough to grab a wire and cut, but each time she approached, Hashtag struggled harder.

  Billie retreated far enough that the mare stopped struggling and pulled her cell phone from her pocket. When Doc answered, she didn’t even introduce herself, just started talking. “Cutting her leg…can’t get close… What should I do?”

  Hashtag tried to rear, fell over in a horrifying slow-motion contortion distorted by her entangled legs. One of the strands of wire snapped as she kicked and wrapped itself around her face.

  “Do you have a horse blanket nearby?” Doc asked. “No? Some cloth? Take off your shirt then. Approach her from behind her head so you don’t get kicked, and be careful. If she swings her head and hits you, she could kill you. There’s a rhythm to her movements, you see it? Thrash-rest. Thrash-rest. Get that shirt over her eyes while she rests. She’ll hold still when she can’t see. That’ll get you time to cut her loose, but be quick.”