by Brad Smith
On the drive home, Billie stopped at a corner store and picked up a real estate flyer. Back at the farm, she sat at the kitchen table and went through the paper, circling the names of the two realtors with the most listings. She would call them in the morning.
There was one beer left in the fridge. She cracked it and went outside to the deck. She stood by the railing, drinking and listening to the sounds of the night—the wind in the pines emitting a low whistle, the soft guttural noises from the horses below. She could smell the manure and the hay and the pungent mud of the now-filled pond. From the road she heard a hot rod downshifting as it approached the stop sign, glasspack mufflers rumbling like distant thunder. The driver turned onto the highway and then pounded the vehicle through the gears as he headed for town, for cold beers and female companionship, Billie presumed.
The sounds and smells of her youth, she thought as she drained the bottle and headed for bed. Lost to the years.
Ten
THE REALTORS WERE QUICK TO RESPOND. By noon they had both been there and gone, after doing quick evaluations of the property. And they were clear that it was the property—not the buildings—they assessed. Neither bothered to even enter the barn or machine shed, nor did they ask to see the upstairs of the house. The first agent was named Habib—a Pakistani with a British lilt—and the second a woman named Lorelei, who looked like a country and western singer from fifty years ago: big hair and an accent straight out of Hee Haw. She drove a pink Cadillac. Billie spaced the two appointments an hour apart but Lorelei was early; her Caddy and the departing Habib in his Audi met in the driveway.
Whatever their differences in background and accents, the two were in lockstep on everything else, including price. Habib said he would put the place on the market for two hundred and ten thousand, while Lorelei came in at two fifteen. Either scenario would leave Billie with about two hundred grand after fees—that is, if the asking price were met. Roughly enough to break even and exactly what David Clay had predicted.
As Lorelei was driving off, Billie saw Jodie pedaling up to the barn on her bicycle. When the little girl looked up to the house, Billie turned and went inside. She poured a cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. She wondered how soon was too soon to call Reese Ryker. She didn’t want to appear overly eager. Then again, she didn’t want the opportunity to pass her by. He was hot for the property for whatever reason, but maybe a week from now that wouldn’t be true. After all, he was a fart in a mitten and such a man might be capricious. Billie wanted to get on with things. Maybe she could get Ryker to pay the assessed price of two fifteen. That would get her square with what was owed and leave her with a few dollars for her troubles.
Either way, she wanted it done. She wasn’t use to dealing with— well, pretty much anything. Her life was simple and purposefully so, if she didn’t count the abusive ex-boyfriend and the fact that everybody she encountered was of the opinion she was stuck in a rut of some kind. But Billie could argue that ruts themselves were simple things. Uncomplicated things.
She was thinking of making something for lunch, and realizing there wasn’t much available for the making, when she heard a tapping on the back door. She turned to see Jodie standing there, outside the screen.
“I need your help.”
The piston pump in the barn, bought used by Will Masterson two or three decades earlier, lost its prime occasionally and wouldn’t draw. When that happened, a steel plug on top of the pump needed to be removed and the pump filled with water. The girl knew that; she’d watched Will do it a dozen times. However, she wasn’t strong enough to remove the plug. When she and Billie walked into the barn, the pipe wrench from the machine shed was already there, on the shelf beside the pump, alongside a bucket half-filled with water from the diminished trough outside.
“You have to take out that plug,” Jodie said.
“I know what I have to do,” Billie said.
Will Masterson would never tighten a bolt or a nut if he could overtighten it. It was all Billie could do to get the plug out. Twice the wrench slipped and she fell backward. She felt the little girl’s eyes on her, judging her, wondering if she was up to the task. Finally the plug turned. When it was out, Jodie indicated the bucket.
“You have to fill it to the top.”
“I’ve done this before,” Billie said again.
“I wasn’t sure,” Jodie said. “Looked to me like you were never going to get that plug out.”
“It’s out, isn’t it?”
Billie filled the pump and put the plug back finger tight, in case more priming was required. Jodie flipped the switch; the pump ran noisily for a bit and then they heard the water gushing into the trough outside. Jodie walked to the door and watched before turning to Billie.
“Thank you.”
“It’s all right,” Billie said.
“Maybe you could leave the plug a little loose and I can do it next time. That way I won’t have to bother you.”
“You didn’t bother me.” Billie could have added that there weren’t going to be too many next times, but she didn’t. Still, she torqued the plug to her own specs, not Will Masterson’s. When she was done, the girl was looking out the open door.
“The way that front pasture’s greenin’ up, we might be able to turn the horses out before long.”
Billie looked past the kid to the field, where the grass was beginning to grow after the drought. She was somewhat unnerved by how the little girl used Will Masterson’s words. The pasture greening up.
When Jodie went outside again to check the level of the water trough, Billie looked around the pump room and noticed a car battery on a shelf by the door, alongside her father’s old battery charger. Probably a spare the old man had picked up somewhere. It was Billie’s now, and she might have use for it. When Jodie returned, she caught a flapping loose sole of her running shoes on the doorsill and stumbled. She righted herself without falling, then walked over to switch the pump off.
“You need new shoes,” Billie told her.
The little girl looked at her feet. “I guess.”
“So buy yourself a pair. You get that money from David Clay yet?”
“Not yet,” Jodie said. “I have to save that money for my animals anyway.” She paused. “At least until I know what’s going to happen.”
I can tell you what’s going to happen, Billie thought. But she didn’t say it. She already had, and the girl hadn’t listened.
“Do you mind if I stay here for a while and work on the cart?” Jodie asked then. “I need to sand it some more before I can paint it.”
Billie looked at the pony cart on the sawhorses. Most of the paint was worn off or chipped away and she could see where the kid had been sanding the rest. The sulky had once been bright red. Billie knew because she had painted it herself. Will had made the harness, or rather he had cut down a harness that had once been used on a Clydesdale owned by his father.
“Does your mother know where you are?”
“Yes.”
“And it’s okay if you spend the whole day here?” Billie asked. “Don’t you have stuff to do?”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Kid stuff.”
“She doesn’t—” the girl began and then stopped. “It’s okay. I only live over on the next road. She knows I’m here.”
She had started to say that her mother didn’t care but had stopped herself. Now she was looking at the cart, as if it were the only thing in the world for her. Billie shook her head. She hoped that Reese Ryker wouldn’t take too long with his offer.
“You can stick around,” she said. “If you’re going to be painting in here, open the doors. I don’t need you keeling over from the fumes. Or better yet—drag the thing outside.”
“I don’t have any paint yet. I have to buy it when I get my money.”
“You’re going to buy paint for that old cart but not shoes for yourself,” Billie said.
The girl shrugged. Billie left her there.
Grabbing her keys from the table, she went out the front door and got into her car. The engine turned over slowly but fired. Driving off, she took care not to look down the hill to the barn where the little girl was sanding away on a pony cart that would in all likelihood never be harnessed to her orphan pony.
On the main street in town she drove past Mom’s Homestyle Diner. She could see through the plate glass that the place was turning a brisk luncheon trade but she wasn’t interested in going in. David Clay might be there, plowing through a plate of chicken wings or spaghetti while offering sage advice and tall tales in equal measures to the locals. Billie was not in the mood for his sagacity today.
The Bellwood Hotel, which sat in the northeast corner of the town square, had a restaurant on the ground floor, she recalled. She parked in the municipal lot behind the main drag and walked through the square, past the statues of soldiers from the various wars of the past couple of centuries, men depicted variously in buckskins and butternut, wearing puttees and coonskin caps, carrying flintlock rifles and assault weapons. All of them looked upward, advancing on some unseen enemy, their faces etched with valor, courtesy of some anonymous stonemason.
The restaurant in the old hotel had two rooms—a pub out front and a dining room to the rear. The place smelled pleasantly of linseed oil and draft beer. Billie was about to take a stool at the bar when she recognized the bartender as Mike McCall, whom she’d gone to high school with. They had been acquaintances more than friends; she remembered him as a silent type, not into sports or cars or juvenile delinquency, which was why they hadn’t been close, she realized. She had no opinion about him one way or another but she didn’t feel like getting trapped in a conversation with someone who might be interested in catching up, especially when they had nothing to catch up about. She turned and made her way to a corner booth. After a time, Mike spotted her; she waved and asked across the room how he was doing. He asked the same and that was it. If only everything were that easy.
A waitress appeared and Billie ordered a beer and a burger with fries. Sitting there, waiting for her food, she was bored and noticed a discarded newspaper on a table near the front windows. She went over to retrieve it and as she did, she glanced into the dining room. Marian Dunlop was at a table there, with three other women, all nicely dressed, all with silver hair. She sat sideways to Billie, in conversation, and didn’t see her. Billie grabbed the paper and retreated to her booth, out of sight.
The paper was the Marshall Gazette, which came out every Wednesday. There were more pictures than articles inside, and most of the images were of various sports teams from the local high school, although there were a few of the bowling leagues—both men’s and women’s—and from the service clubs around town. One page was devoted to the criminal activity in the county for the past week. There had been two car accidents, one charge of under the influence, several break-ins, and a domestic assault. Billie thought she might see the name Everson among those charged but she did not.
The waitress brought the burger, which was passable, and the fries, which were cold. She ate the burger while reading the classifieds. There was a livestock section with a couple of dozen animals for sale—horses and goats and rabbits and alpacas. It occurred to her that she could run an ad and sell Jodie’s animals that way. Find a good home for them and give the kid a few bucks to boot. Maybe she could buy some shoes that weren’t falling apart. Why wouldn’t her mother do that? Presumably her money was being spent on other pursuits, Troy Everson among them.
Setting the paper aside, she glanced toward the front door and saw Marian standing at the till there, settling her bill. As she waited for her change, she turned and looked directly at Billie. She stared for a few seconds before turning away. That’s good, Billie thought. Pay your bill and off you go.
But she knew of course that wouldn’t happen. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in the world.
“You could have asked,” Marian said as she approached.
Billie looked up at her from the booth. The older woman wore a green summer dress and flats. Her sunglasses were pushed up into her thick hair and she had a brown leather purse of distressed leather looped over her shoulder.
“I’ll bite,” Billie said. “Ask what?”
“If you could wear my Tony Lamas.”
Billie hesitated. When she’d returned from the track last night, she’d taken the boots off inside the front door and left them there. Which meant that Marian had been at the house that morning and seen them. How else would she know that Billie had worn them? But when was she there? Billie had driven straight from the farm to the restaurant and when she arrived Marian was already there, in the dining room with her silver-haired posse. She had to have been in the house while Billie was down at the barn with the kid, priming the pump. So she was there, did a little snooping around, and then left without talking to Billie. Wasn’t that interesting? The woman had an agenda after all, although Billie had no idea what it was. Not yet, anyway.
“I must have missed you this morning,” Billie said.
“Missed me where?”
“At the house.”
“I wasn’t at the house.”
Now Billie was getting aggravated. “Then what’s this about the boots?”
“You could have asked before you borrowed them,” Marian said. “I would have said yes. They’re just boots, for Chrissakes.”
“What—you got somebody following me?”
Marian laughed. “You’ve been gone too long, Billie. Around here, people talk. If you have dinner in the dining room at Lexington Downs with Reese Ryker and his latest wife, chowing down on quail and sipping red wine and cognac, and if you’re wearing kickass Tony Lamas while you’re doing it, people are going to notice. And some of those people are going to run and tell me about it, hoping that I might give a damn when I don’t.”
“Ah, but here you are,” Billie said.
“Hey, women and their boots, right?”
Billie showed her palms. “Won’t happen again.”
Marian turned as if to go, but then stopped, as if something were holding her there against her will. “Has he made an offer yet?”
“Ryker?”
“Yeah, Ryker.”
“No, but he’s going to.”
“You going to take it?”
“He’s offering me more than market value,” Billie said. “I guess I would be a fool not to.” She paused briefly. “You’re suddenly acting as if you have a dog in this fight, after telling me the other night you didn’t. All I’m trying to do is pay off the old man’s debts. You do understand that, right?”
“I’ll bet he’s offered to buy the livestock, too.”
Billie had a drink of beer, wiping her mouth afterward. “What if he has? He can have the goddamn horses. More money for me. Like I said, I’m not making any off the farm.”
“Take the money and run, then,” Marian said. “Take it and skedaddle back to Ohio. That way you won’t hear people laughing at you.”
Billie had had enough of the cryptic nature of the conversation and of the woman’s attitude in general. She didn’t care for people who let on that they knew more than everybody else in the room. For one thing, they usually knew less.
“What the fuck is your problem?” she asked.
With that, Marian laughed again. That didn’t help the situation, not from Billie’s standpoint anyway. If there was one thing worse
than being talked down to, it was being laughed at.
“You really believe that Reese Ryker is wining and dining you because he’s desperate to buy Will Masterson’s thirty acres? You haven’t stopped to ask yourself why?”
Billie shrugged. “I don’t care why. I look at him and I see some rich asshole with too much money and not a lot of brains. The world’s full of people like that. We have one in the White House right now.”
“Listen,” Marian said. “You can do whatever you want. But you really need to know one thing—Ryker doesn’t have the slightest interest in the farm. All he cares about is that gray colt.”
Billie had the mug of beer halfway to her mouth. She hesitated, thinking back to the young horse in the paddock. Of how Ryker had stopped to appraise the animal when he’d come to call yesterday, never giving the broodmares a glance.
“What’s so special about the colt?”
“Well now, you’ve been here three days and you’re finally asking a question,” Marian said. “Maybe there’s hope for you yet, Billie Masterson.”
With that, she unslung the purse from her shoulder and sat down in the chair opposite. Since spotting her earlier, Billie had been fervently hoping the woman wouldn’t come over and join her. Now she wasn’t so sure.
“I’ve been here three days and I haven’t told you to go fuck yourself . . . yet. Answer the question.”
Marian turned in her chair, looking toward the bar. “If I’m going to get cursed at, I want a beer.” She signaled to the waitress. “Bring us a couple of drafts.”
Billie saw that her glass was nearly empty and drained it before looking at the older woman across from her. “Well?”
“You know of a horse named Saguaro?” Marian asked.
“Yeah, I’ve heard of Saguaro.”
“That’s the sire.”
Billie sat silently for a moment, wondering—once again—if there was something she was missing. She seemed out of step with everyone she met or talked to. Dealing with these people was like playing Scrabble blindfolded.
“The old man drove a twenty-year-old pickup,” she said. “He couldn’t afford Saguaro’s stud fee if he sold his soul to the devil. So what are you talking about?”
