by Brad Smith
“I had no idea how much stuff I had here,” Marian said. “I let myself in. I didn’t think you’d mind.”
Billie shrugged.
“I’ll leave my key,” Marian said, sensing the attitude. “I thought I’d better do this now. I wasn’t sure how far along you were with Reese Ryker.”
“How far along?” Billie asked.
“Toward selling the place.”
Billie went into the kitchen and got a beer from the fridge. Opening it, she walked back into the living room. “I’m not selling the place. I wouldn’t sell those ratty slippers to Reese Ryker.”
Marian looked at the slippers, which were practically new. “You’re not selling to Ryker, or you’re not selling at all?”
“I don’t know,” Billie said. “But not to Ryker.”
She drank from the bottle and went over to the window. Looking down the hill, she saw the gray colt standing by the hayrick with the two broodmares. Jodie must have fed them. The pony cart sat gleaming in the afternoon sun. Billie thought back through the years to when she had painted it. She’d gotten more red on her than on the cart, it had seemed. It was oil-based paint and her mother had scrubbed her for a half hour to remove it. Billie wondered if Jodie had gone home in the same state. Would her mother help her clean up? Probably not.
Billie turned to see Marian putting more stuff in the box. “I was just over at Chestnut Field, talking to a little old guy who tells me that I should race the colt. He says the horse is fast and that he knows himself, or something like that. And there was something else about a bear shitting somewhere.”
“I always liked old Skeeter.”
“You know him?” Billie said. “Of course you know him. You and the old man were attached at the hip, apparently. You can probably tell me where the registration papers are for the colt, and the damn lease agreement for the stall at Chestnut.”
“That stuff is in a box under his bed,” Marian said. “Where else would Will Masterson keep his valuables? I have to say, you seem a little on the crusty side today, Billie. Even for you.”
Billie took another drink but said nothing. Marian watched her a moment and then shrugged. She walked over to retrieve a framed print of Elvis Presley from a sideboard along the wall. There was a twenty-dollar bill tucked along the edge of the glass.
“I’d like to have this if you don’t mind,” she said. “Will bought it for me when we went to Graceland. When I wasn’t looking he signed Elvis’s name on the twenty and tried to tell me it was genuine.”
“Take it,” Billie said.
“I just want the print,” Marian said, sliding the bill out from under the glass and handing it to Billie. “The money is yours.”
“Graceland,” Billie said. “Did he just want to be your teddy bear?”
“All right,” Marian said. “I won’t tell you any more stories about Will and me.”
“Did you slow dance to Nat King Cole?” Billie asked. “He and my mother slow danced to Nat King Cole.”
“We danced to Tony Bennett.”
“I don’t care,” Billie said.
“Then you shouldn’t have asked.”
Billie stuffed the twenty into one of the Tony Lama boots and left. She walked outside to the deck and stood there for a while, drinking the beer. Down the hill the colt was now trotting back and forth along the paddock fence, watching her, as if he knew he’d been a topic of conversation of late. As if he too wanted to get on with things. After a while Marian came out to put the house key on the table.
“So tell me,” Billie said, still watching the horse. “How come you and the old man hit it off? What did you have?”
“I didn’t have anything,” Marian said. “The answer is simple. When I first met your father he was pushing seventy. If he’d been twenty-five years younger, we’d have never lasted. You know he was a wild one. Where do you think you got it from?”
“You saying I’m just like him?”
“Seems to be the consensus.”
“Sounds to me like you’ve been talking to lawyer Clay,” Billie said. “You probably know that he told me the truth about my mother.”
“Yes, and I wish he hadn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because if your father had wanted you to know, he’d have told you.”
“Maybe he should have,” Billie said.
Marian looked at her but said nothing.
“Well, I know now,” Billie said.
“Are you any better for the knowledge?” Marian asked.
“I can’t answer that,” Billie told her. “I guess I’m no worse.”
Thirteen
IT WAS BILLIE’S BAD LUCK THAT the quarter horse racing circuit had moved out of Kentucky ten days earlier and was now in Missouri. She passed a few days weighing her options, or rather watching them diminish, then on Sunday she got into her car and drove west.
She’d had an unproductive week. Chuck Caldwell had told her that she had no right to the stall Will had rented at Chestnut Field, even after Billie had shown him the contract she’d found, as Marian had said she would, in a shoebox under her father’s bed, along with the registration for Cactus Jack, a few photos of Billie as a child riding her pony, her parents’ marriage license, and an Army Colt revolver that looked as if it might have gone up San Juan Hill. Caldwell had said that the contract didn’t mean anything, as the agreement was made with Will Masterson, not Billie.
Billie also got the sense that Caldwell had been talking to any number of people about Reese Ryker’s claim regarding the colt. She had contacted eight trainers over the course of the week and every one of them said they didn’t believe his theory, just before saying that they didn’t want to get involved with a horse that might become part of a legal battle. Before leaving that morning, Billie had called David Mountain Clay and given him an update, thinking he might dispense some sage legal advice. The man was uncharacteristically quiet and not in the least bit helpful. Maybe he was pissed off that Billie had called on a Sunday.
Luke Walker wasn’t on the list Skeeter had given her. He’d been Billie’s idea, one that she would file under the category of last resort. She caught up to the quarter horses in Poplar Bluff. The track there was a few miles out of town, near the east bank of the river and beneath the bluff itself. By the time Billie arrived and paid her admission, the card was half over. She didn’t spot Luke until the last race, which he won aboard a muley-looking bay gelding that was listed as eleven years old in the program. Under Luke, the horse looked like it had wings.
Billie went down to the backstretch after the race and immediately ran into Steve McGee, who was loading the very same gelding into a double trailer. At first he didn’t recognize Billie.
“Goddamn,” he said when he did. “What the hell are you doing here?” He looked past her, as if he might see something there that would explain her sudden appearance.
“Looking for Luke,” she said.
“Luke?” He seemed surprised by that too and why wouldn’t he be? Billie was fairly surprised herself. “Well, you just missed him. He jumped off this gelding and into a Camaro with some girl that’s been hanging around here all night.”
That part did not surprise Billie. “Any idea where they went?”
“It’s Luke,” Steve said. “You know where they went. He’s been drinking at a place called the River Flats, on the way into town. You can’t miss it.” He eyed Billie narrowly. “Why do you want to talk to Luke?”
“I’m not sure that I want to,” Billie said. “But I feel like I need to.”
The River Flats was a honky-tonk bar with a corrugated steel roof and a gravel parking lot. The place was relatively busy for a Sunday night—cowboys and cowgirls, bikers and carpenters, teenagers and geezers trying to look like teenagers, their hair spiked, noses pierced. There was a band playing, and what they lacked in talent they made up for in volume. The lead singer was a tall redhead, a walking tattoo with a screeching falsetto.
Billie found a place at the bar and ordered a
Bud. She’d spotted Luke Walker when she entered, sitting at a corner table with a half dozen people, among them a young woman of twenty-five or so—a voluptuous girl whose cropped T-shirt did nothing to hide that fact. She was, Billie suspected, the driver of the Camaro Steve had mentioned. Luke, holding forth, had eyes only for the girl and hadn’t noticed Billie’s arrival. As she drank her beer the band announced that it would take a break, mercifully, and the room grew somewhat quieter, at least quiet enough for Billie to hear Luke’s familiar voice in full storytelling mode.
“I still say that sonofabitch Nevada Ned loosened my girth when I wasn’t looking,” he was saying. “Anyway, halfway down the track my saddle starts to slide and I’m hanging on to this nag like a flea on a jackrabbit. By the time I crossed the finish line I’m sitting on that horse’s rump, holding onto the reins like a man driving a goddamn stagecoach.” He paused to look at the pretty girl. “At this point I feel compelled to tell you that I did win the race.”
“Nobody loosened your girth.” This from a bearded man in a black cowboy hat, sitting at the table. “You were nipping at the Jim Beam all day and forgot to tighten it.”
“I ain’t going to admit to any such thing as that,” Luke said.
He laughed, looking around the room as he did, and it was then that he spotted Billie. A moment later he was standing beside her. He was not much older than she, but he could have passed for ten years older. He was skinny as ever, with a face that had been exposed to too much sun and too many midnights. He smelled of horse and sweat and of Luke. When he smiled, she saw he was missing a tooth.
“Now where in the hell did you come from?” he asked.
“How are you, Luke?”
“If I was any better, there’d be two of me.”
“There has to be a law against that,” Billie said.
“Now Billie,” he said. “Hey—I heard about your old man. I would have come to the funeral but I was racing up in Montana. Sorry to hear it, though.”
Billie nodded. “Can I buy you a beer?”
“You can buy me a whiskey. If you still love me, you’ll make it a double.”
“A single it is then,” Billie said, lifting a hand to get the bartender’s attention. When she indicated Luke, the man nodded. Of course he knew what to bring. Half the bartenders in half the states of the union would know.
“You look good, girl,” Luke said.
“You look like a boot that somebody left out in the weather all summer long.”
“Christ,” Luke said, falling silent for a moment. “I thought you were in New York City.”
“I was, for about ten minutes once.” The drink arrived and Billie paid for it. “Ohio recently. But right now I’m back home.”
“Actually right this minute you’re in Missouri. Why is that?”
“I inherited a two-year-old thoroughbred that might have some potential. I’m looking for a trainer.”
“Well, don’t be looking my way,” Luke said. “I lost my thoroughbred license a few years ago and I don’t care to ever get it back. You have to be rich to run thoroughbreds these days.”
“Just what I needed to hear,” Billie said. “Seeing as I’m church-mouse poor. What do you have to do to get your license reinstated?”
“Suspension’s over, so just pay the fee. But I told you—that ain’t happening. I’m strictly a quarter horse man these days.” Luke took a drink, eyeing her. “You didn’t drive here from Kentucky to ask me to train a horse for you?”
“I did.”
“Kentucky is full of trainers.”
“None of them want to work this horse,” Billie said. “None that are any good anyway. Reese Ryker has put the word out that I’m poison and Cactus Jack is damaged goods.”
“What’s a Cactus Jack?”
“The colt that I drove two hundred miles to talk to you about.”
The bartender brought another whiskey and another Bud for Billie. She paid.
“Cactus Jack,” Luke repeated. “Not that colt by Saguaro, that little deal your old man and Humphrey Brown dreamed up. He’s two already?”
“That’s the colt.”
Luke thought about it a moment. “Can he run?”
“He hasn’t raced yet but his workouts are good.”
“When you going to race him?”
“When I get a trainer,” Billie said. “Are you having problems with your hearing?”
“My hearing has always been fine,” Luke said. “It’s my judgment that gets me in trouble.”
“Or lack thereof.”
He ignored her, something he was always good at, when it served him. But she could see his brain working now, that same brain she had many times suspected was incapable of functioning very well. When it came to horseflesh, though, he was capable of operating on a different level.
“You say the workouts are good? How good?”
Billie told him.
Luke nodded and had a drink, grimacing as if he were fighting an internal battle with himself. “All right, we go to Tennessee in the morning. Running there through the weekend. I figure to be back in Kentucky, I don’t know, next Monday or Tuesday after that. I might stop and have a look. Just a look though. It could be I can recommend somebody for the job.”
“Okay,” Billie said.
“You want to come join us?” Luke said.
Billie shook her head. “I’m going to drive home. Besides, it looks like you got your hands full with that poor girl who can’t afford a T-shirt big enough to cover her boobs.”
“Watch it—that’s my new girlfriend.”
“Really? What’s her name?”
“Her name is Loretta.”
“Loretta who?”
Luke hesitated. “We really haven’t gotten around to last names yet. She’s only been my girlfriend for a few hours.”
“You’ll be a teenager when you’re ninety, Luke.”
“A man can only hope,” Luke said as he headed back to the table.
Billie got back to the farm at three-thirty in the morning. She went to bed and fell asleep immediately, something she hadn’t been doing of late. Then again, she’d been up for nearly twenty hours and behind the wheel for half of that time. When she woke the sun was full up and streaming in the window. Since arriving back at the house she’d been sleeping in the room that had once been hers. The same double bed was there, although it had been piled high with her father’s books and work clothes and other items. Apparently the room had taken on the role of a large junk drawer. She could have slept in the master bedroom but it didn’t feel right, especially knowing that the old man had been sharing the bed with his girlfriend these past few years. Girlfriend seemed an odd term to use for a woman of Marian’s age but Billie couldn’t come up with another. Partner seemed to suggest a business arrangement, or people who were herding cattle. Significant other sounded clinical—and had too many syllables anyway. Lover she didn’t want to think about.
She heard voices when she woke and got up to look out the window. David Mountain Clay was standing in the lower driveway by the barns, talking to the girl, Jodie. The lawyer was in his shirt-sleeves and he had his pants hitched up nearly to his armpits. He was of course doing most of the talking, words that Billie couldn’t make out. But she had to assume that he was asking of her whereabouts.
She got up and pulled on the clothes she’d worn for her trip to Missouri, then went into the bathroom to pee and wash her face. Going out the back door, she saw by the kitchen clock that it was ten fifteen. As she started down the hill, David Clay glanced at her, then said something to the girl before getting into his Lincoln and driving off without another look Billie’s way.
“What the hell was that?” Billie asked.
Jodie turned to her. She wore rubber boots that were caked with manure. Apparently she’d been cleaning stalls. “What was what?”
“He left,” Billie said. “Wasn’t he looking for me?”
“I don’t think so,” Jodie said. “He was looking
for me.”
Billie watched as the Lincoln made its way along the county road, heading back to Marshall. “Why?”
Jodie reached into the pocket of her shorts and produced a check. “He gave me this.”
She held the check out, but Billie already knew what it was. Nice to know that David Clay was looking after the little girl while he barely gave Billie the time of day when she’d called on Sunday.
“I can pay you for my share of the hay now,” Jodie said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Billie said absently.
“I have to pay my share. Will would never say how much I owed so you have to decide.”
“I said don’t worry about it. Put the money in the bank. And buy yourself some sneakers. Those you’re wearing weren’t worth ten cents and now you’ve got red paint all over them.”
Jodie fell silent then. It seemed as if something were bothering her, and it occurred to Billie that it wasn’t her shoes.
“What?”
“Can you cash the check for me? I don’t have a bank account.”
Billie wondered if other nine-year-olds had bank accounts. Did she at that age? She couldn’t remember but she guessed that she probably did. She would get money for birthdays and other occasions and deposit it. “Get your mother to cash it.”
“You can’t do it?”
The situation was suddenly clear. Billie put David Clay’s rude departure out of her mind, at least for the time being. The little girl didn’t want to hand a thousand dollars over to her mother, who didn’t work for a living and was apparently spending her days in the company of a petty thief named Troy Everson. Billie didn’t blame her. She wasn’t thrilled that it fell to her to come up with a solution, but evidently it had.
She glanced toward the front pasture. A few days earlier she had turned the two broodmares and the gray colt out into the field, where the grass was lush and green after the rains. The three were now grazing along the edge of the pond. On her drive home last night, Billie had decided that she needed to get the lease situation at Chestnut Field settled before Luke Walker arrived to look at the colt. In fact, she hoped to have Skeeter Musgrave start exercising the horse again. Before that could happen, she was going to have to deal with Caldwell’s contractual bullshit about the stall at Chestnut. She could always trailer the colt back and forth to the track every day, but she’d rather not do that. The horse needed to be in one place. Her father wouldn’t trailer the animal every day, so neither would Billie.
