Borrowed Horses (36 page)

The detective swallowed the last of his coffee. “Have you decided what to do with the horse’s remains?”

“His name,” I said, “was Foxfire.”

The silence hung between us. Whatever pain Dave imagined I caused him, I could imagine nothing to match what I felt now. I clenched my teeth, willing myself not to allow even one tear to fall in front of this man.

“I apologize.” He was quiet for a moment. “I know how hard this must all be, and I really am sorry to have been the one to share it with you. I’m afraid the question is as painful, but I must ask it. Have you decided what you will do with Foxfire’s remains?”

“I’d like to ask Connie if she’ll allow him to be buried in her field, but at the moment, I doubt she’d speak to me.”

“I’m going to see Ms. Thornfield next; I’ll ask. The truth is, we need to get the body taken care of.”

“Thank you.” The words sounded cold.

The detective stood and shook my hand. “There is no way to say this and sound sincere, but please believe that I am very, very sorry for your loss.”

I merely nodded and showed him out, then washed his cup to erase the evidence of his visit and the news it had brought. I remembered burn victims from the ER: the skin boiled away from fat and muscle, the charred flesh, the smell. Every time I shut my eyes, Foxfire burned.

I picked up the jar with Timothy’s amaryllis. What a weak symbol it seemed now that he was gone. I wasn’t strong. All I had was impotent anger.

My hand squeezed tight around the coldness of that glass, but it didn’t break. I turned and moved my arm to pitch it into the wall, but as I did, water from the jar tipped out onto my wrist, cold and pure, and brought me back to a degree of sense. A sob escaped.

I set the jar down as the phone rang. “Are you riding tomorrow?” Eddie asked.

All I wanted to do in the world was ride, feel Foxfire’s body again and know his mind. I wanted him to feel the depth of my love for him, like he’d read every other emotion I’d had. Zephyr was the borrowed horse I’d used to betray him. I couldn’t ride her now. “I’ve got work.”

“What about after?”

I didn’t answer.

“Joannie, this is the one thing I can do for you right now. You need to get back on.”

It hadn’t been forty-eight hours. I pressed my finger into the scar of my cut and thought of the boy whose life had run out too soon. I began shaking again, and the shaking broke some fissure in the shell of me. My voice broke as I spoke. “Are you going to sell me Zephyr? Because if you won’t, then I’m not sure I really see the point of all this.”

Eddie paused. “You know as well as I do that riding is more than winning horse shows.”

“Riding Foxfire was about more than winning. I’m not sure what riding Zephyr is yet. All I know is, if you sell her, I’ll have lost two horses.”

“Training has rewards of its own—you know that as well as I do. Don’t let what happened to Foxfire erase what you accomplished at Deep Creek.”

“Can we talk about this later?”

“Zephyr won’t wait.”

“It hurts, Eddie.”

“I know, Joannie,” Eddie’s breath rasped across the receiver. “He was a horse in a million.” He took a minute to gather himself. “I’ve moved Zephyr to Ferndean for the rest of the winter. Their indoor isn’t as large as Connie’s, it’s damp, and the footing is not as good, but it will have to do until spring. She needs training for the show.”

Tears were in my eyes and I couldn’t trust my voice.

“Joannie, I need you to do this. I’ve got to get the boys to basketball tomorrow night, and Zephyr won’t do well if she’s in a stall with no work.”

“O.K.” I hung up before I might have to say one more word.

The phone rang again when I had barely set it in the cradle. I paused a moment and swallowed before lifting it and answering. It was a reporter. Jenny was talking and the guy said he wanted to give me a chance to rebuke her claims. I hung up, but the guy called back at least twice more that evening. By seven, I turned the ringer off.

Tired as I was, sleep wouldn’t come. I got on the treadmill, running steady, focusing on rhythm to the exclusion of any other thought.
Tempo, tempo
. I would become a mechanism, a framework of bonemetal, a few clever pumps, some fluid, and well-timed electrical pulses. Machines didn’t feel.

When I finally did fall, spent, into bed, I slept fitfully. I dreamed of the monsters we create, I dreamed of Mouse driving me at another brick wall, and, just before dawn, I dreamed Foxfire alive again. I was at Connie’s. The black skeleton of the barn still smoldered, and through a ghostly smoke and the cracked black bones, I saw Foxfire running in a back pasture. “We buried him,” I said. “He’s dead.”

Connie appeared at my side, smiling. “We found him out there this morning.” She pointed where we’d dug the grave, but it was no longer a neat mound of earth in a pasture corner, but a fresh hole. I looked at him again, and noticed that he no longer moved with the hitching steps. He was fluid as a colt and his copper coat burned with its subtle fire. No, he moved better than a colt—he moved like he had wings on each fetlock, floating across the surface of the earth. Zephyr watched from the next pasture, nickering to him like they were old friends.
This isn’t happening
, I thought, and I woke suddenly to yet another new layer of sadness.

Beggars’ Horses

J
enny’s story ran in the morning newspaper. Cheryl looked smug; she’d been right the whole time, if only anyone had bothered to listen. She leaned to whisper audibly to Doreen. “They did the autopsy downstairs. Kathy said the body was charred so dry that parts kept falling off. A finger nearly rolled off the table.” It wasn’t true. The autopsy tables had troughs to collect the fluid, but I didn’t stop to debate the point.

Jenny emerged a local heroine, the wife who stayed true to her husband even as I seduced him into insanity. Now, the story went, she was back in the loving arms of her family. Her father pushed television reporters away from the pale, young widow. Rumor was he’d bought over-priced tickets to fly his sisters in from Savannah. I pictured her flanked with aunts and said nothing to contradict my own black portrait.

Just after lunch, a thirteen-year-old girl came in, engulfed by an oversized football jersey and jeans. Her pale skin bore the map of her blood vessels, and her left arm hung heavy in a jury-rigged sling. She tipped back a ball cap to reveal her bald scalp. “I have leukemia
and
a broken wrist,” she said. “Can you believe that shit?” Her smile was beautiful and proud. Her problems made her special.

I gave her my hand to help her up and she held it with the strong, confident grip of someone who does not doubt she will beat her disease. “Some luck,” I said.

“Tell me about it.” She settled herself on the table like one experienced in getting radiation. “Hey, you’re the one in the paper. The one that guy burned down a barn for.”

I focused on positioning the table. “That’s me.”

“That’s so romantic.”

“Then I could do with less romance.”

The girl laughed. “I know what you mean.” Her laughter was amazing, all crocuses pushing through snow.

“What’s your name?” I said.

She smiled up into my eyes, glad she would have her own identity here, that who she was mattered, that she was more than a clipboard with a list of symptoms and procedures. “Lily.”

“Well, Lily, I’ll need you to hold still for a little while so I can get a nice clear shot of that wrist.”

“You talk like a doctor,” she complained, but she lay still. She was practiced in the art of being a patient, of listening, obeying, hiding pain in smiles. Afterward, she slid from the table and chucked me on the arm with her good hand. “Later, skater,” she said, giving me one last wink before she disappeared.

She high-fived Dr. Rivers on his way in. “Meet you in the ER?” she said.

“I’m just off,” he told her. “You’ll have to settle for Dr. Leonard.”

“Drag,” she said, letting the door close behind her.

He turned to me and smiled. “I see you met Lily.”

“Is she going to make it?”

“Her arm will heal. That’s all I know. Her oncologist is the one to ask about the cancer. All I can say is, I hope to be treating her for many broken bones in the future. She loves her skateboard, so if the chemo goes well, we should see her again. This is her third broken bone in two years.”

This wasn’t the reason he had come. I waited. He straightened the pens in his pocket, only now avoiding my eyes. “I didn’t know you rode horses.”

He had tried to sound casual and off-hand, but the reference to that morning’s article made me defensive. “None of it affects my work.”

“No. Your pictures today were excellent as always.”

I picked up my bag and moved toward the door.

“I used to ride,” he said quickly. “When I was a kid in Iowa. Then one day, a pony bucked me off and I landed in a ditch. I thought I’d broken my neck. I lay there for an hour waiting for someone to save me, but no one ever came. Turned out I had nothing worse than a bruised ego.”

“You seem to have made a full recovery.”

“You’d never catch me getting on a horse again.”

“The thing about riding is that even good horses will throw you eventually.” I didn’t want to talk about this. “You have to ride knowing that you will get hurt. It’s not an if, but a when.”

“Mountain bikes are safer,” he said.

“I’ve seen plenty of mountain bikers in this room. There’s no such thing as a safe life.”

“No, only degrees of danger.”

“Riding’s not a sport for the faint of heart.”

“No, it isn’t.” He looked at me with a curious expression that seemed to mix understanding and triumph, and I wondered if he was trying to lead me to that confession, like he was the doctor prescribing the necessary thought. “You’ll get through this, Joannie. I don’t know if everyone could, but you can.”

I was supposed to ride Zephyr. Instead, I ran in the last light of early winter, pushing myself hard and fast, needing to be breathless and hurting. Cold burned in my lungs and lactic acid in my muscles, but I ran on, desperate for a physical pain. I ran the long flat of Mountain View Road and on up the base of the mountain. I ran roads I didn’t know. When they forked, I chose the steepest route. Evening was falling with brutal cold, and I ran upward to meet its darkness. My face stung against the bitter air.

Out among the fir and pine, the snow began to fall like barn ash, slowly and methodically covering the earth. I fumbled.

My eyes stung with cold, dry air. I turned and looked out over Moscow. From here, it looked so small: a quilt of threadbare trees pulled around houses. It was hard to believe that twenty thousand people lived wrapped there. Bleak wheat fields stretched over the surrounding hills, lined with windbreaks. The Kibbie Dome, pride of the Vandals and the first domed stadium in the country, sat squat and ugly as an airplane hanger at the edge of the university. On its face, the faded pattern of gold and black squares still managed a boldness in the failing light. Water towers and grain elevators reached as high as anything.

It wasn’t a postcard town. It wasn’t anything people would seek out. I could leave it any time I liked. I already had.

That wasn’t true. Even in New Jersey, I’d never left it.

The muscles of my legs tensed, cramping. I took a few tentative steps forward, then broke into a jog. The tears came faster now. No matter how much I wanted to believe otherwise, my heart was no fist of string. It pumped red blood, carrying oxygen, carrying other things. I stretched my stride longer, running back to everything I’d ever wanted to leave.

By the time I arrived at the barn, Zephyr was pacing her stall and striking its wooden door with brutal fury. Hobbes, in the stall next to her, stood calmly eating hay, occasionally flicking his ears toward her antics. Zephyr moved in a contained gyre, exposing the stall mats as she’d shuffled the wood chips into the corners. As soon as she saw me, she charged the stall door, snapping her teeth. I held my breath and a halter, trying to find the moment when I could open the door without getting bitten or struck. “Easy, girl,” I said, but easiness was not to be had for the price of small words. She wanted a pound of flesh at the minimum.