House of Mercy (12 page)

Throughout the summer, the female trees dropped their fluffy seeds like fairies in wedding dresses onto the horses’ backs. Gert was lying on her side next to the barn, covered in a veil of cottonwood white that mimicked the snowflake pattern of her lovely mottled coat. The horse’s lungs worked as if she’d just run a race, but she didn’t have a drop of sweat on her.

“When did she go down?” Beth asked.

Jacob was sitting in the dust by Gert’s head. “Right after you hung up.”

“Sorry to make you wait. Dr. O’Connor is out on a call.”

“I know.”

She knew then that he’d called the vet first, before her, and she felt mildly embarrassed that she’d assumed otherwise. But she couldn’t figure why he wouldn’t just come out and say it.

“Who else did you call?” she asked.

“Stanton, from up in Villa Grove, but it’ll be another hour before he gets over.”

Beth ran her hands over Gert’s throat, which was quite hot and dry to the touch. She placed a forefinger under the left side of the horse’s jawbone and easily found the pulsating artery there.

“Count fifteen seconds for me,” she said. Jacob glanced at his wristwatch and gave her a go-ahead.

“Time,” he said.

Beth multiplied her count by four. “Heart rate’s fifty-six,” she said.

“That’s what I got too.”

“You might have mentioned that.”

“I answered all your questions.”

“Okay, then. Is this a game? One point for you, Jacob.”

“No game,” he said.

“Did you take her temp by yourself too?”

“All my answers were truthful,” Jacob said, tipping his hat back on his head. The band inside left a reddish impression above his eyebrows. “I respect my horse’s dignity.”

“But you know how to do it if you had to.”

“What kind of a cowboy would I be if I didn’t know how? She’s pushing 103.”

Beth raised her eyebrows.

“Mercury in my fingertips,” he said, showing her his hands.

“You can’t tell just by touching her,” Beth scolded.

“You’re the expert.”

Separated from Jacob only by his horse, Beth could easily smell his earthy scents: sweat mixed with the dust of the day and the wet leather of his boots, which were damp and mud-crusty from his irrigation work. He smelled like all the comforts of home, the way it had been in summers before this one, which she’d ruined before it even started.

She wanted to lean into him and close her eyes and rest her head in that safe spot between his collar and his arm. The strength he’d collected from the outdoors would give her courage that fluorescent lights and air-conditioning and a windowless grocery store could not.

She wanted to shave off that facial hair and run her hand over his cheek.

Instead, she fetched a thermometer from the barn, tied a string to the end, and went through the routine motions of determining just how hot Gert was. The girl was typically compliant, but today it wasn’t even necessary for Jacob to hold her head when Beth inserted the device.

An accurate reading would take three minutes. Gert closed her eyes but seemed no less relaxed. Jacob rose and leaned against the barn. Beth waited for God to use her, wondering what it would feel like this time, what it would look like. Would this event bring her any closer to figuring out his methods, or hers?

Beth lifted her eyes to the pasture to see if any other horses were affected by similar symptoms.

“You’re a born vet,” Jacob said.

She looked at him, wondering what had prompted the remark. “That’s nice of you to say.”

“Not being nice. It’s just the truth.”

“Well, I’m not a legal one.”

“It’ll happen.”

“It’ll take a miracle.”

“Miracles happen.”

They do!
she thought. She nearly said it—she nearly told Jacob everything about the antelope, the wolf, and the bird. Something stopped her, though: the sight of Gert lying there in the same condition as when Beth had arrived, the truth that she didn’t have a formula to explain God’s work, a flicker of wavering faith. Doubt.

“Do you think so?” she said instead.

With his head tipped back against the barn siding, Jacob crossed his arms and his ankles and regarded her carefully. His eyes were the same color blue as hers and should have been unremarkable in their familiarity. Instead, the direct and thoughtful attention, as if he possessed a clear answer but didn’t think she could handle it, caused her to speak over any reply he might have offered.

She continued, “Or do we just call anything we don’t really understand a miracle?”

“Nope. Miracles happen,” he said again.

She wanted his certainty.

“If I get Gert off the ground in the next fifteen minutes, will that be miraculous?”

Jacob frowned now, and a deep line crouched between his brows.

Beth cleared her throat. She hadn’t meant to be flippant. “What I meant is, what do you call a miracle?”

“Do you believe God loves you?” he asked.

“Sure. He loves everyone.”

Jacob shrugged. “For starters, then, I guess I think it’s a miracle that he loves someone like me.”

“What do you mean, someone like you? You’re a straight-up guy, you work hard, everyone likes you, you’re good to people.” She sighed. “You’ve never stolen a horse and killed it.”

He didn’t reply to that, and she might have apologized for her self-pity if he hadn’t cracked that smile at her—the kind of unfunny, condescending smile older people gave when they were thinking,
I’m wiser than you are, young’un, but I’ll hold my tongue
.

The smile goaded her to be just a little sassy. She was really bungling this whole conversation. She said, “If I get off light in this lawsuit, will that be a miracle? I’m sure Darling would say it’s an injustice.”

“Encouragement is hard to come by,” Jacob said. “Maybe you should just take it at face value when it shows up.”

He was right, of course.

He said, “Maybe it’s a miracle you weren’t hurt worse than you were when Joe threw you.”

“Okay, okay—forget I brought that up.” She turned back to Gert. “I’m thinking she’s got heat stress.”

Jacob glanced back at the reclined horse. “I know it’s hot, but none of the other animals show signs. And she’s not sweating. Isn’t that how horses cool off ?”

“Generally speaking. Animals with fur pant; animals with hair sweat.”

She removed Gert’s thermometer. “One-oh-two point nine,” she read. “Might as well be 103. You score again.”

“Wish I’d been wrong about that number.”

“It is a bit high. Did you really just guess?” He nodded, and she said, “I’m impressed. I mean it.”

“What do you recommend?”

The question brought to mind a story she’d read in one of James Herriot’s books. In this particular tale, the vet had been summoned to treat a collapsed bull. The owner, befuddled over the bull’s condition, put a lot of stock in cutting-edge medicine and expected Herriot to wow him with a complex diagnosis and high-tech treatment. When Herriot told him the bull had heat stroke and would recover with shade and a cold spray from the hose, the owner was downright disappointed to see his valuable animal come back to life so quickly.

“Sometimes things are never anything more than what they seem,” she muttered.

“Then it should be okay to call a miracle a miracle,” he said.

She laughed and felt forgiven. “You are worse than a dog on a rabbit,” she said. “I was talking about Gert. Let’s try to cool her off.” There was a hose wound like a rattlesnake at the side of the barn. She unwound it and attached it to a spigot, then turned on the water and directed a gentle spray at Gert’s legs. In a few short minutes, the horse’s terrible breathing began to slow.

“I hereby diagnose her with heat stroke,” Beth said.

Jacob was too nice to ask her again about the lack of sweat, but she knew he was thinking it. That was one mystery that her diagnosis didn’t solve.

“How long have you had her again?” Beth asked.

“Since last October. She went with me when we went up to fetch the cows.”

“Okay. I remember that. So she hasn’t been with us through a summer before—or an August. Did her previous owner mention any trouble with her?”

“None.”

“Where’s she from?”

“Montana.”

“Right.”

An odd idea was emerging from the back of her mind, a factoid she’d tucked away long ago for a time such as this, when she’d have to apply it to a practical situation. “I’ve heard that some horses don’t sweat.”

“No kidding? How does that work?”

“Not too well. I read about it once—it’s a condition called . . . what’s it called? Hydro-something. Too little sweating. Antihydro . . . adiapho . . . oh—anhidrosis. A tendency to overheat.”

“That so, Dr. Borzoi?”

“Don’t take my word for it. We’ll have to ask Dr. O’Connor what he thinks.”

“Your word’s good enough for me.”

“You ought to reserve judgment.”

“Gert’s smiling. That’s all I need.”

“She is not!”

“Your future as a large-animal doctor is secure. I’ll take that game-winning point now.”

He tipped his hat at her, and she flicked the spray of the hose lightly in his direction. A spatter bloomed on his blue shirt. “You’re kinder than I deserve, Jacob.”

“Anyone who’s ever lost a dream needs a kind person in his life,” he said.

“I promise,” Beth said. “If I ever get my second chance, I won’t blow it.”

“That’s not what I—” Jacob sniffed and shook his head, resigned. His eyes followed the water slipping off of Gert and pooling in the dry grass under her flank. “Well. Never mind. What can I say, you’ve got a healer’s touch. Miracle worker.”

She couldn’t tell if he was teasing or genuine. She was afraid to ask, because her need for clarity would only make her feel like a little girl again. He crossed his arms and turned his face to the sun as Beth directed the water over Gert’s ribs and back.

Awhile later she asked, “You ever lose a dream? In college maybe? I didn’t expect you to come back here afterward. You could’ve gone anywhere. Why didn’t you? Why don’t you? It’s been eight years—nine already.”

He didn’t open his eyes at first. “Are you saying I’ve worn out my welcome?”

“C’mon now, be serious.”

Gert snorted once and lifted her nose into the direct spray of water. She seemed to be enjoying it.

“All my dreams are right here,” he said. “Simple as that.”

“I’ll probably keep coming back to the valley too. If they don’t throw me out.”

“Good place.”

“I don’t really want another life.”

In fact, Beth had never been attracted to the busier world beyond the valley, the world that beckoned with glossy careers in entertainment or politics or big industry. Days of physical exertion spent mostly outdoors, alongside family, capped by a night’s untroubled sleep, was the most rewarding life she could imagine. Depending on the judgment that would come down on them Monday, though, this simple life that she loved so much might change dramatically, or even vanish completely.

Anxiety crept back up on her once more. The magnitude of how this consequence would affect Jacob was suddenly heavy on her heart. She wondered why he didn’t seem worried about it, or embittered in the same way that Levi was. It was Jacob’s home and livelihood at stake as much as any Borzoi’s.

Maybe Jacob really was just being kind to her, hiding his true feelings. Would he be so supportive if he knew about that saddle?

She stole a look at him. He’d lifted his head and was regarding her with a kind of sideways grin that didn’t seem to be pretending anything other than friendly amusement. His dimple showed through his beard.

“What?” she said.

“I’ve just been wondering. What was it like to ride that Thoroughbred? I want to know everything.”

She couldn’t tell him everything, of course, but she told him what she thought he really wanted to know—about the thrill, the adventure, the speed. Someday, she thought, she might also be able to tell him about the rest. Until then, she took his advice and accepted the encouragement of their conversation at face value. It was a gift between two friends who might or might not be in the middle of a miracle.

And when Gert stood up twenty minutes later, looking every inch her old self, Beth counted the dusky evening as one of the most pleasant of her life.

11

C
at Ransom’s life began to fall apart, again, on Monday morning.

In truth, the crumbling had begun the night lightning struck Garner Remke’s window and rekindled the man’s hope for a family reunion. Since then, Garner had fully recovered from his illness. It was no stroke or flu that had afflicted him, but a very carefully measured brew of elderberry-bark tea, disguised as something less toxic. Just enough to give him pause while she got to the bottom of the facts. Of course, she had no medical examiner “friend” in the valley. But she had loads of common sense. All that was required to confirm Abel’s non-death was a phone call to the Blazing B, a claim to be a supplier returning a call to Mr. Abel Borzoi, and a hasty hang-up when the calm person on the other end of the line said, “Let me fetch him for you.”