Love, Like Water (7 page)

As he watched, Eli ducked into the trailer, and a minute later the back end of a horse appeared, shuffling down the low slope of the ramp to the ground. Joshua stared in disbelief. The horse was barely a hide over bones, the ribs sharp against the skin, the hipbones flared. A skeleton of horse, like something out of the creepy fairy tales his
abuela
used to tell him. The horse’s head drooped, and it moved slowly, passively, hopelessly.

The man with the bag—the vet?—inspected the horse carefully, then he said something to Tucker, who nodded and signaled for one of the hands to come over. He put the lead rope of the hackamore the horse wore into the man’s hand and said something to him. The hand nodded and led the horse away, moving slowly, keeping pace with the animal’s speed.

They repeated this four more times, each of the horses just as gaunt, just as hopeless as the first. But when one of the hands came up to take the last one’s lead, the horse gave a little bounce, throwing its head back as if it were trying to rear, but without the energy to do so. The man startled and stepped back, but Tucker and Eli didn’t move. Eli put his hand gently on the horse’s withers and the beast quieted, but refused to budge.

Then the trailer driver said something, and climbed into the trailer, returning a moment later with something in his arms. The horse bent his head to the pale gray bundle; the driver handed it to the hand waiting to take the horse, and the horse followed meekly after.

Tucker stayed by the other two men, but Eli crossed the yard to lean on his accustomed place at the foot of the stairs to the porch, against the stair rail. “What was that about?” Joshua asked.

Eli chuckled. “Turns out the horse made friends with one of the cats from the farm they came from. Cat managed okay after the owner died—there ain’t never a shortage of mice around a farm. Fortunately, it was mostly tame. Barn cats aren’t usually, so it might have been a house cat that was lucky enough to be outside when the old man went. But the horse wouldn’t leave without it. Animal welfare’s usually pretty careful with the animals they rescue, and in a case like this, they’ll just take both animals along.”

“It’s nice, I guess, that the horse has a friend. Seems to have a little more spirit than the others.”

“Yeah,” Eli said softly. “Sometimes friends give you strength you don’t know you have.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Joshua watched his uncle shake hands with the trailer driver, watched the trailer roll along the turnaround behind the near paddock and head back down the drive toward the road, watched his uncle and the vet as they turned and walked into the barn, heads together as they talked. He purposely didn’t look at Eli; he knew the man would be watching
him
with those bright, patient eyes. He didn’t know why—there was nothing judgmental, nothing pejorative about the look. It was more like he was waiting, but waiting for what? For Joshua to jump up and run around, waving his arms insanely as he went over that final edge? For Joshua to suddenly start talking like everyone else around here, easily, as if words were their friends and they didn’t have anything to hide? He didn’t know what Elian Kelly wanted, he just knew that the patient watchfulness made him nervous, made him curious, made him crazy.

Made him want to walk over to where he stood, put his head on his shoulder, and wait for those patient arms to come around him, pat him gently, and tell him everything was going to be okay.

He shook himself mentally and said, “So what are you going to do with those horses? They look ready for the glue factory.”

“Not here,” Eli said, still in that soft, easy voice. “We’re gonna try and get them better. Doc’ll give ’em vitamin shots. We’ll put them on a special diet, watch them, take care of them, try to get them back to being horses again instead of animated skellingtons.”

“What then?”

“Then it depends. We find homes for some of them. Some of them stay here. That sorrel mare Jesse’s playing with in the far corral? That’s Sallee. She looked just as bad as any of these when she got here a few months back.”

Joshua studied the horse. It was on a lunge line, with Jesse, Sarafina’s boy, in the center of the paddock. The mare was cantering steadily around the boy at the end of the lunge line. “He’s teaching her voice commands,” Eli said. “Most Western stock learn both voice commands and neck-reining. Using the reins is fine unless your hands are full, so most working horses need to be able to follow voice orders too. The saddles we use aren’t like them fancy English types, where the horse can feel your butt and thighs telling ’em what to do, so we gotta be able to talk to our mounts. Otherwise you might find yourself hauling on a three-hunnert pound calf and your horse not cooperating ’cause he don’t understand what you’re doing and you got no way of telling him.”

He was looking out at the pair in the far corral, so Joshua took a moment to sneak a peek at him. It was still early in the day, so he hadn’t acquired the patina of dusty sweat he usually had by evening—though he’d always shown up at supper washed and wearing a fresh shirt, his curly sun-streaked hair still damp from his shower. He seemed to take pride in himself, earthy and practical as he was. Joshua thought of days wearing the same filthy jeans, the same sweat-stained T-shirt, not caring if he was clean, not caring if his teeth were brushed or his hair washed. Not caring. He tried harder now, because he didn’t want to disappoint Uncle Tuck, but it wasn’t because
he
cared. Elian Kelly cared. Not only about his job, and the horses, but about himself. Joshua wondered what it would be like to take pride in oneself again. He’d done it before, but that was long ago.

Sometimes friends give you strength you don’t know you have.

Did Elian Kelly think of himself as Joshua’s friend? Joshua had had friends, once—again, long ago. College friends, friends at the Academy, friends among the other young agents in the Cincinnati field office before he’d transferred to Chicago for his exciting new assignment. He supposed to his college and Academy friends, he’d dropped off the face of the earth; the field agents might know what happened to him, but it was more likely they were told his assignment was successful as the FBI measured success and that he’d resigned immediately afterward. Maybe some of his college friends had tried to get in touch with him, but his mother and Cathy had been kept in the dark as to his whereabouts for his own safety during his assignment, and now…. Now there was no point. He was in New Mexico, and likely to stay here, and besides, his friends from college wouldn’t know him. Hell,
he
didn’t even know him.

But he was getting to know Elian Kelly, and he was starting to like him. The thought worried him, for some reason. It was as if every time the man looked at him, he saw a different Joshua, one that Joshua wished really existed. He wanted to be the Joshua Eli saw, but he was afraid he wasn’t. And someday Eli would see the real Joshua, and that would be the end of any hope for friendship… if friendship was what it was.

Tucker came out of the barn with the vet and they climbed up to the porch, the vet settling in one of the rockers and Tucker sitting on the porch rail the way Eli had the other night. “So,” he said, but it wasn’t as a preamble to anything else, just a comment.

Eli said, “I don’t reckon you’ve met Joshua, Rodney. Tuck’s nephew.”

“I figgered as much,” the vet said. He stuck his hand out for Joshua to shake. “Rodney Lathrop, local vet.”

“Joshua Chastain, local nephew,” Joshua said seriously. The vet grinned and they shook. “So what’s all that about? Are those horses even gonna make it?”

“Oh, yeah, they should. They were the lucky ones—they were out in a corral, and while they suffered some exposure, there was a trough to catch rainwater for drinking, and they at least weren’t up to their ankles in filthy wet straw. They had to put down two horses that were in stalls in the barn—hoof rot. These babies aren’t much but starved.”

A thought occurred to Joshua. “You need to pen the cat.”

Three pairs of startled eyes met his. “Say what?” the vet asked.

“I read that cats have a kind of homing device in their heads? That when you hear about cats traveling thousands of miles back to a house their family moved from, it’s because the cat still thinks it’s home. That you gotta keep a cat shut up for a couple of days until the homing thing in their head resets to recognize that the new place is home.”

“Hmm,” the vet said. “Makes sense.”

“You like cats, Joshua?” Tucker asked with interest.

“Yeah, they’re okay.” He’d liked them once. He supposed maybe he someday might again.

“We’ve got an old kennel we can probably fix up for it,” Eli mused. “Keep it in the stall with the horse, and it should be fine. Just need to find something to use for a litter box. Sand we got plenty of.”

“Get it set up and Joshua can take over the cat,” Tucker said. “That’ll be in line with the rest of his job.”

“The bookkeeping?” Joshua was puzzled.

“Nope. Tending our new guests.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, not much to begin with. Ricky’ll take care of that—he’s the red-haired kid you seen around with Jesse. But I thought mebbe you’d like to take on a little light work. Monitoring their health, making sure they’re getting enough sun and exercise….”

“I don’t know anything about that.” Joshua felt his throat tightening. “I don’t know how to take care of anyone… anything. I….” His throat closed in panic.

Eli said quietly, “It’s okay, son. You and Tucker can talk about it later, right, Tuck?”

Josh saw the two of them exchange a glance, and he felt stupid and helpless. Then Uncle Tucker said, “Sure, Josh. Didn’t mean to spring it on you. And it ain’t like it’d be solely on you or anything. We’ll talk after supper.”

Joshua nodded. He stood up, closing the picture book, and said, his voice thick as tar, “Okay. Later,” and fled to his bedroom.

The last thing he heard as he let the screen door close behind him was his uncle’s heartfelt “
Shit
.”

Chapter 6

I
T
WAS
cooler in the barn, shaded from the sun, with all the hot air far above under the roof panels. The smells…. Joshua closed his eyes a moment, taking in the dusty scent of hay, the tang of saddle oil, the mustiness of old wood, and, of course, the pungent stench of horse, despite the fact that the barn was cleaner than most specimens. When he opened his eyes, the kid Ricky, all long bones and elbows, stood on his shovel, grinning. There was a laden wheelbarrow behind him. “Kinda overpowering if you ain’t used to it,” he said.

Joshua regarded him a moment. He’d met the kid the other afternoon; he was a friend of Jesse’s who had a part-time job at the ranch. The lanky, jug-eared redhead was the physical opposite of the compact, darkly lovely boy, but according to Sarafina, the two had been best friends since kindergarten. “I was just thinking,” Joshua said slowly, “that it reminds me of when I was a kid here.”

Ricky scratched his head. “You were a kid here?”

“A long time ago.” Joshua nodded at him and went past on his way to the stall with the cat kennel in it.

The gelding who’d adopted the cat had turned out to be a pretty bay under the layers of mud and shed hair, and despite the bones that stuck out beneath the reddish brown coat. The two boys had worked all morning currying the new arrivals—not just for cosmetic reasons, but so the vet could inspect them for any lingering wounds or infections. The bay stood now with its head down against the side of the wire kennel they’d found and cleaned up for the cat, who was curled up so that the horse’s breath ruffled the long, matted fur. Despite the wire between them, they seemed content. So Joshua just stood for a while, leaning on the big stall—Tucker had called it a “loose box”—and watching the two of them.

After a bit though, the horse raised its head and looked at Joshua, snorting softly. “Sorry, fella,” he murmured, “but I haven’t got anything for you….”

“Sure you do,” Ricky said in an undertone. Joshua glanced over his shoulder and saw Ricky holding out a bucket. Joshua took the bucket. Inside were oats, some pieces of carrots and apples, cut up small, and a few handfuls of grass. “Tuck told me to make up some of this, to get them used to us, but they’re pretty friendly. Not like some of the ones we get here that are afraid of their own shadows. These guys are just hungry.”

Indeed, the gelding was moving slowly, carefully in their direction, his attention on the bucket. Joshua took a handful of the mixture and held out his hand, palm flat, the offering open. After a moment, the horse came up and snuffled up the treat, his wet, fuzzy lips moving delicately over Joshua’s skin. Joshua had thought that maybe it would be rougher, too eager to eat, but the gelding was a gentleman. “Do we know their names?”

“Nope,” Ricky said. “I think Tuck might have a list, but I ain’t seen it.” He set the shovel to the side and trundled the full wheelbarrow out, leaving Joshua with his equine friend.

“Y
OU
seen Josh?”

Tucker finished taking the bridle off Mary Sue, scratched her cheek, and hung up the bridle on the nail next to her stall before answering. “He went into the small barn right after lunch. Ain’t seen him since. Ricky’s been in and out of there, though. Maybe he seen him.”