Sunday afternoon, my doctor signed my release papers.
"You're not allergic to any medications, right?"
"Far as I know."
"You're employed?" I nodded, and he said, "Take off for a day or two, and when you go back, take it easy for a couple weeks." He pulled a prescription pad from a pocket in his lab coat and began to scribble. "Occupation?"
"Barn manager… at a horse farm."
He looked up, his pen hovering over his paperwork. "Better take off a full week, then start back slow. Give the ribs a chance to heal."
I didn't tell him I couldn't afford to, that there was just too much to be done, not to mention the fact that I needed every penny I earned.
He saw what I was thinking, tore up the prescription, and wrote a new one. "This will give you more relief. If you have any questions or problems, get in touch with your family physician." He tried to suppress a yawn as he initialed the chart. "You do have a family doctor?"
"Err, no, actually."
He shook his head. "Well, find one, will you?" He straightened and tucked the pen back into his breast pocket. "Have the police finished with their interviews?"
"Last night."
"Thought so. You weren't very coherent when they brought you in."
The entire police thing had been more tedious and involved than I ever would have imagined and something I would just as soon forget. Besides requiring a more detailed statement, they had taken my fingerprints-for elimination purposes, they'd said. And they had photographed my injuries. Need to have proof an assault happened, you know? The only thing they still needed, and were unlikely to get, were suspects.
He dropped the prescription on the bedside table. "Good luck." He grinned. "And stay out of trouble."
I watched him stroll out the door, then I called the farm and arranged for a ride home.
For the next two hours, I stared out the window at a dreary expanse of black rooftop, thinking unproductive thoughts while the relay switch in the heating unit clicked wildly. At a quarter to five, Marty slouched into the room, and it was only from long acquaintance that I noticed the brief hesitation in his face as he took in the bruising and the gown and the bandages around my wrists.
He called over his shoulder. "He's in here."
Dave, Foxdale's handyman, appeared in the doorway as Marty hitched a hip on the footboard.
"Tell all," Marty said.
Since I'd started at Foxdale, Marty and I had become best friends. An unlikely union as we were more opposite than alike. He was easygoing and coarse, vulgar at times, and seemingly without ambition. "You first," I said. "What's happening at Foxdale?"
Marty shrugged. "What you'd expect. Phone ringing off the hook. Outrage, paranoia, tears." He grinned. "On the boarders' part, that is. 'Cause the guys are thrilled to death having seven less stalls to muck out."
"That won't last."
"Suppose not. But some folks'll be afraid to trust their horses to us now that somebody's taken off with a trailer full. So give with the details. Whatju run into?"
I sighed. It was going to be a long week.
He waved his hand. "Come on, man. The cops were crawling all over the place yesterday. You'd of thought you were dead," he glanced around the room, "or dying."
"It's true," Dave muttered but kept his gaze on the floor. He'd been checking out the pattern in the tiles ever since he'd walked into the room.
"Anyway," Marty said, "the boys in blue had Mrs. Hill holed up in her office for about an hour, and when they finally hightailed it out of there, she was madder'n hell. But, Mrs. Hill being Mrs. Hill, she wouldn't tell us a goddamn thing. And, get this. A fucking reporter showed up this morning. Mrs. Hill sent him packing, though," Marty added, and it was clear the thought amused him.
I just stared.
"So, what happened? Rumor has it, the shits who took the horses took you, too."
"That's right."
"Fuck, man. How'd you get away?"
"I just did. So, why'd Mrs. Hill send both of you?"
Marty stood and stretched. "She thought you might be wantin' your truck, so we dropped it off at your place when we got the clothes you asked for."
"Oh," I mumbled.
"What were you-"
"Marty, shut up," Dave said. "Let Steve get dressed so we can get outta here." He handed me the paper bag he'd been holding which I saw contained a fresh change of clothes.
"I knew you were weird," Marty said. "But goin' to the barn naked?"
I grinned. "My clothes got soaked. The medics cut them off."
"How'd they get-" Marty said as Dave pushed him out of the room, "wet?" he finished as the door swung shut.
It was after six and dark by the time Marty swung his old Firebird round the parking lot behind the loft and jerked to a halt at the base of the steps. He looked over at my Chevy parked under the dusk-to-dawn light. "We couldn't find your keys. Hope you got a spare. And you'd better check your battery 'cause it was dead. You left the door open, and the dome light was on."
But I had closed it. I distinctly remembered how loud it had sounded. "Then how'd you get it over here?" I said.
"Jumped it."
"But-"
"He hot-wired it," Dave said from the back seat, and I thought I heard a hint of disapproval in his voice.
Marty turned in his seat and grinned at me.
"Well, who'd of thought." I levered myself out of his low-slung car, then watched Dave struggle out of the back seat and plop thankfully into my spot.
Marty ducked down so he could see me through the passenger window. "Need help with anything?"
I told him I'd be fine and waved him off, but by the time I made it to the landing, I was doubtful. By the time I reached the deck and walked into the kitchen, I knew I had lied. I was exhausted and hungry, but too tired to bother with it. I swallowed some pain pills, turned off the lights, and crawled into bed.
I was running down a long dark tunnel. Running as fast as I could and getting nowhere. There were no footsteps. No sound.
I came to a door. Didn't open it. Didn't want to.
Just the same, I ended up inside a room. A room without walls.
The ground felt solid but somehow wasn't. With dread, I looked at my feet. The floor was liquid. It didn't make sense. I looked closer. Not water. No, it wasn't water.
It was blood.
Ripples lapped against my boots as something moved on the edge of my field of vision. I tried to turn my head to see what it was but couldn't.
Couldn't move. Couldn't breathe.
I forced myself to look. It was a head. A horse's head. Others floated past in the current, rising to the surface like huge, hideous bubbles. One drifted past my feet. I could see the dull, lifeless eye staring up at me.
Tight bands constricted around my chest, and my heart was pounding so hard, I was afraid it would explode.
Someone cried out.
The sound woke me. Though the air was chilly, I lay trembling between sheets soaked with sweat. The pain medication had worn off.
I sat up, braced my hands on the edge of the bed, and worked to slow my breathing. One of the cats leapt onto the bed and leaned against my arm. Her purring sounded loud in the quiet dark. Ignoring her play for attention, I nudged her off the bed and stood up.
I walked stiffly into the kitchen, washed down a pill, and set the glass on the counter. It had snowed, and I could see quite easily into the night. Dark shapes were scattered on the hill above the lake. I picked up the binoculars and adjusted the focus. Deer, six of them. In the muted light, the fencing rose and fell like a roller coaster, enclosing pastures that were otherwise empty, their inhabitants snug in the barn below. On the frozen lake in the south field, the snow was even and stark.
I glanced at the clock on the stove. Three-ten. I had slept for a long time. I walked into the bathroom and switched on the lights. The plush expanse of teal and navy wallpaper and matching carpet seemed foreign after the cold sterility of the hospital. The loft seemed different somehow. Nothing tangible, but a change nonetheless. Or maybe it wasn't the loft that was different but my perspective of it.
I turned on the shower and looked in the mirror. Despite the fact that I had two impressive shiners and my cheek was mottled with purple, black, and yellow, the swelling around my eye had improved considerably in the last twenty-four hours.
When I took off my clothes, the view there wasn't much better. Under the bandages, worse still. Deep red grooves dug into my wrists. In places the skin was raw and oozing.
Bastards.
I stood under the spray of hot water, and as the tension in my muscles drained away, I thought about the horses. They had been chosen for one characteristic and one characteristic only. Size. The larger and heavier, the more money they would command at slaughter. I thought about Shrimpy with his huge, intelligent eyes. I had watched him in a jumper class once, when he had slipped going round a turn. He'd regained his balance, zeroed in on the next fence, and jumped it without a rub. His rider, all the while, had been grossly out of position, simply struggling to stay on. The horse had a heart of gold, and now he was heading down a frightening path to annihilation.
I braced my hands against the wall and watched the water swirl down the drain, thinking I could have met the same fate.
I stayed in the shower until the hot water ran cold.
I spent most of the day in bed, listening to music and trying not to think. Not about the horses, or the men, or what they had done. Around four in the afternoon, I got the coffee machine going, made some toast, and sat on one of the barstools. I slid a magazine across the counter and leafed through the pages until I came to an article on pastern lameness.
Behind me, someone banged on the kitchen door. My hand flinched, and coffee sloshed over my fingers and spread across the page.
"Damn."
I wiped my hand on my sweats and walked across the cold white tiles. My landlord was standing on the doormat, blowing on his hands and shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
He looked up when the door creaked open. "Oh, man."
"Hi, Greg."
He closed his mouth with a snap. "Marty said you'd tangled with them, but I didn't think…"
Cold air and a couple of snowflakes eddied in through the open door. I backed up. "Come in."
He stepped into the kitchen and stood just inside the door while the snow on his boots melted and formed an irregular brown puddle on the tile.
"Susan knew something was up," he said. "She saw someone drop off your truck Sunday afternoon and thought that was kind of weird, especially when we didn't see any lights on last night. You know how she is, the motherly, overprotective type."
Motherly would not have been my first choice when describing his wife. Beautiful, yes. And sexy. Motherly? No way.
"Then Foxdale's my first stop this morning, and I hear about the horses." He ran his fingers through his light brown hair. "What happened?"
As I told him, I thought that I should have handled the situation differently. Should have gone back to the truck and driven somewhere else to call the police. Put up a better fight. Hell, I didn't put up any fight.
Greg rubbed the back of his neck. "Jesus. Are you all right?"
"Yeah, I'm okay." I gestured to the coffee pot. "Want some?"
He glanced at his watch. For answer, he opened the cabinet door closest to the phone.
"Next one over," I said.
Greg let the door thump closed and opened the one beside it. He took down a mug and filled it, then sat on one of the stools and rested his elbows on the counter. He had the loose-limbed build of a basketball player, and at six-foot-three, he had a good three inches on me. He kept his hair layered and long in the back, and he had what many considered Hollywood good looks. But being a horse vet was about as far from glamour as it got. He'd once told me he might have reconsidered his career choice if he'd realized it meant spending half the day with his arm buried to the shoulder in a horse's rectum.
"What they did," Greg said. "I've been thinking about it all day."
"How's Sprite's eye?"
Greg raised his eyebrows. "You sure like to change the subject, don't you?"
I smiled.
"The cornea's healed," he said. "No thanks to your crew. No one's bothered to medicate it. You must've treated it aggressively in the beginning, like I told you."
"Yeah, I did."
He unbuttoned his coat and cupped his fingers around the mug. "Doesn't anyone over there do medications besides you?"
"No."
"Two hundred horses, and no one else does medications?" Greg shook his head. "What are they going to do when you go on vacation?"
"You assume a great deal."
He shot me an amused glance, then took a tentative sip of his coffee.
I sighed. "Nobody else takes the initiative, and management cuts corners wherever they can, whenever they can. As long as the boarders won't notice." I dropped two more slices into the toaster. "How often do horses get stolen around here, anyway?"
"I'd bet it's more prevalent than any of us realize. They don't always make the papers, but I hear about them on my rounds sometimes. Foxdale's more vulnerable than most operations because no one lives on the premises." He smoothed his fingers through his hair. "Someone out there doesn't mind taking risks for what I would have thought was a small profit."
"Maybe they like the risk more than the profit," I said.
His gaze sharpened on my face. "What makes you say that?"
I shrugged. "Firsthand knowledge."
Greg shook his head. "Jesus."
I pulled the slices out of the toaster and dropped them on my plate. "So, what kind of profit are we talking about?"
"Well, let's say the bottom'd dropped out of the meat market, and all they were getting was fifty cents to the pound. For a thirteen-hundred pound horse, that would be about six-hundred-and-fifty bucks. Round up seven good-sized horses, and they'd end up with about forty-five hundred. That's not bad for something that didn't belong to them in the first place. As the price gets closer to a dollar a pound, it just plain gets more tempting."
"What's the price right now?"
Greg shrugged. "Haven't heard."
"How hard would they be to sell? They're some nice-looking horses. Wouldn't they stick out?"
"Put 'em in a crowded lot for a week or two, and they'd look like nags by the time they turned up on the auction block or, more likely, at a packing plant."
I spread some margarine across the toast. "Then they get slaughtered?"
"Yeah, but probably not in the states. Most of them are hauled to Canada first. Then the carcasses are shipped to Europe."
"Why there?"
"Because horse meat is a common… Well, people eat it."
I made a face. The idea seemed alien, like eating the family dog. "What about proof of ownership? Wouldn't they need that?"
"Some outfits aren't very careful with the paperwork end of it. And if the thieves have a connection somewhere, it would be easy."
I slid the plate down the counter and perched on the edge of a stool, hoping I didn't look as stiff as I felt.
Greg eyed me across the rim of his mug. "What goes wrong with people that they'd do something like that?" he said, and I knew he was no longer referring to the horses.
"Things don't go wrong, people do. It was their choice," I said and was surprised by the anger in my voice. "Nobody forced them."
Greg looked at me with an expression I couldn't read. Guess he hadn't expected Philosophy 101. Not from me anyway. He sighed. "I suppose you're right."
He glanced at his watch, then fished his wallet out of a pocket. "Here's my card. Pager number's on the bottom. If you need anything, let me know. The clinic's closed today, so we should be eating around seven. Why don't you come over? Susan would love to have you."
I almost smiled at his choice of words and tried to suppress my runaway imagination by blocking her out of my mind as best I could.
"Come on, Steve." He glanced around the loft-an actual hay loft that he'd converted into a spacious apartment for his teen-aged daughter before she'd decided at the last minute to attend college out of state. I'd considered myself lucky when Greg had offered to rent it to me. "It'll do you good to get out of here, have a home-cooked meal for a change."
"Some other time, thanks."
He downed the rest of his coffee and stood up. "You sure?"
I nodded, and Greg reached over and placed his hand on my shoulder. His palm pressed down on an area of bruising that was still tender. I flinched, and he dropped his hand to his side and stared at me.
"Nothing a Percodan won't fix," I said.
He shook his head and ambled over to the door. "That's strong stuff. Make sure you follow the directions."
"Yes, Mom."
He grinned as he pulled the door shut.
The sky had cleared, and the brood mares, heavy with foal, were grazing in the field where the deer had been. I walked back to the counter and fingered the toast. It was cold, and the margarine had congealed into an unappealing film. I decided I wasn't hungry after all.
Five days after the horse theft, I went back to work.
I nosed the pickup down the long gravel lane, swung the truck around into my spot, and switched off the engine. It was a quarter of seven, and as usual, I was the first one there. Except for a row of trailers parked along the fence bordering the southwest field, the lot was deserted. I listened to the pings and clicks as the engine cooled and tried to ignore the tension that had crept into my shoulders and settled at the base of my skull.
I climbed out of the truck and slammed the door. As I walked down the lane past the entry door by the pay phone, for a brief second, it was the middle of the night, and I was back inside and scared half to death. Scared half to death and hurting. Hell, I was hurting.
I shook my head and tried to lose the sensation as I unlocked the office door with the new set of keys Dave had dropped off at the loft the day before. I scooped up the scraps of paper in my bin and flipped through them-a list of horses to be medicated, a reminder to leave Mary Anne's gelding in so he'd be ready for an early morning lesson, a note from Mrs. Hill that Lori's mare had thrown her bar shoe again. She'd scrawled that one in red ink and had underlined "again" three times. I added the mare's name to Nick's list, jammed the slips of paper into my coat pocket, and walked down to barn B.
Overnight, it had warmed up to a balmy thirty degrees, and the barn was fragrant with the long familiar smells of horse, hay, and sawdust. Listening to the usual chorus of nickers and whinnies, I loaded medications and supplements into the feed cart and was halfway down the aisle, when I felt as if someone had kicked me in the gut. Fourth down the med list was a name I wouldn't need to worry about. "Gold Coast-vit. supp.," it read. Poor Shrimpy. He wasn't going to need a vitamin supplement anymore. Neither were six other horses.
I rubbed my face. I hadn't thought it would affect me like this. Hadn't prepared myself for any of it. I glanced at my watch when I heard a thump in the barn aisle across the way.
"Yo, Steve. That you?" Marty's voice.
"Yeah."
He cut through the small arena and strolled down the aisle toward me. "There's the man hisself. Our hero. Defender of horses everywhere."
"Give me a break."
He came closer and inspected my face. "Pretty."
I ignored him.
"You got a nice rainbow going-black, purple, green, yellow-kinda clashes with your blond hair, though."
I shoved the scoop into the grain, then emptied some of the pellets back into the cart until I could see the three-quart line. "How'd it go while I was out?"
"The usual circus. You shoulda been here Monday. Mrs. Gardner came back from some cruise Sunday night and found out about her horse secondhand," Marty said through a yawn. "She had a fit, and Sanders made a scene, like he actually gives a shit about his horse."
"We know better, don't we?" I said. "He doesn't get a horse, and fast, he won't be able to show off for his girlfriends."
"Man, oh man." Marty slapped his thigh. "That's right. You missed it. The Monday you were off, before the horses got pinched, Sanders brought this blonde to the barn. I swear, the girl had secretary printed on her forehead."
"Administrative Assistant."
"What?"
"Never mind."
"She was really hot, man. If her skirt'd been any shorter, I'd've been checkin' out her underwear, assumin' she was wearing any."
I snorted. "What in the hell do they see in him?"
"His money, what else? The guy's got no redeeming qualities. Anyway, I happened to be hayin' down at the far end of the aisle when she-"
"Happened to be? Yeah, right. You were scopin' her out, man."
"Hey. I had to hay down there eventually, didn't I? Anyway, they're lookin' in at that stud of Whitey's, and he's hangin' like he always does. Well, she just about pees her pants when she sees how big his dick is."
I chuckled.
"And get this," Marty said. "Sanders has the nerve to compare hisself. Like he's even close."
"What an asshole." I scooped out an ounce of biotin and dumped it on top of a helping of grain. "How'd the crew do for you?"
"Brian let things slide a bit, and I caught him smoking."
"Damn." I rolled my shoulders. "Where?"
"Out behind barn A. Thought he was on vacation, you not being here and all."
"Yeah? Well, he'll earn himself a permanent vacation if I catch him at it."
Marty chuckled.
I dumped the grain through the opening in a stall front. The pellets slid down the bay's nose and clattered into the feed tub. "What's that sign about, at the corner of Rocky Ford and Stonebridge?"
"Farm got sold." Marty pushed the feed cart farther down the aisle. "Some big-time developer's gonna build a bunch of fucking mansions on puny two-acre lots."
"Oh, no," I said, but it wasn't a surprise. Everywhere you looked, what had once been prime farmland was now a housing development or shopping center or office complex.
It also wasn't a surprise, because the brothers who owned the farm were getting up there in age, and their kids wanted nothing to do with farming. Although I had been drawn into lengthy conversations with them on more occasions than I cared to remember, the old guys were good neighbors. They were as generous lending their equipment as they were dispensing free advice. And most astonishing of all, they had ignored the present-day free-for-all when it came to litigation and had given Foxdale's boarders permission to ride on their property.
"Well," I said, "at least we still have the park land."
"Yeah. In a couple years, it's gonna be the only place where there won't be houses standing eyeball to eyeball." Marty stretched and yanked off his hat. His black hair stood up from his scalp, full of static electricity. He smoothed it down with his palms. "Want me to finish graining, Steve?"
"No. This is easier than haying. I'll leave that to you guys this morning."
Marty grunted. "Why'd you come back so soon? Mrs. Hill would've let you take more time."
"If I'd stayed in the loft another day, they'd be hauling me out of there in a straight jacket."
Marty rolled his eyes and headed for the door, muttering under his breath. Though he kicked butt when he was at work, he would have taken full advantage of a shot at some time off, most of which he would have willingly spent in the sack. And he wouldn't have been lonely, of that I had no doubt. Marty had inherited his father's height and his mother's Latin American looks, and this time of year, he made the rest of us look anemic.
At twenty-two, he was a year older than me, and he made me feel old.