LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

about some music, Dorry?” Dad asked. “The two of you. It’s been a long time since I heard you play together.”

      The blood must have drained from my face. “I don’t think Carson’s up to it,” Dorry said quickly.

      “I haven’t played…in a while.” Not since Annabelle died. We’d played duets together, just as Dorry and I had done when we were children.

      I stood up. “I’m really tired. I think I’ll lie down for a while. Strange will be here early in the morning to trim the horses’ hooves.” I knew Strange Yoder didn’t like to work on Sundays. He did it for my dad, who’d been good to his sick mother. Sundays were the days Strange liked to fill his ice chest with beer, get some luncheon meat and go to the river to fish in solitude.

      “Good night,” Dad said, effectively releasing me.

      “Do you need Emily to help in the morning?” Dorry offered.

      “No, I can handle it. I’d welcome the company if she’s up.”

      “If she comes home from Susie’s tonight, I’ll tell her.” Dorry went into the kitchen to help Mother wash up after the meal. Such an action exemplified her status as the perfect daughter. I went to my room and picked up an old paperback that I’d bought more than twenty-five years before. I couldn’t believe Mom kept all my junk. I held the book and thought that at the time I was reading it, five girls were still alive on the Gulf Coast. Five women were probably dreaming the same dreams that I’d once had, of a future with a happy family and career. I’d tucked into my bed in Leakesville with a book, and they’d gone out for an errand or to meet a friend or to a party. They’d died. The randomness of life was inconceivably cruel.

      8

      Strange Yoder was a man of indeterminable age. When he bent or moved, he seemed young. He was thin, like a teenager, and he wore his hair long. Quick, alert eyes belied the lines in his face. He was older than me. I knew this only because I’d known him all my life. He had a gift when it came to horses’ feet, and though he was one of the best farriers in the nation, he chose to stay in Greene County, where there were still long stretches of piney woods and the slow amble of the Leaf River.

      Strange didn’t talk a lot. Mostly he looked. He could watch a horse walk and know exactly how to trim a hoof or shoe it or what treatment to prescribe for thrush or founder. He did it not for the money, but because he liked to help animals. He’d been my brother Billy’s best friend. He’d come back from Vietnam; Billy had not.

      Morning light shafted into the old barn through cracks in the east wall, and I sat on a hay bale holding a slack lead rope. Strange crouched in the center of the aisle with Mariah’s left rear leg resting on his thighs as he used nippers to trim off the overgrown hoof.

      “She’s lookin’ good for an old girl,” he said of Mariah.

      “She seems to feel good. I don’t see arthritis, but I’ve got her on some joint supplements anyway. I’m glad I didn’t jump her too hard.”

      “She jumped what she wanted,” he said. “You didn’t push her and she knew what was right for herself. If more folks listened to their horses, there wouldn’t be the trouble there is today.” He shook his head. “Damn quarter horse people just about ruined ten generations of horse breeding for those little tiny feet. Like putting a fat woman in ballet toe shoes. Damn bastards.”

      Strange didn’t earn his name because he was normal. He was opinionated, but about animals, which was the only thing he ever talked about. I could remember Strange when he was called Dustin and had a crooked smile and a twinkle in his eyes. He left those things, and his sense of humor, somewhere in the jungles of Vietnam. He’d held Billy as he bled out, unable to stop the flow of blood. Billy had been hit by a piece of shrapnel in the femoral artery. Had a medic arrived in time, my brother could have been saved. That was the midnight image that came to visit Strange when he slept—my brother, trying to smile and not panic as his blood soaked the jungle floor. Strange never talked about it after he’d told me this.

      Strange trimmed Mariah all around and started on Hooligan. “Needs shoes on the front. His toes are chipped slam off,” he said, going to his truck to get horseshoes. “I hate to shoe ’im. If he gets down in the back pasture with all them roots, he’ll tear ’em off.”

      “I’ll tell Dad to keep them up in the front for a few weeks.”

      He nodded and went to work. Hooligan was half snoozing as Strange hammered the iron shoes to his two front feet and trimmed the back.

      “Now for Bilbo.” I got the gray pony, a cross between a Shetland and a Connemara. For Annabelle, Bilbo had been a dream pony. He didn’t hold me in the same regard, but Bilbo was always good for Strange, saving his practical jokes and shenanigans for me. Mariah and Hooligan were snuffling at the last morsel of grain in their stalls. For the first time in months, I felt a shadow of peacefulness slip over me.

      “This pony needs ridin’,” Strange said. “He misses your daughter.”

      “I miss her, too,” I said. With Strange, it was okay to talk about painful things.

      “Maybe I could send someone over to ride him.”

      I hesitated, and though no word was spoken, Strange stopped his work, stood and looked at me.

      “Your daughter wouldn’t mind. She’d be glad someone was giving the pony attention.”

      “You’re right,” I said, trying not to tear up. “Please, if you know someone, ask him or her to come over. I’ll tell Dad. I think he’ll be relieved.”

      Strange finished the last foot and stood, arching backward to relieve the strain of his job. “This here pony won’t ever forget your girl. She’s a part of him, like she’s a part of you. But he needs someone to love him now.” He gathered his tools. “Animals got a lot more sense about dying than human folk. They know it’s the cycle. Livin’ and dyin’, they’re not so different, except for those of us left behind.”

      “I wish I could believe that,” I said.

      “It took me a while to get there, Carson. Maybe I believe it ’cause I have to to survive. I can only say I’m a more peaceful man since I came to that way of thinkin’.” He gave Bilbo’s rump a gentle slap. “Turn ’em out now, and I’ll be on my way.”

      I pulled money from my pocket.

      He shook his head. “No, I won’t take the money. When my mama was dying, Mr. Lynch mixed up her medicine special. When we didn’t have the money, he mixed it for her anyway.”

      “The horses are my responsibility, not his.”

      He gave me his sharp blue gaze. “It’s one and the same and you know it.”

      I was about to argue when I heard a vehicle pull up. I walked to the barn door and looked out, surprised to see Michael Batson walking toward me from his red vet truck.

      “Carson!” he said, his face breaking into a wide smile. “What a surprise.”

      “Michael,” I answered, knowing it was no surprise at all but my meddling mother. “What brings you here?”

      “Spring vaccinations for the horses. Dorry implied you were having a conniption to get it done.”

      “I see.” I realized that my sister now rivaled my mother in games of manipulation.

      “Hey, Dustin, how’s it going?” He held out his hand.

      The men shook, then Strange gathered his tools. “I’m done here, Doc.”

      Michael glanced down at Bilbo’s feet. “I wish you’d come over and work out of my clinic. Folks could come to you instead of you having to drive all over tarnation.”

      Strange shook his head. “I like drivin’. I like to look at the woods and think.”

      Michael

Скачать книгу