The Blessings of the Animals_A Novel

CHAPTER Two

I SHOULD’VE KNOWN THIS WOULD BE EXACTLY THE MOMENT my cell phone would ring. Gingersnap leaped off the bed and Max barked the way he would if someone pulled into the driveway.
Bobby rolled over. “Max,” he moaned, his voice more affectionate than irritated. “They can’t hear you. They’re on the phone.”
I laughed and leaned across him for my cell.
“Is it Gabby?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.
My heart sank to recognize the number of Sheriff Stan Metz. No, no, no, not today! I volunteered as a court-appointed livestock agent for the Humane Society. “It’s Stan Metz,” I said, my voice part-warning, part-apology.
Bobby groaned and flung his arm over his eyes. I thought about ignoring the call. I didn’t want to leave my warm bed, the anticipated waffles, my potentially laughing naked husband. But Bobby said, “Of course it’s Stan Metz,” with such petulant venom that I answered the phone.
“I know it’s early, Dr. Anderson,” the sheriff said, “but we need you. Immediate removal. We’ve got dead horses, dying horses, and an owner threatening to shoot us.”
Dying horses? Not if I could help it. I swung my legs out of bed, pulse kicking up a notch. I tried not to look at Bobby as I pulled on jeans and a T-shirt while the sheriff gave me directions. “Helen’s already here,” he said of my best friend and fellow Humane volunteer. “She’s calling potential foster homes. Bring your trailer. And a camera.”
Bobby sat up. “You’re going?” he asked. It sounded like an accusation.
“This sounds bad. But, I’ll hurry. We’ll have breakfast when I’m back, okay? I’m sorry.” I leaned over to kiss him, but he pulled away. “Hey, this is my job,” I said. Why was I apologizing? He certainly never apologized when he went to the restaurant at odd hours.
I ran my fingers through his thick black hair. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
He didn’t say, “It’s okay,” or, “I understand.” He didn’t even tease me not to bring home another animal. I stood at the edge of the bed.
Although I’d never, ever say this aloud to him, he’d become worse than Gabriella ever was in her middle-school years. With Gabby it’d been easier. I’d simply leave the room when she used to say her seething, hateful words—a bit of healthy separation—because I knew it honestly had nothing to do with me. Bobby’s sorrow, though, his moodiness, felt personal.
I stood there and wanted to ask him, “Are we okay?” but I’d asked him that yesterday, finally, after having carried the question like something burning in my chest for weeks. He’d assured me, “You’re the one good thing I can count on in my life, Cam. You and Gabby.” He’d held my face in his hands and said that his gloom, his drinking too much, his temper, had nothing to do with me but everything to do with his unhappiness with the restaurant (a thriving restaurant, mind you). Asking the question again didn’t fit us. If he said we were okay, then I believed him.
I made myself kiss the top of his head, then went downstairs. I’d already told him he should sell the restaurant if he was that miserable. I assured him we would manage, I could work more weekends again. His happiness would be well worth it. I wanted the man I’d married back.
I stuffed several baby carrots into my back pockets, grabbed a video camera from my office, shoved my feet into green-and-pink striped Wellingtons (a birthday gift from Gabby, on an eternal quest, I believe, to make her mother more hip), and went outside.
The sky seemed a dark wool blanket slung just above the tree line. Of course my trailer wasn’t hitched, and Bobby was already pissed and sulky so I couldn’t ask him to help me. I looked up at our bedroom window. With a second person down here to guide me, this task would take three minutes, tops. Alone, it ended up taking nearly fifteen—backing and pulling forward repeatedly (under the watchful eye of my stone statue of St. Francis) until I got the trailer and truck lined up just right to lock and pin everything into place.
As I hit the road on the way to the emergency rescue, I vowed that I would not bring home another animal. That would be my sacrifice, my peace offering to Bobby, who’d recently dubbed our farm and its motley crew the “Island of Misfit Toys.” Even though it irked me that a man who hated the holidays would use a Christmas special reference against me (that version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was Gabby’s childhood favorite), I had to admit he had a point.
We had Max, a mutt with a permanent limp—Max had been hit by a car as a puppy after having been abandoned in the country.
We had Gingersnap, a cat with no ears. They’d been snipped off by two sadistic twelve-year-old boys who would no doubt grow up to be serial killers.
“Christ, Cam,” Bobby said when I brought Gingersnap home.
“We have a barn,” I said. “It has mice.”
But poor Gingersnap was an uninspired mouser. I’d noticed a new stray cat—a big orange thing—hanging around though, which I hoped to convince to hunt in our small barn.
In that barn, which held four stalls, we had Gabriella’s horse, Biscuit, a gentle Belgian with a spine defect that didn’t allow him to pull or carry more than two hundred pounds (rather limiting for a draft horse). In another stall we fostered Zeppelin, a “wiener dog” version of a pony with legs too short for his long body, who was blind in one eye. We also had Muriel, a barren white goat abandoned after the county fair. Also a foster. Not permanent.
I had one empty stall as I headed to the rescue that morning. Well . . . perhaps two, since the goat—who escaped with exasperating frequency—was rarely in her stall.
WHEN I REACHED THE RESCUE SITE, THE SHERIFF ESCORTED me past a cluster of shouting people into a barn where skeletal horses stood in ankle-deep filth. Several Humane Society volunteers stood ready to take the animals away to foster homes.
A man and a woman I assumed were the owners argued with the police outside, their obscenities carrying in on gusts of increasingly colder air. A pit bull tied to a red Lexus with a plastic clothesline bayed nonstop. The sound of hammering and splitting wood came in bursts from beyond the barn’s open back door. More thunder rumbled. This was not going to be an easy or quick removal. I thought of naked Bobby in the flannel sheets at home and felt a tangle release inside my chest. Our breakfast together was unlikely.
I stopped walking, shocked at myself. Was I honestly relieved that I’d be here instead?
I hadn’t really thought that, had I?
Helen approached, face grim, pale-blond hair nearly glowing in the dim light. I pushed that horrible realization about Bobby away from me and focused on my terrier of a friend—short and petite but with no concept of her small size, never afraid, and fiercely loyal. She took my camera and began to film, while I set up a sort of triage. I had no time to think about my shameful relief to be away from Bobby as I examined each surviving horse, listening to their hearts, lungs, and guts and looking in their runny noses and eyes. As soon as I scribbled down instructions for a horse’s feed and initial treatment, a volunteer loaded it onto a trailer and hauled it away.
In one stall, a chestnut horse lay dead. The face was already decomposed, its eye a black hole. A nauseating, sweet stench of decay choked me as rain began to tap the barn’s tin roof.
“That was a lucky one.” Helen nodded to the dead horse. She spoke quickly, in a monotone. “Here’s what we know: wife catches husband having affair. Kicks him out.”
Another round of hammering came from behind the barn. Wood cracked.
I moved to another stall and found a brown mare on her side who looked like a tossed-down bundle of thin firewood, her breath ragged and labored. I crouched to listen to the mare’s struggling heart as Helen continued, “Wife gets a restraining order against husband. Fires the barn manager because he’s the husband’s brother. Runs the brother off the property, too. Then, the bitch leaves for Florida for five weeks with her new boyfriend and never hires anyone to replace the damn barn manager!”
Five weeks? I heard no gut sounds on the poor wheezing mare. The horse didn’t stir or respond in any way when I touched her. Five weeks of starvation was a slow, tortured death.
Helen waited for the pounding out back to stop, then said, “A neighbor fed and watered every now and then . . . until the food ran out. He waited way too long to call the police.”
I moved a hand above the mare’s unresponsive eyes. I looked up at Helen; she knew what I had to do. I made too much noise, slamming my kit around as I prepared the injections, the first one to relax and anesthetize the mare—she was too far gone to register new pain, but I wouldn’t allow even the possibility—and the second to end her sputtering heartbeat. I sat in the filth to cradle the mare’s head and whispered, “It’s okay. That’s a brave girl. It’s okay, it’s okay,” until first the drowning gasps stopped and then my stethoscope went silent.
“Get this on film.” I pointed to the gnawed remains of the mare’s feedbox.
Helen filmed and I narrated in a voice that sounded tight and swollen no matter how many times I cleared my throat. “The mare ate the wood. She was eating her own stall in an attempt to survive. Look.” With gloved hands, I pulled back the mare’s upper lip and opened her jaw. “Her tongue and gums are full of splinters, and her mouth is full of manure.”
The shouting, hammering, and barking continued as we filmed empty feed bins, an empty hayloft, empty water buckets.
I euthanized a black gelding and shipped off four other raggedy survivors with the last of the volunteers. Helen got on her cell, trying to round up more foster homes.
When I opened the last stall in this barn, two fillies stared at me from dark, sweet eyes in deep hollows. Their hip bones pushed up so starkly that sores oozed where bone threatened to push through the skin, but their hearts and lungs sounded strong.
The sheriff returned and asked, “How we doing?” His tone left no doubt that we should hurry.
“Where will we take them?” Helen asked. “I’m getting nothing but dead ends.” She looked at me and pressed her tongue against that tiny gap between her two front teeth.
I wouldn’t, I couldn’t take one home. I felt too guilty about preferring to be here rather than with Bobby. I couldn’t stop thinking I was a horrible wife.
The hammering continued from the barn behind us. The pit bull barked and barked.
“—my girlfriend’s horses!” reached me through the wind. “—can’t just f*cking take them!”
“These are the last two, right?” I asked. Maybe I could put them together in one stall, as they were now. Just to get them out of here. Just to get home and salvage the day.
Before Helen could answer, a huge crash came from the back barn.
“What is with that damn hammering?” I said. “Don’t they have anything more useful to do?”
The look on Helen’s face froze me. “That’s the last one,” she said. “The last horse alive is in that back barn.”
That god-awful racket was a horse?
Disbelieving, I walked into the gravel aisle between the barns in time to see a set of hooves strike out over a nearly demolished Dutch door. The hammering resumed as the horse pummeled the wall with his back hooves.
I peered into the kicker’s stall. A dark bay reared. “Hey, hey, hey,” I scolded. “You settle down.” When he kicked again, I shouted, “Hey! Cut it out!”
The horse paused to regard me for a moment, snorted, then resumed kicking.
“Can you trank him?” the sheriff asked.
I frowned. “He’s so underweight. Not a good idea.” And even if it were, how was I supposed to inject him? With a dart gun?
Helen and I glanced at each other, considering our options.
“Sweet boots,” Helen said, in her typical we’re-not-in-the-middle-of-a-crisis way, nodding down at my striped Wellingtons.
I smiled. Helen had an identical pair from her daughter, Holly. Holly was four years older than Gabriella. Gabriella adored her.
Gabriella! Panic zipped through me. I had to get home in time for Bobby and me to have the house to ourselves. I had to make up for leaving him this morning. . . . But who was I kidding? There’d be no cozy, romantic morning. The truth was, I’d get home and Bobby would be moody and resentful all day because I’d left.
Just then, the horse kicked his door free of its hinges, slamming it into the gravel aisle. He barreled out of the stall and skidded to a halt two yards away from me. Close enough for me to smell him—a mildewy, sickly smell—and to feel the heat of his breath.
I held out my arms. “Where you gonna go now, handsome?” I asked. And he was handsome, even in that scraggy, dirty state. Hints of muscle remained on his frame. His leather halter, now far too big, hung crookedly across his nose, below the white crescent moon on his forehead.
He wheeled away from me, thankfully missing my head with the buck he threw in for good measure before he galloped away. I gasped from the adrenaline surge as I followed him.
He’d run into the gravel lot where my trailer was parked, so we closed the gates, confining him. As if on springs, the horse trotted across the gravel. Even in this feeble, eerie light, every rib stood out in stark relief. Blood trickled from one hock and from just above one hoof. He lowered his head to the small swath of grass at the fence line, stripping it in seconds.
“We can get him on the trailer with food,” I said.
“And take him where?” Helen asked. “And what about the two fillies?”
I sighed—I had no choice. I ducked back inside the barn, out of the wind, to dial my parents’ number. I explained the situation.
“Well,” my father said, in his slow, deliberate way. I’d rarely seen him do anything hurried or ungraceful my entire life. “How do they handle? Will they be low maintenance?”
I assured him they had lovely ground manners, which meant I was taking home the kicker. Great. Wouldn’t Bobby just love that?
My father agreed. “Thank you, thank you,” I breathed, giving a thumbs-up to Helen and the sheriff. “Helen’s going to bring them right over, while I take one to my place.”
“Try to beat this storm if you can.”
When we left the barn, the woman screamed at us, “You can’t just steal my horses!”
We ignored her, but I wanted to slap her hateful face. Someone needed to lock her in a cell where she had to sleep in her own shit and eat it if she wanted to live one more day.
Out in the rain, the kicker’s wet coat made him look even gaunter than he had moments before. Keeping an eye on him, I opened the emergency escape door at the front of my trailer and piled an armful of clover hay from my truck into the waiting feed bag. I undid the pins holding the back door in place and lowered the door, turning it into a ramp for the horse to walk up. The kicker whooshed his nostrils at the ramp, which quickly grew slick in the ever-steadier rain.
As calmly as I could, I held a lead rope and reached for the horse’s dangling halter. He shied away from me, then reared. I cursed. A horse should have his lead rope tied to a metal ring in the trailer wall. If he wasn’t tied, he could send the trailer off balance, making it a rough and dangerous ride.
“Motherf*ckers! This is against the law!” carried to me from the driveway.
Having the kicker loose in the trailer wouldn’t be ideal, but it would get him the hell out of here. And it would get me out of here and back home to Bobby, where I should be. Where I should want to be.
Another rush of wind slammed several stall doors, along with the trailer’s escape door, which clanged shut with a force that rocked the trailer and echoed in my ears.
I patted my pockets, wishing I hadn’t given away all my carrots. Turns out it didn’t matter, as the kicker saw the gesture and moved toward me.
“You guys be ready to shut this door,” I called.
“Are you insane?” Helen yelled as she saw me step onto the ramp. But she and the sheriff already approached the trailer. The kicker barely glanced at them but followed me.
I slipped on the ramp and fell, bashing my shin on the frame. I felt the cold and wet before I felt the pain, but the pain was secondary to the exhilaration that rushed through me. Get up. Get up! The kicker’s breath prickled my scalp as I scrambled forward.
I got to the front of the trailer and ducked under the measly protection of the hay bag.
The back ramp-door lifted up and closed with a thump. I prayed that Helen and the sheriff got the pins in before the horse gave the door the kick I knew he would.
His kick was a loud, echoing gunshot. I heard Helen’s “Shit!” but the door held.
I yanked the escape door handle that had blown shut.
It wouldn’t turn.
I wriggled it with my cold fingers, the metallic taste of fear filling my mouth.
The kicker turned his head to view me with one eye. I kept my right hand on the door handle. “The door is locked or jammed or something,” I called. I heard quick footsteps in the gravel.
The horse snuffed the pile of hay before him then began to chew. He looked so serene that I believed for a moment I might be able to put a lead rope on him after all.
Then, he turned his head and bit me.
Startlingly swift, like a striking snake, he clamped his jaw on my right forearm.
The pain surged through my arm like heat. I pictured bones crunching in his powerful grip, his teeth meeting, my bones flattened between them.
Helen jerked open the door.
With my left hand, I smacked the horse on the front bone of his face, where it would hurt. When the smack didn’t work, I punched him.
He released me.
Helen yanked me out of the tiny space.
I fell to the wet gravel in a ball. Helen and the sheriff crouched beside me. I curled up, trying to wrap myself around the pain. It pulsed through my arm in hot white waves that stung my nose and burned involuntary tears down my face. I clutched the arm to my sternum, my fist tight.
“Let me see,” Helen insisted, but I was convinced it would hurt less if I held it to myself.
The kicker was now calm. Even through the rain, we heard his teeth grind the hay.
When Helen got me to release my arm, I was amazed to see no skin was broken. I expected to see spurting arteries. Instead, hard, bright red welts outlined a perfect set of tooth indentations. Purple swelling rushed into the indentations as we watched.
“You need ice,” the sheriff said. “Your arm could be broken.”
No. No. I had to get back to Bobby. I couldn’t go to the ER.
I stood up, holding my arm to my chest as if it were in a sling. I wiggled all five of my fingers. “Not broken,” I said. “What about that dog out there? Tied to the car? We taking him?”
The sheriff blinked and shook his head at me. “No. They brought him with them today.”
I wondered if that meant the dog was more or less lucky than the other animals. “Okay, then, we’re done. Let’s go.”
The sheriff looked skeptical. “You can drive?”
There was still time for breakfast. I still believed there was time.
AS I PULLED INTO OUR DRIVEWAY, I WAS GLAD HELEN HAD agreed to follow me, in case anything disastrous happened on the drive. The kicker (or was he now the biter?)—who had been an easy ride, content to eat his hay—turned himself around the moment the truck stopped and half-jumped, half-climbed out of the trailer. He raced at a gallop around the house.
I’m not sure if I looked up toward our bedroom window or just headed off with Helen as she leaped from her truck to grab a rake from our back porch. I snatched up a broom. Walking together and waving our utensils—me still clutching my injured arm to my chest—we herded the kicker toward the barn. I heard Max barking inside the house. That’s when I remember wondering why the hell Bobby didn’t come out to help us.
The horse put on an admirable rodeo show and tore up clumps of the yard. He wheeled and struck my St. Francis statue with his back hooves, sending the figure flying.
He ran straight for the barn and, once he found himself trapped inside, fled into the only open stall door. Helen shut the door behind him. Of course he immediately exited his stall’s back door into his private paddock, but the paddock’s gate was latched. I rushed to switch on the electric tape that ran along the top of the paddock fences—something I’d installed to prevent the goat from climbing out of her enclosure (it hadn’t worked). Bobby and I had grown so used to her escape routine that a monotone, unruffled “goat’s out” became a sort of joke between us.
Helen and I stood, panting, looking at the kicker. “He’s gonna be a handful,” she said, in that same no-crisis-here tone.
I burst into laughter. “More like a truckload.”
At least the fillies in Helen’s van still stood peacefully. The rain had lightened, but the sky remained that dark green of something about to happen. Helen still had to drive on to my parents’ farm, about thirty minutes away. I felt I should go with her, but Helen shook her head. “I called Hank; he’s going to meet me there. No worries. You go get ice on that arm.”
I nodded, grateful, but the mention of Helen’s husband, Hank—they were teased about sounding like a country-western duo—also caused me a flash of irritation. Was Bobby so pissed at my being called away, or at an additional animal being brought home, that he refused to help us? I hated how much I dreaded walking into the tension in the house.
“You kicked ass today,” Helen said.
I waved good-bye to her and walked across the yard, flexing my fingers, wincing at the deep ache this action pulsed through my arm.
As the lightning flashed, I looked at that sickly sky and remembered running out into the hail. How could I have been so certain I wouldn’t be hurt?