Chosen by a Horse (13 page)

“I don’t even read,” he added.

He didn’t read? This surprised me more than his not writing. Who didn’t read? I got an image of a glowing television set, hot as molten steel, turned to the Sports Channel for five years straight.

But what really bothered me was his tone of voice. It was dismissive, mocking, the way some people talked about the religion of others, as though there was something desperate and childish about believing in a God or an afterlife. His tone said writing and reading books were OK for the little people, but the enlightened were investing in strip malls, like Hank and his small group of partners.

“We fly over rural and suburban areas and look for potential sites—a field, an abandoned drive-in. When we see something, we buy it, develop it, and lease it. Whole thing takes less than a year, from spotting the site to cutting the ribbon on opening day. We have about seventy malls, all the way from Texas to the Canadian border.”

I was with a man who was cementing over America, bringing Blockbuster into the lives of book haters everywhere. It was like expecting to meet Charles Frazier for dinner and having someone wearing a Century 21 blazer with a pocketful of real estate brochures show up.

I didn’t know what to say. As a group, I put writers on the same level as horses: a species almost beyond reproach. Whatever their imperfections, they were still writers. They got me through my childhood, through the last ten years without a date. Whatever sanity I had was thanks to writers, to books that either helped me forget my troubles or helped me understand them. I was one of those people who thought the answer to everything was in a book. To me, the phone book was a book. I could hardly believe we got it free.

My dessert arrived and Hank’s herbal tea. The cake was such a slender wedge, I was surprised it had remained upright on its journey from the kitchen. I took a bite and understood the small portion. It was incredibly rich.

“Delicious,” I reported to the sugar hater.

He picked up his spoon and let it hover over my plate. “May I?”

“Sure.” I nudged the plate in his direction.

He pulled the plate over until it was right in front of him, then he cut the cake in half with his spoon and shoved the whole piece into his mouth. While he chewed, he didn’t push the plate back toward me, so I put my fork down and pretended.
What chocolate cake? What hypocrite of a sugar-hating nonwriter?

“Like it?” I asked, as he took another bite of the piece that was left on my plate.

He shoved the plate away and wiped his mouth with a napkin. The bottom half of his face was contorted as though he’d just sucked a lemon. “Terrible,” he said, picking up his
cup and gulping tea. “I can already feel a canker sore.” He traced the inside of his lip with his tongue.

For this man I had lost sleep? I had wept in front of my vet? Had torn my bedroom apart looking for something with lace to wear? For this man I had become daring and courageous, a Christopher Columbus rat?

I stared at the remaining morsel of cake. “What happens when you like something?”

He shook his head, still chewing, still hunting for that canker sore with his tongue. “It’s not the taste,” he said. “Did you know that sugar is the primary cause for the dumbing down of America? For turning everyone into zombies?”

“I thought not reading was,” I said.

“Nope. Sugar.” He smiled. “I feel dumber already; how about you?”

It was the first time he’d smiled all night, and his smile was nice. It changed his whole face, made him seem sexy, like someone who’d like to lick chocolate off my toes. Then I thought of all the time I’d wasted being nervous about this date, about whether this man would like me.

“I don’t need sugar to feel dumb,” I said.

“You? Dumb?” Still smiling, he shook his head. “I don’t date dumb women. Only smart, pretty ones.”

Maybe it was a line but I fell for it. Still, I couldn’t help it. He’d made me suffer too long. “Is that what this is,” I asked, “a date?”

“Touché.” He smiled and leaned over to spear the last bite of cake.

A
WEEK AFTER
my date, Allie stopped by early on a Saturday morning before the bugs were bad. We stood at the fence with our coffee watching my four horses. They were still two separate couples, but now the pairs were grazing closer together, the geldings always positioned between the mares.

“She looks so good,” Allie said about Lay Me Down’s recovery. She was still limping from Georgia’s attack, but the Vetrap was gone, and she was on the mend. Gone, too, was the dull coat, the hacking cough, the skin with open sores stretched over protruding bones. She looked as sleek and brown as a Hershey bar, as sweet as one, too.

As if she knew we were talking about her, Lay Me Down stopped grazing and walked over to the fence where Allie and I stood. She came up to us and sighed into Allie’s cup.
Allie spilled a little coffee into the palm of her hand and let Lay Me Down lick it up.

“Stingy,” I said, watching the big tongue search for more in the emptied palm.

“OK, OK,” she said and let Lay Me Down lick it right out of the cup.

As Lay Me Down lapped coffee, Allie looked at her in that funny way she looked at people when she was trying to figure out something. It made me nervous.

“What?” I chewed my bottom lip.

“When was the last time you had the vet here?”

“A week ago. After the fight with Georgia.”

“Look at her eyes,” Allie said.

I looked. They were big and brown with enormous black eyelashes. They were beautiful. “What about them?”

“They’re not the same,” she said.

I looked again. They seemed exactly the same to me.

“The right eye protrudes more than the left.” She pointed at it.

Horse eyes protrude. All of them. That’s the way horses are made. Lay Me Down’s looked normal to me. But this was Allie talking, and she looked concerned.

“Are you saying something’s wrong?”

Allie studied Lay Me Down for a few more minutes. “See if you can get the vet to come today,” she said.

My heart skipped a beat. I gripped my coffee cup with sweaty fingers. I was torn between wanting to ask more and telling her to shut up. I hurried inside to call. Jeannie, the
woman who ran the office, answered. She was knowledgeable about horses so I told her what Allie had said about the eye protruding. All five vets at the clinic knew Allie, and they knew she wouldn’t have asked for someone to come that quickly if there wasn’t a good reason. Dr. Grice was on call and could get to my place sometime in the afternoon. I wished that I knew a human doctor’s office that was run as well and caringly as Rhinebeck Equine. If you needed them, they came, day or night.

When I went back outside, Lay Me Down had finished Allie’s coffee and had returned to the herd to graze. We stayed at the fence a few more minutes before Allie had to leave.

“It might be nothing,” she said, brushing flyaway hairs off her forehead. Her fingers were smooth and muscular from years of giving massages with oils. After they brushed away the hair, her fingers traced the length of the still-neat braid falling forward over her shoulder.

“You never wear your wedding ring,” I remarked.

She held up her bare left hand, fanning out the fingers and rubbing the joints. They ached, a result of advanced Lyme disease, something she’d had for over fifteen years. Sometimes the stiffness would become so painful and debilitating that she’d go back on antibiotics for several weeks to kill off some of the spirochetes. “Did what’s-his-name call yet?” she asked, massaging her sore hands. She meant Hank.

“What a jerk,” I said, shaking my head.

Most of my friends thought I was the jerk, however, Allie included. They thought I was judging Hank unfairly, being hasty. When I said it bothered me that he’d put his hand on my back and then eaten most of my dinner, they looked at me like they were still waiting to hear the annoying part.

That’s just men
.

Men like food
.

Men always talk about themselves
.

Strip malls? At least he has money
.

“You should call him,” Allie said.

“He told me he’s allergic to most animals.
Especially
horses.”

She turned and scrutinized me the same way she had just scrutinized Lay Me Down. She sighed and shook her head.

I would not call this man. It would have meant admitting that I wanted this man, whom I didn’t like, to like me. We’d had dinner and he’d never called. Despite my feelings, I wanted him to want me. I already felt abandoned. The scary part was, this made perfect sense to me.

“He’s not even divorced,” I said.

She gave me a look. “A technicality. Give him another chance.” She started walking toward her car. “Call me later. Tell me what the vet says.”

After she left, I went to the barn to get a halter for Lay Me Down. While I was putting it on, I looked at her eyes again, comparing them. I still saw no difference, none whatsoever. She sighed as I snapped shut the cheek latch and
waited for me to indicate what we were going to do next. I stroked her neck and then gently pushed her away to let her know we weren’t going anywhere, she could go back to grazing.

I would have petted her more, scratched along her neck, her belly, the top of her withers, all the places she loved to be scratched. But I couldn’t, not in front of Georgia. Giving Lay Me Down more than a few minutes of attention was all it took to bring Georgia trotting across the pasture looking for a fight.

After lunch, I shut all four horses in their stalls and opened the pasture gate so Dr. Grice could drive right up to the barn. Forty-five minutes later, her blue truck stopped in front of the barn entrance. This time her assistant was with her, a young woman named Donna, who waved hello before she got out of the truck. I waved back from where I stood, just inside the entrance. I was always apprehensive when the vet came, and this time I was too nervous to make small talk.

“Thanks for coming,” I said when they got out of the truck. “Do you want her inside or out?” Inside, there was more control over the horse; outside, there was better light. Dr. Grice knew it was going to be an eye exam because Jeannie had told her about my earlier call.

“Let’s start inside,” she said, walking toward the entrance where I stood with my arms crossed, hoping I didn’t look as nervous as I felt.

I opened Lay Me Down’s stall door and followed Dr.
Grice and Donna to the end of the aisle. Lay Me Down seemed curious about her visitors but not anxious. While she sniffed the two newcomers, I snapped a lead line on her halter and waited to be told what to do.

“Allie thinks it’s the right eye?” Dr. Grice asked, already widening the opening of Lay Me Down’s right eye with her thumb and forefinger and looking into it. Lay Me Down let her examine it without pulling away. The assistant stood on the other side, scratching Lay Me Down’s neck and mumbling soothing words.

Dr. Grice didn’t offer any preliminary opinions, and I didn’t ask. She spent a few minutes looking into each eye, then did it a second time. When she was done, she wiped her hands on a towel and looked thoughtful.

“We’ll do a sonogram on the right eye,” she said. “It does seem to be protruding. We’ll set it up right here. The light’s good enough.”

I wanted to leave, hide in the house until this was over and Dr. Grice was gone. Instead, I nodded and, as I waited while they went back to the truck for whatever they needed, I stood next to Lay Me Down and scratched her neck. She leaned into my hand, into the scratch, letting me know the places she liked. Her trust in me felt awful. I had brought her to my farm to be safe but she wasn’t. I was helpless against a protruding eye.

They came back with all kinds of supplies, most of which Donna carried in a stainless-steel bucket. Dr. Grice had a stethoscope around her neck and carried a small box
in her arms that turned out to be the ultrasound machine. They put everything down on the cement floor, and we let Lay Me Down sniff as much of it as she wanted because if horses are allowed to sniff new things, they are less afraid. (Not Tempo. He was afraid of everything and became more fearful if you let him sniff, especially if it was medical. With Tempo, the trick was speed and, if that didn’t work, a tranquilizer shot.)

The only thing I’d ever seen Lay Me Down afraid of was Georgia, but Georgia was locked in her stall so Lay Me Down seemed relaxed. She sighed over the bucket and licked the lid of the sonogram machine. Everything she did seemed precious to me, precious and tender. For me, her terrible past was always a presence, a reminder of what it was that had survived: this sweet, kind nature, qualities so lacking in my human family they seemed like miracles to me now.

Before she did the sonogram, Dr. Grice listened to Lay Me Down’s heart and lungs and pronounced them both strong and healthy: I had a moment of elation, of crazy hope. How sick could a horse be with a good heart and clear lungs? Next she gave her a tranquilizer shot because, even though she was calm and good-natured, the tranquilizer would help keep the eye from blinking when the sonogram wand touched it.