Horse Heaven (27 page)

“I’ve tried. She’s not responsive.”

Margaret knelt beside the mare’s shoulder and said, “Rise and shine, Mama.” She poked her, then gave her a push. Krista shook the leadrope that she had snapped onto the mare’s halter and the mare opened her eyes wide, looking at her. Margaret said again, “Got to get up, sweetie,” and gave her a resolute, unsympathetic slap on the neck. Finally, the mare rolled onto her sternum and bent a foreleg, but then a contraction took her and she stopped.
“Now!” said Margaret. She pushed on the mare, and Krista pulled her to her feet. Then Margaret went behind the mare, moved the tail aside with one hand, and put her large palm into the vaginal opening. She said, “Lean against her shoulder and neck with your shoulder and neck.” Krista did so. Margaret, watching the contractions, suddenly gave a tremendous shove just as a contraction eased. “Okay,” she said. “I did it.”

“You pushed the foal back in?”

“Yup. Now we’ve got to walk her.”

The mare was reluctant at first, wishing to go down again, but with Margaret poking her from behind and Krista pulling her from the front, she took two steps, then two more, then three more. Finally, she was walking steadily around the stall. She was still having contractions, but her belly now extended downward, and Krista could see the shape of the foal dropping backward into that great space. Margaret pulled an obstetrical glove from the pocket of her jacket and said, “Stop a sec.” Then she reached in. Krista could see her arm and shoulder move as she felt delicately for the stuck limb. Finally, she said, “Got it. Just bent at the knee. This we can do, I think. We’ll just give it a little turn, here. The bones are hard, but the joints are loose, aren’t they, Mama? Turn the knee a little to the outside, then find the foot. Ah. Got it. Then hold it and ease it out. Man, I wish I could get two hands in there. Oh, good boy. I can feel the fetlock and the tendon. No problem that I can feel, just turned wrong at the last moment. Little fellow wanted to gallop out of his mama, didn’t he?”

“I’m so glad you’re here,” said Krista.

“I’ve seen worse,” said Margaret.

Krista was sure that she had. She started the mare walking forward again, and Margaret said, “Say, did you hear about those two horses in that barn by the river last week?”

Krista shook her head.

“Well, the guy who owned them knew that the road might wash out in that big storm, so he fed ’em extra, and then he went home. He came back two days later, you know, after the big storm, and he didn’t have an easy time getting in there, either. One of them drowned in his stall. Water got in there, and I guess the horse lost his footing and fell in the water. The mud level was as high as the door—”

Krista closed her eyes and swallowed hard.

“And the other one had a broken leg from struggling. Had to shoot ’im right there on the spot. The leg was dangling. Two horses. What a fluke, huh?”

“That’s a terribly sad story.”

Margaret shook her head. “I think so, too. But why didn’t the guy trailer them out of there?”

“Maybe he didn’t have a trailer, or the road was already washed out or something.”

“Then there was this other guy—”

“Don’t tell me.”

“No, this is a good one. This has a happy ending.”

Krista doubted it, knowing Margaret, but she nodded.

“Guy comes home from the track late. Goes down to visit his horses in his barn, and he’s looking them over, you know. It’s a shedrow barn, and of the four horses, two are looking out their back windows with their ears up. The other two aren’t doing anything, just eating hay, you know. So, anyway, the guy goes out of the stall and up to the house to take a shower, and while he’s in the shower he hears a big noise, and then comes out in his robe. Well, get this, this giant oak has fallen into the shedrow! Not five minutes after he walked out of the stall, the very place he was standing was crushed to nothing by this tree!”

“I thought you said this story had a happy ending.”

“No! The horses were fine. Even the one standing in that stall jumped out of the way and pressed himself against the wall. He was a little scared, that’s all. Most of the tree hit the tackroom. Five minutes! Those two horses who were looking out the window, though, they knew something. They felt the ground move, you ask me.”

“Or they heard the tree creaking, maybe.”

“I’ve been to that guy’s barn. Biggest tree.”

“She wants to go down again,” said Krista. The mare had begun to brace herself and paw. When they stopped pushing her forward, her knees buckled. Krista stood back. The mare gave a large grunt and stretched out on her side.

Margaret said, “Remember that mare of Bob Roberts’ who went up to New Bolton Center, and when she came back she just looked fine. They had her in one of the paddocks out behind their place, it wasn’t breeding season or anything, I think she was barren, and anyway, pretty soon the mare next to her had raging diarrhea—”

“You know, Margaret,” said Krista, “I don’t think I know anyone who has more stories to tell than you do. It’s amazing.”

“I do kind of collect them. Anyway, this mare who’d gone up to New Bolton, she was shedding salmonella, they said, and the other mare—”

“But I have a hard time with them sometimes.”

“They had to euthanize her after about four days, and when they autopsied her—”

“This one, for example, really bothers me.”

“She had salmonella abscesses everywhere. It was amazing she lived that long. This bothers you, huh?”

“It does.”

“Here’s what I think—”

Krista crawled around to the hind end of the mare and lifted her tail. What she saw was reassuring—the two little feet, properly offset, and the little nose. Another contraction pushed the head out up to the ears, and then another contraction pushed the rest of the head out. Krista gave a large sigh of relief. One, or at the most two more contractions, and the foal would be out. With her little finger, she cleared the baby’s nostrils. Margaret said, “She’s given up for some reason. Come on, Mama. Give the little fellow a push.”

But the mare seemed uninterested, perhaps exhausted. “Lazy girl,” said Margaret. “Come on, mare, push that baby out.” Still nothing. Krista and Margaret exchanged a glance, and Krista felt the panic that she had been deflecting hit her full-force. You could tell by the size of the foal’s head and feet that he was a big one, and needed something extra from the mare. But Donut was lost in space somewhere, as gone as if this weren’t even happening to her.

“You can never tell what a maiden is going to do,” said Margaret. “Who is this, that mare from Black Oak? She was a nice jumper. One time—” But then she said, “Okay, baby, old Margaret’s going to drag you out of there.”

She sat down in the straw, facing the mare’s tail, and put a booted foot on each of her buttocks. Then she reached into her and grabbed the slippery foal around the cannon bones above the fetlocks. Then she bent her knees, bent her back, bent her head almost into the nose of the baby, and suddenly gave a huge heave and grunt. The foal moved forward about three inches. Margaret said, “Let me try to get a better hold here.” She wiped her hands on her jacket, then grabbed the horse’s legs again. This time she cocked her body so that she could exaggerate the torsion on the foal’s shoulders, forcing them to come out one at a time instead of together. She gave another heave and another grunt, and suddenly her knees straightened and the foal shot out of the mare into Margaret’s arms and lap. They sat still for a moment, then Krista laughed. Margaret gently smoothed the amnion away from the foal’s face. The baby snorted and took a deep breath, and Krista said, “Oh, wow.”

“Big boy,” said Margaret.

“No,” said Krista. “Big girl.”

“You know,” said Margaret, “your grandfather always chose the ones he was going to keep and the ones he was going to sell within a few hours of birth. It depended on how they faced life.”

The mare was out of it, so they wiped the filly down where she lay. She was dark, but she had a fan-shaped white star between her eyes and a snip of white between her nostrils, as well as one white foot, the left hind.

Margaret said, “This mare better wake up and look at her baby. Maidens are so unpredictable.”

The filly, though, was wide awake and looking around. Two or three times, she turned her gaze to Krista’s face and regarded her for a few seconds. She also turned to look at the bulk of the mare, who at last lifted her head to look at the filly. Now was the moment for a maiden, Krista knew. Some maidens were so amazed by what had happened to them that they couldn’t take it in, couldn’t relate to the foal, couldn’t give way to their hormonal drive to nurture. But Donut nickered—not loudly, but firmly. The filly looked at her and nickered back. Krista had the eerie sense that the foal knew more than the mare did. After another moment, Donut understood, got to her feet, stepped through the straw, put her head down to the filly and nosed her, then started licking her face. The filly turned her face up to her mother, and the mare ran her tongue here and there with increasing conviction and pleasure. Margaret and Krista stood up and moved away, not without patting the mare on the neck.

“Okay, then,” said Margaret.

“Seems to be,” said Krista. “Thank you.” The mare would go down once more and birthe the placenta, but that was almost never a problem.

“You want me to come over tomorrow and help you check the placenta? You’re going to have Sam over in a day or two to check for uterine damage, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sure,” said Krista. “Look at her. She’s a lovely filly.” And then the filly unfolded herself and rose to her feet.

W
HAT
D
ICK
W
INTERSON
did when he found out on the morning of the race that his wife, Louisa, planned to come out was not anything. He did not discourage her and he did not call Rosalind to warn her. He was already full of dread at the prospect of sitting between Al and Rosalind with the damned dog staring at him and letting him know in every possible way that should she learn to talk she would tell Al everything first crack out of the box. Dick was so full of dread that there was no amplification possible, only a kind of wrong-end-of-the-telescope experience where all of these people seemed to be coming at him in tiny vehicles from very great distances. He was standing at the pass gate, smiling. He could hear the announcer, Tom Durkin, calling the fifth race. Laurita was running in the seventh race, the Rokeby Stakes, a Grade Two race for three-year-old fillies, a mile and an eighth. Al, Rosalind, and Eileen emerged from the Mercedes. It was driven away. They whirred toward him as if on wheels. They were very small, bright, and sharply defined. He greeted them. He said, “Do you mind if we wait here just a few more moments? My wife, Louisa, wanted to see the race, too.”

“Lovely,” said Rosalind instantly, smiling.

“Yeah?” said Al. “She a racing fan?”

“Not really, no. I don’t think she’s been out to Aqueduct in years. Once in a while she goes up to Saratoga in the summer. We used to rent a house there that we liked very much, but now I understand it’s been sold. I don’t quite know what I’m going to do this summer. That house—”

“How’s the filly?” said Al, knowing bullshit when he heard it. But he didn’t wait for Dick to answer. “You know, that filly might go in the Breeders’ Cup. I’ve been thinking about it. If we start thinking about it now, then we might be ready when the time comes.”

“Well—” said Dick, but here came Louisa in their Camry, as tiny and bright as the other three. Dick was so dazzled that all of what Al was saying rose on the bright air around him, unheard and disregarded. Louisa pulled up
to the valet-parking attendant and sat quietly for a moment, then another moment. “What’s the problem?” said Al. “That her?”

“Yes,” said Rosalind.

The door opened, and Dick started toward his wife. She sat there for another moment, the attendant standing over her and looking down expectantly. Then she got out of the car with a sudden jerk and dropped her purse. The attendant picked it up. By this time, Dick was right there, handing the attendant a five-dollar bill. His hand went out from him into another world, the tiny distant world of the parking attendant. “Hi!” he said cheerily. Louisa gave him the look.

She had offered to come to the race. She didn’t know he was sleeping with Rosalind Maybrick. Now that he had betrayed her, he saw her through a thornier and thornier tangle of words that could not be said, and his love for her filled him more and more, as if the conduit between them, once short and wide and capable of carrying off many acre-feet of love, was now long, narrow, and partly blocked. What could not get from him to her flooded him over and over.

The look was a glance of anguish and remorse, arising from the fact that she was having an agoraphobia attack and had come to the racetrack anyway. The racetrack was an agoraphobic’s worst nightmare—crowded, vast, noisy. Dealing with Louisa when she was having an attack was very much like dealing with a spooky horse. You had to exude self-confidence—her heightened sense of alertness always took its cue from him, or from other companions. This was something she could not control, an electricity or pheromone thing, below the level of consciousness. Dick instantly, and without touching her, organized himself inwardly to simply be with her in utter calmness. He imagined himself as a containment building, three-sided, warm, small, no windows. She could enter if she wanted to, if she noticed. She had to enter, though, of her own accord. Nor could you pull a horse into a trailer without tempting him to rear up and hit his head. Horses had died that way.

He introduced Louisa to Al and Rosalind. Rosalind said, “How nice to see you.”

Al said, “We going up to the box? Let me get a
Form.
Dick, I tell you, I’m not kidding about this Breeders’ Cup thing. She’s a good filly, and let me tell you, I’ve been in this business long enough. What, eleven years? How much money have I spent on this? Rosalind, how much money have I spent on these damn horses?”

“I don’t know, darling.”