Lauraine Snelling (12 page)

“Not a doubt in the world this horse is going to make it.”

Maggie rolled her lips together, one of the tricks she’d learned to stem the burning behind her eyes. She’d cried enough in the last two days to last years. Even when she wasn’t crying on the outside, the tears were still there and burning on the inside. Strange, since she’d managed these past years to hide the tears as she hid all of her emotions. What was the cause behind this ongoing eruption? Was it the horse program, like Mr. James had warned them?

“You think he’ll go to the man who came in yesterday?”

“I doubt it. He wants a horse in his pasture and will enjoy caring for it, even knowing it’ll never be ridden again.”

“People do that?”

“Oh yeah, there’s a man out in South Dakota who leases pasture from the BLM . . .”

“BLM?”

“Bureau of Land Management, government agency. He’s adopted several Thoroughbreds and lets them be wild horses.”

“I hope someday I can adopt a horse.”

“I do too.” He turned to her so she had to look up at him. “You’re going to make it on the outside, Maggie.”

At the conviction in his voice, she could only nod. If she’d said something, anything, the soft glue holding her together would have precipitated a total washout.

He saved her by saying, “Go help JJ with the new horse, would you please?”

“Sure.”

“Oh, and I’m assigning another horse to you. Breaking Free is coming along well enough.”

She nodded and kept going. Good, she was beginning to feel like she wasn’t pulling her weight in the program with only one horse to care for. But then who ever dreamed he’d come around so quickly?

That afternoon she saw Mr. James head back to the round pen where Breaking Free dozed in the sun. He repeated the dance of the morning, and the third time the horse settled down before the man exited the pen again.

“What he doin’?” Kool Kat asked nodding toward Mr. James.

“Getting Breaking Free to accept him and to not be afraid of men any longer.”

“Well, I’ll be d . . .” She glanced at Maggie. “Darned.”

“You want to do the join up with your other horse?”

“You bet. I read that book you said.”

“Good for you.” Maggie waited.

“Most of it anyways. That man live a pretty good life.”

“True.”

“So, you think someone like me can make a living working with horses?”

“Many do. That’s what this training can help you do on the outside. Get you a job at a stable or a farm or even one of the racetracks.”

“Never thought I’d want to work with horses.”

Maggie clapped her on the shoulder. “You can do it.” The action caught them both by surprise.

Kool Kat stiffened, then looked from her shoulder to Maggie, a grin deviling her widened eyes. “To quote my mother’s mother, ‘From your mouth to God’s ear.’”

Maggie shook her head and headed for the tack room. If the overhanging fear of DC cooking up some revenge for being embarrassed by Kool Kat’s intervention would go away, these final two months would be almost bearable, with Breaking Free doing so well and Kool Kat’s humanity leaking out more and more each day.

After a wide turn of every corner and several glances behind her, Maggie’s shoulders lowered to normal. Time to do some lunging with Breaking Free and get him back in his stall so someone else could use the pen. Like Kool Kat.

The five days it took for Mr. James to approach Breaking Free and finally pat his shoulder seemed like forever with the impending warden’s arrival only ten days away.

“Compared to other horses, he adapted pretty fast,” James said when she commented. “You laid a good groundwork for me. Tomorrow I’ll bring a saddle and bridle from home. We’ll give it a go.”

A deep swell of something she could barely remember rose in her.
Joy
, she thought. It had taken a hurting horse on a prison farm to bring back joy.

From the corner of her eye, she spied DC standing a short distance off, one hip jutted out and arms folded across her chest. The joy sputtered out. What a pity DC couldn’t learn new things like Breaking Free—like terrorizing people wasn’t necessary.

As soon as they saddled him the next morning, Breaking Free started to jig.

“Look at him, he thinks he’s back at the track.” Maggie slid the bit in his mouth and the headstall over his ears. “Come on, show-off, see if you like the round pen again.”

“You goin’ to ride him?”

“Nope, just lunge him. Get him used to a different kind of work.”

“Bet he was somethin’ on the track.” Kool Kat, who now always seemed to get her work done and show up to watch Maggie and Mr. James work with Breaking Free, stroked the horse’s shoulder and neck. “Look how red he is, sun on him looks like fire.”

“I know.” Maggie rubbed his ears and face. “Yet he’s not the same horse. Not like when they brought him in.”

Kool Kat looked over the paddocks of grazing horses and the bigger pasture where two of the Thoroughbreds were racing along a fence line. “None of them are the same.”

You’re not either
, Maggie thought, but dared not say it. Despite the changes, Kool Kat was still Kool Kat.

After the first race around the pen, Breaking Free responded to Maggie and her commands of walk and trot. His initial run had scared her. What if he reinjured those back legs and never got their full use back?

Later when he let Mr. James pick up his feet, she felt like they’d won the whole war and not just the battles. Letting him loose in the grassy paddock was almost as bad as leaving her son at nursery school for the first time. The memory of that day rolled over her like an 18-wheeler in a skid. Charlie so excited to get there, walking into the room with a bunch of other little kids, some crying, some already playing with toys or in the playhouse. He’d been there before, but she always stayed to help.

“Bye, son, I’ll be back later.”

He waved and ran off to play. None of that clinging to Mom like some of the others. Out in the car, she’d cried, never sure if it was because he handled it so well or because she hadn’t.

Now with her eyes still dry, she breathed in deep, letting the memory soak her instead of pushing it down. She propped her chin on her hands on the rail, watching Breaking Free sniff the ground, lay down and roll, get up and shake, fling his head in the air, whinny an announcement that he was there, and then take off in an easy canter. He made a round of the fences, sniffed noses with the two very interested fellows in the next pasture—one squealed, he snorted—then turn to look at her, like Charlie, as if to say, see I’m okay. Don’t worry. She huffed a big sigh. Sniffing, she nodded. “You did it, big horse. You did it.” Incredibly, so had she—lived through a Charlie memory without totally collapsing.

“You helped him.” Mr. James leaned on the rail beside her. “Annie Forsythe, the director from the Association called last night. She wondered if we might have some horses ready for adoption fairly soon.”

“Do we?”

“Possibly. A couple of them need lots of pasture time. No riding, but they might be ridden again eventually. Those that could be ridden will need to be retrained, and we’re not set up to do that here. They will need to go to a training farm. Some could be adopted from the open house.”

The term
open house
chilled Maggie. Open—as in people coming in to stare at the inmates and watch a freak show with horses. She couldn’t do it. Nobody had said anything about the public being part of this program.

Mr. James, watching Breaking Free, continued. “We’ll be inviting the public so they can become more aware of our program. Hopefully to adopt horses and/or support some of the ones who need extended care. Like old Ghost. He has too many health problems for someone to take him on, but he could be sponsored. I’m going to talk about this in class this afternoon, just thought I’d give you a head’s up.”

Maggie only half heard much of what he’d said. This new information felt much the same as DC’s terrorizing.

“I’d like you to ride Breaking Free at the open house.”

Her mind slipped into free fall. She’d dreamed of riding him. “You’ve cleared this with Warden Brundage?” To ride Freebee, she’d have to be at the open house. It only took a few moments of internal struggle. The big guy deserved to be shown off, impress someone enough to be adopted, and she was the likely one to do it. No matter it would rip out her heart. Her heart had been ripped out before.

He nodded. “This morning. Actually this all makes the prison, er, rather the correctional facility, look good. He’s been doing a lot of PR for the programs here so that the funding isn’t cut out from beneath them.” He turned and leaned back against the board fence, watching the women as they went about their chores. “Now it’s time for this program to prove itself like the beef and optometric programs have.”

“You know it’s been nearly twenty years since I’ve been on a horse.”

“Would you say you were a good rider?”

“Y-yes.” On a normal horse, not a racehorse. Not one like Breaking Free.

“That’s enough for me. I’ll see you in class.”

She gulped. As soon as he left, Breaking Free ambled over to stand right in front of her. She rubbed his nose and up around his ears. “Hey, Freebee, we’ve got another big step to take together, you and me. I know you’ll do fine. It’s me I’m worried about.” Brushing her too-long bangs out of her eyes, she wondered just what the general public would think of her. The jury of her peers hadn’t thought much.

The next morning Breaking Free greeted her with a nicker when he saw her coming.

“Look at that.” Kool Kat nudged Maggie with her elbow. “He sayin’ good morning.”

“I know.” Maggie kept her eyes straight ahead. Kool Kat didn’t need to see how close to the surface her tears were. These weeks with Breaking Free had flushed out more eye moisture than after the . . . the first months of her incarceration.

“First time Dancer greeted me like that I near busted out cryin’.”

Maggie stopped and stared at the black woman. “You did?”

“You don’t be telling no one, hear?” Hands in her rear pockets, Kool Kat shuffled her toe in the dirt. “They kinda get to ya.” She half snorted, half grinned. “Never thought I’d be like this.” But when she looked Maggie fully in the face, she sobered. “So, how do you say goodbye when they leave?”

That was another subject Maggie didn’t want to think about. She shrugged.

“Different for you, you get out on parole pretty soon, maybe you could find Breaking Free and visit him?”

“Who’d want an ex-con contacting them? There’s probably rules against that.” She changed the subject. “How much longer for you?”

“Two years, three months, and four days, unless I get out sooner for good behavior.”

“Early parole?”

“Probably not, since this my second time in.” Kool Kat shrugged. “Stupid twice, shame on me.”

Maggie knew better than to answer that. She knew stupid. “We better get going. Hungry horses.” Never had she asked one of the other women direct questions like that. Sure, she’d overheard lots of conversations, but she never took part. “Just getting through” had taken on a new meaning since the horses . . . the “just” seemed to be slipping.

Later when she climbed reluctantly once more on the bus, thinking of the day when she would never get on a prison bus again and be counted, DC, who had taken over the seat behind Maggie, leaned forward and whispered just low enough to raise the hair on Maggie’s neck. “You better watch your back.” The chuckle that followed could only be called evil, strangling Maggie’s stomach.

THIRTEEN

D
o I go or stay home?

In twenty-four hours he was supposed to be keynoting the convention. Gil stared down at Eddie, sleeping now after the surgery. The ongoing struggle between good dad-bad dad tugged. They’d gone in and replaced the shunt that had grown nearly closed. Nothing new, and it would happen again, but it reminded Gil how temporary life with his son might be. To think his son had complained of a headache only a few hours ago.

“He’ll be going home in the morning.” The nurse checked Eddie’s vitals again and smiled up at Gil. “He’s off the oxygen, and we’ve removed the IVs.” He’d stood to get out of her way when she came in. “You could go home and get some sleep.”

“I know. But I think I’ll just sleep in the chair.”

“I’ll get you a blanket and a pillow. That chair kicks back, you know, into a recliner.”

“Thanks.” Sleep, however, didn’t come, and about an hour later, he retrieved a newspaper from the lounge and sat near the doorway of Eddie’s room, scanning it.

“Inmate program working with horses?” The article talked about an upcoming open house and adoptable horses. Dear Lord, he hoped Eddie never got wind of this. Who in his or her right mind would voluntarily go around inmates, much less trust a horse they’d trained?

He felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket. It would be Maria. He headed down the hall and into the waiting room to return the call.

“He’s sleeping, and the nurse said he could go home in the morning.”

“Bueno. Can I bring you anything?”

“No thanks, you should have been asleep a long time ago.”

“I sleep the sleep of the angels now.”

Gil flipped the phone shut, returned the newspaper back to the table, and ambled back to Eddie’s room, yawning. Something must have happened during the surgery for them to decide to keep him. Other times, as soon as he came out of the anesthesia they sent him home. Of course the other surgeries had been done during the daytime, not in a rush like this one. This doctor didn’t let any grass grow under his feet that was for sure.

It only seemed like a few moments later that Eddie’s voice woke him. “Hi, Dad.” Even after anesthetic Eddie woke up looking as if he hadn’d just been out for the count.

“Hi, yourself.” Gil sat up, yawning. “How do you do that?”

“What?”

“Wake up so alert.”

Eddie shrugged and tossed back the covers. He glared at the raised bars. “I gotta go.”

“Just a minute.” Gil jiggled the railing, pushed on it, and looked for a lock. No deal.

Eddie scrambled down the bed and around the rails.