“What kind of dog food you want?” Ty asked, looking out the door, watching the slim tanned legs topped by the tiny tight shorts.
“Never mind,” Billie said. “I’ll get it later.”
She made out a check for the bag of Equine Senior and hoisted it from the counter onto her shoulder.
“You didn’t use to be able to do that,” Ty said.
“I bet there was a time when you couldn’t either.”
“I’ve been lifting sacks since I was a little kid, Billie. You came to it late.”
“But I’m good at it.”
Outside, she flipped the sack over the truck side. In a shimmering heat haze, she watched the dust plume raised by Richard’s dually on the dirt road headed south.
Gulliver took his time peeing on the gas pumps, sniffing first, circling, sniffing again. A thick coating of white dust settled onto Billie while she waited for him to finish. She licked her parched lips and opened the truck door for the dog to jump in.
“Billie?” Ty seemed to waver in the heat beside her, almost a mirage.
“Yeah?”
“You went to that walking horse show?”
“Yeah. By accident. I was at the showgrounds. I’d never seen one of those shows before.”
“I heard it was coming here, but I didn’t believe it.”
Billie pulled herself into the truck. The cracked leather seat seared the backs of her legs. She settled her feet on the pedals. “Why not?”
“Whatever we have wrong here with horses—and there’s plenty,” Ty said, “at least it isn’t that.”
“Isn’t what?” She wondered if he knew what went on at walking horse shows or if he was talking about something else.
He pushed the Chevy’s door closed for her, so it latched easily and quietly. Then he hung on the open window by his fingertips, stretching onto his heels then pulling himself back up close. He was as long and supple as the bamboo growing in Billie’s barnyard.
“Didn’t you see?” he asked her.
“See what?”
“What they do to those horses? C’mon Billie Snow, you’re the first person who’d notice and start hollering about it.”
“Yes, I saw. I even called Doc to ask him about it. But I still don’t understand. Why do they do it?”
“Well, Google it. I bet you’ll find a ton of stuff on it. My point is, we never had them—the walking horse folks, the Big Lickers—here before this.” He stood up, his head above the window so his voice floated down to her. “What are they doing here, Billie? That’s what I wonder. Why have they come? What have we got way out here in the desert that they want?”
CHAPTER 5
BILLIE STOOD AT her kitchen window, looking out over summer-dry grazing land. In the distance, half-starved cattle struggled to survive for another month or six weeks on brittle love grass and withered cactus. When the rains finally came, the land would green up almost instantly. The desert would look as lush as Kentucky for a couple of months and be soft on the eyes.
She finished making a nopalito salad for dinner and carried it to the futon to eat. She couldn’t get Ty’s questions out of her mind. Earlier, as she fed the horses, her eyes ran over their legs. She remembered what she’d seen Charley do to the filly tied in her stall. Each of his movements, the sound of his voice as he scolded her, ordered her to quit trying to escape. The way he had seemed indifferent to her pain, annoyed when she struggled to save herself. But Billie had also seen him stroke her neck when he was done. And she was sure she’d heard him say, “I’m sorry, baby…”
She awoke hours later from an unintended sleep. She got up and made a cup of coffee, drank it gazing out the kitchen window, trying to shake off the dream that had been part of her life since childhood, strangling her sleep. It wasn’t apnea; she’d been tested, eagerly hoping for a cure, a mask to wear at night that would solve the problem. Every time the dream came, she woke shuddering with horror and bolted from the futon to stand at the window, grasping the sill. From his spot under the sheet, Gulliver watched her. Outside, a falling star caught the edge of Billie’s vision, arcing to the north. She closed her eyes, exhaled, and opened them to see a thick splash of stars sprawled across the sky.
At last she knew what had been bothering her, what she had to do. She opened the door with Gulliver at her heels and jogged down the driveway to the barnyard, starlight all she needed to see her way. The horses nickered, hoping she would give them treats. Not even the low light affected her ability to line up and back the truck to the trailer. A lifetime spent hauling horses made every step as familiar as brushing her teeth. She set the brake, got out of the truck, winched the trailer tongue onto the hitch, coupled them, and slipped on the safety chains and emergency brake wire. She tossed the trailer’s wheel chocks into the toolbox, whistled her dog up onto the seat, and they took off.
Gulliver stood on the ripped bench seat beside her, his paws on the dashboard, alert for any nocturnal excitements—the flight of a nightjar, a bat, cattle on the road, jackrabbits—that he might spot through the windshield. As the truck chattered down the ribbed dirt road toward the highway, the mug of coffee Billie had in the cupholder at her knee sloshed onto her leg. The empty trailer, jolted by every ridge and hole in the road, rattled behind. Years of dirt roads had jarred its welds loose. Gulliver pushed off from the dashboard and planted his forepaws on the passenger side door, peered out that window, then curled against Billie’s thigh, licked the drying coffee, and sighed himself to sleep.
At the interstate,
