“And I’m Annie Oakley.” She didn’t want him to know how badly her neck hurt, how much she wanted to escape back to the casita and lie on her futon with a bag of frozen corn under her head.
“We’re on the same side, Billie.”
“No, we’re not. I saw you with that filly.”
“You mean the one you stole? I can get you prosecuted for that,” he said.
“Really? You’re going to call the cops and say you can identify her by what you did to her legs? No one’s going to try to get her back and we both know it.”
He sighed as if exhaustion had overcome him and pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead.
“I’ve worked for Dale’s family since I was a kid. I learned the tricks from them. I’ve been doing it all my life.”
“How in hell can you stand yourself?”
“I can’t,” he said so softly she almost didn’t hear him. He shifted his weight, and she recoiled, but he just extended his hand toward Gulliver then bent to scratch him. “I can’t stand the things I’ve done all my life.”
Gulliver rolled onto his back, inviting further rubs, but Charley straightened up.
“I had thought that I could just call the 800 number,” he said, “and collect the reward the Humane Society is offering. Ten thousand dollars! I’d just name some names. It was going to be my way out of this life.”
Billie massaged her neck.
“They said my word wasn’t enough.”
“Imagine that.”
“I’ve been taking pictures and videos most of this past year. I’ve got enough now. I can turn them in and apply for the reward.”
“I got news, Charley. Ten thousand won’t get you much in the way of a fresh start.”
“It’s ten thousand per conviction. I can give them a lot of other people besides Eudora and Dale. I can take them all the way to the top.”
“Who’s at the top?” she asked.
He shook his head. He wasn’t going to tell her. “That’s going to be my money, not yours. I want it to get started with my own farm.”
“You shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a horse for the rest of your life.”
“Horses are all I know.”
She thought she heard a swarm of bees outside, but the sound grew until it became more like a train headed for them. She and Charley peered out the shed window. Branches slapped against each other. Dirt swirled upward into a dust devil and roared toward them. Gulliver whined as it passed the shed, lifting objects in its path—a currycomb and brushes, a light plastic chair—then dropped them. In a minute it was over, the devil diminishing as it reached the bamboo grove by a horse trough. The air returned to its summer stillness.
“How could you do that to the filly?”
“It wasn’t supposed to happen.” He rubbed his palms along his overalls. “I’ve cooked horses’ legs all my life and never had that happen. You want heat and pain, not damage.”
Billie wondered if the irony of what he’d said had occurred to him. “Could someone else have messed with what was in the bottle?” she asked. “Could it have been tampered with?”
“I’ve been gathering information for months, doing it the way the Ag folks want it done…” He faded out, thinking. “Maybe someone could have done that.”
“But why?” she asked.
He started to say something but stopped. Blinked. Swallowed. Wiped a mustache of sweat that had beaded his upper lip. His hand shook. He stuffed it deep into the pockets of his overalls.
“You’re going to turn in your bosses? Is that it?” Billie prompted. “Would that have made someone…?”
He reached into the bib pocket of his overalls and pulled out a red flash drive. “I want you to take this. Everything’s in here—the photos, the video, recordings. I don’t think… I think I’ve been found out. Take this.”
“You’re setting me up. I have no idea what’s really in there.”
“I’m not. I need to get rid of this, in case…”
Billie turned away from him, glimpsing herself in the mirror of the medicine cabinet, its glass spotted with years of her own fingerprints along its edges, prints that were stained with iodine, greasy with ointments. The face that looked back at her was flushed from the heat, bruises forming at her mouth and on her cheek where Charley had hit her. And her neck still hurt.
“You won’t help me?”
“You’ve spent your life torturing horses. Now you want to make a killing from turning in your pals. No, I won’t help you.”
He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand then slipped the flash drive back into his overalls.
“You’ll have to destroy that filly,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“She’s suffering. That filly can’t make it. You’d do her a kindness to put her out of her misery.”
“Did you say ‘kindness’?”
“If you try to save her, she’ll just suffer more.”
“Get out! I don’t give a shit about you.”
“Listen, tonight Dale and I pack up and go back to his new farm in Sonoita. I’m offering you a chance to find out what really goes on in a Big Lick barn. Behind the scenes where no one else has gone. I checked up on you, and with your background as a reporter, that’s got to appeal to you. A chance to write about this? Right up your alley.”
He took a lopsided step toward the door. Gulliver wagged his tail.
“I don’t suppose you’d give a lame old man a lift down the road to his truck, would you? I parked on the far side of that wash and hiked in when it was a lot cooler than it is now.”
“You trespass, you beat me up, you threaten me, and now you want a lift?”
He looked at her, asking, not pleading. “Angel Hair Walkers is the name of the place. Take the left fork toward Rain Valley, go a couple miles. You’ll find the sign.”
“Get out of here. GO! Think of that filly while you’re roasting out in the
