The walk back was even slower than the one to the trailer, and Doc’s fatigue was palpable. Billie shortened her stride to stay close beside him in case he needed her. In the shed, he accepted the icy bottle, and they leaned against the side of the building to drink, grateful for the bit of shade.
“Did you know there’s been a movement back east to get soring stopped?” Doc asked. “It’s had some success, so it’s harder now for Big Lickers to get away with what they do. The inspections are a little tougher, the fines are a little bigger.”
“So, that’s good?”
“As far as it goes, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. I hope you decide to write that article, Billie. I don’t think it’ll stop them, m’dear, but it could help some.”
Billie fetched two more bottles of water, handed him one. “Do you think that’s why they’ve shown up here? In Arizona?”
“I don’t know about that. If you ask me, you should stay away from this whole thing. But if you do decide to pursue it, well, that might be a worthy effort.” He looked around. “Where’s your little dog?”
“Up at the casita.”
Doc nodded and finished most of his second bottle of water before screwing the top back on.
“Doc, what will it take to fix the filly?”
“Luck. Plus a lot of time and some money, Billie. And a lot of pain for her. Some might say it’d be a kindness to put her down.”
“Let’s try to save her.”
As they walked back to the barn, Doc outlined a course of treatment. Medicines, salves, months of specially made shoes and pads to protect her damaged feet until they could grow out and she could again walk without pain. Billie wanted to ask how much it would cost, but what difference would the answer really make? Money aside, what was the best thing for the horse? Try to save her or euthanize her? As Doc talked, her mind wandered into the world of grotesque abuse the horse had suffered. Her article might make a difference to the horses suffering in darkened barns. Or maybe it would just help this one horse here, standing in misery in her trailer. If Billie could sell it, she’d have money for vet care. She couldn’t wait to start.
“How widespread is it?” she asked Doc.
He blinked at her, uncertain. “How widespread is what?”
“How widespread is soring?”
“It’s done to show horses and horses that might show. Thousands and thousands of them over the years. It’s a multi-million dollar business.”
“Well,” Billie said, “that has to stop.”
Doc started to laugh, first a slight chuckle, then a big deep rumble. “You’re really something!” he gasped, holding his arm tightly against his body to stop it from moving with his laughter. “Oh my, dear. You are right. It has to stop. It won’t, but it has to.”
He loaded Billie up with medicines for the filly and started to write her bill, leaning against the side of his truck.
“What’s her name?” he asked.
Until this second Billie hadn’t thought about a name.
“Hope,” she said. It would do for now.
When Doc drove off, he took with him a good chunk of her remaining money.
She started to imagine what she’d write. Not the details—she didn’t know them yet. She didn’t know who was involved, beyond Charley and Dale and Eudora and Sylvie, if you could count a kid. She didn’t know the extent of the problem. She couldn’t even fully define the crimes being committed. But the structure of the piece, its rhythm and form, she already knew.
CHAPTER 8
BILLIE STRETCHED OUT on a hay bale under the Milky Way, searching the sky for shooting stars. Alfalfa stems prickled her shoulder blades. She wriggled to avoid them, but each time they just got stuck someplace else—in the small of her back, the back of her neck, the backs of her knees.
She lay there anyway, waiting for the perfect star. Then she would go up to the casita and write. Somewhere in the words she would find a way to feed her animals, find a way to stay on her ranch.
She should have taken Charley’s thumb drive, should have given him a lift, should have thought of what he could do for her instead of just getting angry.
I bolted like a spooked horse instead of staying to figure it out, reason it out, fight it out, she thought. I’ll never learn.
She closed her eyes. Night sounds filled her mind. The horses lipped hay off the ground, a sound like water flowing over rocks. She heard them shift their weight, sigh, shuffle, snort. A screech owl started its predawn call. When she opened her eyes to look for it, the star she had been waiting for arced directly over her, a streak that shrank to a soft astral sizzle then disappeared.
Gulliver lay on his back on her stomach, all four feet in the air. She played her fingers over his belly—single notes, chords. When she sat up, he leapt off and shook himself.
As she hiked back up the hill to the house, Gulliver trotting beside her, Frank’s voice played in her head. Come back, he said. Work for me again. Pick your project or take on mine.
She let herself into the casita and settled cross-legged on the futon. She could have reached for her computer, but she had a favorite pen, a fine-point steel-bodied ballpoint, and a notebook whose pages sagged beneath the pen’s pressure.
Where to start? She had a pile of worries—about her writing, about what her life would be if she went back to writing. Would she solve the problem of income at the cost of this life she had chosen? By making money to feed the horses, would she have to leave them, even lose them? If she agreed to write for Frank, she would have to leave, if not
