“Yes?” she asked.
“I’m looking for a job.”
“Didn’t I meet you last weekend?” she asked. “At the show?”
Billie stuffed her hands in her jeans pockets, ducked her head, tried to look embarrassed, and said, “Right. I’m Billie Snow. I met a guy at the show named Charley. He offered me a job.”
“Charley offered you a job?” Eudora sounded incredulous. “I’m the owner. My name is Eudora Thornton. I decide who gets hired.” Eudora drummed the end of a ballpoint pen against the glowing wood of the desktop. “What kind of job are you looking for?”
Billie felt as if a stuck door just opened a crack.
“I’ve got my own place with my own horses and I board some, but I’m struggling.” Frank had taught her the finer points of successful lying. Tell as much of the truth as you can. The truth sounds like truth, and you’re less likely to forget what you said.
“I need more business,” Billie said. “Or I need a job. I was putting up flyers at the showgrounds when I met Charley. We got to talking, and he said I could come ask for work here. I really need it.”
Eudora settled back and her chair squealed.
“What can you do?” Eudora asked.
“For a start, I could fix that squeak. A few squirts of WD-40 would do it,” Billie said.
“I’ll call maintenance for that,” Eudora said. “What else?”
“I can do anything with horses. I can ride, school, exercise. I can start colts, handle foals…”
“Will you muck?”
“You bet!” She hoped Eudora would figure that Billie’s enthusiasm for this menial job had to do with the hourly wage, but she was thinking: I’m in! Not far in, but this was how every piece of research started, with a small widening of the view.
“I’ll do whatever you need done,” Billie said.
“You can start right away?”
“You bet,” Billie grinned.
“Good.” Eudora nodded. “All right, I’ll show you around.”
She stood up, stylish in a white silk blouse and tailored skirt. Her high heels clicked as she led Billie under a shady archway into a courtyard with whitewashed barns on three sides. Hitching rails lined each wall, interspersed with more benches. The center of the courtyard had been raked into a pattern of swirled white pebbles. The place practically glittered. Through an archway in the farthest barn, Billie saw a dirt exercise track, and beyond the track, desert stretching to serrated mountains.
“Wow!” Billie said and meant it.
“Nice, isn’t it?” Eudora asked.
“Beyond nice.”
Eudora took Billie through the massive door into the first barn on the left and then into a small storage room. She handed Billie a mucking fork and showed her the wheeled cart she should fill.
“Empty it on the manure pile outside. I’ll show you.” She led the way to the back of the building, to a mound of manure, soiled hay, and straw. “There’s a pile behind each barn, for convenience. You won’t have to walk far, no matter where you’re working.” She showed Billie where the bedding was stored in its own shed adjacent to the building, bales of straw and bags of wood shavings stacked neatly.
Inside the barn, she opened a door. “Tack room. Any questions?”
You bet, Billie thought. Where was everyone? Where were the owners of the cars and trucks she’d seen parked outside? Where were the horses she had seen at the show? The animals in this barn weren’t standing on stacked shoes. They looked like any other horses.
“Just muck this broodmare barn today. We’ll see how it goes. Come see me when you’re finished.”
The horses looked well-cared for. Their weight was good, their coats shone, their eyes were soft and friendly.
After Eudora disappeared, Billie settled into the rhythm of stall cleaning. Each horse she tied to a ring in the wall farthest from the door. She left the stall door open, the cart outside, and with the fork, she removed the bedding the horse had soiled during the past day. She closed the stall door behind her and wheeled the cart out to the manure pile, dumped it, and returned to the barn. She loaded a bale of straw and a bag of shavings, wheeled them to the stall and spread them out on the floor, fluffing with the rake. She checked to be certain each horse had water in its bucket that hung from the wall beside the door. Then she removed the halter and let the horse loose. It was simple work that she had done all her life. Different details in different barns, but the swing of the fork into bedding, the heft and lift, the twist to dump it into the wheelbarrow were the same everywhere, every time.
She worked down one side of the aisle, ten stalls, and started up the other side cleaning each stall with its broodmare shaded and cool under ceiling fans in the thick-walled barn.
A stall at the end of the row had drapes pulled across it. Billie glanced around to be certain she was still alone, and pulled the drapes aside, finding a closed door. She tried the handle and opened the door into a big room. Harnesses hung from hooks on the walls. A table held medical instruments. In the middle of the space, parallel iron poles created a chute in which a chestnut mare had been tied. A solid gate closed off the front of the chute. Its back gate stood open. The mare wore a set of breeding hobbles—straps around her hind legs to keep her from kicking the stallion during breeding. She turned her head and looked at Billie, her eyes wide. It was dangerous to leave a twelve-hundred-pound animal, capable of explosive thrashing, tied and alone. The breeding hobbles indicated a
