So that’s what stand on sore meant. Nail this to the bottom of the hoof. Hours, days of torment as it dug in. The horse’s feet would be covered in hematomas, punctured. Forced to move, he’d snap them up, try to keep them off the ground. Because it hurt too much to put them down.
Gulliver whimpered. He looked miserable, lying beside his water bowl, eyes squinted in pain. Billie knelt beside him. “What’s up, boy?”
When she felt him, his temperature seemed normal. But he lay there, whining. In the seven years he’d been her dog, she had never heard him whine like that. It scared her.
Doc’s phone rang a long time. When he answered, he was in the middle of a sentence to someone else. Billie heard him say something indistinct and another voice, female, reply.
At last he said, “Doc here.”
“It’s Billie. Again.”
“How’s Hashtag?”
She had to think for a minute. “Getting better, Doc. The cuts are healing, but it always takes longer than I think it should.”
“Well, you know what I prescribe, Billie. Essence of patience, tincture of time.”
“Doc, I’m calling about my little dog Gulliver. There’s something wrong with him. He’s lying here on the floor, crying.”
She was certain he wouldn’t be able—or maybe willing—to come out for a dog. He was strictly a large animal vet with a practice so busy he had no time left over for sleep, let alone add-on patients. But he would tell her the right thing to do.
“Well, m’dear, it so happens that I’m not far from you. In fact, I’m just down the road a bit. I have to finish up here then I’ll stop by.”
Billie hung up, slumped to the floor, and gathered Gulliver onto her lap. “Thank you,” she said to the hot shed walls. “Thank you.”
Doc still had his arm in a sling, soiled now and with a tear halfway up. It had been scribbled on all over, signed and drawn on. Moons, stars, horse heads in profile, a crude outline of a bull with a cartoon balloon over its head, saying, “I’m sorry, Doc!” He seemed to be moving better and smoothly managed the drop off his truck’s bench seat onto the ground. He slammed the truck door closed with his good shoulder.
“Be glad when I get this thing off.” He eyed her for a moment, evaluating. “I’ll take care of your dog, Billie. Don’t worry, okay? I know you love him. After I see to him, let’s look at the horse you took such good care of who got caught in the wire.”
Billie nodded, helplessly close to crying again.
Inside the feed shed with Doc she was aware that she should have wiped down the counters, swept the floor. But he didn’t seem to notice. He started to bend to pick up Gulliver when Billie realized he couldn’t because of his arm. She pulled a chair out from under the table for him. He sat and she lifted Gulliver into his lap.
He murmured to him; Billie couldn’t tell if it was words or sounds. He looked into the dog’s eyes, then his mouth and checked his gums. He felt down his neck, his back, his hind legs, his front legs, checked each paw. At his right front—the last paw he looked at—he said, “I’ll be darned.”
Then he checked all the other paws again.
“Did you walk him on cement?” he asked. “Maybe in Tucson?”
Billie shook her head no.
“His pads are sore on this foot. He’s got blisters.”
As he spoke, Gulliver tried to lick the paw, stopped, and ran his tongue in and out of his mouth fast. Doc opened his mouth again and gently pried open his teeth. He yelped and struggled to get away. Doc let him jump down.
“Well, Billie,” he said. “I think your dog here got into something. I thought at first he’d scorched his foot. I see it in the summer all the time. People think their dogs’ feet are made of asbestos, if they think at all. They walk ’em on pavement until they’re blistered. But I’m thinking this little dog got into something caustic, and then when he licked his paw, he burned his tongue and the inside of his mouth.”
Billie asked the only question she could think of. “Will he be all right? Did he burn his throat?”
“I don’t think so. This seems pretty localized. I’ll give you some ointment and a little pain medicine for a couple of days. Should be right as rain by then.” Doc rested his good hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Let’s look at the horse,” he said.
“I wonder,” Billie said after Doc had checked on Hashtag and pronounced her on the way to recovery, “if Gully got into something at the show here last night.”
“You had a show here?”
“Walking horses.”
He stopped and faced her. He didn’t say anything, but in his face she saw the same hard disapproval she had seen in Josie’s.
“Flat shod only,” she assured him. “No soring. They promised me.”
He looked past her, toward the mountains. “You don’t know much do you, about people?”
She kept herself from snapping at him. He didn’t know about her previous life, the people she had interviewed, what she had seen. She probably knew more about people than anyone, she wanted to say. But she didn’t say anything.
Neither did he.
She couldn’t stand his disapproval. She imagined arguments she could make to him: they had promised her no hurt horses and she had made money at last. Hell, I made money so I could pay you, Doc, damn it. It was so much fun to have them here, the barnyard full of trucks, trailers, food, horses, dogs, music, kids, and folks enjoying themselves. And there was no soring! Maybe there was a cheater or two. But there are cheaters in every sport, right?
As if reading her mind he said, “Cheaters are cheaters, Billie. Crooks are crooks. Liars lie. Burners
