Riding Lessons Page 20

  I rub a gloved hand over my clammy face, and then realize that I've smeared dye across my forehead. I stumble to my feet and rush to the back of the wash rack to rinse it off. I can guarantee one thing: my plan won't bloody well work if I dye a piece of my hair and forehead the color of Hurrah's new coat.

  I peel off the gloves and thrust my head under the running water, wiping my head and hair furiously in the cold water. I don't have time to adjust the temperature. I'm thinking of Lise's words, about the color being hard to lift. By the time I'm finished, my hair is a matted wet mess, and my teeth are chattering.

  Still shaken, I cross the hall and sit back down. I look at my watch. Seven more minutes.

  If I want to get Hurrah out of here before anyone notices that I've dyed him, I have to move fast. Finding some old pleasure barn should be easy enough, and without the stripes, Hurrah won't raise any eyebrows. If I don't let on who I am, the stable owner will just think I'm some plain vanilla boarder with a pet horse. If I want to really cover my tracks, I'll show up with a Western saddle. Since it doesn't have to fit, I'll buy the cheapest one I can find. It's just a prop, after all. Something to put on my saddle rack in the tack room.

  The more I think about it, the more I like it. It's perfect. It's brilliant. Of course, there's the whole question of getting him onto a trailer, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

  When the time is up, I approach the wash rack again, with trembling hands and heart.

  Hurrah stands patiently, with his head low and his eyes at half-mast. He is bored. Hell, he is practically asleep.

  I walk past him to the faucet, resisting the urge to run a hand along his side. Then I turn on the water and stare studiously at the hose while I adjust the temperature and pressure. I don't want to look at Hurrah yet, am not sure if I want it to have worked.

  Finally, I breathe deeply and turn. The warm stream hits his shoulder, breaking the slick, reddened sludge into blobs that fall to the gray concrete. The residue dilutes easily, rinsing away like blood from a cut.

  I rub the area directly under the stream of water with my thumb. It is red, and remains red. As I stare at it, I am seized with a coldness. It has the flavor of fear, but is something more. It's the feeling of conviction, a recognition that I've gone too far to turn back.

  I work quickly, rinsing him and rubbing his coat hard to make sure I get all the chemicals off. Then I aim the hose at the floor, chasing the last of the blood red water down the drain. Its color seems portentous. When all trace of the dye is gone, I gather the gloves and empty tubes and stuff them back into the plastic shopping bag. I twist its top, wrapping the slack around it several times. Then I step back and behold my solid chestnut Hanoverian.

  The change is remarkable. I suck my breath in through my teeth, and think inexplicably of Macbeth:

  I am in blood

  Stepped in so far, that should I wade no more,

  Returning were as tedious as go o'er

  I'm just closing the door of his stall when Jean-Claude reappears.

  "This is intolerable. They're still not here. I have a lesson in twenty minutes."

  He stands in front of me, directly in front of Hurrah's stall. Don't look in the stall, don't look in the stall, don't look in the--

  "Well, have you heard from them?" he continues.

  "Er, no." I step away from the stall, hoping that Jean-Claude will turn so that he continues to face me.

  "You'd better try to call them," he says, turning. "Do you have their numbers?"

  "Probably. Upstairs."

  "Well, let's go then," he says, and to my immense relief, leads the way to my office.

  When we get there, he stands at the window while I riffle through the filing cabinet.

  "This is strange. It looks like they live together," I say, flipping through the pages of the employee files. Three of the hands live at one house, and judging by the address, the other two live next door.

  "Yes, of course," says Jean-Claude, flopping down into the couch facing the window. He lies with his head on the arm, one leg bent at the knee. "They're family."

  I freeze. "What?"

  "Brothers, all of them. Except for Luis. He's a nephew."

  "Oh, Jesus."

  Jean-Claude sits up, stares at me. "What is it? What's wrong?"

  "I fired Luis yesterday. Do you think that has anything to do with this?"

  "You what? What for?"

  "I found Eva and him messing around in the lounge."

  "How messing around?"

  I stare at him until he understands.

  "Were they..."

  "No. But they might have if I hadn't showed up."

  Jean-Claude looks incredulous. "For this, you fired him?"

  "Of course I did!"

  Jean-Claude rises to his feet, and continues to stare at me.

  Finally I can't help myself. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

  "They are teenagers. That's what teenagers do," he says, his exasperation clear.

  "Maybe in France. Maybe in Canada. But not here, they don't."

  "Oh please," says Jean-Claude, lifting his hand and turning his head dismissively. "You are telling me that you never snuck off and kissed your boyfriend when you were a kid?"

  "Never," I say. Before the word is completely out of my mouth, images of Dan and me groping each other silly flash through my head.

  Oh dear. I suppose it's possible I overreacted.

  Jean-Claude puts a smashing end to all such sympathetic thought. "You are lying," he says simply.

  "How dare you--" I start, but peter out immediately. He is staring at me not with malice, but with calm conviction.

  "I'm just stating the truth, which you apparently are not."

  I groan, and sink back on my chair. "How was I supposed to know they were related? They don't even have the same last name. Two of them are Hernandez, two of them are Santa Cruz, and Luis is a Gutierrez."

  "There were two fathers."

  "And Luis?"

  "Son of their sister."

  I get up from my desk, too agitated to be still. "This can't be happening. They can't have quit."

  "It appears you are wrong." His tone is coolly impartial. At this moment, I can't believe I've ever found his Frenchness anything other than infuriating.

  "That doesn't make any sense. They couldn't all quit. They can't do without the money."

  Jean-Claude shrugs. "What else could it be?"

  "I don't know. Car trouble."

  "Both cars?"

  "A family emergency."

  He moves his head back and forth, weighing the possibility. "Could be. But the fact remains that all our horses are inside, in dirty stalls, and I am expecting students all day. You must call them to find out."

  "How? I don't have their telephone number."

  "It's not in the file?"

  "No." I stop pacing, but start tapping my foot. I am absolutely desperate. I should be arranging Hurrah's removal from the farm at this very moment.

  "Well, you'd better go see them, then."

  "I can't. I don't have time," I say. "There's something I need to do this morning. It can't wait."

  "If you don't go, you'll have even less time, because you and I will have twenty-seven stalls to muck out. Which, strictly speaking, is not in my contract at all."

  I stare at him in horror.

  "I'll go," I say finally.

  "Good. But first, we turn the horses out. You get started," he says, rising from the couch. He moves behind my desk with elegant ease and sits in my chair. "I will call and cancel the lessons," he says.

  Oh dear God. We bring in a hundred and fifty dollars an hour for private lessons, more for groups. We can't possibly afford to cancel our lessons, not even for a day.

  I wonder if I should just burn the barn down now, and make a proper job of it.

  When we are finished turning out the horses, I am miserable and dirty and have a taste of what life will be like if the guys don't come back
. It's not pretty.

  Leading horses out doesn't sound like terribly hard work. But with just the two of us, and with the gates to some of the pastures a good two hundred yards away, taking out thirteen horses apiece starts to feel like work. I end up running beside them, goading them into a trot. I even consider the practice I forced Luis to give up--leading two horses at a time, one on either side.

  Afterward, I return to the stable because I have to get the addresses of the Hernandez/Santa Cruz/Gutierrez residences. When I turn the corner, I see Jean-Claude sliding the bolt on Hurrah's stall.

  "No! Don't!" I say. He stops and looks at me. I can see that I spoke too quickly, too hard. "I'm leaving him in today," I continue, sliding my hands into my pockets and trying to look casual.

  He continues to stare. "Why?"

  "I just am, all right?"

  So I sound irritable. That's okay. He probably thinks it's because there are twenty-seven dirty stalls to clean. And let's be honest--that's not doing anything to improve my mood.

  On my way to the Hernandez/Santa Cruz/Gutierrez houses, I practice my speech. Which is all very well, except that I've never been very good with directions and I can't find the street.

  I'm in the right neighborhood, which makes it all the more frustrating. But I can't seem to pick out the street signs--some of them are obscured by overgrown trees, some of them are actually missing--and none of the streets seems to go in a straight line. Thirty-five minutes later, when I pass one particularly horrible cracked-concrete shoe box of a house for the fourth time, I burst into tears. I pull over to the gravel shoulder, and dig through my purse for my cell phone, which I don't find. When I look up, I see three men approaching the van. All of them are wearing dirty white undershirts. All of them are Mexican.

  Next thing I know, I'm peeling out of there as though my life depended on it, shooting gravel behind me and hearing the screech of my tires as they regain the concrete.

  When I get back to the stable, Jean-Claude is crossing the parking lot with a wheelbarrow of hay. He sets it down and comes up to the open window of the van. He leans one hand against the door, and puts the other on his hip.

  "What happened?" he asks.

  "I got lost."

  "How?"

  "What do you mean, how? The roads are like snakes. Have you ever seen the area?"

  "Yes, I have."

  I look at my lap, feeling chastised.

  "I'll draw you a map," he says.

  "I don't want to go back. You go."

  "No," he says firmly. "Absolutely not."

  "But why?" I plead. "You know the area. You know the guys."

  "Yes, and you're the one who fired Luis."

  "Exactly!" I leap on this. "So they'd probably have a bad reaction to me. But you, you chum around with them, don't you? You were at that birthday party, weren't you?"

  He stares at me accusingly.

  "Please, Jean-Claude, please will you go?" I drop my head and look up at him from under heavy-lashed lids, doing my best to look like Princess Diana, although with my earlier emergency hair rinsing, I realize this is probably overly ambitious.

  Jean-Claude sighs. "Honestly. Women." He puts his hands on his hips and stares at the outdoor arena.

  I wait. Eventually he turns back.

  "All right. Fine," he says, opening the door of the van. "I'll go. But you keep mucking out while I'm gone."

  I nod gratefully, but as soon as he drives off, I slip back up to my office, because for all I know, this could be my last chance today to find somewhere else to board Hurrah.

  Before I start looking at the classifieds, I call Dan. The phone rings a dozen times. Just as I'm about to give up, he finally answers.

  "Dan?"

  There's a pause. "Annemarie." His voice is cool, distant.

  "Do you have a minute?"

  "Actually, I'm kind of busy."

  "Oh, Dan, please don't be like that. I really need to talk to you."

  There's a rustling at the other end of the line followed by silence.

  "Dan--"

  "I have the farrier here. I'll call you later."

  There's a click followed by a dial tone, and I'm left staring stupidly at the receiver.

  An hour later, I hear Jean-Claude's footsteps on the stairs. I refold the classifieds quickly, and rise guiltily from my chair.

  "Did you see them?" I blurt.

  Jean-Claude leans against the doorway and nods. I can tell from his expression that it's not good.

  "So what did they say?"

  "They are angry about Luis."

  "So they just quit?" I'm on the verge of hysteria.

  "There was also the question of their paychecks."

  "What about them?"

  "Apparently they bounced."

  "Oh God." I walk over to the wall and lay my forehead against it. Then I lift my head and drop it against the wall. Then again. And again.

  "They will return, but only if Luis can come back too, and not until you come up with their pay."

  "I'll find the money. But Luis can't come back."

  "They are adamant."

  "Why?"

  "If he doesn't work next month, he won't be able to go to school in the fall."

  "School?"

  "New England College."

  I blink at him, dumbfounded.

  "You are surprised?"

  "Yes. Of course. How was I supposed to know he was going to college?"

  "Tell me, have you ever actually spoken to the boy?"

  I purse my lips.

  Jean-Claude continues. "Luis is very sharp, very smart. He's got a scholarship for tuition and books, but the rest he needs to come up with on his own. His parents are still in Mexico. They cannot help him."

  I feel the comparison coming and I fight it--I shut my mental eyes and stick my fingers in my ears--but it's no use.

  I am such an idiot. More than that--I'm a horrible human being. Luis was never a threat to Eva. Not only is he moving to Henniker in the fall--and surely I could have prevented them from pawing each other too seriously for four more weeks--but all my other objections to him have vaporized, too.

  Here is a kid who is making it on his own in a strange country without his parents and has gained a scholarship to go to college. And then there's my kid, who gets everything handed to her, and what does she do? She gets her tongue pierced, gets a tattoo, and drops out of school. And who, exactly, is the bad influence here?

  I am strangely close to tears, and think back to my ignominious retreat from Luis's neighborhood a little more than an hour earlier.

  I am guilty of exactly what Eva said I was. I judged Luis--and everybody in his neighborhood--entirely on my own expectations.

  As I follow Jean-Claude down the stairs, it occurs to me that unless I can find a way of getting Hurrah out of here without Jean-Claude seeing, the jig's going to be up in just a few minutes.

  We muck out one, two, then three stalls, slowly working our way toward Hurrah. By the time we're in the stall next to his, I've chewed my lips raw.

  Then, miraculously, Jean-Claude excuses himself to go to the washroom. As soon as I hear the lock click, I rush to Hurrah, throw open his stall, and yank on his halter.

  "Come on, come on!" I hiss in a loud whisper, clicking my tongue and fumbling with the lead rope. He lumbers into the aisle. He looks confused, sleepy even. I continue pulling and clicking until he breaks into a grudging trot.

  On my way back from the field, I realize how crazy this is. It's conceivable that I've hidden what I've done for this morning, but it's all over as soon as we bring the horses back in. Earlier, if Jean-Claude notices that Hurrah is missing from the herd. Or that there's a new horse, an unidentified one-eyed liver chestnut, running with the geldings.

  When I return to the stable, Jean-Claude is standing in the doorway of Hurrah's stall. He dumps a load of manure into a muck bucket, and then leans against the shovel.

  "Changed your mind?"

  "Yup," I say.

>   He stares at me with something approaching suspicion.

  Cowed, I reach for the other shovel and disappear inside a stall.

  It takes almost three hours, and that's with every labor-saving device known to man. We drive the wagon down the aisle so we won't have to haul buckets of dense heavy manure out to the yard. Then we throw the bags of shavings--the damned, damned, bags of shavings!--into the stalls, returning with knives to slash them open and empty their contents. We dump the water buckets into the wheelbarrows so we won't have to carry them outside individually, and then refill them by dragging the hose into the stalls. And then finally, we fill two dry wheelbarrows full of feed--Jean-Claude's with Complete, mine with Senior--and push them up the aisle, scooping the appropriate amount into each horse's feed bucket.

  At the end of it, my back, arms, and shoulders are killing me. I am filthy. My hair is matted, because it dried before I could get to a brush. My clothes have manure stains on them, and my shorts are soaking because I sloshed water on them while emptying buckets.

  "Well," says Jean-Claude, wiping his hands on his jeans. "Damn."

  "Damn indeed," I reply.

  He looks at his watch. "In two hours, we have to bring them back in."

  "Unless it starts to rain."

  "Uh-uh!" he says, shaking his head and waggling his finger. "Do not tempt the fates."

  But it is too late. The roof starts to clatter with the sound of rain, a sudden and violent onslaught.

  Jean-Claude and I stare at each other in horror. Mine is deeper than his, but only I know that. I am thinking of the dye, and wondering whether it will hold.

  "Well," Jean-Claude says, pulling his moustache. "I say we leave them out unless there is lightning."

  "Ditto," I say quickly.

  He stands staring at me, hands on his hips.

  "So," he says.

  "So," I say back.

  "You will arrange something today, yes?"

  A moment of panic; he knows about Hurrah. Then I realize he's talking about the stable hands.

  "Yes, absolutely. Today. I'll talk to the bank manager and we can take them cash tomorrow."

  "We?"

  "Well, you know how to get there and I don't."

  He narrows his eyes.

  "I have no sense of direction," I continue. "Oh come on, Jean-Claude. You do want them to come back, don't you?" It's a lame attempt at a joke, which he either misses or pretends to.

  "Oh, all right," he says, shaking his head. He turns and disappears down the aisle.