Show Barn Blues Read online

  “It would be a hell of commute,” I commented, squinting at the temporary signs flapping in the breeze, looking for the field set aside for parking trailers.

  “Oh, I know. I’d have to be able to telecommute and move if I ever wanted to board someplace like this.” Colleen chuckled. “But you can see why people who really want to ride all the time move out to the middle of nowhere. This is heavenly.”

  I decided she didn’t mean any harm and concentrated on parking my rig at the end of a row of gleaming horse trailers.

  We unloaded the eight horses in the close-cropped grass, brassy with the summer sun — six boarders, plus Ivor and Hope. Add their two tests each to all the coaching and hand-holding I had to do today and I was looking at one exhausting Saturday.

  Trail rides, I thought, sounded positively heavenly right about now.

  “Let’s get going,” I told Anna. “You support the left side and I’ll support the right side. Help them tack up, comb out tails… you know the drill.”

  Anna grinned. “We’ll get them out there just fine,” she said with a wink. “All our kids will do great today.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Anna was right; all our kids did great.

  Tired and happy, we were gathered in the barn to hang up the day’s ribbons. It was a cool evening, a hint of fall in the breeze at last, refreshing after the heat of the day and the worry and the frazzled nerves of a horse show day.

  I called it a success, despite the summer-like day. No one had gotten hurt and no one had run away and no one had cried (very much) and no one had gotten food poisoning from the roach coach parked by the show secretary’s tent, so I was willing to overlook a hot day in October as our show season opener. It would get cooler as the days went by, and we’d started the year on a good note. A successful beginning to the show season was all a trainer could ask.

  The hanging of the ribbons was the last thing we did together, a barn tradition, after the horses had been fed and turned out for the night, after the trailer had been cleaned and put away, after the tack had been wiped and the saddle pads put in the laundry and the grooming kits returned to their shelves and the food wrappers and soda cans and napkins had been pulled from the truck cab and tossed in the trash. It was always late and we were always tired beyond the point of caring by the time we got to the ribbons, but the simple act of smoothing the cheap satin and hanging the shimmering prizes along a length of baling twine hung between two stall bars was a calming, refreshing exercise. It gave meaning to the day; it reminded us of our triumphs, whether it was the first time at a new level or the first time winning a championship.

  This first show was especially important — these ribbons were a sign of the season to come.

  Usually, I felt a jolt of excitement at this point in the day. In show seasons past, I’d been revved up, ready to go, anxious for the big festivals to kick into gear. This year, I just felt a quiet resignation, coupled with an underlying suspicion that I was thoroughly exhausted, mentally and physically. I didn’t have to look at the big calendar hanging in the tack room, show dates picked out in red pen, to feel a very real longing for my bed. I wasn’t going to see much of it in the next few months. Somehow, my lack of quality sleep felt like a more tiring prospect than it had in years past.

  Oh, I supposed that was a normal response. I was getting old, that was all. Every year the show season got longer and harder, with more students, with bigger jumps, with more grueling days in the sun, but I just kept getting older and creakier. Grouchier, too. Just ask my students.

  Gayle fingered the blue ribbon I’d gotten for Ivor’s fourth level test, the long tails streaming over her smudged white breeches. “I’d love a blue,” she sighed wistfully.

  I nodded sympathetically. The fact was, Gayle’s Hanoverian mare, Maxine, was fully capable of getting a blue ribbon, especially in the First Level test that Gayle had shown her in today. A few half-circles, a few lengthenings of stride—Maxine could do that sort of stuff in her sleep.

  It was Gayle who wasn’t quite there yet, and might never be, if you looked at how little progress Gayle had made with her bouncing hands and broken-angled wrists. Maxine was a good girl, and carted her rider around without any apparent resentment about the beating her mouth took. I kept Maxine’s bridle fitted with a gentle eggbutt bit, to minimize any damage.

  “It’ll come,” I said reassuringly. It wasn’t a lie — nothing was impossible, and First Level wasn’t exactly rocket science. You just had to work at it. “You put in a really nice ride today. You’re definitely getting there.” And you’ll get there much faster once you actually memorize the test and stop turning your horse by shifting her entire head and neck with your upper body, I thought, but didn’t say aloud.

  “It’s just so stressful,” Gayle said. She rubbed at her eyes with dirty palms, leaving black streaks on her sweaty cheeks. “I couldn’t sleep last night. I couldn’t eat breakfast. I haven’t eaten all day! My husband is fed up with it. He wants to know what the point of spending all this money is, if it doesn’t make me happy. I don’t know what to tell him, you know? I tell him riding does make me happy and he says ‘this isn’t what happy looks like.’ And I’m just at a loss.”

  I looked from Gayle to the nodding heads around her, looking sympathetic and understanding and agreeing with her, and felt a tremor of genuine panic. Elizabeth put down her yellow ribbon, our best student showing of the day, with a gusty sigh of her own.

  “It’s so hard,” she lamented. “My son always says ‘I thought this was supposed to be fun’ when I’m stressing before a show. And he’s only thirteen!”

  “What we need is to relax,” Colleen announced, her tone defiant, as if I had forbidden relaxation. (Of course I hadn’t… not in so many words.) “We need to have some fun. I took Bailey on a trail ride last week, and it was great.”

  “Bailey wasn’t spooky?” I countered, because I knew better, and she blushed.

  “A little,” she admitted. “But he went anywhere Sailor went, and Kennedy said he was bouncing around so much because he was having fun.”

  Having fun trying to dump you in the dirt so he could run home as fast as his little legs could take him, I thought.

  “I love that horse Sailor,” Elizabeth sighed, voice dreamy. She was in full throes of a horse-crush. On a trail horse, when she had a thirty-thousand dollar European import parked two stalls down! “And Kennedy is just so chill and relaxed, just like him. They’re really fun.”

  “She invited me on a trail ride,” Gayle admitted. “But I was too afraid to skip a training session.” Gayle shook her head, looking back at the ribbon-less facade of Maxine’s stall. “Should’ve gone.”

  I was facing a full-fledged revolt here. It was time to act. Something fun… “Let’s play riding games on Tuesday,” I suggested. “Or… gymnastics. I’ll set up a big gymnastics course—bounces, one-strides, five or six or seven jumps in a row. It’ll freshen everyone up.”

  “I hate gymnastics,” Colleen said dismissively. That bold thing. I added her to my mental shit list, right next to Kennedy. “I’m going on another trail ride Tuesday, anyway. I already made plans. Kennedy found a tree with a bald eagle nest, out by the lake.”

  I sputtered my protestations, but it was too late — I had already lost control. Heads together, ribbons forgotten, the students plotted right through my reminders of upcoming shows, of fees paid, of points series and potential championships. They agreed to cancel lessons and previously scheduled training rides with cavalier wantonness, as if they had decided in some silent vote to remind their imperious trainer they were the boarders and students, yes, but they were also the owners — at the end of the day, those were their horses in my stalls and they would do whatever the hell they wanted with them.

  No matter what lofty plans and goals I had already set for them.

  I hung up my blue ribbons on my own horses’ stalls and stalked away to do night-check. Let them go out goofing around on the trails, I thought
furiously, glancing through the stall bars at one water bucket after another, turning the faucets on each wall to top off the buckets. I’d be here waiting when they had realized riding in the woods was about as rewarding as getting the oil changed in their car, and nothing felt as good as plain old hard work. I’d be here drawing up a new business plan that would insure I wasn’t so dependent on their silly whims. I’d be here when they were ready to get back to their previously scheduled hopes and dreams.

  Or when someone got hurt, whichever came first.

  Of course, I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. I didn’t even really want to tell any of my students “told you so” anyway. It wasn’t good for business. The prospect of growing my business was giving me enough worry, without alienating the clients I already had.

  Still, I had my chance to say those mocking words almost sooner than I could have predicted — on Tuesday after the show, in fact, when Bailey came back to the barn without a rider, wild-eyed and foamed with sweat. I was out in the covered arena on Hope, practicing gymnastics — well, at least I was enjoying the gymnastics course, even if my rebellious students were not. I had to pull Hope up abruptly, though, when I saw Bailey come crashing out of the woods. Hope nearly leapt out of his skin at the sight, and I dug my heels down deep, in case he was the next horse to go wild.

  Bailey went clattering across the parking lot, steel shoes skidding dangerously on the asphalt, and raced into the barn. I heard “whoa, whoa, whoa!” in Margaret’s deepest, most authoritative tones, and the racket came to a clattering stop, so I knew things were fine inside. I worked to steady Hope, who was having a minor heart attack over the proceedings, and watched the trail-head for any signs of Bailey’s trail-riding companions, human or horse. A moment or two passed, during which time I was starting to get the awful feeling I was going to have to ride this little dunderhead out there in search of them myself, when a plain nose appeared from the brush, followed by the head, neck, and body of Sailor the Perfect Quarter Horse, two riders wedged onto his short back.

  I kicked Hope, who really couldn’t seem to get his head down from giraffe level, through the grass between the arena and the barn, meeting Sailor and his riders as they came up to the barn. I reined back and allowed Hope to dance an excited jig beneath me, while Sailor came to a placid halt and watched Hope with mild disinterest. I wondered what had happened to that horse’s personality. If he’d ever had one, it had been buried beneath years and months and weeks of plodding along sandy trails looking at the same damn palmettos over and over again. Ideal for taking beginners on horseback, but not as interesting as I liked them.

  Colleen, meanwhile, was finding her horse was more interesting than she might have liked. She was clutching her wrist and blinking back tears as she slid cautiously from Sailor. Kennedy, following her to the ground, looked rather more shell-shocked — her expression was blank and her movements around her horse were oddly mechanical. I supposed she hadn’t expected her little Life Is Good revolution to end in carnage so quickly. She looked at me questioningly — for instructions, for a dressing-down, I didn’t know. I went for the former. “Go hose down your horse,” I said, and turned to Colleen for the story. Kennedy, I figured, could think about what she had done and apologize to me later.

  But Colleen wasn’t ready to recount her tale. She was too busy sniffling and looking down at her wrist. “I think it’s broken,” she gasped when I moved to touch her arm. “I landed on it first.”

  I winced. It was tough to ride with a broken wrist, not to mention how much more difficult it would make her “real” life, outside the barn — Colleen was a marketing manager at a fairly large firm, and I had a feeling she did a lot of typing and writing and signing of directives in that sort of position. I felt another surge of anger towards Kennedy — she was putting these naive ladies in danger in more ways than one, threatening their horses, their show careers, and their jobs.

  Colleen, however, was more than ready to blame herself. “I’m just so embarrassed,” Colleen whimpered. The words caught in her throat as she choked back a sob. “I shouldn’t have taken him out there. He didn’t like it — he kept telling me he didn’t feel safe, and I ignored him. And you told me too, and I thought I knew better than you…” her words trailed off as her eyes overflowed again.

  I put my hand on her shoulder — I knew exactly how she felt — and with my other hand pulled out my phone and called for an ambulance. This was intense, type-A, powerbroker Colleen, after all. If she was apologizing to me, she was probably going into shock.

  The ambulance pulled into the parking lot some time later, the EMTs within looking around rather curiously. I stepped into the lot and waved them towards the barn entrance. Just within, I had Colleen tucked into an Irish knit cooler and drinking water.

  “I had no idea there was still a horse farm out here,” the driver yelled, hopping out of the cab. “I did a double-take when I saw the call.”

  “I’m still here,” I replied drily. “Rumors of my demise exaggerated, that sort of thing.”

  The other EMT grinned and opened the back doors of the ambulance, rooting around for equipment.

  “You must get offered millions for this place,” the driver said companionably, as if he’d just swung by for the conversation.

  “Not millions.” I smiled tolerantly. “But I do get offers. People are always in a big hurry to build more houses.” I gave him a nod and went back into the barn, already sick of the topic. That was all anyone wanted to talk about anymore — developers, construction, selling the property. It wasn’t happening, but I was tired of having to repeat it.

  Colleen looked up. In her usually perfect skin, a crease was etched between her worried eyes. “Are they going to take me to the hospital? My husband isn’t here yet.”

  “I’ll call him and tell him where they take you,” I promised. “Gotta get you patched up and show-ready.”

  She smiled weakly. “I should have been practicing for the show today.”

  “I won’t hold it against you.” I grinned to show her I was joking and stood back to let the EMTs do their job.

  When the ambulance had gone, the husband phoned, and the horses cooled out, I expected everything to go back to business as usual. Margaret, Tom, and Anna finished up evening chores a little late and went their separate ways. By eight thirty, the boarders had dispersed. There was only one car left in the parking lot — Kennedy’s. I gazed at the car for a long moment, feeling a surge of resentment. That girl was giving me nothing but trouble, and now all I wanted to do was flip out the lights and head home for the night… but first I had to find her and send her on her way.

  I did a loop of the barn aisles and didn’t see her. I glanced in the tack rooms — nothing. I looked in Sailor’s stall, and he blinked at me from the corner, where he was working his way through a pile of hay. No Kennedy. I ended up back at the barn entrance, gazed up the aisle, and saw that my office light was on, shining brightly from the second floor.

  What the hell was she doing in my office?

  I charged up the narrow stairs, too angry to bother a stealth attack, and by the time I’d burst into the office she would have been well aware I was coming — those stairs groaned and creaked like a ship in a storm. There wasn’t any need for a surprise appearance, anyway. Kennedy hadn’t been going through my papers or doing anything shifty. She was just sitting in the chair meant for visitors, turned a little so that she could see the door, her face drawn and anxious.

  “What the hell, Kennedy?” I snapped, but my temper was already waning. She was afraid of me, but she hadn’t been able to sneak away without seeing what her punishment was going to be. I respected that, even if a braver person would have sought me out instead of hiding in the office and waiting to be found.

  “I’m sorry,” she burst out, sounding half-choked, as if she’d been trying not to cry. “Don’t kick me out. I have nowhere else to take Sailor.”

  “I’m not going to kick you out,” I said, although I ha
d been considering it. “Relax.”

  She looked up then, eyes round. “I thought for sure you would. Margaret said you would.”

  “Margaret’s a groom.” I shook my head dismissively. “You want to know something, come to me. Don’t ask my employees.”

  “Okay,” she said. And then: “Okay,” again, as if she was reassuring herself.

  “Go home, Kennedy. I’m tired. I want to be done with this day.”

  Kennedy got up and went past me onto the narrow landing, careful not to brush against me. She leaned against the railing, and after a minute, I joined her. Something was on this girl’s mind. I waited for her to share it.

  We looked out for a minute at the moon, setting in orange splendor over the distant trees beyond the county highway. If we stayed here long enough, and looked at the right spot to the south, we’d see a fireworks show. Another world, just minutes away, would be celebrating the night away while I poured a glass of wine and heated up a bag of frozen Chinese food. Kennedy looked in just that direction, as if she’d been here late enough to know what to look for.

  “The theme parks are down there,” she said after a minute.

  “Yup.” I pulled the office door closed.

  “It’s hard to believe they’ve built hotels all the way up here, isn’t it? I mean, when I was a kid, we’d come to Florida on trips and there was nothing out here… it was just farms. I remember seeing watermelons growing for the first time and I couldn’t believe it… I’d only ever seen them in a grocery store.”