Craig Johnson: Divorce Horse

He whistled and glanced at me. “Vic?”

I nodded but Cady answered. “His name is Michael.”

He folded his newly clean arms over his lean, horseman’s body. “He anything like her?”

She laughed. “No.” I watched her study him for a moment, and then ask: “I heard about you and Lisa. What happened?”

He ran his fingers through his hair, wet with sweat, the black of it shimmering blue in the half sun. “Oh, I don’t know. I guess I got so interested in the horses that she thought I wasn’t interested in her anymore.” He sighed. “We both got mad and said some things. . That’s when I got started on the Black Road with the drugs and stuff. I told her I wasn’t sure what it was I wanted. .” He gestured around the dirty infield at the blowing trash. “So here I am, and I guess this is what I wanted.” He swung his legs onto the dirt, pushed out of the chair, winced at the weight on his leg, and glanced at me, possibly unhappy that I was hearing all of it; then he hitched his thumbs in his loincloth. “I keep thinking that I’ll just call, but I made myself a promise that I wouldn’t bother her anymore after all that happened.”

We stood there for a moment, listening to the drumming and chanting echoing off the grandstand from the Fancy Dance competition, no one looking at Tommy, Tommy looking up at the first evening star.

I straightened my hat. “So, what’s the story on the div. . Um, on the horse?”

His face came back to life. “Oh, that horse. He’s got an adjustable lug on his left shoe, but if we’d had him in this last heat we would’ve won straight up.”

“What happened?”

He shook his head at the injustice. “We had ’em all tied to the back side of the horse trailer over here and when we went to go take ’em to the start, he was missing.”

I looked past Saizarbitoria at the two muggers, looking like embarrassed twin towers. I remembered one of their names. “Randy, you guys look for him in the infield?”

The giant answered. “Yeah, but he’s an escape artist, that one. The only one he really liked was Lisa-he’d follow her and nicker and toss his head. Only bit me.”

The other giant added. “He can untie knots like a sailor, but I had him clipped. We looked everywhere, but he’s not here.”

Tommy’s voice rose from behind me. “Somebody stole him. He’s not in the infield and there’s no way he would’ve crossed the track on his own.”

I glanced around the sizable infield-no trees, just dirt and prairie. “No way he could’ve pulled loose, jumped the railing, and joined in as the horses raced by?”

Jefferson shook his head. “The pickup riders would’ve gotten him. He was stolen, I tell ya.”

I glanced at Henry and watched as he walked between the two giants and rounded the horse trailer. Shrugging, I started after him, noticing my daughter’s hands behind her back, three fingers extended on one hand and three on the other: tied.

Ruthless.

I glanced at Saizarbitoria. “You can head back over to the grandstand, Sancho, but turn your radio up so you can hear it.”

I joined the Bear between the infield railing and the side of the trailer where the horses were tethered to a piece of rebar steel attached to the side just for that purpose. Two-year-olds, the horses were skittish, and moved away, stamping their hooves and showing us the whites of their eyes.

The Cheyenne Nation reached up and ran a hand over the nearest horse, a dark bay, nut brown with a black mane, black ear points and tail, who immediately settled with a sighing rush of air from his distended nostrils; the Bear had magic in his hands, and besides, the animal was probably happy to meet an Indian who wasn’t trying to catapult onto his back.

Henry stepped forward and then ducked under the halter leads attached to the bar. Some of the other horses backed away, and one tried to rear but was held down by the length of the rope strung through his halter. The Bear mumbled something and they settled. Magic, indeed.

At the ends of the leads were the metal snaps that could only be manipulated by an opposing thumb, and I didn’t see a lot of those around on that side of the trailer.

At the other side of the horses, Henry kneeled and placed his fingertips in the impacted dirt. I felt like I always did whenever I followed his intuitive skills. The Bear was a part of everything that went on around him in a way that I could only witness. He had described scenarios to me so clearly from the remnants of events that I would have sworn that I’d been there. Crouching behind the trailer and looking at the hitching bar, he sighed. “ If they had him clipped to the end of the bar-somebody took him.”

“Where?”

His dark eyes shifted as he stood, and he walked past the rear of the trailer to run his hand along the inside railing, finally stopping and lifting the top loose. He stared at the ground. “Here, the horse was led through here.”

I joined him and looked past the dimpled, poached surface of the track at a forgotten gate leading to a fairground building that hadn’t been used since the renovation of the place back in the eighties. “Across the track and through there-toward the old paddocks.”

We stepped through the gate, walked across the track, and opened the top rung of a rail that you’d never have noticed unless you were looking for it. The Bear paused at the end of the walkway that stretched a good hundred yards, the darkness permeated by the rectangular light shining through the windows of the old barn in staccato. “Which do you think will get us first, the black widows or the field mice?”

The place looked its age, deserted, and as if it might collapse at any time, the peeling white paint scaling from the untreated lumber like parchment in abandoned books. “Termites would be my bet.”

In the powdery dirt you could see where a horse with an adjustable screw attachment had been walked through. I kneeled this time and studied the boot prints that ran alongside the pony tracks, smallish and worn down on the heels.

“Female, or a very small man.”

We were away from the road and parking lots, which would make it difficult to load an animal and whisk it away. That was the beauty of horse stealing, though-you could always ride your stolen property. Of course, that might be difficult to do with a headstrong, half-broke two-year-old that bites. “Did you see how those horses fought the muggers in front of the grandstand?”

“Yes.”

“And this horse is the worst of the bunch.”

“Yes.” He smiled, having the same thought.

We got back to the infield, rounded the trailer, and found Team New Grass and my daughter where we had left them. The muggers were still attending the horses, getting them ready for the next race, while Tommy and Cady sat talking under the tent.

Tommy looked at me, and I had to admit that the Big Horn County Jail dentist had done a wonderful job on his teeth. “So, what do I do? Come into the office and fill out some paperwork?”

I pulled up short, took off my hat, and wiped the sweat from my forehead with my shirtsleeve. “Your horse is in the abandoned paddocks across the track in stall number thirty-three.”

He looked past my shoulder toward the condemned buildings. “Over there?”

“Yep.”

“How the hell did he get over there?”

“No idea.”

“How come you didn’t bring him back?”

I shook my head. “He wouldn’t let me anywhere near him, but we got him blocked off in the stall.”

He stood and glanced at the wristwatch on his arm, which looked incongruous in the middle of the war paint. “If we hurry we can get him in this next race.” He looked down at Cady and took her hand. “I gotta go, but good luck with your marriage.” He smiled with the new teeth and held her hands long enough for her to know that he meant what he said next. “There’s no way you’ll screw it up like I did.”