April Smith - Judas Horse

The Darcy part likes it that some oaf is looking at me. I hope he makes a move, just to see what it would be like. This never happens in normal life, when I am Special Agent Ana Grey. Even on a weekend, even at a car wash, looking like everybody else in a tank top and shorts, my first reaction to a guy staring is, What are you up to? Not exactly a turn-on.

Megan: “What do I owe you, Rusty?”

“No worries. I’ll just run a tab.” To me: “What’re you doing here, girlfriend?” “I must have read the guidebook wrong,” I say, flirting.

Rusty grins. “Don’t fret. We get a lot of nice folks stopping in après the market. Megan has a booth there. She’s a regular. Guess what she’s sellin’?” Megan carries the drinks away. “Nothin’ you’ll ever afford.” “She sells homemade hazelnut brittle!” Rusty shouts. “She’s a nut.” He winks. “Lives on a nut farm, along with some goats and about a hundred cats and dogs. Got a whole thing going where she rescues animals.” “She’s an animal lover?” My head swivels back toward the woman, who is now sitting at a table with the man who ordered the Salty Dog.

“Who is she with?”

“That’s the boyfriend. His name is Julius Emerson Phelps.” Broad-shouldered, six three, hard-built but with enough gut to put him over two hundred pounds. It would be difficult to pinpoint his age. Young girls would find the implication of sexual mastery in his craggy smile and wish for his attention, while men of my grandfather’s generation would resent having to relinquish their grip on the world to a male who still looks young. I make him for a middle-aged farmer with a ponytail; he must be some type of an agro guy, because there’s a flying ear of corn on his cap.

Above the rows of liquor bottles, in a mirrored sign for Becks, I watch Megan Tewksbury drape a possessive arm over Julius’s shoulders. They are talking cheek-to-cheek without really looking at each other, eyes scanning the room. I am surprised to see myself in the mirror — looking happy. My cheeks are flushed from the heat and noise and sexual signals snap-popping off the crowd. I’m feeling all warmed up, looking for a friend. Someone local, who would be a way into the community. Megan? Approachable?

Not while they’re nuzzling. I nip at the mug and observe. The beer is cold, and after a while I realize that it has been going down nicely with the wigged-out nasty metal guitar band coming from the jukebox.

The mirror shows it is Julius Emerson Phelps who has changed the music. He is holding on to both sides of the machine, bent over the glass as if in a trance. The heavy ridges of his face are colored blue by the jukebox lights, a handsome face that has gone to seed. He wears a worn-out denim shirt and blondish hair that, if unloosed, would fall below the shoulders. But here’s what really dates him: an improbable pair of frayed red suspenders only old hippies can pull off.

I choose to steal what you choose to show

And you know I will not apologize

“Anybody know what that is?” I ask in general.

“‘Career of Evil,’” rasps Mr. Terminate, like he’s still got pieces of ashtray stuck in his throat. “Blue Oyster Cult.” “Weren’t they big in the seventies?”

But Mr. Terminate goes stone-cold silent.

I slide off the stool and meander to the jukebox.

“Blue Oyster Cult,” I say. “Weren’t they big in the seventies?” Julius’s eyes are slow coming out of the trance.

“You are way too young to know about Blue Oyster Cult.” “That’s the only song of theirs I recognize.” I smile truthfully.

He straightens up. There’s a silver loop in one ear. I like earrings on men. I like the kind of face that knows you’re looking at it.

He indicates the lighted selections. “One song left. You pick.” “Jackson Browne.”

He approves. I move closer, so now we’re peering over the titles together. The heat of the machine jumps up.

“I like your friend, Megan.”

“Good lady.”

“You come here after the market?”

“She sells her hazelnut brittle. I grow ’em, she sells ’em.” “I just moved to Portland. I haven’t been to the market, but I hear it’s awesome.” “You should go,” Julius says.

We listen to the piano riff at the opening of “Fountain of Sorrow.” The mood shifts, low-key and melancholy.

“Why do you have a flying corn on your hat?”

Reflexively, as if to be sure it’s there, Julius touches the red-and-green ear of corn with wings that adorns the cap.

“DeKalb,” he explains.

“What’s DeKalb?”

“DeKalb, Ohio. Corn-seed capital of the world.”

“What does corn seed have to do with hazelnuts?”

“I was born there,” the big man tells me. “Picked corn when I was in high school, lying on my back on this very uncomfortable contraption, a mattress they put on wheels—” Megan is on her way. She’s had enough of us talking. She slips two fingers in the waistband of Julius’s jeans, sliding him close.

“I was just telling this young lady about Ohio.”

“Is he boring you with his life story?” she asks.

“Yes,” replies Julius, glad for the intrusion.

“Your friend, Rusty, at the bar, he was saying that you rescue animals? At the hazelnut farm?” Julius’s attention snaps back. “Rusty said that?”

“Why not?” says Megan. “It’s true.”

“I’m a total animal person,” I say, boasting. “I once got arrested for getting into a fight with a dude at a shelter who euthanized this cat I was going to adopt. Because I was fifteen minutes late.” “That’s awful. Where are you from, Darcy?” Megan asks kindly.

“Southern California. Don’t ask.”

“Heat, traffic, smog?”

“And the most repressive attitude toward animal rights. We have to fight for every soul.” “Are you in the movement?” she asks.

“I show up. Done a lot of cat and dog adoptions. Can I come to the farm and see your operation, maybe help?” Megan hesitates. “We don’t encourage visitors. It upsets the animals.” “But don’t you want to adopt them out?”

“Once we get ’em, we keep ’em. We’re not open to the public,” Julius says abruptly, and downs a beer.

Regroup.

“I’ve been reading in the Oregonian about the wild mustangs,” I say barreling on. “I think it’s terrible what the government is doing to them.” “Infuriating,” Megan agrees.

“Ever heard of FAN?”

“Are you a member of FAN?” she whispers conspiratorially.

“Me?” I strike my heart with surprise. “No, are you?” “No,” she says slowly. “But I don’t condemn what they do. Especially concerning Herbert Laumann,” she adds bitterly.

My stomach goes whoa! Angelo’s intel just paid off.

“The deputy state director of the BLM? What’s he up to now?” “Killing horses.”

“They can’t be killed; it’s the law.”

“He steals them.”

“Steals them?”

“He’s been stealing the horses he’s supposed to protect. Since he’s been deputy director, Herbert Laumann has supposedly adopted one hundred and thirty-five mustangs.” “What?”

“This is a guy who lives in the suburbs.” Megan nods, disbelieving. “Where is he going to put a hundred and thirty-five horses?” “The man’s a scumbag,” Julius says, scanning over people’s heads. Waiting for someone?

“Know what he’s been doing?”

I shake my head. My eyes are wide.

Megan’s voice is rising. “Government employees aren’t allowed to bid on the mustangs that are up for auction. So Laumann adopts them illegally under his relatives’ names.” Her cheeks are pink. “Then he sells them to a slaughterhouse in Illinois, where the horse meat is packed and shipped for human consumption in France.” “They eat horses, don’t they?” comments Julius, not taking his eyes from the crowd.