Darlene Scalera - Born Of The Bluegrass

He looked at her. Her beauty was quiet. A man wouldn’t see it at the first glance nor probably the second, but if he was wise enough to look a third time as Reid did now, he would wonder how he’d missed it before. “Who?” he asked.

“The boy.” She looked away from him as she spoke, busied herself removing the saddle. The horse swung his head toward him.

“Sleeping I hope, but that’s a long shot. Odds are he’s already up, pestering his grandmother for a Moon Pie.”

“A Moon Pie?” The groom paused, the horse’s tack in her arms. “In the morning?”

Reid stepped forward and took the tack from her with such a natural movement, she didn’t object until it was no longer in her hands. He ignored her protests, hoisting the tack higher and marveling at the small woman’s strength. “His favorite breakfast. I don’t doubt he gets it now and again when I’m safely out of sight. My mother spoils him rotten.”

As he turned from the tack stand, he saw the girl’s lips curve and knew he’d put her at ease. She had a lovely full-lipped smile. He smiled back at her. “How long have you groomed for this outfit?”

“Almost two years.”

He nodded toward the horse. “You took care of him when he fractured his pelvis?”

“And when he had the lung infection, the colic.” Her smile disappeared, leaving a sudden maturity in her face far beyond her years.

“No wonder he trusts you. You’ve stuck by him.”

“He’s just had a bit of bad luck is all.” The colt shuffled. She caressed the animal’s neck in silent communication. “That doesn’t mean you abandon him.”

A cloud came across the woman’s features and her eyes darkened to the green of May. She turned, led the horse to a waiting pail of soapy water.

“Loyalty. I like that.” Reid thought of the innuendo following his brother’s death and Aztec Treasure’s fatal injury. The investigation had eventually ruled the incident an accident, but most said that was only because there was no evidence to prove otherwise. Reid still heard the whispers when he walked into a room.

“Obviously so does he,” Reid noted as the horse rested his nose on the woman’s shoulder.

The woman didn’t look at him as she began the colt’s bath. Reid sensed he had made her uncomfortable again. He should go, let her do her work. Still he stood, watching her slip the sponge rhythmically across withers to loins, the steam rising from the colt’s flanks.

“You just have to pay him a little attention now and then. Everybody is too quick to forget who he is.” She rinsed the horse. “But he knows exactly who he is.”

She finished putting on the cold-water bandages and blanketed the colt. “A winner,” she said quietly as she watched the horse being led away by a hot walker. She looked directly at Reid. “It’s his meanness they talk about but it’s his heart they’ll remember.”

Reid saw in her expression she loved the animal as only grooms could—with the bonds of a mother to a child. He understood. He himself was drawn to the colt. He looked at the horse being hand-walked and knew there was something that colt could give him. A dream.

He turned back to the woman. The sensation remained as if she, too, had the answers to endless questions. The sense of familiarity returned, stronger this time, obviously fostered by their shared fondness for the horse being led around and around the walking ring.

The groom glanced up and saw his study. She busied herself cleaning up, uncomfortable once more. He should go. His own reluctance surprised him. He picked up the pail for her. Her hand shot out, grabbed the pail’s handle.

“Thank you.” She squared her feet, made her stance firm but he saw from her inability to hold his gaze, she was ill at ease. He let go of the bucket.

“Goodbye…” Funny he should feel such an intimacy, yet he didn’t even know her name.

“Goodbye.” She set the pail down and squatted, pretending to tighten her shoelaces. Out of the corners of her eyes, she watched him walk away. She thought about the boy. She wouldn’t let herself think about the man, the way even now her breath came hot and thick. She could only think about the boy. Nothing else.

Saratoga’s closing day was next Monday, Labor Day. Many of the outfits were packing up this weekend, moving on to Belmont Park, then south for the winter. Dani was going south, too, but not with Solstice and the Fox Run team. She was going home to Kentucky and the Keeneland Racecourse, only fields away from Hamilton Hills. She hadn’t told anyone. She had to tell the colt first. The horse already knew something was changing. He’d been edgy, walking the stall more, dancing with a jump in the air on his front legs and two or three head tosses. She had to tell him today.

She saw the walker leading the animal back, a look in the horse’s eye as if he were listening to something far away, something humans could never hear or see. She took the lead line, murmured, “There, now,” heard the tenderness in her voice.

She led him into his freshly-bedded stall, he always seeming too big for his box. The late summer light found the straw and turned it blond. She picked up the hard brush and the currycomb, and as she rubbed, she explained everything in a low voice that now held a clef of sadness. She found the soft brush and began to alternate a hard stroke with a soft one, the rhythm matching her murmurs of hope and fear, and her hands dully cramping.

She crouched to the side, running her hand down the front of the legs, feeling for the heat or swelling that signaled hurting. “Staying away isn’t a choice, you see. In fact, there is no choice. All right, yes, some will say there’s always a choice, and in my head, I know that.”

She rubbed the legs with a mix of alcohol and liniment. “But in my heart, there is no choice. I have to go. Or it will be like giving him up all over again.” She wrapped the legs with clean white cotton from the ankle to just below the knee and then wrapped them again with flannel, careful they were tight enough to stay but not too tight to cause the legs to fill with fluid. “I’m only going to be nearby, you see. Not close enough to cause any trouble but close enough to get a glimpse or two, watch him grow. God, you should see him. Maybe you did. Yesterday. Right here at the barns. Yesterday. I held him in my arms.”

She fell silent so the shake in her hands would stop, and she could fasten the last steel pin.

She straightened, unfastened the tethered horse, removed his halter. “I have to go, Solstice. He’s my child, you see.”

She turned, bent to move the feed tub, when she felt a breath along the left curve of her neck and then, the sharp edges of teeth closing around her ear. She didn’t move. Neither did the horse. A slight bearing down and her ear would be his. A long second went by. The pressure along her flesh stayed the same, not hard enough to cut the flesh but tight enough to hold on. Another second passed. She heard the scratching of another groom raking outside. She stood with the perfect stillness that had bonded her to this horse. As soon as they’d met, she’d recognized the animal’s need for a space to call on and always find calm. After that, when he had come to her and butted her shoulder or nipped the thin cotton cloth on her back, she’d stood absolutely still, giving him one area of quiet in a noisy, confusing world.

She calmly waited, not touching him, not moving. Several minutes passed. Solstice’s mouth opened and his moist grip released her. She straightened, standing a little off to his side. His head turned to her. His eyes, like all horses, set wide so that even when he looked at her, he always seemed to be looking past her. Except this time. She stared at that animal, and he stared back at her without mistake. She saw the white and black of his eyes and within them, a look that seemed to say, “I was listening.” Like she had done when she’d first come and had listened and heard too much noise inside him.