Xavier Lysiak rearranged the papers on his writing table. Today he planned to polish his dissertation, his ticket to a terminal degree and a teaching career.
Now his cell phone rang, and he read the caller ID.
“I’m handling a tragic mess at Dotty’s place,” his boss Rory said. “I need your muscles, such as they are.”
“I’m busy.”
“Get your butt on over here, Perfessor. Two horses are on the ground. Bring the gun in case we got to put them down.”
This was Xavier’s second year living in Rory’s A-frame. He had answered an online ad for a salaried caretaker to watch over Rory’s woods in the country. “I need a caretaker, so sneak thieves don’t go logging my woods,” Rory explained, “It don’t pay much, but the rent is free.”
After Xavier’s wife miscarried and died while he was in Africa observing the parenting behaviors of Barbary macaques, he sold their condo to cover her funeral and medical bills. He now regretted leaving pregnant Abigail to get additional field data. Haunting him yet was the accusing voice of Abby’s mother when she reached him in Morocco with the sad news. “You cared more for those monkeys than you did your own wife,” she said, warning him not to show up at the funeral.
Rory, a powerful man with eyebrows like centipedes, promised to make the cabin habitable. Although half of his left hand had been severed in an accident, Rory earned a tolerable living as a carpenter, mechanic and welder. His pinch-faced wife Nadia stocked shelves at the local discount store and scolded him when he overspent her salary on Marlboros and booze.
When Xavier moved in, he found Rory had patched the A-frame’s roof, replaced rotted floorboards, and hauled away Nadia’s trash. An outhouse had collapsed long ago, but Rory found him a camping toilet.
“There’s no bath, but you can clean up at my house,” Rory said.
The landlord issued Xavier an oiled ex-military service pistol and a box of ammunition. “If a timber rustler shows up, fire a shot and he’ll leave pronto.”
Rory seemed a perpetual energy bomb who relished action. No one gave orders to Xavier’s boss. Not his nervous wife, his aimless son, and especially not a threadbare scholar without mechanical skills.
One day Xavier’s car broke down in the university parking lot. He called Rory who changed the clutch on the spot. Xavier handed him the requested tools and parts.
“You’re a genius,” Xavier said when his old Toyota ran again.
“Just a shade-tree mechanic,” shrugged Rory.
Rory’s generosity came at a price. The landlord bored Xavier with his boasts and tall tales while they swilled potato vodka. Rory had sulked after Xavier turned down his invitation to sample Nadia’s Midwestern chili with noodles. “You think your crap don’t stink?” Rory had roared, spittle flying. “Well, it does.”
Xavier parked his sputtering hatchback in front of Dotty’s sagging farmhouse. A gutter flopped from the rusted metal roof, slapping the faded asbestos siding. A thunderhead like a noose matched his mood. Each week Xavier dropped by Dotty’s place to buy blue eggs three for a dollar.
One time Xavier arrived while Dotty transferred eggs from a bowl into cartons.
“How come your eggs are blue instead of white or brown?”
“It depends on the breed,” Dotty said, holding a single egg up toward the sun.
“Must be some pigment causing that.”
“I special ordered my chickens from Chile.”
A washing machine on the concrete porch slab quivered. Rory had just put in a new motor. Dotty’s husband had been Rory’s fishing buddy until Sam had a snootful and buried his Dodge Ram in the grille of a logging truck. His death accustomed her to the inevitability of catastrophe.
Xavier rapped the knocker on the tattered screen door.
Dotty, a slim-hipped woman in thrift-store designer jeans, answered his knock.
“Rory is waiting for you at the ravine.” She swept a shock of dyed blonde hair out of her eyes. Her calm demeanor surprised Xavier after Rory’s agitated call.
The wind picked up as Xavier walked past a heated henhouse. He sidestepped a goose that threatened him. The gander belonged to Dotty’s ever-changing menagerie. Village gossip said she bought exotic fowl with money lonely men paid her for comforting them. At one time or another, her henhouse held clown-lipped Madagascar guinea hens, white-hackle gamecocks, and ducks with bills of preposterous dimensions. Predators, logging trucks, blizzards, floods and grass fires claimed each one eventually. Only the hardiest fowl lived long in these hills.
Xavier pulled his seaman’s cap tight over his ears as he passed Rory’s pickup truck. The rear passenger fender bore a dent, a souvenir of the owner’s last binge. “Welcome to Indiana, the Tick Fever Capital,” a bumper sticker said.
Xavier entered the ravine and found it flanked by a stand of scraggly trees. Rory squatted like a cowboy against the fangs of a cold wind. A white brood mare lay at his feet. Tara grunted like a bullhead out of water. Her repeated kicks against the metal moldboard of a rusted ploughshare destroyed her hooves. Half-digested silage matted her winter’s coat. Her yellowed teeth jutted outward like gravestones.
“What’s wrong with her?” Xavier asked. “Is it colic?”
Rory squinted. “Around these parts we call it `the bloat.’”
“Fatal?”
“Some unblock, some never do.”
Rory picked up a beer can from the ground. His Adam’s apple rose and fell as he sipped.
“Did you call a vet?” Xavier took out his cell phone.
“On a Sunday?” Rory gave a derisive snort. “You got that kind of money?”
“It’s Sunday?” Xavier pocketed the phone. “Just another writing day for me.”
Xavier squatted on his hams. He leaned to one side, jamming fingertips into the ground to keep from toppling. He stroked Tara’s soiled head and mane. The foul odor made him gasp. “Terrible for an Arabian to end up like this.”
Rory drained the beer, crumpled the can, and tossed it across the ravine. “She’s not Arabian.”
“Dotty told me so.”
“You like visiting her?” Rory looked him over.
“Not for that.” Xavier protested. “For her eggs.”
“The guy that sold them lied about the pedigree.”
“Didn’t she ask for papers?”
“Asking ain’t getting.”
“Any idea what caused all this, Rory?”
“Might be Tara gobbled moldy feed.”
“Dotty probably traded a trick for cheap hay.”
Rory stood, knees crackling like twigs breaking, and took Xavier’s measure. “Until you pay some dues you shouldn’t so much as badmouth the weather.”
“If you say so.”
“I say so,” snapped Rory. “Tara’s colt also is down. We’ll leave her here for a bit and see about him.”
“Just walk away?” Xavier said.
“She deserves every last chance,” Rory said. “I’ve seen a horse rebound a time or two,”
The two men approached a barn behind the farmhouse. The meadow behind the barn contained the husks of rusted vehicles and farm equipment. A white goose rushed up to Xavier, flapping its wings and grumbling.
Rory intercepted the goose and delivered a vicious kick. It hissed and retreated.
“I hope you didn’t hurt it,” Xavier said.
“Maybe you should get a job with PETA.”
Rory’s son Butch, a big boy in his early teens, sat with his back braced against the rear of a stall. A water bottle lay under the belly of Tara’s fallen colt. Xavier winced as he witnessed the colt’s deformed, overgrown hooves. The colt’s ribs resembled the frame of a ship. Both flanks bore chew marks from the eruption in his belly. Excrement fouled his sorrel coat. A slack rope around the colt’s midsection connected to a beam overhead by a block-and-tackle rig.
“I heard you show up, Xavier,” Butch said. “Your old car is dieseling, right?”
“It’s idling rough, yes.”
“Another job for Super Rory?” Butch asked, giggling.
“I suppose.” Xavier’s face burned.
“That’s the only time I ever hear from you,” snapped Rory. “When you need help.”
Xavier tried to restore the peace. He watched the colt suck in deep breaths. “The colt is not wheezing like Tara.”
“Good sign,” Rory said. “Means it’s not pneumonia.”
“What’s that hot water for?”
“It’s turpentine,” Rory said. “Draws the poisons out.”
“Does it work?”
“Can’t do no harm.”
The colt began kicking. His head struck the stall’s concrete slab like a fish thrown onto a bank.
Xavier yanked on the rope as if he knew what he was doing.
“We had this baby on his feet until Butch’s arms gave out,” Rory said.
“Aw, Pa,” grumbled Butch.
Xavier addressed the colt. “Sorry I wasn’t here earlier to help, little fellow.”
“Hardly matters,” Butch said. “The horses been down all night.
“Dotty didn’t call you for help until this morning, Rory?” Xavier said.
Rory shrugged. “Maybe she didn’t want to bother nobody.”
Xavier understood the inference. He lifted one of the colt’s front legs.
“The frog area looks infected,” Xavier said.
“Yeah, smells like bad cheese,” Butch said.
“A bacterial infection,” Xavier said.
“You two going to jaw-jack or help me?” Rory snapped.
The trio attempted to lift Diablo. Xavier encircled Diablo’s slender neck with both arms, wrinkling his nose against the stench. Butch took hold of the tail. Rory seized the rope at the colt’s center, bending his creaky knees to put power into his lift.
“Heave,” Rory called out with a grunt, “Put your backs into it.”
The colt started to rise when Butch’s wrist twisted. He howled in pain and dropped the rump. Rory, knocked off balance, pitched forward, losing his grip on the rope. The colt’s head jerked
and bashed Xavier’s nose. “I hope my nose isn’t broken.”
“Quit sniveling,” Rory said. He grabbed the colt’s hackamore. His boots thumped the matted underbelly.
“Try again,” Rory bellowed.
Diablo squirmed and kicked. At last, he stood on wobbly legs.
“We did it,” Butch shouted, pumping one fist.
“Simmer down,” Rory said. “You want this rope to slip and hang him?”
Rory pulled all slack from the line and knotted a timber hitch. Butch and Xavier supported the colt’s weight front and back.
“Now let go,” Rory said.
Diablo hung from the rig like an ornament. The colt sucked in air to emit a muted cry. Tara whinnied.
“Mama and baby miss each other,” Butch said.
“That’s the power of love,” Xavier agreed.
“Bah, forget love,” Rory said. “Hate is going to save him, not love.” Rory lit another cigarette. He patted the colt’s quivering nostrils. “You hate me, don’t you, Diablo?”
“Enough, Rory,” Xavier snapped.
Rory turned his head to retort. The colt struck like a snake. A strip of flesh hung from Rory’s forehead.
Rory yanked out a soiled kerchief to soak the blood and cackled. “Want a piece of me, Diablo? Then you got to want to live.”
Xavier fumed in the farmhouse kitchen as Dotty patched Rory’s wound in the back bedroom.
He killed time examining curiosities like hand-carved deities, dolls with bone faces, and a bell jar with flowers made from human hair. Xavier wondered if she collected such odd things to fill the emptiness in her life.
Xavier turned on the television. A female guest bent low to kiss the game show host’s bald head, while the pudgy husband beamed. This had been Abigail’s favorite show, and Xavier used to tease her for watching it.
Rory came back with his boots in one hand and in the other a half-filled whiskey bottle. He unscrewed the cap. The smell of mash permeated the air. The landlord’s forehead bore a white strip of tape.
“I don’t like any of this,” Xavier complained.
“You don’t like much of anything, do you?” Rory asked, setting the bottle on the oaken kitchen table.
Dotty bopped into the kitchen. “I don’t think Xavier even likes himself,” she joked. She turned so Rory could zip her pink cashmere sweater. He gave her bare neck a sloppy kiss.
“Now don’t you be snitching on me to Nadia,” he cautioned Xavier.
Dotty put on a ceramic kettle to brew chai tea. Xavier and Rory peered through a cracked plate-glass window at Butch leading Diablo around the yard.
“Diablo’s chances of living go up every minute he keeps moving,” Rory said.
“Diablo’s hooves are splayed,” Xavier said. “What good is a horse that can’t be ridden?”
“Dotty can keep him like a pet dog,” Rory reasoned. “Same principle.”
Dotty’s eyes turned to slits as she remembered something. “When I bought the mare and colt you said you’d come over and trim their hooves, Rory.”
Rory changed the topic. “Looks like your little colt has a chance.”
“What about Tara?”
“She may be past hope,” Rory said. “That’s just my opinion.”
“If you say so, it is so, Rory.” Dotty handed Xavier a Dresden teacup. He sipped the jasmine tea and found it sweetened with a honeycomb.
Dotty tried to placate Xavier. “How would you like an old Roman Polanski film I recorded last night?”
“You watched a movie while your horses suffered?”
Dotty gave a soft cry and padded away to her bedroom.
“You feel better after accusing her?” Rory arched his hairy eyebrows. “People like you pray for times like these because you feel superior.”
Xavier flushed. “What do you pray for?”
“A cool corner in hell, Perfessor” Rory pulled up a ladder-back chair and sat down. “You sure are uppity for a guy that abandoned his own wife.”
“Talk about feeling superior,” Xavier said. He watched Rory toss the empty soldier of whiskey into a reeking garbage pail.
“When I was a pup, my dad yanked me out of sixth grade,” Rory said. “A local farmer hired me to help with chores. One morning I caught this left hand in the combine. I chewed on the bill of my cap to keep from passing out. I used my hunting knife to get free.”
“Good lord,” Xavier said. “You sawed them off?”
“Been using what’s left ever since.” Rory snorted and chuckled. “I can throw a hay hook with this webby thing.”
Xavier looked out the window. “It’s growing dark.”
“Ten minutes more won’t hurt Tara.”
They went into the living room. Dotty picked a pimple in front of a horse-collar mirror. She pretended she had been fixing her hair. The blotch glowed like a taillight.
Xavier toppled onto the cushion of a Hepplewhite chair. A cat leaped from an overhead shelf onto his lap; its dewclaws lodged in his pants leg. “Whoa,” he cried.
“Chase him away if you want,” Dotty said. She lit a cigarette.
The cat withdrew its claws and found a place on Xavier’s lap. He ruffled its fur. “He’s settling down.”
“Xavier here is an animal lover,” Rory said. “He don’t know what makes them tick, but he says he loves them.”
Xavier examined the mosaic of dark hues sliding through his fingers. “Dotty, did you dye this cat?”
“Topaz is an Abyssinian,” she said. “The breed has fur with five bands of color. The most valuable cats are a shade of chocolate.”
The cat’s motor purred as Xavier scratched its ears. “This one is more steel than chocolate.”
“Still, an Abyssinian is an Abyssinian, and he’s the only one in the county.”
“Would you abandon Topaz if you learned your Abyssinian wasn’t really a purebred?” Xavier demanded.
“Beg pardon?” Dotty looked confused.
“Quit baiting her,” Rory said. “Let’s see Tara. You the one so anxious to put her down.”
Xavier spilled the cat from his lap and stood.
“Fix us up some sandwiches and a toddy before we go,” Rory said to Dotty. “It’s getting right chilly outside.”
She crushed her cigarette against a littered tray. “Want a slice of lime in that drink?”
“Perfect, just perfect,” Rory said. “Did you remember the gun, Xavier?”
Xavier reached inside his coat for the pistol.
“Not sure it’s powerful enough to put down a horse big as Tara,” Rory said. “Where do you keep your guns, Dotty?”
“I have that showpiece .22 over the fireplace mantel,” Dotty said. She left to make sandwiches.
Xavier removed the .22 from the wall.
Xavier saw that only half the original stock remained. A rude pine slab riveted with metal studs replaced the other half.
“This is a piece of junk,” Rory complained.
Dotty brought over three sandwiches and a paper cup with Rory’s cocktail. “No, it’s one of a kind. You’ll find three shells in that rolltop desk’s top drawer.”
“Three’s enough,” Rory boasted. “My old man sent me our hunting with three bullets. If I came back with only one or two rabbits, everyone but me ate stew.”
While Xavier and Rory wolfed their sandwiches, Dotty fetched a flashlight that a state trooper gifted her. “You’ll need this,” she said.
The two put on their coats and went outside in the dark, lifting their collars against the falling snow. Rory fluttered the light until the beam located Butch crouched alongside the colt. Diablo lay on his side, heaving great breaths, with snow melting on his warm flanks.
Rory accosted his son. “You do nothing right,” he said.
“Wasn’t my fault, Pa.”
“Did you give him water?”
“You didn’t tell me to.”
Rory rolled his eyes.
“We have to get the colt back on his legs,” Xavier said.
The colt did not fight them as they each took a hold. In another moment, Diablo stood on shaking legs.
“He’s getting stronger, I think,” Butch said.
Rory handed his son a sandwich. “Go bring Diablo a bucket of water,” he said. “Give him small sips.”
Rory and Xavier left the barn and approached Tara in the grove. Xavier carried the flashlight. The beam raked the trees and settled on two fat guinea hens resting on a lower branch. To Xavier, the trees looked as threatening as a black forest in a Grimm’s fairy tale.
Tara lay on the earth, her nostrils flaring. Her breath formed a cloud in the night air.
“She’s no better,” Xavier said.
“She’s worse.”
Xavier moved the light to the mare’s rear.
“Oh, no,” Rory said. He pointed to a prolapsed red organ.
Rory steadied Dotty’s rifle. Xavier tensed.
Rory’s cigarette glowed like a raptor’s eye. He twitched his trigger finger, then twitched again.
“The sucker jammed,” Rory said. He punched the ruined stock. The impact made the rifle fire. Xavier jumped back a foot.
Rory rebuked him. “Don’t be so jittery.”
Tara’s head jerked as if fighting a tight rein. Blood ran from her nostrils onto her soft muzzle, soaking the fresh snow.
“You shot her, Rory.”
“Blast this worthless gun.”
Tara dug her hooves into the hard ground. Like a boxer coming alive at the nine-count, she stood for several seconds. Then her wasted legs collapsed. When she fell the red organ burst and splashed the earth with blood. Xavier’s head pounded, remembering the bloody sheets in a corner of the hospital ward where his wife died.
Rory cleared the rifle chamber with his penknife blade, popped in another shell, and aimed at Tara’s head. He squeezed the trigger, and it fired. The recoil made Rory’s cigarette ash break off.
Tara stirred. Xavier latched onto Rory’s coat sleeve. “She’s still alive.”
“You saying I missed or what?”
“You didn’t miss, but she’s still breathing.”
Xavier took out his cell phone.
“What do you think you are doing?” Rory demanded.
“What I should have done earlier. The law might have something to say about cruelty to animals.”
Xavier turned his back and started walking toward the farmhouse.
Rory cleared the shell. He slapped the third bullet into the chamber.
Xavier took a step inside the grove of trees. He shivered when he heard Rory fire the rifle. Simultaneously, something brushed Xavier’s head. He yelped in fear.
“That was a guinea hen,” Xavier hooted. “My warning shot made it fly off its tree branch.”
Baring his teeth like a cornered wolf, Xavier pulled out the pistol. Rory reassessed the caretaker. Xavier was not the fighting kind, but he hadn’t turned and run.
“Maybe you’ll make a man yet,” Rory said.
The mare’s lustrous eyes stayed open. One front hoof scraped the earth back and forth. She gave out a death rattle, but still she lived. Xavier wondered whether Abigail had made that same sound before dying.
“Satisfied now?” Rory asked, sneering. “She won’t last long now.”
“You can go to hell,” Xavier whispered. He aimed the pistol at the dying horse. His bullet smashed against Tara’s bony forehead and deflected with a whistling whine. The bullet ricocheted and found flesh.
Rory never heard the shot that killed him. He collapsed beside Tara.
The mare’s front legs twitched once more and halted.
Xavier, horrified, dropped the pistol. His fumbling fingers dialed 911, and he gave his location
as he walked toward the yard with his shoulders hunched. The snow lashed the fields while he trudged past the chicken shack.
Xavier reached his car. As he started the engine with a clatter of tappets, Dotty’s face loomed in his car’s side window. For a moment she glanced in the direction of the grove. Her lipstick stained the glass red. He rolled down the window, and she handed him a carton. “Fresh from the henhouse.”
The siren of a state trooper’s car muted Xavier’s reply.
Abigail came into his mind. Xavier had always cooked their breakfasts. His pretty wife couldn’t boil an egg. She’d never held a job, either.
Off in the barnyard, Diablo whinnied once more for Tara, as he and Butch plodded onward in an unending circle.
Xavier opened the carton’s lid. All the eggs were unbroken.
