Flying Changes, Page 4

  "Well, no. Not exactly."

  "Oh." There's a pause. "Do you want me to try to find someone else?"

  "No, no! I'll be fine."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Positive," I say, winding the phone cord so tightly around my fingers that the ends of them turn white. "Just tell me what to look for."

  "Restlessness. Discomfort. Check her vulva for swelling or discharge."

  "Okay," I say, nodding vehemently. "Swelling and discharge. What else?"

  "Her udder may leak. Or get waxy."

  "Leaking, waxy udder. Got it." Continued bobbing of my head. "What else?"

  "That's about it. When she goes into labor she may lie down and get up a lot. And seem uncomfortable. Pawing the ground and so on."

  "Well, yes. I should think so." I swallow hard. "And, um, if she starts? What then?"

  "Well, it's fairly straightforward. You want to make sure that two hooves are presenting, followed by a nose. If that's not the case, call the backup vet immediately.

  His name is Walter. I left his name and number in the foaling kit."

  "All right."

  "Chances are good it won't happen until I get home, but she's far enough along I need someone to check on her once an hour. Oh--and at night, you can use the foal-cam. I usually just sleep in front of the TV."

  "Will I be able to figure it out?"

  "It's dead easy. Ask Judy to show you." Dan's voice softens, turns gravelly and low. "Thanks, babe. I'll make it up to you."

  "Sure. If you ever come home," I say.

  "I'll be home in a day or two. We'll catch up then. I promise."

  "Maybe I'll cook you dinner," I croon into the receiver.

  "What? Why? What did I do?" he cries in mock desperation. "Whatever it is, I'm sorry!"

  I snort. "All right. I won't cook. But I'm warning you, I plan to be Velcro woman when you get back," I cradle the phone in both hands, rocking it gently. "I really miss you, Dan."

  "Miss you, too. I'll be home soon, sweetie. I promise."

  Mutti throws me a questioning look when I appear with a duffel bag. She's wiping the table with a pink sponge. The kitchen smells of bleach.

  "What's up?" she says.

  "I'm spending the night at Dan's."

  "Is he back?"

  "No. He's got a mare set to foal, and no one else can stay."

  Mutti's arm stops for a second--just the slightest hint of a pause, but enough for me to see. Then she continues wiping the table with wide, broad strokes.

  "Schatzlein," she says, "have you ever seen a mare foal?"

  "Er, no," I say, dropping my duffel bag on the floor.

  "And what will you do if she starts?"

  "I'll call Walter, that's what."

  "Who?"

  "Dan's backup vet."

  "Ah," she says. She walks to the sink, rinses out the sponge, and centers it precisely behind the faucet.

  "Dan says she'll probably hold off until he gets back anyway," I say. "But I'm sorry to leave you with Eva in a state. Do you think you'll be okay with her?"

  Mutti turns from the sink and approaches me. She lays her bleachy hands on either side of my face and kisses my forehead.

  "I will handle Eva. Don't you worry," she says. "Now go help your Mann."

  Which of course is the German word for husband. As I scoop my duffle bag from the floor, a hollow pang runs right down my middle.

  The road that leads to Dan's property is long and winding and passes through pine trees so crowded and tall the bottom thirds are scraggly and naked from lack of sun. The road is dirt, full of pot holes, and in the winter occasionally blocked by a fallen tree or branch. These have been cleared and set off to the side, where they'll either rot or get collected at some point in the summer.

  I'm driving my Camry--which has almost no suspension left and never really did recover from its altercation with the truck last year--and I wince as it kerthumps into yet another large hole. There's no avoiding them. The best I can do is try to have only one wheel in one hole at a time. This isn't the most practical car for this part of the world, but of course I wasn't living in this part of the world when I bought it.

  The property itself consists of two barns--the one in front, built in 1811, is tall and red and handsome. Not far from it stands (in a manner of speaking) the original house, which had not been occupied for probably a century before Dan bought the place, and which collapsed promptly upon his signing the papers. Fifty years of assault by carpenter ants and powder-post beetles plus one heavy snowfall did the job. The local old-timers gathered around the next afternoon muttering things like, "Aye, yup, knew it would go real soon," puffing their corncob pipes, clapping poor miserable houseless Dan on the back, and chiding him for not having insurance.

  Its fieldstone fireplace and the boards at three of the corners still stand upright, but the rest of the structure lies where it fell, a dense heap of spindly wood. It looks like the collapsed hull of a sunken galleon, the protruding rib cage of a weathered corpse. Dan has been selling the wood to local carpenters, who treasure the grain and color, which apparently only reveals itself after a clear coat of polyurethane. I wish they'd treasure it a little faster and get rid of the damned thing.

  Behind these two structures is a flat concrete building with eighteen stalls that is both Dan's quarantine barn and his surgery, although the two operating rooms at the back, with their hydraulically powered tables, haven't seen much use this year. The end result of Dan's desperate scramble to rescue the PMU horses involved in the production of pregnant mares' urine is that he's been backing further and further away from his veterinary practice, which I can't help finding alarming. His finances aren't officially my business, but I'm hoping they will be soon.

  Behind all of that, past a thin line of anemic trees, is Dan's trailer. He bought it before the house collapsed, thinking that he and Jill--his late wife--would live there temporarily while he worked on the house. The trailer was used at the time, and that was eleven years ago. To this day it rests on concrete blocks with assorted garbage, junk, and God only knows how many rodents' nests beneath it. I shudder at the thought.

  I find Judy alone in the main barn with the tractor parked in the aisle, tossing steaming piles of manure into the back with a pitchfork. When I enter, she looks up, startled. I think. It's hard to tell with Judy.

  She's a string bean of a woman, tall, with long feet and hair even more calamitous than mine. Her glasses are thick and round, which magnifies her eyes and makes her look slightly cross-eyed. She has deep creases beside her mouth and across her forehead, and squints continually.

  "Hey, lady--want a hand with that?" I say, grabbing a pitchfork from the wall.

  She wipes the back of her hand across her forehead, smearing it with manure. "Oh, yeah. Hallelujah."

  "Where's Chester?"

  "Gone."

  "I thought he was supposed to stay the day?"

  "Teresa was pretty desperate. All three kids were up all night, and now she's coming down with it too. Was threatening to run away if he didn't get home right away."

  "Well, can't blame her for that," I say, ducking into a stall and observing the mess with horror. The stall belongs to Ringo, who was a show horse in his previous life and never got turned out. The end result is that he never relieves himself in the pasture. He holds it all in until he comes in for the night, and then lets loose with a deluge. Then he turns circles, making sure he spreads it into every corner.

  "Ugh," I say.

  "Ha," says Judy through the stall wall. "Finders keepers."

  "Ugh," I say again.

  "Might want to get yourself a shovel. You won't be able to save much."

  Judy and I spend the morning mucking out, scrubbing and refilling buckets, mixing feed, wiping dust and cobwebs from stall windows, dumping the contents of the tractor at the muck heap, topping up the shavings, and finally watering down and sweeping the aisle. At the end the barn looks much too clean to let the horses back in. It's
kind of like my experience with kitchens. The second you get one clean, it's time for another meal.

  When we're finished with the chores, Judy and I sit in Dan's office gobbling a late lunch of Ruffles, Twizzlers, pepperoni sticks, and Coke. We're covered in filth; from manure and water-bucket slime to shavings that cling to our hair and clothing. I remove a boot and whack it against the beat-up couch, pick the remaining shavings off my sock, and then scratch the bejesus out of my ankle. Then I plop my feet up on a tack box and lean back into the couch.

  "So how's Maisie look?" I ask around a mouthful of soda and licorice. I try to sound casual, but I'm watching Judy hard from the corner of my eye.

  "Looks fine to me." She lines up three pepperoni sticks and bites off the ends. "Say, you're not nervous, are you?"

  "Maybe a little."

  "It's easy," she says brightly. She points a forefinger into the air beside her head. "Just remember, the goal is a foal!"

  "I'm sorry, Judy, but that's helpful how?"

  She stops chewing and stares at me, her magnified eyes enormous. She leans forward, arms on her legs. "You really are nervous, aren't you?"

  "No. Yes." I glance up, and then down again, embarrassed. "Yeah, okay. Maybe a little."

  "You've had a baby. You know what to expect."

  "That's just it. Things don't always go as expected."

  For example, uteruses rupture. My hand moves unconsciously to my belly.

  Judy's eyes follow it and linger there. After a moment, she raises her eyes back to mine. "I can't spend the night because the kids drive Todd bonkers," she says quietly, "but if she starts and you get nervous, call and I'll come right on over."

  I chew my Twizzlers in embarrassment, grateful almost to the point of tears. "Thanks, Judy. I may just do that."

  After lunch, Judy heads out to run some errands. Since it's ages before the horses have to come in again, I hang around the office and boot up Dan's computer. He's so sweet--his password is my birthday.

  I may not know anything about foaling, but I sure do know a thing or two about Googling. Before long, I've had a crash course in foaling and its most common problems--breech birth? Got it. Dystocia? Retained placenta? I am so on the phone to Walter. But mostly I'm relieved to learn that in the vast majority of cases you're supposed to just leave the mare alone to get on with it. Not only that, you're actually encouraged to leave her alone in order to leave the umbilical intact as long as possible--the better to achieve maximum placental blood transfer to the foal.

  In late afternoon, when I find myself skimming passages because I recognize the information within them, I shut the computer down and head back to the barn. Then I mix a bucket of bran mash, stick a dandy brush in my pocket, and wander out to the back paddocks to see Bella.

  Bella is my personal project, a thirty-four-year-old Morgan mare who came into Dan's care a few months ago. She'd had a good life until about a year ago when her owner got into a spot of trouble with a shotgun and ended up in prison. A neighbor who knew nothing about horses took over his twenty-six mares and geldings, turned them all out together, and tossed hay over the fence in one big pile. Bella, being old and arthritic, was driven away by the other horses, and since the ground was covered in snow, there was no grazing.

  With her person suddenly missing, her arthritis untreated, and no food, Bella simply shut down. When the neighbor finally noticed something amiss, he sent the emaciated old mare to auction. Dan intercepted right before the gavel came down, paying three cents a pound more than the killer buyer.

  He brought her home on Christmas Eve, the saddest sack of bones I'd ever seen. Her chestnut coat was run through with gray, her mane and tail straggly. Her head hung low--as did her bottom lip, as though she couldn't be bothered to keep it closed.

  I've seen Dan coax horses back from the brink when anyone else would have given up, trying everything from equine massage to acupuncture to aromatherapy when traditional veterinary care fails--but in this case everything was failing. Since there was no medical reason for it, Dan finally concluded she wanted to die.

  I couldn't accept that. Something about her eyes haunted me. They were hollow and glazed, which is certainly not uncommon in horses when they first arrive here, but I saw something else, too. Since Joan and I were teaching on alternating days, I started spending my off-days here, working with Bella.

  Dan was immensely grateful, because he was working fourteen-hour days trying to get his latest load of rescued horses adopted. His gratitude made me all the more determined to save the old mare, because I want him to know I support his work. I want him to know that I'm willing to do this with him. Hell, what I really want him to know is that I'm ready for us to start our life together.

  I put Bella in a paddock by herself so she'd have no competition for food. I put Barney, an equally ancient Thoroughbred gelding, in the paddock next to her, for company. I brought her pellets, oats, apples, carrots, mints--I tried all the tricks I used on Hurrah last year, but she was having nothing to do with any of it. She grew thinner and thinner, until it was hard to believe she could remain upright.

  Naturally, the breakthrough that led to her recovery came on one of the days I was teaching at Maple Brook. Life's like that sometimes.

  Dan was in the quarantine barn, mixing up buckets of bran mash to disguise the taste of medications for his surgical patients. Somehow, Bella got free and her nose led her to Dan. Apparently she was quite insistent on the matter. I wasn't there, of course, but Judy's description of the commotion as Dan danced from medicated bucket to medicated bucket trying to keep Bella's nose out of them was hilarious, particularly since Judy acted out the parts of both horse and man, flinging her long arms and legs about like a marionette.

  And so began Bella's recovery. She loved her bran mash so much she'd lick the bucket clean with her eyes shut, ears twitching in ecstasy. And she began eating hay again.

  We realized she was going to make it the day we came out and caught her nuzzling Barney over the paddock fence.

  Now they share a paddock, inseparable friends. They spend much of the day standing head to rump, snoozing in the sun.

  As I approach with her mash, Bella lifts her head and lets loose a low rumble, a throaty huh-huh-huh, huh-huh-huh. It's a greeting of honor, the one reserved for a horse's chosen person.

  "Hey, sweets," I say, opening the gate and coming through. She plods over and shoves her head in the bucket. I haven't even set it down yet. Barney turns to look and resumes snoozing. He couldn't care less about bran mash. They're a perfect couple. Jack and Mrs. Spratt.

  As Bella eats, I pull the dandy brush from my pocket and run it over her coat. Then I pick some tangles out of her tail with my fingers. She ignores me, continuing to lick her bucket long after the bran mash is gone, pushing it up against the fence with her eyes squeezed shut. When she finally gives up on it, she pulls her head out, turns to look at me, sniffs my hand, gives it a quick lick because it smells like bran mash, and wanders back to Barney.

  As I turn to leave the paddock, I see Judy approaching. She stumbles on a clump of dirt.

  "Whoopsy," she says, staring back in consternation and then tripping over something else. She comes to an abrupt stop just outside the paddock, pushes her glasses up her nose, and places her hands on her hips. She squints even though the sun is behind her, shining through her hair so that it looks like a halo of steel wool. "Mind if I take off now?"

  "What's left? Just evening feed?"

  "I got it ready. All you gotta do is bring them in."

  "Thanks, Judy. You're a doll."

  "Don't I know it." She turns to go.

  "Oh, hey, Judy," I call. "When did you last check Maisie?"

  "Just now. She's sulking, so I think you're safe."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "She's attached to Dan, and he's gone."

  Apparently I look baffled, because Judy continues.

  "Prey animals. They have a smidgeon of choice when things happen. But check her o
nce an hour anyway, just in case. Say, you know how to work the foal-cam?"

  "Uh, no." I say.

  "Put the TV on channel three, and then press the Input button on the big clicker."

  "Sounds easy enough."

  "It's not brain surgery," she says, walking away.

  I wince, because she's probably just jinxed me. In my experience, those words have always been the precursor to some disaster.

  A quarter of an hour after Judy leaves, the sky splits with a resounding crash of thunder and SLOOSH!--an entire ocean's worth of water drops on my head. Why, I can't imagine, because the last time I looked up there was nothing up there but rolling puffy clouds. In retrospect, I suppose they were suspiciously tall and lumpy.

  The water comes in sheets, sideways, never in the form of rain. Instead, it vacillates between hard sleet and clumpy snow, which melts the second it hits the ground and turns it into great squelching catfish mud whose many gaping mouths are constantly trying to suck off my boots. I rush back and forth from pasture to barn, desperate to get the horses in before they're soaked through.

  They huddle at the gates, shivering, with snow gathering along their spines and manes and wondering what the hell is taking me so long.

  When they're all safely inside, rubbed down and dry and munching on alfalfa hay, and after I've made sure I've been forgiven by each--because Lord knows I'm the only human here and therefore responsible--I poke my head outside the main barn and gaze mournfully at the quarantine barn, where Maisie resides.

  But since I think I should probably assess the swelling and discharge--not to mention the Leaking Whatevers--in person before relying on the foal-cam, I grab an empty feed bag, hold it over my head, and sprint out into the squall. Halfway there, one foot skids out from under me. I throw both arms out in an attempt to regain my balance, sending the feed bag flying from my head. On its way past, it sluices water down my back. The mud offers no resistance whatever and I crash to the ground. Something snaps in my hip just before I hit. I cry out and clutch it with both hands, my fingers curled into wet, slimy denim. The pain is severe, and for a moment I wonder if I'm going to be able to get up and keep going. When it occurs to me that if I don't, nobody will find me, I steel myself and struggle to my feet. After ascertaining that I can, indeed, bear weight, I whimper and limp onward, with teeth clenched and the heel of one hand pressed against my hip. I leave the stupid traitorous feed bag in the mud, where I will no doubt slip on it in the morning and break my neck.