The Blessings of the Animals: A Novel - By Katrina Kittle Page 0,4
a barn,” I said. “It has mice.”
But poor Gingersnap was an uninspired mouser. I’d noticed a new stray cat—a big orange thing—hanging around though, which I hoped to convince to hunt in our small barn.
In that barn, which held four stalls, we had Gabriella’s horse, Biscuit, a gentle Belgian with a spine defect that didn’t allow him to pull or carry more than two hundred pounds (rather limiting for a draft horse). In another stall we fostered Zeppelin, a “wiener dog” version of a pony with legs too short for his long body, who was blind in one eye. We also had Muriel, a barren white goat abandoned after the county fair. Also a foster. Not permanent.
I had one empty stall as I headed to the rescue that morning. Well . . . perhaps two, since the goat—who escaped with exasperating frequency—was rarely in her stall.
WHEN I REACHED THE RESCUE SITE, THE SHERIFF ESCORTED me past a cluster of shouting people into a barn where skeletal horses stood in ankle-deep filth. Several Humane Society volunteers stood ready to take the animals away to foster homes.
A man and a woman I assumed were the owners argued with the police outside, their obscenities carrying in on gusts of increasingly colder air. A pit bull tied to a red Lexus with a plastic clothesline bayed nonstop. The sound of hammering and splitting wood came in bursts from beyond the barn’s open back door. More thunder rumbled. This was not going to be an easy or quick removal. I thought of naked Bobby in the flannel sheets at home and felt a tangle release inside my chest. Our breakfast together was unlikely.
I stopped walking, shocked at myself. Was I honestly relieved that I’d be here instead?
I hadn’t really thought that, had I?
Helen approached, face grim, pale-blond hair nearly glowing in the dim light. I pushed that horrible realization about Bobby away from me and focused on my terrier of a friend—short and petite but with no concept of her small size, never afraid, and fiercely loyal. She took my camera and began to film, while I set up a sort of triage. I had no time to think about my shameful relief to be away from Bobby as I examined each surviving horse, listening to their hearts, lungs, and guts and looking in their runny noses and eyes. As soon as I scribbled down instructions for a horse’s feed and initial treatment, a volunteer loaded it onto a trailer and hauled it away.
In one stall, a chestnut horse lay dead. The face was already decomposed, its eye a black hole. A nauseating, sweet stench of decay choked me as rain began to tap the barn’s tin roof.
“That was a lucky one.” Helen nodded to the dead horse. She spoke quickly, in a monotone. “Here’s what we know: wife catches husband having affair. Kicks him out.”
Another round of hammering came from behind the barn. Wood cracked.
I moved to another stall and found a brown mare on her side who looked like a tossed-down bundle of thin firewood, her breath ragged and labored. I crouched to listen to the mare’s struggling heart as Helen continued, “Wife gets a restraining order against husband. Fires the barn manager because he’s the husband’s brother. Runs the brother off the property, too. Then, the bitch leaves for Florida for five weeks with her new boyfriend and never hires anyone to replace the damn barn manager!”
Five weeks? I heard no gut sounds on the poor wheezing mare. The horse didn’t stir or respond in any way when I touched her. Five weeks of starvation was a slow, tortured death.
Helen waited for the pounding out back to stop, then said, “A neighbor fed and watered every now and then . . . until the food ran out. He waited way too long to call the police.”
I moved a hand above the mare’s unresponsive eyes. I looked up at Helen; she knew what I had to do. I made too much noise, slamming my kit around as I prepared the injections, the first one to relax and anesthetize the mare—she was too far gone to register new pain, but I wouldn’t allow even the possibility—and the second to end her sputtering heartbeat. I sat in the filth to cradle the mare’s head and whispered, “It’s okay. That’s a brave girl. It’s okay, it’s okay,” until first the drowning gasps stopped and then my stethoscope went silent.