The Blessings of the Animals: A Novel - By Katrina Kittle Page 0,47

and manure. I got down to his frog and felt the hard, hot lump. “Yep. He’s going to abscess. Feel that?” I let Tyler feel the hoof. The way his face changed heartened me. The interest, the curiosity—the heartache with Gabriella temporarily forgotten. I strained to keep Moonshot’s leg up while Tyler pulled the bucket of hot water and Epsom salts into position.

Moonshot was so eager to put his leg down that half the bucket’s contents splashed out on my jeans. He snorted in surprise, then groaned a sound that was unmistakably relief.

I bent over, hands on knees, peering at his back feet. “Look at that.” I pointed to his left rear hoof, near the coronet band. “He’s abscessing in two feet. This poor guy.”

Sure enough, the head of the abscess was visible—angry, hot, and ready to open.

I tried to clean that back hoof, but Moonshot was too inclined to kick with it. I managed to pry some layers of muck from the bottom before my aching back insisted I give up. Three tries got that back hoof finally planted in another bucket of hot water.

While Moonshot stood in buckets, I took off his too-big halter. Ideally, I’d leave his face naked to let those raw rub marks across his nose heal, but he was still too tough to handle. I rustled up another halter that fit him properly, with lambskin pads across the noseband.

Tyler helped watch Moonshot’s head while I took scissors to the worst of the dreadlocks in his mane and clipped the clumps of matted hair hanging from his belly and legs.

“Can’t you just give him antibiotics?” Tyler asked. “Wouldn’t that be faster than all this soaking and dealing with . . . pus?”

I rested a hand on the horse’s withers. He let me, although he ground his teeth, the munching-gravel sound making my skin shudder. “Some people do. But you know what I’ve found? It makes the infection appear to get better. Everything clears up for three or four weeks, and then, just when you think you’re out of the woods, it comes back. There aren’t any shortcuts. You’re better off going slow and letting the ugly stuff come through.”

Helen looked at me from across Moonshot’s back. “You gonna take your own advice?”

I looked away.

AFTER THE KIDS AND HELEN HAD LEFT, I CALLED A FARRIER to check Moonshot’s hooves and a large-animal vet I liked to take a look at the abscesses. With their help, I discovered that the back hoof’s abscess was caused by a nail—probably from the stall he’d been in the process of dismantling when I’d met him—but the front hoof was still a mystery. I was to soak him three times a day.

I welcomed the time this ritual was going to take. I wanted every moment filled up. I was not wrecked. I would show Gabriella I was fine.

I hauled branches to the county refuse yard, chatted with the roofer who came out to fix the missing shingles, and managed to reattach the gutter to the barn myself, injured arm and all.

I propped St. Francis upright, balanced his head in place, and stuck my chewing gum in the space between as a temporary fix. Unless you looked closely, you didn’t notice the split.

MY “STAY BUSY” ROUTINE DIDN’T PREVENT ME FROM SEEING my daughter’s heartbreak. She returned around four that afternoon. My “How’d it go?” was met with a shrug as she opened the fridge.

That Sopranos ring tone sounded again from her backpack, but she ignored it.

“You think we’re ever going to have real food in the house again?” she asked.

I winced but didn’t answer. “Are you ever going to talk to him?”

“Maybe.” She took a pear, a Diet Coke, and a yogurt from the fridge. “Maybe not.”

She carried her food up the stairs to her room and shut the door.

I sighed, glad to know the ring tone she’d picked for me was Wonder Woman. That is, unless she’d changed it.

My own cell phone rang while I was in the shower. I didn’t have special ring tones for different callers, never having bothered to program such things. When I checked the display and saw it was Helen, I shut off the water and answered, standing in the tub naked and dripping.

“Feel like tackling a crazy cat lady? Got a report on one downtown.”

“Aren’t we supposed to handle large animals?” I complained, already knowing I would do it. It would fill more time. It would show Gabby that I was just fine, thank you