gnawed remains of the mare’s feedbox.
Helen filmed and I narrated in a voice that sounded tight and swollen no matter how many times I cleared my throat. “The mare ate the wood. She was eating her own stall in an attempt to survive. Look.” With gloved hands, I pulled back the mare’s upper lip and opened her jaw. “Her tongue and gums are full of splinters, and her mouth is full of manure.”
The shouting, hammering, and barking continued as we filmed empty feed bins, an empty hayloft, empty water buckets.
I euthanized a black gelding and shipped off four other raggedy survivors with the last of the volunteers. Helen got on her cell, trying to round up more foster homes.
When I opened the last stall in this barn, two fillies stared at me from dark, sweet eyes in deep hollows. Their hip bones pushed up so starkly that sores oozed where bone threatened to push through the skin, but their hearts and lungs sounded strong.
The sheriff returned and asked, “How we doing?” His tone left no doubt that we should hurry.
“Where will we take them?” Helen asked. “I’m getting nothing but dead ends.” She looked at me and pressed her tongue against that tiny gap between her two front teeth.
I wouldn’t, I couldn’t take one home. I felt too guilty about preferring to be here rather than with Bobby. I couldn’t stop thinking I was a horrible wife.
The hammering continued from the barn behind us. The pit bull barked and barked.
“—my girlfriend’s horses!” reached me through the wind. “—can’t just fucking take them!”
“These are the last two, right?” I asked. Maybe I could put them together in one stall, as they were now. Just to get them out of here. Just to get home and salvage the day.
Before Helen could answer, a huge crash came from the back barn.
“What is with that damn hammering?” I said. “Don’t they have anything more useful to do?”
The look on Helen’s face froze me. “That’s the last one,” she said. “The last horse alive is in that back barn.”
That god-awful racket was a horse?
Disbelieving, I walked into the gravel aisle between the barns in time to see a set of hooves strike out over a nearly demolished Dutch door. The hammering resumed as the horse pummeled the wall with his back hooves.
I peered into the kicker’s stall. A dark bay reared. “Hey, hey, hey,” I scolded. “You settle down.” When he kicked again, I shouted, “Hey! Cut it out!”
The horse paused to regard me for a moment, snorted, then resumed kicking.
“Can you trank him?” the sheriff asked.
I frowned. “He’s so underweight. Not a good idea.” And even if it were, how was I supposed to inject him? With a dart gun?
Helen and I glanced at each other, considering our options.
“Sweet boots,” Helen said, in her typical we’re-not-in-the-middle-of-a-crisis way, nodding down at my striped Wellingtons.
I smiled. Helen had an identical pair from her daughter, Holly. Holly was four years older than Gabriella. Gabriella adored her.
Gabriella! Panic zipped through me. I had to get home in time for Bobby and me to have the house to ourselves. I had to make up for leaving him this morning. . . . But who was I kidding? There’d be no cozy, romantic morning. The truth was, I’d get home and Bobby would be moody and resentful all day because I’d left.
Just then, the horse kicked his door free of its hinges, slamming it into the gravel aisle. He barreled out of the stall and skidded to a halt two yards away from me. Close enough for me to smell him—a mildewy, sickly smell—and to feel the heat of his breath.
I held out my arms. “Where you gonna go now, handsome?” I asked. And he was handsome, even in that scraggy, dirty state. Hints of muscle remained on his frame. His leather halter, now far too big, hung crookedly across his nose, below the white crescent moon on his forehead.
He wheeled away from me, thankfully missing my head with the buck he threw in for good measure before he galloped away. I gasped from the adrenaline surge as I followed him.
He’d run into the gravel lot where my trailer was parked, so we closed the gates, confining him. As if on springs, the horse trotted across the gravel. Even in this feeble, eerie light, every rib stood out in stark relief. Blood trickled from one hock and from just above one hoof. He lowered his head to the small swath