I'm Done Being the Family Joke novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Black

Della works a colicking stallion through the night at the Ockenden barn; Cal sees her back and says nothing, but tells her what his family lost; at dawn her father padlocks her barn.

The Ockenden barn light was on when I turned in, and the black stallion's scream carried across the yard.

Cal met me at the stall door with a halter in his hand.

"Thirty minutes ago he was fine," he said. "Then he started kicking at his belly."

"Has he eaten since noon?"

"Just his evening grain."

"Get me a stethoscope and the vet's number on speaker."

He didn't ask why I was late, or why I was in a coat with a bare neck and no hat.

He went and got the stethoscope.

I pulled my coat off and hung it on the stall hook.

The camisole underneath was thin, and the barn was cold, but I would need my arms free.

I laid my ear against the stallion's flank and listened.

Nothing moved in there.

"No gut sounds on the left," I said. "We walk him. Right now, and we don't let him roll."

"The vet said the same thing."

"Then she's right."

Cal slipped the halter on, and I took the lead rope, and the black came up out of the straw shaking.

He was scared, and he weighed a thousand pounds.

I talked to him the whole length of the aisle, low and boring, about nothing.

The stall lamp swung behind us.

I felt Cal stop walking.

He stood at the end of the aisle with his hand on a post and his eyes on my back.

I knew what he was looking at.

Under my right shoulder blade, in black capitals a hand high, were the words my sister had written.

My neck went tight, and I kept walking the horse.

"Don't," I said.

"I wasn't going to say anything."

"Good."

He came up on the other side of the black and took the near rein without another word.

We walked the aisle for an hour.

The vet called back and said keep walking, and give the pain shot at three if he wasn't passing anything.

At two in the morning the black dropped his head and tried to lie down.

I hauled on the rope.

"No. No, you big idiot, up."

The word was out before I thought about it.

Cal looked at me over the stallion's neck.

Neither of us said anything.

I turned the horse around and kept going.

Around three, Cal gave the shot, and I leaned against the stall door with a bucket of warm water and a rag.

The barn smelled of straw and old liniment.

Out in the dark the wind was moving the snow around.

"Your father did that?" Cal asked.

He didn't point.

"My sister did. It's ink. It's supposed to fade in a few weeks."

"And your folks."

"They laughed."

He took that in, standing with the rope in his hand.

"I thought I knew your family," he said.

"Everybody thinks that."

The black blew out a long, shuddering breath and lowered his head onto my shoulder.

I rubbed his ears.

"My dad can't say my name anymore," Cal said.

I looked up.

"The stroke took most of his words, last spring. Before that, the fire took a winter of hay and the whole north barn, and he never got over it."

He wasn't looking at me.

"Nobody from your house came out to the ranch. Not once. Not a casserole, not a call. We found out from the paper who paid for what."

My stomach turned over.

"I wanted to," I said. "I tried to."

"Tried how?"

I had written a card the week after the fire, and I had walked down the road with it.

My father met me at the gate with his hand out and said I had done enough already.

He tore it in half in front of me.

I had never told that to anybody.

"It doesn't matter," I said. "You're right. Nobody came."

Cal let it go.

He nodded, slowly, and I could see he took that as the answer he had expected.

Just before dawn the black lifted his tail and passed a heavy, steaming pile in the straw.

I laughed out loud.

Cal laughed too, once, rough and surprised, and rubbed his face with both hands.

"That's it," I said. "That's all I wanted."

The vet's truck came up the drive an hour later, and she listened to the left flank and said we had done her job for her.

Cal walked me out to the yard in the grey light.

He took off his canvas coat and put it over my shoulders on top of mine.

"It's cold," he said. "Don't argue."

It smelled of hay and woodsmoke and horse.

"Thank you for coming," he said.

"He's a good horse."

"He's not the only reason I called you."

He looked at me for a beat too long, and then he turned and went into the house.

My phone lit up in my pocket before I reached the truck.

It was a text from my father.

I've put a lock on your barn. Your clients' horses are inside. Come to the house at noon and apologize to your sister, and I'll open it.

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