Whitehorse Part 2

"Do I look like the vet to you?"

"Oh, I don't know. I've seen some vets who were real babes in my day."

"I hope you're not talking about Dean Crabbet. There would be a whole lot of disappointed women if you were."

He laughed and joined her at the barn door.

"I'm Shamika," she said. "And this is Doc Starr's lunch. Long as you're here, why don't you take it to her? She's probably starving by now."

Shamika thrust the plate and coffee into his hands. "Now you make her eat. She won't if you don't." She started to turn, then stopped. "By the way, I think what you're doing with the Native American Rights Fund is right on. On the other hand, the casino issue is going to get sticky as far as Senator Foster is concerned, if you know what I mean. While Leah and her father aren't exactly close, he's still her father. It's that old blood-is-thicker-than-water thing. It's chiseled in granite someplace that the offspring of powerful men are the last to abandon the familial ship-even if that ship is is the the t.i.tanic." t.i.tanic."

"Warning noted."

"She's had a tough time of it, Mr. Whitehorse. I'd appreciate it a lot if you take it easy on her."

"I just came to see my mare, then I'm outta here."

"That's what I'm afraid of," she replied with a thin smile, then turned for the house, allowing the screen door to slam behind her.

A Neil Diamond tune played on a radio ca.s.sette player set on a table near the entrance of the barn. Johnny picked up the empty ca.s.sette holder and flipped it over. A young Neil Diamond with wild hair and wearing a skin-tight jumpsuit stared up at him just as "Red Red Wine" rolled out of the speakers and filled up the silence with memories that he had stored away long ago-he and Leah at Lover's Peak drinking warm Sangria straight from the bottle, sitting on the tailgate of his father's truck, this very ca.s.sette playing in the background as he educated her on Apache spirituality. She had freely offered him her virginity that night, and he had accepted it like a starving man coveting a crumb of bread. Afterward, they vowed to love one another always-to stay together forever. They would marry soon after graduation and support each other's goals to go to college and attain their degrees-hers as a veterinarian, his as a lawyer.

Fantasies of the young and ignorant, and deliriously in love.

Johnny frowned and gently put aside the ca.s.sette box.

There was a bull with a grotesquely swollen s.c.r.o.t.u.m chewing hay in the first stall. A donkey resided in the next, its back right leg st.i.tched closed from its fetlock to its hock. A pair of pygmy goats, no more than eighteen inches high, stood like sentinels at the far end of the barn aisle, regarding him suspiciously and chewing alfalfa leaves. They twitched their curled tails from side to side before shaking their horned heads in an apparent warning-as if anything other than a jackrabbit would take their threat seriously.

Dr. Starr backed out of a stall in that moment. She did not see him, but focused instead on the spindly colt wobbling after her.

The rain the night before had obliterated her features as she stood in the dark on the side of the road. In his mind, as he lay in bed hours later, listening to Dolores breathe deeply in sleep, he had imagined that Leah had looked just as she had in high school. But seeing her now, dressed in baggy khaki pants and a man's denim shirt with sleeves rolled up to her elbows, he realized that there was little girlishness left in her. Her brown hair was in disarray, haphazardly secured with a rubber band at her nape. It was longer than he remembered her wearing it in high school. The color had not lost its richness, however. It suited her complexion, which was fair and p.r.o.ne to burn in the sun. He recalled rubbing sunblock on her back and b.r.e.a.s.t.s when they skinny-dipped at Copper Springs. With their bodies slick and smelling like coconut they had made love openly under the hot sun again and again, only to discover much later that the sunblock had done nothing to protect the sensitive, tender skin of their naked b.u.t.tocks. Putting on their jeans at the end of the day had been excruciating. She had not been able to sit in hot bathwater for a week-even after he had sneaked into her bedroom one night and anointed her b.u.t.t with ice-cold skin cream. Her idea, not his. He would have made up a paste of mescal and aloe. He would have chanted her one of his grandfather's medicine songs and made her sleep with a fetish tucked under her pillow.

The mare nickered with worry as the colt unsteadily rocked on its tiny feet and nearly fell. Leah jumped to its aid, wrapped her arms around its chest and rump and laughed as it did its best to buck her away.

She looked up unexpectedly, catching him off guard. There was a purple knot on her head above her eyebrow and dark circles under her eyes. The hair around her temples was slightly damp with sweat, and there was a smudge of mud on her chin.

"Oh," she said. "I didn't hear you walk up."

"Nice colt."

"Yes." She nodded and nudged the foal back into the stall. "The mare is going to be stiff for a while. Obviously, I can't give her too much for pain as long as she's nursing."

"I've brought your lunch."

"No thanks. I'm not hungry."

"No can do, Doc. I've been given explicit orders by your friend that you are to eat this or else."

She took the cup and plate and walked out of the barn. Johnny remained standing in the shadowed aisleway, still regarded by the suspicious goats. His first instinct, oddly enough, was to follow Leah, but he quickly checked it (he had not come here to talk over old times that were best forgotten) and entered the stall with his mare. Despite the previous night's accident, she looked none the worse for wear. Doc Starr had done a nice job suturing the cuts on her chest. There was a nasty swelling on her stifle that obviously caused some pain, as the mare kept the leg slightly c.o.c.ked and pinned her ears whenever the colt stumbled against her in search of a teat.

He left the stall, adjusted his hat again, and moved toward the office, glancing toward the wading pool and then the back door of the house, where he could just make out Shamika staring out at him through the dark screen, her arms crossed over her chest.

Leah sat at a cluttered desk reading a magazine article. The sandwich had been discarded in the trash, along with balled-up gauze, newspapers, and unopened mail from American Express and MasterCard. He watched her silently through the screen door before knocking.

A moment pa.s.sed before she looked up. Her face looked flushed and her eyes slightly gla.s.sy.

"You don't look so good," he said, stepping into the room.

"You were always a real smooth talker, Johnny." Her Her hand went up and brushed a tendril of hair back from her brow. "I guess you're wondering when you can take the mare home. I'd give her until the end of the week, just for safety's sake. Since I was partially responsible for the accident I won't charge you daily care." hand went up and brushed a tendril of hair back from her brow. "I guess you're wondering when you can take the mare home. I'd give her until the end of the week, just for safety's sake. Since I was partially responsible for the accident I won't charge you daily care."

"I'm not worried about the money."

She gave him a flat smile and sat back in the chair, which creaked like old hinges under her weight. Only then did he recognize the desk and chair as the same one that had belonged to his father. Then it had occupied a tiny office in the house-a cubicle off the kitchen that was more of a pantry than a room. After his father's death, Roy had stored a few furnishings in a warehouse. The others he had donated to Goodwill.

"Looks like you've done a good job fixing up the old place," he said.

"There's a lot to be done. I have no desire to sink any more money in to it than I have to. Hopefully, I won't be here long."

"Moving back to Dallas?"

"Hardly." Sitting forward, she absently looked at the magazine and turned the page. "Once I get my practice up and going I'll get a better place. Something closer to town. I have a meeting with Greg Hunnicutt at the track. I understand there's a need for another on-site vet. I'll take him my resume and see what happens."

"Tough business vetting at the track. I can't see that you'll like it much."

"Like it? Or do you mean fit in?" She closed the magazine and tossed it aside.

"I mean like it. You know the race business. The horses aren't exactly someone's backyard pet. They're money machines. If they don't earn their keep, they're history, in one way or another. I can't see you putting down a horse because it came in last at a Futurity."

Leah drank her cold coffee, still refusing to look at Johnny directly.

"So why did did you come back to Ruidoso?" he asked. you come back to Ruidoso?" he asked.

"Why not? It's my home. Where I grew up. I still have friends here."

"And family."

Her jaw tensed. Carefully, she set down her coffee cup and finally lifted her blue eyes to his. Hers were bright with anger. "Did you come here to discuss my father, Johnny? Perhaps you have some message you want me to pa.s.s on to him? Say, you intend to destroy his reputation by any means possible in order to win the next senatorial election?"

"I have nothing to say to your father that I can't tell him in person, Le."

"Or to every gossip-hungry reporter who's looking to break the back of yet another politician, and don't call me Le. Only my friends call me that, and as I recall, we are no longer friends."

He nodded and shrugged. "Sorry you feel like that. But as I recall, Doctor Doctor, if anyone has the right to feel p.i.s.sed about what happened between us, it should be me. You unloaded me, remember? 'Been nice knowing you, Whitehorse, but I have my future to think about and you're not included.' Guess you couldn't handle the heat you would have gotten over showing up at the senior prom with an Indian on your arm. I was good enough to screw in the back of old pickup trucks, but not to be seen with in public."

Leah jumped up and threw the coffee in his face. He did not blink. She, on the other hand, turned white as the gauze in the waste bin. Her body shook. "You're a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, Johnny. A real b.a.s.t.a.r.d. No one but a cold-hearted b.a.s.t.a.r.d would have so proudly and arrogantly told my father to his face that he had been 's.c.r.e.w.i.n.g' his daughter for nearly a year right under his own roof. But then, maybe that's why you were crawling into my bed in the first place. It was your way of retaliating against my father. How better than to seduce the boss's daughter. Pay him back for what you believed was shabby treatment of your father."

Johnny swiped the dripping coffee off his chin with his hand.

Leah's eyes pooled with tears, and she took a steadying breath. "You were always a hothead, Johnny. So full of anger you couldn't rationalize beyond striking out at anyone you believed wronged you. Fight first, then ask questions. You hated my father for his wealth and power and the fact that your father had to work for a white man in order to survive. Yet look at what you've become. You beat your breast over the stereotyping of Indians. You rant on 20/20 20/20 about the mistreatment of Native Americans by the government, and how the whites should strive to better understand the earth's people. Yet, look at how you live, Johnny. Where you live. Not on the reservation. Not among your people-" about the mistreatment of Native Americans by the government, and how the whites should strive to better understand the earth's people. Yet, look at how you live, Johnny. Where you live. Not on the reservation. Not among your people-"

"I didn't come here to exchange insults, Le-excuse me, Doctor. Doctor. I just wanted to see my G.o.dd.a.m.n horse." I just wanted to see my G.o.dd.a.m.n horse."

"So you've seen it."

They stood in silence, glaring.

"Fine," he finally snapped, then turned on his heels and hit the screen door with the palms of both hands. "See ya around, Doc. I'll have Roy pick up the mare and colt at the end of the week. Just send me a bill. I'm good for it."

THREE.

From her bedroom window Leah could lie in bed and watch traffic come and go along Highway 249. There were trucks, mostly, area ranchers traveling to and from the city, some hauling horse or cattle trailers, others hauling flatbed trailers of hay bales stacked as high as a two-story house. Occasionally a tractor lumbered by at a snail's pace, causing impatient drivers to pa.s.s on the wrong side of the road into incoming traffic. Just a month before, a teenage boy had driven his car head-on into an oncoming semi, too busy giving the old man on the tractor the finger to notice that he was barreling into death's clutches. Leah had attempted to give the young man CPR while waiting for the paramedics to arrive. But there was too little left of the kid's face and chest for it to do much good. He'd sailed through the windshield of his car and splattered against the truck's grill as if he were a bug. truck's grill as if he were a bug.

Not long after Johnny's visit, Leah's fever spiked at one hundred and three. Shamika put her to bed, proceeded to pump her full of orange juice and aspirin, threatened her with physical harm if she so much as thought of answering the phone again before she had kicked the fever. "You're not going to do anyone any good if you're in the hospital," she declared with that telling tone that warned Leah that her friend's patience was long past its limits.

Leah rested against propped-up pillows, her gaze locked on the asphalt highway as the television droned in the background. Shamika had brought her another lunch, chicken noodle soup and Ritz crackers, which Leah had allowed to go untouched. The mail had arrived an hour ago; obviously Shamika had screened it and decided the demands for payment would be too much for Leah to deal with at the moment.

"You're supposed to be sleeping," Shamika whispered from the door.

"That would be nice," she responded wearily. "But I'm beginning to suspect that sleep has been deleted from my memory banks."

Shamika had tied a leopard-print scarf turbanlike around her head and donned a pair of dangling bronze earrings that tinkled when she moved. They were Val's favorites. She regarded the uneaten food with a raised eyebrow. "Your starving yourself isn't going to help build up your strength."

"I was never one who could force myself to eat."

Folding her arms over her chest, Shamika studied Leah closely. "What's going on, sweetie? You haven't been yourself for a while now. That tantrum you threw earlier at Johnny wasn't like you at all."

"You haven't seen me around Johnny before. He's always had a way of driving me crazy. I lose all common sense when he's around."

"I can see how he would do that. He's one good-looking specimen. The photographs I've seen don't do him justice. I imagine getting over a man like that would take some doing."

"I got over Johnny a long time ago. He's arrogant and shallow. Cher can have him, or whoever that was I saw on his arm in People People magazine." magazine."

"From what you've said in the past, I got the impression you two were hot and heavy for a long time. You never did tell me what broke you up. Did he cheat on you?"

"Johnny's not a two-timer. With him it's all or nothing."

"Then he lied to you? Abused you? Took you for granted?"

"We're not talking about my ex-husband here." Leah laughed. "No. Johnny treated me better than anyone has treated me my entire life."

"I know his race had nothing to do with it. Or did it?"

Leah s.n.a.t.c.hed a Kleenex from a box and proceeded to tear it into shreds. She looked out the window and watched a breeze play with the leaves on a nearby poplar tree. "I loved loved Johnny for who and what he was. I worshipped his spirit. I applauded his hunger to rise up from his circ.u.mstances and succeed. I also loved the fact that he was forbidden to me." Johnny for who and what he was. I worshipped his spirit. I applauded his hunger to rise up from his circ.u.mstances and succeed. I also loved the fact that he was forbidden to me."

"By your father, I take it."

"By everyone. His father didn't approve of me any more than mine approved of Johnny, so our lives were spent meeting on the sly. We were going to come out of the closet, so to speak, and let the world know that we were in love on prom night. What I didn't know was that my father had suspected that something was going on between us. Just minutes before Johnny arrived at the house, Dad confronted me and threatened that if I ever saw Johnny again he would fire Johnny's father and make certain he never worked in New Mexico again."

Sinking a little deeper into the pillows, Leah took a shallow breath. "I'll never forget the look in Johnny's eyes. First shock and confusion. Then pain. Then so much anger."

"You did tell him the truth, didn't you? About your father's ultimatum?"

"Of course not." She shook her head. "Johnny despised my father. Had I told him the truth-dear G.o.d, he might have torn Dad in two with his bare hands. The confrontation between them the next day was ugly enough. Johnny spent the night at White Tail Peak, drinking himself into mindless oblivion. He showed up at our door at five the next morning, shirtless and barefoot, drunk and demanding to see me. He'd applied war paint to his face. He and my father stood toe to toe on the front porch. Johnny informed him in shocking detail about our year-long relationship. My father called him a no-account Indian with the morals of a tomcat, and that the only reason he allowed his old man to continue working his horses was because he was the best s.h.i.t-picker minimum wage could buy. Johnny should kiss his feet for even keeping the old drunk employed. He wasn't worth the three-fifty he paid him an hour to crawl out of bed."

Shamika pursed her lips and whistled softly. "Nasty stuff, huh?"

"Johnny's weak spot was his father. He'd watched Jefferson Whitehorse go from a proud man and one of the finest racehorse trainers in the state to a broken man whose dreams were diluted by whiskey." Leah tossed the tattered Kleenex aside and drew the comforter up to her chin. She had begun to shake and sweat. Obviously the fever had begun to break, thanks to the aspirin she'd taken earlier. "I'm ashamed to say that my father was partly to blame for Mr. Whitehorse's problems, as much as I tried to deny it back then. Jefferson had a special way with horses, as if he could communicate with them. If a horse hurt, he could look into its eyes and determine the problem. If the horse was afraid, he rea.s.sured it. I've seen him take the wildest colt and within an hour have it follow him like an adoring puppy."

"So what happened? Did the horses not run well? Didn't they win?"

"Oh yes. They won all right. But not with Jefferson as the trainer of record. Mr. Whitehorse would get them ready for the track, in peak condition, then my father would remove the horses and send them to Jack Jones-a well-known trainer who would run the horses, win, and get the credit for training them. My father's excuse to Mr. Whitehorse was, because of Jack's influence at the track, Jack could request the best jockey, and get them. He could also pull a few strings and ensure he got the best gate positions. There was never a chance of Jefferson Whitehorse getting a reputation in the business for training because there were never any horses running under his name. Johnny often tried to convince his father to go out on his own-start his own training facility-but my father wouldn't have it. He made subtle threats that he would see Jefferson's license revoked. And besides, what chance did an Indian have making a name for himself on the white man's track?

"Johnny wanted desperately to get an education so he could make enough money to back his father's business ... but when Johnny was a soph.o.m.ore at the university, he was notified that his father had been found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head."

Shamika closed her eyes. "Lord, girl. No wonder Johnny Whitehorse hates your father."

"Can you understand now why it's so difficult to see Johnny?" Leah asked. "My family has done nothing but bring him pain."

"He didn't seem so angry today, at least, not until you booted him out the door with coffee dripping off his nose. I think he's much too smart to think that you had anything to do with his father's problems."

"I'm ashamed to say that through it all I defended my father-right up until the day I learned about Jefferson's suicide. I guess I just didn't want to accept the fact that my own father was the sort of man who could so coldly and calculatingly destroy another human being. My, how times change, huh? If I'd known then what I know now, I would have told my father where he could put his prejudice and walked off into the sunset with Johnny Whitehorse.

"I've thought a lot the last few years about how different my life might have been had Johnny and I got married. Gotta admit that seeing him again stirs up all the old if onlys." if onlys."

Shamika put her hand on Leah's and gave it a squeeze. "Johnny's not married, you know. Maybe-"

"No. Don't even think it, Shamika. Johnny and I exist in different worlds-different dimensions, for heaven's sake. He can have any woman he wants, and probably has, judging by the tabloids. Besides, you and I both know there are far too many complications to a relationship with me."

"Then why are you going out with Sam Clark again this Friday night? I mean, if you think your life is too complicated to get involved with a man, why are you wasting time on this jerk?"

"Sam is not not a jerk." Leah sniffed. "He's fun. He likes to dance." a jerk." Leah sniffed. "He's fun. He likes to dance."

"Excuse me? The man sells used cars-"

"Meaning?"

"Meaning ... nothing. I just think you could do better."

"I did better, once. I married a petroleum engineer making nearly a hundred grand a year. Look where that got me."

Shamika raised one eyebrow. "Have you told Sam about Val?"

"Not exactly." Leah shook her head and averted her eyes.