Whitehorse Part 21

"Apache was something to be proud of, once, when this land was ours and our homes were wherever our hearts led us-when we were warriors to be respected and feared. Do you take pride in this?" He pointed to the line of shabby, cookie-cutter houses built fifty years ago, with yards cluttered with rusting automobiles that lay shadowed in the dark like the bones of long-dead buffalo.

"You drink yourself to oblivion every night and are too d.a.m.ned hung over in the morning to work. Dolores gave you money to go to college, and what did you do with it? Spent it on wh.o.r.es and Chivas. You could have gone to medical school like you once wanted, but you allowed the old ones to convince you to stay for the sake of keeping the tradition and culture alive. How can you keep a culture alive when it's squirming in malaise and Jack Daniel's? For that matter, who the h.e.l.l wants to keep such a culture alive? Where is the pride and dignity in dying before you're forty of cirrhosis of the liver-or suicide? Do you really think the world out there is going to listen to an uneducated drunk when he stands up to decry this reservation's situation? They won't respect you, Billy. They'll pity you. Since when did the Apache crave the pity instead of the respect of a white man?"

Billy swung at Johnny; Johnny jumped back as the knife blade sliced within inches of his face.

"Stop this!" A tall, slim-hipped woman in faded jeans and a plaid cowboy shirt tied at her midriff planted her hands against Billy's chest and shoved him back. He tripped and fell, sprawling heavily into the dirt at his mother's feet.

"Idiot," she hissed, and kicked his leg. "What do you think you're doing? You shame me for your stupidity, not to mention your drunkenness. If you truly cared about showing respect for our sister, you would have laid off the Jack Daniel's tonight."

The woman turned on Johnny, her dark eyes snapping with emotion, her waist-length black hair swirling around her shoulders. "As for you... you..." She glanced past Johnny to Leah, who remained nervously in the distance. "What the h.e.l.l are you doing bringing her her here?" here?"

His eyes narrowing, Johnny looked her up and down. "Savanah?"

"What's wrong, Whitehorse? You look like you've just seen a mountain spirit up close and personal." She propped her fists on her hips. "Long time no see, you arrogant son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h. So much for dropping me a postcard from the Big Apple."

He opened and closed his mouth, refusing to believe that the shapely, beautiful young woman before him was Savanah Rainwater, Dolores's sister. "The last time I saw you you were thirty pounds overweight, four inches shorter, and were fighting a bad case of p.u.b.erty acne."

"That was ten years ago. I've grown up. And you haven't answered my question. What is Leah doing here?"

"She was a friend of Dolores's-"

"Don't bulls.h.i.t me, Whitehorse. Dolores hated Leah Foster with an Apache pa.s.sion. And to top that off, you've been plastered all over the news trying to castrate her father. Don't tell me you and the senator are in bed together now."

"Hardly." He grabbed her arm and pulled her to one side, ignoring Billy's rambling. He glanced again at Leah, doing his best to rea.s.sure her with a smile as she stared at him and frowned.

"So it's true." Savanah yanked her arm away. "Dolores was right. You're back together with Leah. You dumped my sister-"

"I didn't dump your sister, Vanah. The fact is I had no intention of it-at least not at the time. Leah and I have just ... after Dolores died-"

"She moved in on you like a copperhead on a lazy field mouse." She shook her head. "Dee was always afraid this would happen. She knew you had never gotten over Leah. She told me just a few days ago that she suspected something was going on between you."

"I wasn't aware you two were even in contact. Where the h.e.l.l have you been the last few years?"

"Here and there. I came home when I heard about the accident."

"From...?"

Savanah crossed her arms and again looked past Johnny. He turned as Leah moved up beside him, her gaze locked on Dolores's sister.

"Savanah?" Leah smiled and extended her hand. "My gosh, I hardly recognize you. It's wonderful to see you again."

Savanah stared, ignoring her hand.

"I'm sorry about Dolores." Leah lowered her arm.

"I'll bet. Just like you were sorry when you stole Johnny away from Dee in high school."

Leah set her jaw and raised one eyebrow. "I see you're still cursed with an att.i.tude. I thought you might have mellowed over the years."

"And I didn't come here to see two women get in a G.o.dd.a.m.n catfight," Johnny interrupted, grabbing them each by an arm and hauling them toward his truck. "In the last five minutes I've had my face slapped twice, been spat upon, and had my nose nearly cut off by a drunken Indian. My temper is slightly on edge so I suggest the two of you draw back your claws and shut up."

Reaching the back of the truck, he lowered the tailgate and set Leah and Savanah on it side by side. Then he paced, dragging one hand through his hair. "We're all here for the same reason, for G.o.d's sake. Dolores is dead." Pointing one finger at Savanah, he added, "And don't sit there and pretend you and she were tight again. Dolores herself told me you haven't spoken in years. She didn't even know where the h.e.l.l you were. The last time the two of you were in the same room you about clawed each other's eyes out, according to Dolores."

Savanah looked off into the dark.

Leah took a weary breath and released it. "I knew I shouldn't have come. I start a job at six in the morning and it's nearly midnight now. I've only provoked more anger-"

"It's not your fault," Savanah said more softly, yet still refusing to look at Leah or Johnny. "Dolores never stood a chance in h.e.l.l of landing Johnny Whitehorse. No one did except you. She knew it. She accepted it, I think. With Dee it was more of the chase, trying to prove herself by outdoing someone else. By being the best, not just in everyone else's eyes, but in her own. She simply couldn't get beyond the fact that she was an Indian. She never felt ... equal. It made her take stupid risks..."

She turned her big eyes up to Johnny's. "Whatever caused that accident ... I'm sure it had nothing to do with your carelessness. Or because you were drinking or taking drugs. My G.o.d, you're the finest role model we've ever hoped to have, Johnny. Since you've become a household name people have actually appraised us as a people with potential. The problem is, they're now asking, if you can do it, get educated and successful, why can't they all? Your achievements only make the rest of these people look like sluggards and exaggerates their own sense of failure."

Laughing, she shook her head and thumbed over her shoulder. "Take Billy for instance. He would never admit that he envies you. With his looks and his smarts he could have become a fine doctor. But he allowed my mother's cloying demands that he remain here and take care of her after our father died to drain him of his dreams and aspirations. He hates you now because you're a reminder of what he could have been."

"It's not too late," Leah said. "It's never too late to change your life for the better. He could still go to school."

"He's a borderline alcoholic. He'll end up dying just like our father, his insides rotted by whiskey and his mind eaten away by ignorance." She looked at Johnny. "We need to talk. Privately," Privately," she stressed, sliding off the tailgate. "I'm leaving tomorrow night. Will you call me in the morning?" she stressed, sliding off the tailgate. "I'm leaving tomorrow night. Will you call me in the morning?"

Johnny nodded and Savanah walked away.

SEVENTEEN.

Jake Graham didn't bother to look up as Leah stepped into his neat, sterile-smelling office with charts of horse anatomies on the walls, framed degrees from universities and veterinary schools, his state license to practice medicine on the track, and photographs of horses streaking across finish lines. With a stethoscope hanging around his neck and his long brown hair falling in a wave over his brow, he was focused on a clipboard of papers, scratching notes on one before flipping through others and writing something else.

"You're late, Doctor." He turned to a metal filing cabinet and yanked open the drawer. "Rounds start at six sharp. It's now six thirty-five. Your tardiness has put us half an hour behind schedule."

Leah opened her mouth to apologize- He slammed the drawer shut and turned on her, jaw unshaven that morning, eyes as clear blue as a mountain spring, and just as icy. She'd heard he wasn't bad to look at-true, in a rugged sort of way, if one liked the Foreign Legion mercenary sort who appeared as if he would rather run you through with a bayonet than say good morning. Whatever qualities might have made him appealing were canceled out by the intimidation of his scowl and the downward slant of his mouth.

Graham shoved the clipboard at her as he walked around her toward the door. "I just got a call from Lorian Farm. Their stakes winner, Cool Me Down, has a gut problem. Get your a.s.s in gear and follow me."

Her face beginning to burn, Leah glanced toward the coffee maker on a table near a water cooler that sported a label from a distillery just outside of town. Graham had every right to be angry, she reminded herself. She'd fallen back to sleep when her alarm went off. If it hadn't been for Shamika dragging her out of bed, she would no doubt still be sleeping or thinking of Johnny and the ridiculous fear she'd experienced over his reaction to Val. She'd spent the better part of the night tossing and turning, not out of worry but over the memory of watching Johnny hold her son, and hearing his words, "I wish he were mine."

She hadn't bothered with coffee after her shower to revive her, and without coffee her mind would continue to feel like cotton for another two hours.

"Starr!" Jake shouted, causing her to jump and turn away from the coffeepot, toss her purse into a corner, and hurry out the door, into the bracing morning that was barely an hour old.

Business was bustling throughout the facility's vast barns. Electric horse walkers hummed as they went round and round with horses walking or jogging on the end of ropes. The high-spirited, muscular animals wore leg wraps around their cannon bones, their glossy bodies sending steam into the cool air. In the distance animals sprinted around the track with jockeys checking them back or driving them on, trainers standing on the sidelines with stopwatches in hand shaking their heads, cursing and shouting directives to the slender young men riding the horses.

Leah ran to catch up with Jake Graham, whose long legs made quick time of crossing one barn lot after another. She did her best to read the material Graham had shoved into her hands-not easy considering she was forced to jog just to keep up with Graham.

"Clinical Diagnosis," she read aloud. "Gastric ulceration hyperkeratosis. The horse is suffering from stomach ulcers."

"The gastric mucosa looks as if it's been sprayed with buckshot. You'll see the endoscopic evaluation there in the file. He's been on twenty-four hundred milligrams of Ranitidine tablets two times a day for the last week. He gets nothing more to eat than alfalfa and timothy hay four times a day. Until this morning the abdominal discomfort had abated. We were due to rescope tomorrow."

"Signs of discomfort this morning?"

"Pawing, lying out flat, looking at his side, camping in back."

"Colic."

"Maybe."

By the time they reached barn six, Leah was struggling to breathe. She paused at the door long enough to take a much-needed breath as Graham moved down the barn aisle, glancing back at her with a smugness on his face that made her want to take his stethoscope and palpate him with it.

Finally she followed, catching up with him just as he reached the string of stalls belonging to Lorian Farm. A tall, lanky man with faded orange hair that had thinned to a half-dozen strands wrapped over his bald head stood by a sleek black thoroughbred stallion with drawn-in flanks and heaving sides, its head down with nostrils wide and muzzle pinched.

His step slowing, Jake looked down at Leah and said quietly but firmly, "Watch. Listen. Do what I tell you to do and nothing more. Don't give Lorian an opinion. Don't even open your mouth. You have no license yet to practice here. If you were to diagnose wrong, that son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h could sue us and the state could close us down quicker than you could wiggle that cute little a.s.s. Understand me?"

She nodded, understanding thoroughly.

Leah stood back, remaining silent as Graham checked the animal's vital signs: respiration, heart rate, gut sounds, the color of its gums, its temperature. He checked the stall: kicked around the shavings, toed a pile of dung, then glanced into the water bucket, hay and feed bin, then told Lorian to move the horse to the clinic to be palpated.

Lorian shook his head. "I'm gonna have to hock my truck to pay this bill, Jake. s.h.i.t, man, that Ranitidine alone is costing me two hundred bucks a week. h.e.l.l, I could go down to Wal-Mart and buy up a buncha Tums to give this bag of bones."

Jake turned on Lorian so fast that Lorian nearly tripped on himself. "Fine, Lorian, you do that. Go buy you some Tums, and while you're at it a plot to bury the G.o.dd.a.m.n horse in because that's what's going to happen if you don't start following my directions in the care of this animal. Is that it? You trying to kill the horse? You got plenty of insurance on him or what?"

Lorian's face went beet red. "What the h.e.l.l are you accusing me of, Graham?"

"I told you not to be giving that horse grain for a week. There's mola.s.ses on his breath and oats in his droppings. You've been graining him, you stupid b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"He was losing weight. I can't run no d.a.m.n horse if he's fifty pounds underweight. He won't make it around the G.o.dd.a.m.n track."

"He sure as h.e.l.l isn't going to make it if he's dead, is he?" Jake shouted back, then turned on his heels and stormed from the barn, leaving Leah to take the lead rope from Lorian. He glared at her with sweat running down his temples.

"Who the h.e.l.l are you?" he said through his tobacco-stained teeth.

"I'll be a.s.sisting Doctor Graham for a while. I'm Doctor Starr." She extended her hand and tried to give him a steady smile. "I'm sure your horse will be fine, Mr. Lorian."

"I don't give a s.h.i.t, lady. He ain't won a G.o.dd.a.m.n dollar since last year and if you ask me I'd just as soon put the somb.i.t.c.h down. Je-sus. Get the nag outta here, why don't ya?"

Lorian walked off, shouting orders to a pair of Hispanic grooms, who scuttled like crabs out of his way. Leah ran her hand along the horse's withers and down its ma.s.sive shoulder bone, smiling as Cool Me Down raised his head and turned his big dark eyes, reflecting intense pain, on hers. "No wonder you have ulcers," she said, then headed back to the clinic.

"There is a swelling on the left that might be a gas pocket, but I don't think so." Leah leaned further into the horse, her eyes closed as she visualized the interior walls of the colon and the location of the spleen and kidneys. The pressure and heat around her arm, all the way to her shoulder, felt uncomfortable if not outright crushing. "The gastric ulcerations are probably contributing to his discomfort, but in my opinion I think we're dealing with a nephrosplenic entrapment. The large colon has somehow gotten tossed over the ligament, probably while he was rolling." Leah gently withdrew her arm from the stallion's r.e.c.t.u.m, peeled the examination sleeve off and tossed it in the trash. Turning to Graham, she said, "You can run another CBC fibrinogen and PCV for total protein but I suspect they're not going to tell you anything you don't already know. He's anemic and dehydrated, which means this has been going on a while. I suggest a good shot of calcium and a thirty-minute turn out on the walker at a trot. The calcium will shrink the colon and the exercise will allow it to shift back into place."

"Unless the entrapped area is distended by the G.o.dd.a.m.n grain Lorian has been feeding him."

"Then you sedate the horse and manipulate the colon rectally."

Jake reached into his medicine cabinet for a vial of clear liquid and a syringe, then proceeded to ease the needle into the horse's vein, first drawing back blood to check his efficiency. Tossing the syringe into a canister labeled Hazardous Waste, he glanced at Leah.

"You may as well know I think your working here is a bad idea."

"I don't have to be psychic to figure that out."

"It's no reflection on your abilities as a fine veterinarian. I've asked around about you. You've got a decent rep. But it's a tough job. You deal with a lot of a.s.sholes that could make Hitler cry. Aside from that, there's no place here for feminine emotionalism."

She gave him a flat smile. "Is that another term for PMS, Doctor Graham?"

"Not at all, Doctor Starr." Jake poured himself a cup of coffee and reached for a stack of files. "We're asked to make some tough decisions, not just occasionally, but every day we come to work. And you'd better believe there is going to be somebody in your face at all times. Take Lorian. He trains his own horses, races them, lives in the feed room because he doesn't have the money for rent. He's got half a dozen kids off in Oklahoma or Arkansas that may or may not all be his-he doesn't really care, just as long as there's a wife to give him some sense of purpose. Cool Me Down was a stakes winner last year. Lorian's first to win a major purse. The horse showed every promise of becoming a superstar, blew the h.e.l.l out of the record books in the following several races. Then it was over. He quit running."

"There has to be a reason."

"Aside from the gastric ulcerations, we've found no evidence of anything else. He's just shut down."

Leah moved to the horse's head and allowed him to nuzzle her hand. "Maybe it's time to turn him out to pasture and let him be a horse for a while."

"Try telling that to Randy Lorian. Go on. I dare you. That b.a.s.t.a.r.d would rather bury the animal than allow it the pleasure of running free in green pastures. After all, what good is having a horse that can't pay for itself."

As Leah frowned, Jake laughed and shook his head. "Get used to it. This isn't the world of women infatuated with pet horses or some good old boy named Bubba who likes to rope off his favorite quarter on the weekends. Those animals could hop around on three legs and as long as they eat carrots and apples and mola.s.ses cookies out of hand and halfway tolerate their owners they'll live out their lives in comfort until they die of old age.

"Not here. Not these machines. If they don't pay for themselves, they're useless. The owners can sell them to Alpo for ninety cents a pound and get a small return on their investment. Or if the horse is lucky he gets put in an auction and maybe someone other than Alpo will find him interesting enough to take a chance on him. That is if he's not already lame or his brains aren't fried by steroids and stress."

Jake shouted to an a.s.sistant to put Cool Me Down on the walker for fifteen minutes. "Coming?" he asked Leah, then walked out the door.

With the radio on low and the deejay suggesting that thanks to El Nino the area was in for the hottest summer on record, Johnny pulled the dually up to the curb outside Bernice Rainwater's house and, reaching across the pa.s.senger seat, shoved open the door, allowing the June heat to wash through the cab in a simmering wave. He glanced up at the temp gauge on the rearview mirror, not surprised to see it registering ninety-two degrees-d.a.m.n hot for so early in the season. He made a mental note to run the truck by the auto shop to make certain there was plenty of coolant in the engine, and also to check out the air-conditioning system at Leah's house. He knew from experience that the small house baked like an oven in this sort of heat.

Savanah Rainwater, shielding her eyes from the sun, looked up and down the quiet narrow street before slinging her suitcase into the truck bed, then more gently laying the collection of cameras she had hanging from each shoulder onto the backseat. She climbed up into the truck and slammed and locked the door before reaching for the seatbelt.

In the light of day there was something about her appearance that affected Johnny. Not in the way she was dressed, certainly, in faded jeans and a turquoise cotton blouse, but in her energy and will that seemed to both absorb and reflect the light around her. Her skin was dusky with the slightest hint of copper and her huge, almond-shaped eyes were the darkest plum purple, which she accentuated with the merest touch of purple shadow on her lids. Her hair had been feathered around her face, the cut drawing the observer's eye to the high cheekbones and a nose so perfectly formed that, had he not known her better, might have been the result of a very fine plastic surgeon.

"I could have rented a car," she told him, grinning. "Driving me to Albuquerque seems excessive, even if we are old friends."

He shrugged and turned off the radio. "You said we needed to talk. So I'm here to talk."

"Good ol' Johnny on the spot. Mr. Reliable." She laughed and adjusted her seat back, stretched out her long, denim-clad legs and released a weary sigh. "I should never have come home. It was a mistake. Seeing Billy and Mother accomplished nothing more than making me feel guilty again for walking away, especially now that Dee is gone."

They drove for a while without talking, until Ruidoso was behind them and the highway stretched like a silver ribbon before them, waves of heat rising from the asphalt, making the oncoming cars resemble mirages. Johnny glanced at Savanah occasionally, thinking to himself that if he had b.u.mped into her on the street he would not have known her. The ugly ducking had certainly turned into a swan, yet there was still that edge of tomboyishness that made him think that she could hold her own against any man who thought he could best her physically in a wrestling match-not to mention romance. This one would not fall in love easily. There was a chip on her shoulder the size of the Sierra Blanca, and he wondered to himself what sort of relationship she had experienced that had stamped wariness and distrust so indelibly over her features.

"Ever thought of modeling?" he asked, drawing her attention from the scenery back to him.

She shook her head. "Been there and done that. Unlike Dolores, I prefer to be in back of the camera, thank you."

"You're into photography, I take it."

"Dabble in it a bit." She grinned. "Next time you want a partially nude shot of you taken on Fifth Avenue, give me a call. I do my best work photographing wild animals."