She spun around, and the whites of her eyes glowed in the shadows of the trailer as she took in her new surroundings.Her nostrils flared, undoubtedly because of all the new smells and all the new horses surrounding her.
Tom stepped forward and took the reins from the man, approaching the mare slowly, his hand out.He rested it against her neck and waited patiently for her to stop jerking her head.Then he pressed his forehead to her cheek and whispered something I couldn’t make out.
Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out a carrot and held it in front of her nose.Her lips wiggled, reaching for it.He let her eat it, but then produced another, moving it forward so she had to step toward the door of the trailer to get it.That was how he got the emaciated-looking horse out of the trailer and into the stall.
He made sure she had water, a salt lick, hay, and other treats.But she’d need a hell of a lot more than that before she even began to resemble the healthy horses in the other stalls.
The man in the ball cap stuck his hand out.“Thanks so much, Tom.I know she’ll be safe here.”
“Farrier and vet are on their way.”
As if on cue, they both tilted their heads to the ceiling when the sound of a chopper overhead grew closer.
The man in the ball cap chuckled.“Oh, you millionaires and your money.You just helicopter a vet and a farrier over at your whim, do yah?”
Tom chuckled.“Why have money if you can’t do something good with it?”
The man closed up the trailer.“I wish more rich guys were like you.”
“Does she have a name?”Tom asked, following the guy around to the driver’s side door.
“‘Angel’ was what I was told.”He snorted.“Gonna need a miracle to keep that one from getting a real halo and wings.Best of luck to you, buddy.Take care.”
“Ciao,” Tom said, making his way back toward Sam and me, as we now stood at Angel’s stall watching her growing increasingly agitated.She ignored the food and pawed the straw-covered ground with her gnarled hooves.Her nostrils flared and her ears pointed forward as her breathing picked up tempo like she was cantering through a field and not standing still in her stall.
“This makes me so sad,” Sam said, her voice choked.“Look at how bony she is.”
“I know, sweetie.”
Angel grew more and more frantic as the other horses started to make noises of either greeting or distress.Tom had disappeared when the truck and trailer rattled away, only to come back into the barn with two men in his wake.One was short with thin, gray hair on top of his head and round glasses, probably in his fifties.The other was tall, fit, and with two sleeves of tattoos disappearing beneath the sleeves of his rolled-up flannel shirt.Both carried big bags of supplies for their trade.
They walked right past us, and only the farrier with the tattoos acknowledged us, giving me a friendly smile and a small hello.
“She is here,” Tom said, unlocking the stall.
The short, bespectacled vet stepped in, reaching for the reins, and started doing a thorough examination of Angel while the farrier checked out her feet.
“Fuckin‘ ’ell,” the farrier said, grumbling.He had an accent I wasn’t expecting.Was that Scottish?Irish?Welsh?I was terrible with accents.“Look at ’er hooves?You ever seen hooves this bad, Morty?”He glanced at the vet, who now had a stethoscope in his ears and was pressing the other end to Angel’s chest and around her sides.
“Never,” Morty, the vet, said.“We have a problem though.”
“Another one?”the farrier said.
Tom, who’d stood by the door of the stall until now, stepped forward.“What’s wrong?”
“I’m hearing two heartbeats,” Morty said.“Our sad little Angel here is going to be a mother.”
“You’re shittin‘ me?”the farrier said, his accent even thicker.“This wee lass is up the duff?”He ran his big hand over her belly carefully.“She’s just bones.Where’s the babe?”
“I’ll get the doppler,” Morty said, reaching into his bag.
As much as I wanted to stay, and I knew my daughter wanted to stay, I felt like we needed to go.To give them space to work.We certainly weren’t of any help, and while Sam would be content just brushing horses for the rest of the day, I didn’t want our presence on the farm to add to Tom’s stress.
I tugged my daughter to the side by her elbow.“We should leave them to Angel.”
Her eyes widened.“What?No.I want to watch.You know I want to be a vet, Mom.Maybe I can help.”
I highly doubted that.
