“So, how was your day-yate?” Sabine knows better than to treat a dinner out with a new friend seriously. In her whole life, Sabine has never been threatened with her mother’s falling in love with anyone other than herself and her family. And, now, the Hitchhiker. Oh, there were times in her young life when Sabine encouraged her mother to look elsewhere for affection, but Ruby never took that seriously either.
“Very nice. Great buttermilk fried chicken.”
“Skip to the chase, Mom. Did he kiss you?”
In fact, he had.
There is just enough of a pause in replying, that Sabine jumps on the implication. “Good for you.”
Ruby forestalls the next remark. “And, no. He drove off in his car and I drove off in mine.”
“You know that saying … If this van’s rockin’.”
“Nothing rocked.”
“Not even your world?”
“Stop it.” Ruby is laughing. In fact, that good night kiss was quite nice. A little zizz of interest was definitely felt. “But there is something that came up that I want to talk to you about.”
“Okay.” Sabine takes a moment to redirect a child toward the chore he is tasked with. “Shoot.”
“I’m going to take a DNA test.”
“And that will do what?”
On television, swabs of DNA become markers to find criminals, or reveal nationality, prove paternity. What will knowing if she’s Scottish or English or French or Lithuanian actually tell her? “It will be a starting place. If I join one of those databases, it may show me that there are living relatives. To me and to you.”
There is the sound of a door shutting. “Molly came home yesterday crying because she divined that her friend Amber is going to move. Amber knew nothing about it and got mad. Then her mother called me to ask if I wanted any of their houseplants because, you guessed it, they’re moving.”
“I don’t know if the genetic marker for being a psychic is possible, but wouldn’t finding out that somewhere in our history there were others like us be a good thing?”
“You mean your mother?”
“Yes. If taking a swab of spit out of my cheek will in any way lead me to the woman who left me behind, then I’m doing it.”
“But it may not lead you to the reason.”
I cannot decide if I like living in the rolling house better or living in the place where lots of other people live. In the one, it’s just me and Ruby. In the other, there are so many lovely scents to follow. In the rolling house—the van—we get to be with Boy and his person. Here, where we are now, I get to meet so many nice people. I get pats and treats. What could be better? Plus, it’s cooler here, or at least it was until the thingy that blows cold air stopped blowing cold air. And I get to stretch out on the bed. In the van, we are sometimes a little more scrunched together than I like. Especially when Ruby doesn’t open up the bed.
I have read the signals and I can see that it is time for us to go back to sleeping in the van. Ruby has packed up her things. She’s borrowed the horrible machine that scares me a little so that I have to bark at it, and she cleaned all the dirt that she brings into it out of the van. Sprayed it with that nasty stuff that takes away all the good scents of last night’s dinner and my own lovely doggy smell.
I am surprised when we don’t follow our usual route into town, or toward the lake, where I hope to get a nice run in, or to Boy’s place. Instead we get on the fast road, with the cars that go around us instead of keeping patiently behind us. I sense that this is going to be a long ride, so I curl up on the seat and close my eyes.
The wonderful thing about living in your transportation is that you never leave anything behind. Ruby could point this van in any direction on a whim and never have to go back and pack. She gooses the Westfalia up to sixty miles per hour and feels the fetters of a settled life break away. If she chose to, she could leave Harmony Farms in the dust, leaving behind her the haunting legend of the psychic who, for a time, made life better for the animals within the town’s borders. Apropos of that, Ruby is on her way to a farm to analyze what has been described to her as a performance horse. She’s known performing horses, so she’s actually not sure if this is a circus horse or an athlete. Carrie Farr is sending her to Peterborough, New Hampshire, to a friend of hers in the horse world. This will be the first time that Ruby has had an opportunity to practice her animal communicator skills outside of Harmony Farms and she’s a little nervous. What if, as she has thought before, this weird skill is restricted to the borders of a little affluent Massachusetts town? She’ll fake it, that’s what she’ll do. This is a premium job requiring a premium price which, apparently, the Peterborough horsewoman is willing to pay.
Ruby signals for her exit off the highway and heads north on a secondary road. Her directions seem to be leading her around and around, but eventually she comes upon a large Colonial-style house. A red barn is situated at a bit of a distance from the house, and between the two buildings, two horses doze in a large white-fenced paddock. A third horse paces in a small enclosure attached to a smaller barn. She figures out right away that one is going to be the beast in need of interpretation.
A woman comes out of the house, waves Ruby toward a second driveway that ends in front of the red barn. Predictably, she’s dressed in haute equestrienne couture including really interesting boots adorned with a surfeit of buckles. The whole shebang smacks of wealth and privilege and Ruby immediately thinks of Poor Farm Estates and the unfortunate Great Dane. “Oh dear,” she says to the Hitchhiker.
The dog has moved from the bench seat to the passenger seat and has been inspecting the view with her tail drifting slowly left to right. Interested, but not excited. Ruby shuts the van off and puts her hands on the dog, a little test to see if she’s going to be able to carry this off.
“What is this place? You aren’t going to leave me, are you?”
“Whatever would give you that idea?”
“It happens.”
Satisfied that the psychic vibe is there and assuring her buddy that she is safe from abandonment, Ruby gets out of the Westie and greets the client.
Prudence is the client’s name and she sticks out a firm hand for shaking. “Carrie thinks very highly of you.”
“I think the world of her.” Through the proffered hand, Ruby picks up a quick suggestion of competitiveness, and a little dash of nerves. She also gets the vibe that Prudence is a woman betting the proverbial farm on the outcome of Ruby’s visit today. She gets a real sense of someone in the background, perhaps a husband, and the aura of a last chance.
Prudence leads Ruby to the big horse in the small paddock. She sees that the horse has a choice, in or out, which seems like a good idea except that the “out” area seems nearly as small as the “in” area. And this is the biggest horse she’s ever seen. Every muscle ripples beneath a bronze coat, ears at attention. He is still for only a heartbeat then goes back to circling the twenty-by-twenty pen clockwise, pawing and snorting, shaking his head before trotting off counterclockwise. He is absolutely gorgeous, like an Elgin marble crossed with a dragon and come to life.
“He seems agitated. Is he usually kept in this small space?”
“He doesn’t play well with others.” Prudence inclines her head toward the pasture where the other two decidedly less spectacular horses are dozing on their feet. She puts a hand in a pocket and pulls out carrot chunks, which she shares with Ruby. “Besides, at the price I paid for him, I can’t afford a self-inflicted injury. He may look big and strong, but he’s as fragile as porcelain. You probably know that horses are about as accident prone as any of God’s creatures.”
Ruby decides that acting like she has horse experience is better than not. “Yes.”
The horse doesn’t approach the two women standing at his fence; he doesn’t want their puny offerings. Ruby doesn’t need to lay hands on him to know that he is claustrophobic and holds humanity in utter disdain. Carrot bites aren’t going to make him docile. “What do you do with him? Carrie said he was a performance horse.”
“Eventing.”
“Which is?”
“Cross country, stadium jumping, and dressage.”
“And cross country is…”
“Big fixed jumps, water jumps, ditches, et cetera. It’s meant to suggest what you’d find in the hunting field, only bigger.”
“Sounds a bit daunting.”
“Oh, it is.”
“So, you need a big, brave horse.”
“Yes. And that’s what he’s supposed to be. He’s been bred to do it.”
“Does he know that?”
“We haven’t discussed it.” Prudence shakes her head. “The thing is, if I’m not brave, he’s not. And, frankly, between you and me and don’t you say anything to Carrie, he fucking scares me.”
That doesn’t come as a surprise. “So, what do you want me to help with?”
“Look, this is nonsense, no offence, but if you can let him know that I’m on his side…”
“Can you get him to stand over here?”
“I’ll get him.” Prudence goes through the little barn and comes back out in the paddock with a halter and a lead line with a long chain attached. The horse doesn’t resist being haltered, but the cast of his eye suggests that he’s already anticipating unpleasantness, exacerbated by the fact his owner has laced the chain around the nose band of the halter, effectively putting the brakes on his ability to resist. “Come on through. He won’t hurt you.”
Indeed, the horse is standing stock still. There is nothing relaxed in his immobility. He looks like a powder keg about to go off. Ruby mentally girds her loins and walks toward the horse, neither slowly, like a predator, nor quickly like a jerk. “Hey, big guy.” She offers one of the carrot chunks, balancing it on the flattened palm of her left hand. The gelding doesn’t even lower his nose to where he could sniff it. Everything about him suggests distrust.
“What’s his name?”
“He has a long complicated registered name, but we call him Brando.”
This animal is so tall that Ruby could fit beneath his chin and he wouldn’t even notice she was there. With her right hand, Ruby carefully reaches up to touch the horse’s shoulder. Unlike Carrie’s troubled mare, she’s not about to put her face close to this one. “Okay, Brando. Will you talk to me?” She lightly glides her hand from his shoulder to his neck, which is nearly rigid beneath her fingers. She wonders if she would hear a heartbeat should she rest her ear against his chest, which is just about level with her ear. Some instinct keeps Ruby moving her hand gently up and down his neck, over his withers, which she scratches. Suddenly she is rewarded with a heavy sigh, a puttering of his nostrils. Prudence looks surprised. Ruby keeps scratching.
Images begin to flood into Ruby from the animal, memories of mutual grooming with another horse, playfully rearing, bucking, running side by side with a pal. The taste of grass. The images are so strong that Ruby falls into something like a trance, a state of mind she rarely experiences. Eyes closed, she presses her forehead against the horse, breathes in his rich scent. She lets the images and equine thoughts float until she understands what this beast needs to tell her. Finally, Ruby feels something soft and moist against her cheek and then the touch of the cold metal chain. In a split second, Ruby is shaken out of the trance-state.
“He’s never done that with me,” Prudence says. “I’ve been waiting for six months for him to acknowledge me like that.”
In the distance, the other two horses have roused themselves and moved under the shade of a tree. Ruby says nothing, watching the pair scratch each other’s backs in the same way she had “seen” it in her trance with Brando.
“You need to start over with him. He needs to be a horse first, a competitor second.”
“I don’t have the time. I mean, we’ve got to be competing this year. I bought him for that purpose, not to be a lawn ornament.”
Ruby pats the horse, whispers to him, “I’ll do what I can.”
She places her hands over Prudence’s. “He’s told me that he is claustrophobic in this little barn all by himself. He needs companionship. He is happy to jump big things, but he doesn’t like his saddle. He doesn’t like the bit. He is fighting both. He doesn’t like that you are afraid of him. He needs you to spend more time just being with him with no saddle, no bit. He is willing, but he needs some accommodation, especially time to run around and, yes, he might hurt himself, but he craves it. He calls it free run. To run around without weight, bit, saddle, or human direction.” She lets go of Prudence’s hands.
Prudence reaches up and pulls the halter off the horse. Brando shakes his head, relieved of the restraint. He doesn’t immediately move away. Prudence strokes his neck. “Okay, let’s see what we can do to make your life better.”
Back on the road, Ruby pulls off at a farm stand. She takes the dog out for a quick break, then treats herself to a cup of coffee and a freshly baked muffin. Sitting on a redwood bench, Ruby reflects over the events of the last hour. The Hitchhiker is doing her best I’m-not-really-begging-but-if-something-fell-from-your-lips-I’d-clean-it-up act. Ruby finds a carrot chunk in her pocket and drops that. Always game, the Hitchhiker snaps it up, mouthing it in a sportsmanlike way.
Free run. The horse had been filled with a desire Ruby herself has known. The need to be unrestricted. Unencumbered. To get back into the Westfalia and spin the metaphorical compass to see what direction she should take. Put some distance between herself and Harmony Farms and regain that wind in her hair feeling of life on the road. There is nothing and no one holding her back from doing that. Everything she owns is with her.
The dog spits out remnants of the carrot. Stands, shakes, bows, and points her nose at the van. “Time to go home.”
“That is home.” Ruby points her own nose at the Westfalia.
Yet, at the end of the day, the horse expressed a willingness to work, to, in effect, be fettered if only with the right equipment and with the right attitude from his owner.
“We aren’t done yet,” says the dog.