Burnside Preserve it wasn’t ten yet and that was a good thing because she still had unfinished business in Ukiah. As she rolled up to the barn, Cindy emerged from the house dressed in jeans and a sweater, her hair loose around her shoulders. It was cold. Everything was beaded with moisture, the fog even thicker here. “You poor thing,” Cindy said, coming across the yard to her. “Did you get your dog back yet?”
She could only shake her head, the question so fraught and painful she had to bite her lip to keep from venting right then and there. She tried to keep her personal life separate from her business and didn’t like to make excuses—it wasn’t professional—or lay any of her political views on her clients unless they were receptive, and the Burnsides definitely weren’t receptive, or not the way she read them anyway.
“Cup of tea?” Cindy offered. “And I’ve got a loaf of three-grain bread I baked yesterday if you want a bite of something—”
Cindy was in her fifties, an heiress to some corporate fortune—Sara never could remember which—who bankrolled her husband’s obsession with preserving African ungulates that were on their way to extinction in the wild. She didn’t put on any airs. If you didn’t know, you’d never guess she was worth a hundred million or two or three or whatever it was. She seemed content to live out here on their hundred and twenty acres, riding her horses and helping her husband manage the herd of sable, roan and kudu antelope and the Hartmann’s and Grevy’s zebras roaming around the place as if they’d stepped out of a nature film. She didn’t have a dog because of the animals—there were breeding females amongst them, that was the whole point, and theysaw any canine as a threat, no different from jackals or the piebald wild dogs that tore their calves to pieces out on the savanna—and when Sara was there she was always careful to keep Kutya in the car. But then Kutya wasn’t in the car. He was in a cage. In Ukiah.
“No, that’s nice of you, Cindy, but I’ve got a day ahead of me—lots of complications—so I better get right to it. The vet coming?”
“He was out on Tuesday so we went ahead without you. It was Corinna? She was favoring her left hind leg and so he darted her and did a thorough exam—there was some inflammation there and he didn’t know exactly what was causing it, so he’s got her on prednisone. And since she was down, he did the hoof trimming himself.” They both looked off to where the corral narrowed and the fences started and you could see some of the animals in the distance. “So it’s just the horses today,” Cindy said, turning back to her. “No big deal. Nothing to worry about. These things happen, right?”
“Yeah,” Sara said. “Yeah. But why do they have to happen to me?”
She worked quickly, trimming the horses’ hooves, cutting out the excess hoof walls and dead sole and then reshoeing them, letting her mind go free. All three horses—two mares and a gelding—knew her, so there was no problem there, just the routine she’d gone through a thousand times. The work settled her, the simple movements, the tools in her hands, the living breathing presence of the animals. She was in the car and heading back up the driveway by noon, feeling the sense of accomplishment she always felt on a job well done (and a payment received), but as soon as she got out on the main road it all came rushing back at her. The quarantine period was for thirty days. Thirty days. There was no way she was going to accept that.
She might have been pressing a bit, going faster than she should have considering the fog—at one point she came up on the pale ghost of a Winnebago moving so slowly it might as well havebeen parked, and she had to swing blindly out into the opposite lane to avoid hitting it, something she’d never do normally. There was no one coming, thank god, but she told herself she had to get a grip even as her speed
She could only shake her head, the question so fraught and painful she had to bite her lip to keep from venting right then and there. She tried to keep her personal life separate from her business and didn’t like to make excuses—it wasn’t professional—or lay any of her political views on her clients unless they were receptive, and the Burnsides definitely weren’t receptive, or not the way she read them anyway.
“Cup of tea?” Cindy offered. “And I’ve got a loaf of three-grain bread I baked yesterday if you want a bite of something—”
Cindy was in her fifties, an heiress to some corporate fortune—Sara never could remember which—who bankrolled her husband’s obsession with preserving African ungulates that were on their way to extinction in the wild. She didn’t put on any airs. If you didn’t know, you’d never guess she was worth a hundred million or two or three or whatever it was. She seemed content to live out here on their hundred and twenty acres, riding her horses and helping her husband manage the herd of sable, roan and kudu antelope and the Hartmann’s and Grevy’s zebras roaming around the place as if they’d stepped out of a nature film. She didn’t have a dog because of the animals—there were breeding females amongst them, that was the whole point, and theysaw any canine as a threat, no different from jackals or the piebald wild dogs that tore their calves to pieces out on the savanna—and when Sara was there she was always careful to keep Kutya in the car. But then Kutya wasn’t in the car. He was in a cage. In Ukiah.
“No, that’s nice of you, Cindy, but I’ve got a day ahead of me—lots of complications—so I better get right to it. The vet coming?”
“He was out on Tuesday so we went ahead without you. It was Corinna? She was favoring her left hind leg and so he darted her and did a thorough exam—there was some inflammation there and he didn’t know exactly what was causing it, so he’s got her on prednisone. And since she was down, he did the hoof trimming himself.” They both looked off to where the corral narrowed and the fences started and you could see some of the animals in the distance. “So it’s just the horses today,” Cindy said, turning back to her. “No big deal. Nothing to worry about. These things happen, right?”
“Yeah,” Sara said. “Yeah. But why do they have to happen to me?”
She worked quickly, trimming the horses’ hooves, cutting out the excess hoof walls and dead sole and then reshoeing them, letting her mind go free. All three horses—two mares and a gelding—knew her, so there was no problem there, just the routine she’d gone through a thousand times. The work settled her, the simple movements, the tools in her hands, the living breathing presence of the animals. She was in the car and heading back up the driveway by noon, feeling the sense of accomplishment she always felt on a job well done (and a payment received), but as soon as she got out on the main road it all came rushing back at her. The quarantine period was for thirty days. Thirty days. There was no way she was going to accept that.
She might have been pressing a bit, going faster than she should have considering the fog—at one point she came up on the pale ghost of a Winnebago moving so slowly it might as well havebeen parked, and she had to swing blindly out into the opposite lane to avoid hitting it, something she’d never do normally. There was no one coming, thank god, but she told herself she had to get a grip even as her speed
Similar Books
