Gift Horse

Chapter 1

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The horses were long gone. I looked around the derelict grounds, which bore little resemblance to the place I’d visited as a child. Winter-dead weeds bobbed in the biting wind broadcasting that nature was reclaiming its territory. Weather-worn outbuildings begged for a fresh coat of paint, or perhaps just a can of gasoline to end the suffering. Across the rutted parking lot, a decrepit mobile home looked a bit off plumb, as if leaning against the unrelenting wind. A rusty pickup truck sat in a potholed drive next to the place. It appeared to have four flat tires and no tailgate. An equally questionable horse trailer was backed in next to it. The finish was badly oxidized and faded lettering that had likely once said Wildwood Stables now said ild ood ables, which had been owned and operated by my late Uncle Phil. The grounds were situated at the dead end of Horse Camp Road, a two-mile-long private drive featuring a slew of washouts, overgrown vegetation, and unavoidable ruts. One would think that such a nefarious approach would have discouraged trespassing, but empty beer cans, used condoms, syringes and God knows what else gave evidence that the place was the frequent destination for naughtiness.

“So, what do you think, Kat?” asked my father, breaking into my mental ramblings. Kat was short for Kathryn and my last name, Wilde, invited unwelcome name meddling resulting in the annoying high school nickname of Wildcat. I guess it could have been worse, since I was very tall for a girl (5’9”) and the mean girls tried to dub me sss Woman, but it never stuck. Plus I had been pretty good at volleyball in my day.

Dad looked at me then hoisted one foot up on a rickety corral board. Well, to a cowboy, it was a corral. To an English equestrian, it was a paddock. I fancied myself as the latter.

In order to spare Dad’s feelings, I tried to be diplomatic, without being too enthusiastic. “Well, it certainly is a fixer-upper,” I said, infusing my voice with false perkiness. Oh my God, how things have fallen to rack and ruin! was what the voice in my head was saying.

“We could do it,” Dad said. “We’d get some hired help, and of course Clara would need to be convinced. There would be a certain financial investment involved.”

Clara was my mother who rarely shared the same visions as my father. However, they seemed to make it work, even though I often felt pressured to “pick sides.” Sometimes I longed for a sibling to share the burden of strong-willed parents. I guess when I was born, either my parents felt they couldn’t improve on perfection, or believed it best to save the world from too many Wildes. Either way, they never provided me with a brother or sister to loathe and blame things on.

Looking at the substandard accoutrements throughout the compound, it was likely that Mom and I might share a similar opinion of the place. I would have to say that on a scale of one to ten regarding career opportunities, the defunct Wildwood Stables was around a two (with a “one” being either waitressing or p**********n). However, it’s not like I had a lot of options glowing brightly on my horizon. But horses?

I had loved riding as a kid. When I was just a tot and we visited Uncle Phil, he plunked me on some dead-broke horse and led me around in a circle. As I got older, he took me on trail rides through the Crystal Lake Wilderness that abutted the Wildwood property. I remembered the sense of freedom, being out there on a horse.

Eventually Uncle Phil hired an international grad student from the college to teach English riding. The girls, including me, all thought he was positively hot, since he had an English accent and said things such as, Now luv, you were smashing on that first jump but b****y awful after that. I even won third place in a small schooling horseshow, which was more of a teaching learning experience than a true competition, and only included students from Wildwood Stables. And granted, there were only six kids in the class (to assure everyone got a ribbon), but still…

Basically, though, there was tedium in learning the intricacies of equestrianism, which largely involved riding in endless circles in an enclosed riding ring on a “schooling” horse that likely realized he had few options for escaping the annoying human bouncing around on his back. The metaphor was not lost on me. I mean, when you go in a circle, you never really get anywhere.

“Your Uncle Phil loved this place,” Dad said, “but he was not a practical man. He lived and breathed horses but had no head for business, despite my advice. I mean, he was such a softie.” Dad sighed. “People took advantage. He hemorrhaged money. But, damn, I sure do miss him. He…well, he was just such a good guy.”

My Uncle Phil had passed away that last fall after an agonizing bout with cancer. He had never married and Dad was his only sibling. Uncle Phil’s “kids” were his horses. Dad loved tossing aside his plastic pocket protector, briefcase, and horn-rimmed cheaters to do manly things around the stable with his brother. Mom, on the other hand, did not care for the smells and roughness of a stable, and insisted that though women certainly could try to compete in the corporate world, I should learn certain domestic skills if I were to survive in a misogynistic society. So, while Dad and Uncle Phil were busy fixing fences, looking at a new horse, or stacking bales in the barn, I was learning the intricacies of a successful molded gelatin salad.

Eventually impending adulthood found me heading off to college at Michigan Tech, so horses moved far into the rearview mirror. And of course, college segued into a job and the pretense of being a grownup. My mom was of the notion that my job working as a grant writer for U.P. Regional Hospital would lead to my landing a suitable husband with an M.D. after his name. Preferably, I’d hook a specialist, perhaps in cardiology or orthopedics or even plastic surgery, which might come in handy for her down the road. Youth is gone in the blink of an eye, Mom would mutter wistfully when she primped in the mirror. To me, mirrors were nothing less than wicked.

Grant writing was a dreary vocation. Dad’s a certified public accountant, which he finds rewarding and even exciting. However, he is not your stereotypical CPA. Admittedly, he carries a briefcase and keeps his readers close by, but seldom does he wear khakis or button-down shirts to the office. Physically, Dad is tall and actually quite rugged-looking. Lately he has been dabbling in the rustic appearance of not shaving, which Mom hates. While I have inherited Dad’s height, I also received Mom’s genetically flawed hair, which springs into brown unruly curls with the least bit of humidity. She says we have Hungarian blood, which is apparently responsible for big hair. While Dad’s side of the family offered an Irish/English bloodline, Mom’s leaned toward Eastern European. In other words, I was a hodgepodge of genetic disarray, like the pooch at the shelter whose info card says “mixed.”

“The horse camp was a great idea,” Dad said, waving his arms skyward. “If Phil hadn’t gotten sick and had to shut it down, he would still be going strong and the place would be in tip-top shape.”

Dad’s kudos for his late brother were a bit of a stretch. Uncle Phil faced a mighty headwind by promoting horses in Upper Michigan where the winters are long and horse enthusiasts are scarce. Still, he made a fair go of it by eventually converting from a boarding/ training facility to a destination horse camp geared for tourists who were willing to trailer their equine charges to the great Northwoods for a unique camping and riding experience. Additionally, he maintained a string of horses to use for guided tours that could last a few hours or a few days out in the 17,000 acres of the Crystal Lake Wilderness. With a fair amount of advertising, the stable generated enough business to allow Uncle Phil to eke out a living doing what he loved. Then the two, make that three-pack a day habit caught up with him.

“I think your Uncle Phil would want us to carry on his legacy and the timing is perfect for you to oversee this. After a bit, we can check out the campground. Pretty sure it’s gone to seed, though.”

Dad. Always looking out for his little girl—now a youngish woman of 25 who had been left flapping in the wind. Perhaps it was Dad who encouraged me to carry on the family tradition of crunching numbers. However, balancing financial spreadsheets, doing tax worksheets, and scrutinizing business plans is much different from writing grants and begging for money. It seemed everyone expected me to magically solve their financial woes, which was not typically the mission of foundations looking for a sexy way to peddle their influence and flaunt their munificence. This irreconcilable difference in revenue expectations earned me a pink slip before I could even land one date with a dashing young doctor, not that I was trying that hard.

Parents in general carry the invisible subtitle of “fixer.” My fixer was trying to salvage Uncle Phil’s legacy and shove me toward the dubious prospect of making it happen. Since the termination of my grant writing career, I had slid down several rungs of the so-called corporate ladder to land a pity job as part-time file clerk and errand girl at my father’s office.

The most humbling aspect of my downfall involved giving up my spiffy little apartment in Marquette, with a view of Lake Superior. My folks’ house was a lovely three-bedroom ranch with a somewhat finished-off basement. Mom and Dad of course had the “master suite,” which included a spacious bedroom with a private bath and jetted tub, dual sinks, and an enormous walk-in shower. A sliding door on one side of the room led out to a private patio where the parental hot tub was located. The smallest bedroom of the house had served as a catch-all over the years, which included items collected for the annual church bazaar, abandoned craft projects, a couple of dusty exercise machines, and a litter box for the cat. Since my old bedroom had been thoughtlessly converted into a home office once I had left the nest, the only option upon my return was to move into my parents’ basement. How pathetic is that?

As our tour of the decrepit Wildwood Stables continued, Dad and I crossed the parking area and entered the stable, which was an enormous pole barn and the only building on the place that didn’t need razing.

“Barn’s one-twenty by forty,” Dad said, looking around. “Seems in pretty decent shape.”

Rows of box stalls lined both sides of the barn and an asphalt aisle ran down the middle. The end of the barn had a space where a few bales of moldy hay were stacked. I counted a total of seventeen stalls, each with a sliding door with vertical metal bars at the top. It gave the unsettling appearance of an abandoned prison. I half expected bony hands to be clutching to the bars, begging for freedom. Something swooped overhead, making me duck. I swear it was a bat.

“Owl,” Dad said. “Probably after the mice.”

I guess a predatory owl was slightly more desirable than a bat.

One corner of the place held a room that featured a door hanging askew on one hinge. Dad and I entered, using the light from our phones since the electricity had been shut off. An anemic patch of light struggled through the small, grimy window at one end of the room. Cobwebs festooned every nook and cranny and dust motes drifted in the beams of our lights.

“What died!” I said, gagging. “Wow, this place needs some air.”

“Probably a racoon or skunk. They like to make dens under places like this and sometimes don’t make it through the winter. We’ll have to search for burrows along the foundation.”

I looked around, holding the collar of my coat over my nose and mouth. Forlorn wooden racks that had once held saddles and bridles joined the cobweb festival. Mouse droppings trailed along the racks and likely along the edges of the room into hidey holes where the propagation of the species flourished. A large steel box sat at one end. A mantle of dust covered the lid, which was closed and padlocked.

“That’s where the grain was kept,” Dad said pointing to the box. “Always locked when not in use just in case some Houdini horse managed to get into the tack room to rummage around. Phil said a horse will eat itself sick or even to death.”

Speaking of sick, the dead smell seemed to be growing stronger. Perhaps an entire family of vermin had met its demise in the catacombs lurking beneath the asphalt floor.

Dad pointed his phone flashlight at the padlock. “Guess we need to find a key and see what got left in here.”

I squinted at the padlock. “Combination,” I said.

“Maybe I should just get some bolt cutters,” Dad said. “I hate to think there’s rotting oats or corn in here. Maybe that’s what we smell. Stuff ferments and mildews. Let me check the tool shed.”

When Dad returned with bolt cutters, I had managed to pry open the small window, but the brisk April air had done little to dispel the stench.

“Okay, Kat, stand back in case the padlock shoots off. Don’t want any injuries. That’s all your mother would need to put the kibosh on everything.”

The padlock dropped benignly to the floor. Dad tugged on the lid, which was acting a little stubborn.

“Christ,” he said. “Help me lift this thing.”

We gave it a big heave-ho. The lid relented with a screech as we flung it back against the wall.

A tsunami of putrid air knocked us back, causing me to stumble and fall on my keester and Dad to grab a saddle rack, which tore out of the wall.

“Holy Mary Mother of God!” Dad bellowed.

Me, I just scrambled outside and retched into a dirty pile of snow alongside the barn.

After expelling my hearty country breakfast, I sat up and tried to clear my head, gasping in the brisk air. What I had just seen certainly wasn’t a dead skunk or racoon.

“You okay, honey?” Dad said as he hurried to an open area and pulled out his phone. “No sense in calling 911. Not much we can do for the poor soul in there. I’ll just call Ollie. I think I have a couple of bars on my phone.”

Everyone called Sheriff Olsen “Ollie” because his real first name, Marion, invited ridicule. Dad and Ollie went to high school together where neither enjoyed a ton of popularity.

“Hello, yeah, this is Gary Wilde. Is Sheriff Olsen in? It’s important. Sure, I’ll hold. Thanks.”

I took a handful of semi-clean snow and washed my face as best I could. Eventually, I wobbled to my feet. I stared off into the woods, taking deep breaths, willing the image in the box to vanish. Eyes, staring up from its feed box coffin and mouth, frozen in a scream, were deeply etched into my mind. Probably for a very long time.