Catch Rider (9780544034303) by Jennifer H. Lyne Read Free Book Online Page B

lined with black fencing. Horses grazed in clusters below barns on distant hilltops. The grass was bright green, no bare spots or patches of tall weeds. It was like green carpet that someone had laid out and stapled right up to the fence posts.
    I hadn’t been on this side of Afton Mountain in a while. When we looked for horses, we usually traveled the other way, toward West Virginia. Two Olympians from the U.S. Equestrian Team had come from near Charlottesville, and I wondered if I might meet someone who knew them. I’d read about Melvin Poe, the huntsman of Orange County Hunt, how he’d taken Jackie Kennedy out fox hunting. I pictured Melvin dressed in a pink coat and canary vest, flask in his pocket, dented hunting horn in his hand.
    â€œWho owns the barn?” I asked Wayne.
    â€œMr. and Mrs. Wakefield. They owned the paper mill before they sold it.”
    â€œ
The
paper mill?”
    He nodded. “Their daughter, Dee Dee, is at the barn a lot with her daughter, Kelly, who you oughta steer clear of.”
    â€œWhy?” I asked.
    â€œShe ain’t no good.”
    I was going to ask him why and tell him I wasn’t steering clear of anyone—she could steer clear of me—but for some reason I decided not to.

NINE
    W AYNE SLOWED DOWN at a sign that read OAK HILL above a fox head and hunting horn, and he turned in. I grew anxious, and my eyes searched the fields around us. We drove up a long driveway to a two-story stone barn. A stable hand was raking the pea gravel in the driveway, and another one was weeding planters overflowing with red verbena. I got out of the truck and jammed my hands into my pockets. I’d never walked into a barn before without bringing my saddle and chaps.
    A Mexican stable hand in his forties nodded at Wayne and looked at me. He carried himself like a barn manager, checking the horses, watching what the other grooms were doing.
    â€œWhatever you do, you don’t talk to that lazy son of a bitch,” Wayne said to me loudly. The man turned and smiled.
    This meant that the man was someone I could trust. The meaner the insult, the closer the friend. Sure enough, Wayne winked and told me that was Edgar, one of the grooms.
    The barn was all oak with brass fixtures. I had never seen anything like it before. There wasn’t a speck of hay or sawdust in the aisle. A brass nameplate was attached to the door of each stall. SUMMER BREEZE. LADY GAGA. DANCING BEAR. I saw a big gray hunter resting his chest against a nylon stall guard with his head way out in the aisle. I saw some Welsh ponies and what looked like Thoroughbreds. Each one was clipped and clean—I mean, not even an inch of a whisker. No hair in the ears, no dirt, nothing. I’d never been in a barn that barely smelled like a barn.
    Mexican grooms were cleaning stalls, clipping, wrapping legs, and feeding. They talked quietly to one another in Spanish and moved around the horses with ease.
    I followed Wayne down the aisle.
    In one stall I saw a black bay Thoroughbred, standing up and sound asleep. On his blanket was his name in script: KATAHDIN . The aisle between the rows of stalls was lined with monogrammed fiberglass tack trunks.
    I walked by the open tack room and looked in, smelling glycerin saddle soap and neat’s-foot oil. Two grooms were cleaning dirty bridles hanging from a hook. They wiped their sponges across the translucent gold bars of soap in a quick rhythm. I could see from across the room that the bridles were made of English leather, not the cheap Indian leather that was already dark brown when it was brand-new and tore after only a year.
    Wayne handed me a pitchfork and wheelbarrow and pointed to a row of stalls. A metal bowl with a cone on the bottom was bolted inside the first stall, and I asked Wayne what it was.
    â€œAutomatic watering system,” he said.
    I’d read about these but had never seen one in real life. When a horse drank all the water, the metal bowl