Gargantuan by Maggie Estep Read Free Book Online Page B

pretty soon I got him to take a bit and to stand somewhat still as I put a little saddle on him and tightened the girth.
    I started sleeping on some blankets outside Darwin’s stall at night. Mostly because I just didn’t have any reason to go home. I lived in my uncle Edgar’s house even though I’d never felt at home there. Edgar had up and moved a few years after my mother’s death, leaving me to fend for myself. He hadn’t known what to do with the house so he’d just let me stay in it while he’d gone home to Kentucky. Now, though, Edgar had called the real estate lady in town and had put the house up for sale. There were people tromping through it at the oddest times. I didn’t feel safe in there. I had gone and gathered some of my clothes and a sleeping bag and I kept these at Sandman’s stable and pretty soon, that was it, I never left.
    Sandman knew, I guess, but never chose to address the situation. I availed myself of the hoses in the grooming stall sometimes when I got to stinking. It was fine. There was warm water. And I’d heard how horse shampoo was good for human hair and this proved to be true.
    Days turned to weeks turned to months. Kathy was riding Darwin now and we all realized Sandman had been right. The little guy wanted to race. I’d get on Murmur, a big brown gelding that had raced until he was six but now had James working with him trying to turn him into an eventing horse. We’d put Murmur on the makeshift half-mile track Sandman had in one of the fields and he still had the instinct to go. I wasn’t by any means an experiencedrider and I’d never yet been allowed on a real racetrack but I knew enough to balance and keep out of Murmur’s way and let him stretch out. And Darwin learned to run his little heart out with Kathy in the irons, poised with her rear end in the air, letting the little colt pull ahead of Murmur, giving him a taste for winning.
    And then the day came when one of the trainers Sandman knew came by to have a look at Darwin. The guy was impressed. Gave Sandman five thousand cash on the spot. I had to load the little guy into the trailer. He behaved perfectly. My heart was breaking.
    Somehow, it was worse even than when Dingo had died. I tried to get interested in some of the other horses. I liked a lot of them fine but I didn’t have the same kind of bond that I had with the little colt. I was sad but my life at Sandman’s was good. I never had to think too much or dwell on anything. At night, I slept in Darwin’s empty stall. It was fine.
    What sent me over the edge was when I heard about what happened to Bethany, the chestnut mare who’d been the first horse I’d gotten on.
    One night, Sandman came and found me in my stall.
    “Ben, we got a problem,” he said, and I thought he was going to finally address my sleeping in the barn, like maybe he did actually mind it.
    “What’s that, sir?” I said, because I still called him sir, particularly when I thought I was on the wrong side of him.
    “That couple I sold Bethany to? The ones said the woman was gonna take up riding and they needed a nice quiet backyard kind of horse?”
    “Yeah?”
    “They ain’t treating her so good. I happened to be passing by there this morning and I stopped in to check on her. The folks weren’t home so I went around back to their little two-stall barn to see what’s what. What I found was not good. Bethany was inside there with no light, standing knee-high in filthy, soaked straw and she had sores on her back. Weren’t no water in her bucket and when I turned the light on she seemed like she was blinded, like theyhaven’t let her into the light of day. Plus, mare musta lost a couple hundred pounds in the five weeks since she left here. I got sick to my stomach to see it.”
    I said nothing. I was sick to my stomach too and all I could see was red. A violent horrible bloody red nothing like the rich red of Bethany’s chestnut coat. Sandman went on: “I waited till them