Page 3 of Stay Buried

The animal was wild, pacing back and forth, but staggering as if drunk, banging against the sides of her stall. Uncle Thomas attempted to assess her, as he would a human patient. As usual, he included me, using this opportunity to teach, to test my knowledge. I clenched my notebook and pencil.

“See the whites of her eyes?” he asked.

I nodded. They were yellowed. “Jaundice,” I said. “And herrespirations are fast, breathing labored and wet.” I jotted down my observations. I have found that any problem before me makes more sense if it’s written down on paper, in my own hand.

“And what does that suggest?” Uncle Thomas asked, keeping his eyes on the horse.

“Some sort of lung ailment, with possible pulmonary edema.” I studied the mare’s face. Her mouth was frothy with white, blood-flecked sputum. Her movements were jerky, puppetlike. She moved, I thought, as if not of her own volition.

I heard Aunt Margaret’s voice in my head now:Something bad is around the corner. I saw it in the bones.

“Easy, girl,” Luther cooed again, trying to soothe her.

While we watched, the mare dipped her head down and sank her teeth into her right foreleg, drawing blood.

Luther gasped. “It ain’t right,” he cried. “This animal, she’s not my Shirley. It’s like she’s got some kind of devil inside her.”

The sickly sweet scent was coming off her now, growing stronger.

“It’s not a devil,” Uncle Thomas said.

“Well, what is it, then?” Luther demanded.

“I believe it’s rabies,” Uncle Thomas pronounced. “The animal should be destroyed.”

Rabies?I wrote in my notebook, circling the word.

I thought of what we knew about rabies: the foaming at the mouth, the agitation, the madness. I’d seen it in dogs and a raccoon.

But all of the horses being afflicted so suddenly? It seemed unusual, unlikely. And did not explain the distinctive odor.

The mare stopped chewing her own leg and looked up at us, her yellow eyes glowing in the light, teeth stained red with blood. I took a few steps back. Despite my belief in logic and reason, at that moment, I was sure Luther was right: the animal had the devil inside her.

Without warning, she lowered her head and bolted forward, crashing right through the latched gate, the wood splintering and exploding out around us. Uncle Thomas stumbled backward, right intome, and we both went down, falling against the back wall of the barn. The hooves and the great blocky bared and bloody teeth came toward us as we lay splayed there on the ground, helpless.

Three shots followed in rapid succession.

The horse went down, the front of her skull torn open by the bullets, exposing the soft gray matter of her brain.

“My God,” was all Uncle Thomas could manage to say as he stood up, reached for me, and helped me to my feet. My heart banged a strange and frantic rhythm in my chest and my whole body trembled. The contents of his medical bag were spilled across the filthy barn floor amidst the straw and shavings: stethoscope, surgical kit, bandages, little vials of medicines, needles and syringes, ophthalmoscope.

We were all three quiet a moment, watching the mare, Luther with his gun still trained on her, as if we half expected her to get up.

And though it must have been a trick of light, or an after-death reflex, I was sure I saw the mare’s eyes twitch, turning to look up at us with a mad yellow glimmer.

TWOASHLEY

September 23, 2016

Her hands were stained up to the wrists, such a vivid red she was sure it would never wash away. Nearly two dozen jars of pickled beets lined the kitchen counters, waiting for the final stage: the hot bath that would seal the lids. The beets floated in brine like small hearts.

They’d never had such a crop.

The beets and potatoes had done well this year in the large garden that took up half of Gram’s backyard. Ashley had suggested they downsize to a smaller, more manageable garden, maybe put in some high raised beds so Gram wouldn’t have to bend over and spend so much time on her knees, but Gram wouldn’t hear of it.

The many pounds of potatoes they’d harvested would be packed into wooden boxes and set in a dark corner of the cellar. The beets they were canning would go into the pantry beside the jars of this year’s previous harvests: tomatoes, string beans, pickles, carrots, Gram’s famous strawberry rhubarb jam, and maple-spiced pickled crabapples, which she served alongside the turkey each Thanksgiving—one of those oldfamily recipes that had been passed down for generations.

“Having a well-stocked pantry is better than money in the bank,” Gram would say, looking proudly at the shelves with their neat rows of carefully labeled jars.