Lightning: 15

Fifteen

The windows were down, but despite the shade of the Sonic drive-under and the breeze blowing crosswise through the truck, Mel felt as if she were melting in her seat. Just looking at the burger in her lap made her queasy, so she folded it back up in its wrapper and set it on the CD console. She’d agreed to tell the story, and she was going to, because she wasn’t a liar, but she was suddenly overcome with an anxiety that was almost crippling. People tended to react one of two ways about this sort of thing – with shocked sympathy, or the assertion that she was being dramatic. Dan, she had a feeling, would be the latter.

Still, she took a deep breath and stared through the windshield, watching little brown sparrows peck at French fries in the gutter, and began.

Lightning: 14

Fourteen

“Good.”

Melanie almost laughed, but she caught herself, too tired to really force the sound out of her lungs anyway. Instead she nodded and loosened the girth of the little bay colt she’d just ridden. He was one of the three-year-olds just getting used to a saddle and weight, so she’d used her English tack on him.

It was just after noon and the sun was an oppressive, heavy ball in the middle of the sky, pressing down on them. She’d ridden all morning, this colt the last ride of the day, and after all that time, all Dan had to say was “good”.

“Thanks.” She ran the stirrup up and rolled the leather beneath it, securing it in place, and looped the reins over the colt’s head. “Come on, dude,” she patted his sweaty neck and started for the gate. Dan stood at the rail, his crutches propped against the fence, a white-knuckled hand gripping the top board. He stared at the empty arena and stayed motionless while Mel led the gelding back toward the barn.

Chapter Twelve

Twelve

“Radio says there’s a good chance of a tornado. There’s warnings all over the place,” Toto said as he strode past her, arms laden with empty feed buckets. “I’m not puttin’ anybody out till this passes.”

Chapter Eleven

Eleven

“Whatcha think, dude?” Mel reached up to scratch LT behind one red, silken ear. In the blue-white beam of the flashlight, his face seemed eerily long, the stripe on his face almost fluorescent. His wide, liquid eyes were the only sign that he was at all alarmed about the fact that she was sitting in the corner of his stall in the pitch black of the pre-dawn barn. He sniffed at the flashlight in her hands, then, deciding it was harmless, tried to figure out if it was edible too.

“No, no,” she laughed even though she didn’t feel like it, pulling the Maglite out of his reach. Her horses were magical like that: even when she felt absolutely hopeless, they inspired a smile, a warm thought. Reminded her that she couldn’t afford to swim in self-pity because she had creatures who depended on her for everything.

Sleep had mocked her until she’d finally given up and tugged on clean clothes, had moved through the barn as silent as a ghost and let herself into LT’s stall. She loved Roman, but if you were going to sit prone in anyone’s stall, it had to be LT’s.

Chapter Ten

Ten

“Am I doing it?”

Can’t you tell? Mel wanted to ask. Instead, she bit back a chuckle and watched Eli attempt to guide his horse Red through a movement she called a “leg yield” that he kept referring to as a “side pass”. Like the time before, Red was trotting straight down the center of the arena, his spine rigid, not yielding in any way.

“Not quite,” she softened the blow. “You might try practicing on a circle before you attempt the straightaway.”

He pulled his solid chestnut gelding to a halt and gave her a bewildered look over his shoulder.

Chapter Nine

Nine

“I still can’t wrap my brain around that.”

Mel released a soft sigh that was part exhaustion, part frustration: frustration at her inability to make any more sense of the crazy turn her life had taken.

She sat in the grass, one leg folded beneath her, the other extended because she had a cramp in her calf, drawing aimless patterns in a sandy patch of earth with the end of a stick. The sun was hanging low in the sky, nightfall a mere hour away. From her seat behind the barn, she could hear the hungry whickers of horses as Toto and the Danville brothers poured the evening feed.

“I know,” she relented.

Her friend Elyse made a tsk-ing sound from the other end of the cell phone Mel held against her ear. “You are not working at some dude ranch, Mel. This is insane.”

Chapter Eight

Eight

Dressage: a French term meaning “training”, the purpose of which is to further develop a horse’s natural athletic ability with an emphasis on obedience, flexibility, and suppleness.

Mel reminded herself of the basic, fundamental definition of her sport the next morning as she jogged down Dry Creek’s long driveway in the predawn darkness, a cell phone in one hand, flashlight in the other. She had always believed in her own personal fitness and at Carlton, that mentality had been reinforced.

She also hoped her daily routine would quell some of the nervous energy jumping through her system thanks to the knowledge she would have to work alongside Dan today. He was obviously disgusted by her, though he knew nothing about her. Which, she thought with a sigh, wasn’t all that uncommon in the competitive horse world. He would doubtless balk at the idea of her working with any of the horses who were in for training because she was a dressage rider. But, just as she’d reminded herself, she planned to remind him that dressage training was built on athletic fundamentals. She was quite capable of handling these horses.

Chapter Seven

Seven

“You’re sure I can’t talk you into letting me help you turn out the rest?” Mel watched her geldings explore their new, lush, two acre paddock. They had inspected the rain shelter and the water trough and Roman was now making friends across the fence with two of the training horses.

She glanced over her shoulder, again wondering where the rest of Larry’s crew was this morning.

“I’m sure,” Toto’s voice was friendly, but firm. “Me and Foster, we do this every Sunday,” he said of the blue heeler, who was aptly named after the Australian beer. “I think you oughtta go on up to the house and meet Larry’s missus.”

“You think?”

“I know.”

Chapter Six

Six

After twenty-four hours without a shower, Mel overcompensated and took two: one that night and one the next morning. There was an apartment above the barn that was accessed via a stairwell in the back of the office and though it needed updating and obviously hadn’t been used in a while – a thin layer of dust coating everything – it was comfortable. The ceiling was peaked, which she’d expected, and it was furnished with a dresser, on top of which sat a TV and DVD player, a small twin bed, café table and two chairs, fridge, a single kitchen cupboard, floating counter, fridge, sink and a bathroom that was, thankfully, walled off and sealed with its own door.

By the time she was content that her horses were comfortable for the night and Toto showed her to the apartment, it had taken all her remaining stores of energy to take a shower – not caring as she watched the water mix with the dust inside the tub and run in a brown cyclone around the drain – brush her teeth and fall into the lumpy bed with its scratchy sheets. She didn’t question whether the sheets were clean. Didn’t look inside the fridge. Didn’t call her parents though her guilty mind suggested she do so. She shut her eyes and in what felt like only moments, she was opening them again, a subtle lightening of the gray sky beyond the apartment’s one window signaling that she’d slept all night and dawn was here.

Chapter Five

Five

It was a soft, velvety indigo sky that covered the world tonight, nothing like the churning mass of black clouds that had heralded the storm’s arrival the night before. The weather was only a small comfort, though, as Mel followed the blue and white Dry Creek rig through the familiar turns that would take her to the ranch, and the Carlton estate.

When the flickering carriage lamps mounted on either side of the automated, intricate iron gate that barred entrance into the Hanoverian farm came into view, her pulse picked up. The headlights cut a bright wedge through the dark, showing the masonry pillars that held the Carlton gate, the black and gold sign emblazoned with the Carlton prancing horse. Carlton Premier Hanoverians, she read to herself with a convulsive shudder.

Chapter Four

Four

Mel was hand-grazing her horses near the cattle pens when Larry found her. She held a lead rope in each hand and let Roman determine their meandering path across the rodeo grounds, LT content to follow. When Roman lifted his head, chewing grass, and pinned his ears, she knew someone was approaching. A check over her shoulder revealed the owner of Dry Creek Ranch walking toward her.

Chapter Three

Three

Melanie’s mother was a veritable wellspring of optimism and forceful determination. Quitting was not a part of her vocabulary. She had reared both her daughters to believe there was no obstacle, no setback that couldn’t be overcome. Ain’t no mountain high enough and all that. Mel’s younger sister Elizabeth was a year away from her bachelor’s degree and was already applying to law schools, one of which would undoubtedly offer her a full academic scholarship.

Mel’s decision to drop out of college at twenty-two so she could focus on her equestrian pursuits had nearly sent her mother to the hospital. Only polite, careful insistence, planning and organization on her part had finally convinced both her parents that she wasn’t quitting, but simply redirecting her life down a more suitable path. Afterward, it had taken three years of hard physical labor, long nights, early mornings, calluses, blisters, saddle sores and a persistence she hadn’t known she’d possessed to land the job of all jobs – at least for a dressage rider like herself: a stint as a working student under the tutelage of  Arthur and Marissa Carlton at Carlton Premier Hanoverians.

Chapter Two

Two

Larry Shaw swallowed two lint-covered aspirin he’d dug from the depths of his pocket with a sip of coffee and grimaced. A heavy dampness clung to the morning left over from the night’s storm, thick tendrils of steam curling up from the fields surrounding the fair grounds. The rain had turned the Georgia clay to red slurry that was doubtless going to rid a horse or two of a shoe. Beads of condensation clung to everything: the gates, the seats of the bleachers. It dripped down off the high ceiling of the pavilion and dotted the arena with water polka dots. The humidity was wreaking havoc on his arthritis, and he concentrated on extending his leg and straightening his inflamed knee with every step as he and Eli went to check the horses.

“…need a faster run,” Eli was saying. “These are the stupidest damn cows I ever saw.”

“Not sure it’s the cows’ fault,” Larry said, leaving out the usual reprimand that Eli was too impulsive, too heavy-handed with his horse, and always threw his rope too soon.

Eli snorted.

Chapter One

One

“Do you have your paperwork?”

Melanie passed over the proof that both her horses had been tested for coggins and found clean and watched as the thickset Georgia State Patrol officer behind the desk gave the results a cursory glance. The tidy green file folder also contained LT and Roman’s vaccination records, negative results for any and all disorders that might have been found in the blood samples that had been drawn from each gelding. Their total health workups, proving that she transported two strong, disease-free animals across the Florida state line into Georgia.

Healthy, but not necessarily happy.

The weigh station was a cramped, smelly, cheaply carpeted little box set up on stilts so the sliding windows were accessible to the truckers who usually passed through to have their loads calculated. Mel twisted around, sending a shower of rain droplets flying off the hem of her black rain slicker, so she could peer through the station’s windows and glimpse her rig parked beneath the floodlight outside.

The rain was vengeful tonight, chasing her away with as much ferocity as the Carlton family. It pummeled the sides of the station, its fat drops rattling the windows in their panes. The thin walls of the building groaned against the wind. Lightning cleaved the dense summer night sky and in its flash, Mel imagined she could see Roman’s black head whipping back in fear through the trailer’s window.

Just Like Lightning

Melanie Walsh dropped out of college and moved her whole life to Florida in pursuit of a dream: a coveted position as a working student at Carlton Premier Hanoverians. But she finds herself alone and homeless, days' drive from her parents with her two horses and trailer in tow. Seeking shelter from a storm in the temporary stables at a rodeo, she has no idea if she should trust the cowboy who finds her huddled in a stall, but she doesn't have much choice in the matter. Mel learns that life has a way of changing with violent suddenness - just like lightning - and not always for the worse.