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Chapter Six


Nick

I woke up with a start and I didn’t know why at first. I laid there staring up at the ceiling a couple moments. Then I heard a door close and I realized something had woke me up out in the hallway. The problem with it being so quiet in Kentucky at night is that it’s so quiet in Kentucky at night that you wake up over the slightest sound ‘cos there’s no underlying sounds to drown it out, like the ocean or general traffic sounds. The floorboards creaked past my door and I realized it must’ve been Caroline because Kevin was on the other side. I looked at the clock. It was a little after five.

Curiosity got the better of me, and I knew I wasn’t gonna be able to sleep anymore anyways now that I was awake, so I got up and tugged on my jeans and grabbed a t-shirt from my bag and, kicking on my sneakers as I went, I followed her down the stairs. She was already out the door before I caught up and I jogged after her across the lawn, the sky an eerie, pale color before the sun rose officially.

“Caroline,” I called quietly.

She stopped and turned around to see me coming after her and waited until I’d caught up. Caroline looked really good, wearing those jeans and boots again and an old pull-over sweatshirt, Kentucky Wildcats logo emblazoned on her chest. Her hair was in two thick braids. “What’re you doing up?” she asked when I got closer, “Did I wake you?”

“It’s all good,” I answered non-committally. “I couldn’t go back to sleep anyways.” I’d spent almost the whole night staring at my phone, at the text message reply Lauren had given me. Just two words, It’ll be okay. Well I guess that was three. Technically maybe even four because it’ll is technically it will, but who’s counting.

“I was just getting to work,” she said.

“Cool,” I answered.

Caroline stood awkwardly for a second, “Do you need something?”

I turned red, and I shrugged. “I just… I dunno, I heard you goin’ out and I was curious where you were headed at this hour.”

“The horses need exercise and their stalls need to be mucked out for the morning so they can be fed and watered. Then there’s a broken plank on the dock up at the north end of the river, I gotta go up and repair that today because there’s a group of guys coming up to go fishing up there next week.” She paused. “Just, you know, typical caretaker stuff.”

“Well the place looks good,” I said, “Me and Kev were sayin’ that when we were pullin’ in yesterday. He really liked the sign paint.”

“Did that a couple weeks ago,” Caroline said, “I try to do it at least once a year, keep it nice for the new camping season.”

“How long have you been working as a caretaker?” I asked. I felt good because I was holding an actual, somewhat intelligent conversation with the goddess of denim and flannel. Usually when I had these type crushes on people I stammerd and made a complete ass of myself for the duration of my time with them every time I saw them. To this day, I get about 75% stupider around Kristin. It’s pretty common knowledge among the guys that of all their wives Kris was definitely the one I envied the most. I couldn’t believe how much like Kristin Caroline was. Kevin definitely, definitely had a type, I thought.

“Twenty-one years,” Caroline replied. “Ann originally hired three. I was supposed to be like a housekeeper. But then I went to veterinary school in the city and I learned how to care for the horses proper and I ended up taking over completely. Ann keeps offering to hire more people to help up here, but I can manage just fine. I kind of like the solitude.”

“Don’tcha get scared, being all alone up here?” I asked.

Caroline shrugged, “Not really. I mean, I’m never really alone, there’s always people staying in the cabins. Meet some really interesting people that way,” she added.

“That’s cool,” I answered.

And just like that my conversational mojo was gone. I stood there awkwardly, kinda flapping my arms, trying to think of something else to say to her. I kinda wanted to ask her about the text from Lauren, ask her what she thought Lauren meant by it, if I should text her back again, or what else I should say besides just sorry, but I wasn’t sure how all to ask it.

“I gotta get to the horses,” Caroline said.

“Do you want help?” I found my mouth saying the words before my brain had fully thought them through. I didn’t have a shit’s clue how to help with horses. I don’t even particularly like horses, even. But I didn’t really want Caroline to go away, I liked her company. She was nice and she was really hot and stuff and I just wanted to be near her.

She sized me up for a second. “You ever been near a horse?” she asked.

“Sure,” I answered confidently.

Which might’ve been an exaggeration.

Once when I was a kid I took a pony ride with my sister BJ and the horse had been guided around a couple lazy circles at a fair by it’s owner. Another time Kevin had rented a horse in New York for a Disney Channel special thing we did and I’d gotten to meet it for a second and it had snuffed it’s hot breath in my hair and down my neck and when I panicked it had panicked, too, and reared up and I’d been sure it was trying to kill me. That was the day I’d decided horses hated me. Then, many years later, I’d brought Lauren to a horse farm in Texas for her birthday upon her request that I go horseback riding with her. And we’d ridden the horses through these trails around the ranch and it was okay, but I’d spent the whole day nervous and the horse had been hesitant to take any of my commands because of my nervousness. So I’d spent a lot of the day on a horse that Lauren had to keep yelling commands to while I clutched to the reins for dear life, certain that at any moment it would remember it’s destiny as a horse to try to kill me and I’d be a goner. So maybe my confident response of sure should’ve been less confident.

Caroline kinda seemed like she doubted my confidence anyways. “Well. C’mon then,” she said, leading the way to the barn.

I followed, my palms getting a little sweaty, but I dunno if it was ‘cos we were going closer to the horses or if it was because Caroline’s ass looked really good in the jeans she had on again today.

We walked the rest of the way across the yard to the barn, which Caroline unlocked with a key on a ring that had been in her pocket. She tossed the padlock into an old fashioned wooden tool box that sat just inside the doors as she pulled them opened and there was a general sound of shuffling and snorting from inside. She turned on a light and the whole place glowed with a warm light. It smelled dusty and kinda gross, like horse shit I was guessing. I dunno if there’s a fancy word like manure that meant horse shit or not, but if there was that’s what it smelled like if there was. There were like ten stalls but only three of them had horses in’em. There was the brown one from yesterday when Kevin and I had first seen Caroline outside and a white one with different colored dots all over it’s neck and sides and a black one that shook his head as we walked in, making a funny sound that I assumed was what they meant when they said a horse was whinnying.

“Good morning Portia,” Caroline said, rubbing the nose of the black one to calm it down. It bobbed it’s head against her palm, pressing it’s nose into her hand and snorting. She brought her hand up it’s long snout to the spot between it’s eyes softly, then drifted onto the next one, “Peepsa,” she said to the spotted one, rubbing it’s head the same way, then, finally, the brown one, “There you are, Barbara.” She smiled as Barbara nuzzled the side of her head, then turned back to me. “Portia, Peepsa and Barbara,” she said to me, waving to each of the horses. “This is Nick,” she said to them, waving at me.

“Hi horses,” I said tentatively, staying back a couple feet.

Portia whinnied at me.

“You can touch them if you like,” Caroline suggested.

“I dunno,” I said.

Portia was reaching her neck out wobbling her lips at me. She probably wanted to eat me, I thought dramatically. “She wants you to touch her muzzle,” Caroline said, like she’d read my mind. “Just hold your hand out, palm up. Like this.” She demonstrated.

I did as she said nervously. My heart accelerated a little as the horse pressed it’s chin into my palm. It stomped it’s hooves on the floor of the stall and I almost jumped back, but before I could react Caroline said, “Get closer, she’s frustrated because she can’t really reach you good from there.”

That was part of the plan. The less it could reach me, the less damage it could do. But I listened and took another couple steps closer to the horse. Barbara snorted and Caroline rubbed her snout again as she watched. Portia moved her head along my hand, stroking herself on my palm, until my hand had moved all the way up the side of her face to what I guess was probably her cheek, this little bump under her right eye. She had really long eyelashes and dark brown eyes that stared up at me and I kinda felt like maybe she could read my mind or something. It was a little unnerving, but at the same time, I kinda felt like maybe she knew I was scared of her and she was trying to tell me she wouldn’t hurt me.

Caroline smiled, “I think she likes you.”

“Yeah?”

“She doesn’t nuzzle with just anybody like that,” she said.

“You prolly tell everyone that,” I joked.

Caroline smiled again, and turned back to the other two horses and I realized that yes, she probably did tell everybody that. These horses were used to visitors and probably a lot of those visitors were from the city where there wasn’t a lot of horses and probably these horses had been trained really well to deal with that kinda person. I looked up at Portia and wondered how many times she’d had to deal with making stupid people like me comfortable.

I imagined it was probably similar to me taking pictures at a meet and greet, dealing with nervous fan after nervous fan.

Caroline, meanwhile, had climbed up on the door of the stalls and attached leashes to the horses and she leaned over to slip one over Portia’s neck. The moment the leash went over her head the horse started stamping with excitement, tossing her head a little side to side. It reminded me when I asked Nacho and Igby if they wanted to go outside and they started running around with excitement. I backed up. The movement made me nervous again a little because the horses were so big. I mean they were as tall as I was, Barbara was a little taller, even, and I’m willing to bet that in a fight, me versus them, they’d win. You could see the muscles in their necks and bodies and those muscles were way bigger than mine, even with all the working out I’d done with Lauren over the past five years.

“Here,” Caroline said, handing me the end of the leash she’d attached to Portia. I was about to ask what she wanted me to do with it, when she reached down and undid the thing holding Portia’s stall closed and the door swung open and Portia came trotting out, a billion pounds of strong horse muscle and big thick hooves that clop-clopped on the ground. I jumped back as she came out and hovered next to me excitedly tossing her head still.

“You freed it,” I stammered.

“That’s the idea,” Caroline replied, and she turned to the other two stalls, freeing those two as well. “We’re gonna bring them out to the enclosure so they can get some exercise while the stalls get mucked,” she explained, and she clicked her tongue and led the way with Barbara and Peepsa. Portia trotted along behind Caroline, being respectful not to tug on the leash I held, looking over at me and snorting and making a chirping sorta sound at me, like she was encouraging me to keep up.

I couldn’t help but glance up at the window of the house that I was pretty sure was the one that went to my bedroom and wonder why the hell I hadn’t just stayed up there where it was safe and horseless.

If Lauren could see me right now…

We led the horses through the yard alongside the fence to a gate that Caroline opened and we stepped inside. She unleashed the three of them and when Portia stayed standing next to me, she gently swatted her hip and she ran off with the other two into the field. We stood and watched as they galloped away, weaving between each other through the grass, their hooves kicking up dirt as they went.

On the way back to the barn, Caroline said, “So what’d you think of the horses?”

I shrugged, “They’re alright.”

When we stepped back inside the barn, Caroline turned on a second lighting system that was much more industrial than the lights she’d had on when the horses were in there. “Now what?” I asked.

“Now we muck the stalls,” she replied.

I wasn’t sure what mucking the stalls meant, but if mucking was anything like another word that it rhymed with, I thought I might enjoy it so I said, “Sounds fun.”

Caroline smirked. “You’ve never mucked a stall, have you?”

“Not in my life,” I answered.

Caroline’s smirk persisted and I had a feeling maybe mucking the stalls was gonna be something I wouldn’t enjoy as much as the word it rhymed with. I watched as she opened one of the extra stalls and pulled out a couple of pitchforks and a wheelbarrow. “So it’s easy enough,” she said, “Basically, you use the pitchfork to move the dirty hay from the stall into the wheelbarrow.” She opened Portia’s stall and held out a pitchfork to me with a smile.

I took the pitchfork and looked into Portia’s stall. There was shit all over in there. This reminded me of cleaning Mr. Mulder’s litter box back home with the little plastic shovel thing. I made a face, but, not wanting to be a baby in front of Caroline, I stuck the pitchfork into the hay and started moving it little bits at a time from the pile in the stall to the wheelbarrow behind me. The dirty hay was heavier than I expected, and it only took a few good forkfuls before my arms started burning like I was working out back home in the gym. I watched Caroline over the wall that separated Portia’s stall from Peepsa’s. She’d barely broken a sweat. “You do this often?” I asked her conversationally.

She looked up at me like I had twelve heads.

“I mean… cos you’re good at it.”

“At cleaning up horseshit?”

I licked my lips. I didn’t know how to backtrack from that. So… “Yeah,” I answered. Then, “We all gotta be good at something, right?”

Caroline raised an eyebrow. “I guess so. I’d like to think my talent is something other than horseshit cleaning, but whatever.”

My face felt like it’d been set on fire.

“The stalls need to be mucked at least once a day, more if they have to stay inside because of the weather. Winter is a bitch.” She stuck her pitchfork into the pile of shitty hay in the wheelbarrow and came out. I watched as she climbed a ladder to the second level of the barn and threw down three huge bales of hay. When the bales hit the ground, a burst of dust filled the air, and my lungs, and I hacked, pounding on my chest. “Sorry,” she called down, then she used a rope to slide down to the floor like she was Jane from the Jungle or something. She flipped her hair back over her shoulders and looked at my surprised face with a laugh, “What?” she asked.

The woman had unending talent, I thought.

I shook my head. “I just ain’t never seen a woman slide down a rope like that,” I replied.

Caroline laughed and shook her head like that was the silliest thing anyone had ever said and turned to the bales of hay, pulling two of them over to Peepsa and Barbara’s stalls. “Are you done mucking over there yet?” she asked as she pulled a pair of clippers out of her pocket and started tossing hay into Barbara’s stall.

I looked at Portia’s stall, where most of the dirty hay was still in the pile the horse had kicked it into. “Uh, I dunno, almost maybe,” I replied.

“Well, hurry and we’ll get the fresh hay in there,” Caroline replied, busily spreading the fresh stuff around the farthest stall.

I grabbed the pitchfork again and started moving piles of poo from the back of the stall into the wheelbarrow, my biceps fighting me all the way. I wondered how many star stickers this would count for on my chart back home. ‘Cos yeah I have a chart on the back of the bathroom mirror. Yanno, like the ones lil kids get for homework and stuff? Except instead of homework I have to do so many arm curls or push ups or minutes planking and instead of rewards like toys or video games or whatever, when I cashed in my star stickers with Lauren I got various sexual rewards.

That system fuckin’ works man. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in the gym and had to push on through wanting to give up because I was so close to scoring myself a great night in bed.

Suddenly Caroline was behind me. “Here, let me finish this real fast so we can get this done,” she said, reaching for my pitchfork. I gave it up to her because, well, my arms hurt and I was done moving the shit. So I backed out of the way and stood by the wheelbarrow to wait ‘til she’d finished. She mucked like crazy fast. I watched as pile after pile of poo flew into the wheelbarrow.

And then it happened.

“Nick? You out here?” Kevin’s voice rang from just outside the doorway of the barn and Caroline, mid-muck, turned a little too far to see where Kevin was and the pitchfork full of horse shit flew through the air, overshooting the wheelbarrow and with a sound like death it smashed into my midsection. Dirty hay and liquidy horse poo fwapped into my chest, exploding in all directions, rolling down my shirt and jeans, landing on my sneakers, and seeping through my clothes so I could feel the shit on my skin.

I held my arms out, my jaw dropped, choking on the stench that was invading my nose. I couldn’t wrap my mind around what it was that was all the fuck over me. I stared down at myself, at the brown liquidy mess.

“I’m so sorry,” Caroline said, half exclamation, half laugh. “Oh shit.” At the word shit, she couldn’t hold it back any longer and she cracked up.

I flapped my arms, trying to get the horse poo off them that had spattered onto them.

Kevin came walking into the barn, his eyebrows creased together, and came to a standstill in front of the wheelbarrow. “Nick, what the hell are you doing?” he demanded, looking me over head to toe. A smirk crossed his face, “Why are you always getting into shit, Carter?”

Like I regularly messed around by throwing horseshit on me and standing around barns. I raised my eyebrows.

“She mucked me,” I said, pointing at Caroline.

Kevin choked on a laugh.

Caroline stuck the pitchfork into the wheelbarrow and leaned against the door of the stall, and crooned, “Oooh, you’re dirty.” She laughed, and so did Kevin, their laughter rung through the rafters overhead.

The laughter was comfortable and familiar and for the first time I could actually picture them as a couple.

A couple of assholes right now, granted, but a couple.

I stood there watching as they laughed, the shit still rolling off me in big clumps, making this nasty squashy noise as it hit the floor of the barn. The longer they laughed, the less amused I felt about the whole situation. I just wanted to get the shitty clothes off and change into something that wasn’t covered in --- oh shit.

Flashback to my bedroom in Los Angeles as I grabbed my clothes out of the closet and drawers and shoved them into the duffel bag, getting ready to high tail it before Lauren got home from the church. I distinctly remembered grabbing one pair of jeans from the closet and tossing them into the duffel bag, figuring if I needed more I’d just stop by the house. Then we’d travelled across the fucking country to the middle of cow central here and I still only had one pair of jeans.

And they were currently covered in horse poop.

“Fuck you guys,” I said because they were still laughing and suddenly my life was anything but humorous because I was sentenced to wearing shit covered jeans for the forseeable future and I couldn’t stand the smell of myself and it felt grosser and grosser by the second as the liquid poo was seeping through every layer imaginable. I wondered what kinda disease my dick was gonna contract from all the shit liquid it was getting in contact with.

I was gonna be a eunuch.

I turned and started waddling out of the barn, shaking my legs, trying to get all the stuff to fall off me. I didn’t wanna track it all in the house and make the whole house smell like shit, but I was getting in a friggin shower if it killed me. I felt like a dog.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Caroline said, trying to stifle her laughter. Kevin was still laughing boisterously, more so at my waddly-shaky walk even than when I’d been just standing there. “Wait, Nick.” Caroline squeezed between the door of Portia’s stall and the muck-filled wheelbarrow and caught up with me, gingerly touching my arm to keep me from getting the crap all over her. “C’mon, we’ll hose you down and get the - the stuff - all off of you so you can go take a shower and change.” Her voice was gentler, like she maybe really was sorry for throwing a bunch of horse shit at me.

“Okay,” I replied, melting a little bit because it was hard to stay mad at a hot person, even if they did throw shit at you.

“Kev, come help me hose Nick down,” she called, and Kevin followed us out into the yard, wiping tears from his eyes as he followed, still chuckling. I kinda wanted to kick him. But Caroline led me around the side of the barn where a big green hose was hanging up on the wall, and she started unlooping it from the rack that held it in place.

Kevin came to a stop beside me and patted my shoulder, “You’ll laugh at this later,” he told me.

I nodded. Then I reached down and grabbed a handful of shit off my stomach and turned to him, swiping it across his chest in a very deliberate way, leaving streaks from his shoulder to his belly button. “And you will laugh at that later, too,” I said.

The amusement had toned down a little bit in his eyes.

“Look at you two,” Caroline said. We both looked up. “While I loooove dirty men… let’s get y’all cleaned off, huh?” And she held up the nozzle of the hose and turned it on, blasting us with a stream of water so cold it was probably being channeled directly from the heart of Antarctica.