Free Revenant by Carolyn Haines

gone out for an errand or to meet a friend or to a party. They’d died. The randomness of life was inconceivably cruel.

8
    S trange Yoder was a man of indeterminable age. When he bent or moved, he seemed young. He was thin, like a teenager, and he wore his hair long. Quick, alert eyes belied the lines in his face. He was older than me. I knew this only because I’d known him all my life. He had a gift when it came to horses’ feet, and though he was one of the best farriers in the nation, he chose to stay in Greene County, where there were still long stretches of piney woods and the slow amble of the Leaf River.
    Strange didn’t talk a lot. Mostly he looked. He could watch a horse walk and know exactly how to trim a hoof or shoe it or what treatment to prescribe for thrush or founder. He did it not for the money, but because he liked to help animals. He’d been my brother Billy’s best friend. He’d come back from Vietnam; Billy had not.
    Morning light shafted into the old barn through cracks in the east wall, and I sat on a hay bale holding a slack lead rope. Strange crouched in the center of the aisle with Mariah’s left rear leg resting on his thighs as he used nippers to trim off the overgrown hoof.
    â€œShe’s lookin’ good for an old girl,” he said of Mariah.
    â€œShe seems to feel good. I don’t see arthritis, but I’ve got her on some joint supplements anyway. I’m glad I didn’t jump her too hard.”
    â€œShe jumped what she wanted,” he said. “You didn’t push her and she knew what was right for herself. If more folks listened to their horses, there wouldn’t be the trouble there is today.” He shook his head. “Damn quarter horse people just about ruined ten generations of horse breeding for those little tiny feet. Like putting a fat woman in ballet toe shoes. Damn bastards.”
    Strange didn’t earn his name because he was normal. He was opinionated, but about animals, which was the only thing he ever talked about. I could remember Strange when he was called Dustin and had a crooked smile and a twinkle in his eyes. He left those things, and his sense of humor, somewhere in the jungles of Vietnam. He’d held Billy as he bled out, unable to stop the flow of blood. Billy had been hit by a piece of shrapnel in the femoral artery. Had a medic arrived in time, my brother could have been saved. That was the midnight image that came to visit Strange when he slept—my brother, trying to smile and not panic as his blood soaked the jungle floor. Strange never talked about it after he’d told me this.
    Strange trimmed Mariah all around and started on Hooligan. “Needs shoes on the front. His toes are chipped slam off,” he said, going to his truck to get horseshoes. “I hate to shoe ’im. If he gets down in the back pasture with all them roots, he’ll tear ’em off.”
    â€œI’ll tell Dad to keep them up in the front for a few weeks.”
    He nodded and went to work. Hooligan was half snoozing as Strange hammered the iron shoes to his two front feet and trimmed the back.
    â€œNow for Bilbo.” I got the gray pony, a cross between a Shetland and a Connemara. For Annabelle, Bilbo had been a dream pony. He didn’t hold me in the same regard, but Bilbo was always good for Strange, saving his practical jokes and shenanigans for me. Mariah and Hooligan were snuffling at the last morsel of grain in their stalls. For the first time in months, I felt a shadow of peacefulness slip over me.
    â€œThis pony needs ridin’,” Strange said. “He misses your daughter.”
    â€œI miss her, too,” I said. With Strange, it was okay to talk about painful things.
    â€œMaybe I could send someone over to ride him.”
    I hesitated, and though no word was spoken, Strange stopped his work, stood and looked at me.
    â€œYour daughter wouldn’t mind. She’d be glad