Page 32

The first time they went out together, Ivor asked Mac to drive the van. He could turn the wheel to the right but to the left was too painful.

“You wouldn’t believe how she got me,” Ivor said. It was a mule in West Yellowstone named Agatha, and something about Ivor being so genuinely mad at a mule named Agatha struck Mac as very funny.

“It’s not funny,” Ivor said. “I’m on blood thinners for thrombosis. And I have a list of twenty horses needing shoes by next Friday.”

“I’m sorry,” Mac said. “Is it not the wrong line of work for you in that case? Because of your—what you call it.”

“Thrombosis. Never been kicked like that in thirty years. And if I ever see her again I’m going to do more than kick her.”

Every moment they had together was a chance for Ivor to offer Mac advice. His number one rule of the job was to keep his head higher than his ass as much as possible. He told Mac to always set the anvil a minimum of five paces from the forge and five paces from the horse needing to be shod.

Mac had noticed the very first time Ivor came to Larkspur that he set everything quite far apart. Mac thought the extra steps were a waste of time but Ivor explained it was for his back and hips, so he had a chance to stand up straight and walk out the kinks. The rest of the job was done in an extremely tensed and bent position, the horse’s hoof either on the stand or braced on Ivor’s leather-aproned thigh. It was not easy on the body when the beast whose foot you held weighed fourteen hundred pounds. One yank and there goes your back.

Even after Ivor’s ribs healed, he found he liked Mac’s help, liked reaching more clients. Ivor preached that farriery was an art, not a science, no matter what the ag schools taught. And like all arts, it could only be taught up to a point. Beyond that the artist just had to know.

Bill Cunningham didn’t like Mac sleeping in a Larkspur bed and eating Larkspur meals and making money for someone else. Mac noticed he was cooler to him since he started with Ivor, a little quick to question whether Mac had done things correctly, neatly, on time. He didn’t understand until PJ laid it bare for him. Embarrassed, Mac asked PJ what he should do, he never meant to offend. PJ said it was just an act. Bill didn’t mind, especially since Mac was still doing his chores on the ranch and was dependable, which was the rarest thing to find in those parts. He just wanted a cut. Ten percent would probably do it.

“But, Mac,” PJ said, glancing around. “These jobs with Ivor are for cash, right? No contracts. Everything done on a handshake?”

“Yeah?” Mac said, not getting it at first, and then he felt even dumber than he had a moment before.

“So,” PJ said and shrugged.

BARRY WAS THE ONLY ONE who wrote to Mac, though sometimes Thomas would include a note at the bottom. Why didn’t Rian do the same? Mac imagined Barry seated at the table at home, calling out to anyone in earshot that he was writing to Mac and did anyone have anything to tell him? Rian did not, apparently, so instead Mac had to search for him between the words, he had to picture him in the news Barry gave.

As much as he craved news, sometimes Mac didn’t open the letters for a day or two after they arrived. Once, he put the letter on his bunk and went on an overnight job with Ivor and didn’t get to it for three entire days.

Debra went to college in Colorado in the fall of 1965, but Mac had been so busy with Ivor that he hadn’t seen her much before she left, and then she’d come home for Christmas break and not reached out. Which was fine, Mac realized. A relief, even. He saw her at Jenny and PJ’s on New Year’s Day, 1966, and she was perfectly pleasant to him, happy to see him, and referenced her boyfriend. Mac wondered if the boyfriend knew about the dimples above her hip bones. He used to rest his thumbs there when he kissed her.

“Did you mind seeing her?” Martin asked. “Was it awkward?”

“Not really,” Mac said, and it hadn’t been.

“You wouldn’t marry an American anyway,” Martin said. “Right? I might but I can’t see you.”

“Marry? Who’s getting married?”

“No one. I’m just saying. I bet you when your time comes you’ll pick an Irish girl.”

AFTER MAC AND IVOR HAD been working together for a year they went to see about a very expensive eventing horse on a ranch just west of Butte. Ivor was not usually willing to drive so far for a single horse—Butte was over two hours from Teaberry—but the owner was a wealthy woman from California who lived on her ranch part-time and had heard about a young Irishman who had a connection to horses, who could diagnose them better than any vet. She promised to compensate them in time and miles.

“That’s you,” PJ said, when word of this got back to Larkspur. There wasn’t much to understanding a horse, Mac thought. All you had to do is remember that they came in all varieties, just like people. Some were natural-born cautious, some shy, some risk-takers, some silly. A lot of them had been treated cruelly by owners or riders and had learned to protect themselves.

Butte brought to mind Teacher, who’d shown them a photo of a cemetery there and painted a picture of a city filled with beauty and industry. To Mac, it was the only place he’d seen in Montana that seemed haggard and worn-out. Its hills were treeless and gaunt, appearing as if they were clawed by iron giants. The scenery was disfigured with networks of train tracks and trestles, rusted stairs leading nowhere, sagging chain link, wood buttresses supporting mine entrances that had long been abandoned. But according to Ivor, there was nowhere on earth more fun if you wanted a big night out.

When they arrived at the ranch they’d been aiming for, the owner was standing in her driveway. Mac got the impression she’d been looking out for them all morning.

“I’m Sandy,” she said as she walked them to a particular stall. “And this is Apollo.”

Mac could see right away that he was in pain. “Hello, Apollo,” he said.

“Sorry, but… how old are you?” Sandy asked Mac. “I heard you were young, but—”

Mac’s first instinct was to fib, but then he just told the truth. “I’ll be nineteen next month.”

“Okay,” she said, glancing over at Ivor, who nodded. “No harm in you taking a look, I guess. I’m at my wit’s end.”

As Sandy led Apollo outside, she said that the vet and the regular farrier thought the problem was tendonitis in Apollo’s hip, but whatever their regular farrier did made it much worse, so now that man was barred from her property. Ivor approached first, crouching to look at Apollo’s legs and feet, and then asked Mac what he thought. Mac, making sure he was in Apollo’s line of sight, slowly took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. He let Apollo get a good look at him and then he circled him, a black Thoroughbred with one blaze of white on his nose. He could sense the animal’s awareness of him, that he knew exactly where Mac was even when his head wasn’t turned. He was drooling, trembling, and Sandy said he was refusing to eat and grinding his teeth, all signs of pain. Mac asked Sandy to take the rope and walk him slowly around the paddock if Apollo could stand it. Yes, he had a hitch in his hip, a rolling step and wobble on one side. When they’d completed a circle, Mac stopped them. He ran his hand from Apollo’s withers to his hindquarters and then walked over and did the same to his other side. He sensed that the trouble was not the horse’s hip but his forefoot. Something in the hoof. The way he was walking was only his way of compensating for pain somewhere else.