A Wooden Fence, Mottled Green with Age and Damp, Ran Along the Western Boundary of The

Shadow…1

Shadow

A wooden fence, mottled green with age and damp, ran along the western boundary of the ten acres Louis now called his own. He walked alongside it in the late afternoon, just before the bloodthirsty mosquitoes would begin to muster their forces. Sometimes he brushed the tips of his fingers against the top slat of the fence, forgetting about the splinters and the fuzz of mold; he would draw his hand back at once, somehow abashed, even though there was no one there but the border collie, Shadow.

Louis could see the grassy hilltop, and the tall bright house perched atop it, like a watchful white egret. It gave him more pleasure to look at his new home from afar, where it seemed small enough that he could cup it in both his hands. He felt as if he owned it, in a very different way than he had owned the townhouse in Charleston. There had been the practical matter of regulations there, the duty of preserving a historical legacy, but beyond that, you could never truly own a part of a city.

Shadow never growled, but Louis saw her stiffen, straighten, and followed her keen gaze back towards the old fence. A woman on the other side was leading a horse towards them, following a worn and earthy path that cut through the thick grasses. She didn’t seem to be in any hurry, giving Louis ample time to observe both her and the animal. The horse was black other than a white mask on its muzzle,and massive, especially in comparison with the stockyand diminutive woman. Louis decided at once that he would like this woman, who looked to be in her forties, wore her hair under a baseball cap in a painfully tight ponytail, and leaned easily against the fence when she finally reached it.

“Shadow, down,” said Louis. She folded in an instant, laying her muzzle against the ground between her paws, but her curious eyes flicked back and forth from the stranger to the black horse. The woman raised an approving eyebrow.

“Good dog,” she said.

“Nice horse,” said Louis. He’d had a moment of anxiety that Shadow might spook the horse, but it only flapped its lips at him and stomped a back hoof.

“You’re the new neighbor, I suppose,” the woman said. “My name’s Ruth Carr.” She reached her hand over the fence to shake. It was a large brown hand, horny with callouses.

“That’s the size of it. I’m Louis Moran. Call me Lou.”

“You mind taking a walk with me, Lou? You and your pretty dog.”

“I sure do,” said Louis, grinning. “I mean, I certainly don’t mind.”

He set off again, two having become four. Ruth wasn’t chatty in the way that some Southern women were, all gossip and flutter, but she still talked a lot. He learned that the horse’s name was Maximillian, that he was more than twenty years old, that he was blind in one eye but had still never kicked or bitten a single soul. Horses were Ruth’s business; she and her father worked as trainers, and owned the small stable next to Louis’s new home. All the tourists hankering for a midnight ride along the beach meant there was high demand for reliable, even-tempered animals. They did well for themselves, apparently.

Louis could almost feel the earth getting softer under his feet, the longer they continued on. This was filled in wetland and just beyond the boundaries of his land was a stretch of unclaimed marsh that led all the way to the coast. Right where terra firma ended and the marsh began, there was the eyesore that the seller had referred to as the “paddock.” Most of the wooden posts still stood upright, but the ugly tangles of barbed wire sagged close to the ground, and the wooden shed was little more than a pile of lumber. Louis hesitated, calling Shadow close to heel; he didn’t want her to step on a loose bit of wire hidden in the grass. Ruth paused as well, the grin slipping from her face.

“You planning on keeping animals, Lou?” she asked him.

“Just Shadow for now,” said Louis. “I need to get settled in, clean the place up a bit. But, well…there’s no use in letting all this land sit empty, and my kids would be thrilled.”

“You never mentioned you had kids.” Louis thought that was a little rich, seeing how she’d barely left him room to breath for all of her horse talk.

“I’ve got a boy and a girl,” said Louis. “Caleb and Micah.” He forged ahead, figuring that if Ruth gave a crap about Molly, she wasn’t much worth knowing anyway. “My ex-wife is dropping them off tomorrow. She’s working on an art exhibit overseas, so they’re going to be staying with me all summer.” And maybe longer, he thought, but didn’t say it.

“I see,” said Ruth, but she was still looking at the snarls of wire. Amid the harsh and sword-like swamp grass, it almost seemed like a native vine. “Make sure your kids don’t play around here. It’s dangerous.”

“I’d hope I didn’t raise two kids who think barbed wire makes a good playground,” said Louis, half as a joke.

“Yeah,” said Ruth, and patted Maximillian’s broad flank. There was an awkward silence between them.

“Your little girl like horses?” Ruth asked him at last.

“She’s crazy about them.”

“You planning on getting her one?”

“Not at this moment.” Louis frowned, wondering what she was getting at. Maybe she had something to sell him…maybe he’d been picked out as a city boy, an easy mark, from the very beginning.

“Good,” said Ruth, the wrinkles around her mouth set and stern. “Lou, I’ve got something I think I ought to tell you. The man who built that house and built that paddock, fifteen years ago…Derringer, I think his name was. He had money to throw around, just like you. And I wouldn’t say he had a cruel or a spiteful bone in his body.” Louis saw the hair rising along Shadow’s back, perhaps in response to Ruth’s sudden change in tone. He remained quiet, examining the whorls of wood on one of the fence posts instead of meeting the woman’ssteady black eyes.

“That man had two little daughters, and spoiled them rotten. He bought those girls two little Welsh ponies. Daintiest creatures, all dappled and gray, but clever; so clever he had to put up all that wire to keep them penned. You put up a wooden fence, you see, and they’ll try to leap over it, or they’ll push against it until it snaps. You use barbed wire or an electric fence, they’ll leave it alone.

“Derringer didn’t know nothing about keeping those ponies. He didn’t even know swamp fever when he saw it. That was what killed the first one…and when it couldn’t stand any longer, he had the gall to try to call my father instead of the goddamned vet! And by that time, the girls had gotten tired of their toys. Sometimes I would come by, pick all the little thorns and burrs out of that poor pony’s mane, because there wasn’t anybody else who’d bother to do it.”

“Did you call animal control?” Louis asked. Ruth’s outrage was infectious. He was bristling as well as his dog, though the horse, Maximillian, only lowered his head and chomped at a verdant patch of weeds.

“He wasn’t starving it, or breaking any laws. There wasn’t anything to be done. But one night…well, I can’t say it was all Derringer’s fault, but there were loose dogs, running in a pack. Maybe some ferals mixed in, working them into a frenzy. They dug in under the wire, and once they were in, there was no place for that pony to go. It got tangled up in the wire, trying to get away, and once it’d been bled, it was all over. Derringer said he never heard a sound…no barking, no howling, no screaming. He was sleeping soundly in his bed while his animal was being torn to pieces.”

“A pack of dogs?” Louis asked, aghast. He’d imagined his daughter Micah (it was probably too late for Caleb) having the summer of her life on this land, dashing about with Shadow, searching for bird nests in the reeds and crawdads in the creek. The idea of an animal attack had never occurred to him, but now it was too late to purge the image from his mind.

“Now remember this was fifteen years ago,”said Ruth, holding up her hands, perhaps regretting what she’d said. “Those dogs were shot, and that was that. And if the pony hadn’t been all alone and trapped on the wire, maybe they wouldn’t have gone after it. All I want is for people to think before they go buying animals they aren’t going to take care of.”

“I appreciate your concern,” said Louis.

“Ah, forget it. See you around, Lou.” Ruth shook her head, and there was no telling what she meant by it. Louis watched her go, followed Maximillian’s tail swishing steadily from side to side in a sort of rhythm. Her story had spoiled his good mood almost entirely, though he supposed her passion was justified, having seen the results of neglect first hand.

Louis sighed, and reached to give faithful, patient Shadow a rub. She twitched away under his hand, which startled him enough to look at her. The dog was down on her belly, not in the down position that he’d taught her, but a sort of crouch. She was stalking, ever muscle tense and ready to release in a sudden burst of energy. Louis couldn’t tell what had caught her attention. There was only the empty paddock, with its dismal, forgotten pile of boards…though was that movement in the darkness beneath? The air was, as always, stifling humid, but Louis still felt a small chill. Then a blacksnake slithered out, slipped smooth as jet under the wooden fence towards Ruth’s land, and though his heart leapt at the sheer size of it, Louis was able to laugh and move on.

When Louis settled into bed that night, he was awash with the anxieties he’d been able to banish on his walk around the property. Would Molly hand over the kids without a fuss? Would Micah be delighted or intimidated by her new home? Caleb spent so much time staring at the screen of his tablet that Louis doubted he would notice the change of surroundings…but it seemed to him that his little girl would notice the sparseness of the rooms, feel the silence after leaving the bustle of Charleston.

It was so warm that the thin sheets stuck to his body, and Shadow, curled up at his feet, was a panting furnace. He would still never kick her out of bed, since she was the only thing that kept him from feeling the emptiness, as well. Louis dozed off, dreaming of barbed wire and blacksnakes, and when he awoke, though all the rest of him was burning, his feet were cold.

“Shadow, you need to go outside?” he murmured, but she wasn’t pacing the floor and waiting for him to wake up. He called again. All Louis could hear was his own breathing, and the faint whistle of the wind through the window glass.

Louis got up, pulled on a T-shirt, stumbled and cursed through a dark and unfamiliar house. He called twice more, too befuddled to be anything other than annoyed, until he discovered the open window on the first floor. Louis had cracked it open to let in a little air, but now it was gaping wide. The house was built so low to the ground, Shadow could have easily hopped out onto the ground, and if she wasn’t coming to his calls, that meant that she wasn’t somewhere she could hear him. The goddamn dog had gotten out.

Louis lurched outside without bothering with shoes, though he regretted it as the sharp grasses clawed at his bare feet. He had no flashlight, nothing to see by but the light of a golden half-moon, which glinted down at him like a cat’s half-lidded eye. A noise carried above the wind. A bird call perhaps, a scream that was nothing human, but still made Louis shudder.

The scream came again, and Louis thought he recognized it now. He didn’t know why he’d thought it was a bird, when it was certainly a horse. What was a horse doing on his land? Louis began to run, ignored the painful grass, the slick feeling of blood running down his heel when he stepped on a sharp rock. He followed that high-pitched, drawn out, agonizing noise, remembering the wire, and knowing where he had to go.

Louis imagined the poor, dappled pony in his mind, its flank coated in froth and blood, its struggles against the binding wire only trapping it more completely. That was what he expected to find, even though he was aware himself that he was still half in the world of dreams.

But the paddock was empty. The wire lay as it was, inert. From across the rotten fence that marked the boundary of his land, the whinny came again. Then there was a human voice, a woman’s voice, shouting a single indecipherable word, followed by the crack of a gun, and silence.