Part 3
Beth set the kit on an overturned feed tub and looked first at the hay, then at the water, before she put a hand on Beacon.
“What’s he getting?” she asked.
Daniel told her. She nodded once and began at the horse’s head.
She had a way of working that made unnecessary help feel exactly that. Daniel stayed by the stall door, handing her what she asked for and keeping his questions to himself. Beth checked the eyes, felt along the jaw, and lifted the lips to examine the teeth.
Beacon tolerated her without fuss. When she moved to his shoulder, he turned one ear to follow her, then went back to watching the aisle.
“He needs weight, but slowly,” she said. “You can do more harm trying to put it on fast than leaving him lean another week.”
She ran her hands down each leg, asked Daniel to lead him outside, and watched him walk away and back over the level yard. On the turn, she studied the left hind.
“Age and stiffness. Keep him moving, provided he’s comfortable. Don’t make him earn his feed.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Good. Easy walking only if you ride. No hard ground, no long climbs.”
Back inside, she checked his mouth again with a light. This time her hand stopped against his upper lip.
Daniel straightened from the doorframe.
Beth adjusted the light, rolled the lip a little higher, and leaned closer. She said nothing. After a moment she wrote on her pad, then returned to the rest of the examination.
Daniel watched the pad.
She went through the vaccination sheet and told him when she wanted the next worming done. She showed him where the halter had rubbed and advised leaving it off when Beacon was safely enclosed. Only after she’d packed her kit did she mention what she’d found.
“He’s got an old racing tattoo.”
They were beside her truck. Daniel had one hand on the tailgate.
“Inside the lip?”
Beth nodded. “Faded badly. I can read pieces of it.”
“They said he had no papers.”
“They don’t have his papers. That doesn’t mean there aren’t records.”
She tore a small sheet from her pad and turned it toward him. Some characters were clear. Others had a question mark beneath them.
“Quarter horse registry may be able to help. With his markings and an approximate age, a partial identification can be enough.”
Daniel studied the little row of ink. He’d spent the morning trying to remember the exact shape of a horse’s face from twenty-three years earlier. Now Beth was offering to put a name to it.
“No need to go to a lot of trouble.”
She shut the kit with more force than necessary.
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
Daniel looked up.
Beth’s expression softened only slightly. “Would you like me to look?”
He folded the paper along its existing crease.
“Yes. Thank you.”
“I’ll call when I have something worth calling about.”
After she left, Daniel remained in the aisle. Beacon was eating, separating the hay with his lips before taking a mouthful.
Daniel had named Timber for the way the young horse used to stand at the pasture fence, watching the wooded rise behind the farm. He’d never cared what a registry called him. There had been a packet from the breeder, and papers later when he sold, but he’d attended to the signatures and the money.
He couldn’t recall reading the full name.
He went to the tack room, looked at the shelves without touching anything, and went back outside.
Work took up the next two days. He hauled the wire to the eastern boundary and replaced the leaning section of fence. The new staples drove cleanly into sound posts. Where the old corner post had softened, he set another beside it and tamped the soil with the end of a bar.
He picked the remaining Stayman apples from the upper block. His fingers grew numb around the stems, and the branches left wet marks on his sleeves. At the barn, he found himself checking the horse before unloading the crates.
Beacon ate, drank, and moved about the paddock. Sometimes he stood where he could see the house. Sometimes Daniel found him watching the orchard, ears relaxed, one hind foot resting.
Nothing about him would have drawn a visitor’s attention for long.
On Sunday evening, Daniel carried a portable radio into the barn while he repaired a loose hinge. He left it on a shelf and forgot it there.
By morning the batteries had weakened. Music came through thinly, broken by a dry crackle. Beacon stood at the rear of the stall with his head angled toward the shelf.
Daniel replaced the batteries, then stopped with his thumb over the switch. He put the radio away without turning it on.
Later that morning, the paddock was empty again.
He found Beacon between the same two apple trees.
This time the gate had swung closed. Both bolts appeared to be in place, but when Daniel tried them, one moved without resistance and the other had barely caught the edge of its keeper. He stared at the arrangement, then walked the entire fence looking for another way out.
There was no broken wire, no fallen rail, no opening large enough for a horse.
Beacon waited in the hollow, his forelock stirring in the breeze.
Daniel brought him back and secured the gate. He stood there another minute with his hand on the top rail, then went inside.
Evelyn’s journal was still beside the place where he’d eaten supper. He sat down and opened it from the back, then turned to the beginning.
Her handwriting made him pause before he’d read a word. The letters were small, even, and slanted slightly forward. She’d written shopping lists in the same hand, and notes for the school, and labels for jars she’d intended to give away.
There were long gaps between entries. A wet spring. The first good crop from a replanted block. A remark Daniel had made about a neighbor’s new barn that she’d apparently thought worth preserving.
He frowned at that one, then smiled despite himself.
Several pages later, beneath September 14, he found Timber.
No year. Evelyn often left it out.
“Timber was awake before either of us again. I could hear him moving around while Daniel was still asleep. By the time I reached the barn, he was waiting at the door as though we’d made an appointment.
“I went out there yesterday when I couldn’t bear being in the house. I hadn’t cried. I hadn’t said a thing. He left his hay and stood beside me. Close enough that I could touch him, but he didn’t ask for anything.
“I stayed until I could go back inside. So did he.
“People believe you when you say you’re all right. I don’t think he pays much attention to the words.”
Daniel rested his fingertips beneath the final line.
He remembered her going to the barn alone. He’d assumed she wanted a little space, and sometimes he’d been grateful to let her have it. There were things neither of them knew how to say during those first months of treatment.
Outside the window, the apple branches crossed against a white sky. A loose length of gutter tapped once when the breeze reached the house.
Daniel read the entry again, then turned the journal toward the light, though he had no difficulty seeing it.
His phone rang.
Beth’s name appeared on the screen. He picked it up and waited a beat before answering.
“I’ve got your horse,” she said.
Daniel’s free hand closed around the edge of the table.
“The tattoo was incomplete, but there was enough to search. Three characters I was certain of, the others partial. I checked the result against age and the old marking description. Then I had them confirm it.”
He heard paper move on her end of the line.
“Daniel, his registered name is Timber’s Beacon.”
The stove clicked as the burner cooled.
Beth continued, more slowly. “The ownership entry is April 2001. Daniel Mercer. Rural delivery outside Dunmere, Somerset County, Pennsylvania…”
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