Winter Money

Chandelier

Chandelier I was standing on the slick concrete floor of the barn hall, smoking a cigarette, waiting for Clement. It was four-thirty in the morning and the dew on the roadside grass leading to the barn sparkled in the moonlight. Clement said he'd be here atfive,but I hoped he would be here sooner and we could get this thing done. It was cool outside and when the wind eased through the barn, it hardly felt like May. The Queen of England was coming next week and I was sorry it wasn't going to mean much. She was going to visit some of the horses she'd been boarding at Indigo Farm five miles from here. Then she was supposed to go to the races at Lexington Fields the following afternoon. Her itineraryhad been listed in the newspaper. Horse farms failing all over Kentuckyand the Queen was coming. I'd lost mine and was about to move to Miami where I had ajob selling speedboats. I dropped the cigarette to the floor and touched the coal out with the toe of my boot. I walked down the brightly lit hall past a series of stalls on either side and opened the door to the tack room. I turned on the light andjust stood there for a minute trying to warm up. Back at the house this morning I was going to make coffee, had gotten out the tin of grounds, but then stood at the sink and cried. In the tack room now, I regretted that scene at the sink even more. It had simply come out of nowhere and afterward I wiped my face with a tea towel and felt like a fool. And I hadn't made any coffee, either. There was a small chocolate-colored refrigerator in the corner of the tack room where Otis, my former stallion manager, used to keep candy bars and beer. The top of the refrigerator and the floor around it were cloaked in dust, the plug lying next to the outlet, its prongs bent. I went over to the refrigerator, pulled open the door. There were two cans of Coors on the top shelf. I took one, dry and warm, clicked open the top and took a drink. I set about getting a bucket of soapy water ready, finishing that beer as I found the things I needed on the shelf. In the stall next to the tack room, Silver Patriot rustled his straw, sniffing the floor for stray oats. This was the first time I'd had the horse in the barn since I sold him and he seemed tense. I'd bred Silver Patriot to seventy-nine mares that spring, about twice the normal number . Five years ago, if a man had a decent stallion he could screen the mares, only selecting the top ones for mating. But this was when the yearling market was ablaze with foreign money and horses were more valuable than the land they grazed on. Then the yearling market collapsed and the money all dried up. If a man owned a stallion, he compensated for the tough times by breeding it to anything with a mane and a tail. Silver Patriot now belonged to a man named Frances Skiles, an Oklahoman who'd escaped the oil bust. Skiles bought Silver Patriot and the rest of my farm. He was moving in tomorrow and I wasleaving for Miami tonight. Skiles had been all right about giving me time to pack, sell off the furniture and all that. What I had left was a sandcolored Mercedes owned by a dummy corporation I'd set up when I saw trouble coming; my clothes, except for the serious winter stuff I'd dropped off to the Salvation Army; some trophies my horses had won. A few of the nicer pieces anyway. I had some money in a bank in Atlanta. I had thisjob waiting for me in Miami. A friend ofmine, Tim Willis, CHANDELIER ^ 47 who used to have Havrewood Place over on Ferrick Pike, had moved to Florida last year and started a speedboat dealership with what he had left over. He said I could start anytime, that I was entirely qualified . A man who could sell horses could sell anything. Before Frances Skiles bought my place, he had me agree to stop breeding Silver Patriot for that season. He was indignant...