“Do you always carry on conversations with your horse?” the officer said, having sneaked up behind me while I was scolding Frey.
I let out a burst of air. An uh, ack, or something equivalent. The man had startled me. I gently put down Frey’s hoof and stared at the guy. Why was he so tall? Every time I glanced at him, he seemed bigger.
“You bedded the boys down?” I asked.
“Yes, and I told them a story. They were yawning, and their eyes started sagging almost the moment they got out of the warm water. They were so tired, they didn’t even protest about wearing a woman’s nightgown.”
I gave Frey a gentle pat on his hind quarters, told him to enjoy his grazing, and informed him that I was going inside.
He gave me a nickered grunt, the sound he made that meant okay.
Only someone who has been around horses knows that they may have fewer words than humans, but they still communicate well. They ear twitch, head roll, nod, hoof stamp, and make a variety of utterings that horse people more or less understand. Frey, since he’d grown up with me, had more vocals than most, and he expected me to know the meaning of all of them.
Anyway, whether he understood my words or not, he tramped away, still flicking his tail, hitting his flank on each side. I definitely needed bug spray, or at least some material to sew him a head protector and a tail lengthener. I wondered if the house had some old curtains left to rot, lying in a basement or attic. Did the house have a basement or attic?
Before the officer could get a word in, I started badgering him about it.
“How would I know?” he said, shaking his head and standing in the way people do when they reject whatever you’re trying to tell them. “This is only the second time I’ve been in the house, and the first time was only to . . .”
“Check that the old lady was dead?” I said, taking note of his hesitance to fill in that detail.
The expression on his face registered one part disgust that I’d said it so blatantly, one part chagrin that he hadn’t, and something else, which I couldn’t quite latch onto. The man was a mystery. I wondered what his wife was like.