three #2
Without meaning to, David met his eye again.
They held their gaze for a moment too long before David remembered to jerk his head down, and back to the hoof he was examining.
Idiot, he needed to be more invisible. Just focus.
While keeping the hoof resting on his thigh with one hand, he scrabbled in his pocket for the hoof pick he always carried with the other.
Just as he realized it was in the pocket on the side where he was holding the hoof, another hoof pick appeared before his eyes, offered by the policeman whose horse it was.
He grunted his thanks without looking up, took it and set about cleaning as much dirt and debris from the hoof as he could without touching the wound.
As he worked, he was aware of three pairs of eyes on him, two of them belonging to the law.
“I’ll need to clean it with hot water and antiseptic solution, and I’ve got a cream we’ll apply. Carme, do we have any vet wrap? And we’ll need duct tape too.”
She nodded. “I go and hunt it out.”
“I’ll get the water and disinfectant.”
As they walked away together, she asked in Catalan again: “What’s up with you? I’ve never seen you this moody before.”
“I’m good,” he replied and headed towards the bathrooms, where the only hot water faucet in the stables was located.
How to tell her about any of this? He and Carme had become close in the last couple of months, but he’d been economical with information about his past. The less she knew the better.
And this was his fresh start. He didn’t want to muddy his so-far successful new life with any of what had gone down back at Ravenscragg.
That was all behind him. It had happened to another person, another David.
In the bathroom, while a bucket was filling with warm water, he took a moment to look at himself in the mirror.
His eyes, normally blue, looked darker, his pupils contracted, and his face a taut pale mask of tension.
Fear? He hoped not. His mousy blond hair also looked darker, as if dampened with perspiration.
Just play it cool, do what you know how to do, which is heal the horse.
Don’t give them any reason to notice you and you’ll be fine.
He turned off the faucet, took the bucket, a bottle of disinfectant, a stiff wire brush and another softer one for cleaning near the wound, and headed back out to the yard.
Carme was there already, with the duct tape, vet wrap, gauzes and a disposable nappy.
She waved it at him, smiling. It was a trick he’d shown her.
After dressing the hoof, you wrap it in the nappy, which absorbs any discharges while keeping the wound dry.
An unconventional hack, but one pretty much everyone used nowadays.
He put the water down and went back for the salve, which he had in his room.
One of the few things he’d brought with him for some reason, as if he knew that wherever he went, he’d end up working with horses again.
When he returned to the yard, the policeman had his horse’s hoof lifted, and was washing out the wound.
David refused to look at that fantastic ass facing him, presenting itself like a peach through the stretched black cloth of his police jodhpurs.
Last thing he was about to do was start ogling coppers.
The other policeman was holding the horse’s head and calming it, while he chatted to Carme.
David came up beside the cute-assed one, just as his horse chose that moment to protest at having its hoof made such a fuss of.
But with one leg raised, it couldn’t do much.
The cop quietened it and focused on holding the hoof steady, while David finished cleaning and dressing it, the two of them working shoulder to shoulder.
“Carme, can you prepare the duct tape, the way I showed you?” David asked, as he began packing the hoof with cotton gauzes and then wrapping it in the disposable nappy.
“Sure,” she replied. “You guys need anything else? Ramon? David?”
They both shook their heads.
“David?” Ramon murmured. “Pleased to meet you.”
Thankfully in that position, there was no possibility of eye contact, but David was intensely aware of the pressure of his muscular shoulder against his.
“Same,” he muttered, picking up the vet wrap and beginning to bandage the gelding’s hoof.
While he worked, Carme was constructing a double-layered square of duct tape on one of the fence posts.
Once David had finished the bandaging she peeled it off and handed it to him.
He applied it over the vet wrap as a final waterproofing layer to protect the bandage and used more duct tape to fix it firmly to the hoof.
“There you go,” he said finally, straightening up and giving the horse a friendly slap on its shoulder. “You’ll be right as rain in a few days, boy.”
“Estel, he is called,” Ramon said, standing beside him and stroking the horse’s neck. “Thank you for your care of my horse.”
“You’re alright,” David muttered. Perhaps now he could get off and make his presence scarce. But Carme had other ideas.
“Do you want to keep him here , Ramon? We’ve got a clean box on the end there. David’ll show you where it is.”
“Thank you, that is a good idea,” Ramon replied. “And so maybe I can buy you both lunch to thank you for looking after Estel.”
“Ah no, that’s OK,” David replied quickly. This was all getting too complicated.
“Hey, Ramon,” the other policeman called. “We still have two hours left on our shift.”
“But how can I patrol without a horse?” Ramon shot back.
They were all speaking English, supposedly just for his benefit, and it was starting to get embarrassing.
“No, thank you, but sorry, I got things to do,” David tried again.
“No, you don’t,” Carme answered. “We’re quiet as anything today. Come on, David, you can’t turn down a free lunch.”
To keep refusing now might start to look suspicious. Alright, just lunch and he’d keep his mouth shut the whole time. When the guy came back for his horse he would make sure he wasn’t around. He nodded:
“OK, I’ll take Estel to the box. I’ll unsaddle him there—it’s closer to the tack room.”
He unhitched the horse and set off walking, before anyone could say anything.
“Wait, I’ll help you,” Ramon called, but thankfully he got caught up in a conversation with his colleague, and stayed back in the yard.