Juliet in August Read Online Free PDF Page B

leg and picks up a foot. Lee leans his face into the animal’s side, closes his eyes, and sucks in the sweet, familiar smell—the blend of dust and grass and warm sweat. The smell of the horse takes him back to when Rip and Tom were there in the pasture, when he was a boy on another hot summer night, when the fences of the farm encompassed his world and he knew every inch of it as well as he knew his own skin.
    He is startled when he hears a choking sob coming from his throat, which is tight, he realizes, aching even.
What is this about?
He steps back in surprise from the horse, who has swung his head around to stare at him. Cracker is staring, too. Lee tries to stop the sobs, but he can’t. Another, and another.
It’s because I’m tired, I’ve been up all night.
But it’s not just that. He’s missing the two old horses, as stupid as that might seem, and he’s missing his childhood, not because it was easier, but because there were people in it, Astrid and Lester, and in this moment he’s missing them in a way he hasn’t allowed himself to miss them. Cracker whines and paws at Lee’s leg. Lee pushes him away with his foot, almost cruelly, and then immediately regrets it and reaches down to give the dog’s head a pat. He can hardly see Cracker, his eyes are so watery, and then the emotion passes as quickly as it came upon him.
    He takes a deep breath, gives his head a shake, and wipes his face on the sleeve of his shirt. He can’t remember the last time he cried. It frightens him, the way this feeling, whatever it was, snuck up. It’s not as simple as sadness. This was much more physical in the way it took hold of his body. It’s left him feeling exposed, although only a horse and a dog are watching.
    Lee takes the horse’s lead, and the cooperative animal follows him to the pen on the south side of the barn. When Lee hangs a water bucket from a fence rail and fills it, the horse sniffs, splashes with his nose, and drinks. Lee forks some hay off one of his new round bales and throws it over the rails of the pen. The horse accepts the feed readily.
    In the moonlight, Lee sits on the top rail and watches the horse shove the hay around with his nose, looking for the choicest bits. He would love to get on the back of this horse. There are still a couple of saddles in the barn. He could try them for fit, ride the horse in the pen, see how broke he is. Lee knows he’s not a rodeo cowboy, but he spent a lot of hours on the wily Rip and can ride well enough to help his neighbors out when they need a crew.
    â€œWhat do you think, Cracker?” Lee says.
    The dog wags his tail.
    Lee gives up completely on the idea of sleep. He gets down from the fence, crosses the pen, and gives the sliding barn door a shove with his shoulder. He enters the dark interior and heads for the corner stall at the back, where Lester hung the saddles from a beam after he sold the lame horse, saying, “Don’t imagine we’ll be needing these.” Until he died, Lester had taken them down every spring and cleaned them up with Murphy’s Oil Soap. Several springs have now passed without Lester, and Lee is reminded that the saddles are no longer getting their yearly cleaning. He will do this, he thinks, once he’s had his ride around the pen on the horse, maybe a loop around the yard. He’ll do right by Lester, clean off the dust with Murphy’s and polish the leather to a rich shine and then hang the saddles once again in the barn.
    As Lee lowers the smallest of the two saddles in the dark, he hears a barn owl swoop from its perch in the hayloft above and fly out the open loft window, its wings flapping with effort. An owl has lived in the barn, first the old barn and now this one, for as long as Lee can remember. The current occupant screeches as it flies through the yard and lands in its favorite old poplar tree by the house.
    Lee dusts off the saddle and looks