The Horse Whisperer Read Online Free PDF Page B

desk clashed so badly, everything else should clash too. The result was a cacophony of shape and color that the designer, with no detectable sign of irony, called Eclectic Deconstructionism.
    All that really worked were some abstract splatter paintings done by Grace at the age of three that Annie (to her daughter's initial pride and subsequent embarrassment) had proudly framed. They hung on the walls among all the awards and photographs of Annie smiling cheek by jowl with assorted glitterati. More discreetly positioned, on the desk where only she could see them, were the photographs of those she cared about: Grace, Robert and her father.
    Over the tops of these Annie now surveyed Don Farlow. It was funny to see him not wearing a suit. The old denim jacket and hiking boots had surprised her. She'd had him down as a Brooks Brothers type - slacks, loafers and yellow cashmere. He smiled.
    'So. You want to sue him?'
    Annie laughed. 'Of course I want to sue him. He signed an agreement saying he wouldn't talk to the press and he's libeled me by saying I've faked the figures.'
    'A libel that'll be repeated a hundred times over if we sue. And blown up into a much bigger story.'
    Annie frowned.
    'Don, you're not going soft on me are you? Fenimore Fiske is a bitter, twisted, talentless, spiteful old toad.'
    Farlow put up his hands, grinning.
    'Don't hold back Annie, tell me what you really think.'
    'While he was here he did all he could to stir up trouble and now he's gone he's trying to do the same. I want to burn his wrinkled ass.'
    'Is that an English expression?'
    'No, we'd say apply heat to his aging fundament.'
    'Well, you're the boss. Fundamentally.'
    'You better believe it.'
    One of the phones on Annie's desk clicked and she picked it up. It was Robert. He told her in a level voice that Grace had been in an accident. She'd been flown up to a hospital in Albany where she was in intensive care, still unconscious. Annie should stay on the train all the way to Albany. He would meet her there.

Chapter two

    Annie and Robert had met when she was only eighteen. It was the summer of 1968 and rather than go straight from school to Oxford University where she had been offered a place, Annie decided to take a year off. She signed up with an organization called Voluntary Service Overseas and was given a two-week crash course on how to teach English, avoid malaria and repel the advances of amorous locals (say no, loudly, and mean it).
    Thus prepared, she flew to Senegal in West Africa and after a brief stay in the capital, Dakar, set off on the dusty five-hundred-mile ride south in an open-sided bus crammed with people, chickens and goats, to the small town that was to be her home for the next twelve months. On the second day, as night fell, they arrived at the banks of a great river.
    The night air was hot and damp and clamorous with insects and Annie could see the lights of the town twinkling far across the water. But the ferry had shut down till morning and the driver and other passengers, now her friends, were concerned about where she would spend the night. There was no hotel and though they themselves would have no trouble finding a place to lay their heads, they clearly felt the young Englishwoman needed somewhere salubrious.
    They told her there was a
tubab
living nearby who would surely put her up. Without the faintest idea of what a
tubab
might be, Annie found herself being led in a large posse bearing her bags along winding jungle tracks to a small mud house set among baobab and papaya trees. The
tubab
who answered the door - she later found out it meant white man - was Robert.
    He was a Peace Corps volunteer and had been there a year, teaching English and building wells. He was twenty-four, a Harvard graduate and the most intelligent person Annie had ever met. That night he cooked her a wonderful meal of spiced fish and rice, washed down with bottles of cold local beer, and they talked by candlelight till three in the morning.