Page 101 of Brother In Arms

Chapter 35

Rush

“It’s just an idea,” she said to me, dropping into my lap. I looked up from the plans I was drawing up for a piece of furniture and put my arms around her waist.

I tipped my head to the side and said, “What is?”

“The corporate retreat, the bed and breakfast part of it, it was just an idea that I had, not a dream I was fully invested in and what’s more, it’s not your dream. I’m serious, Rush. What do you want?”

She straddled my hips and faced me, her fingertips lightly curling in the short hairs at the nape of my neck and I leaned back and looked her over. It’d been a few days of dealing with clean up and shit over at Blue Hills. Storing things away and getting the stables and large barn ready to go dormant for a longer period than either one of us would have liked.

“I want a place that I can work on my furniture and be around horses. I like working with my hands,” she wiggled her eyebrows at me and I laughed, and she smiled too. “But most of all, I don’t give a fuck what I’m doing as long as I’m with you and we’re both some kind of happy and committed to doing it.”

“I feel shitty for giving up on Blue Hills so easy, I was meant to deal with thoroughbreds, not yuppie corporate types. I mean, I would love to have a riding school, a place to introduce kids to the joy that is horses, but I went to school, got all of that education in hopes I’d be able to stay at Blue Hills, down on the ground and committed to making it the best damn racehorse farm and breeding facility Kentucky has ever seen.”

“So don’t give up. Let’s do it.”

She looked thoughtful and said, “Do you think the offer will still stand if I don’t do the riding school and B&B part of things?”

“Why can’t you do both?”

“What?”

“Why not do a thoroughbred breeding program and a riding school? How many people do you think would pay to stay on a real working Kentucky racehorse farm? You said it yourself, Blue Hills is way bigger than it ever needed to be for just being a thoroughbred farm.”

“No one is going to want a bunch of regular folks around their blue blood horses.”

“Dude, what happens to a thoroughbred horse that doesn’t work out for racing? I’m sure it’s happened.”

“Actually, you may be onto something but I’m thinking more along the lines of retirees that aren’t suited to breeding.”

“What happens to them?”

“Slaughter, usually… It’s always been a more than slightly depressing field to work in. A racehorse usually goes for a career of about seven years, but what about the next two decades? Some are bred, but some?”

“Some need to be retired to live out their days educating folks rather than just being slaughtered, I mean what the fuck? Shit, man… you’re right, this ain’t some dude ranch like back in AZ, but at least they don’t just go killin’ horses when they outlive their usefulness.”

“Okay, so what if we refocused a little…”

And just like that, she broke through whatever funk that’d been put on her and she started really dreaming her own dreams. We spent the rest of the night with my pad of paper and pencil thinking up ideas and going new directions with some of the space available at Blue Hills.

“We’d have to rename it,” she said suddenly and I looked at her.

“I’ll leave that up to you, babe. If it were me it’d end up being something like Iron Horse or some shit and I don’t think your hoity toity rich crowd would take that seriously.”

She laughed and said, “I don’t think you’re wrong about that.”

“You think about talking to your mom’s buddy? That Cranston lady?” I asked.

Bailey leaned back in her seat next to mine as we gently swung on one of the benches made for it around the cold fire pit.

“It’s not a bad idea,” she said finally and nodded. “I think I could do that.”

“Cool.”

“Let me try my mother, see if she’d be willing to put us back in touch.”

“Sure, sounds good. Or, you know, you could just call her.”

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