The Blue Bead

By Annette Israel

Set in the fictitious town of Lake Luffit, two middle-aged women, one Jewish and one African American, find a little white horse. The mysterious horse had been forgotten and left alone to starve.

As Hanna and Rochelle spend hours together in a dilapidated barn together, they learn about and face social issues-and issues of their own.

The Blue Bead is about so much more than a horse. It is about life, communication, and the lack of communication. It is about relationships, friendship, and healing.

The Blue Bead is a passionate and empowering story, poignant, provocative, and beautifully written. The characters are approachable, the messages, brilliant.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9781475926057

Annette Israel

ANNETTE ISRAEL is an award winning author (ForeWard gold medalist for her first book, Horsepower - A Memoir). The Blue Bead is her first novel. Annette holds a master’s degree in Humanities. She lives in the middle of a horse pasture in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan surrounded by her many rescued horses and dogs with two happy cats who refused to admit that they ever needed rescuing.

Book preview

Chapter One

He hovered so low that she could almost reach up high enough to touch him. She watched, instead, as the wind held him poised in the air, next to her and just above.

How does he do it?

With his wings outstretched, the seagull faced into the wind. Although in flight, he remained unmoving, as if he’d been painted into the scene by an artist. Suspended. Close to his soul. The seagull cried out, then banked to the right, heading home to the shore. She watched him until he vanished into the gray sky.

Her eyes then drifted down to her feet. Each foot shoveled into the fallen leaves on the road: left, right, left, right. A reassuring rhythm as they rustled through.

Hanna Tauber enjoyed these peaceful walks, alone with thoughts that seldom amounted to much of anything. Other times, she found things to ponder. The lack of pressure to concentrate, or have to do anything, pleased her. Today, she contemplated the seagull.

She’d found the seldom-traveled dirt road a few months ago when she and her husband, George, moved into their new house. Prior to moving, they’d lived in the city all of their lives. George developed a thriving law practice over the years and he’d done well as an attorney. But as he’d grown older, his fire for wrangling corporate law waned. Rather than retire, he asked her one day what she thought of moving to the country. He would still practice law but wanted to turn his attention to contracts, wills, and trusts. In their later years they’d grown weary of mere existence in the city. The traffic and the noise pummeled against aging eardrums. The faceless people you passed on the street with which you never shared a cracked smile, bored even the busiest souls, though they didn’t know it. All of this gnawed away at your youth. The opportunity to move sallied into their lives within days of the discussion.

Let’s go for it, she said.

Lake Luffit is just a spot on the map, he told her as he presented the brochure that had been delivered to his office by mistake. It described a new, secluded subdivision being built in the woods on the outskirts of the small town. The town itself had been shelled from a natural beach that sloped its way down to a large puzzle piece-shaped lake. The first family that settled on that beach, the Crenshaws, named the lake in 1890. As more people arrived, and stayed, the name of the lake also became the name of the town.

Most activities in the obscure burg revolved around the lake. Everyone, except George and Hanna, had a boat. And everyone, except George and Hanna, spent ninety percent of their free time on their boats on the lake fishing. George once suggested that they also buy a boat.

Wouldn’t you like to learn how to fish?

Yuck, she said about the fishing. But the boat part wasn’t such a bad idea. She’d think about it.

The road elbowed off to the right of the street Hanna lived on and then formed a long, swallowing curve. Sage-old pines stood like ancient sentries along the way. Ash, oak, and poplar mingled with the spruce and cedar. An occasional birch found a place to squeeze in among them. Wild blueberry bushes grew on the lower level along with an assortment of bramble and weeds. The blueberry bush leaves changed from green to red in the fall. Red and wild—she thought this a superb combination.

In the winter, the evergreens caught most of the snow and weighed the boughs down so that the bottom branches anchored to the ground. Then they froze like that, like snow tents.

A stiff breeze sideswiped her. She clutched her zippered sweatshirt tight up to her throat. She threw her braid over her shoulder and felt the familiar thump against her back. Not quite brown and not quite blonde, the braid was the color and weight of a sea-beaten nautical rope. As it went zinging out of her sight, new unwelcome hairs subtly sparkled in the overcast light. One day it will all be gray, she thought. Then what: cut it? Dye it? Dying it’ll be a lot of work. And George’ll shoot me if I cut it.

She looked up to check her progress. She walked two and a half miles from her house to the end of this road, turned around and came back; five miles, seven days a week. She chuckled as she did every day at this same spot. In the distance she could see the yellow sign in front of the forest where the road stopped. It read: ROAD ENDS. Don’t they know that people can see that the road ends at that point? By the time you reached the sign you knew the road dead ended because you were right at the end. No sign planted at the corner where the road began alerted you. It brought a smile to Hanna’s face each time she saw it.

Everyone who lived in Lake Luffit knew everyone and knew where everything was already. Directions, if needed at all, were offered not by street names and signs, but by places and people. Turn left at the bank and It’s next door to Joe’s farm were common ways of telling people where to go. The lake gauged most everything and served as a common reference point: Just around the curve from Cappy’s (one of six bait shops). Upside of the inlet. Just past the north shore.

She’d reach the sign and the end of the road in minutes.

She hummed a Vivaldi concerto, mulling over ideas for supper, as visions of chicken or fish; potatoes or pasta, passed through her mind. Just as she remembered that she didn’t have onions or tomatoes for salad, the bushes and branches to her right crunched and snapped as something ventured toward her. It came from deep within the woods, coming straight at her. She stopped. Stopped walking, stopped breathing. The ominous racket awkwardly hustled closer as an unknown creature crashed its way through the thicket.

Stop! I’ll squirt you with mace! (She had no such thing with her).

Her pulse ticked off machine gun rounds as the noises grew louder and nearer. She tried to run but her feet stuck at the ends of her spastic legs and refused to budge. She focused on her would be attacker.

Leave me alone!

Silence.

Then another sound purled in her direction. She could hear the thing breathing. A twig snapped again. Leaves crackled. It took another breath.

It sounds wounded.

Terror grounded Hanna as the tangle of blueberry bushes began to part. She gulped so hard it hurt, as if she’d wolfed a boiled egg down her throat whole. She braced for the evil assailant, man or beast, to pounce upon her. She’d never known that type of fear. Fear that leaves you crippled and useless yet wired and charged.

The final blockade of brambles split. The thing snorted and out into the open it came.

Her shoulders plummeted under the weight they’d supported and her body shuddered as fear gushed out of her. She released her breath in a long whoosh.

It’s just a horse, she said.

One lone white horse.

The horse’s dark eyes penetrated Hanna, as if hands, instead of eyes, reached out to her. They sought and grasped an area of her core that she’d never been aware of until that moment. She frowned, shook her head, and shook it once more, trying to get free of it.

She’d never been around horses in her life. Like so many, the closest she’d ever come was that chance meeting at a county fair. In fact, she’d never once devoted even a scrap of thought to horses. And now she stood face to face with this one. Moments ago, she’d been shackled with fear. But in a flash the fear had dissolved, as if it had never been.

Hello, horse, she said.

The horse remained motionless and gazed straight into her. A strand of barbed wire that she’d never seen before ran beside the road just beyond the ditch. An overlay of weeds and brier disguised most of it. She noticed a driveway for the first time as well, a two-track that cut a passage through rows of pines.

She shrugged. She exhaled. She shook once more, hoping to dislodge from the emotion-packed experience. She made four strides past the horse, toward the sign at the end of the road. Then the horse nickered. Hanna stopped again. She felt a chill. Her attention remained riveted to the sign in front of her, her destination. Horses don’t talk. Yet the animal called out as if it had spoken one word. Jumbled thoughts shimmied through her brain all at the same time, each vying for that coveted place; the chance to surface first. If she pressed onward, the horse would turn and go back to its home, somewhere behind the forest from where it came and Hanna would never see it again. But when the horse whinnied, the accent of desperation resounded, one last, final chance. Tears welled in Hanna’s eyes. But why? She didn’t know the answer, wouldn’t have been able to explain why, had she been asked. She turned around for a second glance at the horse, one more chance to look back.

My God.

The horse’s mane formed a mass of knots woven with leaves and dried mud. The scene became more gruesome the longer Hanna viewed it. The animal’s neck, so thin, didn’t appear capable of supporting mere hair let alone the weight of the spine it contained. Corrugated hide clung to bones sharp enough it seemed they should have cut through its skin.

Hanna stumbled backward, as if pushed, and almost fell when the horse dropped to the ground with a moan.

Oh my! What’s happening to you?

The horse’s body fell in a heap of desolation. But it kept its head up. Its eyes remained focused into Hanna and not once strayed off target.

I’ll get your owners!

She bolted down the two-track to find help. But the urgency, and sense of obligation, ebbed. She slowed to a jog, and then to a walk, as she thought about the horse’s condition. These people don’t deserve to have a horse. What am I going to say to them?

A cabin topped with a sagged roof sat at the end of the driveway. Stained curtains hung limp out of a broken window. The half-attached screen door rested against chipped siding.

She knew that there wasn’t anyone around, but she sidled up to the home anyway. The two bowed steps to the deck grumbled leave me alone as she crept up them. She knocked on the blemished door and waited a few minutes. She peered over the right edge of the railing. An abandoned dog house sat lopsided over holes the dog had dug. Weeds had grown partway into the house. A chain raced from inside about fifteen feet straight to its end. Where’s the dog?

To the left of the home and about one hundred feet away, a barn, she assessed as haunted, towered above the loneliness. Hanna knocked once more on the door and peeked in a window. She saw no evidence of life, human or animal. She sailed from the deck onto the ground, skipping the steps altogether, and went to the barn.

The wooden barn door, blanched from the sun, and kindling dry, denied her entrance though she rattled the handle several times. Locked, she said, needing to hear some form of human babble. She traipsed through weeds to the rear of the barn and squeezed through broken fence rails. Once near the barn, she found an open half door, from where the horse had come. No activity. No sign of life. A putrid stench stabbed at her. The glands in her throat rose. The source of the stench lurked next her and she almost vomited when she saw the tub of green sludge in a rusted metal tank. That’s all it has to drink.

Inside the horse’s stall, her track shoes sunk in urine soaked manure. She extracted her feet and sidestepped on the aged cement-like manure along the edge of the walls to the other door. She opened the door to the main part of the barn and stepped into the aisle. A lost, bare wind filled five otherwise empty stalls. The stall across from the rank one seemed more suitable for the horse. Except for dust it was clean and the dirt floor was dry.

She winced. Cobwebs hung in opaque curtains from the highest corners and draped to mere inches above the earthen floor. She wouldn’t look up at them. If she didn’t see them, they might cease to exist. Spiders and June bugs sat together at the top of her phobia list, and at the moment, spiders ranked number one.

She plucked a bucket from a stack, tapped it against a wall to knock the dust out, and went looking for water. A city girl, she searched for a sink, unaware that barns seldom have them. Frustrated, she came close to abandoning her mission when she discovered a spigot outside next to the tank of swill. She filled the bucket and hauled it back to the stall and placed it on the floor. The word ‘hurry’ tugged at her to get the task completed, and the new stall for the horse prepared as best she could, and soon.

I don’t know anything about horses, but this’ll have to do.

She went through the stall and out the back door to go to the woods to get the horse and almost smacked into it. The horse leaned its full weight against the barn, staring at her.

Good Lord, you scared me! You’re kind of creepy . . . the way you just . . . appear.

The horse stared at her, ears forward.

At least you got up and came back to your barn. But you sure scared the snot out of me.

The horse jutted its muzzle forward, acknowledging human chatter. Its nostrils fluttered.

Come on in. I have a new room for you. You won’t have to be in that filthy one.

The horse didn’t move, just stared at her.

Rope. I need a rope. I’ve got to find a leash for it. She faced the horse. I’ll be right back.

Every time Hanna needed something to help her with the horse, she scrunched her lashes together in the somber light, roamed a bit and found a useful item, convenient enough. It had been a working horse barn at one time. Lead ropes of assorted lengths and colors hung on a spike in the aisle. She took one, shook off the dust, and then looped it around the horse’s withered neck.

She used her most assertive tone. Let’s go.

The horse stretched its neck out as far forward as it could without moving its feet. That was the most it agreed to do. Hanna stepped back to better assess the situation and contemplate her next move. This is the thinnest, sorriest looking creature I’ve ever seen. It’s nothing more than a breathing skeleton. As she scanned the horse, wondering what to do, she noticed the horse’s feet for the first time. She didn’t know anything about horses, but anyone could see that its feet were grossly disfigured. The toes of both front hooves curled up, like Aladdin’s slippers, about a foot in length, years overgrown. The sides of the hooves twisted under, as if it stood on gnarled pine roots. The horse couldn’t walk.

You poor little thing. I think you need to come inside. I’ll help you. I’ll be right here. Just take a small step. When the horse moved a foot, Hanna said, Good horse, and patted the fleshless neck. The horse plodded into the stall, warm to the touch and sweating from the pain of the effort expended to travel the short distance.

Okay, horsey girl, she said, noticing the gender of the animal. There is fresh water for you.

The mare’s head plunged into the bucket of clear water. At first, Hanna thought it amusing as she watched the guzzling and slurping. But sorrow soon replaced gaiety because the mare drank with her eyes closed. Water had become that foreign to her—and that spectacular to reach. Hanna had never known, never witnessed, thirst that claimed dominion over life itself. She filled the bucket again. The mare emptied it. Hanna filled it a third time, a fourth time, a fifth time. The sixth bucket remained full. The mare swung her head toward it every few seconds, not to drink, but as if to assure its presence.

Hanna leaned against the stall wall. She shook her head at the pathetic sight in front of her. I may not know anything, but you seem pretty small to me as far as horses go. You’re way littler than those big Budweiser horses. You’re not so scary. What happened to you? How’d you get left here?

Once again, the mare crumpled to the ground. Her breaths came unsynchronized and inaudible, as if she might be too weak to continue on with the work of filling her lungs. Even though the horse had water to drink, Hanna doubted that any animal in such condition could survive. And what am I supposed to do about it?

She left the stall and walked around the barn. There has to be something to feed her. Climbing the cobweb-laced stairs in the far corner seemed the most logical thing to do in the search for food. She swallowed hard and took a deep breath to prepare for the journey.

Spider webs twitched in the drafty stairwell as she began her ascent. She remembered not to look overhead. Who knows what I’ll find up there, she said, still needing to hear conversation. But she pressed on and up the crotchety stairs. She used the broom she’d found to push the cobwebs away from her face. She didn’t want to disturb the spiders so much that they’d jump or fall down onto her hair. The mere thought of that made her skin crinkle.

The sun shone in slanted streaks through cracks in the loft walls, illuminating a stack of hay bales. Horses do eat hay. That much I know. Speaking it provided validation. She’d have to walk across the loft floor to get to the bales. My luck, I’ll fall through and no one will ever find me. No one knows where I am. So, she tapped the floor in front of her with the broom to test its security before taking each solid step toward the hay.

She had no idea how much hay to give a horse. I’ll just push one bale down the steps and make a good guess. Two hemp strings cinched around the bale made it easy to pull and slide the bale across the worn-shiny plank floor. Once she had the bale poised at the top of the steps, she gave it a shove with her foot and sent it careening end over end all the way to the bottom. A whinny rose straight up to the rafters—she remembered the sound.

Hanna ambled sideways down the odd-sized steps. The strings on the bale had snapped and the hay exploded into square sections all over the floor. She carried three of the squares to the mare and placed them in front of her. The mare bit into them and tore the sections apart. She crammed the hay into her mouth at first but then settled down to less frantic munching. It filled Hanna with polar emotions: cold and pity for the horse’s circumstances, warmth and pride for having done a kind deed for another living thing.

George would be home from work soon and he’d wonder where his wife was. She was always home from her walks by dusk.

You have water and food, she said, wondering if the horse had a name. I have to go, horsey, but I’ll come back to check on you tomorrow.

Cumbersome thoughts hindered her as she walked down the driveway and back to her world. She plowed through the leaves on the side of the road, kicking them asunder. What am I supposed to do now, call the police? Call animal control? Tell George? She kept her face down, ducking the biting wind, hands balled in her pockets. She had told the horse that she’d see her tomorrow, but she didn’t believe that would happen. She knew in her heart of hearts that the horse couldn’t and wouldn’t survive another night.

On that walk home, she made a decision that would change the course of her future. She would not tell anyone, not even George.

Chapter Two

Where have you been? he asked, when she bounded up the steps at the back of the house. He held the door open for her. It’s dark. You’re not usually out this late. I was getting worried.

I think I might have dillydallied to pick wildflowers on the way home.

Flowers, this time of year?

Okay, weeds then.

Where are they?

Where are what?

"The flowers."

Hanna, looking straight ahead and thinking fast said, Good question. I must have dropped them when I put my hands in my sweatshirt. It’s getting chilly out there.

Later in the evening, George asked, What happened to your shoes?

She breezed into the mudroom for a quick look. The white, and previously unblemished, shoes had returned home entombed in crusted crud.

I stepped in a puddle, she said, thinking, that will do.

Looks like you about drowned in it. Why didn’t you step around it?

Because I didn’t. I just didn’t. Okay?

End of conversation. After twenty-three years of marriage to the longhaired vixen, George Tauber had come to accept his wife’s unique quirks. He loved her, though mystery hovered around her. He watched her heave the braid, like she did at least fifty times each day, as she bent over her defiled shoes.

I’m going to toss them, she said. Once again, the braid wandered forward to dangle in front of her, dusting the floor. He joked that if she cut it he’d divorce her. She intrigued him and excited him and it happened most when her hair fussed with her and got in the way of a task. He longed to see her hair loose again and draped around her, hiding her naked body. Even now, as she inspected her stinky shoes, he wanted her.

That head of hair caused George to smash the brakes to the pavement the first time she crossed in front of him with a group of her friends. Once he got past the tornado of hair, swirling all around her on that windy day, the rest of her kept him interested, too. All doled out in pleasing proportions, it suited her. Like a thoughtfully wrapped present, everything matched. She smiled at him on that day; a cute, not beautiful face. She flashed her gemstone-green eyes, doused with too much makeup, and flirted with him. But it was the hair that hooked George.

They seldom fought. They enjoyed the same movies and foods and they shared a much more than stable lifestyle. There was just one area that needed bolstering. Hanna wasn’t enthralled with sex. George brought her flowers, he lit candles, he held her, and he took his time. He knew he was good to her. Although they shared a decent sex life, there were times it seemed awkward. In part, he blamed himself for this. Hanna had told him that she’d never had sex with any other man, not even with Leonard Levine, whom she dated for a year in college.

On their wedding night, George knew that Hanna wasn’t a virgin. She’d lied to him and this angered him. He demanded to know who he was, someone she wanted to protect. She cried and she begged him to believe her. He finally said that he believed her, but he couldn’t, and never did. Though George had done his best to bury it, it had glommed onto their relationship like fungus on a tree. Pretend it doesn’t exist. It’s not that serious. Besides, fungus might not kill the whole tree. It wasn’t that she’d