The Horseshoe

“I am on my way to pick up a horseshoe. My brother Dennis took it. It’s been outta my hands for a very long time,” says the man on the seat beside me. We’re on a Greyhound somewhere in West Virginia.

I swirl my frosted vanilla cappuccino and take a long pull through the straw. Around us the other passengers are snoozing or gazing out the window. I’m glad I doctored my drink with a stiff shot of Grey Goose before I boarded. “A horseshoe, eh?” I say.

My seatmate Braydon is a tough-looking guy, with close-cut hair that doesn’t quite disguise the patchy baldness. He has animal-theme tattoos creeping around his body, under his T-shirt, along his arms, partway up his neck. A walking bestiary. “Let me tell you, Vince, things are gonna change.” He pumps his fist.

Over the past forty minutes, Braydon has filled me in on his three ex-wives, two stepdaughters, and an innovative dog-breeding venture.

“My brother is a millionaire now,” he says. “Talk about dumb luck, Vince. He bought a mansion in Montreal. That could have been me, you know.” He holds my eye as a sly smile crawls over his face.

I nod politely and take another swig of the iced cap. The straw barely reaches to the bottom and I’m having trouble vacuuming up the sweet milky slush.

“Like, I advised him on his last big acquisition,” Braydon says. “My work in dog breeding, you know? Gene splicing. It’s all genetics. All there on the innernet.”

This bugs me, when people don’t enunciate the T in words like “internet” or “interview.” When you think of it, the word “innernational,” if it existed, would mean “domestic,” which is the opposite of “international.”

“You can make designer babies now,” Braydon says. “Or—what I’m innerested in—designer puppies.”

I play it cool. “Oh? What traits do people want in the designer dogs?”

“Depends. Size… color… psychology.”

“Psychology?” I say.

“Big dogs are kind of mild, you know?” he says and I nod. “But those little yappy shits? They land on you like a hornet,” he says. “But I want to put crazy in my pit bulls.”

It’s news to me, that pit bulls need more crazy, but I stay quiet.

“Bought all my stuff through BioLabs,” he continues. “And damned if Dennis, my millionaire brother in Montreal, didn’t run out and buy that company.” He says this in a note of aggrieved astonishment.

He raises his hands, palms open in supplication to Lady Fortuna. His arms are ropy with muscles and veins. His arm tattoos include sea creatures with tentacles.

“Was it because your brother has the horseshoe?” I ask. I’m not quite sure why I pick up on this point. Maybe I’ve heard one too many tales of almost-a-millionaire from Dad. “Luck is just around the corner,” Dad always said, and he’d dredge up some half-baked example or another.

 “Nope, it’s innernet, see?” Braydon says. “I entered my credit card info—cause I’m buying the BioLabs NL 580 centrifuge, see—that’s what I use to concentrate the dog sperm. Dennis has a computer that crawls the innernet and shoots him a message every time that I, Braydon Schumpeter, approve the technology. The next day, boom, he’s buying the company.” Braydon pauses to make sure I am adequately impressed. “He rides around in a limousine and me, I’m stuck on the goddamn Greyhound.”

“How is that tied to the horseshoe?” I ask. “You’re saying it was the internet.”

“Dennis is lucky to have a brother like me,” Braydon says. “Someone who sees the future and acts on it.” He takes a small flat tin from his pocket, unscrews it, and puts a small wad of smokeless tobacco in his mouth. “How ‘bout you? Are you lucky or not?”

I look around the bus. Ads for wedding rings, overseas charity, and pay-day loans. Plus, I have a deadline of this Reedsy story hanging over my head. I glance at my worn paperback copy of Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, abandoned after Braydon’s third interruption. “Lucky,” I say. “For instance… I was shopping online… for a wedding gift.”

His expression changes to that of mild challenge and he chews strenuously. I can imagine the bitter brown liquid staining his small, crowded teeth.

“For my kid sister, Tiffany,” I say. I conjure a puffy pale face with dark mussy hair and big eyes. “We used to fight like cat and dog but not anymore. For their wedding, I wanted to give her and Austin something they’d always remember.”

“Were you best man, Vince? That’s a riot.”

“Nah, Austin’s brother was. Josh. He’s a jerk.” I pause, trying to figure out what kind of a jerk Josh might be. Someone who kicks puppies, I guess. Designer puppies.

Braydon leans closer and I can hear the saliva rushing as he chews. I’m not sure where I’m going with this or why. We were talking about luck and big spenders. I guess I can talk about Tiffany’s luck (recovered health, finding true love) and her big spend (the wedding). No, hold on, I said I was the lucky one.

I remove the lid from my cup and suck out the remaining drops. “This was late at night. I was on Tiffany’s old website and reading about her work in third-world development. I was thinking about Tiff’s chemo and Austin’s love and support through it all. And thinking about her wedding and just how brave she was.”

“Yep, a wedding’s a damn scary thing,” Braydon says. “I’ve walked down that aisle three times, and—it makes you think. You’re getting up there, in front of friends and family, promising to—”

I cut him off. “So it was late at night and my brain was going full tilt. I was getting stressed, thinking: What am I going to give? I hate to say it, Braydon, but I hadn’t believed the wedding would actually happen.”

I wait two beats. “Damned if the computer didn’t start popping up ads for a wedding goat.”

“Wedding goat?”

“Yeah, a wedding goat. You know these charities where you pay X amount, and they’ll buy a Christmas goat for a third-world family? They send a nice little picture so you can let the recipient know a donation’s been made in their name?” I wait for a nod of understanding and then add, “For an extra ten bucks a month you can name the goat.”

“Ha, I’d name mine Larissa,” he says. “Ex number one.”

 “So I made the donation. For special effect I rented a small goat from a local petting zoo.”

“What! Zoos don’t rent their animals!” he laughed in my face.

“You’re right, city zoos don’t, but this was a small private zoo. For a charitable donation, I could rent a goat. I brought it to the wedding and tied it to the leg of the gifts table.” I visualize a sturdy brown goat straining against the leash. Butting his head against the leg of the polished mahogany table. The head caterer comes over to complain and the animal bleats. “Tiffany loved my gift.”

Braydon laughs. “You’re kidding.”

“Ha, great pun,” I say, but he doesn’t acknowledge.

“Whyn’t you just give money?” he asks.

“Oh, sure, you always have to put something in the hat. But our family has an entire table set up at the reception where the gifts and gift tags are displayed. You’re judged by what you give. Hence, the goat.” I can tell he wishes he was on the guest list.

“Like, what kind of things?”

“Oh, wedding-y shit – toaster, barbecue. Nothing so fine as a BioLabs NL580 sperm centrifuge,” I say, and his eyes dart back to my face. “No, the problem with the cash kitty is…,” and here I drop my voice for effect, “the guests sometimes steal.”

“Huh.”

“It’s easy to do,” I say. “The money is handed over to the father of the bride in a fat envelope, let’s say. Everybody’s drinking and dancing. Some guy leans over, gives the father a big welcome-to-the-family hug and slides out the envelope.” I mime the action.

“Huh.” Braydon grins. The bus shifts to a low, noisy gear. Out the window, I can see we are now in city traffic. He starts pulling on his hoodie.

“What I’m saying, is that a person has to make their own luck, right? Like, why are you hell-bent on getting your brother’s horseshoe?”

Braydon says, “Coz.”

“Well, I make my own luck. I was looking forward to Tiffany’s wedding as a way to beef up my own bank account.” I grin.

A look passes over Braydon’s face. He starts going through every pocket he has. Hoodie and pants.

The bus driver announces over the P.A. that we’re within city limits. “Please gather your belongings and prepare for dis-em-bar-ka-tion.”

“Long story short, it was my good luck to get a nice fat envelope at my sister’s wedding.” I pause. “But it’s my bad luck that half of it was cheques.”

He snorts. “Ain’t that the way. Did you have a fence?”

“Nah. Plus, it wouldn’t be fair to take all her money. So I put the cheques in an envelope and dropped it in the parking lot—right beside the best man’s SUV.”

He laughs uneasily.

I picture the parking lot lights, the wet asphalt, the trickle of people going home and the shock of Austin’s brother, the jerk-face puppy-kicker, picking up a torn envelope. I imagine his hands turning it over, wondering what the hell it is, looking for an address.

The laughter dies out and Braydon stares at me.

“I’m just kidding,” I say. “I wouldn’t rip off my sister like that. Not with the chemo and wedding stress and all that. No. No, I wouldn’t.”

Have you ever noticed that sometimes the more you deny something, the more you sound like you’ve done it? With every denial, Braydon looks more judgmental.

The bus grinds to a halt in the terminus and everyone gets up. He’s pulling a BioLabs NL 580 centrifuge box from under the seat and a gym-bag from up top. I hear the clicking of test-tubes in Styrofoam.

“Well, bye Braydon,” I say brightly, “and best of luck getting that horseshoe.”

“Yeah, uh, same to you,” he says, nodding as he turns away, not making eye contact, checking his pockets one last time. “Good luck with that wedding goat.”

THE END