Woman on a horse. Long blond hair flying, mane and tail flying, horse and rider suspended in one wide galloping stride, headed for the first barrel. In another moment, this female centaur will round the first turn of the cloverleaf pattern; on the bottom of the black-and-white photo a brief notation gives the horse’s name—“Highball”—and “first place, Salinas Rodeo, 1979”; one can conclude that the run was as good as it appears in the faded photographic print.
 The face of this rider is, of course, familiar; I am certain that I have never seen the horse. Were it not for the circumstances, the picture would be relatively meaningless, merely a good shot of a barrel racing run. But now I stare, mesmerized, looking for a clue that would bring this flying horsewoman to life, make it clear who she really is. So my eyes search the framed photo, checking details—clothes, tack, the quirt in the woman’s clenched teeth, the shape of the horse’s blaze, looking for something, anything—what, I am not sure.
 I am hunting for an answer, racing for a solution, even as the woman in the photo is driving toward the finish line, riding hard to win. In this moment we are here, face to face as it were, intent on our goals—for all the good they may ultimately do us. Chasing cans.
 
 
 

 Lindee Stone was one tough lady. I had reason to know; she’d been my veterinary client for many years and was currently my next-door neighbor. None of which had made me the least bit fond of her. For my money, Lindee was a nasty piece of work, albeit a good-looking, blond version of such.
 This particular June afternoon, I was nursing my year-old baby and contemplating the hours ahead with a calm and equable mind, when Lindee Stone called me on the phone and shifted my tranquil mood into outright hostility in a few short sentences. Her voice was unmistakable--low, a little hoarse, just a hint of a southwestern twang. “Am I speakin’ to Gail McCarthy?”
 “You are. Who’s this?” I rebutted, although I was quite sure I knew.
 “This is your neighbor, Lindee. I just thought I ought to let you know that you’ll be needing to move your two horses out of Joanie’s field. I leased it.”
 “What?” I was so startled I jerked upright, causing Mac to lose his latch on my nipple. Since he now had teeth, this was more than a little painful. I tried to muffle my “Ow” through clenched teeth as I let Mac get a good hold and demanded, “What are you talking about? Joanie leased that field to me.”
 Joan Grant was another neighbor, whose property lay to the west of both mine and Lindee’s. Two of my geldings, Twister and Danny, had been living in Joanie’s ten-acre pasture for over a year, and Joanie had always seemed happy with the arrangement.
 “Not anymore, I’m afraid.” Lindee sounded smug. “As of this morning, that field is leased to me. And I’ll have to ask you to get those horses off pronto. I’ll be turning some mares out there right away.”
 “You’ve got to be kidding. Joanie never said anything to me.”
 “Call her and ask her,” Lindee snapped.
 “I will,” I said just as sharply.
 “And see that you get those horses out of there. I plan to turn the mares out in a couple of days.” Click.
 I stared at the receiver in my hand, seething with fury, frustration, and confusion. Sensing something, Mac quit nursing and looked up into my face.
 Clear, gray-blue, otherworldly, my baby’s eyes rested on mine in a mildly questioning way. I took a deep breath. Just as I had on many other occasions in the year since I’d become a mother, I reminded myself to keep my priorities straight. Priority number one was taking care of Mac.
 I let my breath out, slowly. Consciously relaxed my clenched jaw. Smiled at my little boy.
 “Hey, baby,” I said softly. “Hey, Mac.”
 His answering smile came quietly and sweetly, and after a moment’s further scrutiny of my face, he latched on again, apparently convinced that things were all right after all.
 Not me. Despite my now outwardly calm demeanor, my mind was racing, trying to solve this new problem that had been thrust upon me by my obnoxious neighbor. Why in the world would Joanie boot my horses out of her field in favor of Lindee’s mares? As far as I knew, Joanie didn’t like Lindee any better than I did.
 Nothing for it but to call Joanie and find out. I watched Mac suck busily and felt the powerful pull that seemed to come from the core of me, certainly from somewhere deeper and more central than a mere breast. How did he do that, I wondered, not for the first time. It truly felt, literally as well as figuratively, as if he were tugging at my heartstrings.
 Resolving to let him finish nursing before I engaged in another upsetting phone call, I stared out my south-facing windows at the vegetable garden fence. June’s lush profusion glowed at every point, from the cascading showers of apricot roses, through the pinks and purples of sweet peas, to the flames of nasturtiums, all clambering and scrambling together on the weathered gray brown grapestake fence. Within the fence, vegetable beds showed dark brown earth marked with neat rows of carrots, onions, peppers, radishes, and basil; mounds of zucchini and crookneck squash; a bamboo teepee was draped in twining pole beans; all courtesy of my husband, Blue. I was grateful that he’d had the energy and desire to put in a vegetable garden this year; I certainly hadn’t.
 I loved looking at it, though. Just as I loved looking at the much wilder hillside beyond it, where the native brush mingled with meadow grass and some flowering plants that I’d introduced. Those few that had survived, that is. The wild garden was a tough place and competition was keen. For every successfully vivid verbena flower spangling the grass, there were at least a dozen casualties. But the bright-purple verbena mingled happily with the golden orange California poppies and the pink and white fleabane daisy, and all of them ran riotously through the tall grasses in a profusion of color and movement.
The wild oats were just turning from green to silvery gold, in the way of coastal California summers, along with the native rattlesnake grass, thickly hung with its papery fairy lanterns that rustled in every breeze. The meadow formed a shifting, flickering foreground to the rich ascending shapes and shades of the brushy plants clothing the hillside beyond. Live oak, elderberry, monkey flower, wild lilac, coffeeberry, and greasewood, to name only a few of the main players, provided a rich habitat for the native fauna, and my garden was as lively with animals as it was with plants. I loved this life and movement, this mixing of wild and cultivated, despite the inevitable conflicts, i.e. bobcat versus chickens. I wouldn’t have traded my few acres here in the brushy coastal hills by California’s Monterey Bay for any fancy piece of manicured real estate anywhere in the world. I only wished I owned Joanie Grant’s ten acre pasture, too.
 Damn. Things had been just fine until that serpent in Paradise, that insufferable Lindee Stone, had moved in next door a year ago. Suddenly the neighboring property, a mere two and a half acres just like my own, had become home to a training barn and over forty horses, with the inevitable coming and going of all those clients, owners, and boarders with their trucks and trailers.
 Don’t get me wrong. I have horses; I love horses. I’m a horse vet by trade. But even I became rapidly disenchanted with the reality of a large training barn next door. At least this training barn.
 Lindee Stone trained barrel racing horses; she also bred and raised registered paints, standing a stallion and keeping at least half a dozen brood mares. As far as I could tell, she boarded horses and traded horses and pursued just about any deal where it was possible to make money on a horse. Ethical or not.
 Rumors had always abounded about Lindee. That she had, on numerous occasions, passed horses off as sound that were running on major painkillers, that she had doctored papers to make horses look younger than they were, and sold horses with papers that were not their own in order to make them appear to be valuable when they were not… The list went on and on. It was said that she had left her last training establishment after screwing the owner out of many months of rent. Unfortunately I had reason to know that she’d actually bought the place next door to me, so it didn’t seem likely that she’d be leaving any time soon.
 Despite her less than unblemished reputation, Lindee Stone still seemed to have a large following, probably because she won. She won at a very high level, competing at numerous rodeos, often successfully. In effect, she could get the job done. And so people came to her for training and lessons, though they often didn’t stay with her long.
 All this made for a great deal of traffic, noise, and just general equine and human population on the property that bordered my south fence. The one consolation I’d had was that the whole shindig wasn’t visible from my house; oak trees and brush screened it out nicely.
 Staring out my window, I frowned in the direction of Lindee’s home and horse training operation, feeling Mac’s pull on my breast even as I felt the equal and opposite pull—to be up and doing, to take some action, any action, to combat this new foe.
 I sighed. I did not jump up, as I longed to do; I did not startle my baby, who was nursing peacefully off to sleep. I held still, taking deep breaths, reminding myself to keep my priorities straight. Priority number one was taking care of Mac. My mantra.
 That I honestly believed this did not always make it easy to live by, as proponents of various religious faiths can attest. It had not been easy to tell the senior partner in my veterinary firm that I wasn’t sure when I was coming back to work, and when I did, I would come back part-time only. It had not been his expectation, nor had it been mine. I had expected to take six months to a year off to have my baby and then be back at it. Little did I know.
 Motherhood had turned out to be everything I expected and more, a whole lot more. Taking care of Mac, being present for Mac, being there to nurture him and raise him had become by far the most important thing in the world to me. Somehow I had, prior to his birth, underestimated the power of this feeling and its far reaching implications.
 And now I struggled once again with the inevitable conflict between this overwhelming drive to mother versus my own wish, neglected but not forgotten, to continue being the assertive, professional woman I was used to being. Gail McCarthy the horse vet, that was me. Independent, strong-minded, competent, in charge—these were the words that came to mind. Not tranquil, maternal, nurturing, patient—the virtues that went with mamahood. And yet, here I was.
 Here I was, all right, struggling with the need to actively sort out this situation, to trot on down and confront the despicable Lindee Stone, and faced with a trusting child whose eyelashes fluttered gently over his closing eyes as he drifted, his gaze still following my face. My baby. My baby who needed his mama—present and loving. Not to mention tranquil and holding still, not dashing off to confront someone. Damn.
 I sighed again. Reminded myself I was doing what I really wanted to do. Wondered why being a mother frequently seemed such a difficult task. Was following one’s deepest desire always and inevitably one’s most difficult challenge?
 Mac’s eyes were closed now. I knew better than to move. One short year of motherhood had driven home the lesson in no uncertain terms: Let the baby fall completely asleep before you try to move him. And even then, don’t count on it working.
 I watched the sweet, sleeping face, my heart softening despite my revved-up mind. The perfect, almost translucent skin, the delicate bow of the lips, the soft waves of fawn colored hair… Mac was beautiful. Of course, all mothers think this, I reminded  myself; only in my case, it was really true. Right.
 I sat, feeling the warm weight of my baby resting across my lap and arms. This was my life; this was what I was here to do. And what, I wondered, was I going to say to Joanie Grant?
 That I needed her pasture? That Twister and Danny, my two horses with major medical problems, weren’t sound enough to ride so I couldn’t exercise them, let alone I didn’t have the time. That they would be terminally bored locked up in corrals all day every day, even big corrals like mine. What was I supposed to do—beg?
 I really did not relish making this phone call. Still, there didn’t seem to be much choice. Gingerly I shifted Mac. He didn’t flinch, he didn’t twitch, his eyelids didn’t even flicker. By my reckoning, he had moved from REM sleep to deep sleep and could now be moved. Amazing the way all these minute details of motherhood came perfectly naturally to me now, when a little over a year ago I wouldn’t have had a clue about any of this. Instinct had its place, also a lot of reading. The one subject I was interested in these days was child rearing.
Carefully, I stood up and carried Mac to the co-sleeper bed that stood next to my own bed. Mac didn’t actually sleep in it much; he preferred to be cuddled up by my side, but it was handy as a safe spot to put him for naps, especially when I needed to be doing something.
 Once he was settled, still sleeping, I picked up the remote phone and walked back out in the other room. Reluctantly, I dialed Joanie Grant’s number.
 As I listened to the mechanical ringing tone and waited, I pictured Joanie Grant. A retired schoolteacher, widowed and living alone, Joanie was in her seventies, and still a dynamic, lively personality. We’d always gotten along well, and shared an interest in horses, which had helped the bond between us grow. Joanie had owned horses all her life; when I first started working as a veterinarian, ten years ago, her old mare, Cinnamon, had been in her thirties, enjoying a happy retirement in Joanie’s pasture. Since then, Cinnamon had passed on, and last year Joanie had been glad to lease the now empty pasture to me.
 At seventy-five, she’d explained, she didn’t want to buy another horse, but she still loved horses, loved to see them grazing in the field in front of her house, loved to go out and socialize with them, stroking their noses and getting to know them. My two geldings, Danny and Twister, were very receptive to this, and had quickly learned to amble over to the fence whenever Joanie appeared. She often brought them an apple or a carrot and had steadily grown fonder of them, reporting back to me on individual personality quirks she’d noticed and letting me know when one or the other looked a little “off.”
 It had seemed an ideal arrangement. Though in theory the field was “leased” to me, Joanie charged me no rent. I took care of all chores, made sure the horses had adequate feed and water, was responsible for veterinary care and regular visits from the farrier, and everybody seemed happy, horses included.
 Until now. Even though Joanie and I had several times commiserated over the misfortune of having Lindee Stone and her entourage right next door, apparently something had convinced the woman to boot my horses out in favor of Lindee’s. Money, maybe? It didn’t seem likely, given what I knew of Joanie, but all the same, I now wished that I was in possession of a multi-year signed lease and was paying some nominal fee.
 “Hello?” Joan Grant’s voice sounded older than I remembered.
 “Hi, Joanie. It’s Gail.” I tried not to let the gamut of emotions I was feeling show in my voice.
 “Oh, Gail. Good. Or I mean it’s not good, it’s terrible. But I do need to talk to you.”
 “Lindee just called… to tell me you leased your field to her,” I said, I hoped calmly and evenly.
 “That…” Joanie hesitated. “That bitch. I wouldn’t normally use that word, Gail, you know that, but that woman deserves it.”
 “What happened?”
 “Well, you should know, she’s been after me for a while to lease this field to her. She’s got some broodmares she wants to turn out, apparently. I always told her no, that I was happy having your two horses here and that was enough. And to tell you the truth, I wouldn’t have leased the field to her if it was empty. I don’t want anything to do with her; you know her reputation as well as I do.”
 “Uh huh,” I said.
 “Then, this morning, she called me up, and told me, again, that she’d like to lease the field. I started to say no, and before I could get the word out, she said, ‘You’d better think about that.’
 “I asked why I should and she said, ‘You know that little house you’re building? I understand the county doesn’t know about it.’” Joanie took a deep breath.
 “Oh my God,” I said.
 “That’s right. She pretty much told me she’d turn me in to the county if I didn’t lease the field to her.”
 “I can hardly believe it.”
 “Believe it,” Joanie said grimly. “She meant it.”
 “You’re right,” I said, “she’s a bitch. A real bitch.”
 There was silence for a minute. I knew, as well as Joanie, what a bind she was in. For the last month she’d been having a contractor build a small cottage behind her house. It was in no one’s view, and was a tiny structure, meticulously done. Joanie intended it as the future residence of some live-in help—an attempt to stay in her own home as she got progressively frailer and in need of assistance. The building was being done sans building permits, since the Santa Cruz County building department was legendary for its arbitrary and draconian restrictions and its exceedingly expensive and completely unnecessary requirements. In short, a permitted building would inevitably cost at least twice as much as an unpermitted structure and would almost invariably end up in a different spot and be in many ways quite other to anything the owner had originally intended.
 Unpermitted “granny units” were the rule rather than the exception in this county. Everyone who could get away with it built them this way and they were as common as pebbles in a stream. In a place where the cost of housing was as high as anywhere in the United States, the granny unit was ubiquitous.
 Unless, of course, you had a difficult neighbor. A neighbor who would call the quasi-hostile minions of the building department and sic them on you. This could put an immediate stop to your construction project. Most right-minded people didn’t bother with such behavior unless said project was right in the way of their view or would in some way interfere with their lives.
 In this case, Joanie’s little house was not visible from Lindee’s property, and given the huge amount of traffic coming and going at Lindee’s place, it was hard to see how she could object to Joanie having a single tenant. Nope. It was blackmail pure and simple.
 “That is really shitty,” I said out loud.
 “I know it is, but what can I do? I don’t want to do this to you, and I love Danny and Twister, you know I do, and the last thing I want is anything to do with that damn Lindee, but what else could I do but agree?”
 “Shit,” I said, with some feeling. “You know Lindee’s doing half a dozen things that are illegal, from the building department’s point of view. She’s got a barn girl living out there in a travel trailer, for heaven’s sake.”
 “I know. And I thought of that, too. But it isn’t going to help me to get in a pissing contest with her. Once she’s called the county on me, I’ve got a problem.”
 “I know it. If those damn building inspectors get started with you, you’re screwed. I do understand. Guess I’m just going to have to find another place to turn out my horses.”
 “I’m so sorry, Gail.” I could tell that Joanie meant every word. “I’d like to kill that woman.”
 “Me, too,” I said fervently. “Me, too.”