Chapter 2

As for Leanne, our divorce was now long final and shortly after the end of my trial her parents drove over from Cincinnati to pick up her stuff. About time! I suspect more than a few mice had burrowed into her clothing boxes to nest but that was her problem for letting the boxes sit for nearly a full year. She lived with her parents for a while, moved out and then became involved in an abusive relationship with a guy who soon tired of her shit too. Then she moved in with yet another guy who beat her and treated her even worse. By the time they came to pick up her things here, Leanne had been institutionalized, with her willing agreement and consent for treatment.

Her folks didn't hold anything against me — they knew exactly what their crazy daughter was like. We've kept in contact over the years and they have quietly kept me informed of the up and downs of Leanne's life. Her condition was more or less treatable with medication and she was released fairly soon into outpatient care. She struggled a bit; she was still going to be a rather odd person but would eventual settle down enough to hold a teaching job. She remarried and they stuck it out for awhile but another divorce was obviously inevitable. She gave marriage a third and final try a few years ago and I think this one might work. Her meds are a bit improved now and she's mellowed with age ... her new hubby is a big teddy bear with the patience of a saint and I don't think he's going to strangle her.

Fortunately, she was no longer my problem.

Unfortunately, I now had new legal problems — suspicion of pedophilia and murder.

There was just a single minor problem ... the authorities couldn't seem to find any actual victims of either offense ... not that it stopped Judge Moonbat.

Let me explain now how this new mess got started. This time it was my own damn fault when I let my sense of humor get carried away.

Fred Olson runs the feed store in town and is about the most gregarious and happy sort of fellow you could ever meet. He's the splitting image of the actor William Conrad, except for being a bit more jovial. He bowls on a different team against us but I've never held that poor judgment against him.

We were having breakfast together at the local town diner one Saturday morning and talking about my new 'rescue' horse, an eight year old filly named "Sue". Ok, technically Sue wasn't a filly anymore, she was old enough to be called a mare right and proper, but she was undersized, underfed and seemed like a lost little girl to me. Besides, she was the only female in my life at the moment so I could call her anything endearing I wanted to.

There wasn't exactly a long line of single available women waiting to date an acquitted attempted murder. I had hopes that that particular problem would resolve itself with the passage of a bit of time.

The County SPCA calls me in whenever they handle a large animal rescue to evaluate the medical condition of the animal. It happens a lot more often than you would think, or would like. Usually the root cause is fairly innocent. An elderly farmer or rancher who was unable to tend properly to them anymore, or having too many horses, sheep or head of cattle on insufficient grazing land — or insufficient water. Sometimes, it's just plain pure neglect. In this case a 'weekend rancher' became too busy back in town and pretty much forgot about his herd. Several horses died, and Sue was too weak to stand. I was hoping the County would cut that bastards balls off, but he escaped with just a fine. Someday he'll have another group of 'pets' needing to be rescued and I hope they do it while holding shotguns. Bastard.

I decided to keep Sue myself. She had the saddest eyes I've seen in my life on a horse and for awhile I wasn't entire sure that she was going to make a full recovery but she did. She's an extremely smart horse with a lovely sweet disposition but she had been ill-used and it took me quite a good long stretch of time with her to earn her trust. She now thinks she's a puppy dog and follows me around the property everywhere and would even follow me inside the house if she'd fit through the front door. I tried to keep the downstairs windows all open wide so she could stick her head into whatever room I'm in to watch and be near me. It didn't take me long to love this horse more than I probably ever loved my ex-wife.

Sue had finally recovered enough that I felt it was safe to begin riding her. And ride her I did! Soon I was riding Sue more often than I was driving my truck. I'd take her to work with me and give her the front stable at the vet barn, and even ride her to most of my house calls and into town. I don't think I saved much money on gas with the extra oats she was getting, but she was definitely more eco-friendly.

Anyway, that Saturday I rode Sun into town, and no one thought it was unusual for me to tie her up on a nice grass lot next to the diner. Other folks often did the same. Weekends it was as common to see a family on horseback together as see them in their family car. Fred complimented me on my new female companion, and getting into the humorous spirit we proceed to crack every horse and sex related pun we could think of. Here is but a brief example:

"So I hear your new filly loves to be ridden hard and put away wet."

"Well she is small for her size, but by the time she's ten years old I hope she'll settle down a bit and wants to be ridden a bit less — she's wearing me out — I'm getting knackered!"

"Are you sure her mother didn't mind?

"Well she didn't say "Neigh". Besides she just fell into my lap, so you know what they say about 'gift horses'.

"Still isn't eight a bit too young? She's a little younger than the age of your usual girls."

"She's mature for her age and knows exactly what she's doing. She has an unbridled passion for me - I couldn't keep her out of my bedroom at night if I didn't keep her all tied up in the barn."

"Well don't get to attached to her, sooner or later you'll just have to take her behind the barn and put a bullet into her skull like all of the others. What do you think you'll make out of her skin? A new lampshade?"

"She'll do fine in my harem when I add others. She's good breeding stock and I can keep her going until she's at least fifteen or sixteen, before she gets old and tries to hoof it."

Anyway ... you get the idea. Silly, but mostly harmless. Unless you have the elderly (and quite batty) mother of the current minister of the local Mennonite Church sitting in the booth behind you, avidly listening and misunderstanding nearly every word.

That Sunday morning Fred and I were denounced from the pulpit as pedophiles and child murderers.

The shit now really began to hit the fan. Things had just barely gotten back to normal after my attempted murder trial and it had cost me several long time regular customers. Now the same old shit was starting all over again!

Fred and I explained our innocent conversation to everyone who would listen until we were blue in the face. I even took Sue around me to visit a few of the more stubborn die-hards to introduce my "eight year old girlfriend" to them. Most country folks are pretty sensible and it didn't take too much to convince them, but there were still some people that felt that since there was smoke then there must be fire. The batty mother could never be convinced, and I'm sure she went to her grave believing that I was a dangerous pedophile and baby killer.

Once again, I was back on the local law enforcement tour schedule and filled out statements until I had writer's cramp from signing affidavits. You better believe I got my lawyer in on things fast! It still didn't stop the local corn wrapper newsrag from publishing a story about me that danced just about as close to libel as they thought they could manage. That started the mess all over again.

The local town Police Chief investigated thoroughly and found absolutely no cause for action. The County Sheriff also investigated thoroughly and found absolutely no cause for action. The State Troopers next paid a visit and investigated thoroughly and found absolutely no cause for action. The State Bureau of Investigation then decided to get into the act as well and spent two days investigated thoroughly and found absolutely no cause for action.

Finally, I thought the matter was finally dead and buried (ouch, poor choice of words).

Judge Moonbat somehow heard that a certain 'infamous predator against women' is once again back to his old tricks and she held a press conference making statements of an inflammatory and highly slanderous nature and reeking with intentional malice. Comedy gold (and still available for your viewing amusement on YouTube if you know where to look). Except it wasn't even remotely funny now.

The FBI now showed up with a cadaver dog search group, two teams of ground search crews and a famous serial killer profiler in tow. They proceeded to make my life hell for the next three days and after a long thorough investigation found absolutely no cause for action. The famous profiler questioned me for 15 minutes, laughed hysterically and then followed me around during my vet duties for the next few days while we talk non-stop about our horses. (I'm still on his Christmas card list and he recently sent me signed copy of his latest true-crime book.) The local rag printed a rumor that numerous bodies of children had been found on my property. Their retraction the next week was printed at the bottom of page of page six, right next to the garage sale notices. Judge Moonbat held another kooky press conference and orders the FBI back to look some more searching, even bulldoze up my entire property, if necessary. They do — and find nothing. A pathetic couple from Indiana with a missing eight year old daughter named Sue shows up at my house and holds a gun to head for three hours until the local Sheriff and the FBI convince the poor bereaved couple that I don't have their missing girl in a shallow grave in my pasture. That might have been the saddest day of my entire life. The County Judge orders everyone to go home and stay there. The local rag prints a vague story that the "on-going investigation" against me has taken a temporary backburner due to lack of evidence. I eventually win my libel suit against the rag and it is settled for half of their net worth - $12.47 (half of the amount in the coffee can where they keep their petty cash). The publisher outside of the courtroom proudly displays his OSU tattoo on his ass cheek.

Somewhere about this point Judge Moonbat got a polite but firm message from the Attorney General of the United States telling her get her shit straight and do her job, leave the FBI alone and shut her goddamn mouth. Probably not in that exact order.

Still the damage had been done.

I lost a lot more of my regular customers. Things this time never did return back to any sort of 'normal'. Poor Freddy just gave up, and sold his feed store about a month after it was all over. He was a kind fun loving soul who never did a lick of harm to anyone, nor had an unkind word to say. He just couldn't stand the silent whispering campaign. He had family down in Missouri and started up a new feed store down there and is doing well. I thought about joining him down there but decided it would be best to try and stick things out for awhile to see if they'd get any better.

They didn't.

My vet insurance costs going up nearly 300% didn't help matter much either. They heard about my two episodes of 'legal problems' and decided that I was a bad malpractice risk. Between that and permanently losing about a third of my clients the vet practice was no longer remotely profitable. Most folks, especially my ex-wife don't realize that big animal vets don't make the big bucks that the city cat and dog vets do. We're really two entirely different veterinary programs. We get to stick our hands all the way up horses and cows backsides and are paid much less money for the privilege. And folks wonder why the kids don't want to get into big animal practice anymore!

I owed my lawyer another boatload of money again, which I definitely didn't have. I sold the house and the acreage, but I didn't have much equity and I had to sell fast and relatively cheaply. The meager profit mostly covered his bill and he forgave me the rest.

Putting the practice up for sale was the next logical step once I decided that I didn't have much of a future left in this area. Being politely asked to quit the bowling team was pretty much the last straw. The Sheriff and I go way back but he was an elected official and just couldn't afford to get tarred with the same brush I had. It took me awhile to forgive him but I can't say I blamed him.

The practice sold faster than I thought it would, and I ended up receiving exactly what I had paid for it a few years ago and got all of my loans paid off. I didn't own hardly anything anymore but then again I now didn't owe anyone a dime either. Things could have been worse.

I loaded up my truck with the stuff I wanted to keep along with my vet tools, materials and supplies and hitched Sue's trailer to the back and got the hell out of Dodge.

Big animal vets are needed everywhere — there was a shortage then and it's only worse now. I wasn't ready yet to buy another practice, although I could easily have done so. I was just too angry at life and with everyone and everything to feel like dealing with new clients and customers. In fact I didn't feel much like dealing with much of anything at all. I also wanted my recent notoriety to become as cold as possible. In my opinion at that time, I just wanted a dry hole in the ground to crawl into and drag a rock over it to hide.

All in all, it took about five years to get most of the anger out of my system and my rage down to a tolerable dull-ache that still wouldn't quite leave me — but I could now deal with it. Only then did I begin to consider opening another practice of my own again. I had been working very regularly for other big animal vets that had large practices requiring multiple docs all throughout the Southwest under a sort of contract labor agreement. I also did a good bit of work for some big corporate owned ranches during their busy seasons. I didn't mind doing the work, or the fairly low salary; I just didn't want my name on the shingle and to hassle with the customers. Sue and I didn't need all that much.

It came as rather a surprise one day to receive an unsolicited letter from a small South Texas County politely inquiring if I would if interested in taking the job of Assistant Director of County Veterinary Services. The offer letter didn't include a whole lot of details. There was a brief typewritten job description, of sorts; if it walked on more than two legs it would be my responsibility, more or less. The pay frankly stunk (about what I was making now as an assistant at someone else's practice), but the list of benefits was fairly intriguing. The County would also pay my malpractice insurance and provide the usual standard benefits of being a County government employee, health coverage, paid vacation, etc. There was also something about 'professional, private and stock grazing accommodations provided'. I wasn't quite sure what that was all about, but to me it sounded like they'd provide me, at the minimum, with a corner for an office, minimal medical treatment facilities, a bed to doss down in at night and someplace to park Sue while I was doing my job.