White fence, gray horse. Conspicuous on a landscape of hills and winter oaks. At dusk, in January, rural Long Island was as colorless as a woodcut on parchment. The horse had been shot, maybe while jumping the fence, maybe as he touched down. It was possible that Will Chaser had been aboard. The animal lay in waist-high sedge, his body mass creating an indentation in the grass. Tail and mane were darker than the Appaloosa spots on his rump. He had been dead for at least eight hours, but vapor continued condensing on his coat as heat dissipated from his body. We had crossed a hundred yards of pasture. Behind us was one of Long Island’s elite equestrian estates, Shelter Point: dressage ring, boarding barn, breeding lab, staff quarters, forty acres of white fencing, a castle-sized mansion in the distance, an orange wind sock that told me the horsey set used private jets. The practice arena was patched with snow. Jump stations were fabricated with a theatrical precision that reminded me of a miniature golf course.
