by Gigi Amateau
“Shhh . . . I’m working,” he said.
A redbud branch, clinging to the last of its leaves, snapped back in my face. Izzy had taught me to recognize its heart-shaped leaves. Are redbuds all over the mountain? I wondered. “Job, I want to see Cedarmont from the top!”
“Not yet. You’re too young to make the crest.”
I trotted up beside him. “Then, can we race?”
Job kicked out. “Stay behind me, now. Let me lead you.”
I heard a blue jay call from way up ahead and couldn’t help but break into a jog.
“You wanted to see the mountain. Slow down and look around!” Job bossed me.
“At what?” I asked him.
“See the lace ferns around your feet? See the Queen Anne lining your path? See how the goldenrod is still in bloom? Take notice of everything, Macadoo; that’s your job today. Stay back, now.”
When we reached the river, Poppa said to Izzy, “Now, untack Molly. We’ll stay here awhile. Let her drink from the Maury River with us.” He filled his hat with water and emptied it over his head.
Izzy led Molly upriver to join us. I nickered and gave her a breath.
Molly swatted at me with her tail. “I hope you learned something today, Macadoo. One day when you are old enough and strong enough, you will carry Izzy on your own. He’s going to rely on you to keep him safe, to help him find his way.”
I blew across the Maury River to make it ripple, and Molly did, too. Poppa unpacked his lunch and sat down on the sunny bank in the moss. Molly and Job waded upstream, under the old, tall sycamore.
I stood next to Izzy with only wind and water between us. I could have run, but did not because I was right where I was meant to be.
I had everything I needed and all that I wanted at Cedarmont. Autumn passed, each day cooler than the one before; each day darker, too. As the days turned shorter, my coat grew longer. The hair covering my cannon bone grew long and feathery. My winter coat kept me warm and mostly dry.
The sound of the school bus rolling to a squeaky stop told me that when Izzy was home, so I was always waiting for him by the gate in our field.
Every afternoon Poppa and Izzy would come with a grain bucket and a lead rope.
As winter inched closer and the air turned colder, I looked forward to the warmth of the barn each night.
“What is Christmas, Molly?” I asked across the lane between our stalls one especially nippy morning. A hard frost covered our field; Poppa had set out extra hay.
“Christmas is a time when people sing.”
“Poppa sings every day,” I reminded her, and it was true. He started each morning with a song and left us each evening with one, too. I understood that people sang when they were happy, but I still did not understand Christmas.
Job explained it a different way. “People seem to enjoy one another more at Christmas. They remember all those that they love and have loved.”
I hung my head out over my door and jimmied the latch loose with my nose until the handle turned freely; just how Molly had shown me. Then I pushed the door free with my head and walked over to her stall.
“Izzy promised something special for us at Christmas. How will I know when it’s coming?” I wondered aloud.
“You will be patient and wait. And, you will go back to your stall right now,” said Molly.
Job explained it differently. “Christmas isn’t something you can see, though you can see signs of its arrival. The sky foretells Christmas at the beginning of winter, very near the darkest day.”
The hardwood trees soon dropped all their leaves, and I could see through the forest. One day, Job sniffed and said, “Smell the air, Belgian, and taste it. Is it not frosty and wet?”
That night, Poppa added a fine blanket to my coat and it kept me warm like summer inside, warm enough to nudge open my window and bathe in moonlight, while I waited for Christmas to come.
“The night smells like Alberta,” I said to Job as the wind whisked a paper birch leaf past my face. “Could this wind have come from where I was born, where I lived with Mamere? Just now, I thought it smelled like our old field for a minute.”
“Snow is coming,” Job said. “Christmas is surely near.”
“I wish you had known my dam. Cedarmont is everything she wished for me.”
Job placed a mouthful grain for me in our space. “I know you miss her. I know you do.”
I ate the grain without saving even a speck, then told Job, “I like to be near Izzy because when I am it feels like Mamere never left. I leans against him, and when he talks about the forest, the field, the sky, I think I feel her with me. If only I could see her again. Sometimes, it’s hard to remember my dam. Sometimes, Mamere hardly seems real anymore.”
Molly heard me from across the aisle. “Nonsense. Of course she is real and still with you. Macadoo, can you see the wind?”
“No, ma’am. I see where it goes, but I cannot see the wind itself, no.”
“You can’t feel it either, I suppose?”
“Molly, I can feel the wind! I can even smell the wind!”
“Then you’re very, very sure the wind exists?”
I sniffed my hay. Izzy had started giving us alfalfa now that the grass was gone. Mules ask odd questions, I thought. “Yes, I am sure. I know the wind, Molly,” I answered.
Molly held her head out into the night and told me, “Put your head outside, child. Do you feel a breeze now?”
“The night is still. There is no wind,” I told her.
Job whickered now. “What if the wind never returns?” he asked.
I pulled back into my stall. My chest tightened. No more wind? No more wind? The very thought swirled a gust into my stall, lifted some pine shavings, and swished out into the night.
No more wind! These two mules couldn’t trick me. “Even if I cannot see the wind; even if I cannot feel it in every second. The wind will come back,” I said.
“That’s right,” Molly agreed. “Remember that, always.”
Throughout the night, I shared memories of Mamere with Job and Molly. Job told stories about his dam, too, who loved to walk in the Maury River. And Molly told us about a girl named Charlotte who used to live at Cedarmont a long time ago.
“There hasn’t been a child here — a family — in a very long time. I will never forget Charlotte. She loved me the way Izzy loves you. Oh, she and I knew this mountain even better than Poppa. Believe or not, it was Charlotte who taught me to unlatch my stall!” Molly told us.
“What happened to Charlotte?” I asked. “Where did she go?”
“She moved away with her mother and then came in the summertime and, usually, about now for the holidays. Then she grew up and had a child of her own, and now she . . . Now Charlotte is gone.”
I whickered softly to comfort Molly.
“Thank you, Macadoo. You know, Charlotte is like the wind, too. She is always here with me, always at Cedarmont. It’s good for me to tell you about her. And, now you know something of Izzy’s mother, too.”
I whinnied. “Charlotte was Izzy’s dam?”
“Oh, son, I thought you knew,” Job said.
All through the night of our remembering and recalling the ones we so loved, a white cloud held Cedarmont in stillness, and we waited for the first snow to fall.
To ready Cedarmont for Christmas, Poppa hung cedar wreaths in every window and on every door of the farmhouse. Trucks delivered flowers, new furniture, and boxes of all shapes and sizes.
Poppa has changed since Izzy, and now you, have come here, Macadoo. We haven’t seen a Christmas so full of cheer and gifts in a very long time,” Molly told me. Izzy complained about having to chop and stack wood, already split from trees that had fallen during a late-summer storm — cedar, hickory, and oak. Job and I watched over him while he worked, swishing our tails in time with each strike of his ax.
When our boy grew tired, Poppa would take over. He broke each log in half again with a full-force swing, then loaded the wheelba
rrow full and stacked the firewood into a snaking line around the house. While he loaded and unloaded the split logs, Job and I walked along with him, on our side of the fence.
I learned from listening that this was Izzy’s first Christmas without his mother. He said how much he missed her. Poppa missed her, too. Charlotte, Poppa called her. My Charlotte.
Smoke poured from the two chimneys on either end of the house, and neither fireplace could keep up with the other, Poppa still would not rest. He kept busy. Instead of using his cane for support, he zigged against trees and zagged toward fence posts to steady his balance. He took Molly up into the mountain, and they came out dragging a full and round red cedar.
Though the calluses on Izzy’s young hands were open sores from all the work, he braided my tail one night. “Poppa taught me this,” he said, and chuckled, fumbling with the rubber bands. “He said Mom always braided her fancy pony with red and green ribbons. No ribbons for you, Mac.”
Izzy polished our halters and cleaned the feed room and tack room until they glistened; soon the entire barn smelled of citrus. At night, the farmhouse was aglow with candles.
The first snowfall started before breakfast. Izzy came to feed us and break up the ice that had formed in our water buckets overnight. With the barn door open, I caught sight of the snow beginning to blanket the ground. I pushed my window wide with my nose to taste and see Christmas. I ate my grain fast and clanged the empty bucket to urge the mules to hurry.
“Molly, I saw snow! Will Christmas come today?” I kicked the floor and the wall and the stall door, too.
“Shhh . . . we’ll see.”
Job passed some grain over to quiet me. “Yes, I think any day now, yes,” he said.
I pawed through the pine shavings all the way to the dirt until the ground felt cold on my frog. I pulled fresh shavings from the wall and set my feet on the warm, soft bedding. This time, I knocked my grain box harder, and finally, Job and Molly joined me in making a racket so Izzy would hear us and turn us out faster.
In the paddock, under the three oaks and beneath the snow, wild turkeys pecked for acorns, and, by the run-in, the Canada geese gleaned for ryegrass seeds. I stood guard with Job and watched snowflakes pile up fast and high in the curve of his back. I couldn’t help but reach out for a lick. Job sent me off to the rock at the top of our field, but it wasn’t as fun to eat snow off a rock.
“Mac! Macadoo? Where are you, boy?”
I whinnied and whickered and raced to the gate when Izzy came home.
Izzy ran straight to me. “Do you remember what I promised?” he asked, wanting to know. “Come with me! I think it’s here! Poppa has our surprise in the barn.”
Izzy haltered me and lead me to just outside the tack room. Poppa was in there, too. I had never seen inside and was distracted by a wall filled with old, faded ribbons and shelf after shelf of trophies stacked up everywhere, even on the floor.
“Young man, who do you think won all those prizes,” Poppa sounded like he was bragging.
“Wow, Poppa, are those yours?”
“No, sir. Those are your mother’s. I cannot recall a finer horsewoman than Charlotte,” Poppa answered.
Izzy reached out for one of his mother’s show ribbons. “These are all my mom’s? She must have been an awesome rider.”
“Your mother had such talent,” Poppa said. “All those are hers. Champion, reserve champion, novice rider of the year, junior rider of the year — your mother could ride; I’m telling you. I trained her, you know. I pressured her too much, I suppose. Pressure to win, always to win. Still, when I wasn’t demanding that she be perfect, we had some fine times here at Cedarmont.”
Molly kicked at her stall; she wanted to go out, but Poppa kept on talking. “Every day, it seemed, we were late for dinner. Charlotte never wanted to come home. When she was about your age, your mother even slept out here with Molly some nights.”
Izzy patted me and asked, “Can I sleep out here with Mac?”
Poppa put his arm around Izzy. “Tell you what. Look out the window. Can you see the black line of that dark mountain there through the snow?”
My Izzy rose up on his toes to get a good look.
Poppa said, “The whole mountain is your winter garden, Izzy. Tomorrow, you and Molly and Job and I will go out. We’ll pony Mac and take him with us. What do you say?”
I felt Izzy’s heart pounding. I rubbed my face against his wool jacket.
“Now,” Poppa said. “Close your eyes. I know you’ve been waiting for this. Open.” Poppa swept his hand toward the tack trunk, where a new saddle sat on top.
Izzy put his hand on my barrel and looked down at the floor. Big, silent tears dropped onto his boots.
Poppa wrinkled his face. “What? Don’t you like your new saddle?”
Izzy didn’t say anything at all.
“Tell me, son. What’s wrong?”
“No, it’s selfish. It’s just . . . Well, I thought . . . maybe it would be a telescope. I just . . . Oh, never mind. I’m sorry, Poppa.”
“Oh” was all Poppa said.
Izzy tried to explain. “I love Mac and I love you. I love Job and Molly, too. I do want to ride in the mountains. I want to ride Mac and Molly and Job, but I don’t care about ribbons or shows or hunting. I miss Mom so much. It hurts still every day, but I’m not her and it seems like that’s who you want me to be. I’m me, Poppa, not Mom.”
Poppa looked confused, then pretended to smile. “You may change your mind. You’re a natural, Izzy. Just like your mother was.”
Izzy dropped my lead and ran from the tack room into my stall. I followed.
I found Izzy sitting down in my stall. He had wiggled his way deep into my pine bedding. He had grown taller since summertime, and his long legs stretched out across the corner.
“Thanks, Mac. I love Poppa, I really do, but he doesn’t understand. He can’t make me the same as Mom. I don’t want to be a rider like her or a judge like Poppa. I want to be a vet like Doctor Russ and help horses, dogs, cows, and any animal who needs me.”
The barn cat jumped down from the beam and into Izzy’s lap.
Izzy said, “I’m tall like my mom was. I think she was even taller than Poppa, and she could make me laugh and smile even on the worst days. She played the piano; sometimes we would play together. That was the best. I keep a picture of her by my bed, so I won’t ever forget her. Like I could ever forget.”
I nickered in his ear. When my boy told me about his mother, I wished I could tell him about mine.
The black cat kneaded Izzy’s lap and curled up small.
“Mac, can I tell you a secret? Poppa was all the family I had after Mom died. She never brought me to Cedarmont even though she grew up here. She always said Poppa drinks and drinks and that he’s sick. She wanted Poppa to get better. I know my mom loved him. She kept a picture of the two of them — just like I keep a picture of her. Since I came here and since you came, too, Mac, Poppa is better.”
I nuzzled the boy to let him know that he and Poppa had helped me, too. Izzy gently lifted the sleeping cat and set him down.
“Let’s put the new saddle on you, Mac. See how you like it. I’ll be right back.” He opened my stall door, then closed it shut behind him but didn’t lock it. I could have followed him without even having to unlatch my stall door. Izzy was coming right back, so instead, I munched on my last bit of fresh hay. Before I could finish, I heard Izzy’s startled voice. “Whiskey,” he said. “Oh, Poppa. Poppa, you promised.”
I dropped my hay and went to Izzy, but he ran into the tack room and shut the door behind him.
I made a ruckus and stirred up a fuss trying to find Poppa. I galloped through the open paddock gate and around to the front lawn, not sure what had caused Izzy to withdraw from me like that.
But the house was silent. Candlelight shone through the wreathed panes. The red cedar that Molly had dragged from the mountain stood in the front window, lit up by hundreds of tiny golden lights.
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nbsp; I stood in the yard, whinnying over and over, until, at last, Poppa stepped into the night — without his cane or his coat.
“Macadoo! What on earth?” His breath hung heavy in the air around him.
I charged up to the porch and stomped my front hooves on the first step. I pushed against Poppa with my head.
“Whoa, big fella. What the devil’s going on?”
I whinnied for him to follow me.
“Settle down, boy. Let’s get you back to your stall.”
Poppa didn’t need to hold my mane, for I led him back to the barn. Inside, he placed his hand on my shoulder and spoke with a winded voice. “Well. Now. What’s this all about?” He folded over, I think, to steady his breathing.
That’s when Izzy lunged out of the tack room. He held a glass bottle and shook his head at Poppa, as if Cedarmont had been too good to be true for all of us.
Poppa struggled to stay upright. “I . . . I, Izzy. I’m out of breath. I ran with Mac from the house without my cane.”
“Did you lie?” Izzy wanted to know.
Poppa shook his head.
Molly and Job stopped eating their hay. We’d never seen Poppa with a bottle but had watched him ready the house, chop a winter’s worth of wood, and ride out of the forest dragging the finest Virginia cedar — all for Izzy.
Poppa stood up straight. When he breathed in, a deep and terrible cough took over and his face turned dark.
“You promised me you would stay sober for Mac . . . for me.”
Poppa spoke clearly. “I am sober, Izzy. I am.”
“Then, what is this, Poppa?” Izzy shoved the bottle toward his poppa. “This is your drink. I remember. After Mom passed away, when I first came here, I found bottles just like this one everywhere, all around Cedarmont, until we got Mac. Why? Why now when everything is so good?”
Poppa rounded his shoulders and hung his head. He brought his hardworking hands to his face. He didn’t speak.
“Izzy, I can’t explain why I didn’t threw that last bottle away. I found it in the tack room yesterday when I was setting up your new saddle. I must have hidden it here some time ago — before you came, even. But I swear I have had not one drink from it. See my steady hands? Look into my clear eyes,” he said.
