A Horse for Elsie

by Byler, Linda;

  The characters and events in this book are the creation of the author, and any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental.

  A HORSE FOR ELSIE

  Copyright © 2018 by Linda Byler

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher,

  except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Good Books, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  ISBN: 978-1-68099-383-7

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-68099-384-4

  Cover design by Jenny Zemanek

  Printed in the United States of America

  Table of Contents

  The Story

  Glossary

  Other Books by Linda Byler

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Elsie stood at the metal yard gate beneath the old white oak tree, one foot tucked up under her purple skirt, the other planted solidly on the fractured cement sidewalk, and glared at the pony and cart trotting gaily past their driveway. The pony was perfect—small, round, and compact, the way all Shetland ponies are. But this pony was special in the way he arched his thick, short neck and raised his hooves high, looking as regal as could be.

  He was driven by Elam Stoltzfus, a boy from seventh grade, one grade above her own. Elam was bold, as proud as his pony. She had asked him once if she could drive the pony, but he had told her airily that anyone who had no experience with ponies could not drive this one. He’d give her a ride sometime, but no, she could not drive.

  His little brother, Benny, sat beside him today, his straw hat smashed down so far Elsie could only see a nose and a chin. What was the point of going for a ride if your eyes were stuck behind a straw hat? Boys were strange creatures with idiotic ideas—especially Benny. He claimed there were turtles as big as a cow that lived to be a hundred years old. Then, as if that wasn’t hard enough to believe, he said they lived on an island she couldn’t hope to pronounce and couldn’t think of spelling, so she had tried to look it up in the World Book Encyclopedia but never found it. He was making it up, she was sure. She wasn’t about to ask him how to spell the name of the island, either.

  And there he went, sitting beside Elam driving that perfect pony. Elam was older than Benny but just as much of a know-it-all, especially when it came to horses. Elsie had read Black Beauty and all the Marguerite Henry books in the school library, so she knew a lot more about horses than those two thought she did.

  The thing was, her family was poor. They could hardly afford hay and grain for their one stodgy old driving horse, let alone feed a pony or any sort of horse just for pleasure. So, Elsie never dared talk about wanting a horse of her own. When Elam talked about all their horses, she hung around to hear what he had to say, correcting him on occasion, but mostly thought he was too proud, even arrogant, boasting about that barn full of beautiful horses.

  Elsie was the oldest in a family of five children, all girls—except Amos, who was only a year old and the biggest pest anyone could imagine. He was always underfoot, his nose ran constantly, he fell and hurt himself at least a dozen times a day. And who was yelled at to go rescue him? She was.

  They all lived in an old farmhouse that wasn’t their own place, the way other Amish people bought their homes. Elsie’s father had been in a car accident on the way to work at the pallet shop in Kinzers and lost most of his right arm. Ever since then, he’d struggled to find work he could do that paid well enough to support the family. He was cheerful and thankful, appreciated the cheap rent, and loved the old farmhouse and the dilapidated barn that housed his old horse and rattling secondhand buggy. He loved every one of his children and said he was grateful for each day here on earth. He could have been killed that day, and then what?

  Which was true.

  Elsie couldn’t imagine life without her happy father. He was everyone’s sunshine, the spark that ignited all the good times. And there were plenty of good times. But being poor was a constant disappointment. When the other girls had new dresses and black aprons, brand-new name-brand sneakers and baseball gloves, Elsie knew she looked dowdy with her sneakers from the consignment shop on Strasburg Road, dresses that were her cousin’s hand-me-downs, and a baseball glove that was too small and weathered to a dull brown, the laces loose and broken. When lunch boxes opened at dinner hour in school, she eyed the fancy granola bars in their shining wrappers, the bought containers of yogurt and Jello and pudding, the individual bags of Cheetos and potato chips, and did her best to hide her white American cheese sandwich in both hands. The bread was always homemade and crumbly, leaving telltale crumbs all over her lap and on her desktop. She had become an expert at swiping them onto the floor before the other children took notice.

  Her mother made a fresh popper of popcorn almost every morning, unless she bought a huge bag of stick pretzels at Creekside Foods. She only did that when they were on sale. Popcorn worked really well, though, especially if it was seasoned with sour cream and onion powder. Rosanne Esh, in eighth grade, loved Elsie’s popcorn and traded all sorts of delicious things to get her hands on it. Once, she handed over a ziplock bag containing chips that were stacked together, perfectly uniform and shaped like little cups. Too proud to ask what they were, Elsie merely reached into the bag and ate them one by one. It was the most delicious snack she had ever eaten. It was a big mystery, how anyone could make potato chips that weren’t greasy or salty and that fit together so precisely.

  Elsie was always impressed that the other girls had fancy new lunch boxes every year. Actually, some of them were like little purses with their names written on the front in fancy lettering. They said their mother bought them at a 31 Party. Whatever in the world that was, Elsie thought.

  At recess, Elsie forgot about being poor. She was an avid baseball player, naturally athletic, with long, thin legs that propelled her around the ball diamond faster than the boys. She scooped up hard-drive grounders, caught flies, and threw the ball with amazing precision to yelling, hopping outfielders. It was a known fact that Elsie was always chosen long before some of the upper-grade boys, which usually sparked a few martyred sniffs from Elam. Oh, she knew what he was thinking. Girls should never be chosen to be on a team before guys, no matter how good they were.

  Elsie always flashed him a triumphant look, before bouncing over to the team that had chosen her. You drive your fancy pony, Elam. I get chosen before you, so there.

  Elsie guessed if she had not been born to an Amish family, she would be a player on some important team, wearing a uniform and a ball cap pulled low on her forehead, her hair in a ponytail. Wouldn’t that be exciting? But she was Amish, and she loved her world, her people. She was fine with flying around the ball diamond in her faded green dress, the pins that held her black apron around her waist mostly intact, her hair in the bun on the back of her head loosening steadily as recess wore on. Mostly, she was content.

  Except for this chafing ambition to own a pony, a harness, and a cart. Not just an ordinary pony, but one that ran down the road the way Elam Stoltzfus’s pony did. Like a show horse. It gave her chills.<
br />
  Someday, somehow, she would have a Shetland pony that ran as beautifully as Elam’s pony, Cookie. Now what kind of name was that for a pony? A cat should be named Cookie. A pig or a parakeet, maybe. Not a pony. If she had a pony, she would name him something more inspired, like Lightning or Whiz or Dreamcatcher (Dream for short).

  She turned when she heard a high-pitched sound coming from the sandbox beside the house. There was little Amos, his face lifted to the sky, screeching like a hyena, his eyes closed tightly, his mouth an open hole that emitted desperate sounds of agony. Now what?

  Elsie turned and ran, flung herself on her knees, and reached for him, streaming nose and all. She found his hand stuck firmly inside the small opening of the metal watering can.

  “Here, hold still. Stop yelling. Shh. Hush.”

  Nothing helped, so she tugged, twisted the child’s toy first one way, then another, until she freed the trapped, reddened little hand.

  His yells increased with her efforts until they escalated to short, horrible shrieks of panic.

  “Hush, Amos. It’s all right.”

  Her mother’s worried face appeared at a window, a moment before she dashed through the screen door, letting it close with that familiar slapping sound. She bounded down the steps and to the sandbox, holding out her arms, already crooning her baby nonsense that made Elsie’s toes curl.

  “Komm, komm. Poor little chap.”

  She lifted the corner of her gray apron to wipe his face, leaning back to blow his nose as he turned his head.

  “I don’t know why you do that. Use a handkerchief,” Elsie said drily, swallowing her disgust.

  “Oh, it’s just baby mucus. Just a little bit. Right, Amos?”

  He dug his half-wiped face into his mother’s shoulder before popping a sand-covered finger into his mouth, opening his eyes wide with astonishment and beginning another fresh chorus of howls.

  Elsie stalked off. Her baby brother was so different than her baby sisters had been. He pulled cats’ tails, got scratched on a regular basis, then sat there and howled exactly like this. The next day he would do it again. He ate dirt, swallowed dimes (Mam found one in his diaper), emptied out cupboards and trash cans, played with shovels and trowels and scissors if he could, and hardly ever played with toys.

  Elsie secretly believed there was something seriously wrong with him. He probably had some sort of handicap that wouldn’t allow him to go further than third grade. She planned to have a serious talk with her mother about it.

  Elsie never understood why her parents couldn’t have stopped at four girls. The girl babies had sat in their bouncy seat and played with their toys, or smiled and cooed, blowing little spit bubbles. They also had hair—a nice amount of dark brown fuzz that grew from their scalp like a velvety bonnet, framing their features perfectly. Every one of her younger sisters were good babies—Malinda, Suvilla, and Anna Marie.

  Then along came Amos, shattering the well-ordered life of the Esh family. He weighed almost ten pounds and was bald as a volleyball and red as a caramel apple. He never stopped howling unless he slept. So between Elam and Benny being so full of themselves and a baby brother that drove her to distraction, Elsie decided she’d rather not have boys in her world.

  Her father wasn’t like boys. He was tall and strong and happy, with a shining stainless steel hook protruding from his nearly empty sleeve. It was attached to his shoulder with a series of bands that opened and closed the hook with a rolling motion of his shoulder, so that he could use it like a thumb and a forefinger.

  Sometimes he would play games with the little girls, pretending he was the big, bad wolf, snapping the steel hook open and shut like jaws, sending the little girls shrieking up the stairway or into the pantry. He would make awful growling noises as he crept through the house, his back bent double, his head turning from side to side like a hungry predator until even Elsie felt as if she should hide behind the couch.

  No, her father was a beloved figure, a whistling person who brought a light into Elsie’s world and illumination to all the good things surrounding her she may have missed otherwise. She admired him immensely for the way he soon accepted the loss of his arm, never spoke a word of self-pity, and certainly never turned moody. Sometimes Elsie tucked one arm to her side and kept it there, for hours, just to see how it would feel to be her father. She could pull weeds, but not use a hoe. She couldn’t tie the bib apron around her waist, and she certainly couldn’t tie her kopp-duch under her chin. She couldn’t sweep the kitchen, but she could wash dishes, only it took much longer and they weren’t too clean.

  So who knew, perhaps Amos would grow up to be wonderful like her father someday, but that didn’t seem likely.

  The house they lived in was close to Gap, a fairly small town in the heavily populated Lancaster County. It didn’t seem as if they lived in a bustling area, at home, anyway. The house was built on a rise, among trees, surrounded by farmland. You could barely see Gap off in the distance. At one time, there had been a barn, but a fire had destroyed it in 1937, which was so long ago you’d get tired if you tried to think about it. There was a heap of brown stones, some of them blackened, in a tangle of blackberry vines, thorny as all get out. There were snakes back there, large, slippery-looking black snakes that gave you chills of delicious fright.

  The house was actually a farmhouse, but if there was no longer a barn or fields belonging to the house it couldn’t be called that. So it was just a house.

  Emanuel Lapp owned the two acres of property. He was an older Amish man with a white beard and white hair and more money than President Trump, Elsie decided. He must have, because he owned four farms. He didn’t charge them much rent, just enough to let them keep their pride. He hired workers to put on new white siding and new windows with white trim. They cemented the porch floor and added new vinyl posts, which made the house look scrubbed and clean.

  Mam planted geraniums and petunias, put in a garden, and trimmed the ancient boxwoods in front of the house. She never complained about cracked linoleum or peeling wallpaper. She put contact paper on the old shelves in the pantry and in the kitchen cupboards, so she could wipe them down with strong Lysol soap. They set their furniture along the walls of the house, painted the steps gray, and lived in it just the way it was.

  Sometimes Mam’s face would harbor that wistful expression when church was held in some nice home or other. She would run her fingertips along the smooth cupboard doors when no one was watching, or stand in awe of some fancy bathroom done up in a dusty shade of lilac and beige, the shower curtain the identical twin to the window curtain.

  But she never mentioned any of it to her husband. How could she? Why hurt his feelings so badly when he was doing the best he could? They had shelter in winter, food to eat, and best of all, each other.

  Elsie helped her mother with Amos, washed dishes, and folded laundry. She learned the proper way to hoe, learned how to run the cultivator, and how to pull the small weeds without hurting the vegetable plants or loosening their roots.

  She picked peas and beans, shucked corn, picked cucumbers and tomatoes. All summer long, there was the garden, that enormous patch of earth that spilled all kinds of vegetables from the stalks. When April arrived, they ate new spring onions and radishes with fresh homemade bread and butter. When enough warm May sunshine ripened the peas, they bent their backs over endless rows and picked bucketfuls, pouring them into plastic Rubbermaid totes, then sitting on the porch and shelling them for hours. Elsie grumbled and complained, ate raw peas by the handful, and said she didn’t know why the minute school let out, the peas were ripe. The truth was, she missed baseball already. What was she supposed to do all summer, with no pony and only long, skinny cats and a screaming baby brother?

  They didn’t have a trampoline or a swing set. She was too big to play in the sandbox, and besides, that’s where the cats did their business. She’d caught them at it. Filthy animals. Cats ran a close second to boys as far as being annoying, but her mother said
the cats were here to stay, that the younger girls loved them.

  After the peas were all blanched and put in the freezer, the hulls scattered among the peavines for compost in the soil, the green beans and cucumbers got ripe. They brought more backbreaking work, requiring Elsie to bend down and move the beanstalks aside to find the elusive beans hanging underneath.

  By the month of June, the sun was hot, hot, hot. Mam did not like the beans to be picked early in the morning when they were wet. Mam’s mother always said if you handle the beans when they’re wet, they’ll get rusty. Whatever she meant by that. How could something become rusty if it wasn’t metal? Old wives’ tales, Elsie thought, shaking her head. But then, her grandmother was old, so she might have known what she’s talking about. Elsie went down to the garden in secret on one dew-filled morning and picked a few handfuls of beans and fed them to the driving horse named George. Sure enough, a week later the next growth of beans was crisscrossed with brown spots. Rusty.

  By July and August, Elsie gave up and stopped complaining. The heat was like the roaring furnace in the Bible and the corn and tomatoes and peppers and lima beans were all ready at once. Amos developed a painful-looking heat rash followed by days of loose bowels until his little backside was as red as his face and you could hardly tell which end was which. Mam was constantly in the kitchen, chopping vegetables and mixing vinegar and sugar and pungent spices so that the kitchen took on a sharp, acidic odor, like unwashed underarms. They froze two thousand ears of corn, Elsie told her mother. She laughed, said, “No, no. Now, Elsie. We sold some to the Hoffmeiers down the road.”

  Mam’s face was also a perpetual shade of red. All summer long it stayed that same alarming color, as if the blood vessels beneath her skin were all rising to the surface, ready to explode with tension and heat.

  “How old do I have to be before I can get a job?” Elsie asked her father one night, after the sun had left nothing but twilight and a few stars had poked their light through the navy blue curtain of night.