Gift Horse

by Dandi Daley Mackall

  “I sold 11 rolls!”

  “I sold nine, and I think I can get rid of six more tonight!”

  “I sold six, but I was sick all weekend!”

  They were all girls from Summer’s herd, all trying to please the dominant mare.

  “Good!” Summer exclaimed. “I want everybody to think Mantis and Magnum XL-200! Think Raptor and Demon Drop!” She paused for effect. “Think Wicked Twister! All the great rides.”

  “Go, Summer!” came the cry.

  “So your assignment is to sell at least five rolls of paper by tomorrow! And that’s an order!” She did her pouty-lip thing again. “And if you let me down, fellow classmates, I’ll never be able to show my face in Ms. Brumby’s room again.”

  Note to self: Let Summer down.

  I thought English class would never end. The whole morning dragged. All I could think about was Gracie, home alone.

  Life science was my last class before lunch. I was so worked up over Gracie that I knew I’d never be able to eat or even sit through another class.

  I slid into Pat’s room and went straight to the board, where she was writing long, fancy names for animal groupings. “Pat, do you care if I go home and check on Gracie? Please? Dad’s in Mansfield all day picking up supplies. Gracie could be lying there alone, sick!”

  Pat stopped writing. “Well, I reckon. Just this once. If it’s okay with the principal—”

  “Thanks, Pat! You’re the best!” I was already putting on my coat.

  “But we’re reviewing for the final. You be sure to get Barker’s notes.”

  I was halfway out of the room. “Thanks!”

  “Check with the principal! And you owe me today’s assignment!” she called after me.

  Gracie was okay, but her eyes looked empty. Her ears lopped as she paced her stall. I had to wonder if she was closer to foaling than I’d thought.

  I ran to the house and came back with a bag of carrots, which I shared with Nickers and Gracie.

  By the time I made it back to school, lunch period was almost over. The cafetorium, which is what they called the combination cafeteria and auditorium, smelled like grease, hot dogs, and sweat. I elbowed through throngs of kids to Catman and M’s table and sat across from them.

  “Have a hot dog, M,” I teased, pointing to the four dogs arranged on his tray in the shape of an M.

  “He’s had nine,” Catman explained. “Dude’s going for the record.”

  Kids gawked.

  Sal shouted over from Summer’s table, “Go, M!”

  “That is so gross!” Summer shuddered. “I hate hot dogs.”

  “Which makes M have to eat more just to take up your slack,” I threw in.

  M held each dog with thumb and forefinger and lowered it into his mouth, like a bird feeding its baby. I think he swallowed the last one whole. The crowd cheered.

  After school I raced home, checked on Gracie . . . and Nickers . . . and walked back to Pat’s Pets. Barker was finishing up his e-mail answers on the Pet Help Line. I read over his shoulder:

  Dear Barker,

  Help! I think i got a mean dog from the pet shop. Every time i get near him, he growls, puts his ears back, and the hairs on his neck stand up. Should i take him back?

  —Dogman

  Dear Dogman,

  Your pet is worried, not mean. Ears back and growling could be aggression. And if your dog shows his teeth and opens his mouth, then look out! But with the neck hairs raised, he’s just saying, “What’s wrong? Are you trying to hurt me?” So he won’t be afraid of you, don’t grab him. Let him come to you. Then pat his chest, not his head. And congratulations on your new best friend!

  —Barker

  I pulled up a chair as Barker answered his last e-mail:

  Dear Barker,

  My dog, Sophie, keeps having run-ins with skunks. Mom won’t let her back in the house until Sophie quits stinking. Can you help?

  —Skunk-hater

  Dear Skunk-hater,

  Here’s my favorite recipe for turning your stinker back into your sweet Sophie: 1 quart of 3% hydrogen peroxide; 1/4 cup baking soda; a tsp. of liquid soap. Get your dog all wet. Then work the skunk shampoo through her hair. Leave it on 3 or 4 minutes, then rinse. And try to get your Sophie a better playmate!

  —Barker

  I answered four horse questions, but they didn’t seem very important compared to Gracie’s problems. One girl wanted help convincing her mother it wasn’t dangerous to ride bareback. Another one wanted ideas on a good name for a Palomino. And two questions got the same answers—give your horse more pasture time.

  As soon as I finished with the e-mails, I logged off and started doing a little research on foals and broodmares. One site listed everything that could possibly go wrong in a horse birthing. I couldn’t even finish reading it.

  Pat scurried over from behind the counter. “Winnie, I plumb near forgot. It came!”

  I turned around. “What came?”

  “It!” Pat glanced around the store as if we were talking about sneaking in endangered species. “Lizzy’s terrarium! It’s a beauty! Want to go see? It’s out back.”

  Lizzy’s terrarium! I’d forgotten all about it. I still had enough to pay for it, but I figured I’d better wait until I found out how much I owed the vet. “Thanks, Pat. I’ll have to wait. I better get back to Gracie.”

  M was already in the barn, rubbing down Gracie’s stall with cleanser, like I’d shown him. We finished with Gracie’s stall, and M followed me into Nickers’. My horse knew I needed to muck, so she kindly stepped out into the paddock.

  “So how did you get to know so much about horses?” M asked, picking up Nelson.

  Before I knew it, I was telling M all about my mom. It was weird. I kept talking and talking, telling stories about horses she’d gentled, about mares we’d seen foal. I guess M didn’t talk, didn’t keep asking me questions out loud, but I felt like I was answering them all the same.

  As I talked about Mom, I felt that familiar stab in my chest. But as much as it hurt to talk about her, it also felt good to remember, to picture her and know she was still a part of my life. I wondered if that’s what Ralph’s prophet guy was warning Mary about, that her heart would hurt and feel good at the same time.

  When Lizzy was little, she used to talk about good hurt and bad hurt. Bad hurt was falling off her bike and skinning her knee. Good hurt was getting a splinter taken out or feeling the sting of antiseptic.

  “My dad didn’t have anything to do with Mom’s horse business in Wyoming,” I continued. “I was pretty sure he didn’t even like horses. That’s why it was really something when he came up with the idea for me to be Winnie the Horse Gentler here. I thought he was starting to like Nickers and appreciate the other horses I worked with. Now I don’t know.”

  When I finally shut up, M nodded, as if I’d answered all his questions. I studied his face, which was too wrinkled for an eighth-grader, his black ponytail, his black eyes that let me see myself in them. My mom would have liked M.

  He walked out of Nickers’ stall and back to Gracie and rested his head against her side. “Hey, small horse. I’m M. How’s it going in there? We’re out here getting ready for your coming-out party. But you take all the time you need. We’ll be right here.”

  “Cookies!” Lizzy swept into the barn with an aluminum-foil-covered plate. The warm, sweet aroma mixed with the great smells of hay and horse.

  “I’m starving, Lizzy!” I shouted. “What kind of cookies?”

  “Hot-dog cookies!” she exclaimed.

  Nickers snorted. I did the same. I’d tried Lizzy’s oatmeal pie, tuna squares, beef candy, and peanut-butter-and-jelly, three-layer cake. But I have my limits. “Elizabeth Willis, that sounds totally—”

  “—creative,” M finished. He lifted the foil and sniffed. “Definitely hot dog.”

  “Geri said that Steven said that his brother said Catman said you liked hot dogs.” My sister was talking trotter speed. “But it’s not
all that creative. True, I may be the first to develop an edible hot-dog cookie. But Geri told me about this place called Mad Martha’s on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts or one of those old states, which is where Geri got to go visit her aunt who has all this money, even though the rest of the family doesn’t. Anyway, Mad Martha’s had hot-dog ice cream on the menu! Geri didn’t try it, so we don’t know if it was any good.”

  M ended up eating four cookies on the spot and taking the rest home with him.

  Tuesday after school, Catman took a turn at helping me exercise Gracie. He loved leading the mare outside in the cold of the paddock. He would have kept it up for hours if I hadn’t stopped him.

  Wednesday both M and Catman came over after school. We trimmed Gracie’s hooves and gave her a horse massage.

  In the evening, we stopped over at Barkers’ to check on the puppies. Granny, Mr. and Mrs. Barker, Barker, Matthew, Mark, Luke, Johnny, and William were all decorating the biggest Christmas tree I’d ever seen. I didn’t have to touch it to know it was real. The whole house smelled like pine.

  Mrs. Barker brought out Christmas cookies, which Catman and M downed in two minutes, while Macho, Johnny’s black-and-tan hunting dog, watched, his tail thumping the wood floor in time to the Christmas music piped through the house. Luke’s Chihuahua yapped, while Matthew and his bulldog, Bull, frowned at the little white dog.

  Just being inside the Barkers’ house felt like Christmas, as if they loved each other so much it spilled over and got into the furniture and stove and everything else in the house.

  Granny B had a story for every ornament she hung on the tree, and every story embarrassed one of the Barker boys.

  M stared at a tiny nativity ornament, picturing Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus in the stable. “Nice-looking baby,” he commented.

  Granny Barker stared at the ornament with him.

  “Did you see my Christmas bulletin on the Pet Help Line homepage?” Barker asked, standing on a stool to hang Matthew’s old baby shoe on a high branch.

  “Extremely cool!” Catman said, stringing a gold cord where Mrs. Barker pointed.

  “What?” I asked, struck with a pang of guilt that I hadn’t answered the horse e-mail in a couple of days.

  “I made a dog lover’s Christmas list on how to dog-proof your house at Christmas. You know—like no tinsel.”

  “It’s metal!” Matthew added, glaring at me as if I’d dared to bring tinsel into his house. “Tinsel can mess up a dog’s insides. And cover your tree water with foil!”

  Barker got down from his stool. “And warnings about Christmas-light cords and berries on string, things dogs could chew. And no English holly, amaryllis, or mistletoe.”

  “They’re poison to dogs!” Matthew declared, petting Bull.

  M had disappeared. I glanced around the room.

  “Puppies,” Catman said, as if reading my mind and telling me where M would be. He headed down the back hallway, and I trailed after him.

  Mark scurried after me. “My dogs are growing fast,” he said.

  Poor Mr. and Mrs. Barker still had a fight on their hands.

  We found M lying on his back, with all four puppies crawling over him. The biggest one was chewing on M’s ponytail. Two of the others were licking his face.

  Catman and I played with them, too. And for almost an hour I forgot about everything that was going wrong with Christmas.

  On Thursday, Mason helped M and Catman and me pile fresh grass hay in Gracie’s stall. We let Mason, secure in his cowboy boots and riding helmet, sit on Gracie’s back while we led her up and down the stallway. M was the one who got Madeline to give us the okay.

  When we finished, M held Mason up and let him press his ear against Gracie’s belly.

  Mason giggled, and his thick-lensed glasses scooted down his nose. “Is it hard for a mommy horse to have a baby?” he asked, his voice soft as a horse’s muzzle.

  “Easier than it is on cows,” I answered truthfully. I didn’t add that if something does go wrong with a mare in foal, it’s almost always serious, a lot more dangerous than with cows.

  “I love Gracie and her baby,” Mason said, trying to wrap his thin arms around the horse.

  God, please don’t let Mason get hurt. Make everything go okay. I’d been thinking it, and then I was praying it. God and I had come a long way since I’d moved to Ashland. For a time after Mom died, I refused to talk to God, much less listen to him. But praying was getting more natural, even automatic sometimes. I had a long way to go before I prayed like Lizzy or our mom, though.

  Mason was staring at Gracie’s gray-dappled splotches.

  “Will you help me make a first-aid kit, Mason?” I asked, not wanting him to go away to the secret place in his mind. I knew Madeline still hated it when Mason followed us to the barn. But I also knew it wasn’t because she thought we couldn’t take care of him. She didn’t want her son to get too attached to the mare.

  It was too late for that.

  Mason brought out towels from the supply room. I gathered clean strips of cloth, string, scissors, a squeeze bottle, iodine, soap, bandages, and plastic sleeves, which are like big gloves. We packed everything into a small suitcase I’d brought from Wyoming. I could hardly wait for school to be out for Christmas so Dad would let me start spending nights in the barn.

  There were more reasons why I couldn’t wait to get out of school. Summer had made a sales chart and posted it big as life in Ms. Brumby’s room. Each day we had to record how many rolls of wrapping paper we’d sold. I tried not to let it bother me, but I was the only one with all zeros.

  Just to get Summer off my back, I decided I’d try to sell a couple of rolls. Then, if we really did raise enough money to go to Cedar Point, I wouldn’t have to feel guilty.

  On Friday I stomped snow off my boots and headed straight for Pat’s class before school.

  She acted glad to see me. “Winnie! I was just praying for you and that horse. Did you come by to bring me those assignments?”

  I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten about them . . . again. I shook my head. I should have done them. And I should have gotten Barker’s notes too.

  I changed the subject. “Pat, our class is selling Christmas wrapping paper. Would you—?”

  She laughed. “ ’Fraid you’re barking up the wrong tree, no offense! I made that mistake already—all that money for that little bit of paper on the roll! Mighty pretty, but whoo-ee!”

  “You already bought paper . . . from someone else?” I’d never even thought of that. She must have known I’d be selling too.

  “Let’s see here . . . Brian, Barker, and a roll from Summer. Wish I’d unrolled the paper before unrolling my bankroll.”

  “But I haven’t even sold one single roll, Pat.”

  “Sorry! Must’ve had me a dozen or two kiddos try to sell me paper this week alone.”

  Kids streamed into the classroom. One of them edged between us and asked Pat something about the final.

  I wandered off to Ms. Brumby’s room. Couldn’t Pat have bought one roll from me? Would it have killed her?

  Instead I had to trail into Ms. Brumby’s room just as the bell rang and get in the “reporting line.” Ahead of me, Kaylee wrote a 1 in her box. Grant wrote 6. When it was my turn, I filled in the square the way I’d filled in every other square—with a big fat goose egg. No offense.

  Saturday night Hawk called from Florida. As soon as I heard her voice, I wanted to say a million things—that I missed her, that Mason and Nickers and I missed Towaco, that I wished she’d come home and help me with Gracie.

  Instead I said, “Hi, Hawk. Having a good time?”

  “I miss Peter Lory,” she said. “He would love this balcony.” Peter Lory is her favorite bird, a red chattering lory she named after an old actor, Peter Lorre. I’ve never seen him, but Hawk loves him in black-and-white crime movies.

  “How’s Towaco?” I asked, imagining the Appy with a Florida sunburn.

  “Towaco and I prefer
Ohio,” Hawk admitted.

  I tried to fight feeling happy about that. But as soon as I’d stopped worrying about her trailer in the snowstorm, I’d started worrying that she’d love Florida and want to stay there. I was glad she liked cold, snowy Ohio better.

  Neither of us said anything. I could hear her breathing and birds chirping out on the balcony.

  Finally Hawk asked, “How are you, Winnie?”

  I started to say fine. I’d played it safe with Hawk since the first time we met, when she was known only as Victoria Hawkins. She’d been guarded too. But we’d started breaking through that stuff. It was no time to go backward. “Not so good.”

  “Tell me everything,” Hawk said.

  So I did. I told her about my gift horse and the mysterious Topsy-Turvy-Double-U. I told her about what the vet said and how Dad was acting, never missing an opportunity to remind me that Gracie wouldn’t make it. I talked about Mason and how he was getting attached to the mare.

  Suddenly I glanced at the kitchen clock. “Hawk, I’m sorry! You’re paying for long distance!”

  “Dad can afford it,” she said.

  She was right about that. “I should be asking about you, Hawk. Have you talked to your mom? What are kids like down there? When are you showing Towaco? You guys will win everything, you know.”

  She answered all my questions, talking a lot for Hawk. Then she got quiet, so quiet I thought she might have gotten disconnected. “Winnie, I wish I were home. Ashland home. I wish I could be there to help you with Gracie.” She gave me her Florida phone number. “And call me if Gracie has her foal. Promise?”

  I promised.

  When I hung up, I felt better than I had in days . . . until I remembered that I still didn’t have a Christmas present for Hawk. With less than a week till Christmas, I had to admit there was no way I could afford everything I wanted to buy—especially the terrarium and a subscription to Gizmo Magazine. I’d had to buy high-energy feed, mineral supplement, and protein supplement, which had cut deep into my shrinking Christmas funds. Plus, there was still the vet bill to worry about since I’d promised Dad I could cover it.