“What about you?” Jane asked.
Jessica smiled wryly. “Well, I did okay.” She waved casually at them from over her shoulder and went inside.
Jane heard footsteps crunching up the gravel path that led to the cabin and looked up with surprise to find Susan approaching. She half-hoped that she had thought of some more things to say to Alyssa and Jennifer. But Susan stopped before the porch. “Hi,” she said simply, and Jane and Robin said, “Hi, Susan,” together. Their trainer looked at them uncertainly, then sat on the steps in the place Jessica had just vacated. She was still carrying her crop and drummed it lightly against her boot as she stared out into the firefly-sparked darkness before them. Robin looked at Jane questioningly, and Jane shrugged.
“Jane,” Susan said softly, “I’ve got some bad news.”
Jane’s heart gave a sickening knock. “What—is someone, is Lily—” she started, but Susan cut her off.
“No, no, not about your family. It’s about Beau.” There was an awful silence.
Susan cleared her throat. “Jane, I’m sorry, but he’s been sold.” She slapped the crop against her boot again, and another silence fell. Jane’s mind went curiously blank and there was a slight ringing in her ears, as if she were deep underwater, everything muffled and moving very slowly. She found she couldn’t speak; even if she’d wanted to desperately, she was quite sure that she couldn’t make a sound come from her tight, dry throat.
“Megan rode him in the Beginner class all spring, and she’d been doing really well on him. I moved her up to Intermediate for camp. Apparently she was disappointed that she hasn’t been able to ride him, except that one day, when I put you on Brownie … .” Susan’s voice was flat, and she wasn’t looking at Jane. “Her parents called a few days ago and told Mrs. Jeffrys that they wanted to buy Beau to surprise Megan for her birthday tomorrow. Since they’re going to keep boarding Beau here, it means that the Jeffrys get both his purchase price and the cost of upkeep, and they agreed. They …” Here Susan faltered. “Of course they know you, Jane, but I don’t think they understood about you and Beau.”
Suddenly Jane couldn’t be on the porch anymore. She stood abruptly, catching a glimpse of Robin’s horrified face, and like a sleepwalker she moved to the cabin door.
“Jane?” Susan called, and her normally gruff voice was gentle, which somehow made it worse.
“He … was never my horse,” Jane began, and then her voice, and her heart, broke.
Chapter 7
Nighttime at the Barn
The pale green glow of Jessica’s travel clock showed one o’clock and Jane thought confusedly of fireflies, of how their light looked like this clock’s light, and how their hum, when captured, was like the noise in her ears. She rolled over again, trying to find a place on the pillow that wasn’t damp from her tears. She tried to shut her thoughts off, staring at the blank wall before her, then went back to the clock and its silent stare. Her mind moved like a broken thing, giddily fast with images of stealing Beau, setting off across the dark, still fields of the farm to ride across the country as she’d dreamed, then slowing down to a crawl as she imagined watching Beau with another rider, with an owner, cantering the same fields on which they had just done so well. Then her thoughts halted at the image of a phone, and her finger dialing her own number as she called her parents and asked them to come and take her home.
It was all over, she thought. She could never come back to Sunny Acres again.
As the tears, the seemingly unending tears that hurt her throat and her eyes so terribly, swelled again to a crescendo somewhere in her chest, threatening a new outbreak, Jane sat up, struggled out of her sleeping bag, pulled on her jeans and her sneakers, grabbed her sweatshirt, and fled the cabin.
The night air brought some relief to her hot face and swollen eyes, and she walked quickly down the gravel path toward the fields. She had to see her horse one more time before he was, in the morning, not her horse. It was a nightmare, though she hadn’t slept: the porch, Alyssa’s cold, biting words, Susan’s sad face, then the loud nightly confusion of the campers and their music and shrill conversations and laughter, Robin’s arms around her shoulders, Jennifer saying, What’s wrong with Miss Goody?, apparently having cottoned on to Jane’s awful new nickname. And Jane, huddled in her bunk with her face to the wall, ignoring her best friend and her enemies alike. She felt like an alien, like an outcast. They are my enemies, she thought savagely. They’ll laugh when they find out, but I won’t care, I’ll be gone. Maybe I’ll move with Lily, find a high school in New York. Her mind whirled and whirled. Then her feet stopped.
There was a light on in the main barn, and Jane saw a shadow move across the doorway. She wondered dully what was happening. Maybe a burglar, or horse thieves (were there any horse thieves anymore? Her aching brain conjured ruffians in black frock coats and stovepipe hats, vengeful Comanches, and filthy-whiskered outlaws spitting chew). Perhaps I’ll join them, she thought, and changed her course wearily to the lighted barn, not out of any real curiosity, but to get a handful of sweet feed for Beau. What she saw when she reached the door shook her abruptly awake.
The corridor of the barn was flooded with light. A high-pitched whinny came from the far end. Jose, his hat cocked back on the crown of his head, kept a firm grasp on the lead rope of a horse who looked in considerable distress: sweat streaked over distended sides, hooves pawing, eyes rolling white as the chestnut tossed his head, struggling to break away from the steady hand guiding him.
“Shhhh, shhhhh, my friend, my darling, my dear, shhhh …” came Jose’s caressing voice as he turned Lancelot. He caught sight of Jane, standing uncertainly in the doorway, and shook his head at her.
“What’s the matter with him?” Jane asked.
“It’s a bad night for Lancelot—and for you, I think, little Jane.” He paused the mighty horse before her, petting his strong, slender neck with even, soothing strokes. Lancelot, betraying his usual ferocious dignity, twisted his upper lip and gave what looked like an enormous yawn. “They do that, with colic,” Jose told her.
“He’s got colic?” Jane whispered. “How?” Colic had many causes, though the most common was overeating.
“Yes, my grandson guessed, and I think he’s probably right.” Jose glanced behind him, and Jane saw Ben standing in the frame of Lancelot’s stall door, looking much as he did when Jane first met him, holding a pitchfork. “You got all that hay up?” Jose called, and Ben nodded.
“It’s clean,” he said.
Lancelot suddenly jerked his head, trying to nip at his flank, and Jose started him toward the stall. “We’ll let him have a roll. Watch that he doesn’t start thrashing his legs around.” Jane walked with them, distracted by a fellow creature in more pain than she. Then she saw Beau’s stall. It was festooned with red and gold streamers, and a banner hung above the door, proclaiming HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MEGAN! Although she felt weak and stupid with tears already spent, they came again, hot and unwanted, coursing down her face. She turned abruptly away, then felt an arm circle her shoulders, pulling her around, and she flung herself against Jose’s broad chest, sobbing as he held her.
“Is Big Red okay?” Jose said over her head to Ben. Jane moved to let him go, but he held her close. “Ben will look after him right now.” Jane wondered miserably what Ben would think of her, crying like a baby to his grandfather, her face a swollen wreck. She let Jose guide her to a stool by the tack room and sit her down. He brought her a cup of water from the pump, and a clean saddlecloth, dampened, to wipe her face and blow her nose. She struggled to catch her breath, and slowly, with a few relapses, stopped crying.
“Abuelito,” Ben called, “I think we should get him up again.” Jose patted her knee and walked quickly to Lancelot’s stall.
“That rolling won’t hurt him, as long as he doesn’t bang into the walls. We don’t want to tire him out walking.” He rejoined Jane and sat next to her again, taking her hand and searching her eyes for a long moment. “Bonita
, I need you to help me,” he said, and paused. “I need you to help us.” Jane, not knowing what else to do, nodded. “I called Doc Hallman, but he’s with another horse. His assistant is calling around to other vets for us, but it’s a busy time, lots of mares foaling. I hope with Big Red it’s not too serious, but right now we don’t know. I’m going to make up a warm mash for him with a little aspirin in it to help his bellyache. Will you keep an eye on him with Ben and help him get Red up if he starts banging around?”
“Of course, sure.” Jane nodded again and blew her nose. Jose winked at her and patted her knee. He gave her a hand up and walked swiftly to the feed room.
Jane hung back from Lancelot’s stall. Ben was leaning with his arms over the door, apparently concentrating on Lancelot. She didn’t know what to say, and her embarrassment mounted with each passing minute of silence, broken by the restless thrashings of the sick horse.
Finally Ben glanced over at her, and she realized he looked as embarrassed as she felt. “I’m, um, sorry about Beau,” he said, his voice cracking a bit. He cleared his throat and frowned.
“It’s okay,” Jane said, and he nodded and turned back to Lancelot. The lie, and his acceptance of it, helped somehow. At least, it closed the subject for the evening, and Jane was so exhausted by her own thoughts and feelings that she actually felt some relief. She joined Ben at the stall door.
Lancelot was on his side, his crimson flanks dark with sweat. His large, pink-tinged nostrils were extended and his breath was ragged. He moved his legs in place, as if he were trying to outrun his pain. “How did he get like this?” Jane whispered. Ben glanced quickly at her. “You know Emily left, right?” he asked.
Jane shook her head in confusion. “What? Why?” And then she suddenly remembered something from earlier that afternoon, a lifetime ago: You could always just pull an Emily and throw Ariel in her stall … .
“I don’t know. Her parents came and picked her up this afternoon. She left class early. I was setting up jumps in the ring, and Red got out of hand when they were cantering, and she got mad at him again. Susan told her to call it quits for the day. Red looked really worked up and he’d kinda been freaking out all morning. Then—” Ben paused. Lancelot was getting heavily to his feet. They waited while he clambered up and watched him uneasily. He stood, head low, breathing loudly. But he seemed calm. Ben resumed his story.
“I had to go help my granddad unload all the feed because, you know, my cousins are gone picking up a new school horse for the Jeffrys.” Jane registered with a painful twinge why the Jeffrys needed a new school horse. “So I didn’t see exactly what happened. But my guess is that she just put Red in his stall and left, and he had a full bucket of oats in there waiting for his dinner later on and a pile of hay and water. He must’ve drunk the whole bucket of water, and he ate almost an entire bucket of oats and half of his alfalfa. Granddad and I were busy all day and Red is usually in his stall anyway because he’s not so good yet in the field with all the other horses around. Granddad didn’t see he was sick until about midnight when he came back to the barn because he left his glasses in the tack room.” In spite of herself, Jane smiled. Jose was notorious for losing his glasses—usually when they were on top of his head, perched in his thick gray hair. Ben chuckled.
“I know, right? Total Granddad. But I’m glad he lost them tonight.”
“Me, too,” Jane said. A silence fell between them.
All of a sudden, Lancelot pitched forward onto his knees, rolled over, and started pawing at the sawdust. But he’d landed too close to the wall, and with a loud cracking sound one of his hooves struck it, leaving a crescent-shaped chip behind. Without thinking, Jane sprang forward and threw back the stall door. Lancelot was lying with his head facing her; his long legs, so delicate compared with the rest of his massive form, struck out and met the wall. Jane ran to his head and tugged at his halter. Lancelot groaned and tried to roll toward her. He wasn’t getting up.
Bang! went a knee against the wall as he lost the momentum of his roll. Jane tugged and tugged, pleading with him to rise, cradling his neck with her left arm as she pulled at his halter with her right. Then, “Hyah!” came Ben’s voice, and Jane, startled, looked up to find him at the other end of the stall. “Watch out!” he yelled, and brought his hand down, hard, on Lancelot’s rump. Jane just had time to leap out of the way as the great chestnut surged to his feet. She made a grab for his head, lost her balance, and stumbled forward, throwing her arms around Lancelot’s neck to catch herself.
“I think,” she panted, “it’s time to walk him again.” And then, before she knew it, her face was buried in the rough red mane and she was laughing helplessly, and Ben, holding on to the bars of the hayrack, was looking at her like she’d lost her senses.
Oddly enough, Lancelot seemed not to mind her near hysteria, born of relief and built-up strain. He let Jane lean into him, and for her part she’d forgotten, momentarily at least, that she was using the wildest horse in the barn as a combination of Kleenex and pillow.
“Okay,” Jane choked out as she led Lancelot from the stall, “this really actually isn’t funny at all … I’m just so glad he’s up … and your cowboy call—Hyah!” She doubled over again.
“That wasn’t a cowboy call—they’re the ones that hanged all my ancestors for stealing back our own horses, remember?” Ben replied, with affected offense. “That was the cry of the great Mexican … the great Mexican … um …”
“Weirdo!” Jane gasped, and this time they both cracked up.
“Indeed. The great Mexican weirdo! I get it from my granddad.”
“What do you get from me?” Jose wanted to know, looking at them with bemusement as he reentered the barn, carrying the bucket with mash.
“Um, nothing,” Ben said hastily, and explained what had happened in the stall. Jose ran his hands over Lancelot’s legs, paying particular attention to the knee that Jane told him had collided with the wall. “No damage done,” Jose pronounced. “You two did good to get him up.”
“It was Jane,” Ben said. “She went right in as soon as she saw he was in trouble.”
“But I wouldn’t have been able to get him up without your help,” she protested. They looked at each other and smiled, and Jane blushed and turned back to Lancelot.
“Well, you seem to get along pretty good,” Jose said.
Jane didn’t know where to look. How could Jose be so obvious? What was the matter with adults, even really wonderful ones like Ben’s grandfather, that they would say and do these incredibly embarrassing things without batting an eye? She would never forget the time that her mother, on being introduced to a certain important boy who was costarring with Lily in a play, actually said, with, it seemed to the sisters, an almost gleeful emphasis, “Oh, Lily’s told me so much about you!” The boy had given her a look like, Why? and Lily hadn’t spoken to her mother for two days.
Now Jane decided to pretend she hadn’t heard and concentrated on walking the horse. “He doesn’t seem too skittish around you,” Jose called after her. “He’s not such an easy one, but maybe you two will be friends.” Jane contemplated leading Lancelot straight out of the barn and away from Jose’s evident and totally insane determination to interfere and matchmake. What had come over him? She paused by the door.
“Yeah,” she heard Ben say to his grandfather, “Lancelot seems cool around Jane.” Oh god, she thought, that’s who he was talking about! Shaky with relief, and on the verge of another fit of giggles, she turned the horse around.
What with the excitement of getting Lancelot up, Jane hadn’t really paid that much attention to his behavior now that he was safely out of his stall and moving around. But it was true, she realized, that she felt comfortable around the big horse, and he seemed to be calming down. It’s probably because he’s feeling better, or worse, and I’ve been too busy to be scared by him, she thought. The middle idea—that he might be feeling worse—made her hasten back to Jose and the mash with aspirin.
; And so began the long night at the barn. Jane and Ben took turns walking Lancelot and allowing him mouthfuls of the warm bran and swallows of tepid water. They watched over him in the stall, but there were no further alarms. They talked in spurts, about horses, and Mexico, where Ben’s great-uncles and aunts still lived and where he visited every year, and Jane told him a little about her parents and about Lily going to college in the fall. As the hours passed, Lancelot seemed to grow more and more easy, and Jose fell soundly asleep, leaning against a hay bale, a slightly solemn expression on his kind, weathered face. Every once in a while he’d snore and Jane and Ben would put their hands over their mouths to keep from laughing and waking him up.
Finally Lancelot showed no interest in either the mash or the water, but plainly wanted to go back to his stall, where he lay down heavily, stretched out his long neck, and went to sleep. The sweat had dried on his coat, leaving salty streaks like the tracks of waves on a beach. Jane watched his quiet breathing for a few moments, then stretched her own aching arms and back and walked to the barn door. Someone flipped off the light switch and the barn receded into still darkness behind her, while before her the deep blue light of morning embraced the farm in a quiet but electric glow. It was as if a painter with a phosphorescent brush had visited Sunny Acres, brightening and highlighting the forms of bushes, fence posts, and trees.
She yawned, her whole body shuddering with sleepiness. She felt a kind of numbed quietude, physical exhaustion displacing all of the previous night’s tumult. A hand squeezed her shoulder.
“Bonita, Big Red is asleep, and it’s time for you to go to bed as well.”
Jane turned to Jose. “You think he’s going to be all right?” she asked.
“He’s fine now. Just tired out. Doc Hallman’s going to stop by soon—he got that foal delivered.”
“That’s go-o-od.” Jane yawned again. “So he’ll check him out and make sure he’s completely okay?”
A Horse of Her Own Page 7
