The Fire Pony

by Rodman Philbrick

  I’m begging Lady to take the halter, but she’s kicking at me like I’m part of the smoke. She’s afraid of everything that moves and she don’t know any better, but I can feel the whoosh of her front hooves missing me.

  Now she’s crashing around, and I have to fall down and roll under her belly to get away. I can smell how crazy she is. It smells like she’s burning up inside.

  All of a sudden there’s a whomp! that makes the floor shake, and everything changes. A burning rafter crashes down from the roof and lands right in the way of leaving. Fire races along the beam, and the splintered part explodes like road flares. Before you know it, the fire is inside the barn. It’s racing up the walls into the thundersmoke above.

  “Lady!” I’m screaming. “Lady! Lady!”

  And then I get this idea to climb up on the stalls. When Lady comes racing by, I throw myself down on her back. There’s no saddle or halter to hang on to, so all I can do is grab hold of her mane. She don’t try to buck me off, but she still won’t stop.

  There’s only one way out now, and that’s to jump clear over the beam that smashed through to the floor. But Lady shies away. I get her to run at it again, but she won’t jump it. She’s more afraid of that burning beam than she is of dying. I keep trying to turn her and make her jump, but she won’t do it. The only thing she’ll do is run in circles, and the fire is running in circles all around us. It’s getting closer and closer.

  I can’t breathe much and that makes it feel slow and dreamy, no matter how fast everything is happening. I almost forget how I’m trying to get us out of the barn, and for a while it seems right, the way Lady and me are just running and running. It gets so dizzy and hard to breathe it makes me think I see the grandstands with all the people on fire, waving and cheering us like it don’t hurt to burn up, like it’s the best thing in the world and don’t be afraid. Like the fire will make us win the race.

  And then the smoke chokes me hard and the coughing wakes me up enough to know I don’t want to win that race, and I’m smart enough to know that the fire lies because it wants you to stay inside, but you got to keep trying to get out.

  Except there’s no way out. The barn is burning up from the inside and there’s no escape anymore, even if Lady does jump the beam. We missed our chance, and now we have to stay inside the fire and do what it wants.

  That’s when I start breathing in the smoke on purpose, because I figure the smoke will make me go to sleep. I’d rather dream about the race than be inside the fire.

  That’s what I’m doing, breathing in a dream, when something big comes crashing through the wall.

  * * *

  They say that when me and Lady were inside the barn, Joe Dilly came out of the dark outside, all covered with soot except for the whites of his eyes. And when he heard I chased after my pony, he went into that big corral and found Showdown and got on his back and jumped the fence.

  They say he rode through that fire like a wild man, whooping and hollering and waving his burned-up hat, and he was talking to Showdown and the horse heard him and went where Joe wanted him to go.

  They say nobody ever rode a kill-crazy stallion bareback like Joe Dilly, leaping that wild horse through the running fire as they flew in and out of the smoke, in and out of the crazy light that came out of the flames.

  Maybe Joe was telling Showdown what he saw in the fire. Maybe he was singing one of his stupid old songs. Maybe he was telling that horse how once he came out of nowhere in his old Ford pickup and found his beat-up little brother waiting, and how we became a family and lived on the road where nothing could catch us.

  I don’t know about none of that. All I know is that Joe and his black-eyed horse come crashing through the wall. They come crashing through and the burning wood smashes into burning pieces, and all of a sudden you can see the sky where the wall used to be.

  I been breathing the smoke and I think it must be a dream, but then I hear Showdown scream out that he’s hurt, and I can see where he broke both of his front legs coming through the wall. All of a sudden, there’s Joe Dilly crawling up out of the wreckage, reaching his hand up to me.

  I can tell he’s hurt almost as bad as Showdown, and he’s holding himself like his legs are broke, too, but that don’t stop him grinning that cockeyed grin of his and saying, “How do, sports fans? Hot enough for you?”

  “Joe, you came back!”

  “Never mind about that,” he says. “You better ride this pony on out of here while you still got the chance.”

  There’s fire all around us and Lady won’t listen to me. Joe strokes her face and breathes into her nose and he’s touching her like he does. He talks real soft to her, so soft and low I can’t make out what he’s saying, but whatever it is, Lady listens. I can feel the fear go right out of her. She stops trembling and shying, like something cool and calm has got inside her. Like she don’t know the world is burning up.

  Joe takes his hands away from her. “Go on,” he says. “She’ll be okay now.”

  Right about then the cloud in the rafters turns inside out, and there’s nothing but fire and light on the inside. It’s so hot even the smoke is burning up. The wind gets inside with the fire and the whole place starts creaking and shaking.

  “You come, too, Joe! Get on with me!”

  He’s shaking his head before I get the words out. “One man to a horse,” he says. “She’s too small for the both of us. Besides, I got to stay with Showdown. Don’t worry, I’ll be okay.”

  The stallion has quit fighting his busted legs and he’s just lying here, waiting. You can see him watching Joe, like he thinks Joe can help him.

  “You can’t stay, Joe! Please!”

  But Joe won’t listen to me. He can hardly stand up, his own legs are stove in so bad, but he takes Lady’s head in his hands and he kisses her and he says, “You’re a fire pony now. You just take this boy and run right through whatever it is that spooks you, and you keep on running till it’s cool and safe.”

  I tell him, “I won’t go unless you come with us.” Then the rafters start falling down, and Joe grins that grin of his and before I can stop him he slaps Lady on the rump with his burned-up hat and he shouts out “Geronimo!” and Lady takes off like a race just started.

  She heads right through where Showdown broke the wall, and it happens so quick that when I look back all I can see of Joe Dilly is a flame that looks his size, and then I’m hanging on for dear life like he wants me to, and Lady keeps running, she’s running faster than the fire and every time it licks us, she goes faster and faster and faster.

  That filly runs past the corral, past all the other running horses, past where Rick and Mr. Jessup are fighting hard to find me, and she runs through the smoke and the sparks and the birds on fire. She keeps on running far out into the back country where there’s nothing to burn and you can see where the stars are back in the sky, and the cactus look like soldiers with their hands cocked up to say hello.

  She don’t stop until it’s cool and safe, just like Joe Dilly said when he made her into a fire pony.

  That’s all I remember about what happened that night. They say Sally Red Dawn found me sitting under a cactus and that I was so covered with soot she almost missed me. It turns out she’s a nice lady after all, but I didn’t know that then, and it’s probably true I cursed her and wouldn’t come back and Rick had to come and fetch me in his truck.

  That was a year ago. Since then they built a brand-new stable where the old one burned, and new corrals, and Mr. Jessup put another cross up on the bluff because he says he don’t care what anyone says, Joe Dilly was as good a man as any and better than most.

  After a time I started going to school like Sally wanted, and wouldn’t you know it’s not so bad, even though I have trouble with my grammar, and I keep getting the words wrong.

  I growed some, too, but not so much I can’t ride every day after school.

  All in all, the days are going pretty good lately, here at the Bar None, where everybo
dy is always welcome. Sally helped with the papers so I can stay on and make it legal and never have to go back to a foster home. And Lady Luck came through all her troubles in the fire and she’s stepping high and looking fine, and maybe we’ll race her again come summer, if she feels like it. Mr. Jessup, he likes to say he’s not getting any younger, but he’s the same as always, and he still rides up straight, like he’s walking in the saddle, and he still don’t say much but just enough.

  And me, I’ll never ever forget all the things that happened, the good and the bad and the in-between, and how Joe Dilly tried so hard to fight the fire that burned inside him and kept making him do the wrong thing. And how he always came back to save me, for as long as he lived, and how he loved me like a brother and a father and a friend.

  Rodman Philbrick is an award-winning author of books for both adult and young-adult readers. His first novel for young readers, Freak the Mighty, won the California Young Readers Medal as well as numerous state awards. It was received with great acclaim, has sold more than a million copies, and was adapted to the screen as The Mighty by Miramax. The sequel, Max the Mighty, received starred reviews, and this novel, The Fire Pony, was named a 1996 Capital Choice Book. His most recent books for the Blue Sky Press include REM World; The Last Book in the Universe, which was named an ALA Best Book for Young Adults and a Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People; The Young Man and the Sea, which received the Child Magazine Best Children’s Book Award; and The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg, which tells the tale of an orphan boy from Maine who bravely marches out into the world at the height of the Civil War to find his brother who has been illegally sold into the Union Army. Philbrick and his wife, also a writer, divide their time between Maine and the Florida Keys.

  To learn more about Rodman Philbrick and his work, visit his website at www.rodmanphilbrick.com.

  “You’d shoot a boy?” Harold asks in disbelief. “I am not of age, and I think you know it.”

  For the first time the stranger looks my big brother right in the eye. “I have shot many boys,” he says. “One more will not signify. Now raise your right hand and swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America, and the laws of the state of Maine, and to obey your superiors.”

  Harold looks at me real sorrowful and shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Homer. Squint has got me this time. I must do as they say.”

  My brother is made to swear on Squint’s Bible, and a moment later he’s conscripted into the Union Army, to serve for three years or until he’s dead, whichever comes first.

  “Go with the sergeant,” Marston tells Harold. “He’ll sort you out.”

  “What about me?” I pipe up. “Can’t I go, too? Swear me in, you villains!”

  Corny laughs. “Villains, is it? Mighty big word for such a small boy. You get that out of one of your momma’s books, did you?”

  “Don’t you dare speak of our mother!”

  Corny shakes his head and grins. “Get back in the barn, son. Go hide under the hay until the war is over.”

  “I want to go with Harold!”

  “Hush now, little brother,” says Harold, giving me a quick embrace. “What’s done is done. I am sworn and can’t go back on my oath, no matter what.”

  But I kick up a fuss, and fly at Squinton with my fists, and when that doesn’t work I try to bite him like the rat he is.

  “Cornelius! Put this brat in the root cellar!”

  Corny takes hold and drags me squirming to the root cellar. The last I see of Harold, the stranger in the muddy blue uniform is marching him away barefoot, with a hickory stick on his shoulder. Apparently that’s how they do it when you’re sold to the army for a jug of whiskey and a lie.

  I hope they give Harold a real rifle, and a pair of boots. He’ll need the boots to make it home.

  Also by Rodman Philbrick:

  Freak the Mighty

  Max the Mighty

  The Last Book in the Universe

  REM World

  The Young Man and the Sea

  The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg

  The Dear America Series:

  The Journal of Douglas Allen Deeds: The Donner Party Expedition

  With Lynn Harnett:

  Abduction

  The House on Cherry Street:

  The Haunting

  The Horror

  The Final Nightmare

  Visitors:

  Strange Invaders

  Things

  Brain Stealers

  The Werewolf Chronicles:

  Night Creature

  Children of the Wolf

  The Wereing

  This book was originally published in hardcover by the Blue Sky Press in 1996.

  Copyright © 1996 by Rodman Philbrick. All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, THE BLUE SKY PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  Cover art by John Thompson

  This edition first printing, January 2009

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-34852-2

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.