The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls

by Anton Disclafani

  When I woke, Sissy stood over me, her hair wet. Rain beat against our roof. We exchanged beds, but I had trouble falling back asleep, could not stop imagining Sissy and Boone’s embrace.

  That charged, restless night, the threat not realized: Mary Abbott made no mention of hearing anything.

  —

  On our way to the barn the next morning, the Holmes girls’ necks wrapped with scarves, Sarabeth spoke. “Our father’s coming,” she said happily, “to see me.”

  I squeezed Decca’s hand, which I’d been holding, and she looked up at me curiously. I felt light-headed from lack of sleep, and now, happy. I should be more careful. But careful of what? I wasn’t sweet on him; half of camp was sweet on him, the only man for miles and miles, except for the grooms, and they didn’t count. But I liked that he spoke to me as if I were an adult.

  “Us,” Sarabeth quickly corrected, but Rachel had already taken offense, was staring at her sister with narrowed eyes.

  Sarabeth could afford to be nice now, having already revealed her father’s true intention. There were moments when Rachel seemed mean, but I could never tell with Sarabeth. They were children, sisters who fought over petty things. Sam and I had never fought; further evidence, according to Mother, of how charmed our life was. She had fought with her brothers, and Father with Uncle George. But we were twins, two sides of a coin.

  I was sliding the bit into Luther’s mouth when Mr. Albrecht told us that a tree had fallen in our ring last night, crashed into a rail during the storm. I paused and the bit clicked against Luther’s teeth; he shook his head.

  “It’s fine,” Mr. Albrecht assured me, stroking Luther’s muzzle, “the tree is small. Most of the ring is still usable.”

  Sarabeth led Luther, Decca led Bright past the tree.

  “Pat his neck,” I told Decca, as she walked Bright by the tree, “talk to him.”

  Bright flung his head up suddenly, the rein snapping.

  “There’s a bird.” Rachel pointed. I noticed a faint red scratch on her wrist. “I think it’s hurt.”

  I knelt down in the sand. An owl, with its oddly shaped head, was nestled between the branches, so brown it blended into the leaves. It was clearly terrified, had resorted to keeping still because it couldn’t fly. If Sam were here he would have known what to do, whether or not the injury to its wing was reparable. I guessed it wasn’t.

  “What do we do?” Rachel asked, her voice whiny.

  “Leave it alone,” I said, perhaps too harshly. My mood was spoiled. Mr. Holmes was coming to watch the lesson, and now this. If the owl tried to leave the tree, the horses would spook.

  I made a fast decision. Sarabeth was already mounting Luther. Decca was pulling down her stirrups.

  “Girls,” I said, “do not come near this tree. The bird is hurt. It might scare the horses. So stay away.” They all nodded obediently, even Rachel.

  I stood at the center of the ring while the girls warmed up. I could see Sarabeth out of the corner of my eye. I focused on Decca, who was mastering posting.

  Rachel sat on the fence, her slim legs twined through the slats. At first she sat there quietly as usual, her pale face calm. Her hair was braided in pigtails today, which made her look young. All of the Holmes girls had their father’s hair: dark and glossy.

  Then, again out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rachel come down from the fence to walk around the ring, timidly, as was her style, but also quickly.

  “Rachel?”

  “I’m going to look at the tree.” Her voice again whiny.

  “Don’t you remember what I said? You’ll scare the horses.” I shook my head in disbelief.

  “I just want to see.”

  I signaled Decca to slow Bright to a walk. “Rachel,” I said, trying to make my voice a warning.

  She acted as if she hadn’t heard, her thin frame tilted forward. Sarabeth had halted Luther and sat straight in the saddle, watching her sister.

  “I’m just looking,” Rachel said. “I’m bored to death.”

  “It’s almost your turn.”

  Rachel continued to walk.

  “Rachel.” My voice was high. She looked at me, her head cocked, and I saw she was daring me. My vision was blurry from the cold. “Rachel, sit down. Now.”

  She smiled, and for an instant I was relieved—she was going to pretend she had been joking—but then she took another step.

  “Father’s coming,” Sarabeth murmured, and Rachel hopped onto the fence, resumed her waiting stance. Mr. Holmes smiled; he was thinking of something else, holding out his hand as if to ward off conversation.

  I turned to Decca, my mood ruined. I wanted Mr. Holmes to be happy.

  “Ask him to trot,” I said.

  Decca flapped her legs.

  “Softly,” I reminded her. “Gently. What you ask him should be a secret. No one else should be able to tell.”

  “I’m bored,” Rachel muttered, but quietly so that her father would not hear. Decca ran through her exercises, and I turned my attention to Sarabeth. I almost forgot Rachel was there.

  “Pinch your knees harder,” I called. “Relax your elbows.”

  “Decca’s just sitting there,” Rachel called back.

  “Rachel,” Mr. Holmes said, “that’s enough.” Rachel looked as if she might cry. I was pleased by his anger. Rachel deserved it.

  “Come, Decca.” And I led Bright to the side of the ring, next to Mr. Holmes, so that Sarabeth could practice on the diagonal.

  “Rachel,” I said as we passed, “one moment. And you’ll have an extra ten minutes. I want your father to see this.”

  Rachel ignored me. I took mean pleasure in making her wait.

  “She’s learning how to change leads. See how she moves her legs? Right one back, left one forward?” Changing leads was an advanced technique, and Sarabeth wasn’t really ready for it, but Luther was so well trained, such an old schoolmaster, that a monkey could have gotten him to do it.

  “And he switches.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Like he’s skipping.” Mr. Holmes drummed his fingers on the fence in rhythm to Luther’s canter. Changing leads was something even someone completely unversed in horses could appreciate: it did, indeed, look like skipping. He bit his nails, I noticed. Men didn’t wear wedding bands back then, so there was nothing that I could tell from his hands except that his skin wasn’t rough from riding or another sport or hard work.

  “She’s good,” I said. Mr. Holmes nodded. I wanted him to take more pleasure in his daughter’s trick, in the things she could make Luther do already, but he seemed distracted.

  I unclipped the lunge line from Bright’s bit.

  “Get down?” I asked Decca.

  Everything happened at once then. Get down, I asked, but it was more of an order than a suggestion. I had taught Decca to slide both her feet out of her stirrups before swinging one leg over the saddle; this was lucky.

  “Rachel,” Mr. Holmes said, almost yelled, his deep voice cleaving the cold air. “I’ve had enough. Enough!” Now I knew for certain that Mr. Holmes was referring to some past wrong of Rachel’s. She had been difficult today or for several days.

  When I looked over, I saw that Rachel was gone from her spot on the fence, and Mr. Holmes was striding toward her. My impulse was to laugh: I had never seen Mr. Holmes angry, and it scared me. Rachel backed into the branches of the tree, watching her father, and then she started to speak.

  “No!” she said, quietly at first, then louder and louder until her voice had reached a shrill pitch. “No, no, no, no, no, no!” She looked possessed. She was much too old for a tantrum.

  “The bird,” Decca cried as the owl flew straight up, out of the tree, and then faltered, diving unsteadily toward Luther. Luther backed up, quickly, his neck arched, his ears pointed forward.

  “Thea,”
Sarabeth called, her voice trembling. I could barely hear her over Rachel. “What do I do?” I dropped Bright’s rein and hurried toward Luther, speaking quietly and calmly. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mr. Holmes kneeling in front of Rachel, his hands on her shoulders.

  “It’s fine,” I murmured, “it’s fine.”

  But as I approached the owl leveled out, flying past me so close I might have touched him. His wing was crooked.

  “Thea.” I turned and Sarabeth was pointing in the opposite direction, toward the gate I had left open. Bright had backed out of it, and I could see the liquid red of his flared nostrils, the whites of his eyes. His ears were flattened against his head. He reared back quickly, and Decca fell forward onto his neck.

  “Slide off,” I yelled. “Slide off!” Rachel was still yelling, and I had to scream as loud as I could to be heard, and still it wasn’t loud enough.

  Bright took off then, as I knew he would, and raced toward the barn. It was the worst kind of mistake, a novice’s error, to have left the gate unlatched. And I remembered so clearly not having closed it: an instant of carelessness, in the same category as leaving a girth too loose.

  “Thea,” Mr. Holmes said, and he sounded almost calm. “Stop him.” I broke into a run as Bright disappeared. When I rounded the corner, I saw that he was running at full speed now, flat out, as horses only do when they are terrified. Decca clung to the saddle. She wouldn’t fall off now unless she made herself. But she was frozen.

  The riding groups had all halted in their tracks, a dozen still horses, ears forward, waiting to discern the cause of the alarm. Alice Hunt watched me, not Bright, her face a mask of horror. That I had elicited a reaction from even Alice Hunt, who never seemed to react to anything, terrified me. Leona stared directly at me, her face wide and blank: she shook her head, once, as if she’d known my teaching the girls would end in disaster.

  Mr. Albrecht climbed over the fence, yelling, “Turn him, turn him, turn him, turn him,” until the words acquired a particular rhythm, until it seemed as if Mr. Albrecht was saying, “Tune him, tune him, tune him,” his vowels arched in panic.

  “Stop him,” I heard behind me, “stop him now.” The instruction was useless. Decca screamed, a sound so horrible, so close to a moan, I put my hands to my ears. Just then Bright veered left at the head of the trail; Decca fell the other way, to the right. Her head was not kicked: this was also lucky. It could have been kicked so easily. She fell cleanly, slid out of the saddle almost gracefully.

  Mr. Holmes caught my shoulder as he sprinted past me, and I fell to the ground.

  “Get the doctor,” Mr. Holmes shouted as he passed. “Now.”

  Decca’s eyes were closed, as if she were sleeping.

  I rose and began to run, in a single motion. I looked back, once, at the girls on their horses, still standing as if statues. Sarabeth had dismounted, was crying quietly next to Luther, did not turn her head when Mr. Albrecht ran in front of her in pursuit of Bright, who might be lost in the mountains forever if he was not found quickly.

  I emerged from the cover of the forest into the Square and screamed, “Henny!”—again and again until she emerged angrily from the house mistresses’ cabin.

  “Decca’s hurt,” I managed, and Henny yelled to Docey, who had followed her outside, to call the doctor immediately. We ran back through the woods, Henny so far ahead of me I lost sight of her brown skirt. Her speed surprised me. My chest felt like it was boiling, I could hear watery sounds when I inhaled. I slowed to a walk, tried to pace myself. I wanted rain, or snow, or wind. Something to make me feel not so alone. I wrapped my arms around myself.

  No one noticed me when I materialized from the woods. The girls and their horses had disappeared. Mr. Holmes was kneeling next to Decca, had made himself small next to his daughter; Mr. Albrecht had his hand on her forehead. The first-aid kit was open next to him, the iodine overturned and running into rivulets. Sarabeth squatted nearby, rocking back and forth on her heels.

  I focused on the pattern the iodine made in the dirty-beige sand. A complicated design, improbable and random. But I hadn’t seen any blood.

  I went to Sarabeth and smoothed her dark hair, removed a leaf that had gotten caught in her braid. Someone had taken Luther back to the barn. Her upper lip was covered with mucus, and she was crying, silently. I’d never comforted anyone besides Sam. And that was second nature to me; or it used to be, when we were young and so much a part of each other. Now I went to Sarabeth with Sam heavy in my mind and embraced her, and I was surprised at how eager she was to be comforted: she rested her cheek on my shoulder, and clutched my waist.

  “It’ll be all right,” I murmured. I don’t think Sarabeth heard me, but maybe later the memory of the words would resonate. She would believe me. She was a child. Father had told me things would be all right, and I had believed him.

  Rachel was nowhere to be seen. I would have hidden, too. She had hurt the wrong sister. Rachel was the sister who needed to be told it would be all right, that her world and her family had not collapsed. But whoever told her this would be lying. And it would not be me—I did not have the heart for it.

  {12}

  Word spread quickly through the camp about the youngest Holmes girl. There was an unfamiliar car parked behind Masters, where a girl would not notice it unless she looked. The doctor’s car, I knew. Decca was hurt, it was just a matter of how badly. She had lost consciousness; I knew this was a bad sign.

  On my way back from the bathhouse—for I was filthy, covered in dirt and sand—I saw a gaggle of young girls, Molly among them, whispering dramatically. She waved at me, brightly, and when I half-heartedly waved back she galloped over to me. She was still all arms and legs, like a filly. Her cheeks were bright red from the cold, her hair tied into some sort of knot. If Mrs. Holmes had been here to see it, she’d have sent Molly back to her cabin to repair her grooming.

  “Thea! They’re saying Rachel lost her mind! That she tried to kill Decca!” Her voice was practically a squeal.

  I wasn’t taller than many people, but I was taller than Molly. I bent down and encircled her wrist with my hand. I could feel her bones like a bird’s beneath her skin.

  “Molly,” I said, “that is nonsense. Do you understand me?”

  Molly nodded, slowly, and I saw a gleam in her eye that had not been there before. I had handled this all wrong—I should have laughed off the rumor, brushed it away as if it were no more than a speck of dust.

  I released Molly’s wrist. She stared at me, her eyes wide in anticipation. What would I tell her next? What could she bring back to her clutch of friends, who were all waiting just ahead? Molly wasn’t part of a group of girls that mattered, but still—gossip multiplied so quickly here, spreading through our ranks. Katherine Hayes walked by, coolly, but she was listening to every word. She’d rush back to her cabin and disseminate the information thoroughly and coldly. I glared at Katherine, who hid behind her screen of curls. She, who had so recently been the subject of the camp’s scrutiny, should have sympathy for Rachel. But now her uncle was two months dead, and talk of him and the Hayeses’ errant ways had disappeared. I saw Miss Brooks across the Square, her nose in a book. The adults at Yonahlossee were useless.

  And there was always truth to the rumors, sometimes just a morsel of it, but still. Everyone must have heard Rachel screaming. And what of me, who had put the girl I loved most in harm’s way because I wanted her father to watch me? I turned back to Molly.

  “It was an accident,” I said, loudly and uselessly.

  The last time something terrible had happened, I had tried to explain myself, also loudly and uselessly. But I was smarter now, or at least not as foolish. I retreated to Augusta House and pretended to sleep, ignored even Sissy, whom I could feel behind me once or twice, waiting for me to turn around, to give a sign. Finally she left, all the girls did, for dinner. Life went on, it always went on, and De
cca could be near death but still Yonahlossee would feed its girls three square meals a day. It had seemed so cruel, at home, that Mother still neatened my bed in the mornings, that Father still left after breakfast to call on his patients.

  I could not force the image of my cousin from my mind, and I was usually so good at precisely that, at living a life at Yonahlossee that had nothing to do with Georgie, or Sam, any of them. I saw Georgie when I opened my eyes, when I closed them: not as he was when I left him, but as he had been when I’d known him best. Mother would be so disappointed in me. I realized that part of Yonahlossee’s comfort was that it was a world completely separate from home, and now the two worlds felt like they were eerily merging, and why? Because of me, Thea Atwell, a wrong girl if there ever was one.

  “Thea,” Sam had said, over and over and over. “Thea, Thea, Thea.”

  I sat up in bed and pressed my fingernails into my forehead. I wished I could dig through my skin and skull into my brain, remove my memories of Georgie, of that day, entirely. But what of my soul? I knew from Father that though our brains stored our memories, our souls were the reason we remembered in the first place. And there was no way to get at the soul. The pain from my fingernails, though small, distracted, brought relief.

  I was still in bed when Mary Abbott brought me a roll from dinner, knelt beside my bed, and unwrapped it from an embroidered handkerchief.

  “Here,” she whispered. The other girls filed in: Eva, Gates, and then Sissy, who raised her eyebrows behind Mary Abbott’s back.

  “Thank you.” The roll was cold and doughy in my palm. When warm, these rolls melted in your mouth. The air ruined them.

  “You’re welcome.”

  Mary Abbott stayed beside me, twirled a piece of hair around her finger, avoided my eyes. There was a faint rash across her forehead, where her wool hat chafed. The sight of her, so peculiar, suddenly enraged me.

  “Do you need something?”

  She looked at me, unsurprised. “Aren’t you going to eat that?”