Keeping Barney

by Jessie Haas

And if she says no, Sarah thought, I won’t be able to stand it! When she just thought about it, something seemed to tighten around her unbearably.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “So maybe we’d better not tell her.”

  Missy frowned for a moment, doubtfully. Then her face cleared. “After all, we’re just looking. Where’s the harm in looking?”

  2

  Plots

  Neither of them even considered the riding lesson. Missy gathered up some horse newsletters and sales sheets and refreshments, and they headed down to the barn, where it was cool, to plan.

  The path to the barn was narrow and so steep that it was nearly a set of stairs. “Has your mother been down here since her hip got better?” Sarah asked. Mrs. O’Brien, sitting in the living-room chair in front of her fan, didn’t seem any more mobile than she had been last fall.

  “I don’t think so,” Missy said. “She’d probably better start, so she can get in shape for winter.”

  The barn was small and old, with a big sliding door on each end. Both doors were open now, and that seemed to pull a breeze through the wide passageway, a breeze that Sarah hadn’t felt anywhere else.

  “I’ll let Barney out,” Missy said, opening his stall door. “Hi, guy! Want to come be with us? It’s cooler out here.”

  There was a pause, then the thud of a horse’s hooves on bare wood, and Barney appeared around the end of the stall door. Pert and cheerful despite the heat, he pointed his ears toward Sarah briefly, then walked straight to the extra stall that was Missy’s tack room. It was also the place where she stored grain. He leaned over the half door as far as his neck would reach.

  “Friendly, isn’t he?” Missy said, sitting beside Sarah on the floor. But Sarah didn’t mind. For the first time all summer she had seen Barney without a pang.

  Missy handed her a bottle of iced tea and a paper and pencil.

  “First things first. What kind of horse do you want?”

  Sarah looked across the aisle at Barney. He stood nuzzling the latch of the tack-room door, his eyes wide and thoughtful.

  “I want one just like Barney.”

  “No, you don’t,” said Missy calmly, opening one of the newsletters and running her finger down a column of ads.

  Sarah’s mouth fell open. The hot jealousy she always used to feel toward Missy surged up again.

  “You’re already as tall as I am,” Missy went on, “and you’re not even in eighth grade yet. You’ll want something bigger, for a start.”

  “Okay, bigger. But I want a Morgan.”

  “Think so?”

  “Yes,” said Sarah, crisply. She had always been in awe of Missy, as a college student, as a superior rider, as the owner of Barney. But if Missy was going to bully her and tell her what she did or did not want, she might as well stick with Mom.

  “I’m not trying to tell you what you want,” Missy said, looking a little worried. At the echo of her own thoughts, Sarah had to smile. Missy grinned back at her.

  “You’re like a girl at a football game,” she said. “You’ve got a whole fieldful of potentially gorgeous hunks in front of you, but they’re all hidden underneath helmets and shoulder pads. You shouldn’t even restrict yourself to one team yet, let alone decide you’re in love with number eleven.”

  “Oh, God, I’d never fall in love with a football player!”

  “It’s too early to say that, too,” said Missy, with a mischievous look. “Anyway, why don’t you make a list of what you want in a horse, and I’ll go through this bunch of ads, and we’ll see if we come up with anything that matches?”

  “Okay.” It was the kind of thing Sarah had been doing all summer anyway. She must have two dozen lists, tucked into the pages of her favorite books.

  “And try to put them in order of importance. Like—you might want a black horse, but if it’s exactly the right size, that’s obviously more important.”

  I don’t want a black horse, Sarah thought. “Bay,” she wrote firmly at the top of her paper.

  Now, how big? Barney was thirteen-three hands—just the right size, Sarah thought. But Missy didn’t think so. “Fifteen hands?” Sarah wrote.

  Morgan. Barney was half Morgan, and Morgans were the best, Sarah thought. They were beautiful and cheerful and friendly, and a Morgan could do anything—drive, trail ride, jump, and even pull a plow. “Morgan.” She underlined it.

  “Smart.”

  “Trained English.”

  The list grew quickly. “Sound. Sensible. Trailers easily.” And the personality: “Loves people. Loves to go places. Loves goats.”

  By now the horse was living in Sarah’s mind, in a way he hadn’t all summer. (He? Yes. “Gelding,” Sarah wrote on her list.) He was beautiful, with large, calm eyes. When she entered his stall, he turned his head with a gentle, inquiring expression. He was fast—she wrote that down—and smooth-gaited, and he stopped instantly at the word Whoa, no matter what. “Emergency brake,” Sarah wrote.

  The list was long now, and when Sarah looked it over, she couldn’t make one thing seem more important than another. He was bay. She could see that—

  “What kind of price range?” Missy asked, breaking into Sarah’s dream. “Do you have any idea what your parents want to pay?”

  “Well … we aren’t rich,” Sarah said. Mom was teaching math, after all, and she wouldn’t do that unless she had to. “I guess it should be as low as possible.”

  “You’re in luck,” Missy said. “The horse market was really booming a while ago, but now it’s gone bust. There are a lot of cheap horses out there! Okay, I’ll rule out—”

  A sudden metallic clatter, like the lid of a garbage can falling off, came from the tack room. The door was open, and all they could see of Barney was his rump.

  “You brat!” Missy said, scrambling to her feet. “How did you get in there without making any noise?” She disappeared into the tack room. Sarah heard her scolding, and then she heard Barney take one last enormous mouthful, a shoveling, crunching sound. When Missy backed him out, he was still chewing and dribbling oats onto the floor.

  “Pig!” Missy said. “You’re staying here with us.” She sat beside Sarah again, holding on to the rope. Barney stood over them and dropped oats into their hair.

  “Let me see your list,” Missy said, “and you look at these ads.”

  The only horse ads Sarah had seen all summer had been in the newspaper, and from May through August there had been a total of nine. Now she had three whole pages of Horse for Sale ads in front of her, and that was from only one newsletter. She wanted to read them all, but Missy was already skimming the list. Sarah skipped down to the first circled ad: “Morgan gelding. Fourteen hands, twelve years old. Rides and drives, good with children. Price negotiable, good home a must.”

  “He sounds great!”

  Missy looked over her shoulder. “Of course, we don’t know what negotiable means. Could be hundreds, could be thousands. But there’s no harm in looking.”

  “No.” Sarah was already skipping down the page. Young broodmares, an Arab stock horse, a two-year-old Morgan/Standardbred cross—

  “A two-year-old?”

  “Huh? No, I circled that for the other horse, the Morgan mare. You don’t want a two-year-old.”

  Sarah’s imagination had already covered years of sensitive training and unexpected early triumphs. She was entering the Olympics, herself a sophomore in college, the horse a mature and spectacular eight—

  “Why not?”

  “Bad combination. One of you should know something.”

  “Oh.” A little hurt—and after all, a winter of caring for Missy’s precious Barney had been worth years of experience—Sarah read on. “Six-year-old Morgan mare, old-type, bred in the purple. Seen it all, done it all. Reasonably priced.”

  “Sounds good, I guess.”

  Missy shrugged. “Well, who knows? I don’t think the truth in advertising laws apply, but it’s worth taking a look. Now, there’s one thing missing from your
list. What do you want to do with your horse?”

  Sarah stared at her. “Well, ride.”

  Missy smiled. “I know, but what kind? Trail riding? Showing? Jumping?”

  “Yes.”

  “All of those?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Sarah said. She’d taken riding lessons, she’d pounded out a lot of miles conditioning Herky, and she’d played around on Barney. Other than that she hadn’t done much. She didn’t even know what was possible. “That’s why I want a Morgan. Morgans can do everything.”

  “If you get the right Morgan,” Missy said. “So how do we do this? Should I do the calling, so your mother doesn’t start to wonder?”

  “That makes sense.” Sarah hated calling strangers.

  “And what will you tell her? She’s bound to notice that you’ve found something to do with yourself.”

  Sarah considered. “I’ll say we’re going swimming.”

  “Oh, good! We will go swimming! I know some really good spots. Meanwhile,” Missy said, “tomorrow’s my day off, and there’s a big Morgan show I was going to go to. Want to come?”

  “Will they have horses for sale?”

  “None you can afford,” said Missy, “but we can scope ’em out.”

  On the way home Sarah had Missy stop at Albert’s. She hadn’t ridden Herky today. On riding lesson days Herky had the afternoon off.

  Albert and his father were milking. The big barn smelled wonderful: fresh pine sawdust, fresh hay, fresh milk, and sweet fresh cows.

  Albert stood up from beside a cow as Sarah approached. He was so deeply tanned that his teeth and the whites of his eyes flashed. And he was thin and weary-looking.

  At the end of school Albert had been fat, but a summer in the saddle and out broiling in a hayfield had melted him away. Now the waist of his jeans looked as if it would go around him twice, and he hauled in the slack with an old leather belt.

  “Hi, Alb. I can’t ride Herky tomorrow.”

  Albert frowned. “What do you mean, you can’t?”

  “I’m going to a horse show with Missy.”

  “Oh.” Albert considered. “I guess he could use another afternoon off. Sure, go ahead.”

  “I wasn’t asking your permission, Albert!”

  “You weren’t?” Albert looked puzzled.

  “No! You aren’t my boss.”

  “Oh. No. I never said I was.”

  “You didn’t have to,” Sarah muttered, turning away. But, she realized, Albert really needed her. At the end of the month he was going to ride Herky one hundred miles in three days—forty miles on each of the first two days and twenty the last morning. They had to complete the miles within a certain time, and Herky had to come in sound. His pulse, temperature, and breathing rate would be checked at points along the way, and he’d be judged on how quickly he returned to normal.

  That meant a lot of miles now, to get him in shape, and Albert simply didn’t have time to do them all. Some of it was up to Sarah.

  So I guess Albert is my boss, she thought. She’d have to remember that and be responsible.

  There was no reason not to tell Mom about the show, but Sarah tried to keep her excitement hidden. She wanted to bring it up in her own way and not whenever Mom happened to notice.

  Supper tonight was cottage cheese with pesto and a marinated tomato salad, which Mom put proudly in the center of the table.

  “Finally, enough tomatoes to make something with! The green peppers are ready, too. Pretty good for someone who hasn’t had a garden in fifteen years, hmm?”

  “And who used to hate gardening,” Dad said, shoveling tomatoes onto his plate. “Your father had a lot to say about you and that garden last time he was here.”

  “He never let me do the fun stuff!” Mom said. “Anybody would rather go riding than weed.” Mom didn’t let Sarah even touch a weed; not that she was dying to, but it would have been something to do.

  “Speaking of gardens.” Now Mom turned to Sarah. “Goldy was testing the barnyard fence this afternoon. I hope you’ll spend some time going over it tomorrow.”

  Sarah groaned inwardly. Why now? Goldy had had all summer to think this up. “I can’t,” she said. “I was going to tell you—Missy said she’d take me to the big Morgan show tomorrow.”

  Mom gave her a direct, thoughtful look, the kind of look Sarah had been hoping to avoid.

  “I can lock Goldy in the stall,” Sarah said quickly, “and I’ll fix the fence the day after.”

  “Where is this show?”

  “Northampton. It’s huge, Missy says. Who knows? Maybe we’ll see some horses for sale!”

  At that Mom looked a little guilty, as Sarah had hoped she might. Nothing had been said this evening about a nice air-conditioned movie. “All right,” Mom said. “As long as you realize, Sarah, you won’t find a horse exactly like Barney. Not anywhere, but especially not at a big show like that.”

  I was right! Sarah thought. Mom was cautioning her about just going to a horse show. Imagine what she’d say if she knew their other plan!

  3

  The Morgan Show

  After Mom’s car had disappeared down the driveway the next morning and when Dad was safely in his study, Sarah went to the phone. For the first time all summer she had some real news to share with Jill.

  She dialed with a quick thumping of her heart, a feeling of nervousness. That was strange. Jill was the easiest friend she’d ever made. They’d just liked each other, from the moment Jill first sat next to Sarah on the bus last fall. But in the summertime things seemed different.…

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Jill?”

  “Oh, Sarah. What’s up?”

  “I’m starting to look for my horse!” Sarah strained her ears and was rewarded by the clacking of the typewriter. “Missy’s going to take me around. We’re going—”

  There had been a hint of clamor and uproar on the other end of the line all along. Suddenly it erupted, and Jill screamed, “All right, Brian, I don’t care! Eat your stupid crayons! Just don’t come bawling to me when you can’t find them! Fred, leave him alone! Let him do what he wants!” Sarah could hear her clearly, even with the receiver inches from her ear. There was a furious roar of forced weeping in the background, then a crash and a genuine squeal of pain and wrath.

  “Oh, Lord,” said Jill quietly. “Never mind. What are you and Missy going to do?”

  “She’s going to take me—we’re going to go looking at horses together, and today we’re going to a big show. She’s picking me up in a few—Jill, are they all right?” The roar in the background sounded like a barroom brawl or a rowdy strangling match.

  “They are fine,” said Jill. “They are perfectly normal boys, behaving perfectly normally.” Those were Jill’s mother’s words, and Sarah had heard them often. But she didn’t like the quiet, weary sound of Jill’s voice so early in the morning. “Still, I’m not supposed to let them kill each other. I’d better go. Have fun, Sarah.” There was a click and a humming quiet on the line.

  Slowly Sarah hung up. She felt as if she’d said something wrong, but before she could figure out what, Old Paint rattled into the yard, and it was time to leave.

  “This is the Morgan show, isn’t it?” Sarah was staring at the horse in front of her, the first horse she’d seen here at the giant Tri-State Fairgrounds. He was tall and narrow, with a long head and a nervous expression. He was being posed between two large buildings that blocked their view of the fairgrounds.

  “It’s the Morgan show, but this isn’t the kind of Morgan we’re talking about.” Missy eyed the horse disapprovingly. “Look how long his feet are! He’d be half a hand shorter if they trimmed him right!”

  “Shh,” said Sarah. People were glancing at them. But the horse’s feet were long. He looked as if he were wearing elevator shoes.

  Missy made a face, and they went ahead, onto the main part of the fairgrounds.

  It was a vast flat area, as wide as a river valley. Horses in blankets were
being walked on a road in front of them. Horses were being trotted bareback and under saddle by people in sweat suits or long, bright formal coats. Horses were circling on lunge lines. Horses were having fits of temper and rebellion. There were throngs of people walking, and as Sarah and Missy watched, two people drove past in silent golf carts.

  To the left stretched row on row of stable roofs. Ahead was a huge oval track, with three areas marked off in the infield, each large enough to be a show-ring. Sarah saw people riding hunt-seat, driving wooden-wheeled carts, cantering in sedate circles next to a dressage arena made of white chain.

  “Wow!”

  “Yeah—hey, look out!” Missy pulled Sarah back as a horse trotted past with a tremendous snorting and clatter. The clatter came from the circlets of chain he wore around each front pastern.

  Sarah stared in disbelief. “Did you see that? Is that legal?”

  “It must be,” Missy said. “They’re doing it in broad daylight. Look, there’s another.”

  “Look how he flinches his feet up,” Sarah said. They watched silently as the horse passed. With every step the chains slapped his legs, and he looked as if he were trying to shake them off or step out of them. The chains got his knees up higher, but the result looked pained and artificial.

  Sarah said, “It makes him look like a Saddlebred. Why do they want to do that?”

  “You mean, why don’t they just buy a Saddlebred instead of trying to turn a Morgan into one? I don’t know.”

  “Is it all like this?” Sarah asked as another narrow, high-stepping horse pranced past.

  “A lot of it. That’s where the money is. So, where do you want to go first?”

  “The stables,” Sarah said, hoping to restore herself with a little dose of normality.

  But when they stepped into the first stable row, it was clear that they had entered another world.

  A warm wind was blowing, and all down the row of stalls a huge crimson cloth billowed out. It was a giant curtain, Sarah realized, with openings for every stall door. The gold-trimmed valance above was blazoned with a stable name. Farther down the row the color changed abruptly to forest green: different territory.