No Small Thing

by Natale Ghent

  “Oh, no! Smokey, look out!” Cid yells.

  But it’s too late. Flag grabs Smokey by the withers and practically lifts him off the ground. Smokey squeals and rears up. And then he does something that neither Cid nor I can believe. He grabs the horse by the front leg with his teeth and pulls him down to the ground. Flag topples like an old building. He flounders helplessly in the dirt while Smokey trots away victoriously, his mane and tail streaming behind him.

  “I can’t believe it!” I yell. “He took that horse out without even trying!” I’m so proud I’m busting my shirt buttons, as Dad used to say.

  “I guess we don’t have to worry about him,” Cid says incredulously.

  By the time Flag scrambles to his feet, Smokey is already grazing comfortably halfway down the field. The other horses eye him curiously, then continue to graze. Flag walks to the far end of thefield, his head hung in defeat. He doesn’t even look at Smokey again. We decide that Smokey can hold his own, so we leave him to fend for himself.

  Before we go, we check on Jed. I tell Cid to fill up his water bucket and to be careful not to get too close. The horse looks so neglected and wild, he just might bite out of fear. I toss some hay into his feed bin and we watch him eat for a while in silence.

  On the way home, Cid and I can’t stop talking about how Smokey took Flag down. We can’t believe he had it in him, him being so gentle, and decide it might be a good idea to find a vet and ask about getting him gelded, after all.

  When we get to town, we stop in front of a small hand-painted sign that says “Smyth Veterinary: Large Animal Practice.” The sign hangs over a set of stairs that leads down to an office below another shop.

  “Looks as good as any,” I say.

  We carry our skateboards down the stairs and into the office. A friendly young man with a smiling round face and what looks like Fisher-Price snap-on hair is sitting behind the counter. He wears a pair of dirty blue coveralls with some syringes sticking out of the pockets. The room smells like medicines and antiseptic. There are papers and things all over the desk and the office is generally untidy.

  “Can I help you?” the friendly man asks.

  “We want to see about getting our pony gelded,” I say.

  “Who needs a pony gelded?” another man asks, appearing through a doorway.

  He’s the spitting image of the first man and I think I’m seeing double. I look back and forth at the two men, then turn to look at Cid, who’s doing the exact same thing. The men burst out laughing.

  “We’re twins,” the one behind the counter says.

  “You both vets?” I ask.

  The men nod, smiling.

  “Where’s your pony at?” the second one asks.

  “Up on Forest Road. How much does it cost to have a pony gelded?”

  “Well … it’s a pretty straightforward procedure,” the first one says. “For a pony, it’s 100 dollars even.”

  Cid shoots me a look that says, where are we going to get 100 dollars? but I don’t miss a beat. “When can you do it?”

  The first vet flips through his schedule book. “How about this Saturday?”

  I tell him sure and we agree on a time. “You both going to do it?”

  “We always work together,” the first vet says.

  “Okay. Well, I guess we’ll see you Saturday, then.”

  “See you Saturday.”

  As we’re walking up the stairs, I can’t help thinking that those vet brothers seemed amused by us. I guess there aren’t many kids who come in looking to have their pony gelded. Parents usually arrange that sort of thing. But then, there aren’t too many vets that have a twin to work with side by side. So I guess we amused each other.

  “Where are we gonna get 100 dollars?” Cid asks as soon as we hit street level.

  “I already thought about that,” I say in a confident voice, so Cid won’t ask me a thousand questions. “I can collect for two weeks instead of one. I’ll tell people I’m going on vacation or something and have to collect for two so I can keep the books straight until I get back. You do that sometimes if you have to get another kid to deliver for you and you don’t want to trust them with collecting. I’ll add that to the money I have saved and that should be enough.”

  “But what happens when they see you delivering the paper anyway?”

  “I’ll just tell them that we couldn’t go on vacation, after all. Something came up and we couldn’t get away.”

  Cid looks at me like she isn’t sure how good an idea this is, but I start to whistle and jump on my skateboard, so she doesn’t have a chance to shoot down my plan. To be honest, I’m not sure the plan will work either, but I have to get the money from somewhere and that’s the only idea I can come up with.

  When we get home, Queenie is sitting on the couch watching Charlie’s Angels. It’s a rerun. I let Cid tell about Smokey and Flag. Queenie asks all kinds of questions and Cid does a pretty good job answering them. When she’s through, I tell Queenie about getting Smokey gelded.

  “Why, Nat? Smokey is as gentle as anything. He doesn’t need to be gelded.”

  “We have to. We won’t be allowed to stay in the barn if we don’t. And besides, after seeing how he handled himself today, he may have more stallion in him than we think.”

  Queenie considers this for a minute and then insists on coming.

  “Don’t talk to me,” I tell her. “Talk to Ma. She’s the one who doesn’t want you hanging around the barn with your cast and all.”

  “It doesn’t even hurt any more,” Queenie protests. She knocks hard on the cast. “See? It’s so unfair that I have to stay home while you and Cid have all the fun. I hate this stupid cast!”

  “Tell it to Ma. Not me.”

  By the time Saturday rolls around I can hardly keep myself together. I count my money three times over. I only have 82 dollars. I had some trouble convincing some of the people to pay me for two weeks in advance, but mostly they were pretty good about it. One woman even offered to pay me for three weeks. I think she was upset on account of Elvis Presley up and dying like that. One minute he was on tour and the next he was in the hospital and then he was dead. Heart failure, the papers said. I’m not a fan of his music, but Dad used to like him. Anyway, I told the woman three weeks wasn’t necessary, even though I could have used the money. I felt too guilty to take it. Another woman, Mrs. Geeter, flat-out refused to pay me for papers she hadn’t gotten yet. But she’s an old biddy anyway. Always fussing about how I fold the papers and how I put them in her mailbox. She even complains to me about the price, which I have nothing to do with. I just hope the vets don’t mind me paying them the rest later. I don’t tell Queenie and Cid Ihaven’t got all the money. It would just worry them….

  Cid, Queenie and I get going early so we can be ready when the twins arrive at the barn. Ma fusses a bit and doesn’t want to let Queenie go, but Queenie is so determined that Ma caves in and says okay. Ma makes us swear we’ll be careful. I promise her everything will be fine. Queenie wears one of my old sweatshirts to cover her cast. The sleeves hang way past her hands.

  “Roll those sleeves up so you don’t look funny,” I tell her.

  We can’t skateboard to the barn on account of Queenie and her cast, but I don’t mind. I feel sorry for her missing out on all the excitement so far. It takes us over an hour to walk there. Smokey is waiting for us in his stall when we arrive. Cid and I brought him in from the field the night before and took away his hay and water so he would be ready for the twins this morning.

  Queenie sits on the edge of the old feed trough while Cid and I groom Smokey. “Hotel California” drifts over the radio.

  “I hate this song,” Cid says.

  “Yeah. Me, too.”

  We work away for a while, until we hear a truck pull up next to the barn.

  “Hall-o!” a man’s voice calls in through the door.

  “I’ll be right out,” I call back.

  Cid grabs Smokey’s halter and snaps it on. I let
her lead him out of the stall. One of the twins sticks his head through the door. “Is that the pony? You can bring him out front here.”

  Cid leads Smokey out of the barn, and one of the twins takes him by the halter and leads him over to where the equipment is laid out on a blue paper sheet on the ground. There is a big syringe full of something, a stack of gauze pads, several pairs of latex gloves, a bottle of iodine, some alcohol and a scalpel. Queenie sees the scalpel and gives me a scared look. I wink at her, even though I don’t feel so sure myself. I shake the twins’ hands the way Dad would have done, and thank them for coming out this far.

  “He’s a really nice pony,” one says.

  “What’s that for?” Queenie asks, pointing to the big syringe.

  “Anesthetic. It’ll keep him calm during the procedure.”

  “Will it hurt?”

  “No. It won’t hurt him a bit. It’s very quick.”

  One of the twins injects Smokey, and I know there’s no turning back now. He pets Smokey until the pony’s eyes go droopy and his headstarts to hang. Smokey looks like a big puppy dog with his head leaning against the vet’s thigh.

  The other twin puts on a pair of gloves. He wipes Smokey with a gauze pad soaked in alcohol, then douses him with iodine. He picks up the scalpel and starts to cut. Smokey stands patiently. He doesn’t even shift his weight. The vet works away for a while and I’m starting to get nervous. It seems to be taking a long time. He leans one hand on Smokey’s flank and leaves a bloody handprint on his hindquarters. I’m thinking Smokey looks like an Indian pony with that red handprint, when I suddenly notice that Cid’s face is white and Queenie has tears streaming silently down her cheeks. I put my arm around Queenie to make her feel better.

  “It’s okay. Smokey can’t feel a thing.”

  Queenie stands there for a bit, then disappears into the barn. The twins look at me to see if everything is okay. I nod back but my sober face gives me away.

  “It’s done,” the vet says, pulling off his gloves and rolling the instruments up in the blue paper sheet. “He’s going to be drowsy for a while but that will wear off soon enough. Keep an eye on him for a day or two and call us if you have any questions.”

  I pull the wad of money from my jeans andhand it to one of the twins. “It’s only 82 dollars,” I say in a low voice so Cid won’t hear. “I can pay the rest as soon as I get paid again—if that’s all right with you.”

  The vet stuffs the wad in his coveralls without even counting it. “Pay the rest when you can,” he says. The twins pack up their things in their truck and wave as they drive down the lane. They didn’t write me a bill or anything, so I figure they must trust me.

  I get Cid to hold Smokey and I go into the barn. I grab a little bottle of bleach that I saw in the Gorilla’s tack box. Queenie is sitting on the old trough, her face stained with tears.

  “Is it over?”

  “It’s over and he’s fine. I’m just going to clean him up.”

  Queenie follows me outside. I take the bleach and an old rag I found in the barn and scrub at the bloody handprint on Smokey’s flank. I get most of it off but there’s still a thin red shadow of a hand that won’t go away. I give up after a while because I’m afraid I’ll irritate his skin with the bleach. He’s still really drowsy when I lead him back into his stall. I tie him to his feed bin because I’m afraid he’ll try to lie down and get straw and dust in his incision.

  “Do you think he knows what we did to him?” Queenie asks.

  “No. He won’t even know the difference,” I say, but my words sound hollow. Deep inside I think we’ve taken something away from him, something essential and necessary. I’m worried that he’ll never be the same and that the light will never shine in his dark eyes again.

  We wait with Smokey for hours until he seems a little livelier. While we’re waiting, Cid feeds and waters Jed. We do this every day now, because as far as we can see, no one ever comes in to take care of him. I guess Ted Henry must come in from time to time, but we’ve never seen him.

  We sit and watch Smokey for a while. Then Cid says we’d better get home before Ma starts to worry about what has happened. Queenie doesn’t want to go and neither do I, but we know Cid is right.

  I untie Smokey from the rail and remove his halter. He rubs his head against my stomach. I pet him for a bit, then secure the latch to his stall. I give him a long look before closing the barn door.

  * * *

  Smokey recovers fine from his operation, although I can’t seem to get over my guilt. I tellmyself that it was necessary, that we would have been thrown out of the barn if we didn’t do it, or that the stallion’s true nature would have caused us trouble in the end, but none of this makes me feel any better. I should have stood up to the Gorilla. I hate myself for letting him force us into doing something we didn’t want to do.

  To make matters worse, that old biddy Mrs. Geeter eventually catches up with me when she realizes that I didn’t go on vacation. She appears at her door like a woodchuck from its hole, just as I’m getting ready to toss her paper.

  “Don’t you dare throw that paper, you infernal liar!” she yells, for the whole neighbourhood to hear.

  Her wrinkled lips keep flapping even after she’s done yelling, and I can’t help thinking that she’s got a really loud voice for someone so small and old. I go warily up the walk to hand her the paper, but before I can do this, she snatches it from me and wallops me over the head with it.

  “Try to cheat me! I have a mind to call the authorities!”

  Of course, that’s the last thing I want her to do, so I apologize profusely and promise never to throw her paper again. My apology doesn’t seem to make a difference, because she seems to begetting madder by the minute. But just when I think she’s going to chase me down the walk, she pops back through her door and is gone.

  * * *

  Despite Mrs. Geeter, I finally manage to collect the money I owe the twins and take it to their office one day on my way to the barn. The brothers look at me again with great amusement. “How’s the pony doing?” one of them asks me. I tell him that Smokey is fine. I thank him for being patient and giving me time to pay. “Were you the one who was crying?” I look at him in surprise. “That was my sister Queenie. She’s a girl.”

  The vet just chuckles and for some reason this irritates me, so I thank the brothers and leave before I’m tempted say something I will regret.

  chapter 8

  a different kind of trouble

  Before we know it, it’s the end of August and time for the Eastview fair. This means summer is almost over and the evil known as school will soon begin. Queenie’s cast is ready to come off now too, which is a good thing because she’ll be able to come with Cid and me to take care of Smokey. We’ve been taking turns riding Smokey in the field on sunny days, and when it rains we ride him up and down the aisles in the barn. The other horses found this interesting at first but now they don’t even look up when we do it. No one ever seems to come to the barn—at least, not while we’re there—so we pretty much have the run of the place. Occasionally the Gorilla shows up, or one of the women who own the palominos, but we just mind our own business and stay out of their way.

  Queenie begs Ma to take her to the doctor to remove her cast before we go to the fair. She says she doesn’t want to be “encumbered” while strolling through the fairgrounds. Ma agrees andwe take a taxi to the hospital. Cid and I read magazines in the waiting room while Queenie and Ma go in to see the doctor. It isn’t long before Queenie reappears holding the pieces of her cast. Her shoulder looks skinny and sallow.

  “Look,” she says, holding up the cast. “He cut it off with a giant pair of snips.”

  We admire the cast and inspect her shoulder.

  “Looks as good as ever,” I say.

  After the hospital, Ma walks us over to the fairgrounds. She gives us 2 dollars each for rides and ice cream. I don’t have the heart to tell her it’s 3 dollars just to get through the gate. I
tell her not to worry about us if we’re late because we’ll probably go to the barn after the fair. Ma just nods. Like I said, she doesn’t really mind what we do. It’s not that she doesn’t care. She’s just busy and would rather leave us to our own devices, which is fine by me.

  We wait until Ma is out of sight before running along the length of the fence and hopping over behind the horse barns. I help Queenie over the fence, just in case. I don’t want her hurting her shoulder so soon after getting her cast removed. We brush ourselves off, then stroll through one of the barns, admiring the horses. There are giant Percherons and Clydesdales calmly eating haywhile their owners brush them. There are tiny miniature horses decorated with ribbons and braid. There are quarter horses and pintos and paints, perfectly groomed and waiting to compete in the games.

  “Let’s go see the lady who makes the plaques,” I say.

  We weave through the fair, the whirling rides and the loud barkers calling out to us. There are kids running all over, carrying big stuffed toys their fathers won for them. Disco blasts over the loudspeakers. Posters of Farrah Fawcett hang in every booth. I can’t help noticing there are pretty girls with tight shirts and short shorts everywhere. I feel kind of hopped-up and crazy. My hands are tingling and the hair is standing up on the back of my neck. The smell of french fries and cotton candy makes my mouth water. I wish we had more money.

  We walk along, past freak-show booths with everything from bearded ladies to a headless nurse, from a girl with the body of a snake to a wild man, and even a cow with eight legs—four regular and four on its back. The sign shows the cow running normally, then flipping on its back and running with its other set of legs.

  “I’d like to see that,” Cid says.

  “It’s just a fake,” I tell her. Dad would have said the same thing. He knew all about these things because he used to work for a carnival when he was young. He told us there are tricks to winning, and if you know them, you can beat the carnies at their own game. He was especially good at shooting the red out of the star. He won us all kinds of huge stuffed animals that way, which made the carnies furious.