Rescue

by Jessie Haas

  “Countryside’s expensive,” Tod said—a long speech from him. He dug into his jeans pocket—they all did—and change chuckled into the donation jar, a horse supplement bottle stapled to the side of the barn.

  “Thank you, Colts and Fillies!” Kalysta said. “You’re the best. Hey, before you get to work, I have an announcement.”

  They all turned. The sun blazed off Kalysta’s hair. This week, it was parrot red, with parrot-blue and parrot-green streaks. “Good thing horses are color-blind,” Li Min murmured.

  “It’s positive news for a change,” Kalysta said. “Any guesses? Starts with a p?”

  Joni’s mouth dropped open. She looked at Danae.

  “Patrick?” Li Min shrieked. “You got him?” Kalysta nodded, and everybody started jumping and slapping high fives. Even Tod let out a hoot.

  “Where is he?” Li Min said. “I want to meet him! We’ve been hearing about him for so long!”

  “Out back,” Kalysta said. “Wait! Walk quietly with me, okay? He’s only been here for a couple of days, and he hasn’t met a big group yet.”

  Joni tried to slow herself down, but she was ahead as they went around the corner. “Oh!” She stopped short. The others crowded against her, and she heard several gasps.

  In the shady back paddock, a dark horse stood eating hay. His coat was dull, and all his bones showed. All his bones. Joni could see the knobs of his spine, and every rib, and the deep, deep hollows over his eyes. It felt almost embarrassing, like she was seeing something she wasn’t supposed to see. They’d known his story for what seemed like months now. His elderly owner had sold him before she died. After a few months, the new owner’s neighbors stopped seeing Patrick in the pasture and assumed he’d been sold. Then one of them went into the barn to borrow a tool and found him in a manure-packed stall. He hadn’t been outside for more than a year.

  “I thought the sheriff was feeding him!” Tod said.

  “She was,” Kalysta said. “This represents improvement, believe it or not!”

  Patrick tore hay from the net with steady concentration. Eating mattered. It mattered terribly. But he turned his head to look at them as he chewed. He snatched another bite, then left the net to walk toward them.

  “Oh, sweetheart! Can you believe it?” Kalysta said. “As hungry as he is? But he wants to see who you are, even more than he wants to eat.”

  Joni leaned on the top rail. Patrick sniffed her hands and then her face, gently and politely. His eyes were soft and curious. Joni held still, feeling his trembling whiskers on her cheek. After a moment, he glanced toward his hay net. He wanted to go back to it, but he chose to stay with her.

  “He’s wonderful,” Joni said. “He’s a grown-up!”

  “Yes,” Kalysta said. “He has beautiful manners. All right, kids, off to work. Let’s not keep this sweet boy from his lunch.”

  Joni grabbed a fork and wheelbarrow and started cleaning Hooper’s stall. “Can we go kill that woman?” she heard Willow say from the next stall. “Like, now? I was half-asleep till I saw him. Now I’m like, Adrenaline Girl! With a pitchfork!”

  “I want to lock her up somewhere,” Tod said.

  “In the dark,” said Li Min. “Next door to a pizza joint.”

  Joni didn’t talk, just worked her way steadily from stall to stall. A deep fluffy bed for Hooper. A fragrant flake of hay for Patrick. A fresh salt block in the donkey’s stall, sparkling clear water in all the buckets. She wanted every corner of every stall to say, Life is sweet. People care for you. We’ll make amends.

  But was she just trying to make up for a basic deal that was bad for horses, all horses? A line from one of Dad’s favorite songs played over and over in Joni’s head: And before I’ll be a slave I’ll be buried in my grave, and go home to my Lord and be free. Maybe instead of cleaning stalls and filling water buckets, she should be turning the horses loose.

  But what about the cars whizzing by on the road? What about the cornfield next door? Hooper would finish eating himself to death there. He didn’t understand why his feet hurt. The rest would join him or be killed on the highway. The world where horses could run loose and take care of themselves didn’t exist anymore, at least not around here. That world had sparse grasses that the horses gnawed down as soon as it appeared. Always moving, always munching, they stayed lean and healthy.

  But didn’t slave owners say things like that? They wouldn’t know how to take care of themselves. They need us—

  Shut up, she told the voice in her head. It sounded a lot like Chess.

  Kalysta’s phone rang, and she answered. “A hay donation? Yes, Becky, absolutely! Seventy-five bales—wonderful! Let me see if I can find someone to store it for me.” There was no room for extra hay in this barn. Even the office had been turned into a stall. Kalysta took the phone into her new office, a camper-trailer parked outside. “Come out when you’re done,” she told the 4-Hers.

  Half an hour later, they all crowded into the camper. Still on the phone, Kalysta raised a finger. “One minute,” she meant, but Joni knew better than to believe that. She pried off her boots and climbed onto a bunk.

  Danae flopped beside her. “The fundraising thermometer’s gone down.”

  “It costs a lot to take care of Hooper.” Joni was looking at the EVERY HORSE NEEDS A JOB poster. It had pictures cut out of magazines, showing horses at work. There was a police horse, a city carriage horse, even a pony doing Agility, jumping through a hoop just like a dog, with his owner directing him from the ground. “Bottom line,” Kalysta had said, “if they know how to do something people find useful, they’re less likely to end up here.”

  Slaves were useful, too …

  Shut up! Anyway, Chess was wrong. If owning horses was slavery, Kalysta wouldn’t be for it. She loved horses more than anything. She didn’t have a husband or family. She did bookkeeping to get by, and she did this. That was why she’d made the HOW TO NOT BE A CRAZY HORSE-LADY poster, in her favorite orange marker. The rules included:

  • Don’t fill every available space with horses.

  • In case of an emergency, put on your own oxygen mask before helping others. This means YOU, Kalysta! Fully fund your retirement account!!!

  • Know that you are not the only person who can love and care for your horses.

  • Don’t confuse love with care. Horses can’t eat love, and it doesn’t clean the stalls.

  “Hang up, Kalysta,” Willow murmured under her breath. But you couldn’t hurry somebody who wanted to give you seventy-five bales of hay. Joni looked for a Becky on the ANGELS poster, Kalysta’s list of people who had helped. Their group was there, Colts and Fillies 4-H Club. Dad was there, and—

  Wow, so was Ruth Abernathy! Her name was written in glitter pen, an honor reserved for Super-Angels who gave a large amount of money or time. There was a sliding scale. The homeless lady who donated five dollars of her bottle deposit money once a month was also written up in glitter. Mrs. Abernathy’s name was in the middle of the list, so she’d been an Angel for a while.

  “Phew!” Kalysta hung up the phone, rose from the table, and scribbled “Hay Bank” on the bottom of the WISH LIST poster in magenta.

  “What’s a hay bank?” Danae asked.

  “It’s like a food bank,” Kalysta said. “A food bank provides free food for people who are short of money. A hay bank does the same thing for people who run into problems and can’t feed their animals. I’d start one if I had the money, or the time, or the space.”

  “Where does the hay come from?” Joni asked.

  “People donate it, or give money to buy it. Having a place to store the hay is just as important, though. People who have animals usually need the space for their own hay.”

  “Maybe we could start a hay bank,” Li Min said. “As a group project?”

  Joni opened her mouth and closed it. She knew of a barn with no animals in it. She knew some huge fields with no one to hay them. But she had no idea if Chess would go for it.

 
“I would love it if you guys would take that on,” Kalysta said. “But it’s a major amount of work. Look before you leap—”

  “Like you always do!” Willow said.

  “Exactly! Meanwhile, here’s the scoop on Patrick.”

  When he’d been found, the case had gone before a judge, who ordered his owner to feed him properly. The sheriff came a few times a week to make sure that happened, and Patrick was left where he was while the state and the owner’s lawyer did some legal maneuvering.

  “But Ruth Abernathy knew the first owner,” Kalysta said. “She was pretty sure Patrick had only been leased to this new woman. That would make him the property of the first owner’s heirs. She tracked them down, and they found a copy of the lease agreement and authorized me to take the horse. And you know what? The woman who starved him cried when he left!”

  “I’d like to make her cry!” Willow said.

  Kalysta shook her head. “I have to believe mental illness is involved there. It’s not uncommon. I hope this woman gets help. But I have to do my part, which is to take care of the horses who get caught in the middle.”

  “I wish we could just take animals away from people like that!” Danae said.

  “That cuts both ways!” Kalysta said. “Who gets to decide if an animal is being abused? Okay, with Patrick, it’s obvious. But there are people who think riding is abuse. Should they have the right to take your horse away from you? I don’t think so, but I guarantee there are people sitting in meetings right now, working on making that happen!”

  People like Chess. Joni was glad she’d decided not to bring her—but was that smart? Kalysta was exactly the right person to talk to Chess. She didn’t let people interrupt her, but she didn’t get mad, either, and she could always think of the right words. Who gets to decide … That was good. Joni could try to say that, too, but even better, she had to get Chess over here the Sunday after camp. Then maybe she wouldn’t have to spend the whole summer hearing about Mrs. Abernathy’s horses!

  FOURTEEN

  A Lesson

  Chess had called while Joni was away, wanting to come see the kittens again. But when Joni called back, no one answered. No one answered later in the day, either, and after supper, Joni decided she’d better ride. Camp started in less than a week, and what had she done to get ready? Pretty much exactly nothing.

  When she was serious about riding, she worked in the flat place below the barn. She thought of it as her ring, but it had no fence, and Archie had no interest in trotting around in circles. He kept veering off in more creative directions. When Joni corrected him for the fourth time, he gave a tiny buck. Joni grabbed for the saddle horn. “You brat!”

  Someone laughed. Joni turned to see Mrs. Abernathy standing there and leaning on her cane with both hands—not like she needed it to stand up, but like she planned to stay where she was for some time.

  “Pardon me, but would you like a riding lesson?” she asked. Joni hesitated, and Mrs. Abernathy said, “You need one!”

  Joni felt herself go red. She didn’t need anybody to point that out. “I have 4-H camp next week.”

  “Good! There are three things I can teach you, any one of which will move you up a level. Are you game?”

  Joni wasn’t game. She was a wimp—too much of a wimp to admit that she wasn’t game. She nodded.

  “Good for you!” Mrs. Abernathy said. “Come over here, and I’ll show you what I mean.”

  Why is she even here? Joni wondered. Did she drive the minis? But, no, Mrs. Abernathy’s car was parked near the milk house.

  Archie went over to her gladly. A new person usually meant admiration, treats, and time to rest. Mrs. Abernathy let him sniff her hands and face, but she was looking over Joni’s tack. Not clean. At camp, Joni would soap it every day, hoping to pass Stable Inspection. But this was home, not camp.

  “Has anyone ever talked with you about using your weight as an aid?” Mrs. Abernathy asked.

  The aids were how you told a horse what you wanted him to do. Joni could ace a Quiz Bowl question on them. What are the natural aids? Hands, legs, seat. What are the artificial aids? Whip, spurs … Weight had something to do with the seat, but Joni didn’t get it. You weighed what you weighed, right? You couldn’t change that just to influence a horse.

  “No,” she said.

  “They never do,” Mrs. Abernathy said. “Listen—good riding happens in your core, in your spinal column. Not in your arms and legs. When you sit right, all you’ll have to do is think of turning and your horse will do it. At least it will feel that way, and it will seem that way to anyone watching. If you can do that—and I’ll bet you can—it should impress the heck out of them at 4-H camp!”

  Joni had impressed people the wrong way last year. “What do I have to do?”

  That was the beginning of a long evening. The blue of the sky deepened and darkened. One by one, Mom and Dad, Olivia, Tobin, and Rosita came to sit on the grassy bank and watch while Joni sank into Archie’s back and became part of him.

  That was what it felt like by the time Mrs. Abernathy let her ride. First, there was a lot of sitting still, refining her position in the saddle.

  “Sit on your hands,” Mrs. Abernathy said. “Now rock forward and back. Do you feel two bones poking down through your buns? Those are your seat bones. Think of them as flashlights, and point them straight down at the ground.”

  Next, she showed Joni how to bring her leg back so she was almost standing in the saddle, not sitting like in a chair. “Now sit up straight—no, don’t arch your back. What are your flashlights doing?”

  They were pointing backward. “Experiment,” Mrs. Abernathy said. “How straight can you sit and still keep your flashlights pointing down? No,” she told Archie, pulling her sleeve out of his mouth. “You’re not allowed to do that. That’s better, Joni. Now let’s think about your center of gravity.”

  There was much, much more. Joni felt like a hunk of clay being shaped by Mrs. Abernathy. Lengthen this, push that, breathe deeply, bring your leg back again. At first, she couldn’t forget that everybody was watching, but soon she was working too hard to remember. Bit by bit, Mrs. Abernathy took her apart and hooked her back together again so she felt strong and solid. All without Archie taking a step! How was this a riding lesson?

  Finally, Mrs. Abernathy said, “Walk him in a circle, and notice how that feels.”

  It felt like Archie was one of these flotation-device horses little kids wear around their middles. Instead of just sitting on top of him, Joni seemed to be way down inside him. She felt springy and alive in the saddle, and Archie’s walk rippled from the soles of her feet all the way to her head.

  “Don’t look down!” Mrs. Abernathy called. “Head high, remember your flashlights, and look to your left.”

  Joni glanced left. Mrs. Abernathy said, “No, not like that! Imagine that you have eyes in your upper chest, and look with them. Turn your head and your upper body, and look straight at the place you want to go.”

  Eyes in her chest. Joni turned them, and Archie turned at the same time.

  “Now turn right! Aim, intend, and go.”

  The two sets of eyes organized Joni’s whole body. It felt like martial arts, not riding. Archie immediately turned right, like they shared the same body. “Wow!”

  “Exactly!” Mrs. Abernathy said. “Look where you want to go, with intention, and the horse will go there. Circle him around me—that’s right! Now commit to that arc. Keep looking a quarter of the way ahead of you, all the way around your circle.”

  Joni obeyed. It was the same circle, but she felt completely different—taller, straighter, in command. She felt the way Mrs. Abernathy looked. Her hands and legs hardly had to do anything. It really was like she and Archie were one—

  No, they weren’t! At the barn side of the circle, Archie barged straight ahead, ignoring Joni’s head turn and her seat. Mrs. Abernathy laughed. “Typical pony! Always ready to take you down a peg! Put more weight on that inside seat bone, and
look, and turn, and look—”

  Joni put everything she had into her seat bone, her head turn, her solid, fluid seat. With a snort, Archie settled back on track.

  “Beautiful!” Mrs. Abernathy called. “Stop and give him a big pat.”

  Joni collapsed on Archie’s neck, hugging him. “I didn’t use the reins at all—did I? I can’t remember.”

  “You didn’t use the reins!” Mrs. Abernathy was smiling, and Joni could see why all those old men wanted to marry her.

  But, wow—camp was going to be different this year! Was that completely good? Archie had humiliated her last year, but he’d also made her special. “You’re that little kid with the gray pony?” people kept saying. “I wish I were that brave!”

  “I don’t want him to get too good,” she said.

  Mrs. Abernathy let out a crack of laughter. “No worries, my friend, you still have a lot to learn! But you absorbed something important tonight. You’ll lose that feeling, of course, but now that you know what it is, you’ll be able to figure out how to get it back, and you’ll start having a lot more fun. This is a fine pony. You could do anything on him!”

  “He’s amazing!” Joni said. Her chest swelled with love and pride.

  Dad came up. He squeezed Joni’s knee and gave Archie a scratch on the chest. “Bravo, you guys!”

  Mrs. Abernathy said, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to take over your evening.”

  “No, that was interesting to watch,” Dad said. “Even for me, and I’m not a horse person.”

  “Agreed,” Mom said, kissing Archie’s nose. “But put him away, Joni. Ruth brought us a strawberry-rhubarb pie, and you ladies have certainly earned your slices!”

  Mrs. Abernathy turned toward the picnic table, then paused to look back at Joni. “I know you’ll clean that tack before camp,” she said. “But I was a stable inspector back in the day, and I’ll let you in on a secret. Buckle gunk! That’s all I’m willing to say, but I think you’ll figure out what it means.”

  “Buckle gunk,” Joni repeated. She would check that out tomorrow.