The Amish Blacksmith

by Mindy Starns Clark

  “Listen, Priscilla, I didn’t mean—”

  “To insinuate anything?”

  “Huh?”

  She grunted. “You said when you saw me earlier with Patch, you could tell I was doing something. Why not say what you really meant? You could tell I was doing something weird. Something nutty. Something a crazy person would do.”

  I gaped at her. “What?”

  “That’s what you were thinking, isn’t it?”

  “No. Of course not. That’s not at all what I meant. I wasn’t asking because it was weird. I was asking because I was curious.”

  “Oh, really?”

  I stopped what I was doing, turned around, and looked her fully in the eye. “Yes, really. You obviously have a way with horses. As someone who also has a way with horses, I was just curious if that was a kind of technique or something.”

  For some reason, my words nearly brought tears to her eyes. She looked down, blinking furiously as she mumbled an apology.

  “It’s okay,” I told her, wondering if she was always this way, if she felt every little thing in her life so deeply. She’d been here less than a day and had already experienced more ups and downs in that time than I usually did in a month—or maybe even a year.

  When she didn’t reply, I turned back toward Big Sam to finish my brushing.

  “I just get so tired of it, you know?” she said finally, her voice so soft I could barely make out her words.

  “Tired of what?” I asking, glancing at her over my shoulder.

  Startled, she whipped her head up, and by the look in her eyes I had a feeling she hadn’t meant to say that last part out loud.

  “Tired of what?” I asked again, as gently as I could. I wanted her to know she had nothing to fear by being honest with me. I wasn’t related to her, I wasn’t part of the reason she left Lancaster County, and I wasn’t part of the reason she came back.

  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Of people pointing their fingers at me and reminding me how peculiar I am. I’m tired of it.”

  It hadn’t occurred to me that someone like Priscilla, who seemed so out of touch with those around her, would be fully aware of how she came across to others. I suddenly felt ashamed for how Amanda and I had spoken of her the night before. That’s probably how everyone spoke of her.

  And she knew it. No wonder she’d grown up to be so touchy. Just like a horse who was constantly in flight mode, Priscilla probably had to live her life always on the defensive.

  “If I were you,” I said, “I’d be tired of it too.”

  She stared at me, wordless, for a long moment. Given her surprise, I decided there probably hadn’t been many in her life who had willingly validated such statements. After all, it was human nature to brush over those sorts of things and simply claim they weren’t true. “Don’t be silly,” folks would say. “People don’t think of you that way.” But they did, and she knew they did. The fact that I’d been willing to acknowledge it, out loud, seemed to have a thawing effect. She visibly relaxed.

  “I honestly can’t remember a time when people didn’t look at me as though I were from another planet,” she said. “Just because I like to keep to myself, because I’m good with animals, especially horses, and then all the stuff with, well… I just… I just wish people would stop paying attention to me at all.”

  I had no idea how to respond to that raw and honest statement, but I did know that being good with horses was the one thing that had bonded us way back when, and it could be the common ground that drew us back together now. Once she was reminded of that long-ago connection and of how much I loved horses too, then maybe she’d let down her guard a bit and actually allow herself to befriend me again.

  If that happened, then perhaps that would encourage her to relax a little bit with others as well and stop acting so aloof. Amanda and I would have an easier time getting her into the community of young adults in our district, Priscilla could finally make some friends, and my promise to Amos would be fulfilled.

  “I think it’s great that you have a way with horses, Priscilla. If you recall, I kind of do too, or at least that’s what people say. Patch is here because he has some behavior issues, and his owner asked for my help. I know how I do it, but what’s your technique?”

  Again, I could sense her gauging whether or not to trust me.

  “I don’t have a technique,” she said after a long pause. “I can just tell when they’re upset or afraid or bored or confused. They have emotions just like we do. And their emotions are different, just like ours are. A scared horse is different than an angry horse, which is different than a sad horse.”

  That didn’t sound so terribly odd to me. “So what were you doing with Patch when I saw you this morning? I really would like to know.”

  She hesitated a moment before going back to her work with the hay. “I was listening to him.”

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention. This had become very weird. “Listening?”

  Priscilla huffed as though I had understood nothing she had said so far. “I was paying attention to him, to his body, his unspoken language.”

  “Oh.” That made at least partial sense to me. I had learned how to recognize stress in a horse by noting the physical cues, but nothing in farrier school or my own experience had instructed me on how to hear a horse tell me he’d been abused by a man.

  Priscilla tipped her head. “What?” she said, in an annoyed tone.

  “I’m just… I was just wondering how Patch told you he’d been… uh, abused by a man. That’s all.”

  Priscilla shook her head and continued tossing forkfuls of hay into the open stall. Stubble flew everywhere. Was she not going to answer me?

  “Can’t I ask?” I said, laughing lightly.

  “Can’t you guess?”

  I paused to sort through any possible ideas I might have as to how Patch communicated such a thing. I was stumped.

  “No.”

  “You think he whispered it in my ear?” she said crossly.

  I couldn’t help but laugh again. “Did he?”

  Priscilla stood erect and leaned the pitchfork against the stall’s back wall. “According to Scripture, only two animals have ever spoken,” she said, hands on hips. “The serpent, to Eve, and the donkey, to Balaam. Otherwise, it’s not a part of God’s plan for animals to talk to humans.”

  “Hey, you’re the one who said you were listening to him.”

  “I wasn’t implying actual speech!” She stared at me for a long moment, her eyes narrowing before she added, “And here I always thought you were different.”

  She started to come toward me and would have passed me and gone out of the barn had I not stepped in front of her.

  “Wait! Come on. I thought you could take a joke.”

  She blinked at me. “Is that what we’re doing here, Jake? Joking? Well, then in that case. Yes, Patch leaned in and whispered it in my ear. Ha-ha.”

  Again, she started to move past me. Before I could think it through, I reached out and stopped her. She looked down at my hand on her elbow, and I quickly dropped my arm.

  “Priscilla, please. We used to be friends. Why are you acting like this?”

  At least she had the decency to blush.

  “Fine,” she said. “It was clear to me just by interacting with Patch that he had been abused by someone. Then, when Uncle Amos came into the stable this morning to tell me about the auction, Patch reared up and became very upset. When you came in a little while later, Patch didn’t react at all.”

  “So?”

  “So the big difference between you and Uncle Amos was that he had his hat on when Patch saw him and you didn’t. Patch was afraid of the person in the hat. Men wear hats. Thus, I concluded that he was abused by a man. Simple, see?”

  She left me in the stable to think on this, which I did as I finished up with Big Sam and put the buggy away. While I appreciated Priscilla’s interesting deductions, I doubted she was right. It couldn’t
be that easy.

  Still, it wouldn’t hurt to test out her theory. When I was done with Big Sam and finally free to work with Patch, I intentionally kept my hat on as I walked into his stall. My presence hadn’t been all that disturbing to him before, but this time, to my surprise, the moment he saw me, he pawed the ground at his feet and whinnied as though he’d been poked with a hot iron.

  I took off my hat.

  SEVEN

  Even hatless, the only way I could get Patch to calm down was to walk off and leave him alone for a while. My stomach was growling, so I decided to go back to the cottage, where I made myself a giant glass of iced tea and two ham sandwiches. As I sat at the table and ate every last crumb, I wrote out a fee schedule for my services and went over my notes from farrier school. Then I cleaned up my dishes, shoved four apples into a paper bag, and headed off. I still had nearly an hour before Natasha’s driver would pick me up, which gave me enough time to work with Patch a little more, assuming he’d calmed down by now.

  At the main barn, I hung my hat on a peg by the door, placed the bag of apples on the floor, and grabbed a handful of carrots from the bin. Then I moved on into the smaller stable, holding my breath as I stepped through the doorway. Just as I’d hoped, Patch’s reaction to my appearance was completely different from before. I was the same guy, but with no hat on my head this time, the horse had no reason to fear. In fact, he barely gave me a glance as I walked toward him, only growing skittish once I got close, but for him that was normal. At least he let me feed him a carrot and pat him gently on the neck.

  Incredible.

  Now that I was pretty sure Priscilla had been right about the primary cause of Patch’s problem, I could get down to the business of fixing things. Seemed to me, a phobia of hats had to be about one of the worst phobias a horse in Lancaster County could have, especially a horse owned by an Amish family. There would always be hats in Patch’s life, which meant I would have to desensitize him to that particular fear while also training him to trust his handler whether he was frightened or not.

  I took Patch, who seemed willing but wary, out to the smaller outdoor pen behind the welding shop, speaking in soft, comforting tones along the way. I set the carrots on the ground beside the fence and led the skittish horse to the center of the pen, pausing to latch the gate behind me. I waited until he was calm, and then I dropped the lead rope and took a step back. As soon as Patch realized he was free, he began to trot around inside the limited space, huffing and puffing and nervously trying to discern the limits of his boundaries. I left him alone for a few minutes, until he settled down again. When he finally came to a stop, I reached for a carrot and slowly began to approach the horse’s flank.

  I was about ten feet away when he spotted me and darted off, running frantically around the circle again in an attempt to escape. Classic flight or fight response. There wasn’t really anywhere for him to go, however, so once he’d calmed down and come to another stop, I tried once more, moving with quiet determination toward his flank. It took several more tries, but finally I was able to get close enough to offer him the carrot. He took it from me, munching away greedily as I went to retrieve another and start over again.

  The next time, though, I wouldn’t let him have the carrot until he had calmed down a little more first. This became the routine, and after about fifteen more minutes of me approaching his flank and rewarding him with a carrot every time he stopped flinching, he began to visibly relax.

  “See there, boy?” I told him, patting his neck as he chewed away. “I’m not going to hurt you. Nobody’s ever going to hurt you again.”

  When our time was up, I led a far more compliant Patch back to his stall. We were done for now, but before I left, I retrieved the bag of apples, returned to the stall, and rewarded Patch’s efforts by giving him one. He took the ripe fruit from my hand, emitting a grunt of pleasure as he did.

  “Good session,” I told him with a final pat. Then I headed back outside, snagging my hat and returning it to my head as I passed through the door.

  By then it was nearly two o’clock, so I took a seat on a stump near the driveway and ate one of the apples myself as I waited for my ride. A sleek black pickup appeared just as I was finishing, and as it turned into the driveway and eased in my direction, I stood and slid the remaining two apples into my pockets for later.

  I’d been in plenty of cars and trucks before, but never in one as classy and up-to-date as the vehicle Natasha Fremont had sent for me. The interior was all inlaid wood and leather, the dash looked like a small computer, and there was even a tiny fridge in the console. The driver, a twentysomething stable hand who introduced himself as Ryan Warner, offered me a beverage as soon as I’d climbed in and shut the door—at least I thought that’s what he said, though he had the music cranked up so loud I wasn’t sure.

  “You like country?” he yelled over the din as he turned us around in the driveway.

  “It’s fine,” I replied, because I didn’t exactly hate it.

  “What’s that?” he asked, turning the volume down just a bit.

  “I said it’s fine.” The twang of the tune that was playing was a different sound for me, and not exactly my favorite. I’d been a rock and roll kind of guy when I was younger and in my rumspringa. But I could deal with this for now.

  “Go ahead,” he urged, sensing my hesitation about his offer of a drink. “Help yourself.”

  As we headed off down the narrow road, I did just that, opening the console and viewing my options. Nothing looked familiar among the various bottles and cans. I chose something called Perrier, which sounded vaguely familiar. It turned out to be water with a fancy name.

  “So you just graduated from farrier school?” he asked as he turned the music down a little more, much to my relief.

  “Not exactly. I mean, yes and no. I graduated a year ago.”

  “Gotcha. How do you like it so far? Are you allowed to use modern conveniences back at your shop there?”

  I had to think for a moment what he meant. Blacksmithing was an ancient art, so there weren’t really any modern conveniences to speak of, except maybe the fact that we ordered our shoes from a catalog now, premade, as opposed to forging them ourselves. But those shoes were put on a horse the same way they were a century ago. An electric machine couldn’t shoe a horse and probably never would.

  “Well, our forge is propane powered, if that’s what you mean,” I said, taking a light tone.

  “Oh, yeah. I guess there isn’t much about shoeing that involves a computer, eh?” He laughed. I smiled with him.

  “Have you been with the Fremonts long?”

  “The last four summers. I’ll be going back to Penn State in the fall.”

  He went on to tell me he was one of three students Natasha employed each summer. Apparently, they did a lot of the grunt work, such as cleaning out stalls, watering, grooming, repairing fences, and exercising a small contingent of horses she stabled for other owners, in addition to caring for their breeding mares and the foals.

  “About the only horse over there we don’t fool with is Duchess. She has her own stable, closer to the house, and Natasha prefers to handle that one herself.”

  “Duchess?” I asked, wondering if that was the horse I was being brought out to see.

  “Long story,” Ryan replied with a wave of his hand, as if to say he wasn’t in the mood to tell it.

  We were silent for a moment, and I tried to think of some other topic of conversation, lest my driver grow bored and decide to turn the music back up. “Natasha seems pretty nice,” I finally managed to offer.

  “Yeah, she’s nice enough. Rich, but nice.”

  “Do you enjoy working with the horses?”

  A new song came on, and Ryan began tapping out a rhythm on the steering wheel. “Sure, though warmbloods aren’t my favorite. I like hotbloods. Arabians, actually. If I had my own horse, that’s what I’d get. An Arabian.”

  “I hear you,” I said, and I really did know wha
t he meant. As Amos and I had explained to Priscilla earlier, hotbloods were fast and feisty, which made them much more exciting than the well-trained warmbloods of the horse show world. Definitely more interesting—at least to a guy like Ryan.

  “You people probably don’t have any show horses, though, right?” he asked. “I mean, what would an Amish man do with a warmblood?” He laughed again, clearly enjoying his own sense of humor.

  “Yeah, that would make about as much sense as your taking a buggy with you back to college,” I replied, and he howled with laughter.

  We managed to converse easily enough the rest of the way to East Fallowfield, talking about horses and riding and all things equestrian. As we got closer, the subject came back around to Natasha, and from the way Ryan talked, it sounded as if she was more than just the money behind a successful horse breeding and boarding business. Apparently, she was also a top-level competitor in the sport of dressage.

  “She made Grand Prix champion by the age of thirty,” he said, as if I would know what that meant. “Can you believe it? The horse she won with is retired now, but she’s working really hard to get there again, with Duchess this time.”

  I could act as though I knew what he was talking about, or I could just ask. I opted for the latter. “Grand Prix champion?”

  “Sorry. Guess I forgot you’re not part of the horse show world.” He went on to explain that dressage had levels of achievement, with each horse-and-rider pair having to earn their way up the various levels at competitions until they reached the highest level, which was “Grand Prix.”

  “Right now, Natasha and Duchess are still three levels down from there, at the ‘Prix St. George’ level. But I have no doubt they’ll make it eventually. The next qualifying event is in Devon this fall, and Natasha is determined to compete and earn up to the next level from there. If she can do that, they’ll probably be able to make Grand Prix in another year or two.”