Colt

by Nancy Springer

  Colt’s mother went and took her seat on her bench. Even though she no longer had to help him get on the horse, Audrey stayed to watch his lessons anyway, pretending to read.

  “Okay,” Mrs. Reynolds said once Colt was settled on top of Liverwurst and had gathered up his reins, “take him on down to the ring.”

  Colt had done this a dozen times, maybe more. He turned Liverwurst toward the ring and gave him a gentle squeeze with his knees to tell him to walk.

  Liverwurst snorted happily and jumped forward into a brisk trot.

  Colt had never in his life been bounced, not even on a grandparent’s knee, and the shock of what he was feeling stunned him so badly that he couldn’t react. Every functioning muscle in his body stiffened in protest. He heard Mrs. Reynolds shouting, “Pull on the reins! Make him whoa!” But her voice sounded as if it were coming through ten feet of water, and he could not do what she said—he had lost the reins. He tried to get in forward position, but his knees weren’t tight. He was hanging on by the mane and felt himself slipping farther sideways at every jounce. He was going to fall off! And he felt hurt to the heart. Liverwurst, how can you do this to me? Colt had thought the horse was his friend. Tears blinded him so that he couldn’t even see, and, dammit, he hated crying.…

  The horrible jouncing stopped, Liverwurst stopped trotting and stood still so suddenly that Colt almost pitched forward over his neck. But his hands caught him. He straightened and started automatically fumbling for the reins. He blinked away tears and found that he had come perhaps thirty feet from the mounting ramp, only halfway to the ring. Mrs. Reynolds was running up beside him. His mother stood in front of him, holding Liverwurst by the bridle. Audrey Flowers, who had never handled a horse in her life, had jumped out in front of Liverwurst and made him stop trotting.

  “I’m so sorry!” Mrs. Reynolds panted, taking hold of Liverwurst’s bridle from the other side. “He must have got it in his head last time that he’s supposed to trot. And they’re always full of themselves around feeding time. Liverwurst,” she scolded the horse, “I’m ashamed of you!”

  But Audrey Flowers wasn’t listening to her explanations. “Are you all right?” she demanded of Colt.

  He nodded, flushed and angry because he knew there were tears on his cheeks.

  “Does your back hurt?”

  He shook his head, but Audrey was not convinced.

  “Does it hurt at all?”

  “Mom,” Colt said, starting to get some of his poise back, “it’s too soon for it to hurt.”

  In fact he felt weak and achy all over. His mother looked hard at him, then turned to Mrs. Reynolds. “I believe I’d better take him home.”

  “Whatever you think is best,” said Mrs. Reynolds quietly. “I’m very sorry this happened.”

  Colt did not look at Liverwurst as Mrs. Reynolds and his mother got him off the saddle and into the car.

  Audrey Flowers did not say much in the car on the way home. She had her serious, wait-and-see look on, and she drove carefully, as if afraid of hurting something. At supper she told Brad about the trotting incident in quiet tones that fooled no one: Audrey was upset. Colt ate his supper without saying much—he didn’t know what to say. He went to bed early, lay in the dark, and begged whatever authority was in charge of spina bifida to please not let his back act up.

  It was no use. The throbbing of his lump woke him early in the morning.

  His mother came into his bedroom as soon as she heard him thump down headfirst from his bed. “How’s the back?”

  “Fine, Mom.” He scooter-boarded past her toward the bathroom, not looking at her. She followed him.

  “Does it hurt at all?” she yelled at him through the door.

  Colt managed to convince her he was all right until time for Sunday breakfast, when she noticed how stiffly he was sitting in his wooden kitchen chair, how he was not letting its rungs touch his back. She laid down her fork and gave him a hard look. “I’m taking you straight to Dr. DeMieux,” she said.

  Colt sighed. The spina bifida specialist at the medical center was not going to be happy to see him between regular visits. On a Sunday, yet.

  Not that Dr. DeMieux said much. She pursed her lips and inspected the critical area of his back. Lying on his belly on her examining table, Colt swiveled his head around to see if she looked somber. She did. “Inflamed,” she said. She prescribed medication. “What have you been doing, Colt?”

  “Exercises,” he said.

  “Horseback riding,” his mother said.

  “It was just the trotting,” Colt protested.

  “Don’t you remember I specified no trotting when I signed permission for your horseback riding?” Dr. DeMieux looked perturbed.

  Colt faltered, “But that was just for, like, the summer program. I’ve been taking private lessons. I’m a lot-better rider now.”

  “It does not matter. If your horse is going to trot, I am afraid I have to say, Colt, that you must not ride horseback anymore.”

  Obviously she did not understand. All he had to do was make her understand and it would be all right. “But I’ve got to ride,” he told her, calmly explaining. “I love riding, especially trail riding. I won’t let Liverwurst trot with me anymore until I’ve really learned to post. I—”

  “Young man, it’s your life we’re talking about here,” Dr. DeMieux interrupted.

  “Yes,” Colt said, a stubborn edge nudging into his voice. “It is.”

  “Colt!” his mother warned. “He’s getting a mind of his own,” she said, apologizing to the doctor.

  “That’s all right. But in that case he must learn to reason things out.” Dr. DeMieux sat down on her rolling stool so that she faced Colt at eye level. “Colt. You have heard certain things before, but think what they really mean. When I say it is your life, I mean that little mass protruding from your spine: It is your life. If you make it sore, if you cause more nerve damage, then a little bit of you dies. If you rub it open and it becomes infected, there is nothing to keep the infection from entering your spinal cord and going straight to your brain. You could die.”

  Colt swallowed hard but said, “Anytime I walk I could fall down and hurt myself, break my neck and die.”

  “This is true. But on horseback you are twice as far from the ground as when you walk. If you fall, you will hurt yourself twice as badly. And you have seen what happened when you didn’t even fall! No more horseback riding.”

  It was no use talking to Dr. DeMieux.

  The car was very silent on the way home. Colt sat scared silent. Never ride horseback again? It was unthinkable. Horseback riding was the one thing that made him feel complete, whole, really alive. He had to do something, say something to keep his horseback riding, and he knew his life—the life he wanted to live—depended on it.

  “Mom,” he begged, “don’t pay attention to Dr. DeMieux. Please. She doesn’t understand.”

  His mother sighed, stared straight ahead over the steering wheel, and said nothing. She was driving slowly. Colt knew she had to be feeling almost as bad as he did, to be so silent, to be driving so slowly.

  “Mom,” he tried again, “of course she said not to ride. She’s a doctor. She’d like me to never do anything.”

  All his mother said was, “Let me sleep on it, Colt.”

  He slept before she did. The medication made him groggy. He went to bed right after lunch and lay there, too doped to feel awake, too heartsick to really sleep. He heard his mother on the phone with somebody who must have been Mrs. Reynolds: “Please don’t feel bad. You know what they say: hindsight’s twenty-twenty … I guess horses are like kids, full of surprises. Colt wants to come back and try it again, but I’m not so sure … Uh-huh … Might the horse trot with him again when he’s not expecting it? Yes … So there’s no way of being certain the horse won’t trot with him … I see … well, thank you for everything. I’ll let you know what we decide.”

  Mom, please …

  Later he heard her talking w
ith Brad. “He’s been so—so grown-up about this horseback-riding thing, that’s what breaks my heart. That’s the main reason I let him do it in the first place, because of the way he asked. For once he didn’t whine.”

  Brad’s deep voice: “And he hasn’t whined or asked for much since.”

  “And all the exercising he’s done, the way he’s gotten so much more strength and endurance … I could just cry.”

  Don’t cry, Colt thought blurrily. Just say I can ride.

  “But it’s just not safe,” said his mother as if she had heard him. “I mean, I know nothing’s ever truly safe. But horseback riding—it’s like you said, it’s really risky. He could fall, or get thrown—”

  “Not so likely with a calm horse,” said Brad.

  Colt decided that he loved Brad.

  “But what I can’t see worth a darn,” Brad said slowly, “is how he’s supposed to learn to trot without getting joggled. It doesn’t seem possible.”

  Colt changed his mind—he hated Brad.

  “Dammit,” Brad said. “I wish I could give him my back and legs.”

  Because he couldn’t hate Brad anymore, Colt began silently to cry.

  He went all the way to sleep sometime soon after, and slept through supper. His mother woke him to give him medication, and after that he slept through the night. He woke up late the next morning and realized he was not going to school. And his mother must have taken off work to stay home with him, because in a minute she came into his bedroom and looked at him, and he lay in his bed looking back at her.

  “How’s the back? Does it still hurt?”

  “Mom, it’s fine.”

  “Right. Sure. You told me that yesterday.”

  He couldn’t stand it any longer. “Mom, please …”

  She came over to him at once, crouched down and held his face between her hands. “Colt,” she said, “no. I’m sorry, but no. No more riding. You’re my only kid. I can’t risk losing you.”

  Chapter Six

  “Want to play rummy or something?” Lauri offered.

  “No thanks.” It was more than two months since that last disastrous ride; it was November, nearly Thanksgiving, and Colt still didn’t feel like doing anything. It was not that he was sulking. He felt too miserable to enjoy sulking. He wasn’t even interested in being a brat anymore.

  Lauri said more quietly, “Want to talk?”

  He had talked with her before, and knew she understood better than most people because she loved horses. She could imagine how he felt about Liverwurst. She had stopped being one of those strange, alien, interesting beings called “girl” and had turned into a friend. But there were some things maybe she couldn’t understand. Colt was not sure she could imagine how it felt to be a boy, and handicapped. How someday he was going to want a girl to like him as a boy, and he wasn’t sure it could ever happen.… He shook his head. “What’s to talk about?”

  Lauri shrugged. “Well, I’ve got to do my math.”

  Rosie drifted into the bedroom as Lauri left. Crosscountry season was over, the hair had long since grown back on Rosie’s legs, and now he wore sweat pants anyway. He said to Colt, “Play you a game of chess?”

  Colt didn’t even have the energy to be annoyed at invitations that were getting repetitious. “No. Thanks.”

  Rosie got down on the floor, stretched, and said, “Do some exercises with me?”

  Lying on his bed, Colt did not even shrug. Rosie looked at him.

  “No use letting yourself lose all that muscle tone you got last summer, even if you can’t go horseback riding anymore.”

  “I hate exercises,” Colt said without much spirit. All his life he had been doing physical therapy, and all his life he was going to be doing physical therapy, by the looks of things. And he had never been able to enjoy exercises for their own sake. He had to have a reason to want to do them.

  “Hey, superjock, you should learn to like them,” Rosie tried to tease. “Girls love muscles. Especially push-up muscles.”

  “Give me a break,” Colt said bitterly. “No girl’s ever going to want me.” This was maybe not quite true. Once he had dreamed of having his own car with hand controls and a girl to ride around in it with him. But now he didn’t want to dream about anything.

  Silence. Then Rosie protested quietly, “Aw, Colt, c’mon. Wake up. Things could be worse.”

  Colt was convinced that they couldn’t be. Suddenly he was angry, and he reared up and blazed at the older boy, “You don’t know what it’s like! I’ve got to live like this.… You want to know how bad spina bifida is? It’s so bad they don’t even know how long I’m supposed to last!”

  Rosie’s eyes widened. What Colt meant was that treatment had come so far so fast the statistics were not yet in. But Colt didn’t explain this to Rosie. Explaining would have spoiled the effect.

  “And right now I really don’t care!”

  “Yes you do,” said Rosie from the floor.

  “No I don’t! Why should I care about anything? My own father—” Colt stopped with a gulp. He hadn’t meant to talk about that.

  Rosie looked at him. “Go ahead,” Rosie said, and in response to his quiet tone Colt did.

  “After I was born, he left. Disappeared. Never came back. Didn’t want to have anything to do with me. Doesn’t even want to look at me because I’m such a freak. Now, isn’t that supposed to make me feel good?” Colt’s voice rose to a cynical whine.

  “Could be worse,” Rosie said. “My mom left for no particular reason at all.”

  Colt grew still, looking at Rosie. Something hidden behind Rosie’s words told him that “could be worse” was not just an expression people used. Rosie’s mom had left when Rosie was old enough to miss her. Maybe it really had been worse for Rosie.

  “Sorry,” Colt muttered.

  “Sure, let’s have a pity party.” Rosie grimaced, making fun of himself, but kept talking just the same. “You want to know what I hate the worst of all? The name she gave me. My real name, I mean.” He looked up at Colt and quirked a sour smile. “Hey? Would it cheer you up if I told you what it is? Want a good laugh?”

  Colt just looked at him.

  “It’s Francis,” Rosie told him. “Francis Tewksbury Flowers.”

  “Lord,” said Colt, but he didn’t laugh.

  Rosie had not done any exercises after all. He got up, retreated across the room, and flopped on his studio couch. “Hey, Rosie,” Colt called to him.

  “What?” Rosie sounded gruff.

  “I can beat that. My real name is Osvaldo.”

  “It’s what?”

  “Osvaldo Alfonso Vittorio.”

  Their eyes met across the room, and suddenly they were both laughing like a pair of loons.

  By Thanksgiving Colt had thought, grudgingly, of a few things to be thankful for. He was thankful that he had a different school aide this year and she was nice, with a sense of humor, not a fussbudget. He was thankful that his mother and Brad were happy together. He was thankful that the chaos in the Flowers—Vittorio household had subsided somewhat, and that Muffins had finally stopped barking at the new family members. He was thankful that he had Rosie and Lauri for friends, and that Lauri brought girlfriends home with her, and that some of them were almost his friends too. They liked to talk about horses with him. They said most boys didn’t know about horses the way he did. Some of them had even started saying hi to him in school.

  “I am thankful that I’m back on day work,” said Brad at the Thanksgiving dinner table. “And I’m thankful that Lauri has switched to an evening paper route.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Audrey.

  Right after Thanksgiving Colt began to consider what he was going to get everyone for Christmas, and how he was going to manage it. He had never had so many people to buy for before. His mother would probably give him some money to shop with, but he wanted to get Rosie something really nice. And Brad. And sure, Lauri too.

  Coming home from school the first day after Thanksgiv
ing vacation, he saw Lauri’s stack of newspapers waiting for her on the front sidewalk, and he got an idea. Colt got home earlier than Lauri because he was delivered to his door by a special school van, while she had to take the regular bus. So she would be along later, and when Lauri had to deliver papers and had lessons or a lot of homework too, her day really got crowded. Sometimes she complained about how long the papers took. Colt resented her complaining, because he considered her lucky to have two strong legs so she could make money for herself. But it did take her until after dark sometimes to get her route all delivered. Maybe …

  Colt made his way into the house and got the things he needed. When Lauri got home she found Colt on the front sidewalk rubber-banding her newspapers and packing them into the carrying bags for her.

  “Hey, Colt, thanks!” Lauri was so astonished she stammered. “I—I—this is the first nice thing that’s happened all day. Now I’ll get done in time to watch a little TV before I have to struggle with social studies.”

  Colt felt embarrassed by her gratitude. “I’m not being nice,” he mumbled. “I thought maybe—oh, forget it.” He’d just do the blasted rubber-banding for her once in a while.

  She dropped her books to the concrete with a thunk, squatted down, and looked at him. “You thought maybe what?”

  She had her stubborn look on. Already Colt knew about Lauri’s stubborn look. He gave in.

  “I thought maybe if I did this for you every day, you’d give me some of your collections money.”

  Rather than being disappointed in him, she looked happier than ever. She jumped up, did a small dance, then stuck out her hand at him. “Give me five, partner! Every day? I’m in heaven!” She slapped hands with him, grabbed the bag he had ready for her, and skylarked off to do part of her route.

  Colt felt kind of good for almost the first time since “No Horseback Riding.”