Livy Thornton was wearing another fancy dress. Red plaid this time, with a low waist and a big square collar. When Gib smiled at her, she frowned, looked away, pushed back her chair, and got up from the table.
Picking up a coat and a stack of books, she said, “I’ll be in the buggy, Father,” and went out the door. Mr. Thornton was still eating, and except for Hy and Mrs. Perry, who was busy at the stove, no one else was in the room.
When Mr. Thornton left a few minutes later, with only a brief nod in the direction of Hy and Gib, no one else had shown up. Not even Mrs. Thornton, who, according to Hy, wanted to talk to Gib today.
Hy was pushing back his chair. “Mighty fine flapjacks, Delia,” he said. Hobbling over to where the cook was pouring a new batch of batter onto the griddle, he went on, “Can’t understand for the life of me how the menfolk around here can let a fine-lookin’, fine-cookin’ lady like you stay a widow. I’d pop the question myself if I was the marryin’—”
Whirling around, Mrs. Perry said, “Get out of here, you scallywag,” and swatted at Hy with the pancake turner.
Hy limped away, pretending to be scared to death. Gib couldn’t help laughing, and when Hy looked back at him and wiggled his eyebrows, Gib laughed even harder. And went on laughing even after Hy stopped clowning and headed for the door. And then went on laughing even after Hy turned around and gave him a puzzled frown.
Afterward Gib wondered why he’d laughed so hard. Because, after all, what Hy had done hadn’t been all that funny. He couldn’t figure it out, really, except that maybe it was just a sudden relief that the worst had happened—he’d been farmed out just like Herbie and Georgie—and he was still able to laugh. And right out loud, too.
He was following Hy out the door when he remembered about seeing Mrs. Thornton. Grabbing Hy’s arm, he whispered, “The missus. When did she want to see me?”
“Later,” Hy said. “Said she wanted to see you when your morning chores were done.”
Gib almost said he thought he’d finished them, but it soon became obvious that he was a long way from it. He wouldn’t be finished, it seemed, until he’d staked Belle out in the orchard, watered and hoed in the vegetable garden, and started in on cleaning out the box stalls, all of which looked to be in real bad shape.
Hy hung around most of the morning, leaning on his crutches, showing Gib where things were and commenting on how he was doing. And now and then reminding Gib that it had been the boss, Mr. Thornton himself, who had made up the list of chores that Gib was supposed to get done that day.
The garden was hard work, particularly the hoeing. Weeds had grown up in all the rows, and the hoe was old and not very sharp. Gib had done some hoeing in the orphanage garden that spring, but not a great deal, and his hands hadn’t yet developed their summertime calluses. And then, with his hands already blistering from the hoe handle, there was the stall cleaning to look forward to, which would mean a lot of shovel work. Gib was starting on the second stall when Hy decided to go back to the cabin.
“You get that one finished and then wash up and go on in to see the missus,” he said. “You can do Lightnin’s later, and I’ll come out to help with Silky’s. I got to get off my feet for a spell.”
The sun was high in the sky when Gib went back to the big house and washed up on the veranda, wincing when the soap made the blisters on his palms smart. Some of them had broken and dirt had worked its way in under the loose skin. He washed as best he could, took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and went into the kitchen.
Miss Hooper and Mrs. Perry were seated at the kitchen table talking and drinking coffee. They stopped talking when Gib came in.
“Oh yes.” Miss Hooper’s voice, like the rest of her, was thin and sharp. “Mrs. Thornton said for you to go right on in.” Getting up from the table, she led the way to a door, opened it, gestured, and then, as Gib passed her, she sniffed and said, “You’re smelling a bit ripe, boy. Did you wash up? Here, let me see your hands.” Taking his hands in hers, she inspected them carefully, squinting her pale eyes and frowning when she saw the palms.
“They’re not dirty,” Gib said hastily. “I washed just before I came in. Those are just blisters.”
Miss Hooper nodded. “Just blisters,” she said, nodding sharply. “So they are. Just blisters, indeed.” Then she led Gib down the hall, knocked once on a door, and went in.
The large room was lined with bookshelves. Gib had never seen so many books in one place, except back in Mrs. Hansen’s time, when a good reader could win an occasional trip to the Harristown Library. Across the room Mrs. Thornton was seated at a large desk in her high-backed wheelchair.
“Look at his hands, Julia,” Miss Hooper said, and then went out, closing the door behind her with what was clearly a slam. Without meaning to, Gib put his hands behind his back.
The beautiful woman in the wheelchair smiled and motioned for him to come closer. “Your hands?” It was a question. And then when Gib reluctantly held them out, “Oh dear. How did you do that?”
“It was the shoveling and the hoeing, I guess,” Gib said. “They’ll toughen up. They have before. I just haven’t been doing as much shoveling lately and ...
Mrs. Thornton turned back to the desk and rang a bell. “I’m sure they will toughen up,” she said. “But in the meantime I think we’d better get them a little cleaner.”
The next half hour was spent doctoring Gib’s hands. Miss Hooper, whom Julia called Hoop, came back and was sent out for a medicine kit and then was sent out again looking for gloves. “Look in my cedar chest,” Mrs. Thornton said. “My old riding gloves will have to do until we can get some heavy work gloves that are small enough to fit him. And while you’re at it, bring a measuring tape. Henry says he hasn’t any other clothes, and he can’t go on wearing these awful things.”
Gib looked down at his Lovell House uniform of bulky dark blue serge. Of course the material never had been the best, and perhaps it had thinned out a little on the knees and elbows. And right at the moment the pants particularly were maybe a bit barnyardy. But he hadn’t thought they were all that bad.
After a while he began to realize that while all the fuss over the blisters and clothing was embarrassing, it was turning out to feel kind of good, too. Good in the way it had felt when, once in a great while, he’d managed to get Miss Mooney’s full attention. But it wasn’t until his hands were doctored and bandaged and all his measurements taken that he began to find out why he’d really been sent for.
Chapter 19
“ABOUT LOVELL HOUSE,” MRS. Thornton said when Miss Hooper finally disappeared, taking the medicine chest and tape measure with her. “Let’s see. You must have been there since you were five or six years old?”
“Six,” Gib agreed. He was sitting in a big armchair with his arms and hands resting on the fat plush-covered arms. He didn’t like looking at his bandaged hands because, even though the bandages were much smaller and cleaner, they reminded him of ... So he looked away—and noticed a shiny new telephone on Mrs. Thornton’s desk, and then a glass bowl of hard candy.
“So you were in the orphanage for almost five years,” Mrs. Thornton was saying. Then she handed Gib the bowl he’d been noticing and said, “Please have a peppermint. And then tell me all about Lovell House.”
Gib hadn’t meant to stare at the candy, but he’d had a peppermint just last Christmas and he couldn’t quite keep his mouth from watering as he remembered the taste. So he quickly said thanks, put a big round candy ball in his mouth, and began to talk around it. “It’s a great big old building,” he said, trying to keep the peppermint from rattling against his teeth. “Made of stone, and with a tower at each end, like a castle.”
“Yes, I remember seeing it some years ago. But what was it like living there, Gib?”
He thought a minute. “Like?” he said. “Well ... He found it hard to go on in words that would mean anything to someone who’d never lived there. Who’d never lived in Junior Hall with dozens of other kids a
nd not nearly enough of a lot of things to go around. And not nearly enough people like Miss Mooney to go around, either.
So he started by saying, “Well—I was a junior at first,” and then hurried on to tell about how you were either an infant or junior or senior, depending on your age. Once he got that explained, it got easier, and he went on, telling about Miss Mooney, the housemother, and old Mrs. Hansen, who had been the headmistress for so many years. When he got to the part about Miss Offenbacher, he tried not to say too much about how she’d changed things, which wasn’t easy because Mrs. Thornton seemed especially interested in the changes.
Now and then Gib tried to steer the conversation back to what had happened before Lovell House. “Hy says my folks lived near here. Did you know my mother?” he managed to ask once, and when Mrs. Thornton began to answer he felt a shiver of anticipation crawl up the back of his neck.
“Yes, I did.” Mrs. Thornton paused and smiled. “She was a wonderful woman. Strong and brave and ... and wonderful with horses.”
Gib sat up straighter and almost choked on what was left of the peppermint. Mrs. Thornton was looking away—far away—as if remembering. Gib was getting ready to ask something he couldn’t quite find the words for when Mrs. Thornton went on. “You’ve seen my Black Silk?”
“Yes. Yes, I have. She’s beautiful.”
“Yes, she is, isn’t she.” Mrs. Thornton smiled thoughtfully. “Your mother rode her once.”
“My mother ... Gib’s voice had gone strange on him, high and wobbly. “How did ... how come ...
“It was a long time ago. Hy had started training Silk, but she was still pretty unpredictable. Your mother had come to see my husband about some banking business, I believe. But she saw me on Silk. No one had ridden the mare except me, and Hy of course, but I could see how well she reacted to Maggie—your mother, that is. So I loaned her a divided skirt and let her take Silk around the ring a few times.” Mrs. Thornton’s eyes were dreamy again. “Silk went amazingly well for her. Settled and quiet. Hy said that was what Silk needed. That kind of quieting skill.”
Picturing a woman, a woman as beautiful as Mrs. Thornton but with light-colored wispy hair, riding on the black mare made Gib feel almost paralyzed with excitement. “What did she—” he was beginning to say when a loud jangling noise that came from someplace nearby made him gasp and jump.
It was only the telephone. Although Gib had read about telephones and had seen the one on the headmistress’s desk at Lovell House, he had never before heard one ring. Nor had he ever heard anyone talk on one. He watched, fascinated, as Mrs. Thornton rolled her chair nearer to the desk, lifted the hearing horn down from its hook, put it to her ear, and spoke into the cup-shaped mouthpiece.
“Yes ... Yes, of course, Ellie,” she said. “Put him on.” Then she said, “Hello, Henry.” After that she listened for quite a while saying only “yes” and “I know” now and then, but with her face changing slowly, going from warm and smiling to something quite different. Her voice had changed too when she finally said, “All right ... All right. You’re right. I did promise.” Then she said “Good-bye” and hung the earpiece back on its hook.
Gib had tried not to listen, both because he felt he shouldn’t and because what he was hearing, and sensing, made him uncomfortable. But even while he was trying not to listen he didn’t forget what they had been discussing before the phone rang. He was just starting to say, “About my mother, was she—” when Mrs. Thornton interrupted and said, “Something has come up, I’m afraid, Gibson. So we’ll have to cut our conversation short for now. Perhaps we can have another visit someday. There are still so many things I want to find out about.”
Gib felt the same way. There were so many things he wanted, desperately needed, to ask about. As he got to his feet Mrs. Thornton said, “About school, Gibson. Since summer vacation will begin so soon, there wouldn’t be much point in your starting here in Longford just now. But next fall ... She paused, breathed deeply, and then went on, “But next fall—well, we’ll have to decide what to do by next fall, won’t we?”
That was all, except just before he went out the door she called him back to give him the gloves Miss Hooper had found. They were beautiful gloves, made of thick, soft leather, with air holes on the back and two white buttons at the wrists. They looked like they’d just about fit him, but they weren’t men’s gloves, and they weren’t meant for shoveling manure, that was for certain.
“I know,” Mrs. Thornton said, smiling ruefully. “They’re ladies gloves. But they’ll have to do until Hoop can get into town to do some shopping for us.”
As Gib stared at the gloves she added, “And tell Hy that if he teases you about them, I’ll have his hide. You go on down to the cabin now and you can also tell Hy that you aren’t to do any more shoveling today. Tell him I said so.”
Gib said thanks, put the gloves in his pockets, one on each side, and went out. But on the way down to the cabin he took them out and held them in his hands and thought about how Mrs. Thornton had worn them when she rode Black Silk. And how his own mother, Maggie Whittaker, had also ridden the beautiful black mare. The thought made his breath come faster. Closing his eyes, he made a picture of it, of his mother on Black Silk. The image of the mare was bright and sharp while the woman rider was blurred and distant, but there was a new and exciting certainty that everything would be much clearer very soon.
Chapter 20
GIB LEARNED AN AWFUL lot during the next few days, but only about some subjects. Mrs. Thornton hadn’t invited him back for another visit, so he hadn’t learned anything more from her, and after that first day Hy had pretty much refused to talk about past history. At least about Gib’s history. But among the subjects Hy didn’t seem to mind talking about were some things about his own past. Like how his leg got busted.
“Durned motorcar did it,” Hy said when Gib finally got up the nerve to ask.
Gib was impressed. “You were ... No, it couldn’t be. “You weren’t driving one, were you?” He’d heard all about motorcars, of course, and how dangerous they could be. And he’d even seen a few in Harristown, sputtering down Main Street, amazing all the people and scaring horses right out of their wits. But Gib couldn’t imagine that Hy would have anything to do with a newfangled thing like that.
Hy snorted. “Not on your life,” he said. “Wouldn’t catch me touchin’ one of those devil wagons with a ten-foot pole. But Edgar Appleton, down at what used to be the Longford Livery Stable, he’s been tryin’ to sell them noisy, stinkin’ machines lately, and he’s been thinkin’ to get the boss to buy one. Been workin’ on him for a long time. I reckon he’s got it in his mind that if a big-shot Longford banker like Henry Thornton was to start ridin’ around in one of them contraptions, everybody in the county would buy one, even if they had to sell off half their stock and five or six kids to do it.”
Hy stretched out his busted leg and rested it on the apple box he’d been using as a footstool. He stared off into space again, leaving Gib shuffling from one foot to the other, fretting to hear the rest of the story.
Finally Hy blinked, caught his breath like someone just waking up from a catnap, and took up right where he left off. “Well sir, just last month, soon as the roads dried out a bit, old Appleton took it into his head to drive out here in one of them things and take the Thorntons for a ride. And, just my luck, when he rode that smokin’, rattlin’, backfirin’ bucket of bolts down our driveway I happened to be out in front of the house untyin’ the boss’s team from the hitchin’ rail. And you can just bet it scared the holy hallelujah out of them old buggy horses. Specially Caesar. Spooky bonehead’s always been real noise-shy.” Hy sighed again and went quiet, gazing off into the past.
“And so what happened?” Gib prodded him.
“Ran right over me, they did,” he said at last. “Buggy and all. Busted my leg in two places.”
“The team ran over you!” Gib couldn’t keep the shock and consternation out of his voice. “That’s awful.
”
“Surely is,” Hy said mournfully, but then he grinned. “But on the good side”—he rolled his eyes meaningfully—“it gave us a real good bargainin’ chip for—” He stopped suddenly, shrugged, and changed the subject. And Gib wasn’t able to get him to change it back.
Gib had also learned during those first days exactly what was expected of him as a farm-out at the Thorntons’ Rocking M, or, as Hy called it, “what’s left of the Rocking M.” By the third day Gib had pretty much learned not only what chores he was expected to do every day but also exactly how to do them. Right at first Hy had followed him around, “showin’ him the ropes,” as he called it. But as soon as Gib knew where all the tools and grooming equipment were kept, and just how and when to do the feeding and stall cleaning and gardening, Hy started spending less time giving advice and more time back at the cabin resting his bad leg.
So Gib milked and watered and hoed and shoveled and fed in the morning, and then after the noon meal he did a lot more of the same. And just about when he was finishing everything up it was time to start listening for the jangle and clop that meant Mr. Thornton and Livy were returning from Longford, and there was the team to take care of.
Hy had mentioned that after his leg was broken, and before Gib had showed up, Mr. Thornton had managed to unharness the team himself for a while. But not anymore. “Don’t think the boss likes being around horses much,” Hy said. “And I reckon he figured a banker ought to quit doing barnyard work as soon as the outfit had an able-bodied horse wrangler again.” Hy grinned at Gib. Gib didn’t see what being a banker had to do with not taking care of a tired team, but to tell the truth he got a kick out of doing anything that had to do with horses, just as he’d liked taking care of old Juno back at Lovell House. And he surely didn’t mind being called the wrangler, even if Hy was only pulling his leg when he said it.
So it was a part of Gib’s job to fetch the tired, sweated-up team around to the barn, unharness them from the buggy, walk them a bit to cool them down, put them in their stalls, and get them fed. But then he was free to do whatever he wanted, right up until it was time for the evening milking.
Gib Rides Home Page 9
