Pony Stories (3 Book Bind-Up) (Red Fox Summer Reading Collections)

by K. M. Peyton

  She’s worried about falling down the steps, realized Faith. Gem shot her a look of wide-eyed, exaggerated horror which usually made Faith want to laugh. Now, it merely increased her discomfort. She wished fiercely that Beth would go inside and change back into her jeans.

  To make matters worse, Ben Warren’s face assumed a false look of heartiness. He strode up to where Beth stood and said in an uncomfortable voice, ‘This must be Beth.’

  ‘No, it isn’t!’ erupted Faith. ‘She usually looks much better!’

  There was a shocked silence. Faith could hear the tail of her sister’s gasp. And then Beth laughed. It was a big, deep laugh. She had come back among the living. She stopped wobbling and leaned against the old, peeling porch column. Her face relaxed and smiled.

  ‘You were right, Ben Warren, yesterday when you told Faith I would know your name. I know you.’

  The genuine ease flooded back into the cowboy’s manner. He chuckled, put one boot on the lower step and leaned into his knee.

  ‘I sure know you, lady,’ he admitted. ‘You’re a legend. Turning down fifty thousand green ones for the fine black thoroughbred of yours. That right?’

  Beth looked startled and then blushed.

  ‘I’ve watched you ride many a time,’ continued the cowboy. ‘Now I watch your students ride.’ He paused, then said softly, ‘The dynamite lady, Miss Beth Holbein. Pleased to meet you at last.’

  He smiled a real smile into her face. There was a kind of burning in the air between them, like electricity. Gem shot Faith a knowing look but Faith ignored it. They really like each other, she thought a trifle sadly. But she comforted herself that this was her gift to Beth, her cowboy.

  They all helped Ben Warren carry bags of groceries into the newly cleaned kitchen. Faith steered him carefully past the hall closet. Then she arranged the flowers on the table, letting them spill and trail from an old milk pail.

  It was a lovely evening, despite some minor setbacks. Beth’s high heels menaced her walking. A sheep got loose and wandered around outside the house. Ben Warren had to sharpen the dull kitchen knives before he could begin cooking.

  ‘Dull knives are dangerous knives,’ he said as he slid the newly sharpened blade into a chicken breast, neatly severing the flesh from the rib bones. ‘You wind up forcing the blade and you can slip and cut yourself.’

  Faith watched, entranced. He arranged the chicken in a baking crock with tiny new potatoes and artichoke hearts. Faith had never liked artichokes much. But when she saw them, hot from the oven, nestled next to chicken and potatoes in a bubbly sauce, she could hardly wait until they sat down to eat.

  Gem was allowed a half glass of wine and Faith a mineral water with a dash of wine. There were hot rolls. Beth had picked fresh lettuce from her garden to toss with tomatoes, sweet onions and Ben Warren’s homemade dressing.

  ‘Oh,’ breathed Faith as they all sat down and spread the napkins in their laps. ‘Oh . . .’ A phrase of her grandfather’s came to mind. ‘What a sumptuous repast!’ she said.

  They all clinked glasses while the escaped sheep peered through the dining room window.

  The rest of the evening was wonderful, too. Beth took off her shoes and walked barefoot in her old-fashioned dress. She did not flirt like Gem flirted. She blushed and beamed. They all did the dishes. Ben Warren insisted. ‘You have to get this stuff over with or it just hangs on,’ he said.

  Then he gave them a grand tour of his van. It was neat as a pin. Up front he had a tape deck and a citizens band radio. Behind the front seats was a little kitchen with a real sink, a stove and a miniature refrigerator. There was even a tiny bathroom with the towel and washcloth neatly in place. In a narrow closet hung his clothes, shirts all facing left. Faith thought of the hall closet back at the house and shuddered.

  In the back of the van was a bunk bed on which sat a guitar. Faith was rapt when Ben Warren picked it up and began to hum.

  He played ‘Harvest Moon’ and they all sang. He played ‘The Ash Grove.’ Then Gem sang ‘I’m Bidin’ My Time’ in her very beautiful, clear soprano voice and Faith hated her only briefly.

  Faith had never seen Beth smile so much. Nor had she ever seen her so awake at this hour of the evening unless there was an emergency with a sick horse or a broken water pump. Tonight Beth’s eyes were bright and merry. She didn’t seem the least bit tired. Nobody, in fact, was tired, and it was midnight before anyone realized how late it was.

  Smiling, Beth suggested that it was time to ‘hit the hay, girls.’ Faith and Gem went reluctantly up to their bedroom, but they left the stairwell door open a crack. After they had changed into their nightclothes, they crept back down the stairway, smothering giggles, and crouched near the bottom, trying to hear what Beth and Ben were saying to each other in the living room.

  Blackie Whiteface came tumbling down the stairs, his toenails clicking against the wooden steps. Faith hushed him and he curled up in her lap, licking her fingers.

  Bored by the long pauses between the soft conversation in the living room, Faith fell asleep in the stairwell, leaning against her sister. She was startled awake as she and Gem and Blackie Whiteface rolled, bumpidy-thump, down the last couple of steps and thudded into the stairwell door. They had all dropped asleep against each other and collapsed like a house of cards. Ben Warren, who had leaped to his feet at the crash of bodies, ran to the door and yanked it open. It was not the door to the stairwell, but the hall closet door.

  There was a clatter and thump and the cowboy’s shout of alarm. When the girls peeked around the doorjamb, they saw an amazed Ben Warren covered with loops of tack, dirty laundry and kitty litter. Beth was leaning against a wall, her hand over her mouth. Faith couldn’t tell whether she was laughing or just plain mortified.

  ‘Well,’ said Ben Warren, waving his arms to disentangle himself. Then he saw the sisters and a frightened kitten peering from behind the door and began to laugh. ‘You sure need some organizing around here,’ was all he said.

  10

  FAITH WAS SO high on the overwhelming success of the dinner party that she floated about for a week, absorbed by Beth and Ben’s interest in each other.

  When Ben Warren wasn’t off judging a horse show, he lived in his van parked next to the garden. There was a new atmosphere about the place.

  Beth was warm with Faith these days and smiled often. She was amused that Ben Warren had cleaned up her kitchen spick and span and she couldn’t find anything anymore. He had even straightened up Beth’s closet, and all her shirts and blouses were now facing left.

  The cowboy had begun to finish up the sheep’s bathroom, too. In the evenings, he and Beth talked over where the new shelving would go and whether the shower should be separate from the tub.

  Faith basked in her own virtues. She whistled as she shoved damp clothes into the dryer. She hummed as she did the dishes. Ben Warren called her Cinderella, but she could tell he admired her sense of order. Once he watched her lunge a horse in the ring. She showed off by calling for a canter, something she was still reluctant to do, and then she brought the swift-moving animal back down to a smooth trot. Ben Warren tipped his hat to her. ‘Pretty good stuff,’ he said. Sometimes the world is wonderful, thought Faith.

  One morning, in the tilting mirror of their bedroom, Faith was startled out of her happy satisfaction. Something had happened to her thighs. At first, she was horrified. I’m going to have a bulge in my thighs, she thought. I’m growing up into a person with bulging thighs. Her calves, she noticed, were rounded out too. She decided against the striped shorts she had pulled from the drawer. Instead she dragged on a pair of dirty jeans.

  It seemed impossible that her tiptoe jogging in the morning could be responsible for the new shape of her legs. Nor could the hamstring toe-walk up the stairs at night. True, she did her exercises easily and automatically. She now jogged five minutes in place without breathing heavily.

  Faith was desperate to wake her sister and discuss her legs. But she knew Gem woul
d be impossible to talk to this early. Later, she thought, she would ask Gem about her thighs. Her sister had definite opinions about beauty. She was somehow always mysteriously aware of the right ‘look’ in a person. ‘That’s a cool jacket,’ she would whisper to Faith, nudging her. Or, ‘Did you see his haircut? It’s atrocious! He looks like a fish.’

  Faith ran downstairs and into the kitchen. Beth was already outside, feeding stock. Ben Warren’s van was gone. The cowboy had a show to judge in Indiana. A few flies buzzed by the window and Faith swatted one out of existence with the swatter. Now that Ben Warren had repaired the screen doors there were only a few flies in the house.

  Faith ate some cereal and carefully washed up her dishes, putting them away on the newly lined shelves. Gem would be getting up soon. She never slept past a riding lesson but she was often late to help Faith with the grooming.

  Faith did most of the grooming and tacking up for the beginners’ class. Beth had a lot of new students too small to do it themselves. The broad backs of horses seemed easier to reach with the brush these days.

  On some days she actually enjoyed being close to the horses, slipping underneath their heavy necks to get to the other side. She could bridle them all now, wiggling her thumb and fingers into the sides of their mouths until they took the bit. Then she would spray them with fly spray and help the little ones mount.

  Often she watched the lessons with a careful eye, listening to Beth’s directions, looking to see if the riders followed them. She checked to see if she could ‘see daylight’ between their knees and the saddle. New riders’ knees always stuck out. The relief she had once felt at the beginning of each lesson – relief not to be riding – had been replaced by a vague envy.

  The morning of her new-shaped legs, Faith left the kitchen with a firm purpose, ignoring the chill that cooled her heart. For several days she had been contemplating a daring move. Today, she thought, maybe I’ll do it. Just sit on one of the horses when I bring him down to the ring. Just sit in the saddle. The chill moved into her middle.

  She bounded from the porch, scattering a few barn cats. Cars were pulling in with students. She met Beth leading Rambler toward the stable.

  ‘Good morning, lazybones,’ greeted Beth with a mild smile. ‘I’ve already tacked up Vixen and Hobo. I’ll need Rambler here and the other four regulars. They’re in the stalls.’ She handed the gray’s lead rope to Faith. ‘You look ready for anything today.’

  ‘I am,’ said Faith, and led Rambler off. He went easily into his stall.

  She was a little nervous tacking Harold up. Flies had invaded the stable and all the animals were jumpy. But she led the big bay outside to a stump and mounted easily. On the way down to the ring, from the high vista of his back, she felt such a rush of excitement and power that Harold surged momentarily into a trot. The old panic returned. She sat back and pulled him down into a walk, heaving a great breath. ‘Don’t you dare, Harold,’ she muttered.

  Beth was in the ring with students when Faith rode Harold up. When she turned to take the horse from Faith, her eyebrows lifted. ‘What have we here?’ was all she said.

  Faith swung out of the saddle and slid down Harold’s warm side to the ground. She handed the reins to Beth trying to appear casual. ‘I’ll ride all the others down.’ She ran back to the barn, flinging a friendly wave at the gathered mothers. Her back felt loose and strong and she wondered briefly how tall she had grown this summer.

  But when she was grooming a restless Hobo, pestered by flies, he stepped on her once. Then, when she slapped his rump, he dangerously waved his hind leg. Cautiously she led him down to the ring, limping as she went, her foot smarting. ‘He’s in a rotten mood today,’ she informed Beth.

  She changed her mind about riding the others down. But later, Faith bragged to Brady in the barn that she had ‘taken up riding again.’ Brady just grunted and kept right on working. Faith realized she would have to look elsewhere for proper appreciation. In a way, she suspected she had told a lie to Brady. She wasn’t sure she’d try riding a horse to the ring again.

  But, several days later, she delivered first Harold, then Vixen by riding them down to the ring. She felt that, one of these days, she would take on Hobo, too.

  The muscle roundness in Faith’s calves and thighs didn’t astonish Gem. When asked, she said, ‘Well, it looks like you’re going to have legs after all, not those pale sticks you’ve been walking around on.’ It wasn’t a whole lot of comfort. Still, Faith felt able to wear her shorts again, even though they were a little tight in the leg.

  *

  One evening, after the dishes were done and Ben Warren was cleaning his fingernails, he suggested to Beth that they go out dancing. ‘Found a nice place, Lady Beth, with some good music. It’ll be somethin’ new.’

  Gem looked up with interest. ‘A disco?’ she asked. Ben laughed.

  Beth was standing by the kitchen table cleaning tack. ‘I don’t have time for new,’ she said impatiently. ‘Or discos.’ But then she joked, ‘I’ve got six more of these to do. If you want something new – here, clean some tack.’ She tossed a bridle at him. There was a long dead pause.

  She meant it to be funny, thought Faith. Into the silence between the couple, Faith dropped an uneasy laugh. Then, quickly, she offered, ‘I’ll do it Beth.’ She grabbed the bridle from Ben’s lap. ‘This is Cinderella’s job.’ But Ben Warren did not smile. He got up and left the room, saying, ‘See you later.’ They heard the van start up and drive off.

  Beth stopped rubbing oil into the bridle looped over a chair. Gem paused in her perpetual nail polishing. Faith felt the air lie heavily on them, gathered about a table full of tack.

  Gem finally shrugged and said, ‘I guess the honeymoon is over.’

  ‘No!’ said Faith. When Gem and Beth looked at her in surprise she mumbled, ‘Honeymoons last two weeks. It’s only been eleven days.’

  After that, small arguments constantly erupted between Beth and Ben. They were about trivial things. ‘If you put your blouse back the same way you took it out, your closet would stay neat,’ Ben would protest.

  At first, Beth nodded and smiled, chiding him, calling him ‘Mr Perfection’. He called her ‘Willie Workhorse’. Gradually, Beth stopped smiling and began to frown whenever the cowboy protested the way she did things.

  Faith couldn’t understand it. Couldn’t they tell when they would irritate each other? Couldn’t they take the same kind of care with one another they had at first? In the beginning it had amused Ben that Beth went out of her way to use dirt roads instead of the nearby blacktop and highway. Now he criticized how dirty her car got. ‘Take the highway,’ he told her. ‘You’re always late for things.’

  Now, during lessons and chores, Beth appeared distant, preoccupied. She didn’t seem to notice Faith’s efficiency with horses, how easily she groomed them.

  ‘I call for a canter all the time now,’ Faith told Beth one afternoon as they brought in horses to be lunged.

  ‘Good,’ said Beth – but she didn’t seem to have heard.

  Gem didn’t appear worried about Beth and Ben when Faith tried to voice her distress. She was more concerned about when Owen was going to call next.

  Gradually the arguments between Beth and Ben Warren became more intense. Bewildered, Faith gave up trying to intervene. The perfect relationship seemed to have turned upside down.

  One afternoon, the cowboy stormed out of the house and into his van. He drove off in a fury of dust and spitting gravel, his van narrowly missing the corner of the bridge.

  The atmosphere inside the house was grim. Beth sat in the kitchen cleaning another bridle with a cold, determined expression on her face. Faith felt defeated and lonely. She left to seek the quiet comfort of the barn, hoping Blackie Whiteface would be there. She wanted to cuddle him and nuzzle into the fur behind his neck. It always made her feel good.

  She called his name into the barn loft. ‘Blackie? Blackie Whiteface? Hey!’ He usually skittered out when he heard he
r voice. But he was not in the barn. Faith wandered down to the sheep pen. There was a bristling commotion in the ram section where two rams were challenging each other. Beth and Ben, thought Faith. Stubborn. Plain bullheaded.

  Blackie Whiteface was there, perched atop the railing of the sheep pen watching the rams. His little white face peered down into the activity. He leaned so far forward into the pen he appeared to be glued by his hind feet to the top rail. The fury in the pen increased, raising dust. There was the thud of heads and horns, a jostling of woolly bodies.

  ‘Blackie, get away from there,’ scolded Faith. The rams backed off from each other and lowered their heads. Their mean little eyes grew smaller.

  Their charge was furious. They lurched. When they hit, their bodies plowed into the fence. Horns locked.

  ‘Blackie!’

  She cried out as the kitten was knocked from his perch. He fell like a stone into the pen – into the angry, blind activity between the rams.

  Then she was screaming, ‘Blackie! Blackie!’ She struggled over the fence, waving her arms at the rams. They backed off in astonishment at the power of fury.

  His little body lay in a crumpled heap. Faith knelt and touched the sprawled ball of fur. He was alive, his breathing slight.

  Very gently, she eased her hands beneath the little form. With great care, she walked with him to the back porch. She sat down on the steps and cradled the warm little body in her lap. Blackie Whiteface mewed faintly and tried to lick her hand. She could feel his heartbeat through her palms . . . so faint. Beat, beat, and a long pause.

  ‘Blackie? Blackie Whiteface?’ she whispered. Beat, beat.

  She knew when he left her. The beat was so faint, she held her breath. And then it was gone.

  They planned a funeral for Blackie Whiteface. Beth lined an old shoebox with soft flannel. ‘We just want to ease him gently back into the cycle of life,’ said Beth. ‘Soon he’ll be back in circulation again.’ She smiled sadly. ‘Part of a flower here, part of tree . . . grass . . . part of a horse, part of you and part of me.’