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

by K. M. Peyton

  Faith was numb with misery. She didn’t want a flower or a tree. She wanted the little black and white kitten who had slept curled against her every night.

  Ben Warren returned in the late afternoon in time to help dig the narrow little grave. They buried Blackie Whiteface near the woods under a big old hickory tree.

  In the evening Ben held Faith in his lap as if she were a baby again. Faith leaned into his clean-smelling shoulder and let herself be that baby for a while.

  Beth and Ben were gentle with each other too, speaking in soft, low voices. Gem held Faith’s hand and offered to sing her any song she wanted to hear.

  ‘Just hum,’ said Faith. ‘I think I’d like some humming.’ So Gem hummed Ave Maria getting only a little carried away on the high notes. It was a very good evening in a way. When she went to bed, Faith plunged into sleep immediately and slept deeply all night.

  The next day it was sunny and warm and seemed too bright. Faith’s body felt heavy and slow. She went through the motions – cleaning up the dishes after breakfast, bringing the horses in for Beth’s classes and helping groom and tack them up. There was not even the luster of fear around the horses anymore. She poked at her food at lunchtime; Ben’s succulent meals didn’t tempt her. She avoided the sheep and kept out of the barn loft where the mother and sisters of Blackie Whiteface romped and fought.

  She wondered listlessly if the rest of her life would drag on this way, colorless and dull.

  In the late afternoon, she plodded down to one of the horse fields. Gone was the sharp edge of anxiety she had always felt approaching it. She could hardly believe she had ever been that scared of anything, had cared that much.

  She sat on the top rail of the fence in the warm sun. Horses grazed, switching at flies. She stared off over the fields and the strangest feeling came over her. She saw the sunlit fields as if through a gray veil. She felt them fading from her, everything slipping away, no longer hers. An emptiness invaded her so terrible that she clutched the rail beneath her.

  ‘Why so quiet, Red?’ asked a voice near her elbow. Ben Warren leaned against the rail next to where she sat. She could not answer. His voice came to her through the grayness.

  Then he reached his big, neat hand gently to the top of her head and smoothed her hair.

  The awful emptiness welled up.

  ‘I don’t want to die,’ whispered Faith. The hum of insects came muffled through the veil.

  ‘Who says you have to?’ asked Ben Warren.

  ‘Everybody dies,’ said Faith dully. But she looked into his face near her shoulder. She felt the faint stirrings of hope.

  ‘You won’t die, Red,’ said Ben Warren. He tucked his finger under her chin and turned her face to his.

  ‘Sometime, a long, long time from now, so far away neither of us can believe in it, a real old lady with your name and lots of memories you don’t even have yet will die. But she won’t mind.’

  He spoke slowly. ‘She’ll be going on a new adventure, one you can’t go on until you die – and she’ll be ready. You can’t go there until you’re ready.’

  ‘Was Blackie Whiteface ready?’ asked Faith, pulling away suspiciously. With the suspicion came a sharp bite of pain.

  ‘I suspect he was,’ said Ben Warren. ‘It’s just that you weren’t ready for him to leave, is all.’

  ‘No,’ said Faith softly. ‘I wasn’t.’

  Then Ben Warren hugged her again, quick and short, lifted her in one sweep from the fence and spanked her lightly on her bottom.

  ‘Come on, Red,’ he said. ‘We gotta feed livestock.’

  Dutifully she followed him back to the barn, her gaze fixed on the taffy-colored boots and the grass slowly lifting back from his big footsteps.

  That night, lying next to her sleeping sister, Faith stared into the darkness of their room. The hollow by her shoulder where her kitten had curled every night felt cold. I don’t have to worry about rolling on him, thought Faith. With that freedom came the memory of his little round belly, breathing in and out as he slept.

  Tears ran silently from her eyes and into the hair by her ears. She lay that way for a long time, shaking with silent sobs, curbing her misery to keep from waking her sister. She stared into the room half the night and finally drifted into a choppy sleep filled with shards of dreams. She dreamed Blackie White-face was still alive and scratching on the screen door wanting to be let in.

  Toward dawn she fell deeply, dreamlessly asleep. They let her sleep late. She woke up several times during the morning, then finally sat up. She found it odd that sunlight was pouring into the room, slanting bright and yellow across the floorboards. She climbed out of bed and went to the window.

  In the fields below, horses grazed. She could hear the faint clatter from the kitchen where Ben Warren was washing dishes. Gem’s trill of composed laughter told Faith her sister was on the telephone with Owen. Down by the barn, Beth emerged carrying grain for the stallion. The world was turning and turning. Faith leaned her head against the cool glass of the upper window.

  The faint clean smell of outdoor horses and sun-warmed grass drifted past her face. She stretched her arms to the top of the window frame and took a deep breath.

  She was growing hungry, but she wanted to wait a little before she stepped back into the world.

  11

  LATE IN AUGUST, the weather in lower Michigan was perfect. Occasional brief rainstorms kept the meadows lush. Although the flies persisted, the nights were now cold enough to kill off some of the pesky insects.

  Tomatoes and courgettes reached their peak in the garden. Faith helped Beth harvest them both. Beth made vats of tomato sauce and they all ate courgette forty different ways.

  The loss of Blackie Whiteface made Faith more quiet and thoughtful than before. She fell back into the routine of the farm, but fragments of the kitten’s lively spirit came to her at unexpected moments. When she went with Beth to bring in the horses, her mind would fly unbidden to the big old hickory tree by the woods. She welcomed the tears at these times but went off by herself to shed them. Once, alone with Cloud, she dropped her brush and wept loudly against his warm neck.

  The horses were in peak shape, despite the daily torment of the flies. Their coats gleamed with health and cleanness. They frolicked in their fields. They wandered from fly-switching groups to graze.

  Watching them from her quietness, Faith saw the horses with a different awareness. She saw how they spoke with movement and stance, arguing and challenging. They raced. They scratched one another. They stood close, inhaling information. She watched them tease and nip each other. She was surprised their speech hadn’t been clear to her before.

  The stream of life at the farm gathered Faith in. One Saturday, a crew of neighbors came over in the morning for a tree felling. All morning Faith’s ears were filled with the angry buzz of power saws. Four huge, dead oaks at one end of the biggest field were cut down. Great limbs were trimmed off, cut and stacked for winter firewood. Then Faith watched the crew wrap chains about the giant trunks and haul them with a tractor into the middle of the field.

  In the stillness of the afternoon, they piled brush heavily about the trunks. Faith helped stuff newspapers inside the branches. Then Ben Warren touched a match to one of the crumpled newspapers and stood back. The newspaper flared up. The dry wood caught and leapt into flame. Like a neon decoration the flames ran along the trunk. The people standing about clapped and cheered as the twigs crackled wildly.

  All afternoon they fed the fire, until finally the old, dried-out trunks caught. The flames settled into the crumbly wood of the great prone trees and glowed there, burning slowly.

  That night, the slow fire lit up the field. The neighbors gathered there. They cooked thick steaks, speared and held over the fire with green branches. They toasted slabs of Ben Warren’s homemade bread on long forks and slapped them on to cardboard plates to soak up the juices. There were ice hampers filled with lemonade and beer.

  They toasted fat, du
sty marshmallows, burning the skins crisp over their oozing insides, and ate them pressed in between melting chocolate graham crackers.

  Ben Warren got out his guitar and played a rousing song. With sticky faces, everyone sang, wiping hands on their wads of gummy napkins.

  Then Ben struck a mellow sweet chord and played a song no one had ever heard before. ‘About this gal I know,’ he explained.

  Faith knew it was Beth he was singing about, although Ben didn’t look at her right away. He sang about her smooth strong arms and her little waist.

  Faith glanced hastily at Beth to see if she was listening, but Beth’s face was in shadow. Faith couldn’t see her expression.

  And she can’t lie – that gal o’ mine,

  and a promise she will keep.

  She’s honest as day is long

  and stubborn as her sheep.

  There was clapping and some good-natured ribbing from the people gathered there. Beth’s face moved out of the shadow into the glow from the fire. Faith could see she was smiling in a funny, shy way.

  The heat of the fire held them all together in its slow burning. Now the great logs seemed lit from inside, their outer shape held together by the glow within. Like long lanterns on some strange planet, Faith thought, and we are travelers, unafraid.

  The night was very black and clear, no moon but crisp stars. Everyone lay on blankets, talking quietly. Gem sat with Owen on a blanket. They held hands. Faith lay, sleepy, with her head in Beth’s lap while Ben Warren smoothed her hair. She thought of Blackie Whiteface for the first time without the yawning ache. There seemed to be no loneliness or sadness anywhere in the world.

  Problems aren’t solved by one magical night, thought Faith several days later. It had been raining, off and on, all morning. There were puddles around the back porch and Wolfie had tracked mud all over the kitchen floor. Thunder rumble still hung in the sky, now near, now distant.

  Beth couldn’t teach on a rainy day, but she had been exercising horses in between thunder showers since breakfast. ‘They’re getting sloppy from being ridden by too many novices,’ she explained when Faith questioned the purpose. ‘They need to be shaped up.’ And out she strode before it could rain again. Faith recognized the determined expression on her face. It meant: Stay out of my way; there’s too much to do!

  Faith sensed something stormy in the air besides the weather, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

  That afternoon, Faith had just started clearing off the lunch dishes when Beth and Ben began one of their arguments. Faith could hear their voices in the living room. Their quarreling was easier for Faith to take when her sister was around, but Gem had gone off for a drive with Owen and his mother. Owen was practising for his driving test. Even Brady was gone, visiting family in Ohio.

  Faith sighed. She could tell this argument was going to be a long one. Beth had lost several phone bills somewhere among her scattered mail and forgotten to pay them. Now the phone line had been disconnected. Ben Warren couldn’t make some calls about a horse show in Canada. The quarrel, which had started with Beth’s messy desk, had progressed to the messy condition of her closets.

  ‘Lady, I can’t function in chaos,’ the cowboy was saying. His nice, soft tones were gone, gone the slow drawl.

  Beth muttered something about having horses to exercise. Ben interrupted. ‘You can’t function in it either, by the looks of things,’ he said. ‘All those emergencies of yours are your own doing.’

  ‘I do all right.’ Beth raised her voice, cold as the edge of a knife. ‘I function best without interference.’

  A terrible silence. Then Beth continued, slow and stubborn. ‘While you are lining up boots and organizing bills, horses get out and run all up and down the road – or the donkey eats up half my garden or a sheep drowns! What good are boots in a row while horses are waiting to be exercised? Or when my sheep is struggling to get out of a water tub?’

  That’s not Ben Warren’s fault, objected Faith.

  ‘Proving my point,’ roared Ben Warren. ‘Anybody with just a tad more brains than a sheep knows enough not to sink the watering tub in the same field with them!’

  They’re not being fair. Not fair. Faith tuned out the voices, running the water full blast in the kitchen sink, churning up the suds. She scrubbed furiously at a frying pan.

  Then she realized it was quiet in the living room. She couldn’t stand it and slipped into the doorway to have a look.

  Ben Warren sat on a stool by the old-fashioned desk. His shoulders were slumped forward. ‘What’s the use,’ he said quietly.

  Beth was at the window, looking out. Her face was closed and pale.

  ‘What’s the point?’ He wasn’t really asking a question.

  It wasn’t the usual argument after all. It wasn’t slam-the-door anger where Ben Warren stalked off forgetting his cowboy hat, leaving everything behind in his angry dust. And came back later for it. And made up.

  This was cold, quiet, giving-up anger. The cowboy got up from the stool. Slowly he went from room to room gathering his belongings. He didn’t forget his socks and his blue work shirts in the laundry basket – or his toothpicks or the special coffee cup over the sink. It didn’t take him long. He had most of his stuff in his van anyway, neatly hanging or filed away.

  ‘You can keep the food in the freezer,’ he said quietly to Beth. He was stuffing things into a blue denim bag. Beth still stood by the window looking out, a statue with fists gripped, face of stone.

  She didn’t turn. Faith felt a rush of despair. Ben Warren smiled wanly at her as he opened the screen door. ‘Bye, Red,’ he said. He didn’t even slam the screen door when he left.

  Faith ran out behind him, tagging after his heels. He swung himself in the side door of the yellow van.

  ‘Ben?’ asked Faith.

  He turned and looked down at her from the doorway.

  ‘You coming back?’

  ‘Don’t think so, Red.’ His drawl was heavy and serious.

  ‘Can I write you a letter? Someplace?’ asked Faith. ‘Do you have an address? Anywhere else, I mean?’

  ‘I’ll send you a card when I get somewhere.’ He looked at her for a moment. Faith felt tears coming on. Then he said, ‘Don’t make it harder, Red.’ He turned, closing the van door gently behind him.

  ‘It’s going to rain,’ Faith said to the closed door.

  She waited for the van to pull out. He must be putting things away, she thought. Even when he’s mad, he’s neat.

  Then she turned and ran back to the house. Beth wasn’t in the living room anymore. Or the kitchen. Faith hurried, calling through the house, ‘Beth! Beth!’ No answer from upstairs either. She felt meanness spreading through her body.

  ‘Don’t you like Ben Warren?’ she wanted to ask her. My cowboy? I gave him to you. Is that what you do with a present?

  She slammed out on to the porch. The van was still there. Then she saw Beth striding down to the barn. She’s just going to keep on working, thought Faith.

  She watched Beth disappear into the stable and then reappear, lugging a saddle with a bridle over her shoulder.

  From the distant sky, a faint rumble of thunder seemed ridiculously appropriate. Up to the rain-green field strode Beth, hardly slowed by the weight of the heavy saddle.

  Nothing stops her, thought Faith in dismay. Beth hoisted the tack on to the fence rail and marched into the field. Faith watched her catch Cloud without so much as a greeting or a pretty please.

  She’s already exercised Cloud, thought Faith, and then remembered how Beth had ridden out her sorrow when Shinyface was sold.

  Dark clouds were re-forming overhead and the low rumble of thunder growled nearer. Faith felt a fresh surge of anger. They would all have to sit around oiling down wet tack tonight so it wouldn’t stiffen from being rained on. And if somebody didn’t do something, Ben wouldn’t even be there, his easy presence warming the room. She’d have to make Beth see. She jumped off the porch and began to run down to the gat
e. Beth had finished tacking up Cloud by the fence.

  ‘Its going to rain, Beth,’ hollered Faith, hoping to make her pause. But Beth swung neatly up into the saddle. She turned the big black horse and trotted past Faith, leaving a wake like electricity. Off across the big wet field they went. Faith watched her fall into the quick rhythm of the horse, her honey-dark ponytail bobbing in time with Cloud’s tail. The long motion of her back as she posted up and down was easy and sure, as smooth as breathing. Over the crest of the hill they disappeared, heading toward the woods.

  ‘You can clean the tack yourself!’ Faith shouted after her.

  She looked back and Ben Warren’s van was still in the driveway. She had the feeling he was waiting in there, not wanting to leave. If she could just get Beth to stop for a minute.

  She crawled through the fence and began to run across the wet field. Grass soaked her sneakers. Her feet sank into the soft earth. It took ages to reach the top of the hill. Once there, she paused to catch her breath and get her bearings.

  She could see Beth and the black horse, dwarfed by distance. Thunder rumbled again and Beth leaned to pat Cloud’s neck. Faith could almost hear the soothing, ‘Okay, sweet boy – okay.’

  Beth eased Cloud into a canter and he moved out gradually faster, until they were flying toward the woods.

  How beautiful she is, thought Faith. The half light of the approaching rain cast no shadows. Everything stood out clearly, the blades of grass, the perfect miniature of horse and rider against the darkened trees. Ben should see her, Faith thought. He wouldn’t be able to leave.

  Even the small brown rabbit showed clearly, and Faith saw him with pleasure. Her animal person eyes caught the movement as he darted out of the brush, startled by the activity in the field. His little body plunged in a zigzag pattern into the pattern of the thundering horse.

  Faith cried out. Cloud stopped short. He spun up and around. Beth hurtled from his back, somersaulting through the air. Faith heard her land with a muffled crunch. The crumpled figure twitched against the rubble of wood and stones. Then she lay still.