Horse Dreams

by Dandi Daley Mackall

  Mr. Yanke’s eyes grow big. He lowers his stun gun and straightens his cap. Then he peers up at the sky . . . just as the pinto races past us. “I don’t see any helicopters.”

  “Really?” I take a step back. “Huh. Guess I’m seeing things.”

  Sheriff Duffy is the first to reach us. He glares at Yanke. “What happened? You let that nag run right past you!”

  The deputy is behind him. “Yeah! We had him right where we wanted him!”

  “Her,” I correct.

  The three of them frown at me.

  Yanke’s partner storms up to him. She whips off her cap and smacks it against her thigh. “What gives? You could have reached out and stunned that creature and been done with this whole circus!”

  Mr. Yanke jumps in. “Well, I was going to stun her. Then this kid . . .” He glares at me.

  I smile back at them. “He’s right. Mr. Yanke was totally ready to stun that horse all by himself.”

  Mr. Yanke gives them an I-told-you-so nod and waits for me to finish.

  “That’s because . . . how did you put it, Mr. Yanke? Everybody else here is too chicken-livered scared to help?”

  “Hey!” the sheriff cries. “I wasn’t scared.”

  “Me neither!” his deputy claims.

  “You’re the one who hates horses,” Yanke’s partner mutters.

  “Me?” Yanke shouts. “What about you?”

  I leave them outshouting each other while I sneak off to find the pinto.

  The crowd has thinned. It’s starting to get dark, and I’ve lost sight of the horse. Then I see her by the flag pole. I move in closer and can see every muscle of the horse’s skinny back quivering. She looks ready to fly out of there the second she senses danger.

  I’m no danger. I just have to convince her of that. “Hey, girl,” I say in a cheery voice as I inch closer to her.

  Behind me, I hear Colt’s voice. “Stand back, people! Give Ellie a chance. She’s good with horses.”

  I’m grateful to Colt for holding back the crowd.

  “So,” I tell the pinto, “you’ve had quite a day. Me too. Don’t get me started. First I see you, but nobody believes me. Then—”

  I keep a steady stream of babble going. Inside, I’m praying, although I’m not even sure what I’m saying—inside or out. I figure God understands anyway.

  I carefully inch toward the mare. “Who likes to be chased, right?”

  She sidesteps.

  “Whoa, now.”

  She takes a few steps backward. I go with her. I stop, and she stops.

  Now what?

  I keep talking. “Sure glad we found you, Ms. Pinto. My mom’s really sorry she lost you. She loses things a lot. But you’re the first horse she’s lost.”

  The chatter isn’t working anymore. I can see the muscles in the pinto’s shoulders knot. She’s thinking about bolting. I don’t know what to do to stop her. She’ll run away. She’ll be lost again.

  Before I realize what I’m doing, I hear myself singing:

  “I once was lost but now am found

  Was blind but now I see.

  Amazing grace! How sweet the sound . . .”

  The pinto’s big, fuzzy ears prick up. I keep singing, even though Granny used to say I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket with the lid on. I take a step toward the horse, and she doesn’t move away.

  I’ve watched Mr. Harper catch the horses he lets us ride in horsemanship practice. And I’ve noticed a funny thing about those horses. They play hard to get. If Mr. Harper walks into a pasture full of horses, the only one that runs from him is the one he wants. I’ve always wondered what would happen if he pretended he was there for a different horse.

  It’s worth a try now. This pinto sure has been playing hard to get.

  I keep singing as I walk closer to her. But I look past her, off to the side, like I’m going for a different horse—not her. I get so close I feel the heat of her sweaty neck.

  Slowly, without looking at her, I reach up and scratch under her neck. She lets me. I ease my hand up toward her mane.

  With my arm draped around the horse, I start singing again. This time I sing my own words to the tune of “Amazing Grace”:

  “I need a rope for this spotted horse.

  Won’t somebody slip me a rope?

  ’Cause if you don’t,

  This horse will lope.

  And will I catch her? Nope!”

  I keep singing, glad that—thanks to Dad’s soap jingle—I know so many words that rhyme with rope.

  “She should stop singing,” Larissa complains. “That’s not how the song goes.”

  But Colt gets it. He disappears for a minute. When he comes running back, he’s carrying a rope behind his back. I don’t know where he found it, and I don’t ask. He slips it to me. I loop it around the pinto’s neck and pull the end through, and I’ve got myself a lead rope.

  I take a step, and so does the pinto. The way she’s panting, I’m not too worried about her running off on me now.

  Mr. Yanke comes jogging up to us. I wish he wouldn’t. I can feel the pinto tense up at the sight of him.

  “All right then,” he says. “You, uh . . . you shouldn’t stand so close to that horse, girl. Don’t know what you were thinking. I’ll take it from here.” He reaches for my rope.

  “I don’t think so,” I say.

  “Well, maybe it wouldn’t hurt for you to take her on up into my trailer.” The pinto swishes her tail. Mr. Yanke jumps back.

  “Still don’t think so,” I tell him. “I’m taking her back to the . . .” I stop myself before I mention the cat farm. “To the animal farm.”

  “The what?” he asks.

  “Well done, Ellie!” Mom comes running up. She’s barefoot, carrying her sandals. “I wish your father could have seen that.” She narrows her eyes at Mr. Yanke. “Can we help you?”

  “I told your girl here that she could put that horse in my trailer. Or she could hand it over to me now.”

  “And I told Mr. Yanke that I was taking the pinto back to the animal farm.” I wink at Mom and pray she takes the cue.

  “What’s she talking about?” he asks. “Does she mean that cat farm north of town? They don’t have horses out there.”

  Mom grins at him. “They do now.”

  9

  Journey

  Mom stands side by side with me and the pinto as Mr. Yanke storms off to his empty horse trailer.

  Behind us, I hear clapping. Wild applause bursts out across the school yard.

  I look around to see what everybody’s clapping about.

  “Take a bow, Ellie!” Colt shouts.

  “Me?” They’re clapping for me? I see our mailman, Mr. Blackburn. And my first-grade teacher, Miss Tomlin. And two high school girls, cheerleaders for the Hamilton Hornets. They’re all clapping for me.

  The pinto starts dancing around. She doesn’t like the noise. With only the rope around her neck, I don’t think I could hold her if she took off on me.

  Somebody tosses me a halter. I reach out and catch it.

  “It’s an extra I had in the truck!” Mr. Harper says.

  “Thanks, Mr. Harper!” I call back. Sometimes people turn out to be even nicer than I thought they were.

  From somewhere in the thinning crowd, Larissa’s whine comes through. “Big deal. So she caught an ugly backyard horse.”

  And sometimes people aren’t nicer than I thought.

  I slip on the halter and buckle it. It’s a little big, but it should do the trick. Then I fasten the rope.

  “I’ll lead her to the cat farm,” I tell Mom.

  “Honey, it must be two miles to that barn.” She glances at Mr. Yanke’s trailer. “Maybe we could—”

  “No way, Mom! It’s safer if I walk her. Okay?”

  Mom sighs. “All right. I’ll call your father and let him know we’ll be late.”

  We set out at a slow pace, taking the back roads. The sun’s dropped out of sight, but I can see all right. On
ce I let the pinto graze along the roadside. But she takes only one bite of clover. Then she jerks her head up and snorts, like she expects somebody to take it away from her. No wonder she’s so skinny. Who owned her before she ended up here? I’d like to know what they did to make her so skittish.

  I sing to her for most of the journey. Whenever I stop, she prances sideways and begins trembling again. So I run through every song I can think of. Colt would be rolling in the ditch laughing if he were here. He says Ethan is lucky because he can’t hear me sing.

  It takes us an hour to get to the cat farm. The whole time Mom follows me in her car. I didn’t know cars could go that slow. But I’m thankful for the headlights because by the time I get to the barn, it’s pitch dark. I’m not sure who’s more tired—the pinto, Mom, or me.

  “There’s a tank of water in the corner stall,” Mom says. She goes into the barn first and pulls a string that turns on an overhead light. Shadows streak the barn floor.

  We shoo cats out of the stall. The pinto walks straight in and starts drinking. I watch her long, skinny neck stretch to the water tank and gulp, gulp, gulp.

  “You’re really thirsty, aren’t you, girl?” I stroke the soft underside of her neck and feel the water swoosh down.

  I unhook the lead rope but leave her halter on so she won’t be so hard to catch.

  Together Mom and I drag down a bale of hay from the loft. Then we cover the stall floor with a layer of straw. It’s not easy because a million cats swarm around our feet while we work. It’s a miracle the pinto doesn’t step on any of them.

  A scrawny calico cat jumps onto the pinto’s back and curls up there, purring. Spots on spots. I expect the mare to buck her off, but she doesn’t.

  “Let’s go home, Ellie,” Mom says. “I’m dead on my feet and running on empty.”

  I latch the stall door behind me and take one last look at the horse. I sure hope somebody can get those burs out of her mane and tail. She needs a good brushing too.

  We trudge to the car and head home. Outside my car window the moon looks like someone took a bite out of it. “What’s going to happen to her?” I ask.

  “I’ll make some calls tomorrow,” Mom says, yawning behind the wheel. “We’ll find somewhere that can take her. She’ll be fine.”

  I nod. But I can’t help thinking that horse hasn’t been fine for a long time—maybe ever.

  At home, Ethan and Dad make us give them a blow-by-blow description of the great horse rescue. By the time I crawl into bed, it’s really late.

  I say my prayers anyway, like I do every night. I know I need to talk to God more during the day. But I forget. Sometimes a whole day goes by and I haven’t even said hey to God. So at least I make sure to check in at night.

  That was really something today, God. Thanks for helping me catch that pinto. Please take care of her from now on. Find somebody to comb out that mane of hers. And brush her. And trim her hooves. And fatten her up.

  It’s hard to get the picture of the pinto out of my mind. Just before we left, she turned her neck and looked right at me. Then she nickered. It was a soft rumble that sounded like a thank-you.

  After I pray for Mom and Dad and Ethan and everybody, I do what I’ve done every night for the past six or seven years. I ask God to give me a beautiful black stallion, a show horse that could win the Hamilton Royal Horse Show.

  My bedroom window opens onto our backyard. Sometimes at night after I finish praying for a horse, I imagine one coming to visit me. Tonight I picture myself opening my window and a black stallion cantering up and sticking his head in so I can pet him and kiss his soft muzzle.

  As I drift off to sleep, I can almost hear him nicker.

  10

  Worry

  “I don’t see why we have to go through with this parent-teacher-principal meeting now that everybody in town knows Ellie really did see a spotted horse from her classroom,” Dad says. Mom is driving us to school for the dreaded meeting. Ethan is along for the ride.

  “I agree with Dad,” I say helpfully.

  “Ellie,” Mom says, glancing into the rearview mirror for eye contact, “what did your teacher say when you asked her about the meeting?”

  “She said Principal Fishpaw still wants to talk with us,” I mumble.

  “Exactly,” she says.

  “Well,” Dad complains, “it makes a rotten ending to a perfect day.”

  “You had a perfect day?” I ask. My day wasn’t perfect—not even close. A few kids congratulated me on catching the “ugly horse.” But even more people teased me about it. Plus, I forgot to write up my plan for the science experiment. So I’m already down five points.

  “Yes. A perfect day,” Dad repeats. “Thanks to you, Ellie.”

  “Me?”

  “You gave me hope.”

  Then I remember. “Your jingle! Did the soap people like it?”

  “They loved it! We got the account.” Dad smiles at me from the front seat. “Couldn’t have done it without your rhyme.”

  “Way to go, Dad!”

  Ethan taps Dad’s shoulder and signs, Congratulations!

  “I knew you’d pull it off, Lenny,” Mom says. “That must have gone down finer than frog’s hair with your boss.”

  “I believe Ms. Warden was as happy as I’ve ever seen her,” Dad says. “The corners of her mouth turned up for a full three seconds. Moira Stevens, on the other hand, stormed out of the board room without a word. Quite surprising.”

  After what Colt told me about how much his mother wants that promotion, I’m not surprised at all.

  “I hardly see Moira anymore,” Mom says. She turns in to the school parking lot. “We chat on the phone sometimes. But all she talks about is that promotion. Does she realize she’ll have to be away from her family for weeks at a time if she gets that job?”

  Dad shrugs. “Speaking of being away, what’s up with Jeff Stevens? I haven’t seen Jeff around for weeks. I know he travels and whatnot . . .” Dad lowers his voice and stops signing, which makes me think something’s up at Colt’s house.

  Part of me wants to pray that Colt’s mom doesn’t get that promotion. Part of me wants to pray that my dad doesn’t get it either. I’d hate for him to be gone all the time.

  And this is one of the confusing things about praying. What if I’m praying my dad won’t get the promotion, but he’s praying he will?

  I ask God to watch out for Colt. I’ll let God figure out the rest.

  Dad tries to talk Mom out of the meeting at school right up to the second we knock on the principal’s office door.

  “Maybe I should wait here with Ethan?” he suggests.

  Ethan has already claimed the only folding chair in the hallway. He’s lost in his graphic novel.

  “You’re being silly, Lenny,” Mom says, knocking again.

  The door cracks open. My principal sticks out his head. He frowns at us like he suspects we’re secretly here to rob the place.

  Finally he swings the door wide open and motions us to his inner office. No one goes to the Fishpaw inner office unless they’re in serious trouble. Three kids went in and never came out. At least that’s what Colt’s big sister, Sierra, told us.

  We follow Principal Fishpaw single file. He towers over all of us, except Mom. I reach back and take hold of Dad’s hand. But it’s too sweaty, so I let go again. I don’t think Dad notices.

  My teacher greets us and shakes Mom’s and Dad’s hands. I catch her wiping her hand on her blue-and-white sweatpants after she shakes Dad’s hand.

  “Thank you so much for coming.” Miss Hernandez points to the three small chairs across the desk from the principal’s king-sized chair. “Please take a seat.” She leans against the edge of the desk, and my principal takes his throne.

  As usual, Principal Fishpaw is wearing a suit, socks, and sandals. Sometimes in the winter he wears shoes with no socks. It’s a mystery. He’s about twice the size of my dad. His head makes me think of our lawn—with tufts of grass in odd places
.

  Principal Fishpaw fixes his gaze on my dad. “Leonard, it’s good to see you here again.”

  Leonard? Nobody calls Dad Leonard. He’s just Lenny or Dad.

  Dad doesn’t correct the principal. “Thank you, sir,” he says.

  “Brings back memories, doesn’t it?” my principal asks. “You and me sitting across this very desk after I called you to the principal’s office?”

  Sweat forms in tiny balls across Dad’s forehead. “Well, that was a long time ago—”

  “Not so long ago!” Principal Fishpaw bellows, as if my dad is trying to pick a fight with him.

  Dad tries to grin, but he looks like he has a stomachache. “Yes. Well, I-I-I guess we should have called off this meeting.”

  “Called off the meeting?” Principal Fishpaw roars. “Why on earth would I do such a thing?”

  Dad grips the seat of his chair as if Principal Fishpaw’s roar might blow him out of the office. “I mean . . . you know . . . since Ellie did see the horse and whatnot?”

  Miss Hernandez smiles at me. “I owe you an apology, Ellie. When you shouted in class that you saw a horse, I admit I thought it was your imagination talking.”

  “Wait a minute.” Principal Fishpaw glares at my dad. “What do you mean, your daughter saw a horse from her classroom? Were you there, Leonard? In that classroom? Have you decided to repeat fourth grade?”

  Dad clears his throat. “Well, no. Of course not. I have a job. A very good job.”

  “So what you’re telling me is that you weren’t there. You didn’t see any horses from the fourth-grade window, did you? You have no way of knowing if Ellie saw that imaginary horse.”

  “Well,” Dad stammers, “wh-when you put it like that . . .”

  “Dwayne!” Mom snaps.

  Dad, Miss Hernandez, and I turn to Mom. But she has locked her glare onto my principal.

  “Yes, Bev?” Principal Fishpaw answers.

  My mom never had Mr. Fishpaw as a principal because she didn’t grow up here. But she knows everybody in Hamilton. She’s on the school board and president of the Parent-Teacher Organization.

  “Dwayne Fishpaw—” Mom slaps the desk, and we jump—“it’s high time to use the sense the good Lord gave you, hear? Not only did Ellie see the horse, but I saw this ‘imaginary’ horse with my own two eyes. Now, are you going to quit bullying my husband and apologize to my daughter or not?”