A Horse to Love

by Nancy Springer

  “What?” He could not believe what he was hearing.

  “I hate it when you call me Squirt,” she repeated, clearly and without raising her voice.

  “But—but, Erin, it’s your pet name! To show you I love you. I don’t mean any harm by it.” Don Calahan felt hurt, and Erin could hear it in his voice. She sank back to her seat on the bed, shoulders rounded. Everything had been beautiful until she had opened her mouth.…

  “That’s right, Dad,” Mike spoke up suddenly. “Lay a load of guilt on her.”

  “Michael!” His mother was outraged.

  But Don Calahan said, “No, he’s right. I’m way out of line. When somebody speaks up and tells me an honest thing, I should listen.” He touched Erin lightly on the shoulder. “Come on, Sq—Erin, I mean. Get to bed.” He made sweeping gestures. “Mike, you too! Everybody out!”

  “Good night, little sister,” Mike told her nastily in the hallway. Erin smiled at him, a warm, wide smile. Hard for Mike to be too nice for too long. And it was, indeed, a good night.

  The next day, Saturday, Erin spent some time pacing around in her room like a thoroughbred in a too-small stall. Finally, sighing, she sat down at her desk. Much as she wanted always to ride, ride, ride, every day, all summer, she knew now that her horse was not something she could take for granted. Her parents worked hard to make the money that paid the board. It would be only fair if she spent some of her time helping.

  She got out some scraps of poster paper, cut them into small rectangles, and began to letter her business cards: Erin Calahan. Babysitting. And her phone number.

  Also on Saturday, one last special get-well card arrived, a handmade one, from Marcy Gilmore.

  “A friend of yours brought this by,” Tawnya told Erin, handing it to her, “but I thought you were asleep, and I didn’t want to wake you.”

  Friend? What friend? She had never run around with the other kids much, and even less since she had gotten Spindrift. She had been too busy with her horse.

  She understood when she took the stiff white art-paper card out of its oversized envelope. There was Marcy’s best-effort pencil drawing of Spindrift, carefully tinted with watercolor. Inside was another drawing, this one of the mare’s head. “She’s worth it,” the message read. “Get well soon. Love, Marcy.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Grumpy as ever, I see,” Erin complained, standing at the stall door and looking in at Spindrift. She did not really mind the mare’s sulkiness, happy as she was to be back. She was just teasing. “Here I am, haven’t been to see you for a whole week, and all you can do is show me your hind end.”

  Spindrift stood at the far corner of her stall with her back turned, refusing to come to the halter. Only the slight movements of her ears showed that she heard Erin at all. Aunt Lexie, moving stiffly, came to look. The old woman was wearing a brace for her back, and she acted nearly as grouchy as the mare.

  “That’s just the way she is,” she snapped.

  “Just like some people are old hags?” Erin gave Aunt Lexie a daring, playful look. In a giddy mood, she was not letting anyone’s grumpiness touch her. Aunt Lexie stared, then barked out a short laugh.

  “That’s right. She’s a good, steady horse, but she just has to have her say. Look at her now.”

  Spindrift had swung her head around to glare at them over her shoulder. Erin laughed.

  “Some people are just born difficult,” said Aunt Lexie more softly.

  “Come on, girl.” Erin showed the mare a jelly bean, holding it out on her open palm. Very, very slowly, one short step at a time, Spindrift came to get it. Erin haltered the horse, then gave her a crushing hug around her neck and a big, mushy kiss on her soft nose. Spindrift stiffened and rolled her eyes in shock.

  “She’s outraged,” said Aunt Lexie, amused. “Her dignity’s hurt.”

  “Difficult people need love like everybody else,” Erin told the mare. She led Spindrift out of her stall and cross-tied her, then began to groom her, humming a tune to herself.

  “She’s been enjoying her vacation,” Aunt Lexie added after a while. “She knows you work her—that’s why she’s acting so sour. You riding today?”

  Erin stopped humming, and a small frown made a line between her eyebrows. “No, I guess not today,” she said. “I’ll just walk her.”

  “Oh.” Aunt Lexie was surprised, and let it show. “I thought the doctor gave you a clean bill of health.”

  “I’m feeling okay. But my hunt cap is smashed. I don’t have a new one yet.”

  “Your brother said you were going to use his old bicycling helmet.”

  “Oh. Well, I—I don’t know where it is.”

  “It’s right in the tack room, hanging by your bridle.”

  “Oh.” Erin fussed with Spindrift’s forelock, arranging it first over one eye, then over the other. “I’m just going to walk her today, anyway.”

  Aunt Lexie stared hard at her. “Young lady,” she said flatly, “you are scared.”

  “I am not!” yelled Erin.

  “And no wonder,” Aunt Lexie added, as if she were just talking to herself. “I know how that goes. No time to be scared while it’s happening, so you think about it afterward. Bad fall. You were hurt. But when I remember the girl who came out here and just couldn’t wait to ride …”

  “You are an old hag!” Erin shouted at her.

  “Listen, kiddo.” Aunt Lexie came closer, peering at her, an odd, focused look on her face. “I’ve got opinions on this. I fell, and I’d give anything to be able to get on a horse and ride again. You fell, and you can.”

  “I will!” Erin yelled. “Tomorrow!”

  “Seems to me,” said Aunt Lexie, “that it’ll get harder the longer you wait.”

  Erin stood feeling miserable. If bad dreams meant scared, then that was what she was, all right—scared. Dreams of the tree branches waving crazily, and the sick, helpless feeling of being flung through the air and falling, falling, and the growl of the bear. Sometimes the dream started as soon as she closed her eyes to go to sleep. If it was just a matter of being afraid it would be all right—she could walk away. But she loved Spindrift.

  “I was so scared Dad was going to take her back,” she told Aunt Lexie in a low voice, “I didn’t have time to be scared about—about the other thing until the last couple of nights.”

  “He really was that upset? I thought so.” Aunt Lexie nodded with sympathy. “Daddies and their little girls. Almost as hard for them to learn as it is for the kids. That all straightened out now?”

  “I think.”

  “Are you worried that if you ride and fall, maybe he’ll want to sell Spindrift again?”

  Erin shook her head. “No. No, my dad’s okay, and Mom’s on my side. No, I’m just scared.” She swallowed. “What if she does it again?”

  “Rears under you, you mean?” Aunt Lexie sounded very gentle, for an old hag. “Why would she? You planning to go find yourself another bear?”

  It could happen again—Erin knew it could. Though it wasn’t likely.… Nothing was ever simple.

  “You survived,” Aunt Lexie added.

  “I’m just walking her today, anyway,” Erin said in a small voice.

  Aunt Lexie looked at her, then suddenly gave in. “Okay. No rush. You want me to show you how to longe her?”

  Even longeing was not as simple as it looked, she learned. A small change in the angle of the leading arm would make Spindrift balk, and a careless movement of the whip would make her bolt. Spindrift did not know how to act on the longe line. “I thought as much,” Aunt Lexie grumbled. Patiently she showed the mare what she wanted, again and again. At first Spindrift would cut in toward the center of the circle, leaving a loop of line dangling. Warned away with the whip, she would lash out with her heels. Longeing could be dangerous. But Spindrift learned quickly.

  “Here,” said Aunt Lexie at last, turning the line over to Erin. “Just, whatever you do, don’t get tangled in the slack.”

  Don�
��t put your finger through a halter ring. Don’t get caught in a loop of lead rope or rein. The horse is strong enough to hurt you without even knowing. Rules tenteen, eleventeen, and twelvety.

  “Get behind her, drive her,” Aunt Lexie ordered. “Look at her butt, not her head!”

  Spindrift had balked, trying to turn back the wrong way. Erin went to her head, careful to gather up the longe line, and got her going clockwise again.

  “That’s her bad side,” said Aunt Lexie. “Keep her moving. She needs more work on that side.”

  “Huh?”

  “Horses are right-handed or left-handed, just like people. That’s her bad side. She’s stiff on that side—she needs to learn to bend that way. Keep her going twice as long that way when you longe her.”

  Silence for several minutes, as Erin concentrated on working her horse. Spindrift began to glisten with a light sweat.

  “Switch the chain and let her walk the other way to cool off,” Aunt Lexie said. “Who’s that watching from up by the road?”

  Erin looked and did not answer. She wasn’t sure in the late-afternoon light, but she thought it looked like Marcy Gilmore.

  Back in school the next morning, Erin found that her accident had made her something of a celebrity. The kids wanted to see her claw scratches, and were disappointed when she told them they were already gone. For that matter, so was the bear. It had been captured by the Forest Service, taken away, and released in a state park a hundred miles distant.

  “But I won’t be able to ride down there anymore,” Erin told Marcy, “not unless I can find someone to come with me. Spindrift will remember.” She frowned, wondering when she would find the courage to ride at all, and Marcy looked at her oddly, saying nothing.

  That afternoon Aunt Lexie was puttering around the stable in her oldest pair of polyester slacks, a torn scarf on her head, hefting electric clippers. She had some colts and fillies to tend to.

  “Buyers coming next week,” she explained crisply. “Got to get them looking decent. You riding?”

  “I’ll just walk her around,” Erin said.

  “Okay.”

  Erin took Spindrift on the lead line, up along the road, then down behind the development along the woods. The mare was behaving beautifully, not even thinking about charging ahead.…

  A dog ran out of a clump of blackberry bushes, and the next thing Erin knew there was a great and startling explosion of energy beside her, like a pheasant bursting into flight only far larger, and the nylon lead was snapping through her hands. By themselves, so it seemed, the hands tightened on the knot at the end of the lead and tugged, tightening the chain, bringing the mare down. Erin stood, with the skin of her palms burning, staring at Spindrift. No use scolding a scared horse—it would just scare her more. The dog was gone, and the mare seemed calm again. Taking a deep breath, Erin turned and walked on, inwardly quaking.

  “She shied,” Erin reported to Aunt Lexie.

  “They’ll do that,” Aunt Lexie grunted, not even looking up from the fetlock she was trimming.

  The next day Spindrift shied at the loud whistle of a bird as Erin led her out to the longe ring. The day after that, being walked again, she sprang back with a snort from a crumpled potato-chip bag caught in the roadside weeds. Erin gave a tug on the chain and sighed. She had to admit, the potato-chip bag had moved in the breeze. Still, she had not expected owning a horse to be like this, always something to tend to, problems to be dealt with, fears to be faced.… She walked on.

  A few minutes later Spindrift shied at, of all things, a mailbox. “Silly girl,” Erin told her, not at all impressed.

  Back at the barn, she groomed her horse for hours, clipping her whiskers and fetlocks, putting a braid in her mane, just for fun. “So pretty,” she told the mare when she was finished.

  Spindrift paid no attention to the sweet talk or to any amount of patting or fussing. She never did.

  “Stuck-up wossie.”

  The horse’s indifference did not bother Erin anymore. Sometime over the last few days the mare had come into clear focus for her. Not a bigger-than-life dream horse any longer, but her very own Spindrift, the grouch. Spindrift the iron-bellied, who would eat anything. Spindrift, who liked jelly beans best. Spindrift, who had to be herself. A real horse. Hardly scary at all—from the ground.

  She had not mentioned at home that she was not riding, and her parents, assuming that she was, had not found out. “How’s the horse?” they would ask at dinnertime each day, and Erin would answer, “Fine.”

  But somehow Mike knew.

  He had an instinct for these things, Erin thought afterward, remembering how she had learned to ride a bike.

  Or perhaps he was in cahoots with Aunt Lexie. Because when Erin walked into the stable on Saturday morning, Aunt Lexie was not there. But Mike stood, big as life, talking to Spindrift through the stall bars. Erin goggled at her brother.

  “I thought you had a game or something.”

  “‘Or something,’” he mimicked. “Is that the way you follow my athletic career? Let me see you get this wild mustang out of the stall.”

  Erin bribed and coaxed Spindrift over to be haltered, all the time with her mind on Mike. What was he doing in her hideaway? Of course, he had fed and watered for Aunt Lexie the whole time Erin had been laid up, so he knew his way around the stable. Still, she had never expected to see him there.

  “Hey, really,” she said, “aren’t you missing practice?”

  “Do you really care?” Mike grinned at her in open challenge. “I’m not leaving until I see you ride this fierce wossie.”

  “I’ll ride her when I’m good and ready!” Erin flared.

  “Ready, my eye. You’re scared.”

  “I am not!”

  “Don’t give me that. You haven’t been on her since the day she threw you.”

  “So? It’s no business of yours.”

  They argued while Erin groomed Spindrift. Mike lounged against a stall in an irritating way, elbows up, as if he was prepared to stay all day. Erin took her time picking hooves, combing mane and tail. Mike was not fooled.

  “Where’s that saddle?” he demanded. “Do I have to go get it myself?”

  “I am not riding today,” Erin shouted, “just because you say so!”

  “Oh, yes you are, little sister!” With a sudden spurt of energy Mike straightened, strode to the tack room, and came out with his old bicycling helmet. As Erin stared he plopped it on her head and adjusted the chin strap to fit her.

  “Saddle,” he ordered.

  “I am not—” Erin started, nearly in tears. Then she stopped what she had been going to say. Mike was not going to give in like Aunt Lexie, she knew. If the world were ending in fifteen minutes—and she felt as if it might—Mike would be pestering her just the same. Even as she thought it, he grinned.

  “Chicken,” he crooned, as if they were both little kids. “Chicken! Dare ya!”

  She glared at him and went to get the gear. Not even a chance of rain; there was not a cloud in the sky.… She was going to have to do it.

  Aunt Lexie happened to be walking down the driveway as Erin led her mare out.

  “That’s my girl!” she said warmly. “Just take her in the ring, Erin. You know she’s not going to do anything in there.”

  Aunt Lexie had planned this with Mike; Erin felt sure of it. “You two make me sick,” she said, taking Spindrift through the gate. Not answering, Aunt Lexie and Mike folded their arms atop the fence, watching.

  Erin sighed, snapped the stirrups down the leathers, gathered her reins, and mounted. She sat for a long moment finding her foot position, letting her heels drop, finding her proper balance in the saddle. Looking down at ground that seemed much too far below.

  Deep breath.…

  She squeezed with her legs. Spindrift started into an easy walk.

  And as soon as the mare was moving between her knees, Erin felt a familiar, forgotten surge of joy, and the world spread itself at her feet once ag
ain. The wide world, hers for riding in. And no matter how she tried to prevent it, a broad, happy grin crept onto her face.

  “Still mad at us?” Aunt Lexie called, smiling.

  “Run her!” Mike yelled.

  She would have loved to. But though Spindrift could have cantered down a country lane with her, she was not yet well enough balanced to manage the curves of the ring without stumbling. Erin trotted her instead, and varied the pace from jog to extended trot back to walk again.

  “First-rate, kiddo,” Aunt Lexie told her afterward, after Mike had gone to the ball field, while Erin was cooling Spindrift and brushing her dry.

  “I don’t know why I waited so long,” Erin admitted.

  Aunt Lexie shrugged. “You’re young, you’re learning. Now you’ve found out. When rotten things happen, you just have to keep going, Erin. Believe me, I know.”

  Chapter Nine

  “When the farrier comes to shoe her,” Erin told Marcy happily, “I can ride her out!”

  “The vet come yet?”

  “While I was laid up. She stood real still for her shots, Aunt Lexie said.”

  Nearly every school day Marcy sat with Erin on the bus either in the morning or in the afternoon, and she always wanted to hear news of Spindrift. Unlike her parents, Erin thought, who seemed to ask about her horse just to ask, Marcy was really interested. She, too, had read every horse book in the school library three times.

  “I can’t wait to canter her. She’s getting more collected on the longe. She used to go along all strung out.”

  “Will you ride her at the canter on the trail?”

  “Sure!”

  “Where will you ride?”

  “Back by the woods. Anywhere except where the bear was.” Erin sighed. Her rides would still be short for a while, the countryside beyond those far woods still beckoning, calling to her. “Aunt Lexie says the best way to get her through there would be to pony her, go with somebody else on horseback. Horses always act braver when they’re with each other.”

  “Wish I could come,” Marcy murmured.