by Jane Smiley
And now there was a shout from up the hill—“Abby! AAABBYYY!” Daddy’s voice. “Ruth Abigail! You out there?” He only calls me by my full name when he’s worried or mad.
I was backing slowly away from the mare and foal, not wanting to shout and startle them.
Daddy appeared on the brow of the hill. I could see him out of the corner of my eye. Surely from there he could take it all in—me, mare, foal. I backed up two more steps. There was a silence. Then I heard him say, “What the—” He never finished this sentence, because he never spoke the name of the Lord in an idle fashion, but sometimes he came close.
I turned and ran up the hill.
He said, “Is that a foal?”
“It is, Daddy. It’s so big and pretty.”
We stood there for a minute, and Daddy said, “Well, I’ll be—” And then, “It’s always one trial or another.”
“Should we bring them in?”
“And put her where? Those stalls aren’t clean enough for a foal. They’re better off out here.”
“But it’s cold.”
“Well, she should have thought of that before foaling out, don’t you think?”
I looked at him. We were walking up the hill, almost to the gate by now.
“Mares can wait, you know, not like humans. You ask your mom about it. I’ve heard of mares going three hundred eighty days, just because the weather’s no good.” With every word he said, I sensed him getting less and less happy.
I said, “It’s so cute, Daddy. It doesn’t have a speck of white on it. It’s got a pretty head.”
“What can I do with a foal? What can I do with a mare who has a foal? Can’t wean it for five months, then it’ll take another two months or so to get her in shape. That’s seven months of burning hay before we can even begin to sell her. That’s probably why they sold her to us in the first place—they knew she was in foal and they didn’t want to deal with it. Woke up one morning and one of the stallions was out with the mares, or something like that, so they crossed their fingers behind their back and threw her in with the others just to get rid of her.”
Mom was at the door. “What? What is it? Is everyone okay?”
“Got a foal is all,” said Daddy as he went past her into the kitchen.
“A foal!” She put her hands on my shoulders. “Do they look okay?”
I said, “It looks great, Mom!”
“Should we call the vet?”
Daddy said, “First, we’ll call the Lord. The Lord will decide.”
I kind of did not like that, because in my experience, the Lord didn’t always decide as I would have.
Daddy said, “Abby can help me outside. She’s already missed the school bus.”
Mom looked at the clock and said, “Well, she has.”
That was the second good thing to happen that day, and it was only seven a.m.
We had some toast and went back out. The first thing we had to do was clean the biggest stall and put all new straw in, and lots of it. I was happy to think that the Jewel and her foal would be able to snuggle down into the bedding and stay warm. Then we took a halter down to where the mare was. We approached her carefully, but she was friendly, just the way she had been before she foaled. After I put the halter on her, Daddy stood looking at the baby. It was now full day, and even I could see that he was a colt, and a nice one—strong, with a well-set neck and an alert look about him. He wasn’t crowding against the mare, either—he already had a mind of his own (“Not a good sign,” said Daddy).
The colt would turn away from the mare and stare out over the crick or up the hill, then leap into the air and kick out or trot around in a little circle, and she would nicker at him, but not sounding as though she was worried. More of an “I’m here” than a “Watch out!” In the end, we didn’t try to touch him, we just walked the mare slowly up the hill, letting her stop and call him anytime she wanted to. He came along, but not without jumping and frolicking. I couldn’t stand the idea that we might name him George, but Daddy was strict about the names because he said I already got too attached to some of them. If he let me name them, then I would pine for them after they were gone. So I didn’t say anything.
When we got to the top of the hill, Daddy held the other mare so that she wouldn’t try anything, and we went through the gate. The Georges were all eyes and ears, too. Every one of the horses was whinnying.
The hardest thing was getting the colt into the stall. The way we did that was, I held open the stall door as wide as it would go, Mom stood inside with Jewel, and Daddy ranged around behind the foal, not driving it, but being a barrier if it wanted to go away. The key was to let the mare call him and let him find her. Even though it took a few minutes for him to make up his mind to go through that scary doorway, and even though her nickers got just a little louder and more nervous, neither one did panic, and pretty soon we had them locked in the stall. If you ask me, the mare looked relieved. She had a nice clean bucket of water and she drank about half of it. The colt gave us a stare and then started to nurse.
Mom said, “Did you look around down there?”
Daddy shook his head, then said, “You two should do that. It’s time she learned.”
“What?” I asked.
Mom said, “We’ve got to go down the hill and look around for the bag and placenta. We’ve got to see if all the placenta came out.”
“I guess you’ll tell me what that is when we get there.”
“You know what that is. It’s what feeds the baby through the umbilical cord when it’s inside the mother. If any of it stays inside the mare, she can die.”
“Let’s go!”
But the placenta was there, lying crumpled in the grass. Mom carefully laid it out, fitting together the pieces we could find the way you would a jigsaw puzzle. “Seems complete,” she said. “We had a mare once—” But then she decided not to tell me that story, and so I knew it was a bad one.
“Daddy doesn’t like the foal.”
“A foal is a lot of work. And a colt is more work. A big lively colt is the most work.”
When we got back up the hill, Daddy said, “Well, I guess if you aren’t going to school today, you’d better start riding.”
I rode the pony George first. Daddy said that there usually wasn’t much market for a pony, but when someone needed one, then a pony was exactly what they needed and the only thing. Our pony was medium-sized—he came up about to my chin (all the horses were taller than I was by at least an inch or two). Once the spring rolled around, Daddy thought he could sell that pony to some people who had an English riding school out on the coast. In the meantime, no pony burned much hay—in fact, you had to be really careful about giving a pony too much feed or it would founder, which is when a horse’s feet get hot and swell inside the wall of the hoof, except there’s nowhere for the feet to swell to but down through the sole, so the horse (or pony) can get crippled and die.
I rode the pony around the ring with the English saddle, walk, trot, canter, turn right, turn left, back up, go in a big circle, go in a little circle. Three days a week of this was enough for the pony. Once I had untacked him and picked his feet and put him back with the other Georges, I went and peeked in the stall.
The foal was lying down, his back legs folded underneath him and his front legs stretched out. He had his nose on his knees and his eyes closed, but then he lifted his head and looked at me, his ears flicking back and forth. The mare nickered to him, a low ruffling sound, and he put his nose up to her. She touched it with her own, then took another bite of her hay. Behind me, Mom said, “Now, it’s okay to look at them, but you let him and her get to know each other for three or four days before you introduce yourself. Sometimes if you get between a mare and a foal and get your smell on the foal, she’ll reject him.” The foal flopped over and stretched out in the straw. His legs looked incredibly long and thin, loose, like noodles. If I hadn’t seem him jump around on them, I wouldn’t have thought such a thing was possible.
> After the pony, I rode the other Jewel, then the chestnut George. They were little girl material all the way. Then Daddy said, “Okay, Abby, get up on that one again.” He tossed his head toward Ornery George.
“I thought you were going to ride him a couple of times.”
“My back hurts. My feet hurt.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I think you’ll do fine. I don’t want him to get used to me. Sometimes when a strong man pushes a horse around and makes him do what he’s supposed to, then he’s worse when the girl gets back on him. You rode him fine before. Let’s just try it.”
I knew better than to say I didn’t want to try it.
But in spite of how nice the pony had been and the other two horses, it made me nervous to put my foot in the stirrup, and then when he stepped away from me and pinned his ears, I felt my mouth get dry. That was a new one for me. Daddy came up behind me and threw me into the saddle and said, “Now go forward. Don’t give him a chance to think about it.”
I kicked his sides and he squirted forward, then went off at a trot. I tried to remember what my goal was—Daddy said I was to have a goal every time I got on. After thinking hard about my goal for a few seconds, I decided that it was only to be less nervous. I took some deep breaths.
“What are you all stiffening up for? You look like you’re riding a pogo stick.”
I made my hips loosen up and I straightened the small of my back so that I sat more deeply in the saddle. He said, “That’s better.”
When we got to the end of the ring, we trotted back, then did a few circles in both directions. George seemed half asleep. Daddy said, “Stir him up. He’s ignoring you.”
I slapped his sides with my legs, and there he was, kicking out. He kicked out so high that he nearly tossed me over the front. As it was, I got the saddle horn in my stomach. He stopped, I kicked him on, he kicked up again, I pulled him up.
“Now he’s got you,” said Daddy. “He’s got your number and he’s dialing it. He’s saying, ‘Abby, I don’t want to go and you can’t make me.’”
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
“I can’t.”
“You have to. You have to. It doesn’t matter if I do. It’s your number he’s got, not mine.”
While we were talking, he’d come over to me, and now he was standing, looking up at me, his hand on the pommel of the saddle. I could feel that I was shaking now, both because Daddy was giving me his sternest look and because I could feel George beneath me, ready to take off again. I took some more deep breaths and said, “I can’t.” Then I said something I hadn’t ever said before: “And I’m not going to.”
Daddy wasn’t always as strict about sassing as he thought he was—you could say, “I would rather not,” or, “No, thanks,” and sometimes he would give in. But I had used “a tone” with him, so now I looked down, so as not to have him stare at me anymore, and jumped off. I handed him the reins, then walked away, back toward the barn, where I couldn’t resist peeking at the colt. But then I went out the other end of the barn and around into the house without letting Daddy see me. I went up to my room and closed the door. There was always homework.
Chapter 3
MY BROTHER, DANNY, DIDN’T GET KICKED OUT FOR TALKING back to Daddy, but that’s how it started. We call him Danny, Mom and I, but Daddy has always called him Daniel, because that was the real biblical name. Daddy wanted Danny to grow into his name—Daniel. There was a time when I was a little kid when Daddy and Daniel were “just like this!” as Mom would say, putting her forefinger and her middle finger together and holding them up for you to see. But after Danny turned twelve and got to be as tall as Daddy, they went from being “just like this” to being “cut from the same cloth,” and it was a rough, tough cloth. Neither one of them could say anything that the other didn’t disagree with, which meant that Daddy considered Danny “ornery” and Danny considered Daddy “stubborn.” It didn’t help that they looked pretty much alike and could stare each other down, eye to eye. The whole thing made my mom very sad, but there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. She would say, “It’s hard to be a man in the Lovitt family,” and then shake her head.
I remember on the day Daddy kicked Danny out, which was before Halloween, I was in my room with the door open, braiding a set of reins. I heard Mom go into Danny’s room and start in with him. She said, “Honey, it’s fine for you to read any book you want, especially if it’s a schoolbook, but you don’t have to discuss it with him or even tell him what’s in it. You know it will make him mad, so just keep it to yourself.”
“He should know about evolution.”
“He does know about that.”
“Then why didn’t he ever tell me? So that when I raise my hand in science class and make my contribution, as Mr. Freer wants me to do, they can all laugh at me? It’s a good thing I’m bigger than all those guys, or I would have gotten beat up over lunch period.”
“Well, your dad and the science teacher disagree about a few things, but you can learn what the science teacher has to teach you and read the book and make up your own mind without getting into it with your dad.”
“I can?”
“You can. I wish you would.”
Danny generally did what Mom told him, so what happened at the table wasn’t precisely about the science class thing. However, it was about breaking rules. It was Saturday-night supper. Because Mom had to cook for church the next day, we were having something simple—just some minute steaks and gravy with rice and string beans. It was good. Then Danny said, “I’m going to the movies with Frankie Horner. He drives and he’s picking me up. I’ve got the money myself.”
“You’re not going out with a pack of boys alone in a car.”
“It’s not a pack of boys. It’s me and Frankie and one other guy. We’re going to a movie.”
“What movie?”
“It’s just Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster. It’s—”
“It’s a piece of foolishness, I’m sure.”
“Well, yeah, but the other kids said it was good. It’s been out for weeks. Everybody’s seen it—”
“And if every kid in your class—”
Mom and I gave each other a look.
“Poked a rattler with a sharp stick—”
Danny started scowling and then said in his own sarcastic voice, “Would you get in line to poke it, too?”
Daddy slammed down his knife and fork. Danny had never talked quite like that before. Mom said, “Danny—”
I said, “Daddy—”
And then Danny said, “Goddammit.” And he said it in a voice that you would only use if you had said it before, more than once, and if you were used to saying it, not as if it was the first time.
Daddy said, in his extra-quiet, you-better-watch-it tone, “What was that?”
I don’t know that Danny had realized what he was saying before he said it, and maybe he was sorry, but it was clear as day that he wasn’t going to back down, and then he said, “I said, ‘Goddammit.’ What I meant was, ‘Goddammit to hell.’”
“So,” said Daddy, “some boys who taught you to take the holy name of the Lord in vain are going to pick you up and take you to see a fantasy movie about evil and hate. Am I right?”
Danny backed down a little here, and he said, “It’s harmless. I’m s—”
But now Daddy was madder, because the way it works with him, something starts him off, and at first he’s not so mad, but then he thinks about it a little and he gets hotter and hotter. Usually he has to go in his room and pray and seek the righteousness of the Lord before he calms down (though Mom said it was worse before I was born). Anyway, Daddy didn’t hear Danny begin to back off, and so he leaned forward across the table and landed a blow, the chastisement of the Lord, which was a punch across the jaw. This knocked Danny out of his chair, but he came up swinging and crawled across the table, putting his knee in the green beans, and returned the punch, and then the two of the
m fell off the table and were rolling around on the floor, yelling and hitting. And truly, I had never seen anything like this in my life. My mother jumped up and was shouting, “Mark! Daniel! Mark! Daniel!” but they didn’t pay one bit of attention to her.
Finally, Daddy had Danny pinned because after all, he did outweigh him quite a bit, and by this time Danny was crying. Daddy let him up, saying, “Dear Lord forgive me!” but Danny wasn’t going to forgive him, and he went into his room and packed a bag, and when those boys arrived in their car, even though Daddy was shouting, “Don’t you go with them, young man! Don’t you do it or you will find yourself in very hot water!” Danny walked out the door with his bag and never looked back.
He came home a couple of days later for more stuff, and he and Daddy haven’t spoken since, though Mom goes and sees Danny from time to time and takes him things like biscuits and bread and probably money, though he doesn’t need money, because he works for the horseshoer, Jake Morrisson, and even though Jake shoes our horses and Danny doesn’t come over when Jake does, Daddy doesn’t mind that he has a real job and a hard job.
One night, I heard him say to Mom, “It’s just as well that he doesn’t go to school anymore, because the higher you get in school, the more they teach you that’s against the Lord.” But they won’t speak until Danny is moved to come forth with a humble and sincere apology and reaffirm the authority of his father, which I don’t think is going to happen. Daddy and Mom pretend that everything is fine. Daddy even said once that he himself left home at sixteen and started supporting himself, and what’s wrong with that?
What’s wrong with it was that everyone was so angry and that Danny didn’t help me ride the horses anymore. Daddy pretended that everything was the same as it was the previous year when we had ten horses waiting to be sold and they were getting ridden every day and really working. Ten horses in the late winter was good. Along about March, just when you’d gotten them ready, spring came, the flowers bloomed, and the buyers started feeling like they needed new mounts, or better mounts, or prettier mounts. Daddy could make enough in March to be a nice cushion for the whole rest of the year. This year we had five horses, and now it was four, until the foal was weaned.