Fire Pony

by Rodman Philbrick

  “Can a pony die from getting bit?” I ask.

  “Don’t you worry about your pony,” she says. “She’ll be fine.”

  But I catch the way she looks at Mr. Jessup and I know she’s just saying that because she don’t want to make me more upset than I am, which is plenty.

  The only way to make Lady hold still is to tie her up in about nine directions, and her eyes are so big and round it hurts me, even though I’m not the one got raked open by a cougar. Dr. Davis says it’s better not to knock her out, but I wish they would, so she don’t have to feel that needle sewing her up.

  Rick has come back from the main house with a bottle of liquor, and he pours some in paper cups for him and Mr. Jessup and Joe. “Just one to take off the chill,” he says. “Man, I thought that boy was a goner. I really did.”

  They’re all saying I must be as crazy as that cougar, to run into the corral. They don’t know I was scared out of my mind, which is different.

  “Big cougar mauled a hiker, just a few months back,” Dr. Davis says. “Might be the same animal.”

  “Might be,” says Mr. Jessup. He keeps looking at me funny. He don’t finish the booze in the paper cup, he’s just holding it like he wants to be polite. His white hair’s still wet from the rain, so you can see through it right to his scalp, but I still don’t know what he’s thinking. He looks at Joe and then he looks at me again and he goes, “Your brother told you to get back in the bunkhouse, right?”

  “Yes, sir, he did.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “I had to help Lady,” I say. “You understand about that.”

  “I do,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean you did the right thing. No horse is worth dying for, Roy. You don’t believe me right now, but it’s true.”

  “Darn right,” says Joe. He’s had two paper cups so far, and already you can see the difference in his eyes, the way they shine. “You get et up by a darn mountain lion, then where’d I be?”

  Rick shakes his head and says, “Go on, give the boy a hard time, he deserves it. But I never saw no eleven-year-old kid take on a cougar that’s bigger than two of him. And that’s all I’ll say on the subject.”

  Mr. Jessup looks at him and says, real quiet, “Put the bottle away,” and he does.

  Joe has that funny look he gets, and I see the way he’d like to mouth off to Mr. Jessup, but he catches sight of me and keeps his trap shut, and a few minutes later he says he might as well turn in.

  “I’m staying here with Lady,” I say.

  Nobody says I can’t, and the way I feel it wouldn’t make any difference if they did, because they’d have to rope me up to get me out of that stall.

  Dr. Lottie Davis stays on for a while after she finishes sewing up the wound. She sets on a fold-out stool she carries, and she just absolutely has to have a cigarette. “I’m supposed to have quit,” she says. “But there’s something about four o’clock in the morning calls that makes me crave nicotine, I guess.”

  “Is Lady going to be okay?” I ask.

  Dr. Davis blows smoke out of her nose and looks at me for a long time. “You look so young, but you’re not,” she says. “Not where it counts.”

  “I been around for a while,” I say.

  “Uh-huh. Well, I guess I better talk to you like a grown-up, or you might corner me in a corral some dark and stormy night. The fact is, I’m fairly confident that your pony will recover. It looks worse than it is, really. But there’s always a possibility of infection with a large animal wound. You never know what that cougar had on its claws.”

  “But you gave her shots for that, right? To make her heal?”

  “Yes,” says Dr. Davis. “But there’s no guarantee, Roy. Sometimes a viral infection gets into the blood and antibiotics don’t help.”

  I go, “That’s not going to happen to Lady. Nobody is going to hurt her again, not even a bunch of stupid germs!”

  I don’t mean to, but I guess maybe I’m shouting. Dr. Davis puts out her cigarette and gets up. She don’t say nothing, but I get the idea she thinks I’m as crazy as that cougar, too.

  I must have fell asleep, because the next thing I know, Joe is waking me up.

  “Rise and shine, sports fans,” he says, and his eyes are lit up like he’s been awake for hours, or never went to bed at all. “Get some grub in your belly, you’re going to need the strength.”

  I sit up and pull the hay out of my hair and right away I remember it’s not a dream, the cougar really came into the corral and Lady really did get hurt.

  She’s just kind of standing there in her stall and not moving, like she’s sleeping, except her eyes are open. She’s quit tugging at the halter rig that keeps her from gnawing at her stitches. She don’t even make her ears twitch when I call her name. She don’t care about anything.

  Joe, he’s shoving a big plate of sausage and ranch eggs at me. “First things first,” he says. “First you, and then your pony.”

  “Something’s wrong with her,” I say. “I ain’t hungry right now.”

  “ ’Course something’s wrong with her. We know that. And I don’t care if you’re hungry, you’ll clean every crumb off this plate or else.”

  He don’t say what else might be, but I take the food, and what do you know, I’m so hungry it makes me dizzy smelling the fried-up sausage and the butter on the toast. So I eat up, and fast.

  Meantime Joe leans up against this post, drinking coffee from a blue Bar None mug, and he’s looking at Lady. “The doc give her shots, did she?”

  I got my mouth full, but I nod.

  “I figured,” Joe says. “Maybe it’s the medicine makes her look dopey.”

  He’s stroking Lady’s nose and looking into her mouth and humming to himself like he does, and he’s got this tight little smile on his face that means he don’t like what he’s seeing.

  Soon’s I finish eating I get right over there and the first thing I notice is her breath smells funny.

  “That’s a fever smell,” Joe says. “Any minute now she’s going to break out in a sweat.”

  “What do we do?”

  Joe shrugs. It’s like he don’t want to look me in the eye. “Wait it out. A fever will either break or it won’t.”

  “I got to do something, Joe. I want to help her.”

  He don’t say nothing for a while and then he says, “The vet done what could be done. Lady’s got to help herself, Roy. An animal this sick, she’s all sunk down inside herself, trying to get better.”

  “I can’t just stand around and do nothing,” I say.

  “Then talk to her,” he says, walking away. “It can’t hurt.”

  At first I don’t know what to say. When you think about it, it’s pretty stupid, talking to an animal. But when Joe moves off to do his chores, I tell Lady what he’s up to, and from there, well, I just keep on telling her things. Way back stuff, like how bad it was at the foster home, and how the other kids used to tease me about what a worthless drunk my real mother was before she died, even though I can’t remember her at all, and how my father wasn’t no better, and I’d get so mad I’d curl up inside my head and never say a word for weeks at a time, and the only thing kept me going there was thinking about this big brother I could hardly remember who was someday going to ride up on a black horse and rescue me, and one day he did, only it was an old pickup truck, not a horse. I’m telling Lady how the fire comes into Joe Dilly’s eyes sometimes when he drinks, and gets us in trouble, and how we got to keep one eye on the road and the other for what’s catching up behind us, and how I don’t care about whatever bad things Joe might have done along the way, all that matters is we somehow found the Bar None, where everybody is welcome no matter what. I’m telling Lady she’s got to sweat out this fever so she can run them cactus again, and be her old self. I’m telling her it don’t matter none if she’s a racing pony, who cares about some stupid old race, the only important thing is she gets better. I’m telling her maybe the summer will never end, and it won’t m
atter what Sally Red Dawn does come fall, or what she finds out about me and Joe. Like Joe says, maybe pigs really can fly, sports fans, maybe me and Joe can stay in our own little bunkhouse where nobody can bother us, or make us do what we don’t want.

  Well, I keep talking until my throat’s so dry the words disappear, and finally I notice that Lady ain’t listening, she’s all lathered up with the fever and her eyes have gone white and her knees are wobbly. I’m trying to find some spit so I can make my tongue work when all of a sudden her two front legs just fold up and she’s down, and she lays there breathing so hard it hurts to hear it.

  I’m trying to shout “Joe! Joe!” but nothing comes out, and so I run through the stable and into the shed until I find him bent over a fine Arabian. He looks up at me and he puts his file down and ties off the Arabian, and he takes off his leather apron.

  “She’s down with the fever, ain’t she,” he says.

  All I can do is nod.

  “Okay, you go get a bucket of water and a clean sponge. Make sure it’s cool water. I’ll meet you back at her stall.”

  I start to run for the bucket of water and Joe stops me. “Whatever happens, that’s what’s supposed to happen, you know what I mean?”

  I shake him off and run for the water trough. I don’t care what he says, the only thing that matters is Lady. I get the bucket and a brand-new sponge from the supply shed and when I get back to the stall, Joe is already there.

  “Start with her withers,” he tells me. “Sponge her down real gentle. I’ll make sure her throat stays clear.”

  If you didn’t know she was fever sick, you might think Lady had run about a hundred miles, the way she’s lathered up. I start sponging off the sweat and she shivers at the touch. “Don’t dip the sponge back in the bucket,” Joe says. “Wring it out and start fresh each time. Go on, run back and get a fresh bucket.”

  Joe keeps me running until I’m pretty lathered up myself. Meantime he’s got Lady’s head in his lap and he keeps opening her mouth and making sure her throat stays clear, and once she nips his finger and draws blood. “Go on and bite me if you want,” he says. “I don’t mind.”

  We keep it up for a few hours, which seems like forever, but the more I sponge off Lady, the worse she seems to get. At the start of it she was heaving and snorting to get her breath and now it’s more like she’s sighing, like she’s giving up.

  “We got to do something,” I say. “We don’t do something, she ain’t going to make it.”

  Joe looks at me for a long time and then he says, “You take over on this end.” He gets up and leaves me holding Lady’s head in my lap. “I got an errand to run. I’ll be back.”

  I feel like yelling and swearing at him for no good reason, but I don’t. Joe goes off and there’s just me and Lady Luck, and she seems like a goner for sure.

  Maybe I’m sweet-talking her and maybe I’m not — I can’t tell anymore what’s inside my head and what’s coming out my mouth. But poor Lady is so choked up and wheezing she can’t hear me anyhow, so what difference does it make? All I can think of is to whisper into her ear and go, “You’re the best pony that ever was, you know that? Everybody thinks so. Mr. Jessup and Rick and Joe Dilly and me. The best that ever was, bar none.”

  After a time Joe comes back and he’s got something in an old canvas bag. “Hey there, Roy, how you doin’?” he says, setting the bag down.

  I don’t say nothing, I’m waiting to see what he’s got in the bag. Joe grins and gives me a wink and then he opens the bag and takes out this thick white cloth. Right away I can smell something powerful. Something like mint and pine sap and tar, only different.

  “This here will do the trick,” he says, unfolding the cloth. The stink gets stronger and Lady kind of whimpers — she can smell it, too.

  “What is it, Joe?”

  “They call it a poultice,” he says. “A fever poultice.”

  “What’s that?”

  “From the old days,” he says. “Before they had penicillin. You put this on the wound and it draws out the poison and cools the fever.”

  He unwraps the cloth, which looks like he tore up a clean sheet, and there’s gobs of this black, smelly goo, and when I ask him what’s in it he shakes his head and says, “That’s my secret. I will tell you there’s pine tar. Some other powerful ingredients. A little Vaseline so it sticks. Nothing that can hurt her, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “I ain’t worried about that.”

  “Okay then,” he says.

  He sets the poultice right on Lady’s stitched-up wound, and then he wraps strips of sheeting around to hold it in place. Lady lifts her head and gives it a sniff and she falls back and starts wheezing again, like it hurts to breathe and she’s tired of hurting.

  “You make sure she don’t shed the bandage,” Joe says. “That’s your job. I’ll keep her sponged off.”

  The two of us work on her for hours and hours, until it comes round on night again. Me tending the bandage and Joe keeping her cool and seeing her throat is clear, and that she takes enough water. Once I’m sure she’s up and died, but Joe makes me put my ear to her chest so I can hear her heart beating, and he tells me she’s going to be okay. This is the worst, he says, and it’ll get better.

  “She’s saving her strength,” he says. “Sleeping. Which is what you should be doing, too.”

  “I better not.”

  “Go on,” he says. “Lay down there in the hay beside her and catch a few winks. I’ll be right here.”

  There’s something about the way he says it that makes my eyes feel heavy, and I can’t help it, the next thing you know Joe is tending me, fluffing up that hay like it was a real pillow, and I’m thinking they don’t get any better than Joe Dilly, even if he does have the fire in his eyes sometimes. Then I’m fast asleep, just like that.

  When I wake up again there’s light coming into the stables and right away I see that Lady’s not in her stall. It’s like somebody reared back and kicked me in the stomach, because what else can it mean except she’s dead?

  Then I hear Joe and Rick and Mr. Jessup talking, and I come running out of her stall and they’re all of them way down at the other end of the stable, standing around like they haven’t got a care in the world.

  Joe has that same blue coffee mug and when he sees me he lifts it up and goes, “Look who’s finally woke up.”

  I get to where they are, and that’s when I hear her whinny and it goes right through me.

  Lady Luck is alive and she’s standing on her own four legs.

  “We moved her down here so you could sleep where you were,” Joe says. “Fever finally broke about four A.M. I guess a fever always breaks about that time of night, don’t it, Rick?”

  “Seems that way,” he says.

  I don’t hear no more of what they’re saying because I’m in there with her. I can’t say anything, but she knows how I feel. After a while I hear Mr. Jessup cough and they all get out of there and leave us alone.

  “I knew you’d be okay,” I tell her, over and over again.

  The truth is, I didn’t know she’d be okay. I was only hopeful.

  * * *

  The days seem to speed up while Lady gets better, and I can hardly keep track of the time. The pony can’t do much while the stitches are healing, so Joe keeps me busy, and he’s showing me a thing or two about shoeing horses.

  “You ain’t got the size for it right now,” he says. “But you’ll grow into it. You need to be certain in your mind what you’re doing before you start anyhow. Brains first, muscles later.”

  He means you got to think about a job before you can do it. Already I know there’s more to shoeing horses than fitting on the shoes. A lot of them Arabians don’t even get shoes put on, they run barefoot in the pastures, but still you want to trim out their hooves or they’ll splay or split or go lame. That’s mostly what keeps Joe so busy, keeping up with them Arabians.

  “You let a horse go natural, run in wild herds
, in a few generations it’ll lose size and turn mustang. For better or worse, horses are like they are because we made ’em that way, and that means you have to take care of ’em. See to their needs.”

  He’s licking away with his big rasp file, studying each hoof like some people study books. Reading that hoof because there’s a story in there, of how the horse grows and walks and runs, and what makes it feel good, and whatever ails it. You have to listen real close or you lose the sense of what he’s talking about.

  “You see this,” he says, pointing at a low spot on the hoof wall. “You see this and you know why the conformation is off. The horse favors this spot and he loses the sense of his stride. The feel of his feet under him. He gets confused about how to move. He starts thinking, and when a horse starts thinking about how to walk or run, he’s in real trouble. A horse has got to move by instinct or training or habit. That’s why you look to the conformation.”

  When he says conformation, he means the way an animal looks and acts and how it feels about itself. The whole picture. All the parts working together. Joe Dilly, he can look at a horse that’s standing still and know there’s something wrong. Once he gets that horse moving, he knows how to put it right. Maybe it just needs a trim, or corrective shoes, or a particular kind of exercise, or a change in diet. Maybe it needs to be ridden, or could be it wants a rest.

  “It ain’t just nailing on a new shoe,” he says. “Any fool can do that. Cowboys used to just bang ’em on and keep going. I hate to think how many fine saddle horses got ruined by store-bought shoes. They didn’t know any better, them old cowboys. It ain’t the feet you’re fixing, it’s the whole animal.”

  The thing of it is, I never seen Joe so easy or settled as he is at the Bar None. He don’t even mouth off much to Mr. Jessup, when he usually hates a boss like most people hate a splinter.

  All he’ll say about it is, “This place is okay.” And he never mentions what will happen come the fall, which keeps getting closer and closer.