Fire Pony

by Rodman Philbrick

  We won.

  Later on, somebody tells me the whole race took only about twenty seconds from start to finish, but that don’t tell the truth of how long it lasted, or all the things that happened.

  Soon’s we cross the line it seems like everybody pours out of the grandstands and it gets so thick with folks that nobody can move. It’s like they all want to touch Lady Luck, and me, too, and Lady don’t like it much but we’re so jammed in she can’t do nothing about it.

  “Roy! Roy!”

  That’s Mr. Jessup yelling, and he’s climbing over people until he gets near us, then he starts pushing at folks with his Stetson hat until he clears a space around us and we manage to get over into the paddock somehow.

  Once we get clear, Mr. Jessup lifts me out of the saddle and gives me a quick hug and he goes, “I thought you were a goner, son.”

  “Lady wouldn’t let me fall,” I say.

  Then I go, “Where’s Joe?”

  Mr. Jessup looks around but we can’t spot Joe Dilly nowhere. Then I see where Mullins is at — he’s still on his horse, trapped in the crowd like he can’t get into the paddock. There’s folks yelling and waving their fists at him and his face is red and shiny and you can see where his mouth is shrunk up because he’s mad about losing.

  That’s when I see Joe. He’s there in the crowd and the next thing you know he’s yanking Mullins out of the saddle — just like Mullins yanked me — and he’s dragging him down into the crowd and then I can’t see what happens next.

  I hear the sirens, though, and see the way the crowd kind of melts around the police cars as they come through with their lights flashing.

  They say it took a bunch of sheriff’s deputies to hold Joe down. They say he was crazy and wild and out of his head, and that if the law didn’t stop him he might have killed Mullins.

  That’s what they say. All I know is, when Joe gets busted, that’s when all the bad things start catching up, and the fire comes back in Joe Dilly’s eyes, and pretty soon the whole world goes up in flames.

  “The way I see it, Mullins deserved to get the tar kicked out of him,” says Rick. “He’s a liar and a cheat and it’s about time somebody took him down a peg.”

  He’s looking straight ahead and driving with both hands on the wheel. There’s just me and him in the truck, towing the horse trailer home. Mr. Jessup has stayed back to see about getting Joe sprung from jail.

  When I don’t say anything about what happened, Rick says, “Penny for your thoughts.”

  I go, “Nothing. That’s what I’m thinking about — nothing.”

  Rick thinks for a while and then he reaches over and pats my hands and says, “Nick’ll take care of it. Why, they’ll probably beat us to the Bar None.”

  I figure he’s just trying to make me feel better, but wouldn’t you know it, by the time we back the trailer up to the stable, this sheriff’s car with a gold star painted on it comes skidding down the fire road, kicking up rooster tails, and it stops in the main yard.

  You can’t see through the windows, but when the doors open, there’s Mr. Jessup and Joe and the sheriff getting out, and they’re all shaking hands and smiling at each other like they just come back from a party.

  I run up to Joe, but before I can say anything he shushes me.

  “Not now, Roy,” he says.

  I try to hug him but he’s so stiff he won’t hug.

  The sheriff, he tips his hat and shoots Mr. Jessup a look, and then he gets back in his car and pretty soon all you can see is the dust it makes leaving.

  “It’s over,” Mr. Jessup says to Joe. “Let it go.”

  “That stinking son of a scum,” says Joe.

  At first I think he’s cursing the sheriff, but he means Mullins, the man he hit.

  Joe kicks at the dirt and stalks off to the bunkhouse.

  Mr. Jessup looks at me and says, “Your brother is a hothead, but I guess you know that.”

  “I’d a done the same thing,” says Rick.

  Mr. Jessup says, “It doesn’t matter what you might have done in the same situation, Rick. Joe’s the one in trouble. Mullins won’t drop the charges. He won’t take money and he won’t listen to reason.”

  I run into the bunkhouse, looking for Joe. He’s got his cot tipped over and stuff from his kit bag strewn around and he’s looking for something. He finds it — this pint whiskey bottle he must have hid there, but when he lifts it up to the light the bottle is empty.

  “Aw nuts. Can’t a man get a drink around here? Can’t he?”

  “Joe, please. Mr. Jessup will fix things.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “He fixed it so I could get in the race. He can fix old Mullins, too. You just got to give him a chance.”

  Joe sprawls out in the mess he’s made. He’s got his hand over his face like he don’t want me to see his eyes. “Listen to me, Roy. That sheriff let me go because Nick Jessup wanted him to, but it ain’t going to end there. He’s going to check up on me. You know what that means, don’t you?”

  I know what that means but I don’t want to think about it. I just want everything to stay the same. Me and Joe living here at the Bar None, and riding Lady Luck and everything.

  Except we can’t. And I know what we have to do.

  “We better get out of here, Joe,” I say. “Hit the road and don’t look back.”

  Joe lifts his hand away from his eyes and looks at me for a long time. “Too late for that, kid brother. Like the song says, I stayed too long at the fair.”

  I don’t want to hear about no stupid old song that Joe Dilly carries around inside his head. So I start packing up his bag, and mine, too, and I’m talking real fast so I don’t have to think about what I’m saying. It just runs out of my mouth.

  “Go on, get your stuff together, Joe, we’re out of here. Why, it’s the best thing ever happened, leaving this stupid old ranch. I don’t care if I never see another fancy Arabian prancing around like he’s something special. We’ll find us a place where they ain’t got rattlesnakes or mountain lions or thunderstorms, or crazy stallions like Showdown. I just won a thousand dollars, Joe. Maybe we can put it down on a place of our own! Rick says they still got cheap land down in Mexico, that’s what we’ll do, we’ll head south. Yes sir! We’ll keep on going till we hit a place where a thousand dollars can buy a ranch as big as this one, and you can be the boss, Joe, it’ll be just you and me and a few horses that hardly need shoeing. Just enough so you can keep your hand in. Friendly horses that won’t bite you or kick you or step on your feet. Joe? Remember what you said, that night up on the mountain? How we could be kings? How we could be princes? Well we can — we just got to get out of here while the getting’s good.”

  I don’t even know what kind of silly stuff I’m spouting, but it kind of freezes Joe where he is, and he quits looking for whatever other booze he thinks he hid, and he’s staring at me with those soft eyes of his, and after a while he nods and says, “Okay, here’s the plan. You finish packing up those bags. I’m going to go gas up the pickup and I’ll be back for you. How about that?”

  “It won’t take me a minute, Joe. I’ll come with you.”

  “Naw, let’s do it right. Get all our gear together. We’re going to need it when we get that ranch, right? Right?”

  I run to the bunkhouse door and Joe grins at me and ruffles up my hair like he does and he says, “Hang in there, sports fans. I’ll be right back.”

  I watch Joe Dilly drive that old Ford pickup off the Bar None, and the whole time I know he ain’t coming back for me. Maybe he figures I’ll be better off without him. Or maybe he’s fixing to go crazy and he don’t want me around when it happens.

  I’m out in the stable with Lady. Not talking to her like I sometimes do, just sitting around and waiting, because you never know, Joe might change his mind and come back, and that’s when I smell it.

  Smoke.

  It’s like a flavor in the air. Not close-by smoke, but real thin smoke from somewh
ere far off in the distance. Smoke you can’t see yet. All you can do is taste it on the bitter part of your tongue.

  I run out of the stable and look but I can’t see the fire.

  Rick comes out of the main house and sniffs around and says, “Where’s Joe at?”

  I tell him Joe went to gas up the truck and Rick gets this worried look, but he don’t say anything, he just goes back in the main house.

  I stay out in the yard, waiting. It’s night now, but you can still see where the mountains are darker along the edge of the sky, and where the stars are starting to come through like somebody’s making pinholes up there to let the light back in.

  I’m waiting so hard I can’t move, not even when I hear that first siren that sounds like a baby crying as it goes by, or the phone ringing mean and angry in the main house, or the sound of Mr. Jessup’s boots coming outside to find me.

  “They’ve got big trouble at the Mullins ranch,” he says. “Somebody set fire to the hay field. They, ah, the fact is, they say they spotted Joe’s truck in the general vicinity. You know anything about that?”

  “He won’t hurt the horses,” I say real quick. “He never hurts the horses.”

  “What are you talking about, Roy?”

  But I don’t want to talk and he don’t make me. He’s just out there in the night with me, leaning against the fence rail and not talking, but he knows. He don’t have to say it. You can tell by the way he leans against that fence that he knows Joe Dilly done it this time.

  Before long it starts glowing pink along the horizon, but it’s not the sun coming up. What happens is light from the brushfire gets reflected in the clouds. If you don’t know what you’re looking at, you might think it was real cheerful and pretty. But it ain’t.

  After a while the phone rings again and then Rick comes running out. He hasn’t gone far but already he’s out of breath. “The wind went and shifted,” he says. “It’s coming our way!”

  Mr. Jessup gets up quick from where he’s setting against the fence rail. “The ground is tinder dry between here and the Mullins place,” he says. “Get the horses out of the stables. Put ’em all out in the holding corral.”

  Rick’s already running for the trailers, getting the rest of the ranch hands to help him with the horses. I go into the stable with Mr. Jessup and we bring out Pit Stop and Lady and walk them down to the big corral.

  Mr. Jessup says there’s hardly a blade of grass left in the corral, so the ground won’t burn under their feet.

  “Can’t they just run away?” I ask.

  “A horse can outrun a brushfire,” says Mr. Jessup. “But it can’t outthink it. You put horses and fire together, the fire usually wins. They’ll be safe enough here, no matter what burns.”

  Rick and the hands come through, easing the Arabians along a few at a time, like there’s nothing wrong. But they know. They can smell it coming.

  They never put all the horses together in that one corral before, and there’s so many there’s hardly room to move. But Rick keeps bringing on more horses, packing them in. You got to admire the way he handles them into the corral, they never even get a chance to fight him because he don’t let them think about doing anything except what he wants.

  All the time he’s doing this, the sky is getting brighter and brighter and you can see the flames dancing on the clouds, and the air starts feeling thick and heavy and the soot comes out of the dark part of the night and settles over everything.

  At first you can’t feel the wind. You can hear this whistley far-off sound but you can’t feel it. Then the heat starts to move and you realize that’s what makes the wind. And you hate that wind! You hate it because the wind makes the fire and the fire makes the wind and you can’t stop it.

  When Rick gets every last horse in the corral he shuts up the gate and then he runs back to the main house. Mr. Jessup is busy rigging up the water pump so he can spray the horses down and keep them cool, and when he’s not looking I sneak up to the top of the ridge so I can see what’s going on — and maybe catch sight of Joe.

  Up on the ridge the hot wind makes me squint so hard I can’t see nothing but the heat. But I grit my teeth and I won’t give in no matter what. Then my eyes go clear all of a sudden, and I can see where the edge of the sky is blurred. I can see fire spreading like somebody’s pouring it out of a bucket. I can see it leaking all over the dry grasslands and coming alive. There’s every shimmery kind of color in the fire all mixed up together, and if you watch it hard enough, you start to forget things. You watch that fire and it kind of hums inside your head and makes you feel wide awake and sleepy at the same time, and nothing matters but the fire. Then the wind starts singing high and sweet, and you just want to lie down and let the fire change you like it changes the grass. Change you from something dead and dry into something that lights up the world and blots out the stars and makes the wind sing so beautiful it hurts to hear it stop.

  I guess a fire will make you stupid if you let it. Because I keep standing there like a fool, watching the fire come running right up the ridge at me, burning so quick and hot that clumps of dirt are exploding just ahead of the flames, and all I can think about is this: What does Joe see inside the fire? Can he hear that fire wind singing to him? Can he see the river inside the flames, or the fluttering wings? Can he feel the way it has to keep moving or die?

  Then flames come roaring up to the top of the ridge and the sparks fly up like birds on fire, and one of the spark-birds hits my hand and sizzles me awake.

  I turn tail, then, and run like my rear end’s been lit afire, which it almost has. I’m running down the back side of the ridge and waving my hands and shouting for Rick to look out for the horses, but the fire is making so much noise no one can hear me.

  All of a sudden there’s a whooooosh! that lifts me up and throws me down. The fire spits hot all around me and the air disappears and I don’t dare breathe. Then it skips over me and I’m up and running again and Rick comes out of the smoke and grabs me.

  “For heaven’s sake, boy, don’t run off again!” he says. “Come and help me with the horses!”

  * * *

  The horses have gone crazy with fear. There’s better than two hundred animals jammed into the big corral, and they want to get out. They’re all together, stampeding from one side to the other, and Rick is running with them on the other side of the rail, shouting them back and waving his hat. I go along with him, yelling and whistling, but I don’t think the horses hear us. All they hear is the fire coming and that makes them want to find a way out.

  The smoke turns so thick you can’t see the horses but you can hear them. I can hear Lady inside the smoke but there’s nothing I can do because the fear has took her over and she’s not my pony now, she’s part of two hundred stampeding horses and they’re all thinking with the same brain.

  Mr. Jessup comes out of the smoke with this old fire hose he’s got hooked up to the water pump. Me and Rick help him with it as he sprays down the corral. The spray hits the hot sparks in the smoke and they sizzle and go out, but the horses don’t pay no mind to the water or what it does to keep back the fire. Mr. Jessup keeps spraying at them until they’re shiny and wet and all the horses look like they’re made of hot silver but they still don’t care about anything except getting out.

  I keep yelling for Lady but she won’t listen, all she hears is the other horses. And the other horses are saying run run run for your life and Lady is running so hard I’m scared her heart will burst.

  I’m waving for her to slow down when the horses get too close to the rail. This one horse stumbles and falls into the fence, and then all of them keep smashing and they bust a rail loose. A bunch of them break through the opening before Rick and Mr. Jessup can get the rail back up.

  That’s when she breaks free. I see Lady Luck come running out of that corral and she keeps on going into the smoke.

  She’s gone before you know it. Except I know where she’s going even if I can’t see all the way th
ere. She’s heading back to her stall, back to the stable.

  That’s where she’s going, and the fire is going there, too.

  I’m not thinking about anything but Lady when I run through those flames, and duck under the smoke, and slap at the burning cinders that go off like firecrackers in the air. Except I can’t really tell what’s the air and what’s the burning part, and the stuff inside my lungs feels so hot and dry I want to stop breathing, it hurts so much.

  The ground is burning and the sky is burning, and when I get there, the stable is burning, too. The way I find it is, I bump straight up against it, because I can’t see with my eyes all teared up with cinders and soot. I have to feel my way along until I come to the side door, the one that leads into the tack room. I know it’s the tack room because I can smell the leather getting hot.

  The first thing I hear is Lady — the racket her hooves are making as she gallops in circles. At first I can’t figure out where she’s at, and then I find my way through the tack room into the main part of the barn. There she is, rearing up and kicking at the smoke.

  “Lady!” I yell. “Come to me!”

  But she won’t. She’s so busy trying to kick at the smoke she don’t even know I’m there. She’s kicking so high it’s like she’s decided to live on two legs like a human being, only she don’t quite know how to do it.

  I run back into the tack room and grab the first halter my hands see. Then I’m back with Lady, waving the halter and begging her to come back to earth.

  I got to get that halter on her, that’s the only way to lead her out.

  We got to get out, and we got to do it quick! I can feel the heat rushing into the barn, and smoke is swirling up like the inside of an invisible chimney. It looks like thunderclouds are boiling up in the rafters, but really it’s smoke and sparks.