The rest of the barn was empty except for my friend Hawk’s horse, Towaco. It had been a month since I’d boarded my last problem horse, a Miniature Falabella, who belonged to one of my classmates, Sal. The Mini had moved to the backyard of Sal’s grandmother. I had two problem horses lined up for April and May. But for now the barn felt empty.
I scratched Buddy’s chest, then threw my arms around Nickers’ strong, white neck. She nickered softly, and I felt her vibrate. She turned her elegant Arabian head toward me and pressed her dish jowl against my head. Sometimes it seemed like Nickers was the only good thing in my life.
“I need a ride, girl.”
I slipped on the bitless hackamore, even though sometimes I just ride with the halter and lead. But the March wind was blowing. I knew Nickers would be feeling her oats. I led her out of the stall, then jumped up bareback. She and Buddy whinnied back and forth.
Then we were off. Nickers set out at a canter across the pasture. The jarring of the earth helped wear down my anger. I shut out all sound except the pounding of hooves. There was no one but Nickers and me.
We jumped a log, trotted down a ravine and up another one. I let her go wherever she wanted. Leaning onto her neck, I wrapped my arms around her and tried to put every thought out of my head. Part of me wanted to pray because I felt so lousy, but the other part of me felt so lousy I couldn’t pray.
I shut my eyes and pretended I was back in Wyoming.
We cantered on and on. I wanted to get as far away as possible from Dad’s workshop.
When we were both spent, Nickers and I took our time walking back. The sky had turned gray, and the clouds looked bottom heavy. I felt like riding over to Kaylee’s, but I knew she’d still be out shopping for Summer’s birthday present.
Note to self: Birthdays. Bah humbug.
Summer and I weren’t the only ones having birthdays. Lizzy’s birthday was coming up too—March 23, the day before mine. For one day each year, Lizzy and I are the same age. Poor Lizzy. I hadn’t heard her mention her birthday. I guess I’d ruined birthdays for both of us.
Note to self: Write your congressman about banning birthdays. Everyone over 30 would vote for it.
I rode through the pasture and came up the back way to the barn. Buddy was waiting for us in the paddock. She came trotting out of the stall, whinnying her high-pitched squeal.
Nickers answered with a long neigh that shook me.
I slid off Nickers’ back. “Come on, you two. Let’s get you and Towaco fed.”
“There they are!” Mason Edison waved from the barn. He looked okay again. Even from the paddock I could see his dimple. As if God were reaching down and poking long fingers through the clouds, sunlight leaked onto Mason in white-yellow streaks.
Buddy trotted to him. I had a feeling that being with Buddy had snapped Mason back into our world. When the filly’s mother died in my barn, Mason had been so upset that I ended up giving him the foal. It had been the right thing to do. Mason and Buddy had come alive for each other over the past couple of months.
There’s a term in horse training called join up. It means that a horse and a human create a bond, joining each other in the same world—part horse, part human. Buddy and Mason had joined up. They both seemed happiest when they were in the same world.
“Hey, Mason!” I shouted.
“My Buddy,” Mason said, hugging her. Mason is the one who gave the filly the name Buddy. Not your usual girl name, but it fits.
Madeline Edison scurried out of the way as Nickers and Buddy trotted past her to the stalls. “Hello, Winnie.” She looked more normal now too. Her moods seemed to flip back and forth in time with her son’s. “We were all the way home when Mason turned to me and announced that he wanted to see Buddy.” She grinned.
I grinned back. Loving Mason was the one thing Madeline and I had in common, if you didn’t count the fact that we both like my dad. And I, for one, did not count that fact.
“We were just going in to see your father. Are you coming?” she asked.
“No. Barn chores,” I said, not mentioning that seeing my dad was about the last thing I wanted. “Mason can help me if he wants.”
Mason turned his big-eyed hopeful look on his mom. It worked.
“All right.” She reached down and stroked his white-blond hair. “Just be careful.”
She walked off toward the house, saying, “I’m quite anxious to see how Jack’s project is coming.”
My anger bubbled up again. Maybe it was the mention of Dad’s project. Or maybe it was hearing Madeline call my dad “Jack.” My mom called him “Jack.”
“Come on, Mason,” I said, going to the tack box. “Let’s groom Buddy.”
I took out the filly’s halter and picked the softest brush. Mason slipped on Buddy’s halter with no problem. Dad had given me the halter for Christmas. It seemed like a year ago, a time when he really cared about things. We’d all known how sick Buddy’s mother was and how little chance there was that she or her foal would make it through the birth. Yet Dad had cared enough to buy me a halter for a foal he didn’t think would survive.
Mason tied the filly by her grain trough. We’d been doing this for weeks, just to get her used to being tied. He brushed Buddy while I fed Towaco and Nickers and mucked stalls.
Towaco, Hawk’s blanket-patterned Appaloosa, nuzzled me as I sprinkled fresh straw in his stall. He’d been an angel since Hawk had brought him back from Florida. She’d spent her Christmas break there at her dad’s new home.
Hawk and I liked to ride together whenever we could. But she hadn’t had much time lately. Her mom had been taking her to Mansfield Photo Studio a couple of times a week. I didn’t know why, and I didn’t ask. Hawk usually did whatever she thought either parent wanted.
I was helping Mason clean out Buddy’s hooves when I heard someone running into the barn.
“Winnie?” It was Dad.
I dropped Buddy’s hoof and unbuckled his halter. “Dad? What’s wrong?” It had to be bad to get him out of his workshop. I ran out to meet him, a million horrible scenes flashing through my head, most of them starring Lizzy.
“Madeline said you were here.”
“What is it?” I tried to breathe and stop the pictures in my head.
“I couldn’t wait for you to come back! Did you say invention?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, feeling my lungs untwist.
“An invention! Your invention. I was so caught up in the workshop I hardly heard you. Then after you left, I started to replay it. And I was sure you said you wanted to invent something. I asked Lizzy, and she told me about the science fair. And I get to help?”
“I thought you were too busy,” I said. I wanted to stay mad at him. But he was so wide-eyed, he reminded me of a colt.
“Too busy to invent with you? Are you serious? Winnie, this could be the start of something big!”
“You want to help?” I asked, afraid maybe we still weren’t understanding each other.
“Of course I’ll help! We’re going to come up with the best ever Willis invention! Willis and Willis! Come on! Let’s start right now!”
I grinned at Dad, and he grinned back. It felt like more eye contact than we’d had in weeks.
Then we walked to the house, my dad’s arm around my shoulder. He didn’t even wave good-bye to Madeline.
For the next hour Dad and I sat at the kitchen table, plotting my invention for the science fair. Actually, I sat. Dad kept popping up, as if he had springs for legs. Each idea set him off like a Jack-Willis-in-the-box.
I told Dad about the horse hat and the horse-scent air freshener. He jumped up for both ideas, but they didn’t have wide enough “crowd appeal,” he said.
Dad paced while I stared at the box of sugar-substitute packets Lizzy keeps on the table for Dad’s coffee. “Hey! How about fake sugar cubes?” I suggested. “Horses love sugar, but it’s bad for their teeth.”
Dad sprang out of his seat but dropped back into it, fr
owning. “Too many patents involved.”
I was running out of ideas, but I didn’t want to let Dad down. “What about a hoof pick that’s regular on one end, but—”
Dad didn’t even bother to spring up. “Breadth, Winnie. Think crowd appeal.”
I thought crowd appeal, but it didn’t help.
We sat in silence so long that I had to fight my eyelids to keep them from shutting. I’m sure the wheels were whirring in Dad’s brain, but mine had shut down.
Outside, wind blew branches against the kitchen window. Raindrops plinked, then pelted the roof. I hoped Lizzy and Geri were keeping dry. I thought about Kaylee’s Buckskin Bandit and hoped he was safe for the night. My stomach hurt just thinking about it.
“Dad,” I said at last when I couldn’t herd my wild thoughts. “Is it okay if I take my shower? Could we pick this up in the morning?”
Dad’s mouth sagged, but he said, “Sure. Maybe we need to sleep on it.”
I hung a washcloth on the bathroom doorknob, our way of alerting people that the bathroom’s occupied. The lock had been broken for months. I ran hot water into the tub. We really just have a bathtub, not a shower. But Dad had rigged a shower hose.
I turned the dial and waited for the water to shoot through the hose. Then I held it over my head and pretended it was a real shower. I wanted to wash away most of the day—every thought about birthdays and abused horses. The only pictures I wanted to hang on to were my ride with Nickers and the look on Dad’s face when he’d come into the barn to tell me he wanted us to be the Willis and Willis invention team.
“How was the shower?” Dad asked when I came out in pj’s, my head wrapped in a towel.
I sighed. “I wish we had a real shower, with 10 nozzles that could spray me at the same time.”
Dad sprang from his easy chair. “Eureka!”
“Huh?”
“Eureka! It’s what the Greek mathematician Archimedes cried over 2,100 years ago when he landed onto an earthshaking discovery! ‘Eureka! I found it!’”
“I know what it means, Dad. Why did you say it?”
“Winnie, you are following in the footsteps of the great! And both discoveries sprouted in the fertile soil of an ordinary bathtub. Amazing!”
I wasn’t getting any of this. “Dad—?”
“We’ll assemble a Magnificent Multishower! Ten shower heads—no, 12—running up and down the shower stall on all four sides.” Dad paced in a tight circle. He reminded me of a nervous Thoroughbred.
I couldn’t imagine bringing a shower into our school gym. Besides, it didn’t have anything to do with horses. “You know, Dad, I was just saying that stuff about the shower because my arm got tired holding up our hose.”
But Dad was in another world. “Junkyard. Warehouse. Army supply. Cold water, hot water.”
“Maybe we should sleep on it?” I suggested.
Dad turned wide eyes on me. Sal, my classmate who owns Amigo, the Mini, says she thinks my dad is handsome for an old person. I guess his big brown eyes and black curly hair are his best features. But tonight they gave him a wild, lion-tamer look. “This is it, Winnie! We will invent the Multishower!”
I still thought it was a dumb idea. But I was so tired I would have agreed to invent another Summer Spidell. Although I might have tried for a nice version.
“Okay, Dad.” I yawned. “We’ll get on it first thing in the morning.”
“Morning?” Dad laughed like a mad scientist. “First rule of invention: Strike while the iron’s hot! To the workshop, Winnie! There’s work to be done!”
I followed Dad to the chilly workshop and listened as he rattled off plans and schedules. He didn’t seem to notice as the shop grew colder and I grew sleepier.
I don’t know what time we stopped working because when I woke up, daylight was streaming through my bedroom window and I was in bed. Dad must have carried me there. The last thing I remembered was Dad whistling “There Shall Be Showers of Blessing.”
Lizzy’s bed hadn’t been slept in. Her half of the room looked like a tornado had blown everything over to my half, leaving hers neat and clean, and mine jumbled. I hoped she and Geri hadn’t gotten drenched in the backyard.
I threw on jeans and a sweatshirt and stumbled to the kitchen. Lizzy had left me a note:
Winnie, we let you sleep. Dad said you were up late inventing. Geri and I are going down by the creek to see if the snakes are out yet. Help yourself to muffins. —Love, Lizzy
P.S. Lizzy and I stayed dry as a bone in our sleeping-bag tents. —Geri
I bit into a cornflake muffin.
The phone rang. Before I could answer it, Dad zoomed in from the workshop and grabbed the receiver. “Willis and Willis Inventors.” He squinted at me and pointed to the workshop. Interpretation: Get to work!
“Hello, Hawk,” Dad said.
I started for the phone, but Dad waved me off.
“I’m afraid Winnie can’t ride today. We’re working on Winnie’s invention.”
“Dad!” I held out my hand for the receiver.
“I think Winnie wants to talk to you for a second.” Dad raised his eyebrows as he handed over the phone.
For a month I’d been griping because Dad didn’t want to spend time with me. I couldn’t desert him now, even though I would have loved to ride with Hawk. “Guess I can’t ride today, Hawk,” I said into the phone.
“I heard,” Hawk said. “Just as well, I suppose. Mother wants more publicity photos.”
“What’s she do with all those pictures?” My dad never even bought the school’s photo packages.
“Mother dreams of making me into a model.” Hawk didn’t sound like she shared the dream.
“Does she know you’re 13?”
Hawk laughed. “According to my mother, 13 is prime for catalog models. I am waiting for her to outgrow this modeling fantasy. Sounds like your dad has a new dream too. Willis and Willis Inventors?”
“Don’t ask,” I said. “Are you doing a project for the science fair?”
“Yes. But it is not very inventive. Mother takes all my free time with these trips to the studio. All I have come up with is—do not laugh—bird diapers.”
In the background, I heard squawking, then “Ring, ring! Hello?” I recognized Peter Lory, Hawk’s chattering lory, an Indonesian parrot with a good vocabulary. The real Peter Lorre was an actor who played gangsters in old crime movies Hawk watches on late-night TV.
“Peter doesn’t sound too happy about your invention,” I commented.
“He hates the diaper. The parakeets are good sports, though. And mother does not mind so much when they fly around the house if they wear diapers.”
“Winnie!” Dad shouted from the workshop.
“I have to go, Hawk.”
“See you Monday.”
The second I hung up, the phone ran again. I snatched it up, thinking Hawk had forgotten something. “Hawk?”
“Madeline. Hello, Winnie. Is your father home?”
I thought about saying no. Technically, the workshop wasn’t home really. “He’s in the workshop,” I admitted. “We’re pretty busy.”
We didn’t speak for a second. Then she said, “May I speak with him, please?”
I thought about saying no. Dad wouldn’t have let me talk to Hawk if I hadn’t been in the room. “Okay.”
I jogged to the workshop. “Dad, Madeline’s on the phone. Should I tell her you’re too busy to—?”
He brushed past me in his rush for the phone. “Winnie, see if you can get those screws out of the shower door while I talk to Madeline.”
“Okay. But I have to do barn chores first.”
“All done,” Dad said, picking up the phone.
“What?”
“I asked Lizzy to do them so we could get down to business.”
“Our Lizzy did barn chores?” Lizzy would happily hold snakes, lizards, and bugs. But she sweats if she gets within 10 feet of a horse.
“She wasn’t crazy about the idea,” D
ad admitted. “But once I explained our urgency with your invention, she agreed to help. Geri too.”
Unbelievable.
For the rest of the morning Dad and I raided junkyards, which Dad called “discovery centers.” We found hoses and showerheads, not to mention dead raccoons and live skunks.
Dad kept up a steady stream of dialogue. “Did you know, Winnie, that in the 1500s, whole families bathed in a single tub of water? The man of the house got to bathe first. Then he left his water for his wife’s bath. When she finished, the children took turns in order of their ages. Last, the baby was given a bath. Hence the expression ‘Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.’ We have come a long way, but you and I are about to bring the American family the rest of the way.”
Back in the workshop, Dad kept me busy cleaning showerheads. He answered all phone calls. We didn’t even break for lunch. Lizzy and Geri brought in lime milk shakes and fried-egg sandwiches.
It wasn’t until Dad was wedged behind the shower stall, blowtorch in hand, that I was able to escape the workshop. The phone rang, and I dashed out to get it before he could stop me.
“Hello?”
“Winnie! Where have you been? And how can you not have an answering machine?”
“Kaylee? I’ve been waiting for you to call. How’s—”
“Me? You were supposed to call me back! I’ve been waiting all day. Didn’t your dad tell you?”
“He’s so into this invention stuff he must have forgotten.” But I knew Dad hadn’t told me on purpose. “I’m sorry, Kaylee. Go on! What happened at Happy Trails?”
“Winnie, it was awful!” Kaylee broke down. I could hear her choking on her tears. “Bandit wasn’t there. And, Winnie, they said the buckskin never existed!”
Kaylee’s words echoed over the receiver: “They said the buckskin never existed.”
“W-wait,” I stammered. “Who said Bandit didn’t exist?”
Buckskin Bandit Page 3