Mending Horses

by M. P. Barker

  Daniel and Billy followed with Ivy, stopping just behind the tiered benches to watch.

  All it took to make the audience giggle was seeing Mr. Stocking and Phizzy walk into the ring. Mrs. Varley had fitted the peddler out with a mustard yellow tailcoat patched at the elbows and splitting along the back seam, which was mended in huge, sloppy stitches. His coattails sported two enormous pockets. From one pocket dangled an oversized watch chain; from the other, a bit of red calico. He tipped his shabby straw hat, then strode toward the middle of the ring as if he were marching in the militia day parade.

  Just behind him came Phizzy, a similarly battered hat tied to his head, contrasting with the huge pink bow adorning his tail. The old horse held his head high, mimicking his master’s posture and gait. When the peddler took his place in the center of the ring, Phizzy stood a little behind him. Pretending not to notice the horse, Mr. Stocking bowed. Phizzy did the same, extending one foreleg in imitation of his master. The audience snickered and giggled.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Mr. Stocking said. Phizzy pulled his lips back from his teeth as if he, too, were making an announcement. The crowd chortled its appreciation.

  “Look behind you, old man!” shouted one of the show’s teamsters, who’d been planted in the audience to give Mr. Stocking his cues.

  Mr. Stocking looked over his right shoulder. Phizzy sidestepped to the left. Mr. Stocking pretended not to see him. The peddler looked over his left shoulder, and the gelding stepped to the right. They repeated the charade twice more, the crowd’s laughter growing as Mr. Stocking mimed confusion. Finally, Mr. Stocking turned to the right and Phizzy stepped in the same direction. The two collided and Mr. Stocking fell on his backside.

  Even though he’d seen them rehearsing, Daniel couldn’t help laughing. The little man and his horse drew an energy from the crowd that made everything seem funnier than it had in practice. Daniel stroked Ivy’s neck, wondering if she, too, would shine more brightly with all them folk watching her. He plucked at the front of his shirt, already soggy with sweat.

  The audience tittered as Phizzy snatched Mr. Stocking’s straw hat and commenced to eat it. The peddler wrestled it away, crammed the mangled hat back on his head, and turned his back on the horse. Phizzy grabbed the corner of red cloth hanging from the little man’s coat pocket. Mr. Stocking stalked off in a huff toward one end of the ring while Phizzy headed to the other, the cloth clutched firmly in his teeth. A series of knotted handkerchiefs streamed from Mr. Stocking’s pocket: red, blue, green, yellow, purple . . . until the last one brought him up short like a dog coming to the end of his chain. He turned, then hand over hand used the handkerchiefs to draw Phizzy in as if he were reeling in a fish. Mr. Stocking crossed his arms and faced down the horse. “I s’pose you think you’re clever, do you?” he challenged.

  Phizzy nodded vigorously, and the crowd shouted its agreement.

  “We’ll see about that.” Mr. Stocking reached for the chain dangling from his other pocket and yanked out a watch so large it could be seen several rows back. He displayed it to the ladies in the front row of box seats, then held it to Phizzy’s nose. “If you’re so smart, what time is it?” he asked. The gelding studied the watch for a long moment.

  “Humph,” Mr. Stocking said, clapping the watch closed. “Not so smart after all.”

  Just as a titter began to spread through the audience, Phizzy pawed the ground with his left front foot, once, twice, three times. Then he scraped the ground with his right foot once, twice, and continued as the audience counted, “. . . eight, nine, ten.”

  “What was that?” Mr. Stocking asked.

  Phizzy did it again: three with his left foot, ten with his right. Three-ten. The ladies in the front row gasped. What they didn’t see was the faint twitching of Mr. Stocking’s thumb counting out the hours, then his index finger counting out the minutes.

  Phizzy’s learned performance continued as Mr. Stocking tested his mathematical skills, then sent him to select the lady with the prettiest hat, the gentleman with the ugliest vest, the child with the curliest hair. Subtle movements of the peddler’s fingers told Phizzy when to stop and point his nose toward the chosen person.

  “One final question,” Mr. Stocking said. “Can you show me the biggest fool here?”

  Phizzy paced the ring, his droopy mouth seeming to curl in a whimsical smile. Daniel watched both hecklers and dignified gentlemen wince as Phizzy’s sleepy-eyed gaze probed them. The horse paused thoughtfully before each potential candidate, then, with a toss of his head, moved to another as if to say, “Yup, that one’s a fool, but there’s a bigger one here somewhere.”

  As the audience both squirmed and hooted, Phizzy worked his way to the end of the ring, where Mr. Chamberlain stood on the sidelines in his Indian mystic costume, arms crossed over his breast. Mr. Chamberlain lowered his chin and scowled his sternest as the horse swept him with his indolent glance. The two faced each other down as the laughter crescendoed, then Phizzy raised his nose toward the conjurer’s turban, as if to nibble the black gemstone from it.

  “No! No!” Mr. Stocking shouted over the crowd’s shrieks. “I didn’t say, ‘Show me the biggest jewel.’ I said, ‘Show me the biggest fool.’ ”

  Phizzy let out a snort that showered the conjurer with slobber, and amiably trotted straight for Mr. Stocking, nominating him the biggest fool with an affectionate nuzzle.

  “They’re grand, aren’t they, them two?” Billy nudged Daniel’s elbow. “I fancy half that lot has wet ’emselves from laughing so hard.”

  “I only hope they don’t wet ’emselves laughing at me,” Daniel said. He rubbed his shirt cuff along his dripping forehead.

  “Never mind that,” Billy said. “Just keep your own trousers dry.” She stepped forward to take Phizzy’s halter and hand Mr. Stocking his fiddle and bow.

  Mr. Chamberlain performed some sleight-of-hand tricks while Billy led Phizzy away, and Mr. Stocking rosined his bow and softly plucked the fiddle strings to check their tuning.

  “Ready, son?” the peddler asked. Mr. Chamberlain finished his magic tricks and Mr. Varley began his patter about Dmitri, the celebrated Pomeranian horse trainer, who “would present an educational display of equitation, riding an untrained beast in a rude state of nature, without saddle or bridle, and only his hands to tame her.”

  “Hardly.” Daniel’s hands were so slick with sweat that he could barely loosen Ivy’s halter.

  Mr. Stocking tucked his fiddle and bow under one arm, then pulled Ivy’s halter over her ears and dropped it on the ground. With a slap on Ivy’s rump, he sent her cantering into the ring. The crowd spooked her, and she skittered nervously, lashing her tail and snorting. A murmur rose from the audience, as some in the pit eyed her flashing hooves warily. Daniel stood in frozen admiration, his mind totally empty of what he was supposed to do.

  Mr. Stocking poked him with his bow. “Better get out there, son, before somebody remembers they saw you riding her in the entrée.”

  Daniel stumbled into the ring, his heart pounding so hard that Mr. Stocking’s fiddling seemed an insect-like whine in the background, his mouth so dry that he couldn’t muster up the whistle that was Ivy’s cue to turn and charge.

  Somebody did the whistling for him, and Ivy whirled and dashed at him. He could do nothing but stand and watch the sheer beauty of her legs gathering and extending as she ran. She was almost on top of him, galloping full tilt. A lady shrieked, perhaps fearing Ivy’d run him down. He stood like a block of wood and let her come. Ivy pounded by close enough that he could have plucked a hair from her mane as she passed, and still he stood rooted to the ground.

  “Did you see that?” somebody exclaimed. “What’s he doing?” asked someone else.

  He braced himself for the audience’s jeers and boos. But instead, somebody clapped, and the crowd took up the applause. The folk in the pit cringed as Ivy reared before them, and he realized that they hadn’t thought him stupid, but brave. They didn’t know Ivy’d
never harm him.

  The mare wheeled and returned to him, skidding to a stop on her haunches. She bounced on her forelegs, inviting him to play. He shut out the crowd and imagined that there was naught in the entire world but himself and Ivy in the sunny shelter of his secret green place. Raising his arms, he set himself free to whirl and run and leap and dance with her. They circled each other, Daniel matching Ivy’s steps with his own, summoning her close, then sending her away with a wave of his hand, dodging and feinting around her, then inviting her to do the same with him. He stumbled, and the crowd’s anxious “Ooooh!” broke through his awareness, then their cheers resounded as he grasped Ivy’s mane and swept himself up onto her back.

  She reared and kicked and plunged as if she wanted to hurl him to the ground, but he held on easily. It was all part of the game; she no more wanted to shed him than he wanted to fall. He let her play the wild horse for a bit, then eased her down to a rhythmic canter that was so smooth it could have rocked him to sleep. With a triumphant grin, he raised his arms, and the crowd cheered, believing that he’d bested an untamed beast.

  He forgot half the tricks he’d practiced with Mr. Stocking and the Ruggles boys, and the ones he remembered he did badly, but he didn’t care, and neither, apparently, did the audience.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Friday, September 27, 1839, Cabotville, Massachusetts

  “Augusta, I know it’s none of me business, but—” Liam pushed the potatoes about on his plate. “I mean, forgive me rudeness, but—Oh, bloody hell!” He tossed his serviette onto the table. He’d been working up the courage to ask for days, and still he couldn’t get it out. Maybe he didn’t really want to know. But for sure and certain they couldn’t continue as they had been.

  It had started the morning after he’d been sacked. He’d gone to the well, and she’d come from her shanty on the same errand. He’d nodded good morning, filled her bucket, and carried it back to her shanty—a paltry thanks for all she’d done for him. When she thanked him, he had shrugged. “It’s naught.” He’d turned to go, but she put a hand on his arm.

  “What’ll you do now?” she asked.

  “Look for work. Hope nobody’s been spreading tales about me being a shiftless drunk.”

  She looked down at the hem of her skirt, none so bold as he’d seen her before. “Why don’t you come in for a few minutes and have a cup of tea before you go?”

  He shook his head, then realized she might mistake his refusal. “It’s naught to do with what you do—I mean—” Was there no way he could say a thing without insulting her? “You’re a kind lass, Augusta. But you’ve troubles enough of your own without hearing mine as well.”

  She’d smiled at him, that sweet tiny curve of her lips that turned her from common to pretty. “It’s no trouble. I’d be glad to have someone to sit and talk to for a little while.”

  That had been the start of it. By the end of the week, they’d formed a habit of breakfasting together, sometimes in her shanty, sometimes in his, and be damned to what the neighbors might say. How strange it was, that breakfasting with a prostitute now seemed almost normal, that friendship had grown between them so easily. And now he was spoiling it with his fool questions. But he had to know. So he blurted out, “Why, lass? Why do you do it?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I assume you don’t mean this.” She swept a hand through the air over the remnants of their breakfast.

  Liam shook his head. “No. I mean that.” He gestured toward the bed in the corner. “You needn’t answer if you’re not wanting to. But you’re such a, well, a decent lass, I couldn’t help wondering—” He pressed his lips together. “Ah, I’m blathering on like an ee-jit.”

  Augusta took the serviette from her lap and laid it on the table. “All right, then. I came to work in the mills. I met a young man. I was an ee-jit.”

  “I’m fancying he was the ee-jit,” Liam said.

  “We both were. But he didn’t have to worry about it showing.” One hand rested on her belly. “He disappeared. I lost my job, my lodgings. I was afraid to return to my family, afraid of everything. This woman, Mrs. Pratchett, took me in. She ran a disorderly house.”

  Liam’s hands clenched into fists. “She took advantage of your situation.”

  Augusta shook her head. “I had to earn my keep, didn’t I? After the baby came, I mean.”

  “Aye, ’twas mighty kind of her, not sending you out to—to”—Liam gestured toward the bed—“that while you were with child.”

  “She had to be hard to survive, but she loved Grace. My baby.” She blinked hard, but couldn’t hold back the tears that dropped onto her folded hands. “She loved Grace, and she cared for me . . . after her fashion. I didn’t lack for anything I needed, even when I couldn’t work. She taught me how to take care of the baby, to take care of myself, and—”

  Liam held up a hand. “I’m not wanting to know what else she taught you.”

  Augusta raised her head, the tilt of her chin almost haughty. “I couldn’t expect you to understand. There’s plenty of ways a man can make his way in the world, but damned few for a woman when her sins are out there for all to see.” She shoved her chair back and began gathering the breakfast dishes. “Mrs. Pratchett might have been Grace’s grandmother, the way she doted on her. It was the death of her in the end.”

  “Death?” Liam asked.

  “That last winter, Grace and I took sick.” She dabbed at her eyes with her apron. “I recovered. Grace and Mrs. Pratchett didn’t. The rest of the girls scattered, and I ended up here.” She piled plates and silverware at one corner of the table. Then she bustled around the fire, stoking the coals beneath the water kettle.

  “I’m hardly knowing what to say,” Liam said, his mind a tangle. To avoid her eyes, he glanced around her shanty—a hovel not too different from his own and yet not like his at all. When Nuala and the lads had been there, Liam’s shanty had been a jumble of wrestling boys, laundry strung before the fire, bed ticks on the floor, dirty dishes on the table, and always the sense of a storm about to break when Da came home. With Nuala and the lads gone, so were the clutter and the jumble, leaving only a houseful of empty in their place.

  But across the mucky road, in the same sort of ramshackle house, Augusta had created something that made Liam feel that he could sit for a moment and just breathe. At first he’d thought that it was because the space wasn’t crowded with other people’s beds and belongings and bodies. But no, it was a feeling that someone paid attention—put a bit of cloth over the window, painted the battered table, arranged the dishes in a tidy row on the shelf. The chairs and table and cupboard were no newer or finer than Liam’s, but they looked cared for. One shelf had actual books on it—books that he’d seen her reading as though she enjoyed them. Surely someone clever enough to make more of such a place as this could make more of herself as well.

  “What?” Augusta asked. The tip of her nose was pink, and her eyes moist, but she’d collected herself again. She stood with a dipper of steaming water poised in one hand. “You’ve a peculiar look on your face. What were you thinking?” She emptied the dipper into the wooden wash tub on the table.

  “It’s your house. Underneath it’s as mean as mine, but somehow you’ve made it pleasant,” he said. “Better than you’d expect from, well, I mean—” He scrubbed a hand through his hair as he tried to find the proper words. “Have you never thought of doing anything different?”

  Augusta shrugged as she shaved some soap into the hot water and whisked it into a lather. “There never seemed much point.”

  “You mean—do you like doing—well—”

  “Do you like digging canals and cellar holes?” She rolled up her sleeves and submerged a pile of dishes in the soapy water.

  “It’s money in me pocket, food on me table. I don’t think about more than doing me job and collecting me wages.”

  “Well, then,” she said, “It’s the same for me: do my work, collect my wages.”

  “It’s
never the same at all. What I’m doing—there’s nothing—nothing personal about it.”

  “And you think there is for me?” she asked. “What else is there for me to do when I can’t bring in enough with sewing and laundry?”

  “Something—anything,” Liam said. “You’re clever. I see you reading books that I couldn’t hardly make heads nor tails of. Clever with your hands, too—Christ.” He paced the room. “I mean at the needlework and such, not—not—” He closed his eyes and shook his head in his frustration at always putting everything exactly the wrong way. When he dared to look at her, her cheeks were pink, her lower lip twitching. It took him a moment to realize she was trying hard not to laugh at him. “All right, lass. I’m an ee-jit. Shall I be going now?”

  “What do you want to do?”

  Want? God, there were so many things he wanted. Wanted Nuala and Jimmy and Mick back, first of all. Wanted never to fret over every penny that came in and out. Wanted a place to live in that was dry and warm and clean. Wanted to have a full belly every day and to have some money left over. Wanted to be looked up to instead of down on.

  And right now, looking at Augusta’s face, her amber eyes that managed to summon a spark even though the skin beneath them was smudged dark with weariness, her mouth that could still manage a smile in spite of all she’d seen and done. . . . Right now, God help him, what he wanted most was to stop wanting what he had absolutely no right to want.

  “I want—” Liam began. “I wanted—” he corrected himself. “When they were here—Nuala and the lads—I wanted to give them a life that had more to it than working and eating and sleeping. Now it seems I’ve no right to be wanting anything.”