Playing for Keeps

by Suzanne Weyn

  “I didn’t. Cody did.”

  “No way,” Daphne disagreed. “You moved him beautifully.”

  “Thanks.”

  They both turned to see Shafir sidestepping back and forth excitedly, ears fully forward with acute interest.

  Daphne rode alongside Cody and tucked the bandanna into his bridle. “Shafir wants to play so badly, but she’s not sure if she’s welcome. We’ll go closer to her this time, okay?”

  With a nod, Taylor directed Cody to jog over toward Shafir. The Arabian whinnied excitedly.

  Mandy and Daphne came out after Cody and Taylor once again. Taylor gently kicked Cody to move, and the race was on. Mandy was almost close enough to grab the bandanna, but Taylor turned Cody away in time. The maneuver gave them a lead of about a foot. Taylor saw Daphne and Mandy approaching again and turned once more. This time she was aware of a chestnut brown form swooping in on her.

  Shafir ran with them, not sure how to play but clearly caught up in the fun. She ran an exultant circle around them, culminating in a low, two-legged buck of joy.

  “Look at her!” Taylor said admiringly to Daphne. “She’s so great. We have to get her for Wildwood somehow.”

  It’s a nice idea, Taylor, but I’d rather not deal with that Mrs. Ross,” said Mrs. LeFleur later that afternoon, when Taylor suggested that she buy Shafir. They were in the front office, the only part of the ranch that hadn’t undergone any renovation.

  After viewing the impressive indoor corral, Taylor had waited in front of Ross River Ranch and got on the late school bus that took kids home from afternoon activities. She wasn’t really supposed to use the late bus for public transportation, but the driver was lenient about the rule.

  “I know that Mrs. Ross tried to buy this place and you had to fight her in court and all,” Taylor began. At the beginning of the month, Wildwood Stables had gone up for public auction due to unpaid back taxes. Mrs. LeFleur had learned of her inheritance of the ranch only after Mrs. Ross had already offered a bid on the broken-down place at auction. Mrs. LeFleur had had to fight Mrs. Ross in court to get the property back.

  “But,” Taylor went on, “didn’t you meet Mrs. Ross when you were in court?” Taylor asked.

  “No, just her arrogant, fancy lawyers.”

  “What if you had your lawyer speak to her lawyer?” Taylor suggested.

  “I don’t have the funds to engage a lawyer. I’ve poured every penny I have into restoring this place. You know that.”

  Folding her arms, Taylor leaned against the wide desk, pressing her lips together pensively. “What if Daphne and I talk to Mrs. Ross?” she suggested after some thought. In this scenario, Taylor pictured Daphne doing all the talking. The idea of actually speaking to Mrs. Ross was pretty scary.

  “I don’t think it’s that easy to get in to see her,” Mrs. LeFleur remarked.

  “See who?” asked a tall, thin girl with long, thick dark brown hair. Mercedes Gonzalez was an eighth-grader at Pheasant Valley High, a recent transplant from Weston, Connecticut. Mrs. LeFleur had recruited her to volunteer as Assistant Junior Barn Manager since she was an experienced rider and lived close to the ranch.

  “Hey, I could use some help,” Mercedes said when she noticed Taylor. “You’re supposed to be my assistant. Remember?”

  “Oh, hi, Mercedes. I’m fine. Thanks for asking,” Taylor answered. She wasn’t really offended. Taylor had first met Mercedes when the ranch opened, and she’d been put off by Mercedes’s bossiness, but she’d since learned that Mercedes wasn’t so bad under her brusque demeanor. Sometimes her manner of treating Taylor like a little kid, even though she was only a year older and in the same grade at school, was a bit hard to take. Just the same, Mercedes knew everything about horses, and Taylor knew she could learn a lot from her.

  “Well, I’ve been here alone all afternoon,” Mercedes complained. “And Pixie and Prince Albert need to have their stalls mucked, and —”

  Taylor pushed herself away from the desk. “I’m coming! I’m on it! Chill!”

  Mrs. LeFleur bit down on a small smile as Taylor followed Mercedes out the door. “I can see you two are developing a beautiful working relationship,” she commented drolly.

  Taylor stepped back into the office just long enough to roll her eyes in exasperation. “Today isn’t my regular day to be here,” she reminded Mrs. LeFleur to make sure she knew Taylor wasn’t neglecting her responsibilities. Part of the deal Taylor had struck with Mrs. LeFleur was that she would work at Wildwood Stables three days a week in exchange for Pixie and Prince Albert’s board. It was important to her that Mrs. LeFleur realize that she was holding up her end of the bargain.

  “I know you’re working hard,” Mrs. LeFleur assured her.

  “You’ll think about Shafir?” Taylor pressed.

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “She’s a beautiful horse, and I bet you could pick her up cheap,” Taylor coaxed.

  “I thought you were coming to help me!” Mercedes shouted from inside a stall.

  “You’d better go,” Mrs. LeFleur said, scooting Taylor along with a wave of her hands.

  Taylor hurried down the wide central corridor with its three inside-facing box stalls on either side. At the end on the right, she came to Pixie and Prince Albert, who stood in side-by-side stalls.

  The pony neighed in greeting, while Prince Albert swiveled his ears forward alertly.

  “Hiya, you guys,” Taylor greeted them warmly. “How was your day today?” Taylor ruffled Pixie’s frizzy forelock and then went to Prince Albert to stroke his soft muzzle.

  Prince Albert snorted and then whinnied, nodding his head up and down. Taylor had seen him do this whenever she had apples. “No apples today, boy,” she said apologetically. “Sorry.”

  Mercedes set down the buckets. “I think that Prince Albert is probably just glad to see you.”

  “I’m glad to see him, too,” Taylor replied. “But I really think he’s looking for apples. He probably smells them on me. We gave some to the horses over at Ross River.” The moment she said the words, Taylor felt guilty. “I guess I should have saved two for Pixie and Prince Albert. I wasn’t thinking.”

  Mercedes nodded down at her buckets. “Maybe he’ll forget about it if you feed him. I measured out the right amount of food for each of them. I had to estimate their weight since we don’t have a scale.”

  “Is that enough?” Taylor questioned, looking down at the bucket of feed.

  “They didn’t do anything but graze all day. Once they start giving lessons and trail rides, we can up the amount,” Mercedes replied. She yawned and stretched. “I’m going to sweep out the tack room and straighten up in there before my mother gets here to pick me up.”

  “Would she mind giving me a lift home?” Taylor asked.

  “No, but hurry up. She doesn’t like to wait.” Mercedes glanced at the buckets of feed. “You should give them fresh water now, so they can be drinking while you clean the stalls, and then feed them,” Mercedes added as she headed toward the tack room at the front of the stable.

  Wildwood Stables was nearly a hundred years old, so Mrs. LeFleur had needed to hire plumbers to restore the old hand pump at the back of the building. Taylor went out with a large pail and pumped the fresh, cold water that ran in underground streams below the ranch. It was getting dark, and the last birds of the day flitted from branch to branch. A half-moon had already risen but was still low in the sky.

  As Taylor worked the pump handle, she felt it could be a hundred years ago, when some other girl, a girl very much like Taylor, might have stood in the same spot and done the same thing. In her mind’s eye she pictured the place as it once might have been, not so very different from the way it looked now.

  This sense of timelessness — that Wildwood was a world all its own, separate from everything else — was a quality Taylor cherished. It was one of the many reasons she thought of it as the very best place in the world.

  Water splashed onto Taylor’s new r
iding boots as the pail overflowed. Realizing she’d been daydreaming, Taylor hurried back into the stable and gave Pixie and Prince Albert fresh water. Then she moved Prince Albert into an empty enclosure while she picked out his stall with a metal rake, removing the day’s droppings. She worked all the straw bedding into one corner, removing more soiled bedding as she went.

  “Did you hear what Mercedes said?” Taylor asked Prince Albert, who watched her attentively from his temporary holding stall. “If you let other people ride you, you’ll get more to eat. And we all know how much you love to eat. I’ll bring you some apples tomorrow; you, too, Pixie.”

  Taylor laid down fresh bedding, returned Prince Albert to his home, and then moved Pixie and worked on her stall. Taylor had just stopped to notice that a blister was forming between her thumb and forefinger when Mercedes returned, wearing her denim jacket. “Didn’t you put work gloves on?” she questioned disapprovingly. She sighed and rolled her eyes when Taylor shook her head. “Next time bring work gloves. Who doesn’t know that?”

  “Me, I guess,” Taylor admitted, feeling foolish.

  “Come on. My mother’s here. Like I said, she hates to wait.”

  Taylor quickly filled Pixie’s and Prince Albert’s feed buckets and then returned Pixie to her stall, shutting and locking the half door behind her. “Good night, you guys,” she said as she dusted hay from her jeans and hair. “See you tomorrow. Be good.”

  As she passed the office where Mrs. LeFleur sat talking to someone on her cell phone, Taylor called good night and the ranch’s owner beckoned her into the office. “I’m on the phone with a farrier,” she told Taylor. “Pixie and Prince Albert need new shoes. I told him you’d be here next week on Wednesday when he comes. Is that all right?”

  “Sure. I’m here that day.”

  “Excellent. Do you know any good vets? They’re going to need checkups.”

  “No, but Daphne or Mercedes might, or I could ask Claire.”

  “You could ask Mercedes on the way home,” Mrs. LeFleur suggested.

  “Okay.” A car horn sounded, prompting Taylor to get moving.

  “See you tomorrow,” Taylor said, leaving Mrs. LeFleur. At the wide front door, Taylor hesitated. What had she forgotten? There was nothing she could think of, but, still … the feeling nagged at her.

  Come on!” Mercedes called. She stood beside a silver Acura with its motor running. Inside, a petite, stylish, dark-haired woman drummed perfectly manicured nails impatiently on the steering wheel.

  Taylor ran toward the elegant car, suddenly feeling way too sweaty and messy to climb in. She was relieved to see that a blanket covered the backseat where she slid in beside Mercedes.

  Mercedes introduced Taylor to her mother, who simply nodded and asked, “Where do you live?”

  “Mrs. LeFleur asked if you know of a good horse vet,” Taylor remembered to mention.

  Mrs. Gonzalez snorted disdainfully as she pulled out onto Wildwood Lane. “Not around here.”

  “The only ones we know are back in Connecticut,” Mercedes explained. “Daphne might know, though. Is something wrong with Prince Albert or Pixie?”

  “No. She just wants them to be checked.”

  “Do you know anything about those animals?” Mrs. Gonzalez asked. “What’s their lineage?”

  Taylor held the ownership papers but that was all she knew. “I’m pretty sure Prince Albert is a quarter horse, and Pixie is a Shetland pony,” she offered.

  “Who’s the sire?” Mrs. Gonzalez asked.

  “His name is Prince Albert, not Sir Albert,” Taylor answered.

  Mercedes giggled and Taylor looked at her sharply, raising her eyebrows into a quizzical expression that asked what was so funny. “The sire is the father,” Mercedes whispered. “Do you know the name of Prince Albert’s father?”

  “Oh,” Taylor whispered back, feeling stupid. “No, I don’t know his father,” she said to Mrs. Gonzalez. “Or the mother.”

  “You’d better get them,” said Mrs. Gonzalez. “You’ll have a difficult time ever selling him or the pony without knowing their lineage.”

  Good, thought Taylor. Then I’ll never sell them.

  “We can get in touch with the state quarter horse association,” Mercedes suggested. “If Prince Albert is pure quarter horse, he’s probably registered. There’s a half-blood association, too. If he’s the product of two different purebred horses, he might be registered there.”

  Taylor didn’t care if Prince Albert or Pixie were purebred or mixed with ten different breeds. What did it matter? They were both one of a kind to her.

  The rest of the ride passed in near silence. The two tired girls listened to the radio and gazed out at the half-moon as the car glided up the steep and winding Quail Ridge Road.

  All the way home, Taylor kept trying to remember what she had forgotten, but nothing came to her.

  * * *

  “I got your phone message saying you were going to the ranch, but I didn’t expect you to be this late,” Taylor’s mother complained when she walked into the kitchen ten minutes later. “Your supper’s cold, but I’ll stick it into the microwave for you.”

  “Sorry,” Taylor mumbled, though she really wasn’t. She’d let her mother know where she was. What more did she expect?

  Taylor sat down with her plate of warmed spaghetti and meatballs and told her mom all about Shafir and how Mrs. LeFleur was going to pass up a possibly great deal because she didn’t want to deal with Mrs. Ross.

  Jennifer clapped her hand to her forehead. “Oh! Don’t remind me of Mrs. Ross. The luncheon is this Saturday afternoon, and I’m a wreck over it. Every time I think I’ve selected the perfect menu I begin to doubt myself. Maybe it’s not good enough? What if her fancy friends expect caviar or foie gras or whatever those people eat?”

  “I don’t even know what that stuff is,” Taylor remarked, wiping sauce from her mouth with the back of her hand.

  Jennifer handed her a napkin. “Don’t do that,” she chided absently. “Caviar is fish eggs, and foie gras is goose liver.”

  “Ew, gross.” Taylor wrinkled her nose.

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter what I serve, it’s not going to be right.”

  “Why don’t you check with Mrs. Ross?” Taylor suggested.

  Jennifer considered this. “No,” she decided. “I don’t want her to know that it’s Tuesday and I still don’t have any idea what I’m serving. She just said, ‘Surprise me and make it wonderful.’ How should I know what she thinks is wonderful?”

  Taylor got up and brought her empty plate to the sink. “Don’t freak, Mom. Your food is great, and everyone will love it. They always do.”

  Jennifer looked at her and smiled. “Thanks, honey. Don’t leave that dish in the sink. Put it in the dishwasher.”

  Taylor shifted her plate and silverware to the dishwasher. “Do you talk to Mrs. Ross much?” she asked as the seed of a new plan began to stir deep in the fertile soil of her mind.

  “Occasionally,” Jennifer said, beginning to page through one of the cookbooks piled on the table.

  “What’s she like?”

  “Nice enough, I guess. Very businesslike. Scary.”

  “Scary?” Taylor questioned. “How is she scary?”

  “I don’t know,” Jennifer said, her eyes still on the cookbook. “She doesn’t smile much. And she’s so rich and all. Rich people aren’t like us.”

  “That’s not true,” Taylor protested. “They’re only people. It’s crazy to say they’re not like us.”

  “I suppose so,” Jennifer allowed with a shrug. “They seem different to me.”

  “Different isn’t the same as scary,” Taylor pressed.

  Jennifer looked up from the cookbook. “I guess Mrs. Ross isn’t really very friendly. All business, like I said.”

  “But she’s not mean, right?”

  “I don’t know! She hasn’t been mean to me — at least not yet.”

  “Why do you say not yet?” Taylor’s voice had
taken on a squeak of panic. Her plan would go so much more smoothly if Mrs. Ross wasn’t mean.

  “I’m just nervous about the luncheon. I’m afraid she’ll be mad at me if it doesn’t turn out well.”

  “Oh, I bet she’ll be very nice about it — not that it will go badly, because it definitely won’t. It’ll be great, I’m sure.”

  “Why are you so interested in Mrs. Ross?” Jennifer asked, her brows knit in a perplexed expression.

  “Just because I was over there today,” Taylor replied. “I saw her riding.”

  “It’s beautiful there, isn’t it?”

  Taylor nodded. “Could I help you on the day of the luncheon?” she volunteered.

  “Taylor, we’ve been through this. You want to be paid, and I can’t afford to pay you.”

  “No! I’ve changed my mind. I’ll help you just to help you.”

  Jennifer squinted suspiciously at Taylor.

  “Really! I liked it over there. I want to go back.”

  “You’ll be working all day, not riding,” Jennifer reminded her.

  “I know. That’s okay.”

  “All right, then.”

  Mrs. Ross would be at the luncheon. Maybe Taylor could slip away and speak to her about selling Shafir to Wildwood Stables.

  Did she have the nerve to do it?

  Taylor didn’t know if she did.

  But then Taylor never would have thought she’d be able to move a horse and pony through the woods to a home she’d found or convince Mrs. LeFleur to open Wildwood Stables. Doing these things had given her new confidence, greater than she had ever felt before. Maybe she was capable of more than she’d ever realized.

  Perhaps she could speak to Mrs. Ross.

  Still, the idea of it made her quake inside. Everyone regarded Mrs. Ross as such a powerful person.

  “What are you thinking about?” Jennifer asked. “You suddenly look pale.”

  “Oh, nothing,” Taylor told her. “I’d better go get that homework done.”

  In her bedroom, Taylor kicked off her shoes and flopped onto her mattress with her school backpack and did her homework. When she was done an hour later, she lay among her books, thinking about the day that had just passed. She recalled playing the game in the field with the horses. Maybe she could teach Prince Albert to play.