Stray Horse

by Bonnie Bryant

  “It’s a good thing we’re here to help her,” said Carole.

  “Exactly,” said Stevie.

  MRS. ATWOOD WAS standing at the sink when Lisa came in, almost exactly the same way she had stood the night before. This time, though, she was making a small salad.

  “I’m home, Mom,” Lisa said.

  “Yes, I see, dear. Dinner will be ready in a few minutes. Why don’t you clean up and then come give me a hand?”

  “Okay,” she agreed. She hurried upstairs to shower and change. It felt very normal. Her mother usually wanted her to help. Lisa usually had to shower and change first.

  She noticed that the house seemed quiet. It wasn’t because her father wasn’t there. As her mother reminded her many times, he often wasn’t there because he traveled so much. Lisa shrugged it off. She pulled on some clean and comfortable clothes and put her books on her desk so that she could do her homework as soon as she was finished with dinner.

  Lisa always kept her room very tidy. Her mother insisted on it, but she would have done it anyway because it was her nature to be organized. It seemed a little odd, then, to see a crumpled mass of papers in the middle of her floor. She bent down to pick them up. She only had to begin to unfold them before she realized what it was. It was her list of all the good things she’d been doing—all the things she’d wanted to share with her parents, especially her father. She dropped the papers back on the floor and went downstairs.

  Normal. That was how everything felt. Her mother was pulling a casserole out of the oven, and the table needed to be set.

  Lisa pulled three place mats, three forks, and three knives out of the drawer. Then she realized her mistake and replaced one mat and one set of silverware, hoping her mother hadn’t seen her error. One look and she knew that her mother had. She didn’t say anything, though.

  Lisa put the settings on the table, poured a glass of milk for herself, and asked her mother what she wanted.

  “I’ll have milk, too,” said Mrs. Atwood.

  That was odd. She usually had a glass of wine with dinner, even when it was just the two of them.

  Lisa gave her mother milk. She brought the salad over to the table and put out plates for each of them. Her mother brought the casserole to the table, and they sat down. Mrs. Atwood served Lisa a plate and then served herself. Lisa gave herself some salad and then passed the bowl over to her mother.

  They ate.

  “Where’s Dad?” Lisa broke the uncomfortable silence.

  Her mother looked stunned. “We told you. We’re separated,” she answered.

  “I know, but where is he?” she asked.

  Mrs. Atwood appeared shaken. “He’s staying in a hotel downtown for now,” she said. Then her voice wavered. “Once the divorce is final, he’s moving to California.”

  Lisa stood up and took her plate, stacked her mother’s on top of it, and walked toward the sink. The world around her seemed to melt a bit, distorted like one of those mirrors in a fun house.

  “Mom—” she began.

  “Don’t worry,” said Mrs. Atwood. “I’ll do the dishes. You can just get to your homework.”

  Lisa felt the plates slip out of her hand. There must have been a sound, a loud one, but she didn’t hear it.

  “Okay,” she said mechanically. Then she went up to her room and started her homework.

  NOTHING MAX COULD have said would have prepared The Saddle Club for the Wainwright Jump Team.

  “Let me see if I’ve got this right,” Stevie said to Carole. “Mrs. Wainwright has Red measuring the temperature of her horse’s drinking water?”

  “You’ve got it right. I guess ‘cold’ isn’t good enough. It’s got to be exactly forty-three degrees Fahrenheit,” Carole told her.

  “Mr. Wainwright isn’t so fussy, though. He told Denise it needed to be between forty-three and forty-five degrees. Max warned us, didn’t he?”

  “ ‘Fussy’ really didn’t cover this. How can Red stand it?”

  “Easy,” said Carole. “He can stand it because you and I are doing everything else.”

  “Where’s Lisa?” Stevie asked, realizing that their threesome was looking a lot more like a twosome.

  “She’s with PJ,” Carole said.

  Judy had given PJ a clean bill of health on Thursday, and Lisa had brought him over to Pine Hollow Thursday afternoon. It was a short walk from CARL, so she hadn’t even needed to wait until she could get someone to drive a van. She hadn’t wanted to waste a second until she got him to Pine Hollow.

  “I see what you mean,” Max had said, admiring his newest tenant. He gave PJ a pat on his face. The horse flinched. “Did I hurt him?” he asked.

  Lisa shook her head. “No,” she said. “He’s just like that sometimes with people he doesn’t know.”

  “Well, I hope you’ll arrange an introduction for me soon,” he teased.

  Lisa hadn’t thought it was a funny joke. In fact, it worried her. If PJ misbehaved, Max might say he couldn’t stay at Pine Hollow no matter how many chores she and her friends did. Lisa couldn’t let that happen. The only way to make sure he didn’t misbehave was if she was with him and kept him from misbehaving.

  A day later PJ was still edgy, and Lisa was unwilling to leave his side.

  “I guess we have to let her stay with him, huh?” Carole said, thinking about PJ’s behavior.

  “It seems to me we’re making a lot of allowances for her, Carole,” Stevie said.

  “But her parents …,” Carole said.

  “Right, and we know she’s going nuts about this horse. But it turns out that we’re doing all the work that’s making Max agree to let PJ stay here.”

  “You! What’s your name?” A voice boomed behind her. Stevie turned. It was Mr. Wainwright. She wasn’t absolutely sure she wanted him to know her name, but she had to cooperate for Max’s sake.

  “Stevie Lake,” she said.

  “What kind of name is that?” he demanded.

  “Short for Stephanie,” she said, though she didn’t think he had the right to insult her name. His name was Marion. Stevie kept her thoughts to herself.

  “Where’s the hoof polish?” he asked.

  “In the cabinet in the tack room,” Stevie told him. “Right over there.” She pointed.

  “Get it for me, please,” he said.

  Now she was in a quandary. The Saddle Club’s job was to do everything but work for the Wainwrights. On the other hand, their job really was to make Max happy, and Stevie had the sneaking suspicion that keeping the Wainwrights happy would keep Max happy.

  “Of course, sir,” she said.

  As soon as she delivered the pot of polish to Mr. Wainwright, she hurried back to Barq’s stall, which she and Carole had been mucking out together.

  “We’d better hurry,” Carole said. “It’s almost time for the afternoon feeding.”

  “And watering,” said Stevie. “Do you think the stable horses are going to die of jealousy if they just get cold tap water, not cooled to forty-three degrees?”

  “Don’t tell them, okay? As long as they don’t hear about it, we’ll be safe.” The girls laughed.

  The entire stable was abuzz with activities centering around the adored and pampered horses of the jumping team. There were four riders on the team, but only Mr. and Mrs. Wainwright were at the stable that afternoon. Their competition was starting the next day, and the horses would be there for a good part of it. It was something everybody at the stable was looking forward to.

  “O’Malley!” cried Mrs. Wainwright. “Where’s the special grain blend?”

  Nobody ever called Red “O’Malley.” Stevie and Carole gaped while he rushed to bring her the “special grain blend.” He didn’t even make a face or a smart remark. He didn’t even look as if he minded when she apparently forgot to say thank you.

  “How do you suppose Dorothy stands it?” Carole asked. She really felt sorry for their friend, who worked on training these jumpers.

  “I think she stan
ds it by sending them to every competition in the country so that they’re never anywhere near her stable,” Stevie said.

  “Clever woman,” said Carole.

  The girls finished the mucking and then handed out feed to each of the horses, plus fresh hay and water (from the tap, no ice). When they were done, they decided they’d earned a break and went to find Lisa.

  She and PJ were in the schooling ring, far away from the hubbub inside the stable.

  “Everything okay?” Stevie asked, climbing onto the fence.

  “Just fine,” said Lisa. “I thought he might like some fresh air. He probably got used to being outdoors while he was lost in the woods. I think it’s a little, well, claustrophobic for him inside.”

  “You mean you couldn’t stand one more second of those people?” Carole whispered. The last thing they needed was to get the Wainwrights angry at them.

  “More or less,” Lisa conceded.

  She had PJ on a lead rope and was walking him slowly around the ring, letting him sniff and explore. “One of these days I’m going to be able to ride him here,” she said. “I want him to be used to the place. That’s a good idea, isn’t it?” she asked Carole.

  “Seems like a good idea to me,” said Carole. “Most horses adjust to new surroundings fairly quickly, but there’s nothing wrong with helping them along.”

  PJ flinched at a stack of cavalletti.

  “He’s seen these three times before,” said Lisa.

  “Well, maybe the next time around will go more smoothly,” Carole suggested.

  Carole and Stevie perched on the top rail of the fence and watched their friend lead PJ slowly around the far end of the ring.

  “She hasn’t said another word about her parents’ divorce to me,” Stevie said. “Has she talked about it with you?”

  “No,” Carole said. “All she ever talks about is PJ.”

  “I suppose that means her volume is still off?” Stevie asked.

  “Yeah, and the receiver’s on the blink, too,” said Carole.

  “What do you mean?” Stevie asked.

  “Watch her with PJ,” said Carole. “He’s okay with her, but he still misbehaves with almost everybody else. She’s decided he’s the world’s most perfect horse. It’s possible that he might become the world’s most perfect horse, but right now he seems as tender and vulnerable as—well, I guess as vulnerable as Lisa.”

  “Think he’ll change?”

  “Only time will tell,” said Carole. “He must have had a pretty awful experience out in the wild. Maybe that changed him once and it’s just a matter of changing him back. Or maybe he’s always been like that. I don’t know, and neither does Lisa.”

  “So this is where you’ve come to get out of the line of fire!” The girls turned to see Mrs. Reg coming out of the stable toward them.

  “Do you need us?” Carole asked. She hoped the answer was no.

  “No,” she said. “I’m just glad to have a little breather myself. I don’t want to be there when Marion Wainwright figures out that the water is actually fifty-one degrees. I’d rather watch Lisa give that horse a walk.”

  Mrs. Reg leaned against the fence, relaxing, until Lisa joined them.

  “I think he’s more confident now,” Lisa said. “Maybe that’s enough walking for a while, anyway. His leg is still swollen, you know.”

  “I know,” said Mrs. Reg. “Judy says it’ll be healed in another couple of weeks. Maybe you’d better put him in his stall.”

  Lisa took the horse back inside. Carole and Stevie began to lower themselves from the fence and return to their chores, but Mrs. Reg began speaking.

  “You know,” Mrs. Reg said, “there was a pony once.”

  It was going to be one of Mrs. Reg’s stories. There never seemed to be any warning when she launched into one, and there was no more a way of telling how long it was going to be than there was of telling what it was about. The woman just loved to tell stories about horses, and the riders at Pine Hollow were expected to sit still and listen. Carole and Stevie got comfortable on the fence.

  “This old boy lived with a farmer who abused him. It wasn’t that he was mean; he just couldn’t take care of him. The owner was too old. Sometimes he’d sleep a whole day away without feeding the pony or giving him fresh water. Sometimes he’d forget. The animal rescue people spotted him, all bony and unbrushed, and took matters into their own hands. This was before the days of CARL, you know.”

  It was hard to imagine that there had been days before CARL. The place was always so busy that many, many animals must have suffered without its kind help.

  “Well, before CARL, the animal owners and lovers in the area would just all pitch in in their own ways. The lawmen decided it was time for us to pitch in. They called my Max”—that meant her husband, Max’s father—“and they delivered the pony to us on a Saturday morning. No, I think it was a Friday. It was the same day the feed man used to come, and his regular delivery was always, uh, Tuesday. Yes, Tuesday.”

  It didn’t matter to the girls what day it was, but it seemed important to Mrs. Reg to be specific. Stevie and Carole knew better than to interrupt. They remained silent.

  “Tuesday. Definitely.” She seemed pleased, and she continued. “He was unhappy from the minute he walked into the place.”

  “How could any horse—?” Stevie started. Mrs. Reg glared at her. Stevie stopped talking.

  “He nipped at anyone who walked by, human or horse. If we put a saddle on him, he’d puff like nobody’s business. Sometimes it took four tries to get the girth tight enough. He was so naughty with a rider on him that the youngsters began yanking on his mouth. Worst possible thing, of course. That made him even crankier. That made them yank more. Not that my Max would let them get away with that any more than Max does today. He wasn’t young, you know.”

  “Your Max?” Carole asked.

  “No, the pony,” Mrs. Reg snapped. “I don’t even remember his name now. Anyway, my Max figured he’d never be able to retrain him and make him into a good school pony, and he couldn’t keep using him the way he behaved. He gave up on him.”

  “He sold him?” Carole asked.

  “No. He gave the pony away. He hadn’t paid anything for the creature; he certainly wasn’t going to charge anyone else for him. He gave him to a woman who had a field where he could live out his days.”

  “Then what happened?” Carole asked. She had the feeling Mrs. Reg was about to walk away, as she often did, just when the story was getting interesting.

  “He eventually got used to being treated well,” said Mrs. Reg. “Oh, look! Mr. Wainwright is waving his arms about something. I’ve got to go rescue Red. And you girls should go give Barq a grooming. He needs it.”

  She left them scrambling down the fence.

  “What was that about?” Stevie asked Carole. “Was that another weird Mrs. Reg story?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Carole. “I think she’s telling us that PJ is having trouble adjusting and he might not make it here,” she said. “It’s a good thing she didn’t tell that to Lisa.”

  “Maybe,” said Stevie.

  THE AFTERNOON DIDN’T slow down after that. It only seemed to get busier. The Wainwrights kept waving their arms and people kept doing whatever they commanded.

  When Carole stepped into the tack room to pick up a longe line for Mr. Wainwright, she found Red tucked into a dark corner.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Hiding,” he admitted readily. “Since that man refuses to do anything for himself, it’s a sure bet he’ll never come in here. I thought I’d get a moment’s peace.”

  “Your secret’s safe with me,” Carole said, chuckling. “But remember, while you’re hiding, he’s ordering other people around. Here’s the longe line he asked me for.”

  “Yeah, well the last time I took that one to him, he rejected it, saying it was too old.”

  “Then I’ll tell him it’s our new longe line and see how he likes
that. Or maybe that it’s the one we save for the best horses. What do you think?”

  “Go with the best horses thing. And give me five more minutes, okay?”

  “Okay,” Carole said, taking the longe line with her as she left. She delivered it to Mrs. Wainwright with the “best horses” message. Mrs. Wainwright smiled. So did Carole, who quickly escaped down the stable aisle.

  “Look at this, Carole!” Lisa called out to her. Carole paused. Once again, Lisa was grooming PJ. It seemed to be the one activity he would always tolerate—well, that and eating. There was no doubt about it. The horse was getting better. His ribs were no longer so prominent, and the constant brushing, combing, and rubbing of his coat was bringing out a distinct sheen.

  “You’ve got that coat shinier than the Wainwrights’ horses’,” Carole said.

  “I know,” said Lisa. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

  Carole sighed and swallowed the words she wanted to say. Carole and Stevie were working like crazy at Pine Hollow just to help their friend, and the only thing Lisa could think to do was groom PJ one more time.

  “It’s wonderful,” Carole agreed, reminding herself that Lisa was going through a very hard time. Normally Lisa would have been the first to recognize what was fair and what wasn’t. The fact that she couldn’t do that now was a measure of how much she needed support from her friends. Carole was willing to overlook her actions for a while.

  “I’ve got to get to work,” said Carole. “Mrs. Reg asked me to assign ponies for the lesson Max is giving after this class. If I don’t do it right, Penny will have six lessons today and none tomorrow. All the little kids are crazy about her! See you!”

  “Okay,” Lisa said, picking up another brush.

  Carole met Stevie in Mrs. Reg’s office. Mrs. Reg was laying out the grooming tools for the Wainwrights’ horses as if they were a surgeon’s tools (and as if the Wainwrights couldn’t do that for themselves). Carole sat in Mrs. Reg’s chair with the daily horse chart spread out in front of her. Stevie sat across from her with the list of students for the next class. Through the window the girls could see Max giving a class for intermediate riders. Beginners were next.