A Summer Without Horses

by Bonnie Bryant

  I was having fun and I was standing up. I even forgot about how much my injury hurt, until I tried to perch on the fence. I must have made a terrible face and I know I made a noise because everybody turned to look at me.

  It’s not easy explaining a bruised coccyx to a group of six-year-olds, but they were really nice and knew that it hurt me a lot. Leslie told me she knew a good doctor if I wanted one. She meant her father. Isn’t that cute?

  By the end of the day, I was exhausted. But it was a good kind of tired. I felt as though I’d accomplished a lot and that’s a wonderful feeling. I walked home (no bike, of course) and as I went, every one of the kids passed me and waved.

  “See you tomorrow!” they all called out.

  I couldn’t wait for morning to come.

  THE FIRST THING I heard when I walked into the stable the next morning was Leslie saying, “Oh, Red!” and then giggling. That was even before I got to the ring. It seemed that Red O’Malley was teaching the group I’d thought of as “my” kids and it seemed that they’d already become “his” kids. I was about to offer to take over when Mrs. Reg called me into her office and explained that Red was too busy with the class to muck out the stalls today so she thought it would be a good idea for me to fill my idle hours with a pitchfork and a lot of manure.

  I was on my third stall when Red and the kids arrived back in the stable.

  “Oh, Red, that was so funny!” said Jessica.

  “Yeah, you should have been there, Stevie!” said Natalie.

  “Red’s a wonderful teacher!” Leslie said. I could swear she sighed while she said it, too.

  Like I cared!

  Red helped all of the kids untack the ponies. They did it one by one, traveling in a pack. All the while that this was going on, I was mucking out Nickel’s stall. That meant I was delivering loads of manure into a bucket, carrying it out to a pile, scraping the floor of the stall, lugging fresh straw and spreading it out in the stall. And then the minute Red brought Nickel into the stall, he produced a fresh load of manure. I know horses do that all the time and it doesn’t mean anything at all, but at the time, it seemed like a perfect comment on the worth of all my work.

  I was about to throw down the pitchfork when Max arrived.

  “Red,” he said. “I need you to ride out to the woods. Some riders reported that there was a coyote by the quarry. Can you head out there to see if there are any signs of it?”

  “But Max, I’m about to demonstrate grooming techniques for this group.”

  “Stevie can do that just as well as you can,” Max said, “and she can’t ride out to the quarry. Right, Stevie?”

  “Right, Max,” I said. I was only too happy to put down the pitchfork (instead of throwing it down) and I was flattered that Max recognized my skills as a groom. Actually, they are legendary. I’m known throughout Pine Hollow as the best hoof picker in the place!

  Red tacked up Diablo and headed for the woods. I cross-tied Penny in the stable aisle and pulled the hoof pick out of my pocket.

  “The first thing you do when you begin grooming is to pick dirt and stones out of the horse’s hooves.” I held up the hoof pick. “I begin with the front feet, like this—” I showed them how you pat the horse above the leg and then you run your hand down his leg so he isn’t surprised by the touch of your hand.

  “It reassures them,” I said.

  “That’s not the way Red did it when Reuben’s horse was having a problem in class,” said Natalie.

  “Yeah, wasn’t he funny?” Mark commented.

  Leslie actually giggled, thinking back on whatever it was that Red had done.

  “I wasn’t there,” I said. “I don’t know why he did it differently, but this is the way I do it.”

  That doesn’t sound very nice, I know, but I was annoyed. I followed my routine and picked the pony’s hooves. Then I started the grooming.

  There’s a lot you can talk about while you’re grooming a horse or a pony. You can talk about why it’s good for the horse. You can talk about why they like it. You can talk about why you do all the things in a certain order, or you can talk about how often you do it or why you start at the horse’s head and work backward or why sometimes the horses need reassurance and why sometimes they just stand still and love every second of it. There’s plenty to say and I didn’t say any of it. I just talked about Merlin.

  “Every horse needs to be groomed. Every horse, that is, except Merlin.”

  “Who’s Merlin?” Leslie asked. That was all the cue I needed.

  “What’s Merlin is a better question. Nobody’s really sure whether he exists or not.”

  “Isn’t Merlin King Arthur’s magician?” asked Natalie.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Maybe he’s something more, too. I mean I don’t really know. Red told me not to say anything about Merlin to you. He didn’t think you’d be interested. He’s probably right.” I know that wasn’t fair to Red, but he’d been stealing my thunder and I just couldn’t resist.

  Before I said that, Reuben and Mark had been talking about how Penny swished her tail to get rid of flies. They stopped talking about Penny when I started talking about Merlin. Jessica had been gazing over to the refrigerator where her bag lunch was. She stopped gazing at that and started gazing at me. I just had to go on. Besides, not only am I the best hoof-picker at Pine Hollow, I’m hands down the best tall tale teller. I was just getting warmed up.

  “Tell us more!” Leslie said. If I’d needed any more prodding, that was it. I told them more.

  “If Merlin exists—and like I said, nobody’s really sure about that—he lives in the forest.”

  “This forest?” Leslie asked, pointing out the window to the woods beyond the fields of Pine Hollow.

  “Maybe,” I said. “If he exists. Anyway, according to legend …” Legend is a word you should always use when you’re telling a whopper like the one I was about to tell. It makes people think this story has been passed down from generation to generation and so it’s got to be true. “… Merlin was brought to Willow Creek by the old woman who lived in the house on Garrett Road. You know that big old house on the hill?” That’s another thing about tall tales. They work best if you tie them into something that everybody knows. This house was abandoned years ago and is about as creepy as a house gets. “They say the old woman was a witch—I don’t know about that—only instead of riding around on her broomstick, she rode Merlin. That’s how people knew when she was about to cast a spell—they could hear the steady clip-clop of his hooves!”

  “The witch rode a horse?” Natalie asked. Her eyes were wide.

  “Yes, a horse,” I went on eagerly, “but not just any horse—a magical horse.”

  “What kind of spells did she cast?” Reuben asked.

  “The bad kind,” I said. “They say that all her spells had to do with horses. She loved Merlin so much and had so much fun riding him that she couldn’t stand the idea that anybody else could have that kind of fun. One man had a young horse he really loved. She cast a spell that made that young horse suddenly become a very old horse. The colt died of old age by the time he was three! Another time, there was a woman who loved to ride her horse at a canter. The woman cast a spell that made her get seasick so she couldn’t stand the rocking gait of a canter anymore.” “Really?”

  “That’s what they say.” I shrugged. “Everything she did made it impossible for people to ride.”

  “Like making somebody get a bruise on the place where they sit?” Leslie asked.

  I hadn’t even thought about that. I mean it. It hadn’t occurred to me, but it was a really good idea.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “So what happened to the witch’s horse?” Mark asked.

  “Well,” I replied. “Nobody’s quite sure. According to the story that’s told around town, there was one little girl who used to bring carrots to Merlin when he was in the paddock in back of the old woman’s house. Merlin seemed to like her and the old woman couldn’t stand that.
It was bad enough that a horse made the little girl happy, but it was ten times worse that the horse was Merlin.

  “One night, the woman climbed onto Merlin’s back. She always rode bareback. It was Halloween, see, and the woman knew that the little girl would be going out in her costume and she was ready to cast her spell. She waited until the girl came to her house. She waited until the little girl got up to the door, and then the witch and Merlin rode like the wind—right up to the little girl. The woman swooped down, picked up the little girl, and took her to the woods. The little girl was terrified and whenever she asked the old woman what she was going to do, the old woman just said, ‘Don’t worry, little girl. You’ll be fine. You just won’t ever be able to ride a horse again in your whole life!’ Then she cackled with glee.”

  I cackled for them then, too. I’m a pretty good cackler. I cackled so loudly that it made Leslie jump. I had them all frightened out of their wits. I’m so good it scares me sometimes.

  “When they got into the darkest part of the woods—you know the stand of pines near the quarry”—they did, of course. The trees are very close together there and it’s always dark, even at noon—“that’s when the woman got off her horse and made the little girl stand in front of a tree while she cast her spell.”

  “What did the witch say?” asked Leslie.

  “I don’t know, but if I did, I wouldn’t say the words. As soon as the witch had finished her incantation, the little girl started sneezing and wheezing. Then her eyes started itching and got all red. Then the tears began and she was sneezing even harder than before. The witch’s spell had made her desperately allergic to horses! She was so miserable that the only thing she could do was to run from Merlin and the faster she ran, the harder the old woman laughed.

  “Now, nobody’s sure just exactly what happened next, but it appears that Merlin was very smart and understood what had happened and he wasn’t happy about it because he loved the little girl. Since he didn’t have any tack or even a lead rope, he took off—after the little girl. That made her sneeze all the harder and run all the faster. But she was in the dark woods, at night. The inevitable happened. She tripped on something and fell down and Merlin caught up with her.”

  “Didn’t she get sicker?”

  “At first, she did. You’re right, but remember, Merlin is a magical horse so then the magic began. The little girl always said she never actually heard anything, but she swore that horse talked, uttering a chant, an incantation, and when he was done, she didn’t sneeze anymore.”

  “Magic?” Natalie asked.

  “That’s what they say. Then Merlin sort of waited for her and the little girl just knew she could trust the horse. She climbed onto his back. Some people say the horse cantered back to town. Others say he flew. Nobody but the little girl knows for sure and she’s not telling. What the world does know is that the little girl turned out just fine and never sneezed at another horse again. Nobody ever saw the old woman on Garrett Road again.”

  “What about the horse?”

  “They say he lives in the deep piney woods and whenever somebody there loves horses, Merlin knows. And if they need his help, he’ll be there for them. On the dark nights when the wind blows and the shadows dance on the forest floor, some people say the shadows are branches. Others say they’re horse tails. Me? I don’t know.”

  “Wow!” said Leslie.

  She loved that story. So did the other kids. They hadn’t thought about Red O’Malley from the moment I’d started talking.

  THE NEXT MORNING started off okay. In spite of my sore you-know-what, I’d had a pretty good night’s sleep so at least until I got downstairs for breakfast, things were looking up.

  Then came the day’s first piece of bad news. It was my mom’s annual You-can’t-have-a-good-day-unless-you-start-with-a-good-breakfast attempt to improve the world. That means oatmeal in case you can’t figure it out. Then, as I was staring at the globulous mess, Mom handed me two pieces of mail and for once neither of them was addressed to “Or Current Resident.” They were both for me and they were postcards from Lisa and Carole, arriving from opposite coasts on the very same day.

  Much as I wanted to hear everything my friends had to tell me, I didn’t want to get all the good news with the bad news of the oatmeal, so I stuck them in my pocket, explained to Mom that I was too full from dinner to eat the oatmeal, and dashed out of the house to get to Pine Hollow before she could corner me with another lecture on the benefits of iron and fiber.

  When I arrived, Max was just giving final instructions to the older riders about the trail ride they were going to take in the woods. Red and I were to be in charge of the littler kids again. That was basically okay except for the fact that I love trail rides more than anything. Max knows it, too. I actually think he was trying to get the riders out of there before I arrived so I wouldn’t feel so bad about having to miss it, but it didn’t work. I saw everything and I was really envious of what they were about to do. That, combined with the oatmeal, made me feel sort of overwhelmed. I was watching the older riders leave for their trail ride when Red came up to me.

  “Uh, Stevie, can I make you a deal?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like this morning, I’m going over tacking and untacking with the beginners. After I’m done with that, I’ve got a dentist appointment at lunchtime. So, my deal is that I’ll do the tacking demonstration if you’ll look after the kids at lunch. I shouldn’t be more than an hour and a half. That’ll give you time to eat and then begin the mucking demonstration.”

  Mucking demonstration! So much for all the good I did teaching the kids three-point riding. I’d already been demoted to mucking demonstrations. This did not make me happy. Instead it made me think about eating oatmeal for breakfast and receiving postcards from my lucky friends who got to go to glamorous places.

  “Sure, Red. Whatever you say.”

  See how agreeable I can be even when I’m not feeling it?

  That seemed like as good a time as any to read my postcards. I needed a little peace and quiet. The older riders were off in the woods; Red and the young riders were in the stable. I walked through the stable and out to the paddock where there was one horse standing in the summer sun.

  When you’re in a paddock, there’s only one place to sit down and that’s on a fence. Without thinking, I ootched up to the top of it. (Ootching is what I call it. It’s sort of a backward climb using the heel of your boots to give you leverage on the fence boards.) Then I perched on the top of the fence, just like I always do. Later, they said my scream could be heard three towns away, but I think they were exaggerating. I’d just forgotten about the fact that my bottom had the bone bruise and when I sat on the fence, it really hurt. Red and the kids came running out of the stable to see what had happened. This was a case of crying leading to laughing because I had tears of pain rolling down my cheeks and Red thought it was hilariously funny.

  That was the meanest, most thoughtless thing he’d ever done and I told him so. I screamed at him. I was about as angry as I get—and I get pretty angry. “I’ve got this awful wound in a totally unmentionable place and you think it’s funny! I can’t sit down or lie down or even ride a horse. For all I know, it’ll never get better and I’ll never be on a horse again!”

  I sometimes have what people refer to as a “flair for the dramatic,” which is a nice way of saying I exaggerate. I knew I’d ride again, but it had been almost a week since I had and it was going to be a lot more weeks until I could and I’ve got to say, it felt like a lifetime.

  Anyway, Red must have gotten my point because he told me he was sorry and said I should relax and take a little time to myself—as if that hadn’t been exactly what I’d been trying to do. He went back into the stable. I climbed up on the fence again and perched very carefully and read the cards from Lisa and Carole. They should have made me feel better, but they didn’t.

  The problem was that my friends were having wonderful times and they told me so.
Lisa had been out to dinner with Skye Ransom! That’s every girl’s dream come true. Don’t get me wrong. I was happy for Lisa, all right, but I was unhappy for me. Things didn’t improve when I learned that Carole was having a blast in New York.

  Never mind the Skye Ransom part. Just think how you’d feel if one of your two best friends was in glamorous Los Angeles and the other one was in exciting New York, and you were stuck in Willow Creek!

  I carefully got down off the fence and walked back through the paddock. I needed to be someplace by myself and somehow it didn’t seem right for me to be in a beautiful place like the paddock when I was feeling so gloomy. I sneaked into the stable, climbed up the ladder to the loft, and lay down in a soft pile of hay.

  I probably went to sleep. I was only vaguely aware of voices downstairs. First of all, Red was droning on and on about how to put tack on a pony. Then there were other sounds and I might possibly have heard Red yell upstairs about leaving. I’m being as honest as I can and I’ve got to tell you that I’m just not sure about that one. I was vaguely aware of the sounds of the younger riders fetching their lunches from the refrigerator and then I could hear them talking. I should have gone down to be with them, but by then I was definitely asleep because I was having this wonderful dream about riding on a movie set in New York with Skye Ransom. My dream was much more interesting than anything the little kids were saying.

  Anyway, the first thing I really remember is nothing. That’s an odd way to put it, but that was what I thought of when I opened my eyes. There was nothing. No sounds at all.

  A stable is usually a pretty noisy place. The horses stomp, snort, whinny, and neigh. And the riders make all sorts of sounds, especially little kids who are prone to shrieks. No sounds means no riders and no horses and when I realized that, I knew for sure that something was wrong.