A Kingdom in a Horse

by Maia Wojciechowska

  In a way Margaret was like Cornwall. She had not changed much over the years; yet her years of alone-ness had carved a bitterness into her. The desolation of her loveless life was as sad as the desolation of the houses. And she, like Cornwall, was once very young, and almost pretty. But now, like the town, she appeared as forbidding as a past without a future.

  Sarah’s thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of Father Francis Connen. She heard his old Ford a long way off. It had lost its exhaust pipe a long time ago, and its asthmatic motor was well known to everyone. She wondered if he had come to talk her into staying on with the choir. She liked the young priest very much, and it would be terribly difficult for her to refuse him anything. “She’s a beauty!” Father Connen was saying over his shoulder as he patted Gypsy, who came to the fence to greet him. “How does she behave when you ride her?”

  “Pretty well so far, Father,” Sarah answered, “but I’m afraid that the longer I have her, the more spoiled she’ll become.”

  “Do you ride her western?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Would you mind if I tried her out? ”

  “Of course not! “ She was surprised that he rode. But she was even more surprised when he only put the bridle on Gypsy and jumped on her bareback.

  “I’ve never ridden with a saddle on,” he explained. “And don’t worry, Mrs. Tierney. We’ll take it easy. I know all about walking the horse for the first mile. But I don’t promise you that I won’t give her a fair amount of exercise.”

  Sarah stood looking after them—the priest in his shiny black suit sitting straight and proud, Gypsy prancing high. It must be wonderful, she thought, to ride a horse bareback, but I’m afraid I’ll never be able to do that. I will keep on holding to the horn of that saddle for safety. I’ll never get over this fear.

  The priest came back toward her, holding Gypsy easily, the reins loose, the horse walking now without nervousness.

  “If you go to my car,” Father Connen said, “you’ll find a copy of The Horseman’s Encyclopedia on the front seat. I brought it for you. I think it’s tired of being wedged between The Life of St. Anne and Reflections on Spiritual Life. I hope you’ll find it as profitable as I did when I had a horse.”

  Before she had a chance to thank him, he let Gypsy trot away. Even at a trot, she marveled, he kept his seat. She got the book out and looked through it, and was very happy to discover that it contained a tremendous amount of information about horses, their care, and how to ride them. She began to read it, starting with “Accidents,” and was on “Harness Racing” when Father Connen returned. Gypsy was in a lather and Father Connen was exclaiming, “What a wonderful horse! What a truly wonderful horse!”

  Together they walked to cool Gypsy off.

  “Margaret Evans called me,” Father Connen said, “and of course she went on and on about your quitting the choir.”

  “I’ve always hated it,” Sarah said with a smile, “and now that I’ve got such a perfect excuse—”

  “I don’t blame you. I too hate that miserable choir.” They both laughed. “Don’t give it another thought. I only hope that with you gone maybe they’ll start dissolving the whole thing. I’ve never had enough courage to ask them to. I’ll try to talk to Margaret and suggest she just play the organ and forget about those voices.”

  “I’ll help you talk her into it as soon as she has a chance to forget how mad she is at me.”

  “I wish you would. With both of us making the same request, maybe she’ll give in.” He patted Gypsy’s neck. “I’m terribly happy for you. You got yourself a wonderful animal.”

  “If you wish, Father, come and ride her. Any time at all. Every day if you can.”

  “Thank you but I’m afraid I won’t be able to right now. There is the north wall of the church which has to be rebuilt if we intend to have it there for next winter. You know, I had a horse once, when I was only ten. At that age I hoped I wouldn’t grow another inch. I wanted very badly to be a jockey. But at eleven I shot up a couple of inches, and by the time I was fourteen I was already almost six feet tall. And instead of being a small jockey, God willed me to be a tall priest. But Gypsy is fast! She is incredibly fast. I do believe she’s been raced! She’s got a lot of quarter horse in her, and if she came from out West, I imagine she raced with the quarter horses.”

  “How do the quarter horses race?” Sarah wanted to know. She really meant to ask what the difference was between a quarter horse and a thoroughbred, but she thought she would look it up in her encyclopedia.

  “They race for only a quarter of a mile. That’s where their name comes from. They’re good and fast, but don’t have the stamina or the long legs the thoroughbreds have, and that’s why they can’t take longer stretches.”

  Later that afternoon Sarah sat in her rocking chair reading the Encyclopedia while Gypsy ate her lettuce trimmings. Although Sarah had not ridden her horse that day, the third day, she felt tired and closed her eyes. As it was now her habit to do, she fell asleep and awoke past Gypsy’s and her dinnertime.

  The moon was not full but it was light enough. Especially for Gypsy’s watch eye it was light enough. David pedaled hard the eight miles that separated him from Gypsy’s stable. The house was dark. The woman would be asleep. It was well after midnight. Gypsy greeted him with a low sound of anticipation. He found the oats and gave her a handful.

  “If I hadn’t been so stubborn,” he whispered to her as she licked his hand clean, “you’d be my horse and not hers.”

  He led Gypsy out of the box stall after putting on the bridle. He would not use the saddle. Saddles were for a working cowboy; they were useful for roping and for when one had to ride for hours. He led Gypsy, holding her, not riding her, on the grass beside the driveway. Halfway, when they were far enough away for the woman not to hear the hoof-beats, he jumped on her and held her to a walk until they reached the road. It would be safer to ride her there, along the grassy patch, where he knew there were no holes and no stones. It was a long time since he had ridden. Now the wind was chasing them and they were chasing the wind into the night. And it seemed more like flying—like being a bird—than ever before, with Gypsy beneath him, her strides even, her eagerness to run as great as his own.

  He didn’t know when he began to cry or why. Maybe because he loved that horse and knew his father had really tried to make things up to him. But tears were blinding him. He wetted Gypsy’s neck with them as he walked her after their ride, his face buried in her short mane.

  “It can’t be you now,” he whispered to her, “but I’ll have me a horse like you one day.”

  He made sure that she was dry and cool before putting her back into the stall. He gave her some more hay and cleaned her bed for her and kissed her good night. On the way back he sang. For the first time since they’d moved to Vermont he was happy enough to sing.

  Chapter Eight

  The nearness of the horse ceased to frighten Sarah within a week, but more than three weeks passed before she got over her fear of riding. The day she saddled and rode Gypsy without the familiar tightening sensation in the pit of her stomach was the day she went to Burlington and bought a hackamore.

  She had read in the Horseman’s Encyclopedia that a hackamore was easiest on a horse that resented a metal bar in its mouth. A leather strap over the horse’s nose would tighten slightly at the pressure of a pulled rein, and the horse would follow the commands. Now. when she saddled Gypsy, the horse accepted the bridle without tossing her head. And with her mouth free, Gypsy seemed to enjoy their daily rides as much as her mistress.

  With the fear gone there opened a new world of enjoyment for Sarah. The love she felt for Gypsy was an ever growing thing. It seemed to her that now she inhabited a sort of a kingdom, a wondrous country fashioned by mutual need, hers and Gypsy’s. It was a kingdom yet to be explored. She had only reached the first of its many turreted castles, and each day, with each new experience, both of them seemed to venture further. And it was Gyp
sy who was always leading the way on that splendid journey.

  They had a routine now. After a short walk Sarah would make Gypsy do her turns on the flat top of a nearby hill. Some days the horse flatly refused to change leads, pretending she didn’t know what was wanted of her.

  “You’re not fooling anyone,” Sarah would say. “You’re just plain lazy.”

  Gypsy’s tossing neck would seem to agree with her, and Sarah would not insist. She would wait for those days which seemed right to Gypsy to practice what she had once been taught.

  What Gypsy and Sarah both liked best of all was to run. They would gallop for a quarter of a mile, Gypsy snorting happily, the wind filling Sarah’s eyes with tears. They rode as though they were racing against an invisible string of horses. The earth moved away from them, the grass lay trampled in their wake, the birds competed with them in this flight through the sunlit fields and up the shade of the grassy road. On the top of the hill Gypsy would come to a stop, without a command. There Sarah would dismount and let the horse graze while she looked at the incredible beauty of the countryside. It never ceased to amaze her. It was ever changing, ever more dazzling.

  Many times they chased a rabbit across the fields, and once a buck deer. And now, with the fear gone, Sarah would take her horse to Cornwall once a week. A patch of grass on both sides lined the road, and Gypsy would gallop or canter most of the two miles, not at all afraid of the passing cars. When they would arrive at the town sign, with its ever diminishing population recorded faithfully every year, Gypsy would slow down to a walk. While Sarah would go to the post office or the bank, Gypsy would stand, tied to a parking meter, looking at the goings on and letting passers-by pet her. Sarah had not been ashamed, even that first time, to ride down Main Street. She didn’t care if anyone laughed at her, and no one did laugh. She knew that some people, those who had listened to Margaret Evans, continued to think her quite mad, but the fact was that her decision to buy a horse was the very best she had made in many years.

  “Well” It was Margaret Evans, looking down her nose. She was standing at her box in the post office, and Sarah Tierney saw that there was nothing inside of the box.

  “Hello, Margaret,” she said warmly. “How is the choir?”

  “Why would you care?” Margaret shot back, slamming the little door of her box shut.

  “But I do care! About you anyway.”

  “We’re not going to have a choir. I’ll just be playing the organ at the ten o’clock mass.”

  “I think that’s wonderful! You play so well, and the voices used to drown your lovely music. Oh, I’m so happy!”

  Margaret coughed.

  “I’ll finally be able to play Bach,” she said.

  Sarah smiled. “Wonderful!” She put her arm around Margaret. “Come out and meet Gypsy.”

  “Does one get introduced to horses nowadays?” Margaret asked.

  “It’s the latest thing,” Sarah said.

  Whatever reluctance there might have been on Margaret’s part vanished at the sight of the horse, and when Gypsy nuzzled Margaret, she invited her home for lunch.

  “You can come, too,” Margaret said to Sarah, “but you’ll have to settle for less than apples, pears and carrots.”

  After that Margaret would often come and watch her friend cleaning the stable, massaging Gypsy’s legs with a mixture of water, vinegar, and liniment, soaking her feet in a bucket of water with Epsom salts, and grooming her. Gypsy’s coat now shone with a russet glow, her mane and tail were growing, and she had put on the needed pounds.

  “I don’t know about this particular toothpaste,” Sarah said one day while brushing Gypsy’s teeth. “I tried it myself and didn’t care for the taste of it.”

  Margaret laughed. “If there is still a place,” she said, “where they worship horses, you might find the competition rather keen, but in the Christian world I am sure there is no other horse more pampered than this old mare of yours.”

  One day, after seeing her friend ride, Margaret asked, “Would you mind letting me try?”

  Sarah looked at her with amazement. “You? On a horse?”

  “My skirt is wide enough for an elephant, so what seems to be the problem?”

  She mounted by herself and did quite well at a walk, even better at a canter, always in full control of the animal, and seated more firmly in the saddle than Sarah.

  “Where in heaven’s name did you learn to ride? I’ve known you all my life.”

  “Except for one summer,” Margaret Evans reminded her. “The summer I went to Colorado to visit my aunt.”

  “That was when you were fourteen, wasn’t it?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “And you rode out there?”

  “Not only did I ride. I was given a horse.”

  “You never told me! ”

  “No, I never did.”

  “But what happened? Why didn’t you bring the horse back to Cornwall with you? ”

  Margaret Evans passed her hand gently over Gypsy’s neck. “I never brought it back,”—her voice was not the harsh one everyone knew; it was now low and sweet sounding— ‘because the day we were going to leave, my horse broke a leg.” She paused and then added very quickly, “I had to shoot it.”

  “And you shot it yourself?”

  “Yes, I shot it! It was my horse and it was I who had to do it. And that’s why I would never have another. And also that is why I was so mean when I found you’d bought a horse.”

  Summer came and with it the fight against flies. The stable had to be sprayed and Gypsy rubbed down with a fly repellent. They would go out now in the early morning ör very late in the afternoon, not because of the Vermont heat but because of the deer-flies that seemed never to tire in their attack.

  But summer was also a time of fun. For Gypsy it was the time of roaming free. She was no longer locked in the pasture behind a fence, but was given the freedom to go where she pleased. It was a time of rolling in the fragrant grass, of lying down for a sun-bath and a morning nap amidst the clover. It was a time of long days and short nights, a time of warmth and security.

  For Sarah it was a time of discovery. She discovered that Gypsy did not mind at all sharing her hours of sunbathing. She would lie down alongside her horse, using its neck for a pillow, and fall asleep under the warm sun. She discovered Gypsy’s willingness to come into the house, and the kitchen became the place where both of them would have their afternoon snacks, Gypsy a bowlful of quartered apples and carrots and Sarah her tea. Often that summer Sarah would spend nights in the stable, sleeping on a cot, loving to see her horse lie down for the night, the great copper body in repose, deerlike in its beauty. Before falling asleep they would listen to the radio. Gypsy’s ears were only alert when jazz or popular songs were being played, but she seemed to pay no attention whatever to the news or the weather.

  That summer, during their time of quiet happiness, Sarah also discovered that being a creature of habit she was very much like her horse. And both of them seemed to relish the tranquility of their existence.

  For David it was the worst of summers. There was summer school and all that it meant, being cooped up while others swam and had fun and were free to do whatever came into their minds.

  One day in the mail he received an invitation to the twins’ overnight birthday party. He had a whole week to think about it before he was supposed to call and accept or decline the invitation. All through that week he struggled with himself. He wanted to go and yet was unwilling to admit it, or he didn’t want to go and yet thought he should. Finally he picked up the phone. He coughed twice to clear his throat while he listened to the ring.

  “I’d like to come to the party,” he said very fast, not even having noticed if the person who answered was a woman’s voice or one of the twins.

  “Who is this?” a woman asked.

  “David Earl. I got the invi—”

  “What number are you calling?”

  “Isn’t this 467?”

  �
��No, it isn’t, dear. This is 457. Dial again.”

  He didn’t.

  He rushed out of the house, feeling humiliated, stupid, and angry at himself, and sat for hours in the dark garage thinking. He was a misfit, he decided. It was too late for him to join the rest of the world. He had even grown too far apart from boys his own age; he had nothing in common with them. He imagined how it would be if he had gotten the right number and had gone. He would mumble if someone spoke to him and he would have nothing to contribute to any of their conversations. What did they talk about, anyway?

  Twice that summer Peter Pollock came to his house, once to ask him to go camping and another time to take him fishing, and he made excuses both times. When one of the twins broke a leg the other stopped by David’s house to see if he would like to enter a go-cart competition in his brother’s place. Again he made an excuse, and after that no one came to see him.

  And now he only seemed to have Gypsy as a friend. He would often come to spy on her and the old woman. Seeing them together made him both miserable and happy. Miserable because he still wanted, more than anything else, to own Gypsy, and happy because he saw that she was loved as much as any horse could be loved. And because of that love he both hated and liked the woman.