Before They Rode Horses

by Bonnie Bryant

  Most of the time when we moved, it wasn’t so bad. For one thing, we were living on bases where there were other families who moved a lot, other kids who had learned to make friends quickly, other kids who knew a lot about other places. Sometimes we went to schools on the bases. More often we went to schools in the towns. I liked meeting kids who weren’t Marine Corps brats, like I was, but the most important part was just meeting other kids. The problem with the move we made when I was nine was that it was just a temporary assignment for Dad. We weren’t going to be there for more than three months, and it was summertime. That meant no school.

  Now, I know that some people, like my friend Stevie, for instance, think the idea of no school is just about heaven, but when you’ve just moved to a new place, school is the fastest way to meet kids and make friends. Even tougher was the fact that the base didn’t have any extra housing, so we had to rent a house off the base, where there were no other Marine Corps brats around, and, worse than that, it was way out in the country. I mean, I really actually liked all those things, except that every one of them made it impossible for me to make friends. It wasn’t any better for my mom, either.

  Even though we weren’t there for very long, I remember that house well because it was a really nice one. It was a big old farmhouse with a huge yard and a big barn behind it. The first day we were there, I spent the whole morning just exploring the barn. It had once had a lot of animals in it—um, there might have been some you-know-whats—but definitely there had been cows and sheep. There was a chicken coop and a pen where they’d kept pigs. The old tractor was still there. The farmer who owned it was retiring, but he didn’t want to sell his house yet, so he’d sold most of his farm equipment and all of his livestock and rented the house to us while he and his wife rented an apartment in Florida. They wanted to try it for three months before they sold the farm. It was a perfect deal for us all.

  My room was on the second floor, down the hall from my parents’ room. My window looked out over the fields. They seemed to go on for miles. When we arrived, in the early summer, they were already green with the hay that would cover them soon. I remember the smell today, sweet, moist, rich. Everything about the whole place was perfect, except for one thing: no friends.

  The first few days, Mom and I spent all our time putting things away. Well, to be perfectly honest, she spent all of her time doing it, and I spent some of my time arranging my collection of model h—oops—the stuff in my room. Once I’d finished that, I explored, like the barn and the fields. There was a small pond next to the barn where I’d found some tadpoles that were just beginning to get legs. They were a little weird and very cute. I was lying on my stomach, looking into the water, when I heard my mother call me.

  “I’m here, Mom,” I called back.

  “Carole?” She hadn’t heard me.

  “Here, Mom!” I called back louder.

  “Where are you?” She sounded frightened.

  “I’m by the pond, Mom. I’m over here.” I waved to her. She didn’t see me at first. She was standing by the back door of the house, with her hand shading the sun from her eyes, staring out over the miles of field and forests that surrounded our house. There was a strong wind, tugging her dress around her and brushing her hair back. It was just a moment, but there, by the big house, with a big sky above and the wind whipping at her, she seemed terribly alone. I stood up in a hurry and called back as loudly as I could, realizing then that the wind was carrying my voice away from her instead of toward her.

  “Here I am!” I ran over to her. She put her arms out and surrounded me with a hug. It felt good, but I had the funny feeling that it felt even better to her.

  “Is something wrong, Mom?” I asked.

  Mom shook her head. “No, dear. I just didn’t know where you were and it worried me. There’s so much here here that I don’t know where here is yet.”

  That made me laugh. It was like Mom to say something silly like that, that still made sense.

  “I was looking at little baby frogs, Mom,” I told her. “They’re still tadpoles. They’ve got the tiniest little legs and their tails are getting shorter. They are so cute! Would you like to see them?”

  I was pretty sure she wouldn’t. She’d been working so hard to make our new house be a real home that I thought she’d never stop working, but she surprised me because she said she wanted to see them. We lay on our stomachs together that morning, watching the tadpoles. Then a school of minnows came over to us. Mom had a biscuit left from breakfast and we gave them some crumbs. They didn’t eat them, but they sure were curious about them. It was okay that they didn’t eat them, because then we found an anthill in the dirt nearby, and those ants were just thrilled with a couple of crumbs.

  Before I knew it, it was time for lunch, and I realized I’d spent the entire morning playing with my mother exactly the same way I would have played with my best friend. I’d had much more fun, too, because my best friend at the place we’d just moved from wouldn’t have liked the idea of lying on her stomach in the mud by a pond. Mom didn’t care. She knew we had a washing machine and could get clean almost as fast as we’d gotten dirty. That was the beginning of the summer when I learned that my mom was my best friend—and I was hers.

  II

  THE NEXT DAY it rained, so Mom and I stayed inside and played. First she taught me how to play crazy eights. It was an easy card game that I learned in a minute. It was also one where luck mattered almost as much as skill, so I could actually win some games without her letting me win. I’ve always hated it when adults play a game badly so that a kid can win—like we wouldn’t notice.

  Then it was time for lunch and Mom let me choose. We both ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on oatmeal bread—

  “I knew she couldn’t help mentioning something to do with horses,” said Stevie.

  “What?” Lisa asked.

  “Oatmeal bread!” Stevie said. “She couldn’t just have it on white bread like the rest of us?”

  “Oh, hush,” said Deborah. “Let her finish.” The girls were a little surprised at the sharpness in Deborah’s voice, but then they realized she was having another contraction. Automatically, Stevie began massaging her shoulders, Lisa dabbed at her forehead with a cool washcloth, and Carole continued her story.

  —potato chips, chocolate milk, jelly beans, chocolate chips, and corn curls. Mom ate some of everything that I ate, and I think she even liked it, too. Then for dessert, I asked if we could have Rice Krispies treats. Naturally, there weren’t any already in the house, so we made them. Some people might think this was an unimportant thing, but mothers are supposed to give their children some life skills, and when my mom taught me how to make Rice Krispies treats that day, she was doing us all a favor.

  That afternoon, we built a little dollhouse out of some of the packing crates that we’d had from our move. All my dolls got to move into their new house at the very same time my mom and dad and I were moving into ours. It was kind of neat. By the time we were done with it, I’d decided that my dolls weren’t as lucky in their new house as I was in mine, because they didn’t have as good a friend as I did. My mom used an old sheet to make curtains for every single window of that cardboard dollhouse.

  When I went to sleep that night, I wasn’t sure if I wanted it to be rainy or sunny the next day. However it turned out to be, I just wanted to have some more fun with my mom.

  I woke up very early. It was actually too early for me even to be able to tell what the weather was. It was still dark out, just a few streaks of light in the eastern sky. At first I didn’t know what it was that had awakened me. I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about the two nice days I’d had with Mom. Then I heard a noise. It wasn’t a frightening noise, just a noise, and it was outside. In my hazy daze of still mostly sleeping, I was only vaguely aware of it. Then I heard it again. Something was in our backyard, below my window.

  I crept out of bed. I didn’t even turn on my light because it would have bee
n too bright in the dark morning twilight. My window was open already. I pushed the curtains aside. At first, I didn’t see anything. The whole backyard seemed quiet and empty. Then something moved and I heard the sound again. There, right beneath my window, was a big black dog. I guess he either heard me or saw my curtains move. I don’t know which, but he looked up at me at the same instant that I spotted him. It was like our eyes met, and in an instant we knew one another. People talk about love at first sight, but I don’t know about that. I just know that the second I saw that—uh—dog, we were going to be as close as could be.

  I ran down the stairs and out the door to the backyard. He hadn’t moved a bit. It was like he was waiting for me. He knew I’d be there and that I’d take care of him. Of course, he was right.

  The first thing I wondered was if he was okay. I checked him over. There were no cuts anyplace and he didn’t seem sore or bruised. He walked around just fine. In fact, he practically ran around the yard after me. It was neat. There we were. We’d just met a few minutes ago and we were already playing. Well, then I looked to see if he had anything on him that would say who he belonged to. Nothing. There was no collar, no nothing. There was just one beautiful sleek black—uh—dog. The sun came up at that moment, just peeking up over the trees of the woods. We both stopped to look at the pretty pink in the sky. Oh, I know that dogs can’t see colors—actually most animals can’t see colors the way people do—but they sure can see a pretty sunrise. The light of the sun reflected in the dog’s shiny eyes, sparkling brightly. Then, even though I didn’t know who owned him or where he’d come from or how long he’d stay with me, I did know what his name was. It was Sparkle. That was what I was going to call him, anyway. I gave Sparkle a big hug then, and I’m telling you, if he’d had arms instead of legs, he would have hugged me back.

  I guess I must have been making a lot of noise with Sparkle because my dad came out into the yard to see what was up.

  “Daddy, look at this beautiful dog!” I said. “His name’s Sparkle. Can I keep him?”

  Well, of course, everybody in the world knows exactly what Dad said then because it’s what anybody would have known was the right thing to say: “A dog this friendly certainly belongs to someone, Carole. We have to find who it belongs to and give it back.”

  “But Dad—”

  “If he were your dog, you’d want him back, wouldn’t you?”

  I nodded yes then, but what I was thinking was: He is my dog. Now.

  By the time Dad left for work that morning, he and my mother had plans all set for finding what they called Sparkle’s real owner. I tried very hard not to listen. I had no intention of helping them with it. I decided my job was to take care of Sparkle the best way I could. For one thing, I wanted Mom and Dad to know that when “Sparkle’s real owner” couldn’t be found, I’d be an ideal substitute. For another really more important thing, I wanted to take care of Sparkle because Sparkle needed to be taken care of.

  I gave him water and food and I brushed his coat until it gleamed. He stood absolutely still for every second of the brushing, too. Sparkle loved it. I think my dad wouldn’t have been too thrilled with the fact that I used his hairbrush to do it with, but I washed it carefully when I was done.

  Then Mom picked up the telephone and began calling local vets. She figured Sparkle must live somewhere near our house and that someone would recognize him if she described him. I couldn’t listen. I was so afraid that she’d find Sparkle’s owner that I ran out of the house. Sparkle was there waiting for me, and I was just about certain that he was as afraid as I was that his “real owner” would come along for him. We began playing together then. We ran, we walked, we explored. We went all over the fields and all around the woods. We were inseparable.

  I don’t mean to make it sound like we did all of that that first morning. We didn’t. It took weeks for us to go all of those places, but it had only taken one minute for us to become inseparable.

  Mom and Dad kept warning me that Sparkle’s real owners were bound to show up. He was a good, healthy animal and he’d been loved a lot. Maybe he’d traveled a long distance, but anyone who had owned a dog as nice as that was sure to want to find him. I guess I knew they were right about that, but every day that passed without a phone call from someone claiming to own him seemed to me like another wish fulfilled. And as more of those wishes were fulfilled, it seemed more and more possible that my biggest wish would be, too.

  Oh, I dreamed a hundred different reasons why Sparkle’s owners wouldn’t come looking for him. Maybe his owners had been killed in a car accident. Or maybe they’d been driving on a long trip and let him out for a minute but forgot about him and went on driving. Maybe Sparkle actually belonged to the farmer who owned our house and he’d run away from Florida because it was too hot. I know these ideas of mine were a little farfetched, but I was just nine years old and I loved Sparkle very much.

  III

  I THINK SPARKLE loved me just as much as I loved him. We spent practically all day every day with one another. We would have been together at night, too, except Mom and Dad told me that they had promised the farmer we didn’t have any pets. Sparkle stayed in the barn. He didn’t seem to mind that at all. In fact, he seemed so at home there that I might have thought he’d lived there all his life. And that made me feel at home there.

  At the same time Sparkle was making me feel at home, he was doing it for Mom, too. She made so many phone calls about him that she got to know some people that way. She ended up making friends while she did volunteer work at the animal shelter in town because of Sparkle. Sparkle made that farm a real home for both of us.

  At first, as you can imagine, every time the phone rang I was afraid. I was afraid it would be someone who wanted to take Sparkle away from me. Mom had called all of our neighbors and about eight veterinarians—some in the town where our farm was and some in neighboring towns. She put an ad in our newspaper, and when nobody answered it, she put an ad in the papers in neighboring towns. Nobody called, nobody wrote, nobody came to see him. And with every day that went by, Sparkle became more and more my very own.

  It seemed that we played together for hours on end. In the daytime, we were never apart. If we weren’t actually going someplace together, we were staying in the yard together. I taught him things, too. He came whenever I called him, and he would do the things I asked him. He had obviously learned good manners before he came to our house, so he probably already knew most of what I said, but I could always tell that he was trying hard to please me.

  One morning the phone rang and Mom answered it. By then she’d already been doing volunteer work at the animal shelter, so it didn’t surprise me when the call was clearly about an animal. From her end of the conversation, I could tell that it was about an animal that had run away while it was being transported and that the transport company had been less than honest about exactly what had happened, so it wasn’t easy for the owners to know where to look for it. Mom seemed pleased to be able to tell them they’d found the right place to look for their dog.

  “Definitely, it’s a perfect description of Midnight,” she said. “Oh, I’m not surprised your daughter will be happy to have him back. A pet like that really becomes a member of the family. I can assure you, he’s become one of ours.”

  I didn’t understand at first. Mom kept looking at me and smiling. Then she covered the phone’s mouthpiece and whispered excitedly to me, “His name is Midnight.”

  “One of the dogs at the shelter?” I asked.

  She shook her head and then spoke into the phone again.

  “Well, I know how much this means to Michelle, because my own daughter, Carole, has become very attached to Midnight.”

  Midnight? I didn’t know any pet named Midnight. But then I realized suddenly that I did, in fact, know a pet named Midnight, only I called him Sparkle. This was Sparkle’s owner! They’d found us and they were going to take Sparkle away.

  I didn’t hear any of the rest of the conver
sation. I was vaguely aware of the fact that Mom was making a deal to have Sparkle’s owner and her father come to our house the next day to pick him up. I heard her giving them directions. I was aware then that she hung up the phone and looked toward me, smiling in that sort of sweet way that moms have of letting you know that they sympathize with the way you’re feeling, but it’s basically not all right. It’s an “I’m sorry” and a “Please don’t cry” all in one. I knew what she was going to say. She was going to tell me that Michelle loved Midnight very much and had been brokenhearted when she’d learned that he’d run off. She loved her pet every bit as much as I did, and he was her pet so I couldn’t allow myself to be upset. I didn’t give Mom a chance to say any of this. I just knew it was coming, and the fact that it made perfect sense was only going to upset me more. I did the only reasonable thing. I ran out toward the barn where Sparkle was patiently waiting for me. By the time I got there, I’d decided it wasn’t true. There had to be some mistake. How could it be that this dog who had so quickly and so completely become my best friend actually belonged to someone else? He was mine, truly mine. Day after day, we’d proved it to one another. Nothing could change that. His name was Sparkle and he belonged to Carole Hanson. He didn’t—couldn’t—belong to someone named Michelle who called him Midnight.

  He was waiting for me as he did every single morning, looking eagerly over the gate in the barn. His eyes lit up, as they did every morning. His tail wagged and he sniffed at me. He was mine. I patted him and hugged him. He hugged me back, I was sure.

  “Oh, Sparkle,” I said. “I love you.” If he could have talked, I’m absolutely certain he would have said, “I love you, too.”

  I thought about how much this wonderful animal had come to mean to me in the last few weeks. Then I thought about another girl, someone named Michelle. She’d loved her dog, too, and I was a little bit sorry for her, but her dog was another dog. It wasn’t Sparkle. It was Midnight.

  That was the test then; I knew it. I didn’t want to know, but I had to try. I took a step back and I looked the dog square in the eye.