Made That Way

by Susan Ketchen

  “So I see,” says Kansas.

  “Sadly, it’s an untreatable genetic disorder,” says Dr. Cleveland.

  “That is very sad,” says Kansas.

  I know they’re kidding around, but given the fact that they both know that I have a genetic disorder I’d have thought they’d be more sensitive. I guess they’re too excited to be worrying about my feelings right now.

  “It’s linked to a compulsive shopping gene,” continues Dr. Cleveland, “and the shopping-as-recreation reductase enzyme.”

  “I knew that,” says Kansas.

  Dr. Cleveland leans into her vehicle and drags forward another armful of gear.

  That’s when I hear the air brakes out on the roadway. I rise slowly to my feet, keeping my head low as long as possible. The rest seems to have helped, my headache has died down to a dull background kind of pain that I should be able to ignore. It’s more like a toothache now than an exploding head kind of thing.

  When I look up Dr. Cleveland is rubbing the back of her head with her hand. I guess she banged it on the hatch by straightening up too fast when she heard the truck.

  I walk over and stand beside Kansas, and the three of us watch the truck and trailer roll up the driveway. It’s nothing like my dream. The trailer is huge; I bet it could hold at least six horses. And it’s being towed by one of those transport trucks that haul semi-trailers. Even in my horse magazines I’ve never seen such a big rig for horses.

  “Oh good,” says Kansas. “They had an air-conditioned ride.”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered—Braveheart is a good traveller,” says Dr. Cleveland. “What about your horse, Sylvia, has he had much trailering experience?”

  I have something suddenly wrong with my throat and I can’t talk, so Kansas answers for me. “We don’t know,” she says ominously but Dr. Cleveland doesn’t react, which seems odd to me, even if she is distracted, because like my mom she is still a helping professional. My mom would never miss the opportunity to delve into some psychological puzzle.

  “I am so excited!” says Dr. Cleveland. “Do you think he’ll remember me, Kansas? I haven’t seen him for three months!”

  “Oh, I expect so,” says Kansas.

  “You’ll love Braveheart, everybody does,” says Dr. Cleveland. “He’s a real gentleman, a very honest horse.”

  “Honest?” I manage to say. “What does that mean?”

  “Well . . . ,” says Dr. Cleveland, but then grinds to a halt.

  “It means he’s obedient and has a good work ethic and makes an effort to learn what you’re teaching him,” says Kansas.

  “Everyone should have an honest horse like Braveheart,” says Dr. Cleveland.

  “I know,” says Kansas. Again I can hear that ominous tone. She’s holding something back. Then she says, “Sylvia’s grandfather found this horse for her.” And I realize she’s talking in code for Dr. Cleveland’s benefit, and she’s trying not to criticize my grandpa. My dream was right. Kansas wanted to pick out the right horse for me. She must think this is totally crazy, getting an unknown horse from thousands of miles away. I can feel my headache rebuilding.

  “Braveheart is my heart horse,” says Dr. Cleveland dreamily.

  I look up at her. I wonder if she’s on drugs. My dad says that it’s not uncommon for medical professionals to become addicted to prescription medications because they receive free samples all the time from the pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Cleveland smiles down at me briefly, then returns her attention to the truck.

  The truck stops in front of us in the yard. It’s a huge looming burgundy thing with lots of shiny metal trim pieces. The engine shuts off then pings as it cools down. Kansas rubs her palms on her pants, and Dr. Cleveland bounces on her toes and makes chirping noises. This is the best day of my life, I tell myself over and over. Pain is a thing of the mind. Be happy. Be happy.

  We are lined up by the driver’s door, and have to wait forever as he makes some notations on a clipboard, finds his ball cap, and finally finally climbs down from the cab. He refers to the clipboard.

  “I have two deliveries here. One for a Dr. K. Cleveland. The other for Sylvia Forrester. Have I got the right place?”

  I can’t say anything and Dr. Cleveland sounds like she has a squeaky toy stuck in her throat, so Kansas has to answer. “Right place,” she says, then introduces herself as the barn owner. When she finishes, she glances my way then peers at me more closely. “Are you okay?” she whispers, “You’re white as a ghost.” She looks to Dr. Cleveland, probably hoping for an on-the-spot medical consultation, just as a loud bang reverberates from the trailer.

  “Sounds like they want to get out,” says Dr. Cleveland.

  “Might as well,” says the driver. He leans the clipboard on the step beside the cab, pulls a pair of leather gloves from his hip pocket and slips them on.

  He lowers the ramp at the side of the trailer.

  “There he is,” says Kelly. “Hi, Braveheart. I’m here! Remember me?” She is waving and cooing. A large chestnut head with a wide white blaze stretches into view. He’s wearing a leather shipping helmet. An impatient leg reaches forward, wrapped to the knee in blue padded shipping boot.

  I stretch onto my tiptoes, trying to see past Braveheart, but then I lose my balance and Kansas grabs my elbow.

  “Can you see him?” I ask.

  “Not yet,” says Kansas.

  “We’ll unload the big guy first,” says the driver. “What is he, 16.3?”

  “17.2,” says Dr. Cleveland breathlessly.

  “Jesus,” says Kansas.

  The driver climbs the ramp, clips a lead rope onto Braveheart’s leather halter and drops the chest bar. He takes the horse forward a step and barely manages to check him at the top of the ramp. “Can’t get away from him soon enough, can you, fella?” he says, as if a horse as big as Braveheart could be scared of anything. He leads the horse down into the yard and hands the rope to Dr. Cleveland.

  “Oh, Braveheart,” she says. She wipes her shirtsleeve across her eyes. “It is so good to see you again.” She reaches a hand up to stroke his neck which is upright and rigid. He doesn’t even know she’s there. He is staring across the yard to the horses out in the paddock, and bellows a welcome. Hambone answers with a loud whinny, then gathers up his mares and gallops them to the far end of the pasture. Braveheart wheels around Dr. Cleveland in a tight excited circle. Kansas puts her arm around my shoulders and backs me out of range, then we stand there together, watching and waiting.

  “That is a big horse,” I murmur.

  “That is a very big horse,” says Kansas. “Of course they always grow a hand or two when they’re excited. At least I hope that’s what’s happened here.”

  A thin bugling sound wafts from the darkness of the far side of the trailer. It’s nothing like the calls the other horses are making.

  “What’s that?” says Kansas. “It sounds like something from the alien bar in Star Wars.”

  “Oh no,” I say, then clamp a hand across my mouth.

  “What?” says Kansas.

  The driver ascends the ramp for his second passenger. If I could talk I would tell him to close the door and take the horse back where he found him. But I can’t talk. It’s all I can do to stay on my feet. I’m sure any second now I’m going to throw up again. I can’t even run away because Kansas has me held tight against her side. I’m trapped.

  The driver reaches forward with the lead and drops the chest bar. Unlike Braveheart, my horse isn’t so eager to leave the trailer. The driver pats him on the neck and tells him to step forward, but when this doesn’t work he takes a length of chain out of his pocket. I can’t see what he’s doing, but I’ve watched Kansas slip a chain over Hambone’s nose when he’s been difficult, so I figure the driver’s doing the same thing here. My poor pony.
r />   “Thought you’d change your mind,” the driver says.

  When they get to the top of the ramp I won’t look at my horse’s head. I decide to focus on his legs. Big mistake. Immediately I can see there’s something wrong. Even I can see it, and I know next to nothing. The horse is pointing his right front foot, trying to keep his weight off it. When the driver asks him to step forward to the ramp he leads with his left front and short-steps with the right. I tell myself maybe I’m imagining this, maybe nothing is wrong, maybe some horses are gimpy walking off trailers, but then Kansas says, “Oh dear.”

  The ground comes up in front of me and suddenly I’m on my knees, throwing up in the dirt.

  I hear the driver lead the horse the rest of the way down the ramp and Kansas steps away from me to take the lead rope. “Not what she was expecting?” says the driver. “He’s not a bad little guy.” I look up just in time to see the horse lunge forward and bite the driver on the arm. The horse hangs on like a pit bull until the driver cuffs him across the ears with his free hand.

  “Holy crap,” says the driver. He turns his back and doubles up over his arm.

  I rock back and sit cross-legged in the dirt, staring at Kansas’s feet and four black hooves at the end of four grey legs. I know I should stand up and move out of the way, but even if I could stand, this would mean I’d have to take a closer look at my new horse and I don’t want to. I’ve seen enough. When he lunged at the driver I saw the patch of hair missing from his forehead. I heard his weird whinny. I know what I have here.

  I can hear Electra, Hambone and Photon letting loose in the paddock, the air and ground vibrating with the impact of their hooves as they gallop from one end of the field to another. Braveheart is yelling from his stall and Dr. Cleveland is calling from the barn doorway. “Hey, Kansas, could you give me a hand getting him out of his shipping boots, he’s a bit excited, I can usually manage him on his own, but—What’s going on out here?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Kansas insists on calling my mom, even though Dr. Cleveland says I’m probably just anxious. Of course I didn’t mention about the headache, because we’re all horsewomen, and horsewomen don’t give in to pain, or even talk about it unless they absolutely have to. Maybe I am just anxious. But then I have a lot to be anxious about if I’m now the owner of a unicorn.

  My mom can’t leave work. She says she’ll call my dad.

  I hear his SUV pull up, skidding in the gravel, leaving ruts I’m sure. He and Kansas already don’t get along all that well, and this isn’t going to help. He doesn’t close his door or remove the keys from the ignition, I can hear the warning chime all the way from the tack room where I’m sitting on a stool with an ice pack on the back of my neck (this was Kansas’s idea).

  “Are you okay, Peewee?” says Dad. He crouches in front of me and plops a hand on my shoulder. “Did you fall off your horse? I’ll kill the bloody thing.”

  “Dad, no, I’m fine. I just threw up. Dr. Cleveland thinks it’s from anxiety.”

  He stands up. “Anxiety? Your mom didn’t say anything about that. I thought you’d been hurt. I left a meeting with . . . ”

  For some strange reason my eyes are filling with tears, and before I can hide my face, Dad notices. “Oh, never mind,” he says, and puts a hand on my head. “As long as you’re okay.”

  Kansas steps in beside him. “I didn’t think she should ride her bike home. She kind of fainted.”

  “I didn’t faint. And I don’t want to go home yet.” I get to my feet, and stuff the ice pack back into the freezer compartment of the little fridge, which gives me some time to get my act back together. I don’t know what came over me. I turn to face them. “I’m fine now. Really.”

  Kansas is leaning against the door jamb. She’s drying her arms on her t-shirt. She’s been scrubbing water buckets and her sleeves are pushed up onto her shoulders. She has more muscles in her arms than I have in my legs. “You have lots of time to get to know your new pony,” she tells me. “It doesn’t all have to happen today.” There’s a smudge of dirt on her face and a clump of her hair has escaped from the broad blue elastic holding her pony tail. Instead of her usual paddock boots, she’s wearing her work boots which I know have steel toes, this must have been in honour of the new horses arriving, and she’s tucked her jeans haphazardly into the tops. The laces aren’t tied, which kind of defeats the other safety precautions as far as I’m concerned, but what do I know? My dad, on the other hand, is wearing his good beige trousers and white dress shirt and gold and blue striped tie and there’s not a wrinkle or crease or smudge anywhere. It’s as though he has an invisible protective shield around himself, because I know I can’t walk near the barn without attracting a layer of dirt.

  “Come on, Munchkin, I’ll take you home,” he says.

  He holds out an arm for me. He wants to usher me to his car, and partly I want to go with him, I want to fold against him and be taken care of, but also I notice he’s calling me Peewee and Munchkin again, and if it’s time he stopped treating me like a child then maybe I have to stop acting like one. So I squint at him, and am just about to say something that Mom would probably call defiant, when Kansas says, “Why don’t you take him to meet your pony, Sylvia?” She puts a nice stress on my name for me.

  I take Dad’s hand. Maybe if I’m holding on to him it won’t be so bad looking at the unicorn. I lead him down the alleyway and Kansas tags along behind us.

  Dad and I peer over the half-door into the darkness at the back of the stall where my new “pony” is trying to make himself invisible. Dad stands close so I can smell his aftershave. I warn him not to lean on the door or he’ll get his shirt dirty. I have to stand on an upturned bucket because Kansas has asked me not to climb on the doors, she says it’s bad for the hinges. I don’t mind. Kansas and I both know this is temporary, and that once the growth hormone starts to work I’ll be able to see over the doors like everyone else in the world who is more than six years old.

  “Is he supposed to look like that?” says Dad.

  “He’ll be fine,” says Kansas, unconvincingly. “He’s probably shell-shocked from the traveling. He’ll likely settle in, but we need to give him a few days.”

  I can tell that Kansas isn’t happy, but I’m not going to tell her that I know what the problem is, and that it’s not going to go away, because instead of a horse or even a pony, I have a unicorn. She won’t notice for a while, what with the horn missing, and also because he’s grey and not white like everyone thinks unicorns are supposed to be. But I know that in horses, if they’re grey when they’re younger, they gradually turn white. And it’s probably the same with unicorns.

  Dad extends his arm into the stall and twiddles his fingers, saying, “Hey horsey.”

  Kansas reaches over top of me, grabs my dad’s forearm and draws it out of the stall. When she lets go I see a mucky brown handprint on my dad’s white shirtsleeve.

  “There was an incident with the driver. The horse may not like men. We’re not sure yet,” Kansas explains.

  “An incident?” says Dad vaguely. He brushes at the dirt mark on his sleeve but it doesn’t move.

  “He bit the driver,” I say, trying to distract Dad from how Kansas wrecked his shirt. “He was like a pit bull.”

  Probably this wasn’t the right thing to say. Dad looks narrow-eyed at Kansas, who shrugs.

  “This horse isn’t safe,” says Dad.

  Kansas blinks. “Of course he’s not safe. He’s an animal. If you want safe, ride a bicycle.”

  Dad looks down at me. His eyes are pink around the edges.

  “Dad, I’ll be fine.” And to show him how confident I am, I cross my arms on the top of the stall door and rest my chin on the back of my wrists. I am feeling a bit better. While I was waiting for Dad to arrive, Dr. Cleveland gave me some diluted Gatorade in case I was dehydrated. Then Kansas
made me eat some of her peanut butter and honey sandwich. Miraculously it stayed down. And pain is a thing of the mind.

  But then Dad takes another look into the back of the stall and says, “What happened to his head?” And my heart stops.

  Kansas says, “Some horses are born with big heads like that, they don’t all have elegant little faces like Electra’s.” She says it like she’s trying to make a point about how this whole horse purchase thing was not a good idea.

  “I mean the place on his forehead where he doesn’t have any fur,” says Dad.

  At least there isn’t blood pouring out of it, like in my dream. I decide not to mention this.

  “Oh that. Sorry, Sylvia,” says Kansas. “I shouldn’t have said . . . anyway, it looks like he scraped himself in the trailer, that sort of thing happens all the time.” She doesn’t say anything more for a while, then adds, “His eye is nice though, large and dark.”

  It took her long enough to come up with something nice to say about him.

  “And his ears are nice and large too,” Dad adds.

  Kansas makes a kind of gargling sound.

  “What’s wrong with his coat?” I ask, because I actually like his ears and don’t want to hear that there’s something wrong with them, but on the other hand there’s definitely something unusual about his coat. Kansas hums. She’s probably trying to think of the least serious possible explanation so I don’t worry. This is the sort of thing my parents do to me and I hate it, even today when I’m feeling weak in the knees. I want to know the truth. “I mean, here we are in August,” I say, “and it almost looks like he’s still got his winter coat.”

  Kansas sighs. “Well, it is a little coarse. Could be malnourished. Could be Cushings. Could be a bunch of things. Maybe he’s part Shetland pony, who knows? How’re you feeling?”

  “Oh I’m fine,” I lie, because I know she’s trying to change the subject. The headache has come back full blast but I am not going to let her treat me like a baby or an invalid like everyone else does.