A Horse to Love

by Nancy Springer

  Mike came down the hallway and stopped at her door. “Play you a game of Parcheesi,” he offered.

  Erin shook her head.

  “Monopoly, then.”

  Worse yet. “I’ve got homework to do,” Erin said.

  “After you’re done.”

  “I’ve got lots,” Erin lied.

  “Sure you do!” said Mike acidly. “Jeez, have I got a weird sister! All the time stuck in your room. Why don’t you come out once in a while? You don’t have any friends—”

  “Weird yourself! Just scram!”

  “Michael,” Don Calahan hollered down the hallway, “let her alone!”

  Mike left Erin’s doorway, but went to his father to argue the point. “She is. She’s weird! Keeps to herself all the time.”

  “Just let her be.” Mr. Calahan sounded tired.

  “But she acts stuck up.”

  “Erin is shy. I’m glad you’re concerned, Mike, but you can’t force a shy person to be friendly.” The voices faded away as Mike and his father walked down the stairs to the basement TV room.

  Left to herself, Erin remembered for a moment how, years back, she had been afraid of her new two-wheeled bike for months. Her parents had given up coaxing her, but Mike had teased and dared her into learning to ride it. Now she rode a bike daily to Mrs. Bromer’s. She scowled, unwilling to be grateful to Mike for anything, and made herself stop thinking of him.

  She did her homework, always left until Sunday evening over the weekend. Then she went to bed early and lay awake as she liked to do, daydreaming. She focused a picture in her mind of the gray mare.… Silver Girl? Gray Swan? Silky, Princess, Pretty Lady.… The daydream image of the mare wavered hazily, seeming even larger than life, strange, almost scary, terribly exciting, terribly—true. That real, exact mare, with all her beauty and faults, would maybe be her own. She was afraid the vet would find her unsound. She was afraid the owner would sell her before her father called. With an aching in her chest she wanted her.

  Later, dozing off to sleep, she dreamed of her riding lessons on old William. Learning how to sit deep and relaxed in the saddle at the walk, jog, and canter; how to post to the trot and change leads; how to use her legs and ride without stirrups to improve her seat. William was a generous horse and did everything she asked of him politely. But he was not her horse, and Erin knew it. He moved like a robot under her, a push-button horse, and only when Aunt Lexie spoke to him did a spark of life come into him. Erin would feel the difference, and for a moment she would tingle with joy—then it would be gone, making her long for a horse of her own, a horse to be all hers, heart and will. A horse that would look to her as William looked to Aunt Lexie. A horse that would nuzzle her and put grass-green kisses on her shirt. A horse that would whinny when she came near and stretch its head toward her to greet her.

  Chapter Two

  Erin knew she shouldn’t, that nothing really was settled yet, but she couldn’t help it, she was so full of thoughts of the gray mare. Even though she didn’t usually say much to the kids at her bus stop, she had to tell them her news, first thing in the morning.

  “I might be getting a horse of my own,” she said to no one in particular, since she had no special friend. The older kids ignored her, as she knew they would. And Mike had gotten Mom to drive him to school, thank goodness. But a few of the kids her own age, the seventh and eight graders, clustered around her, interested. All girls, of course.

  “She’s pretty,” Erin told them. “She’s sort of white with this kind of gray mane and tail.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Bianca. I mean, that’s what it is now. I might name her something neater.”

  “What kind is she?”

  “No special kind. Just a grade horse.” How to explain that? “A—horse to ride.…”

  “You really got a horse? When did you get her?” It was Mikkie Orris, a red-headed girl, butting in.

  “I just said I might get her. It all depends.”

  “On what? Your mom and dad?” There was a rapid-fire, smarting-off discussion of parents, with much giggling. Erin stood through it impatiently. She had never been much for giggling.

  “Where will you keep her?” It was Marcy Gilmore, an athletic-looking blond girl who lived at the far end of the development from Erin.

  “At Mrs. Bromer’s.”

  Several faces turned toward Erin curiously. “How did you ever get in good with the old bag, anyway?” a girl asked her.

  “I—don’t know. I just hung around.…”

  Though she could not describe it, she remembered the day as if it were suspended in Lucite to keep on her bookshelf. Last summer. She had ridden her bike up the road and watched the colts for hours, the shiny, up-headed Morgan colts frisking with one another and then sleeping in the sun. And she had watched the broodmares grazing. At last, hesitantly, she had wandered down the lane toward the stable. She knew the rules: Don’t touch the horses, don’t even come close to them, don’t startle or upset them in any way. Mrs. Bromer would not drive a child away without reason, but she did not exactly make children welcome, either. Few of the kids from the development bothered to come here more than once or twice.

  Erin drifted in like a shadow at the big door of the stable.

  Mrs. Bromer was there, dark as a gnome in the dim light, cleaning out stalls. She was a stocky woman with creased, leathery-looking brown skin and iron-gray hair that she wore in a shapeless mass of frizz. She was wearing snaggled old polyester pants and duck boots, hefting a manure fork, and she turned on Erin with a hard stare.

  “You know the rules? Don’t touch the horses.”

  Erin nodded.

  “They’re all out right now, anyway. What do you want in here?”

  “I just—want to watch.…”

  Mrs. Bromer turned back to her work.

  “If I got a horse,” Erin blurted, “could I keep it here?”

  Mrs. Bromer straightened up again to stare at her. Erin could feel herself shrinking back. She had not known she was going to ask that question until it was out of her mouth. If she had thought about it, she might not have found the nerve.

  “Every time I ask my mom and dad for a horse,” she explained in a small voice, “they say we don’t have any place to keep it.”

  “What do you want with a horse?” Mrs. Bromer asked sharply—but, then, she always sounded sharp.

  “To—to ride!” It seemed like a silly question, until Erin remembered that she had never seen Mrs. Bromer ride her horses.

  “Anyone ever teach you how to ride?”

  “No—no, ma’am.”

  “Huh. Well, you ought to know what you’re doing before you go getting on a horse.” Mrs. Bromer stabbed her manure fork hard into the litter of the stall. She glared at Erin. “Old William and I, we’ll teach you how to ride.”

  Erin did not know whether to take this as a threat or the promise of an incredible gift. “Who’s William?” she managed to ask.

  “My old gelding. Steadiest horse you’re ever likely to ride. Had him since …” Mrs. Bromer shook her head, an odd expression on her face, and turned her back. Walking away, she paused, glanced over her shoulder, and jerked her head at Erin. “This way.”

  Erin followed her. Mrs. Bromer walked fast for an old woman, leaning forward, swinging her arms and puffing. She took Erin down the long lane that ran between pastures and paddocks to the small paddock nearest the woods, farthest from the road. There she leaned on the brown post-and-rail fence.

  “WILL-yum!” she called.

  A big red roan horse, swishing flies and dozing in the shade at the far side of the paddock, roused and turned his head to look at her. Did she really mean him? Yes, she did. William plodded toward them.

  “He’s not a Morgan,” said Erin in surprise. She had thought all of Mrs. Bromer’s horses were Morgans.

  “You’re right, he’s not. He’s the first one I got after—Well, who told you the others were Morgans?”

  Erin
blinked. “I just knew. The way their necks shoot straight up from their shoulders, and their tails are so thick.”

  “Huh. Well, what breed do you think William is?”

  The gelding didn’t look like a purebred horse at all. He was loafing, his head swinging at shoulder level as he walked slowly closer. But he seemed to have a good bit of muscle on him in spite of his lazy way of going. “Quarter horse?” Erin guessed.

  “Probably has a lot of quarter horse in him. Most horses around here do.” William reached the fence at last, stuck his nose over, and was rubbed hard on the cheekbones and upper neck by his mistress. “He’s just a grade horse. Old sweetheart. Dead safe. Must be twenty-five years old by now.” Mrs. Bromer sounded faintly surprised.

  Erin noticed with a small shock that the soft flesh of the horse’s muzzle was creased and wrinkled with age, just like Mrs. Bromer’s brown arm. She almost reached out to pat, but remembered the rule in time.

  “May I—touch him?”

  “Certainly. If you’re going to learn to ride on him, you’re going to have to touch him, aren’t you?”

  Erin stroked William’s nose and cheeks, breathing in the good horse smell but still half afraid, confused by Mrs. Bromer’s harsh way of giving favors.

  “But not unless I’m with you,” the woman added sternly, as if she had just remembered the rule herself. “That’s all, William.” She sent the horse away with a swat. Erin followed her back to the stable.

  “You’ll learn to ride English,” Mrs. Bromer told her, making it sound like some sort of decree. “Only type of saddle I can lift anymore.”

  Erin nodded.

  “You’ll need leather boots or shoes with hard soles and proper heels. Can’t ride in sneakers. Your feet slip through the stirrups, you’re in trouble.” Mrs. Bromer gave a hard glance at Erin’s feet. Erin looked down in turn at her own snub-toed running shoes, feeling suddenly awkward in them, and nodded again.

  “Have your mother or father come see me. All right, child, now run along. I have work to do.”

  Erin took her at her word and ran all the way back to where she had left her bike.

  That evening at supper she was so nervous she could not eat. Her parents were tired from their jobs, and Erin knew it would be a good idea if she let them eat and relax before she told them her tremendous news. But she was so excited and terrified she felt sick. After her mother had told her twice, between bites, to eat her steak before it got cold, she put down her knife and fork and gave Erin a long, seeing stare.

  “What in the world,” asked Mrs. Calahan, “is the matter?”

  “I—Well, I—” Erin took a deep breath. “I talked with Mrs. Bromer today.”

  Mr. Calahan also laid down his fork and stared, and Mike gave a hoot of laughter.

  “You went up to Old Baggy Bromer?”

  “Quiet, Michael,” Mr. Calahan snapped.

  “And I asked her,” Erin went on, breathless, being purposely vague about what it was that she had asked, “and she said, well, she would teach me to ride. She said one of you should come talk to her about it.”

  “I don’t believe this!” It was Mike again. Don and Tawnya Calahan scowled him into silence, then sat frankly gaping at their daughter. Quiet and shy as she was, Erin had not often surprised them.

  “You and Mrs. Bromer discussed the possibility of riding lessons?” Mr. Calahan asked at last.

  Erin nodded.

  “Well. If you could talk to her, I suppose we can do the same. Right, Tawn?” Don Calahan glanced at his wife and saw that she agreed. “Who should tackle her? You or me?”

  “I guess I will.” Erin’s mother turned back to her steak, but suddenly she, too, seemed not very hungry.

  She telephoned Mrs. Bromer while her husband washed the pots and pans. Erin dried, jiggling her legs and trying not to look as if she was listening.

  “Hello, Mrs. Bromer? This is Mrs. Calahan, Erin’s mother—”

  “The little dark-haired girl? That’s her name?” Mrs. Bromer’s voice knifed clear across the room. “Drat it, I said come on down here and talk to me, about her. I hate trying to settle anything on the phone.”

  “I just wanted to find out when—Right now? In the stable? All right, I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  Tawnya Calahan left, looking dazed. Erin watched a summer rerun on TV, went to her own room for a while and tried to read, gave it up, and sat in the living room, where she could hear the car pull into the driveway, waiting for her mother’s return. Her bedtime came and passed, and her father looked at her, shrugged and said nothing, letting her stay up. Mike phoned to say he was spending the night at a friend’s.

  At twenty minutes past eleven Mrs. Calahan came in, got herself a glass of iced tea, and sank down wearily in her favorite lounge chair.

  “So what’s the story?” Don demanded. Erin was afraid to speak.

  “It seems,” said Mrs. Calahan, word by word, enjoying herself, “that Mrs. Bromer has taken a, well, an interest in Erin. She’s got no use for most of the youngsters, she says. They barge in, make noise, act as if they own the place, don’t know puppypiddle about horses. That’s what she said,” Tawnya Calahan added as her husband gave her a startled glance. “But she says she’s had her eye on Erin. Says she can tell the young lady has a real love of horses.”

  Erin was glad her brother was not there to hear that. He would have fallen over from laughing. Mr. Calahan merely chuckled. “That’s an understatement,” he said.

  “I told her I believed she was right. Then I asked something about her horses, to be polite—” Mrs. Calahan sighed. “And she talked and talked, and took me from stall to stall, and I don’t remember or understand half of what she said. Then she sat me on a cot in the little room off the stable and talked some more. The gist of it was that she’s willing to give Erin riding lessons on that old horse of hers, and she says it’s entirely safe. Says she’ll supply a hunt cap, that’s a sort of hard hat, if it fits Erin, and all the necessary gear except boots. And she doesn’t want to charge us.”

  Mr. Calahan raised his eyebrows. “We really ought to give her something.”

  “I tried to tell her that, but she’s got her own ideas. She says if she gave lessons for money, as if it were a business, it would cause her trouble. She feels she would have to give them to any kid who asked. And she just wants to give them to Erin.”

  Tawnya Calahan looked at her daughter thoughtfully.

  “She wants you to come up as often as you like, to help her around the stable. She says you might want to help her take down the stalls, whatever that means. Says it gets her in the back.”

  Erin nodded.

  “And she also said,” Mrs. Calahan told her daughter, “that what you really asked her was, if you were to get a horse, could you keep it at her stable.”

  “Ohhhh,” exclaimed Mr. Calahan. “I see.”

  Stung, Erin spoke up, “Well, whenever I asked if I could have a horse, you always said there was no place to keep it!”

  “Better just go with the lessons for right now, Squirt.” Mr. Calahan was grinning, and Erin scowled as always when he grinned and called her Squirt. Mrs. Calahan got up, yawning.

  “Past time you were in bed.”

  Erin stopped scowling. “Can I go to Mrs. Bromer’s tomorrow?”

  “I suppose. Just make sure you eat a good breakfast. You’re so thin, it’ll be a wonder if you can manage a horse.”

  Erin recognized this as another of her mother’s ploys to make her eat, and said nothing.

  She went to Willow Hill Farm the next morning, early, in her jogging shoes, because she had no boots yet. And Mrs. Bromer started her on ground work, teaching her how to lead and groom. “Taking down” the stalls turned out to mean shoveling them out entirely and putting in fresh bedding, which was done once a week. Between times they were “picked” with a manure fork. Erin went every day, learning how to clean stalls, how to act around the horses, how to give water, how to put on a halter. And when
the leather boots had been bought, a paycheck of her mother’s later, her horseback lessons on old William had begun.

  “Will-YUM!” Mrs. Bromer had shouted sternly when the old horse failed to respond to Erin’s fumbling signals, and the gelding had goggled at his mistress—did she really mean it? He was to obey this Other? Yes, she really did. He moved off with a deep sigh, and Mrs. Bromer drilled Erin until she was dazed. There were basic rules to be learned until they became instinct, and many of them. Heels down. Head up. Take care of trouble before it happens—though there was very little trouble in William. Never hold on by the reins. Sit deep. Feet centered under the body for balance. Never give grain to an overheated horse. Or water. And many more rules. Erin gave them silly imaginary numbers—rule number eleventy-six, “Never Walk Behind a Nervous Horse,” and so on. This was her private joke, and it made her feel better. She did not like Mrs. Bromer much those days, but that didn’t matter—just being around the horses was enough, just learning to ride was more than enough for the time. She did everything Mrs. Bromer said and never talked back—she would not have dreamed of talking back.

  And sometime in the autumn Mrs. Bromer had said, “You may call me Aunt Lexie.”

  And sometime in the late winter, when half a dozen of the broodmares were huge with foal, she had said, “Time to start looking for a horse of your own.”

  Standing at the school-bus stop, Erin said aloud, “I have to really talk with my parents. I mean, they have to pay for the horse and the board money for Mrs. Bromer and everything.”

  “How come Old Lady Bromer never rides herself?”

  “Huh? Oh.” Erin blinked at the small group of her classmates clustered around her. “It’s her back. She hurt it, falling off a mean horse, years ago. She landed on a sharp rock. So now she just raises the colts and trains them with the driving reins.”