A Horse to Love

by Nancy Springer

  “She doesn’t know you all that well yet,” said Aunt Lexie, who seemed to be able to see around corners and out of the back of her head. “Pick out her hooves while she’s quiet.”

  Erin picked the hooves. Not much had lodged in them, as Spindrift was barefoot. The mare’s hooves needed trimming, and she would need shoeing before Erin rode her out on the trail, where rocks might crack her hooves.

  Using the old towel her mother had given her, Erin washed her horse’s eyes and nostrils, then the udder and dock. “Yecch!” she exclaimed, looking at the black flakes on the towel. “They must not have done that very often.”

  “Probably never,” Aunt Lexie agreed. “Did you feel her jump? You want to do that every day for a while, get her used to handling.”

  “Should I take her for a little walk? Show her the farm?”

  “Fine.”

  Her left hand curled around the chin strap of the halter, Erin unsnapped the cross ties with her right hand and reached for her brand-new nylon lead with the chain end, clipping it in place.

  “Wait,” said Aunt Lexie. She heaved herself up from the bench, came and unclipped the lead, showed Erin how to run the chain through one side ring, under the mare’s chin and snap it onto the ring on the other side. Erin was surprised. She had never led William like that.

  “How come?”

  “More control. She acts up, you jerk it. It’s like the curb chain on a bit, makes her pay attention.”

  “But—why would she act up?”

  Aunt Lexie stared at her as if doubting her intelligence.

  “Cripes, Erin, this mare still has a lot of life in her. She’s not a deadhead like old William. She’s bound to start testing you soon.”

  “Testing me?” Erin did not like what she was hearing.

  “Certainly. You’re her new herd leader, aren’t you?”

  Erin just stared, and Aunt Lexie puffed out her lips in a sigh, reaching for her pipe to chew on. She seldom lit it, and never in the stable, but she sucked on it in moments of stress.

  “Now, you’ve seen the colts in the pasture,” she told Erin in I-am-being-very-patient tones, “nipping and kicking each other. Or even the broodmares, carrying on over who gets petted first. They’re settling who’s the herd leader, who’s next, and so on. Well, you have to show, uh, Spindrift that you’re her leader.”

  “You mean—she’s going to fight me?” asked Erin, her voice going up high in dismay.

  “Not to bite you or kick you, not unless you really spoil her. She’ll try to get away with things. A lot like a colt. Or a kid.”

  “Oh,” said Erin in a small voice. But the horse was supposed to be her friend.…

  “She might try to bull ahead when you’re leading her. So give her a yank with the chain and scold her. And she’s likely to shy at something, but the chain will make her think twice about that. Go on, now.”

  Erin led Spindrift out of the stable and down the lane toward the edge of the woods, where old William stood lazing in his paddock. Old William, with his perfect manners and his complete devotion to Aunt Lexie. Erin saw for the first time that such manners and such devotion were the result of years and years of Aunt Lexie’s working with him, and she sighed, not liking the thought.

  Spindrift was leading perfectly, her head nodding at Erin’s shoulder, neither bulling ahead nor dogging behind. Maybe Aunt Lexie was wrong. Maybe the horse would not test her at all. Maybe—

  Spindrift saw a patch of tall grass at the end of the lane and rushed ahead. Without having to think, Erin tightened her grip on the lead so as not to lose her horse. The chain drew snug under Spindrift’s chin, and Erin remembered what to do next. She gave it a jerk.

  “Whoa!” she ordered, pronouncing it “ho,” the way Aunt Lexie did. The mare halted, head up and eyes rolling. Keeping the chain tight, Erin went up to her to speak to her, just as she had so often seen Aunt Lexie speak to the colts she trained.

  “We go when I say so,” she scolded. “You want to knock me down? Okay, let’s go.” She loosened the chain, turned and walked, and Spindrift followed her quietly—for a moment. Erin had to correct her twice more before they finally reached the tasty-looking patch of grass. Once there, Erin let her graze for a while, all the time watching her and thinking hard.

  “Very good,” said Aunt Lexie when they got back to the barn. She had been keeping an eye on them, it seemed. “The only thing you could have done better when she pushed ahead, Erin, would have been to make her back up a few steps.”

  “Next time,” Erin mumbled. She put Spindrift in her stall—the mare was not to be let out for a few days except in the small canter ring, not until she knew Erin and Aunt Lexie well enough to come to them without much catching. Erin got up on her mounting block to look at her mare.

  “She looked scared of me,” she said, sounding tired. “I’d almost rather let her do what she wants.”

  “You can’t,” said Aunt Lexie, though not sharply at all. She seemed to understand, even, what Erin was saying. “You have to control her. She’s bigger than you; she could hurt you if you don’t.”

  “I’m not afraid,” Erin said.

  “You’ve never been hurt.”

  Remembering that Aunt Lexie had been hurt, Erin kept her mouth shut.

  “Don’t want to be, either. So you have a responsibility. Not only to take care of the horse, but to keep yourself safe, do you see?”

  Some response seemed to be expected, so Erin nodded.

  “Have to make her mind or she won’t be any good to ride,” Aunt Lexie added.

  Erin was silent. “Can I give her a jelly bean?” she asked finally.

  “From your hand? I suppose. She seems mannerly. But if she ever starts to get nippy, you’ll have to stop.”

  “Treats Make a Horse Nippy”—rule number twelveteen.

  It took a lot of calling and coaxing before Spindrift would look around at Erin and see the jelly bean. Once she had finally spotted it, she came right over and lipped it off of Erin’s palm. Spindrift was not backward where food was concerned. But she turned away sulkily before Erin could pat her.

  The horse wasn’t going to be her friend right away. Not for a jelly bean. Not even with her beautiful new name.

  Erin stood watching Spindrift silently for a while, struggling with the thought that she was going to have to change her ideas. Finally she said, “Well, I guess I’d better go home.”

  “We’ll turn her out in the paddock Saturday,” Aunt Lexie hollered after her, “when you’re around. You’ll want to see that.”

  Saturday morning turned out to be gray and cloudy. The sky seemed to be getting darker by the moment, instead of lighter. Erin skipped breakfast, hoping her mother would not notice. She rushed in agony through the chores her parents had assigned her, leaving a trail of forgotten objects behind her for Mike to deal with later—his job was straightening up. Before her family was awake, she was out of the house and on her way to the stable. If the rain would only hold off for just a little while longer—

  “She has to finish her hay,” said Aunt Lexie crankily.

  “Can’t she come back and finish it later?”

  “Well, maybe some of it. But she has to digest her grain. Give the poor creature some time, girl.”

  The sky was purple-gray, dark as slate, when they led the mare out at last. Spindrift looked blazing white against the gloomy sky and dark-green grass. She stood for just a moment with her head flung up, nostrils wide open. Then with a deep, chesty whicker and a gigantic thrust of her hind legs, she leaped into a gallop down the center of the paddock.

  Erin leaned forward with her mouth open, watching.

  The mare shied sharply at the far fence—for sheer fun. No horse had ever looked less afraid. She whirled on her hindquarters and ran alongside the rails, kicking and bucking at every stride, circled the paddock, running past with a noise that magnified in Erin’s mind into the rumble and roar of ocean waves. Head high, tail high, Spindrift galloped, white as li
ghtning against the dark sky, white as seething froth, white as a clipper ship’s sails—though Erin had never seen such sails—and the hairs of her mane and tail flew like spray. Like spindrift.

  “All right,” Erin breathed.

  “She’s a proud horse,” Aunt Lexie stated, “and a bold horse.” The words were not poetry coming from her, but a horsewoman’s jargon, words of truth. To Erin, they sounded wonderful.

  Spindrift had stopped her bucking and snorting and shying. She rounded the paddock at a steady gallop, a canter, a trot, then slowed down to a walk and began to explore her paddock by scent, swinging her head low and snuffling along the ground. Erin watched the mare’s every move, thrilled. She could not imagine greater perfection than that before her. Spindrift began to paw the grass.

  “Upsy-daisy,” said Aunt Lexie with a chuckle.

  Spindrift went down with a grunt and a surge to roll, came up shaking herself like a huge dog. Erin laughed out loud.

  “She’s settling in so well,” Aunt Lexie remarked, “you might be able to ride her sooner than I said. If you want.” She looked down at Erin with crinkling eyes, knowing very well that the girl was dying to ride.

  Erin jumped with excitement, then pounced. “When?”

  The old woman sucked on her pipe, looking vague and enjoying herself.

  “Aunt Lexie, when?” Erin persisted. “Today?”

  “Hardly today,” said Aunt Lexie dryly. The clouds hung black as a bruise. She and Erin called Spindrift in from the paddock, and within the moment it started to rain.

  Chapter Five

  “Erin!” her mother shouted as she went to put out the garbage after Saturday lunch. “What is this disgusting object by the back door?”

  Erin came running. It was the towel she had been using to clean parts of Spindrift, and her mother was holding it between thumb and forefinger, at arm’s length. It was, Erin had to admit, sort of gross.

  “I brought it home to get it washed—I mean, to wash it,” she said, remembering that she was supposed to take care of the horse laundry.

  “Then wash it! Don’t leave it lying here. Go put it in right now.”

  “Okay, okay!”

  “And don’t put anything else in with it!” Mrs. Calahan yelled after her.

  “Sheesh,” Erin muttered, but not loud enough so that her mother could hear. Though of course she had not told her parents so, it had been a rough week. It was getting harder each day to deal with the kids at school.

  “When do we get to come see your horse?” girls would ask her between classes or on the bus. Afraid to simply tell them that they couldn’t, Erin had tried all ways of putting them off.

  “Soon. She’s nervous.”

  “Maybe tomorrow. She’s still settling in.”

  “Maybe tomorrow …”

  In the morning, facing school, she had often thought of being sick. Her stomach really did hurt, every day. But she knew that if she was too sick to go to school, she would have to be too sick to go see Spindrift. So Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, she had walked off to the bus stop, very slowly, and made it through another day.

  “Maybe tomorrow …”

  “Maybe next week …”

  “Next week!” Marcy Gilmore exclaimed on the way home, Friday. “It’s getting worse!”

  “How about this weekend?” Mikkie Orris put in.

  “Just to come see.”

  “How about it?”

  Several of them were staring at her. Erin felt cornered and finally came out with the truth.

  “You can’t. It’s bad for the horse.”

  “How come?”

  “She’ll get confused. Too many people …” Spindrift was not a toy or a game, but a living being that depended on her, Erin, and Erin knew that already, down to her bones. Her feelings told her to protect the horse. But her feelings were hard to explain.

  “Aw, maaan, we won’t do nothing!”

  “You promised!”

  “Traitor!”

  “Scared of Old Baggy Bromer?” someone jeered.

  It would have been easy to blame everything on Aunt Lexie. So easy, Erin grew angry at the thought.

  “She’s my horse, and you’re not messing with her!”

  “But you said—” Marcy Gilmore started.

  “I didn’t know then!” Erin interrupted her, shouting. Not used to having to speak her mind, she had gotten loud, and she was standing up. “So you can all just stay away!”

  “Siddown!” hollered the bus driver.

  She sat, feeling anger beating on her. She hunched over with her arms across her chest for protection.

  “Erin Calahan,” declared red-headed Mikkie, “you are a stuck-up, selfish, ugly brat.”

  “You’re a pig,” said someone else.

  “More like a dipstick,” said a boy who had been listening in, and the group laughed.

  “Dipstick!”

  “You’re a dip, Erin!”

  “Ugly!”

  “Brat!”

  “Pig!”

  “Sheesh! Is she ever weird.”

  Ready to cry, but refusing to cry, Erin had run for her house as soon as she was off the bus. A day later, putting the filthy towel in the washer, she seemed still to hear yelling voices inside her head. She had been half afraid that Mikkie Orris and her gang would come by while Spindrift was running in the paddock that morning. But no one had.

  Her mother was waiting for her when she came upstairs. Tawnya looked tired. “Now, remember, I have to go to that nutrition seminar this afternoon,” she told Erin, “and Mike has practice, and your father has a wedding to shoot. So you’re in charge of supper.”

  Nodding without really hearing, Erin headed out through the garage door to go see Spindrift. Once she was at the stable, nothing would bother her. It was her hideaway, her refuge.

  The mare was shedding her winter fur. Hair gathered in white billows on the stable floor as Erin scraped it free with the shedding comb, and the fine, silky summer coat that was growing underneath shone like white water. Erin groomed Spindrift for a long time. In the cool, dim, silent aisleway of the stable, she could forget her mother’s tired face, forget the names the kids had called her and the angry sound of their voices. She always forgot everything else when she was with her horse.

  Including the time.

  She walked the mare, and had a talk with Aunt Lexie, and groomed Spindrift some more. It was very late when she started home. Opening the back door, she expected to smell supper cooking, but instead she came up against her mother’s angry stare. Tawnya Calahan was trying not to lose her temper.

  “Erin,” she said, in her I-will-be-calm-but-firm voice, “you are late. And I must have told you five times to put our dinner in the oven and set the table. You did neither. Now we have to try to make do with leftovers.”

  The knot in Erin’s stomach was back again. “Sorry, Mom,” she said. “I forgot.”

  “Forgot! It’s your middle name these days! You have not emptied the dishwasher any day this week. You know you are to empty the dishwasher and set the table when you come home from school. You have not been living up to the agreement we made, and I am beginning to be sorry we ever got you that horse.”

  “Aw, Mom—” Erin shifted from foot to foot. “Mike should do that stuff sometimes.”

  “Mike doesn’t even get home from practice until dinnertime! If you may have a horse, Mike may certainly have his baseball practice.”

  “Well, if you didn’t have a job, you could do it yourself!”

  The temper was lost. “If I didn’t have a job,” Mrs. Calahan shouted, “you wouldn’t have a horse!”

  “I’ll set the table now,” Erin mumbled.

  “It’s already done. Tomorrow morning, you stay here and do the jobs you have been neglecting. You haven’t changed your bed since I don’t know when, and it smells like a stable. You haven’t cleaned your room or done anything around the house. Every day you leave your books and papers all over the sofa—”


  “But, Mom, Aunt Lexie said we’re going to saddle Spindrift tomorrow and see if she’ll go English!” Erin’s voice rose so high it cracked. She had not yet ridden her new horse.

  “You can do that in the afternoon.”

  “It’s supposed to rain in the afternoon! Mom, I’ll clean my room when I get back. Please. I promise.”

  Tawnya felt as if her head would split. Seeing the look on Erin’s face, she would have liked to have given in to her, but temper would not let her. And fair was fair.

  “I’ve heard that before. You stay here until you’ve done your share.”

  Erin felt her face flush as red as Mikkie Orris’s hair, and she gave up on holding back tears. “I hate you!” she shouted at her mother. Then she ran for her room and slammed the door.

  Supper was silent, the evening uneasy. Tawnya took two Excedrin and went to bed half an hour early. She had decided to get up much earlier than she usually would on her Sunday off, hoping to have her daughter out of the house by ten. No breakfast, she thought wearily, and she set her alarm for seven.

  Sometime before daybreak her rest was disturbed by a dull humming sound. Mrs. Calahan hung on to sleep for a while longer, but in the end she sat up in bed, groggy but awake. She felt her way into her big, soft slippers and padded down the hallway in search of the noise. Funny, the living room lights were on. Who …