Stable Manners

by Bonnie Bryant

  Carole thought about it for a minute. The truth was, she didn’t quite think of Cam as a boyfriend. He was a really nice guy she’d met once and talked to a lot, but they hadn’t had a date or anything. He’d held her hand for a few minutes when they took a walk after the horse show. That had been nice, but did it mean he was a boyfriend? Carole finally decided that even if she wasn’t ready to call Cam her boyfriend, Lisa probably would see him that way.

  “Okay,” Carole agreed.

  The girls bit into their sandwiches and were silent for a few minutes as they contemplated the Know-Down that was coming up.

  “I’m really nervous about having Cam there,” Carole admitted. “What if he knows more than me?” She paused. “Or what if I know more than him?” She threw up her hands.

  Stevie grinned at her friend’s distress. “I know what you mean. But I’ve decided that it doesn’t matter if we beat them or not. The only thing that matters is learning more about horses. That’s the whole purpose of the thing.”

  Carole raised her eyebrows. That didn’t sound like competitive Stevie.

  “I’m serious,” Stevie reassured her.

  “I totally agree,” Carole said. “So we should send these study sheets to Phil and Cam so we don’t have an unfair advantage.”

  “Of course,” said Stevie. “Let’s borrow envelopes and stamps from Mrs. Reg right now and put these in the mail. We can make copies of Lisa’s study sheets at your house tonight.”

  “Sure. Our next-door neighbor has a copying machine and she’s always telling Dad and me we can use it.”

  The girls wrapped up their half-eaten sandwiches and headed for Mrs. Reg’s office. Mrs. Reg was Max’s mother and the stable manager. Her desk was a confusion of organization. There were papers everywhere, but they were carefully organized. That was like Mrs. Reg. Everything seemed out of place, but when it was examined, there was always an underlying logic.

  “Envelopes here,” Stevie said, reaching into the lowest drawer.

  “And stamps here,” Carole said, locating a roll of stamps in the corner of the top drawer.

  “And a pen?” Stevie searched the top of the desk and found Mrs. Reg’s pen on top of some order forms she was probably about to take care of.

  It only took a minute for each girl to scribble a note and address the envelope to her friend. There was a mailbox out in front of the stable. Stevie took their letters, walked them out to the street, and dropped them in the mailbox while Carole went in search of Lisa.

  LISA WAS TRYING to be patient, but it wasn’t easy. Where she wanted to be was checking on the mare again. She thought she’d heard Judy Barker’s truck pull into the stable driveway and she wanted to be there when Judy confirmed to Max that the mare was about to foal. Instead Lisa was stuck tromping across a small paddock with May Grover. May had insisted on examining the pony cart and that was kept in a little shed along with a buckboard and a sleigh that Max also had for horses to pull. May had never seen any of them and was excited at the prospect of learning something totally new about Pine Hollow. Lisa had tried to talk her into checking on the mare first, but when May wanted to do something, she could be extremely stubborn. She wanted to see the pony cart.

  “This way,” Lisa said, leading May to the shed. She was grumbling to herself about it when she felt May take her hand. Suddenly she remembered that May was just a little girl, small enough so that when she crossed streets she still took her mother’s hand. It was a simple gesture and it made Lisa feel a certain responsibility to the little girl who was entrusting her hand to Lisa’s. Lisa gripped the small hand affectionately.

  “Are you excited about the Know-Down?” Lisa asked.

  “Am I ever!” said May. “The trouble is, I won’t know which to work on harder—the Know-Down or our project.”

  “You’ll find time for it all,” Lisa said assuringly. “All you have to do is study your sheets for the Know-Down.”

  “I know,” May said. “I put them in my pocket so I wouldn’t lose them …” Her voice trailed off.

  Then she let go of Lisa’s hand and patted her pocket. She patted her other pocket.

  “Oh, no!” she said, and the tone of her voice was clear, “I’ve lost them already!”

  “Don’t worry,” Lisa said. “Max will give you another set. Just ask him when we get back.”

  “I don’t want him to know I lost them,” May said. She was clearly distressed and Lisa wanted to comfort her.

  “Here, take mine.” Lisa pulled the folded papers out of her pocket. “I can borrow one of my friends’ and copy them so Max will never know that either of us lost a set, okay?”

  “Okay,” May said happily. She took Lisa’s study sheets and tucked them carefully into her pocket. Lisa hoped May wouldn’t lose those, too, but her concern faded when she saw how deeply May pushed them into her pocket.

  When they reached the shed, Lisa opened the door and flipped on the light. There, in one corner, was the little pony cart they would be using to hitch Nickel. It was very small compared to the buckboard, which was a full-sized flatbed wagon, and very plain compared to the elaborate, old-fashioned one-horse open sleigh. Although Lisa usually thought that everything that had to do with horses was important, she was struck only by how plain and how small and how totally insignificant the pony cart appeared.

  “Wow!” said May. “Look at these things!”

  “Come on, let’s get back to the stable,” said Lisa. “I think I heard Judy’s truck arrive.”

  “Can I sit in the cart, please?” May asked. “Just for a minute?”

  Lisa was discovering that it was very hard to say no to May. She gave the little girl a boost into the back of the cart and watched as she sat as proudly as if she were the Queen of the World on her own throne.

  “Come on,” Lisa urged her. “Let’s go.”

  They couldn’t go right then, though, because May just had to try out the buckboard and the sleigh as well. She thought maybe the sleigh was the best of them, but she wasn’t sure. She wanted to try the pony cart again.

  When the two of them finally headed back to the stable, Lisa watched Judy’s truck pull out of the driveway. She’d been there, examined the mare, and moved on before Lisa even had a chance to ask her about the mare’s moodiness.

  Lisa rushed to the mare’s stall and found Carole and Stevie there.

  “Where have you been?” Carole asked.

  “I’ve been with May Grover—oh, it’s a long story,” she said. She didn’t want to take the time to explain about their Big Sis/Little Sis project right then. She wanted to know about the mare.

  “What did Judy say?” she asked. “Didn’t she say that the mare’s moodiness meant she’s about to foal?”

  “Oh, I forgot to ask,” Stevie said. “Judy was just here for a minute.”

  Lisa was irritated that her friends would forget to ask her question.

  “But didn’t she say the mare could foal at any time?”

  “I don’t think so,” Carole said. “She just checked on her and nodded, like everything seems to be on schedule. She’s not due to foal for another two weeks, you know.”

  Lisa knew. She was also convinced she was right that it wasn’t going to be another two weeks. She wished her friends would take her more seriously. Of the three of them, she was the newest rider, but she’d worked very hard and learned everything she could about horses in the relatively short time since her first ride. It didn’t seem fair that Stevie and Carole still thought they knew more than she did. Maybe the Know-Down would be an opportunity to show them how much she knew. Of course, by then, there would be a new foal to show them the same thing!

  “Horse Wise will resume in five minutes!” a crackling voice announced on the stable’s PA system.

  “Lunch!” Lisa said, suddenly realizing that she hadn’t eaten at all. Carole and Stevie hadn’t finished their sandwiches, either. The three of them hurried to the locker area, gobbled their food and drank their juice before return
ing to the feed room for the second half of the Horse Wise meeting.

  “WHERE’S LISA?” CAROLE asked Stevie. The meeting was over and the girls were waiting for Carole’s father. He’d been at the Horse Wise meeting because he was a parent volunteer. Now, it seemed, the volunteers were having a meeting of their own and the girls had to wait for that to be over. They didn’t mind. Any time spent at Pine Hollow was good time, even if it was spent standing in the driveway. Then, when the volunteers’ meeting was over, the three girls were all going to Carole’s house for a sleepover. That might even be more fun than the Horse Wise meeting.

  “We have to remember not to talk about Cam and Phil too much,” Stevie reminded Carole.

  “No problem. All we’re going to talk about is the Know-Down. There’s so much work to do with the study sheets that we won’t have time to talk about Cam and Phil. I don’t want to hurt Lisa’s feelings any more than you do.”

  “Here she comes,” Stevie said. The two of them waved to Lisa as she emerged from the stables. She waved back, then signaled them to come over. They dropped their bags and trotted over to follow Lisa back into the stable.

  “Look,” she said, when her friends caught up with her at the mare’s stall. “She’s still cranky and skittish.”

  Carole observed the mare. She did seem a little frightened. Skittish was definitely the word.

  “She’s only been here two days and this is an unfamiliar place,” Carole reminded Lisa. “Maybe she’s just afraid.”

  “Maybe she’s about to have a foal,” Lisa said.

  “Of course she is,” Stevie said. “In about ten days, maybe more. Maybe less.”

  “Less,” Lisa said.

  “You girls ready?” That was Colonel Hanson. The parent volunteers’ meeting was over and he pulled the car keys out of his pocket.

  Lisa gave the mare a last look and sighed. Lisa hated to leave, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. By the time she returned to Pine Hollow, there would probably be a foal waiting for her.

  “I’ve got a new one for you, Stevie,” Colonel Hanson said, shifting his car into gear while he pulled out onto the road toward home.

  “Ready,” Stevie said. Her eyes sparkled in anticipation. She and Colonel Hanson shared a love of very bad, very old jokes and they were forever trying to outwit one another with them.

  “How can you tell when an elephant’s raided your refrigerator?”

  “Easy-peasy,” Stevie snapped back. “Smell of peanuts on his breath.”

  “Drat, I thought I had you with that one. All right, then. What has four wheels and flies?”

  “A garbage truck. Why don’t you try something hard?”

  “Hmmmm. Okay. What do you find in the middle of Paris?”

  “Eiffel Tower?”

  “Nope.”

  “Right in the middle?”

  “Yes, right in the middle.”

  “That arch thing? The Arc de Triomphe?”

  “Nope.”

  Carole joined in. “The Louvre? Place de la Concorde? Notre Dame?”

  They tried everything they could remember about Paris, including the Île de la Cité, the Bastille, and Versailles, which, Colonel Hanson was pleased to remind them, was about twenty miles outside of the city. “This is right in the middle of Paris,” he said.

  “R,” said Lisa.

  “Are what?” Stevie asked.

  “R. It’s in the middle of Paris. P-A-R-I-S. R is in the middle,” Lisa clarified.

  “Very good,” said the colonel.

  “Groan,” said Stevie.

  “Da-ad!” Carole complained. Secretly, though, she loved it. She was sure she had the best father in the whole wide world and the fact that her friends seemed to share her opinion always made her feel especially lucky.

  Once they solved the colonel’s riddle, talk turned to horses. Carole and Stevie were curious about where Lisa had been during lunch. Lisa hadn’t had a chance to tell them about the Big Sis/Little Sis project she was doing with May.

  “You know, I learned a lot about hitching a horse to a wagon when I was in Vermont,” Stevie said. “We used horse-drawn sleighs to collect maple sap.”

  “And I had to hitch the ponies to the cart when we were giving rides at the fair Stevie organized—or rather disorganized—last spring. I can help you with it, too.”

  There was a part of Lisa that was glad for the offer of help from her friends, but there was another part of her that wondered why they always seemed to think they knew so much when she didn’t. And then when she did know something—like the mare was going to foal any day now—they dismissed it, “Thanks anyway,” she said. “But Max said May and I were supposed to work on this together. I guess we’d better leave it that way. You guys will have your chance another time.”

  Stevie and Carole exchanged glances. It wasn’t like Lisa to turn down help, Stevie thought. Lisa must be a little jealous of the fact that both Carole and Stevie had boyfriends coming to the Know-Down. She decided that they needed to make Lisa feel included right away. She turned to Carole.

  “I can’t wait to get to your house so we can start working on the Know-Down together,” she said.

  “Me, too,” Lisa agreed. Stevie was glad to hear that.

  “Me, three,” Carole added. “In two weeks, we’re going to know every single thing on the study sheets.”

  “We’ll knock ’em dead!” Stevie vowed.

  At that the threesome shook hands.

  Colonel Hanson pulled up into his driveway and the girls piled out of the car and headed for the house. They did want to get to work on their studying, which, since it was about horses, was what they’d want to talk about anyway, but first things first. They needed a snack.

  Stevie took the milk out of the refrigerator while Carole located some graham crackers. Lisa found a jar of peanut butter. They were setting out plates, knives, and napkins, including a spot at the table for Colonel Hanson, when he appeared in the kitchen.

  “Listen, girls, I have to go out for a while. I had a message on my answering machine. There’s a crisis at the office. General Amato is coming for an inspection on Monday and—oh, I won’t bore you with details, but it seems I’m needed. I won’t be long. Why don’t you help yourselves to a snack and I’ll be back in about an hour. Leave me some peanut butter, okay?”

  “Okay,” they agreed, eyeing the jar warily. There was probably enough for all four of them.

  “Uh, one other thing,” the colonel said. “Carole, I want you to stay away from my desk, okay?”

  “Sure, Dad,” she said, but she looked puzzled.

  “There are some papers there that are kind of private,” he explained. “I know you don’t go rummaging through my things, but there’s some stuff there …” He seemed uncomfortable even saying these words.

  Then Carole smiled in understanding. “No problem,” she assured him.

  The colonel saluted, then left the girls to their feast at the kitchen table.

  Once each had smeared an ample amount of peanut butter on a graham cracker and managed to down the first bite and chase it with milk, talk began, though slowly until the peanut butter cleared.

  “Okay, now the Know-Down. Let’s start,” Carole said. Then she remembered that she and Stevie had sent their study sheets to Phil and Cam. “Have you got the sheets?” she asked Lisa.

  “I had to give mine to May,” Lisa said. “She lost her own in what must be record time. Less than five minutes, I think. The girl’s amazing. Can I borrow one of yours and copy them?”

  “Oh, dear,” Carole said, distressed. She explained to Lisa what had happened to them.

  “What are we going to do?” Stevie asked. It wasn’t as if they’d never be able to replace them, but they’d all been counting on this sleepover to begin serious work.

  “Dad,” Carole said as if it were an answer. “He’s a volunteer. Max had to give a set of the sheets to the volunteers, too, didn’t he?”

  “Of course,” Stevie ag
reed. “We’ll just wait until he gets back.”

  “He might not be back for hours!” Carole said. “Just think what we could be learning while he’s gone.”

  “But where did he put them?” Lisa asked.

  “On his desk, I’m sure,” Carole said. “That’s where he puts everything.”

  “And that’s where we’re not supposed to go,” Lisa reminded her.

  “Oh, he doesn’t mean that,” Carole said.

  “I thought he was pretty clear,” said Lisa. “He told you not to look on his desk.”

  Carole smiled at her friends. “He told me not to look on his desk. He didn’t say anything about you guys. Didn’t you get that? See, it’s my birthday soon. He’s got something on his desk that’s supposed to be a surprise for me. I don’t know what it is and I really don’t want to know, but you can know if you have to. So, the solution is that one of you should go to Dad’s desk, find the papers, and then we can go over to Mrs. Jensen’s house and copy them on her machine. We’ll be back and have the papers on Dad’s desk within fifteen minutes. He’ll never know and whatever surprise there is for me on his desk, well, you just won’t tell me. Okay?” Carole looked to her friends for their agreement.

  “I think you’ve been spending too much time with Stevie,” Lisa teased.

  The girls laughed. Then, since the whole thing had sounded a lot like Stevie Lake’s logic, they nominated her to be the one to go to the colonel’s desk. Stevie took a final bite of her cracker and peanut butter, a last slug of milk, and headed for the living room where the colonel’s desk was.

  Stevie didn’t feel quite right about this. She thought Carole’s father was one of the nicest men in the world and she’d heard what he’d said to Carole and had thought it applied to all of them, not just Carole. On the other hand, there were those who would contend that Stevie was the most curious girl in the world and Stevie wouldn’t think of denying it. If there was something interesting about Carole’s birthday on her father’s desk, Stevie was dying to know what it was.