Firehorse (9781442403352)

by Wilson, Diane Lee

  “Of course she’d never admit to liking it,” he was going on, “being the strong-minded creature that she is, but I’m thinking that a feminine hand might just be the key to winning her over. That, and a peppermint candy or two.” He dug into his pocket and rustled some paper. One of the mare’s ears came forward. When a hard white candy appeared in Mr. Stead’s palm, the other ear came forward. He quickly slipped the treat inside the corner of the mare’s mouth, then stood back and folded his arms. There was a noticeable softening in the Girl’s eyes.

  “I didn’t know horses liked peppermints!”

  He winked. “What girl doesn’t like a gentleman caller to bring her sweets?”

  I laughed. And blushed again.

  “Now that we’ve made a good impression,” he whispered conspiratorially, “let’s move on to the real business. You do exactly as I tell you, and we’ll just see if we can’t get this old girl tonic’d and rebandaged before she can finish her candy.”

  I followed his instructions to hang the lantern from a convenient nail and join him in the stall. A thrill rushed through me. This was dangerous ground, yet I felt rock solid on it. Mr. Stead motioned me closer. He stood near the mare’s haunches, then slid his hand down her back leg, past her hock and almost to her ankle. When he pinched her fetlock, she obediently lifted that leg.

  “Standing on three legs will keep her mind on her balance,” he explained. “Do you think you’re strong enough to hold this one up?”

  I nodded and took his place. Even in her weakened condition, the mare’s power was evident. My heart beat faster.

  Stay calm, I schooled myself. This was no different from cleaning one of Peaches’ back hooves. Hold the leg straight out behind, and she can’t kick. Lacing my fingers through the long white hairs, I cradled the bent ankle in my hands. But the instant and brutal reality was that holding up the Girl’s leg was akin to supporting an elephant’s. My back was already straining.

  “Here,” the veterinary said, handing me a cloth, “put this across your dress so you don’t get it dirty.”

  Wondering how he missed the splatter of mash across my bodice, I shoved the cloth between my white skirt and the thick, feathered ankle. The Girl took advantage of my distraction by trying to jerk her leg away. I gripped her ankle tighter and struggled to hold her leg in place. For a moment there was a seesawing tug-of-war. It took all my strength to keep her iron-rimmed hoof from becoming a weapon.

  “Good girl,” Mr. Stead said. My back was to him, so I wasn’t certain if he was talking to the mare or to me, but I warmed with pride anyway. I couldn’t see what he was doing, so over the next several minutes my understanding of it was related through the mare’s grunts, her sudden shifting of weight, and her repeated struggles to free her leg.

  “Okay, that’s it,” he said at last. “You can let her go.”

  The freed leg dropped with a thud. I straightened slowly, my back uncoiling like a rusty spring.

  Mr. Stead was nodding with satisfaction, only this time I knew the approval was for me. “Well done,” he said. “You’ve spent some time around horses, I see.”

  I nodded, happy.

  He dropped some utensils into his open satchel and took out a rolled cloth. “Most of her bandages seem to be in good condition. I’m just going to change the one along her chest. It’s almost impossible to keep anything in place there. Too much movement.”

  I winced as he ripped the old bandage from the sticky wounds. The Girl grunted and started swinging her head menacingly, but he worked quickly, dodging this way and that, and the new bandage was well in place before she could carry out her threat.

  Afterward, we stood outside the stall looking at her. “Such a pity,” he said softly. “She’s a good horse, the last one that deserves this.”

  “But you just said she had a streak of cussedness.”

  He chuckled. “That I did, and she does. But she’s honest about her cussedness and she’s honest about her work. I value that. I’d have her on my team any day.” As he bent to get his satchel, his pocket crackled. He pulled out the peppermints, popped one into his mouth, and handed me the bag. “You’d better keep these,” he said with a smile. “Bribes. Maybe next time you can get more bran in her instead of on you. I’ll look forward to seeing the both of you tomorrow, Miss Selby.” Winking, he picked up his satchel, stepped into the night, and was gone.

  NINE

  FULL TO BURSTING WITH PRIDE, I RAN TOWARD THE HOUSE. I had to tell someone how I’d helped the veterinary.

  Mother’s voice inside stopped me short. There was something else I had to do: get out of my soiled dress and into a clean one—my third of the day!—before she saw me. Luckily, she and Grandmother were in the parlor, examining the room’s dingy curtains, so I was able to race up the stairs undiscovered. “I’ll be right down for supper,” I shouted.

  “It’s ‘dinner’ now that we’re in Boston,” Mother called after me. “You don’t want people to think we’ve stepped straight out of the backwoods.”

  The image in my bureau mirror could have been a wild creature out of the backwoods—I was that rumpled and dirty, with limp twists of hair pasted to my smudged face—but it was a thoroughly happy creature. I couldn’t stop smiling. I set about scrubbing and brushing and smoothing, even to Mother’s standards, and dashed down the stairs. Composing myself, I slid into my chair at the dining room table.

  Mother and Grandmother were already seated, and for some reason, servings of boiled fish and beets and chopped cucumber salad had been heaped onto each of our plates. The men’s plates sat empty, their untouched goblets of milk beading and running with sweat. Assuming grace had been said, I grabbed my fork.

  “It’s only polite that we wait,” Mother said, halting a morsel halfway to my mouth.

  In stubborn response, Grandmother picked up her fork. “Nonsense. There’s nothing worse than room-temperature fish. They know what time supper is served.”

  “Dinner, Mother. That’s what they call it here.”

  Grandmother lifted a flaky chunk to her mouth and brazenly spoke while chewing. “I’m not from here. And I’ve been calling it supper for more than sixty years. I’m too old to change.”

  Mother’s lips tightened ever so slightly. She turned her attention to the painted metal vase in the center of the table. A modest bouquet of violets drooped over its rim, and she concentrated on rearranging them to her satisfaction. I quietly relinquished my fork and returned my hands to my lap. I stared at the bouquet too, my discomfort measured aloud by the stern ticking of the parlor clock. And by my growling stomach.

  “I helped the veterinary today.” Anything to break the silence.

  “What veterinary?” Mother asked.

  “The one that came to treat the burned mare. Grandmother met him. His name is Mr. Stead.”

  “He’s a cocksure young fool,” Grandmother snorted. “I’ll say that about him.” Her tongue parted her lips and she plucked a fish bone from it.

  Mother shifted her glance to me. “I don’t think I like the idea of you being in a barn with a strange man. And I know your father wouldn’t. It’s not seemly. Besides, isn’t it your brother’s job to … do whatever it is you’re doing to that poor horse?”

  “He wasn’t there,” I explained, surprised to find myself on the defensive. Why was I being pelted with shame? “Mr. Stead asked me to help and I helped.”

  “I’m afraid that won’t do,” Mother replied. Such an authoritative tone, I’d learned, was used only in Father’s absence. “You’ll not tarnish your reputation when we’re so recently arrived in Boston. Kindly allow James to assist the veterinary from now on.”

  “But he wasn’t there.”

  “Then Mr. Stead should not have been there either.” Closing the book on the subject, she picked up her fork and turned to Grandmother. “I think I’ve decided on the bone-colored lace for the parlor curtains.” She slipped a small bite into her mouth.

  “With the scalloped edging or without
?”

  “With.”

  “They’re too ornamental,” Grandmother stated flatly. “They’ll overwhelm such a small room. I prefer the cream ones with the straight edging, the ones that were on the next display over.” With that, the two of them entered into a tedious discussion of every set of curtains they’d seen that morning, weighing the merits of scalloped edging over plain, and the nuances that visitors might infer from hanging white versus ivory versus bone. Mother went on eating, little by little, as she talked, and I took that as permission to start eating as well.

  Neither James nor Father had appeared by the time tea was served, so we cleared the table of all but their plates. I didn’t know if that was so Mother could feed them when they did arrive, or leave them served with a blank portion of guilt for not having arrived on time. Afterward, she insisted we all retire to the parlor. She lit the lamps and arranged the three of us near the bay window, where evening passersby could observe us. Grandmother opened her Bible and began reading and rocking. Mother then insisted I dig out my stitchery sampler, which I hadn’t held in my lap for over a month. She stifled my pained sigh with a tilt of her head and one dark look.

  Sewing of any kind was such excruciatingly boring work. And at the rate I was going, I’d still be embroidering tiny veined leaves onto long-limbed trees when I was thirty. Or older. Especially when Mother shook her head in disapproval and had me rip out an entire evening’s progress. Over the past year I’d satisfactorily completed relatively little. I’d done the alphabet twice in a royal blue stem stitch; the two sets ran along the bottom of the sampler. Above them were two sets of numerals in a green running stitch that, if you didn’t examine the eights too closely, were rather good. And there was my name, Rachel Selby, and age, fifteen. The date had yet to be stitched in. If I finished this year it would read 1872, though I could just as easily picture myself sewing an 1882 and then dropping over dead from exhaustion. Mother fitted a needle with some modest brown thread and pointed to a gnarled garden limb that arched around the top right corner. Dutifully I began embroidering.

  All I could think about, though, was the Governor’s Girl. I wondered how she was faring on her first night in the carriage shed. Alone. I wondered if Mr. Stead’s tonic was giving her any comfort. With a flush of warmth, I remembered his “Good girl” and “Well done.” I let those words echo pleasurably in my mind, over and over, until I lost my concentration and the thread knotted on itself and caught.

  “Rachel,” Mother cautioned, “you’re going too fast.”

  “I’m sorry.” A lie, really. “I suppose I’m tired.” There was the truth. “May I be excused to bed?”

  “Of course, dear. But no reading. You need your sleep.”

  I couldn’t promise that but didn’t say as much. After kissing each of them good night, I stowed the sampler in its basket and climbed the stairs to the attic.

  I was tired. It was just that, as I changed into my night-clothes, I couldn’t help noticing how the lamp’s flame was playing across my horse care manual. The gilt-edged pages glowed almost magically and, if I squinted, the three embossed horses on the cover could be seen to toss their heads in grandeur. My heartbeat quickened. That book was magical to me, full of potions and instructions and detailed drawings for healing horses. Of course I was going to read it.

  I climbed into bed and pulled the book onto my lap. It was nearly as heavy as a sack of flour and creased my stomach with its weight. To my mind, that only served to underscore its value.

  There was nothing on burns, I knew, but I thumbed through the pages anyway. The next chapter I was due to read was “Diseases of the Brain,” but I wasn’t up to such a heavy task tonight, so I skipped ahead and browsed a few pages on foals and foaling. Not reading in any particular order, I learned that autumn colts should always be allowed mother’s milk until the spring grass arrives. And that when they’re teething, wood ashes mixed with salt will cure the inevitable indigestion.

  My mind strayed back to the Girl. None of this had anything to do with healing her. Restlessly I riffled through some more of the manual’s 652 pages. An essay entitled “General Principles in Treating the Horse” caught my eye. Its author certainly began with an authoritative trumpet.

  First, and foremost, I was instructed, you must remember that the horse is more like unto Man than any other animal. In his natural state, he is happy and free from disorders, but kept in cramped quarters against his will he suffers. The practitioner of healing must always remember to work with, and not against, the horse’s true Nature.

  Concern immediately overtook me. Was the carriage shed’s stall too cramped for a horse the size of the Girl? Maybe I could make it larger. I pondered that possibility. Maybe I could knock out the rails on one side—I’d found a hammer in the shed—and take some of the old boards there and … my hand slipped across the page as my head nodded. The tumultuous day was catching up to me. Shaking myself awake, I found my place on the page. Because the horse is so closely associated with Man, he has been cursed with his same diseases—the sure and sudden consequence of sin. My head buzzed. That sentence and the next ran together so that I lost their entire meaning and had to start over. But before I could latch onto one coherent thought, the ornate bits of type began floating off the page, swimming dizzily past my eyes and through my brain. The heavy book sagged lower on my stomach and I gave in to sleep.

  It was sometime during the thick of the night that the fog’s damp chill or the book’s sharp edge awoke me. I shoved the book aside, rolled over, and pulled the covers to my chin. There was a faint glow in the darkness. Dully I struggled to make sense of what I was seeing. It had a yellowish cast, a sort of shimmer as it moved. Like a flame.

  At once I awoke. My skin prickled with the awful realization that I’d fallen asleep with the lamp still burning. And there was just a small lick of kerosene left. Oh, good Lord! With trembling fingers, I reached over and turned off the flame. A cavelike blackness enveloped the room.

  Go back to sleep, I told myself. It’s all right now. Everyone in the house is asleep, the street below is quiet. Just lay your head on your pillow, close your eyes, and sleep.

  Except that my blood was roaring through my body so hard and so fast that it swept away the very notion of sleep. Ghastly thoughts kept flashing through my mind. What if the lamp had burned dry and cracked the glass? Or what if the kerosene had exploded? I’d have incinerated this house and all my family with it. We would have died like the horses in the livery fire, screaming for help that would come too late.

  I heaved myself over the other way and the book fell to the floor with a thud, making me jump. Mice skittered behind the wall. My mouth was as dry as dust, and for some reason I thought of Mr. Stead’s peppermints. Immediately Mother’s stricture pounded in my ears: You’ll not tarnish your reputation, you’ll not tarnish your reputation. I rolled back. The room seemed suddenly hot. The sheets twisted around my legs and I kicked at them until they were a knotted mess. I punched my pillow once, twice. Sleep, I schooled myself. Sleep. But aggravating student that I was, I tossed and turned for more than an hour. Sometime between when the clock chimed three and a quarter past, I finally dozed fitfully, then woke again with a start.

  The night air was thicker and heavier than before. Smoke. I was sure of it. My throat clamped shut; I couldn’t breathe. Panicked, I clawed my way out of the bedcovers and hurtled down the stairs. Only I couldn’t seem to get anywhere. The stairs went on and on endlessly, circling past the landing and Father’s dead butterflies and then opening onto more stairs and more butterflies. I kept tumbling down them, falling, it seemed, straight into damnation. When I thought I’d never escape the house, I was no longer in it; I was in the carriage shed. The air was just as still and heavy there, but more damp than smoky, more like a cave. Or a tomb. I could barely see the Girl. She was nothing more than a gray, ghostly image wrapped in her bandages. And she was making a queer noise, sort of a choking sound. To my sudden horror, I realized that someo
ne had bandaged her too tightly. She’d been wrapped up completely: her neck, her mouth, her nose. Only her eyes were uncovered and they were frantic, rolling to white, begging me to help. I ran to her at once, lifting my arms—but found that I was as neatly wrapped in bandages as she was. I was helpless too. The Girl rocked back and forth in suffocating agony, and I could only watch. In a final spasm, she went still as stone. There was a moment of emptiness and then, as I reached out to touch her, the bandages began crumbling away, she with them, only so much dust.

  “Earth to earth,” I heard Grandmother solemnly intone somewhere in the distance below me, “ashes to ashes, and dust to dust.”

  TEN

  WHAT A HORRIBLE NIGHT. WHEN BLESSED SUNDAY DAWN finally crept into my room, I threw the bedclothes back and dressed with the haste of a prisoner granted release. I had to get to the Girl. I had to make sure that she’d survived the night, that my dream was truly just a dream. Shoes in hand, I tiptoed down the stairs.

  Noises from the kitchen—the clank of a skillet and repeated thuds of the icebox—told that Mother was up, and probably Grandmother, too, so I’d have to slip out the front door if I could. A newspaper rattled in the dining room. Father was up as well. That was going to make it harder. As I reached the newel post at the bottom of the stairs, I heard him preaching his own Sunday sermon, loud enough to reach his congregation in the kitchen.

  “They’re overly taken with calling themselves ‘journalists,’ in my opinion,” he said. “Especially the female one.”

  The kitchen door scraped open on its worn hinges, and I heard china cups clink against their saucers. A heavy platter was set on the table. “You didn’t tell us you had a woman writing for you,” Mother said.

  A woman worked on Father’s newspaper? That held me in place.

  “She doesn’t write for me,” Father corrected. “And if I have my say, she won’t be writing for the Argus much longer. She was already on the staff when I accepted the managerial position. I can only surmise that the editor before me had some different opinions on the ability of women to contribute serious news.”