Firehorse (9781442403352)

by Wilson, Diane Lee

  James joined Father at the table, and like a pair of blundering deacons they mouthed the threat scrawled on the crumpled paper. Phrases such as “back to the prairies where you belong” and “surely suffer the consequences” poked through my consciousness as I lowered myself into my chair. A chilling sense that a reckoning hour was fast approaching—and that at least two of us had played a part in it—sent me ramrod stiff. Even with the summer air drifting through the room, I shivered.

  The doctor returned the next day, as he’d done weekly, to change my bandages. The burns had scarred over, and the bandages’ primary purpose now was to keep the salve in place and to aid the healing. He’d come to expect my questions, so the first thing he said after opening his satchel was, “No talking, please. I have to concentrate.” This time when my puckered, reddened skin—shiny in places, leathery in others—was exposed, he nodded in moderate satisfaction. “Time alone, I think, will complete whatever healing remains. I’ll apply clean bandages this one last time and return in another fifteen days. Then we’ll assess the progress.”

  I was more concerned with the Girl’s progress. Something inside me warned that she had to be made whole again, that we were running out of time. Whether it was Grandmother’s prophecies or my twitching knees, I didn’t know. But before the doctor was even out the door, the fire alarm jangled. He and Mother and I stood on the top step and watched anxiously as the galloping horses pulled the steam engine toward another fire.

  TWENTY

  THE MONTH ENDED WITH A PLAGUE OF MOSQUITOES THAT had to have rivaled Moses’s locusts. Father stamped about the house for days, howling blue murder, after the Massachusetts Republican Party agreed to support women’s right to vote. He broke away from his firefighting columns long enough to pen a particularly vehement one predicting doily laws and spittoon abolishment as well as the imminent downfall of the civilization men had fought for and therefore had the right to rule. Grandmother’s health had improved enough that one night after dinner she was able to give him a spirited argument. Mother monitored their language with dark looks and the occasional “Now, really!” while I paged through Scribner’s Monthly and pretended to read. Overcome by heat and each other’s company, we retired to our beds earlier than usual.

  Sometime in the stillest part of that night I was awakened by the rise and fall of distant voices. I lifted my head off the pillow. The faint conversation—and was that a laugh?—wasn’t coming from Grandmother’s room; these sounds were farther off. Intruders? I sat up, my heart banging. Had someone gone beyond brick-throwing and actually broken into our house?

  Questioning my foolhardiness, I tiptoed down the stairs and along the dark hallway, now cool and damp. The three bedroom doors were closed, as usual, and I heard Father snoring. A peek into the yard below showed nothing moving amid the blackness. I slipped past the butterflies, feeling my way over each stair. At the newel post I paused. The voices—women’s voices, I could tell now—were coming from the kitchen. That door was closed too, which wasn’t usual. Maybe I should wake James. Yet even while I was thinking that, I was sidling closer to the door, holding my breath and prickling with almost numbing fear. I laid an ear to the wood panel.

  Mother. And Grandmother. Chatting and giggling-giggling!—as though they were at a noon picnic. When I’d long since heard the clock chime midnight!

  The moment I laid my hand on the knob, the creaky mechanism squealed alarm and the voices hushed. I eased the door open to find the two of them sitting in chairs they’d pulled close to the orange glow of the open oven. No lamp was lit. Upside down on the floor between them was the big soup kettle, and on its black bottom I dimly made out a scattering of cracked nuts. Grandmother grinned guiltily and chucked an empty shell into the embers, where it made a small shower of sparks before birthing a new flame. More self-conscious, Mother rested her elbows on her knees, hunching her shoulders. In a subdued voice she asked, “Are you all right, dear?”

  Nodding hesitantly, I followed Grandmother’s gesture to join them. The atmosphere in the darkened kitchen—unbuttoned, intimate—was so unfamiliar to me that I wondered if I was dreaming. Grandmother, my own grandmother, was sitting spraddle-legged and barefoot. Barefoot! Never in my life had I seen her without shoes, and now I couldn’t stop staring at her crooked, rootlike toes. “Did we wake you?” she asked.

  I nodded again as Mother wordlessly rose and returned with the stool from the parlor. She set it within their circle and patted the seat. “Here. Sit down.”

  I sat.

  “Are you all right?” she asked again. “Is anything wrong?”

  Bubbling with my own questions, I whispered, “What are you doing down here?”

  “Talking.”

  “In the middle of the night?” I sounded like the scolding parent.

  She blinked passively. “You wouldn’t understand, I’m afraid.”

  “We were talking about your mother’s days as Wesleydale’s finest pianist,” Grandmother said. “Has anyone ever told you about them?”

  I shook my head. Mother modestly turned toward the oven’s glow.

  “When she was a child,” Grandmother chatted on, “all your mother ever talked about was the piano—and about Handel and Bach and … and Cho-pin, is that it?”

  “Sho-pan” Mother enunciated.

  “Oh, Chopin. Well, your grandfather and I didn’t own a piano—he was just a hog farmer, after all—so every spare minute, even when she was supposed to be doing her chores”—Grandmother nodded pointedly—“your mother raced down the road and over to the church to pound on theirs. Got to be quite good at it too. Good enough to get an invitation to study in Chicago, that’s how good.”

  I think maybe my jaw dropped open, but Grandmother didn’t seem to notice and went on happily recounting Mother’s youth.

  “They hired her to play the church service when she was only fourteen, and I couldn’t have been prouder. Wasn’t long before people in neighboring towns were leaving their regular churches and traveling to ours just to hear her.” Chuckling, she added, “Though to this day I suspect Reverend Lozier thought it was to hear his sermons.”

  A spontaneous laugh escaped Mother, and she clamped her hand over her mouth in surprise. Speaking from behind it, she said, “Weren’t those the longest, dullest sermons in all eternity? God forgive me, but do you know, all week long I’d practice something pretty, like ‘Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,’ and then Reverend Lozier would take up with one of his ‘begats’ sermons—‘Abraham begat Isaac and Isaac begat Jacob’ and so on—and I’d see half the congregation nodding off and have to switch to ‘Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory’ just to stir them awake.”

  This had to be a dream. These people were strangers to me.

  “And wouldn’t that congregation go marching down the aisle, still singing it!” Grandmother slapped her knee. “Why, come Monday morning I’d catch some of them still humming it in Milton’s Dry Goods. Churches around here could use a little of that Holy Spirit.”

  Mother smiled and folded her hands in her lap.

  I looked at her anew. “Why haven’t I ever heard you play the piano?”

  Something flickered across her face, a shadow perhaps, there and gone before she spoke. “Because that was a long time ago,” she said emotionlessly. “And because I married your father and he had his work.”

  “Men!” Grandmother grumbled. And when Mother cocked an eyebrow at her, she responded, “I know, I know, he’s my own son-in-law, but he’s just like the rest of his kind: He can’t see beyond his own nose. And if it doesn’t concern his newspaper or his belly, he doesn’t care a rap about it.”

  The two of them fell into a contemplative silence, and I felt that I’d become the intruder. But I didn’t want to leave. The room pulsed with a warm breath, hugging me to my stool. And so I stayed, the three of us staring into the open mouth of the oven, mute audience to its crackles and sighs.

  “What’s troubling you, Rachel?” Mother asked at last.


  I started. “Pardon me?”

  “What’s troubling you?”

  “Might as well be free of it,” Grandmother said, as if she’d been sharing the same thought. “God loves a clean conscience.”

  I wasn’t sure what God thought of my conscience.

  Grandmother ventured a guess. “It has something to do with that horse out there, doesn’t it?”

  I shot a nervous glance at Mother. “Yes,” I answered, “partly—or mostly. But …” Was this the time to admit to my dreams of becoming a veterinary? The guilt of sneaking around had been weighing ever more heavily on me.

  “Are you worried about your hands?” Mother asked gently. “About what they’ll look like when the bandages come off for good?”

  It was no use. She would never, ever understand me. “No,” I replied too harshly, and then, schooling myself, “I mean, yes … somewhat, but …” Looking into the fire, I took a deep breath and tried anyway. “I know you’re going to be disappointed in me and I know Father’s never going to let me, but … I want to learn to be a veterinary.”

  A chunky ember broke apart with a loud hiss. It sounded like laughter, and that’s all it took to break the spell. And when neither of them spoke, I blurted an accusation: “I knew you wouldn’t understand.”

  “Wouldn’t understand what it’s like to have dreams locked away in a trunk?” Mother replied with some starch.

  “Or be packed up and moved halfway across the continent without so much as an ‘if you please’?” Grandmother added.

  Mother laid a hand on my knee. “You see, dear, we’re quite familiar with grand plans and broken dreams. But we’ve learned that we can’t always be or get what we want.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we’re women, and as women we have other roles, other duties. Now before you say anything, I know times are changing; some women are hiring on in offices and others are enrolling in universities, though why they’d want to push their way into places they’re not welcome is beyond my understanding.” She shook her head. “I’m not sure it’s right. But Rachel, a veterinary? That’s men’s work.”

  “What makes it men’s work?” I argued.

  “Well, for one thing it takes a man’s strength to handle horses—”

  “I’m stronger than I look,” I shot back, my eyes narrowing. “And besides, it doesn’t take strength so much as it takes understanding.”

  “Well then, there so much that’s—well, unpleasant about it. That poor animal you’re keeping alive out there is hideous to look at.”

  That struck a nerve. “Like me?” I retorted, holding up a bandaged arm. “Is that what people are going to say about me when my bandages come off? ‘She’s hideous to look at’?”

  Mother was taken aback. She glanced to Grandmother for help but found her intent on picking the meat from a nut. “Of course not, dear,” she continued on alone. “Your arms can always be covered up—I mean, I’m sure they’ll heal just fine eventually; the scars will fade. But if they don’t, you can always wear gloves, and no one—”

  I stood, ready to bolt.

  “Sit down, Rachel,” Grandmother ordered. Mother opened her mouth but was hushed by the upheld hand of her own mother. “Have you truly thought this through? You have a tendency to go rushing into things, you know. Just how badly do you want to be a veterinary?”

  The words came gushing out of me with the force of a spring flood. “It’s all I ever think about. It’s all I read about, all I dream about. I sneak out to see the Girl every time you leave the house.” I glanced guiltily in Mother’s direction.

  She returned a wry smile. “Do you think I don’t know that? I’ve been scrubbing the muddy footprints off the stairs for close to two months now.”

  “I’m sorry.” I blushed even as I charged on. “I know I’d be a good one. I understand horses; I know what they’re thinking and what they’re feeling. And I’ve studied hard. Even Mr. Stead told me once that I know more than most horsemen in Boston.” Turning to Grandmother, I said, “From the moment I saw that foal being born—you were there, remember?—when it breathed on my hands, I’ve felt certain that this is what J was born to do.” Whether from the heat of the oven or the heat from my words, I felt my face flush even hotter. It all sounded so foolish here in the middle of the night. I slumped in frustration.

  She continued shelling nuts. “God speaks to us in mysterious ways, even when we’re not listening. I felt a little inspired myself that morning. You should have been there, Nora.”

  Mother took on a wistful air. “I guess I missed quite an event,” she said softly, all the while looking at me. “Babies can do that to you.” She reached over and shook my knee. “But … a veterinary? That’s such awfully dirty work!”

  “Yes, it is,” I answered, remembering Emilyn’s horror at my hands. “And yet … I simply love it. I love the idea of helping sick horses.”

  “You always did have a big heart,” she mused. “Mother, do you remember when Rachel brought that moth-eaten baby squirrel home, the one that had fallen out of the oak tree?”

  “And took it into her bed with her?” Grandmother let out a belt-busting laugh. “I near jumped out of my skin when those beady eyes looked up at me from her pillow. Curled right up in her hair it was! Gracious!”

  They revisited their memories awhile, punctuating the silence with chuckles and sighs.

  “You’d upset a lot of people,” Mother said finally.

  I stiffened.

  “Oh, Nora,” Grandmother began, but it was her turn to be hushed with an upraised hand.

  “And it wouldn’t be easy, especially with your father’s views. But,” she eyed me with a steely determination I’d rarely seen, “nothing worth having ever is.”

  I squealed with utter surprise and delight and threw my bandaged arms around her neck.

  “I’m not saying I’m agreeing to your being a veterinary,” she cautioned. “And I’m not even certain you can do it. But some things that your grandmother and I were discussing earlier tonight have influenced me enough to at least consider it. Now, I assume there’s some additional schooling involved.” Mother was already working out the details, bless her.

  “Mr. Stead told me it’s a three-year course. A while back he said he’d teach me some of the basics, but now I think it would be better if I went to a veterinary school and did it on my own. There’s one here in Boston, I know. It’s where Mr. Stead studied.”

  “Are you certain you wouldn’t rather enroll in some upper-level courses at a high school? I’ve learned of a very respectable one on Essex.” I couldn’t blame her, really, for making one last effort.

  “I want to attend veterinary school.”

  She nodded and the three of us fell silent again. We could plot a course readily enough, but that didn’t clear the hurdles.

  Teetering toward frustration, I said, “I know Father will say no.”

  Mother pursed her lips in a manner that could only be described as sly. “Get your facts in order first—the cost, the admission requirements, if they’ll even admit a young woman— and an argument for how your studies will be to his benefit. Then wait for the right time.”

  “He’s still going to say no.”

  “Rachel,” Grandmother scolded, “your mother was pounding pianos at fourteen. She knows something about getting her way, so listen to her.”

  “But how can my studying as a veterinary be to Father’s benefit?”

  “That is a puzzle,” Mother replied, tapping a finger against her cheek. “We’ll have to think on it. Now go on back to bed.”

  “We’ll both put our thinking caps on,” Grandmother said. “Morning’s still a ways off.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  PUZZLED DIDN’T EVEN BEGIN TO DESCRIBE HOW I FELT. The very next morning, though, I took out paper and pen and as neatly as I could manage wrote to the Boston College of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery. I politely asked when the next set of classes began and if I, a girl nearly sixteen, could
enroll. I carried it personally to the post office to drop it in the box. And then I waited, day after day, for my fate to be decided.

  Mother and Grandmother said nothing more about our middle-of-the-night conversation, so I could only trust that they were still wearing their invisible thinking caps. At the dinner table Father continued to debate with Grandmother the events of the day, unaware that she and her daughter, his own wife, were sizing him up for another kind of argument. James confided to us that the discovery of the kerosene can, which Father had immediately featured in one of his columns, seemed to have scared off the firebug. There’d been no suspicious fires in weeks. I kept studying.

  By early September I could stand beside the big gray mare, lay my hands on various points of her body, and proudly call out the names of underlying bones and organs and ligaments. The manual had given me an almost magical ability to see right inside her: to see her four-chambered heart, as large as a melon, beating deep in her chest; to count each of her upright vertebrae marching like soldiers along her back; to follow her long latissimus dorsi muscles, “essential for galloping and leaping,” behind her shoulders. She was so much more complex than I had ever imagined. Everyone around me was. Who would have guessed that Mother had a spine or that Grandmother had so many layers to her?

  On the morning of September 12, which just happened to be my sixteenth birthday, I received a wonderful gift: My bandages came off for the final time. I have to admit that while I’d previously brushed aside Mother’s concern for my arms’ appearance, that morning a certain nervousness poked my insides. I didn’t know where to look. At the doctor’s serious face, frowning slightly as he tussled with my frayed bandages. At the tatters themselves, grimy with sweat and fuzzed with horse hair. Or at Mother, her hand covering her mouth at first, then propped under her chin, then smoothing her hair—a restless moth that couldn’t alight, more worried than anyone, it seemed.