A Father for Philip (9 page)

Jeff went right on talking, after
pausing politely to listen while a horse made his sounds. “No, no. Don’t say that!
Of course he’s not afraid of you. He’s just had a couple of bad experiences
with horses, and he worries a bit.”

Philip edged just a step or two closer.
“Are you an’ that horse really talkin’ to each other?”

As if on cue, the horse whickered and
Jeff smiled. “We are indeed,” he said to Philip, then turning once more to the
horse, he said, “Well, all right, my friend. Just one more.” Again the horse
made a sound, and tossed his head. “Oh, Si, I don’t know,” Jeff replied
doubtfully. “But if you think it’ll make you feel happier about staying inside
on such a nice afternoon, I’ll ask him. Just to prove that he really isn’t
afraid of you.” As Jeff turned from the lean-to, the horse muttered something
quietly. “Hey, now!,” Jeff said. “Do you think so? I’ll try that,” Jeff sounded
impressed.

“Try what?” Philip sounded suspicious.

Jeff selected an apple from the basket.
“Si’s feeling bad about you not liking him very much. I told him that you like
him all right… Aren’t scared of him, or anything, just a bit shy, and he said
that to prove it, if you’d give him an apple, he’d feel better. Now, ordinarily
I would never give him another one this close to his suppertime, but just this
once, I’ve agreed. Take this over to him, will you, please?”

Jeff held out the apple to Philip who
backed away, his face going pale. “No! I don’t want to! He’s too big!”

“Steady, now,” said Jeff. “That’s what
Si thought you’d say. He’s smarter than I thought he was. He suggested that
maybe if I picked you up and held you while you fed him the apple, he wouldn’t
look so big to you. You want to try it that way?”

“No! No!”

“Okay, Phil. No need to shout. He
understands, don’t you Siwash?”

The horse whickered softly and withdrew
his head and neck.

“I have your birthday present here, Philip,”
Jeff told the child, giving him a warm hug around his shoulders. “I couldn’t
find one in any of the stores I went to, but Siwash had an extra one. He said I
could give it to you. It’s from both of us. Like it?”

Philip took the heavy horseshoe into his
hands and smiled up at Jeff, his eyes aglow, partly from having the gift, and
partly from the knowledge that even if he didn’t want to go too close to Si
watch, Jeff was not going to say he was a sissy. “Sure I like it! Come on Jeff.
Let’s get the cabin finished so we can hang it up.”

Presently Philip said, “What time is it,
Jeff? I have to feed Casey at five-thirty.”

“Twenty after, sport, so you better make
tracks. See you tomorrow?”

“Yup. Tomorrow, Jeff.”

~ * ~

When Philip entered the clearing the next
afternoon, the door to the stable stood open and neither Jeff nor the horse
were to be seen.

Much work had been done on the cabin.
The ridge pole was in place and rafters had been strung across the opening
between the two ends. Neat piles of cedar shakes stood on the ground, waiting
to become a roof. Philip stood looking at the cabin, wishing he didn’t have to
go to school. There was so much going on that he had to miss. He heard the
gentle clip-clop of Siwash’s hooves and leapt through the doorway to be safe
inside the cabin until the horse had been locked up in his stall.

He heard Jeff talking to his mount.

“Here we are, boy, home again.” Jeff
gave no sign that he had spotted the brief flash of movement when Philip and
darted into the cabin. “No, sorry, Si. You have to go inside. You know Philip
will be here soon, and he’d rather not see you wandering all around the
clearing. Now, Si! Don’t whine about it. Oh, come on now, you know I’ll give
you an apple to make up for locking you in like a criminal.”

When the bottom half of the Dutch door
had been securely latched, Philip came out of the cabin. He walked over to the
bushel basket of apples, selected one which he took to Jeff, who turned as if
surprised to see the boy. He took the apple with a smile of thanks and fed it
to the horse. Siwash chomped with vigor for a moment, swallowed noisily and
looked around for more. Philip gave Jeff a pleading glance and asked, “Can he
have just one more? It won’t spoil his dinner.”

Jeff walked casually way. “He could, I
guess, but I don’t have time to give it to him. Have to get the roof put on.
Might rain any day now.” He climbed the ladder and began hammering shakes on
the lower edge of the roof.

Philip stood torn between his feelings
of guilt that the horse had to be imprisoned and his fear of approaching it
with an appeasement. Out of the corner of his eye Jeff saw guilt to begin to
take the upper hand. He backed silently down the ladder. He seemed unaware of
Philip’s halting progress toward the horse. However, when the child was but too
short paces away and Siwash whinnied, Jeff was ready to catch the cannonball of
boy who ran to him, yelling.

Jeff held the shaking little body close
for a minute and stood, the child still in his arms. “Come on, son. Like Si
said yesterday, if I hold you up, he won’t look so big. Okay?”

Philip drew in a long, shuddering breath
and clung to the back off Jeff’s collar. “Okay, but I still don’t like him
much. I just feel sorry that he’s locked up. Maybe another apple will make him
happier.”

“Hold it on the flat of your hand and
don’t let those big teeth scare you. Horses never eat people. All they eat are
oats and hay and apples and sometimes sugar, but that’s not good for them.” He
talked gently and approached the horse slowly. “He likes carrots, too. Do you?”

When he was within an arm’s length of
Siwash, Philip held out the apple on a shaking hand. The horse took it gently
and munched, drops of juice splattering from his jaws. He whinnied softly and
Jeff whispered to Philip, “Say ‘you’re welcome, Si’. He was thanking you.”

Obediently, Philip said, “You’re
welcome, Si.”

~ * ~

Thursday and Friday afternoons were just
about exact repeats of Wednesday. Siwash was locked up with many sincere
apologies from Jeff and given an extra apple by Philip, for the inconvenience.

Then came Saturday...

~ * ~

Saturday morning was sunny and bright, a
perfect June morning and Eleanor woke with her head feeling worse than ever. It
was totally stuffed up and her chest ached, too. Her vision swam as she sat up
and she held her head in her hands until she felt it settle down a bit. Philip
was in his room, with Casey in bed, she judged from the sounds of merriment
pouring forth. Oh, these summer colds, she lamented. They hang on forever and
ever. She sneezed and climbed wearily from her bed. How am I going to get
through the weekend with Philip home all day? she wondered. If I didn’t feel so
terrible, I’d get in the car and go and see the doctor. I should ask Bill to
take me, but with Kathy so pregnant and carrying twins she didn’t like to take
Bill away. Besides, Dr. Grimes didn’t hold office hours on Saturday, which
could mean hours in the ER of the hospital, an hour’s drive away, spreading her
germs around to everyone else. And she truly did feel too terrible to go anywhere,
so she dropped the idea of seeking medical help, and instead sat slumped at the
table drinking tasteless coffee and nibbling at sawdust toast while her son
packed in two bowls of cereal, a boiled egg and an orange.

“Mom!” called Philip loudly from two
feet away, with his mouth full of half chewed orange, “can I take Casey into
the woods today?” After grimace of pain, which Philip took for the forerunner
of her refusal, he added, “To play with Jeff. He’d like to see him, Mom. I know
he would. Huh, Mom? Huh?”

“Philip, don’t yell! Remember to use
your indoor voice in the house. My head hurts. I told you, Casey’s too small
yet to walk all that way.”

“I’ll put him in my bike basket and I
won’t let him fall out. I’ll ride real slow and careful. There’s lots of room
for him to play in the clearing now. It’s big. It goes all the way to that bend
of the creek before it turns back this way. It used to be just a little place,
Mom, with the dogwood tree at the edge, but now the dogwood’s right out in the
middle and the cabin’s just beside it, so there’s lots of room and he won’t get
lost.”

A little clearing with the dogwood at
one edge, Eleanor thought in agony. So that’s his favorite place to play. I
might’ve known. Then quickly, before he could shatter her skull and before she
began to shed tears which she knew were close, Eleanor said, “Go ahead, then.
But look after Casey and be home for lunch.” She really should teach him to
tell time, since he hadn’t gotten the message when his teacher had told the
class about telling time. If she bought him a watch…

“Can I pack a lunch? Can I, Mom? Huh?”

“No!”

And Philip scooped up his pup and
scampered away.

When he was out of sight, Eleanor let
the despair and desolation wash over her. The clearing, as Philip called it,
her glade. The place where her love had first found her, the place where her
child had been conceived, her special place had been taken over by a small,
noisy boy and an imaginary playmate, and now, a puppy. Something in her mind
told her to think about it for a few minutes. Something Philip had had said
needed consideration, but her mind refused to function.

Eleanor put her head down her arms in
the mess of crumbs from breakfast and wept. As she cried she did not hear the
screen door squeak open, and the first inkling she had that she was not alone
was when a muffled gasp of sound sucked in over bared teeth disturbed her just
as an arm slipped around her and her head was pulled onto a masculine chest.

“What’s the trouble, Ellie?” Grant
asked. “I found I couldn’t stay away and wait for you to call me, so I came
back. Just in time, too, it seems. Don’t cry, Ellie. What is it? Did you miss
me?”

Ellie sat back from Grant, wiped her
face with the backs of her hands, and said, “I don’t know, Grant. Maybe. I’m
just feeling horrible. I’m sick. My head aches. I hurt all over and my sinuses
are all plugged up. And I was sitting here just feeling lonely.”

He took a seat at the far end of the
table and let her cry for a few more minutes and then leaned over and touched
her forehead with his hand. “You have a bit of a fever, Ellie. I sure hope
you’re not coming down with anything contagious.” The concern she heard in his
tone was not for her, but for himself, and that made her fall apart all over
again. He brought her a box of tissues.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You know this
isn’t like me. I’ve been trying to keep going for Philip’s sake, and now I’m
just too tired and miserable to go on. I feel so alone.”

“You don’t have to be alone, Ellie,”
Grant said. “If you’re lonely, remember it’s you own doing. You don’t need to
keep yourself in a position where you have no one to help you when you’re sick
and can’t go on. You could lean on me, let me take over today and every day. I
need you, too, Ellie, and you need me. Admit it. Start the proceedings. Do it
now.”

She wondered dimly why he didn’t reach
out to hold her. She would have loved to be held. A nasty little voice told her
she’d have welcomed a comforting hug from Bill, from the mailman, the FedEx
guy, anybody. But Grant was here. He was offering surcease from the solitude
her own conscience kept her locked in, but the offer, without the physical
support, seemed hollow. Right. Germs. Grant had an almost pathological fear of
germs. She understood that. Really she did, but if he cared, as he claimed to
do, surely he could get over it for just long enough to hold her for a moment
or two?

Eleanor shivered and Grant did touch her
then, taking her elbow, placing the other arm around her, lifting her from her
chair. She slumped against him, knowing that if she hadn’t been so sick, so
weak she would’ve insisted on standing on her own two feet, unaided.

“Come on,” he said. “You go lie down and
I’ll clean up in here. Really, Ellie, it’s not like you to let things go so
badly. Your house is a mess.”

“I’ve been sick,” she protested.

“So? Haven’t you taught the kid how to
wield a broom or wipe the table?”

“He makes his own bed.”

“And not very damn well,” Grant said
with a snort as he led her past Philip’s room. “If a member of my housekeeping
staff made a bed like that, I’d fire here and—”

“Philip is a little boy. A child! He’s
not ‘housekeeping staff’. Oh, don’t. Leave it,” she added when he would have
untied her bathrobe. “I’ll keep it on, I’m cold, Grant.”

Dimly, Eleanor heard the rattle of
dishes, the hum of the vacuum cleaner over the carpet in the hallway and living
room. She could hear the sounds of doors opening and closing and knew Grant was
picking things up, putting them away, tidying the house. The knowledge that
when she did feel like getting up, she would do so to clean house, was
comforting. She dozed until he brought her a cup of tea.

“It’s so nice to be looked after,” she
said, giving him a sleepy smile and then sneezing, slopping the tea into the
saucer. Grant snatched it from her as she wound up for another sneeze and put
it on the bedside table. He pulled the easy chair away from the side of her
bed, sat down and looked around complacently.