Brown Sunshine of Sawdust Valley (2 page)

By the time they found a parking space and Molly had stumbled over tree roots and squawking chickens, the visiting auctioneer had taken his place opposite a tier of homemade bleachers. They were filled to the loft with city folk from Nashville and who knows where else. Sitting alongside were farmers, merchants, and folks from roundabout.

The auctioneer lifted his bowler hat with a flourish and said, “Top o' the mornin', ladies and gentlemen.”

Molly looked around. There was only one lady in the audience. She and Molly exchanged smiles.

The auctioneer cupped one hand about his mouth.

“Bring in that strapping big colt,” he said in a whisper everyone could hear. From around the side of the barn, a tall boy stepped into the ring leading a frisky colt with a #1 slapped on his rump.
As the boy turned the dancing colt to face the audience, Molly noticed that his whiskers were beaded white as if he'd just been nursing. She caught her breath at the golden-red newness of him.

“Now this feller's already been haltered, as you horse folk can tell; meet Numero Uno.”

Molly leaned forward eagerly. It was all she could do to remain in her seat.

“If 'tweren't due to problems of will-probating, the owners'd never sell a strapping fellow like this'un.”

Molly nudged Pops. “The colt looked right at me.
At me!
”

“This big little feller is outen a saddlebred mare and a Morgan sire. Who'll start the bidding? At fifty dollars! Make it fifty!”

Molly nudged her father again. “Can we afford him?”

“Only one way to find out. Ten dollars!” he offered.

The auctioneer's voice sneered. “Ten dollars?” he repeated, curling his lips. Suddenly his mood changed. His pace quickened, words slurred. “Who'll make it fifty? Fifty . . . fifty?”

“Twenty-five dollars,” piped a little old sunburned man.

“Pops, bid!”

“Twenty-five, I'm bid. Twenty-five, I'm bid. Who'll make it fifty?”

“Forty!” The woman's voice.

Pops let out one of his ragweed sneezes. The auctioneer smiled his approval, accepting the sneeze as a fifty-dollar bid.

“Oh, Pops, thank you!”

“The gentleman and his little redheaded colleen bid fifty dollars for this strapping young colt that's ready to be trained their way. His sire and dam both were showstoppers . . . with dash 'n' style. He'll win enough blue ribbons to cover the walls of the little girl's bedroom. Make it a hundred, and he's yours.”

The auctioneer winked one eye at Molly.

“Sixty.” The woman's voice.

Pops fingered the seventy dollars in his pocket and offered it all. “
Seventy dollars
!” he announced with a note of finality.

The sunburned old man snapped his fingers: “Hun-derd!” He seemed ready to bid on and on.

“The gentleman bids one hundred dollars.”

“One hundred and twenty-five.” The lady's voice interrupted.

“One-fifty.” The sunburned man.

“One-fifty. Do I hear one-seventy-five?”

The barn went silent except for a tiny squeal from the colt, pulling toward the open door, as if anxious to be reunited with his mother.

“Going . . . going . . . gone!”

Molly watched the colt being led out of the ring while the elderly man, now sprightly as a grasshopper, hurried off to claim him.

Pops put his arm about Molly.

“There'll be other entries, well-trained; this one was really too green for us!”

“Too green?” Molly repeated. “Oh, Pops, he looked just right to me!”

Horses numbered two through twelve came and went, all ages, all breeds. Each time, the seventy dollars in Mr. Moore's pocket served only to spur the bidding. After a while, Molly's hopes turned to bewilderment. “Pops, can't we do something? Can't we get that foal there to stumble and want to come back?”

“It's too late, Molly. His handler is taking him away.” Pops put his hand on Molly's shoulder.

By the time #13 entered the ring, the crowd had
begun thinning out, but still the auction limped on.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, Lady Sue, Number Thirteen, is last and luckiest.” The auctioneer warmed to his few bidders. “Meet Lady Sue. She has good years left. Her legs are sounder than a dollar. Not a blemish. Mebbe she's gaunted up a bit, but good hay and oats and lots of TLC will make her a fine, dependable mount to hack across country, jump fallen logs, and show off like the hunter-jumper she is. Fact is, she's half Arab, half Thoroughbred and has been trained as a three-gaited saddle horse. She could be just the ticket for the young redhead sitting with her daddy.”

To Molly's surprise, she watched her father go down from the top bench to examine the mare's teeth. Almost immediately he gave a satisfied nod and returned to his seat.

“Who'll offer seventy dollars?” the auctioneer asked with a wink, “for this Thoroughbred with a pedigree longer'n my arm?”

Pops waited for someone else to open the bidding.

“Twenty-five,” said a voice with a laugh in it, “for the flea-bitten sorrel.”

The silence in the emptying barn made the buzzing of a greenhead fly seem noisy.

“Please, Pops, let's go home!” Molly whispered. But her father didn't hear. He had a rapt expression on his face. He seemed anxious to challenge the bid.

“Who'll offer seventy dollars?”

Pops nodded.

The stands were almost empty. Molly covered her face with her hands. The auctioneer seemed in a hurry to close the bidding.

“I have seventy. I have seventy. Going . . . going . . . gone for seventy dollars to the gentlemen and the young lady, who now own a sensible mount, without any colty tricks. And not a scar on knee or hock.”

Molly winced. She had told everybody at school that she was going to get a young horse on her birthday, and it would be as elegant as Secretariat.

“Oh, Pops, why did you do it? This old mare is a shadow of what we both wanted.”

“Molly, we can work magic on her. Good food,
good grooming, and plain old believing in her. Let's get that mane and tail combed out, and give her lots of love and we'll transform her in no time.”

Molly tried to smile at her father, but she was filled with dismay. Would her friends see Pop's point of view?

M
olly's father chuckled softly as he drove the pickup with the trailer attached through the gate and onto the blacktop road.

“I can't believe it!” he said, reaching for Molly's hand and squeezing it in a clasp so firm it made her blink. “How can we be so lucky? Only seventy dollars for such a well-bred mare! Molly, did you notice her delicate head? Her dish-faced profile? And her small ears? And her tail set on high? And her eyes wide apart?”

The questions stopped suddenly. Pops searched his daughter's face. “Molly! You're crying!”

“Probably it's the ragweed, Pops.” Molly broke free of her father's hand and rummaged in her pocket for a handkerchief.

“Poor Molly!” he said. “Isn't it enough you've inherited my red hair and now my hay fever, too? Well, have a good blow, Punkin, you don't have to talk now. Maybe I've said too much.”

The pickup left the blacktop, turning out onto the dusty back road to Sawdust Valley. Her father scratched his back against the seat. “All during my growing years, Molly, my folks had nothing but mongrel horses.”

She tried to listen, tried to forget the fuzzy Number One colt with the curly tail that looked like a wisp of yarn.

“By mongrel I mean they weren't Belgians or Clydesdales or Percherons; they were just everyday workhorses that slow-footed their way
through the fields, combing them into furrows. As a twerp of a boy, stumbling along behind the horses, I used to pass the time picking out cloud shapes in the sky and looking sharp for meadow larks' nests in the furrows of grass.”

Molly watched a hawk thunderbolt out of a cloud, sending a covey of quail scattering.

“And on Sundays,” Pops confided, “I tried to ride the critters, all free of their everyday collars and harness, but there was no fun in it. Not for them, nor for me. They just shambled along as if they were still pulling a plow.”

“I know about slow rides, Pops. I've ridden Freddy's Della, and it's hard to stay awake on her back.” Molly tried to keep up her end of the conversation, but she felt squeezed out and small, as if this were not her birthday at all.

“'Course you do, but now we own an elegant
mare, as different from Della as a gazelle from a bull. I know she doesn't look like much right now, but she's a completely different make and model from Della.”

“Did she have young teeth, Pops?”

“Well not exactly baby nippers, Molly, but if I'm any judge, the jagged edges can be filed smooth and they'll make very efficient tools for grinding her oats and hay into a healthy mash. Then you just watch how she'll fill out, and how she'll travel.”

Molly gave a heavy sigh of resignation.

“Will she go faster than Freddy's Della?”

“Never having ridden old Della, I wouldn't know, but I've a hunch our Lady Sue can fly fast enough to satisfy your old Pops.” He took a deep breath. “I can't wait to have a whole Sunday with Lady Sue, and the land and the Lord, and a cooling wind blowing her mane in my face.”

Molly was long in answering. She sat stewing, looking dead ahead. So that was it. Lady Sue was to be her father's horse—not hers. He wanted and needed a horse as much or more than she did.

“And when I've tested her gaits for smoothness and her disposition on the trail and in traffic, then she'll be yours. All yours. You won't mind sharing her with your old Pops for just one day of each week, will you?”

To which Molly could only say, “'Course not, Dad.” But the words stumbled around the lump in her throat.

Molly and her father sighed in unison, each for a different reason.