Colt (11 page)

Rosie was shivering and looked around without enthusiasm as Colt rode up with Liverwurst in tow. “Oh,
maaan …
”

“There was nobody around,” Colt explained. “This is the best I could do. Can you walk at all?”

With a groan and a grimace Rosie stumbled up. The icy lake water had numbed his feet for the time. Bracing himself against trees, he was able to walk back to the trail.

“Okay. Now climb on something, a rock, a log …”

It was not too hard to find a suitable mounting block. Boulders and windfalls were everywhere. Rosie got on top of a large fallen trunk, and Colt led Liverwurst up beside it. Liverwurst, he noticed, did not maneuver as well as Bonita. Liverwurst did not want to stand as close to Rosie as was needed.

“Liverwurst!” Colt scolded, prodding the gelding in the side to make him move over.

“And you expect me to
ride
that?” Rosie complained.

“Just get on, Francine, before he moves.”

“Shut up, Ozworth.”

Unable to put all his weight on one foot, Rosie bellied onto Liverwurst and eventually managed to slither into riding position. Colt handed him the lead ropes by way of reins.

“Go slow,” Rosie pleaded. “This animal is slippery.”

They went very slowly. Colt knew Rosie would be hurting again soon. He did not want anything to joggle him. Just let Liverwurst nod along—

From just behind the trailside bushes a few feet away, three ducks flew up, splashing, quacking, clattering the reeds. Bonita scooted sideways and stood quivering. Liverwurst plodded on with scarcely a lift of his head.

“Hoo,” said Rosie softly. “You all right, Colt?”

“Yeah.” He urged Bonita forward and caught up with Rosie. “I'm starting to get used to that.”

“This big guy is a good horse.”

“Sure is.”

“He's not much to look at, but he gets the job done.”

“Sure.”

Rosie's long legs hung down Liverwurst's warm, round, softly breathing barrel. With one hand Rosie stroked Liverwurst's wispy mane.

“He has about four or five different colors in his mane,” Rosie remarked.

“That's Liverwurst,” said Colt.

“When we get there,” Colt instructed as they turned down the lane to Deep Meadows Farm, “you're going to have to ride Liverwurst into the stable aisle and get down on one of those boxes by the tack-room door. The phone is right inside the door. You should be able to reach it in a couple of steps. Heck, you can crawl to it if you have to.” Colt had his plan all thought out.

But none of it was necessary. At the bottom of the lane they found cars everywhere. Mr. Reynolds was home, wondering where Liverwurst had strayed to. Some of the riders had arrived. And Colt's mother was there. She had called home to Lauri and then run out to the stable over her lunch hour, wondering what was taking Colt and Rosie so long. It seemed like half the world was there just waiting to help, now that Colt had done all the hard parts.

“I bet you were scared half to death,” Colt's mother said to him after Mr. Reynolds had cut the seventy-dollar running shoes off Rosie with his jackknife and hurried the teenager away to the nearest emergency room, where Rosie's father would meet them. Audrey had to stay with Colt and help him put away Liverwurst and Bonita. As always when exciting things happened, she wanted to talk, and she chattered as she worked. “All alone with a situation like that to deal with. I bet you were petrified.”

“Nope, Mom. I wasn't.”

“Come on. This is your mother you're trying to kid. I've known you since you were a baby.”

“I was upset,” Colt said, “and mad, and worried about Rosie. But I wasn't really scared.” And he felt a quiet joy, because he knew it was the truth.

He reached through the paddock gate, and patted Liverwurst and Bonita, and knew he could truthfully say one more thing.

“I don't get scared of things the way I used to, Mom. Not since I've been riding horses.”

Chapter Ten

Just in time for Sunday dinner the next day Brad carefully wheeled Rosie in the front door. With one foot in a cast and the other ankle wrapped in an elastic bandage, Rosie was home to stay, but confined to a wheelchair for the time being.

“Boy, it's good to be out of that hospital!” Rosie looked around gratefully at the small, cluttered living room where his family smiled at him. “Where's Colt? Hey, Ozzie!” As Colt, who also happened to be in his wheelchair at the moment, rolled toward him. “Gimme a high five, hero!”

“Shut up.” Colt blushed. Already he had heard enough “hero” stuff to last him the rest of his life. He had been mentioned on the late TV news the night before, and the phone had rung so much all day that his mother had disconnected it. The local paper wanted to do an interview, but Audrey had vetoed that idea.

Colt rolled his wheelchair up beside Rosie's and gave him the requested victory salute. Muffins ran around in circles and barked with excitement. “You two guys watch you don't lock wheels,” Lauri said.

“Wanna race?” Rosie offered. He struggled to get his wheelchair moving on his own. “Hey, Colt, give me some pointers on how to work this thing.”

“Want to learn how to pop wheelies?”

Rosie was not ready for wheelies. Trying to thread the narrow path across the living room, he dodged Muffins, blundered into a pile of laundry, and got stuck. Everyone hurried to help him. “Oh, dear,” Audrey sighed, looking around the crammed house. Magazines had cascaded off the coffee table onto the floor again, as always. Muffins had dragged in Lauri's old jump rope and left it coiled snakelike near the hassock. For some reason there was an open package of Rice Chex on top of the TV. “I am such a mess.”

Colt said, “No, you're not, Mom.” His mother had always taken care of him, talked to specialists, gotten him to his doctor appointments and his equipment fittings, seen that he took his medication, taken him to therapy, arranged for tutoring, attended conferences with his teachers, helped him with his homework, coached him through his exercises, made him learn to take care of himself, kept an eye on his shunt, bought braces and crutches and special shoes, and worked a full-time job to pay for everything.
And
made him brush his teeth and keep his nose clean and not swear more than was necessary. How could she keep calling herself a mess just because the house was a dump?

“You're not a mess, Mom. The house is a mess, so what?”

“I like it here,” Rosie said, “mess and all. I don't see why you guys want to move.”

Brad and Audrey stood still and looked at him. “You don't feel too crowded, sharing a room with Colt?”

“Not really.”

“Me neither,” said Colt. He liked having someone in his room to talk with and to play tricks on him. The night before, when Rosie had been kept at the hospital for observation and Colt was missing him, he had gone to bed to find his sheets full of potently perfumed talcum powder. Brad came in when he heard Colt laughing and had laughed with him. “Rosie told me to do that for him,” he explained, and then he helped Colt change the sheets.

“
I
don't mind us tripping over each other all the time,” Lauri said. “It's kind of fun.” She and Colt had talked about this. Lauri had moved around so much in her life that she did not want to do it again, or not for a long time. And to Colt, having a big family, with a father and brother and sister, was all new. At first he had hated it. Now he couldn't get enough of it. He didn't mind being crowded.

“You know what I think?” Rosie said to his father and stepmother. “I think you guys ought to just stay here. And I know what you ought to do with all the money you've got saved up too.”

“Oh, really?” Brad rolled his eyes at his wife, then looked back to his son. “Okay, lay it on us. I can't wait to hear this. What do you have in mind for our hard-earned money?”

Rosie said, “I think you ought to get some more horses. So we can all go riding with Colt.”

There was a moment of total silence. Then everyone started talking at once.

Audrey to Brad: “You know, I really did enjoy riding Bonita.”

Brad to Audrey: “It's a thought. It would be safer for Colt. Horses don't get so nervous when they're in a group.”

“It's something we could all do together.”

“And less hassle for Mrs. Reynolds, not to have Colt pestering her to take him out on the trail.”

Colt to Rosie: “You really mean it? You'd get on a horse again? You sure you didn't hit your head?”

Rosie to anybody who would listen: “I just mean, like, real safe gentle horses. With cowboy saddles. None of that stuff where they make you go over jumps and wear tight pants.”

Lauri, jumping up and down and clutching at the adults: “Oh, oh, oh, a horse of my own, I can't believe it, oh, please, Daddy! Oh, please, Mom!”

And Brad and Audrey gave each other helpless looks and started to laugh. Which seemed to settle it.

“Tell you what,” Colt told Lauri, businesslike, “suppose I take you out to the stable sometime and start giving you some riding lessons.”

Colt told Mrs. Berry all about it the next time he saw her for physical therapy. “So as soon as Rosie is able to get around better, Mom and Brad are going to take a weekend and go out to Ohio to visit Mr. Ticknor and maybe buy some Paso Finos.”

“Colt, that's wonderful.” Bending over the padded table, measuring Colt for longer braces because he had grown so much, Mrs. Berry shook her head happily. She was, Colt noticed, a rather pretty lady, little blond mustache and all. “I'm so thrilled things are going well for you. And you know, I feel like I ought to take some personal credit. I'm the one who dragged you to Horseback Riding for the Handicapped, remember?”

Colt remembered, but Mrs. Berry didn't give him time to answer. She chattered eagerly on. “I can't believe how much you've grown up since then. It's hard to believe you're the same boy. You used to be such a—well, so immature.”

Such a brat, she meant. Colt didn't know whether to laugh or scream. “You noticed,” he finally managed to say.

“I certainly did notice! You were quite a nuisance. Half the time I wanted to strangle you.” Mrs. Berry playfully put her hands around Colt's neck and gave a gentle squeeze.

He grinned at her. “I'm glad you didn't.”

“So am I.” Mrs. Berry shifted her hands back to her tape measure. “Now that you're feeling so much stronger and surer of yourself, you've turned into a beautiful human being.”

Ick. But that was all right. Now that he had Bonita, Colt found it a lot easier to like life and everyone in it. Mrs. Berry and all her handicapped kids—Anna Susanna, Jay Gee, Matt, cute little Julie.

Even boogerhead Neely, who was just coming in the therapy-room door for his own session.

“Okay, Colt.” Mrs. Berry helped him down off the table onto the floor. “Fifty push-ups. Neely, you too.”

“I can't do that many!” Neely whined.

Colt said, “Sure you can, Neely!”

“Drop dead!”

Colt didn't feel the least bit angry. Was that where Mrs. Berry got her patience, just from feeling good about herself? He said, “Hey, Neely, come on, you got to try. I didn't used to think I could do it either.”

“Butt out!”

“Neely,” Mrs. Berry reproved, “Colt's just trying to help. Push-ups, both of you. Start!”

Colt finished his fifty push-ups while Neely was still complaining his way through twenty. He wished he could make Neely see, make Neely understand.… He wished he could change Neely's life the way horses had changed his, because he knew exactly how Neely felt.

At the very back of his mind he decided that maybe he would help handicapped kids somehow when he grew up.

But meanwhile there were other things to do.

On a green-and-golden, blue-skied day in June, a family went horseback riding.

Up the Deep Meadows Farm lane, then along the dirt road. Mrs. Reynolds, now well and strong again, stopped the tractor she was driving and hollered after them, “Beautiful day!”

“Yeah!” Colt yelled back with the others.

“Have a good ride!”

“Okay!”

Brad's horse, the biggest one, was a sturdy chestnut gelding named Flame. He was not particularly handsome, but Audrey's little Maria del Consuela was a beauty. A
cremello
, a pale buckskin, lighter than Audrey's blond hair, with black legs and tail and a sunny streak in her long black mane—she was, Colt had to admit, almost as pretty as Bonita.

Lauri's horse was a flashy pinto Paso named
Luz
, “the light.” Bonita liked Maria del Consuela, but did not get along as well with Luz. When Lauri let Luz get her nose too close to Bonita's hindquarters, Bonita laid back her ears and lashed her tail, threatening. Colt sent her scooting forward before she could kick.

From Flame's back Brad glanced over at him. “Everything all right, Son?”

“Sure, Dad. I can handle her.”

The adoption proceedings had begun. Colt would soon be officially a Flowers. When had he started calling his stepfather Dad? He couldn't remember. It had all been so natural, he hadn't noticed.

Into the state forest, onto the lakeside trail … Rosie rode up beside Colt, his long legs hanging well below his horse's belly. Rosie's horse? It was a big, homely, Roman-nosed, flop-eared Appaloosa with only the most pathetic excuses for mane and tail. Rosie rode Liverwurst, and loved him.

“Race ya,” Rosie teased.

“Give me a break, Fran.” Colt knew he would always be handicapped. He couldn't get reckless on horseback. Ever.

“Turkey! You know this snorting horsey of mine could beat you.”

“Nothing can beat me,” said Colt.

About the Author

Nancy Springer has passed the fifty-book milestone with novels for adults, young adults, and children, in genres including mythic fantasy, contemporary fiction, magic realism, horror, and mystery—although she did not realize she wrote mystery until she won the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America two years in succession. Born in Montclair, New Jersey, Springer moved with her family to Gettysburg, of Civil War fame, when she was thirteen. She spent the next forty-six years in Pennsylvania, raising two children (Jonathan and Nora), writing, horseback riding, fishing, and bird-watching. In 2007 she surprised her friends and herself by moving with her second husband to an isolated area of the Florida Panhandle where the bird-watching is spectacular, and where, when fishing, she occasionally catches an alligator.