Gift Horse (7 page)

It wasn't until I'd gone to bed and Lizzy was making her weird snoring sounds that Dad tried to talk to me. He must have heard me thrashing around in bed because he tapped on the door and called, “Winnie?”

I pretended to be asleep, but he didn't buy it. He sat on the foot of my bed and said what he'd come to say. “Winnie, I think the best thing is to let the vet take care of this. He'll know the best way to handle the situation so—”

I sat up so fast the bed shook.
“Handle
it? The way animal control would
handle
it? Gracie's not an
it!
And neither is her foal! You can't—!”

“And I won't,” Dad said so calmly I wanted to throw my pillow at him. “I won't
make
you call in the vet. But I
will
make you face reality. That horse is almost guaranteed to die, no matter what we do.”

“No!” My chest hurt, as if I'd been kicked in the windpipe.

Dad went on like he hadn't heard me. “And the longer you hang on to it—
her
—the more pain you're going to cause yourself and others. We don't need more pain and grief, Winnie—not you, not Mason, not any of us. Not this Christmas.”

Tears choked me. I coughed out words like shotgun pellets. “I . . .
you . .
 . don't understand. You don't care! I wish . . . I wish Mom were here.
She'd
know. She'd be on my side.”

Dad's eyes misted over. Then he got up and walked out of the room.

I threw myself down on my pillow, sobbing, gasping between sobs. At least he wasn't going to make me do it. At least that.

Sunday morning Lizzy made raspberry pancakes in the shape of Christmas wreaths. I tried to swallow a few bites, but I was too anxious to get out to the barn.

“Too bad I'm so scared of horses,” Lizzy admitted, pouring homemade syrup on a stack of pancakes. “I could help you more with Gracie. I don't know why horses give me the willies. Anyway, I guess I wouldn't have that much time to help. I'm so busy making Christmas gifts.” She set down the bottle of purple syrup. “Are you done Christmas shopping, Winnie?”

I shook my head. I hadn't done a thing about shopping since I'd found the mare in my pasture.

Gracie and Nickers were waiting for me in the barn. I hung out with them until I heard the Barker Bus.

When we moved to Ashland, Lizzy started babysitting for Eddy Barker's little brothers right away. She'd been the first one to go to church with them. After a while, I started going too. Now that Dad was going regularly, we could have driven ourselves. But the Barkers still swung by every Sunday in their giant yellow van we dubbed the Barker Bus.

Lizzy, Dad, and I squeezed into the middle seat with Matthew and Mark. Mr. Barker sat in the back with the littlest Barkers—Luke, Johnny, and William.

We greeted each other. Then I turned to Mark. “How are Irene's puppies doing?”

The van went silent. You'd have thought I'd asked when the world was scheduled to end.

“My
puppies are just fine,” Mark answered.

“Mark,” Mrs. Barker said, tightening her grip on the steering wheel, “we've been over and over this. You're helping Irene take care of
her
puppies until they're old enough to give away to wonderful homes who don't already have five dogs. Right?”

Matthew, the only Barker who doesn't smile a lot, actually chuckled.

“Guess who came over to play with the puppies,” Barker shouted from the front. “M!”

“He seems like a nice young man,” Mrs. Barker added.

Nobody spoke until Granny B turned from the front seat and said, “Winnie, you're looking troubled, girl.”

I nodded. Something about Granny B always makes me feel like she's been discussing me one-on-one with God and he's been telling her things nobody else knows. Even her white hair, sticking out like fresh cotton, looked like the breath of God had just blown right on her.

“I should have called you, Winnie!” Barker shouted over Johnny's demand to be freed from the car seat. “But I'm no closer to finding out who left that horse than I was yesterday.”

“You mean
horses!”
Lizzy exclaimed. Then, faster than a horse's trot, she explained all about Gracie and the foal, while Dad stared ahead, stone-faced and tight-lipped.

“Imagine that!” Mrs. Barker, who was driving, peeked at me in the rearview mirror. It framed her face like a movie-star picture. She's really pretty, with deep brown skin, wavy hair, and huge brown eyes.

Mr. Barker leaned forward from the backseat. “I thought that horse looked too old.”

“She
is
too old!” Dad snapped, so solemnlike the whole car, except for William, went silent again until we reached the church.

Once inside, we headed for the Barker pew. Halfway down the aisle, I stopped. Catman, who always arrives late and makes a grand entrance to the organ music, was already there. And next to him sat M, in a black turtleneck and black jeans.

As far as I knew, M had never seen the inside of a church. I'd only met his parents once, and I liked them a lot. They made it into the
Mansfield News Journal
and even the
Akron Beacon Journal
from time to time for demonstrating against a nuclear power plant or for boycotting a store that sells the wrong kind of tuna. But they weren't churchgoers.

M scooted about six inches from Catman, and I squeezed between them. I had to sit with my shoulders scrunched to my ears, which may be why I didn't hear all the announcements. Or it might have been because I couldn't get my mind off Gracie.

“Clue us in,” Catman whispered. “M wants the skinny on that horse.”

I was sitting three millimeters from M and hadn't heard him ask anything, but I relayed what the vet had said.

M shut his eyes.

Ralph Evans greeted us pretty much the same way he welcomes customers to the animal shelter. I like that he doesn't have a Sunday Ralph different from the regular Ralph. He wore a gray shirt instead of the white lab coat. But he talked exactly the same. “I sure hope everybody's coming to the Christmas Eve celebration.”

“Right-on!” Catman shouted.

Nobody else shouted anything. But they didn't seem to mind the Catman.

I caught Dad scoping out the back pews and knew he was hoping Madeline and Mason would show up. He'd been inviting them every Sunday, but so far they hadn't made it.

We stood to sing a couple of Christmas carols, which was a relief from being squished in the pew. Then Ralph started his sermon. He'd been giving Christmasy sermons since Thanksgiving.

“Last week we talked about that angel who came to see Mary and give her the big news that she was picked out of everybody to be the mother of God's Son. But I want to tell you about another message Mary got, this one from an old prophet named Simeon. He'd been waiting for the Messiah his whole life. So when Mary and Joseph walked into the temple with their baby, Simeon knew who it was. He told Mary that Jesus would do great things and save all the people. Then he added, like a P.S.: ‘And a sword will pierce your very soul.'

“Mary got promised joy and pain, side by side. And you know—we get the same promise. It's part of the same package: life and death; pain of childbirth and the joy of a child born.”

That's where I stopped listening and started wondering. Would it be like that with Gracie and her foal? Pain, then joy? Joy, then pain? I didn't want her to suffer. I couldn't stand it if she suffered.

Why couldn't everybody just skip all the pain part and go straight to the joy?

After church, I told Catman and M good-bye, but M followed me to the Barker Bus.

“Need a ride, M?” Mrs. Barker asked. “Hop in.”

The whole way to our house M kept up a whispering conversation with Granny B in the front seat. When we got to our house, he hopped out with Dad, Lizzy, and me, although he lives in the government housing apartments on the other side of town.

“You're welcome, M,” Granny B called, although I hadn't heard M say thanks.

Dad and Lizzy walked to the house, but I headed straight for the barn. I was wearing a denim dress Lizzy got at Goodwill, so I didn't feel like I had to change.

M followed me.

Nickers whinnied from the pasture and trotted into her stall to meet me. I slipped in with her and hugged her neck, grateful for her fresh, horse smell.

M got into the stall with Gracie.

“She needs exercise, M,” I suggested, thinking about the way Mom used to keep the brood-mares active right up to foaling.

I handed him a brush and leadrope. He brushed her mane, then looked like he didn't know what to do next.

“You can give her a once-over with the brush. Then lead her outside to the paddock and just walk her around.” It occurred to me that I seemed to be answering questions he hadn't asked. Or had he?

The only sounds in the barn were the
swish, swish
of the brushes as we stroked the horses. Nelson, my barn cat, leaped out of nowhere and jumped onto Nickers' back. Catman had given me the little black kitten with one white paw soon after I'd taken over the barn. Catman still has the parent cats, Wilhemina and Churchill. He named my cat Nelson because the real Winston Churchill had a cat named Nelson.

Nickers didn't complain as the cat curled up on her and purred.

“What—? Whoa now!” M, hands up, jumped back from Gracie.

I hurried into their stall. “What's wrong, M?”

He stared at the old mare. His eyes were rimmed with white. If he'd been a horse, he would have been a scared Arabian. “It . . . that is,
she
. . .” He pointed to Gracie's belly.

“Did you feel a kick?” I felt the mare's flank, and M laid his hand next to mine. We didn't move for a long time. Then I felt it. “It kicked!” I cried, biting my lip so I wouldn't bawl like a baby.

M put his head against Gracie's side and listened. “I hear it!” he whispered, grinning. He had dimples. Who knew?

“Everything okay out here?” Lizzy called, trotting into the barn.

“We felt the foal kick, Lizzy!” I said.

“Sweet!” she exclaimed, tiptoeing closer to Gracie's stall and peeking in. “That's good, right?”

“That's great!” I agreed.

M and I listened to Gracie's belly again but didn't hear anything.

“Oh!” Lizzy exclaimed. “I almost forgot why I came out here. Thought you might be hungry.” Lizzy does all of our creative cooking.

“What did you make this time, Lizzy?” I asked, my stomach growling.

“Nothing! Madeline and Mason came over and brought pizza. It's just plain pepperoni. But I'll put extra things on for anybody who wants them . . . cherry tomatoes, celery, leftover tuna casserole, potato chips.”

M led the way, and Lizzy and I followed him into the house for pizza.

Pepperoni-pizza slices were served on individual, waterproof, battery-operated plates. These “power plates” were Madeline's invention. She won first prize at the Chicago Invention Convention, either for helium furniture or her automatic, house-greeting security system. I can't remember, and I'm not about to ask.