Miracle Beach (38 page)

FALL HAD SETTLED IN FOR GOOD. ALTHOUGH BY AFTERNOON on most days the dense morning fog baked off nicely, there was no mistaking the now-bony tree branches that crawled like veins against the inside of a brooding sky, or the scattering of leaves they planted in yards, ditches, and forest floors throughout the island.

On Martine’s advice, Macy had put her show schedule on hold until the following summer, even though she and Gounda had both made a full recovery. “The Talent Squad will be there again next year, and the year after that,” he had said. “It is more important that you start over on the right leg.”

Martine had been completing a program in equine experiential learning, and the extra time that Macy’s new schedule allowed him was put to good use in perfecting his coursework and approach. Martine still came every Wednesday, but often Macy wouldn’t even saddle up. Sometimes she and Martine would just sit in the center of one of the paddocks for one hour, two hours at a time, and Martine would tell her to breathe and clear her mind and allow her inner self to connect with the horses.

“You have to give to them, listen to them. It is not always about taking, taking, taking,” he told her, both of them sitting cross-legged on a knoll in the pasture’s knee-high grass. “You must ask what message the horse would like to send to your heart,” he said.

“This is hocus-pocus shit,” Macy had complained to Martine during their first session. Lately, though, she had secretly come to enjoy their times together.

And she thought that maybe, just maybe, they might have actually begun to work a little bit of magic on her.

Glory and Macy had settled into a delicate dance of getting to know each other, and Glory seemed to somehow know all the steps. She didn’t call Macy “Mom.” She didn’t tell Macy she loved her. She didn’t try to hug Macy or clamor for her attention. She never tried to substitute this new life for her old one. Glory seemed to know that it was different. No better, no worse. Just different.

And the days of that dance were tightly choreographed. Each weekend morning, they would clean stalls, pick hooves, and rotate horses between the barn and the paddocks, Glory working right alongside Macy. The girl never complained. Even more impressive, she remembered everything Macy told her the very first time: how to put a halter on, which horses belonged in which stalls, which horses got a flake of hay at lunchtime and which didn’t.

“You’re a regular barn hand savant,” Macy muttered one day.

“What’s that?” Glory had asked.

“Never mind,” Macy said.

“Is it a good thing, though?”

“Yeah.” Macy nodded, smiling. “It’s good.”

Glory had beamed then, and every once in a while, when they were cleaning stalls on opposite sides of the aisleway, Macy would look up and Glory would be staring at her, that dumb-happy smile creeping across her face, a pitchfork full of shit balanced unsteadily in her hands. And Macy would think then that she should really get to work on painting the spare room down the hall from hers a nice, pale shade of pink.

The deal, when Macy bought Moses, was that Glory had to work if Moses came to live with them. She had to learn how to take care of him all by herself. No one had ever saddled Macy’s horses for her, Macy told Glory, no one had ever wrapped her horses’ legs or picked out their feet for her, and Macy wouldn’t do it for Glory, either. “That’s the only way you learn,” she told Glory.

So on the way to pick up Moses, Macy pulled into Riverbend Tack and Hay just outside of Nanaimo and bought an extra-tall mounting block for Glory—a pink one, at Glory’s request. When Jack came the following weekend, as promised, he attached wheels to the mounting block—the kind that locked in place—and a short rope handle, so that Glory could haul it all by herself from one end of the barn to the other.

Macy had been skeptical about Moses. He was blind in one eye, he’d been half starved to death, and his front legs were a mess of proud flesh from when he had wrapped himself in a barbed-wire fence. But a friend of hers had rescued him and had spent the past year putting some weight on him, and she insisted that if he didn’t work out for any reason, she’d happily take him back. In any case, it was worth a try. Glory couldn’t ride Gounda because of the sheer size of him, compared to her, and she couldn’t ride any of the others because they were just plain dangerous—not beginner horses by any means.

Besides, Glory was positively dying to learn to ride, badgering Macy over and over about how it might be time for her to learn. Macy had made the mistake once of saying that it was because Glory wasn’t quite big enough yet, which resulted in daily updates from Glory on how she had grown an eighth of an inch or put on a half a pound. Macy had watched the girl down three and a half hamburgers only a few nights before in an attempt to “be bigger,” and wondered how much an eight-year-old could put away before actually exploding—something she didn’t care to be personally responsible for.

So Moses it was.

Macy was right to worry about Moses. He nearly jumped out of his skin whenever she opened the garage-style door at the end of the barn. He’d bolt to the back corner of his stall when she threw him a flake of hay. But with Glory around he turned into a kinder, gentler horse. For that little girl and her noisy, rolling, hot-pink mounting block, he’d stand rock solid, even though the whites of his eyes would show like crescent moons against his dapple-gray face. Even though he looked like he was crawling with fear on the inside.

 

“You get Moses ready,” Macy told Glory, who had stacked brushes, her saddle, and a bridle atop her mounting block and was wheeling it down the aisle. “I’ll meet you outside.”

Sophie and Jack were already waiting by the outdoor arena. Sophie with her thermos of green tea, Jack with his supersize travel mug of coffee. They had each given up their respective Saturday-morning rituals to watch Glory ride Moses for the very first time.

Macy started out by leading Glory around the arena on Moses. She told her to stroke his neck right above his withers, right where mares nuzzled their foals, to calm him. She showed her how to sit up and sit back in the saddle, how to gently pressure his sides with her calves instead of digging her heels into his sides. Little by little, Macy let out the lounge line until Glory and Moses were nearly rounding the circumference of the riding arena.

“Ready to do a little more?” Macy asked. Glory nodded. Her hands gripped the pommel of the saddle, her eyes fixed straight ahead, right through Moses’s ears, as Macy had told her; she was concentrating hard.

Then Macy gave a quiet, staccato series of clucks, and Moses eased himself into a gentle trot, seemingly well aware of the first-timer on his back.

Macy had never seen a girl so unafraid, almost reckless—hadn’t ever seen one meld with a horse’s back that easily, that naturally. It was as if her butt and legs had been glued to the saddle. Moses’s legs moved in pairs with long, lithe sweeps.
Bamp—bamp—bamp—bamp.
His hooves struck the ground like a snare drum. He was in no hurry.

“You hear that?” Macy called to Glory. She slapped out a rhythm that matched Moses’s trot with the palm of her right hand against her leg. Glory nodded. “Well, you can’t just
hear
it,” Macy said. “You have to
feel
it, with your body. With your whole body.” Glory nodded again. “I’ve got Moses,” Macy told her. “What I want you to do is close your eyes when you’re ready, so you can feel it. I won’t let Moses go anywhere.” Before Macy had even finished speaking, Glory had squeezed her eyes shut and pointed her chin defiantly to the sky.

Macy saw Glory drop the reins then, and watched as the girl raised her skinny arms, bit by bit, like a fledgling taking off for the first time, until they were straight out to her sides. A panicked “Noooo!” rose from Macy’s stomach up to her throat, but just before it found air to sail out on, she swallowed it back down. Glory was a long way from being experienced enough to do horseback ballet, but Moses hadn’t even noticed. He kept up his one-two beat, wholly unconcerned about the little blond bird fixed to his back.

When Macy finally slowed Moses to a stop, Glory lowered her arms and opened her eyes, looking straight at Macy, that same dumb-happy smile splashed across her face.

And there was Jack, one arm slung loosely around Sophie’s shoulders, the other clapping one-handed against his thigh. And there was Sophie with her hands clasped in front of her chin like a young child praying. There was Moses, contentedly licking his lips, and Glory on top of him, now bent over his thick neck and trying to stretch her arms clear around it.

Macy stood absolutely still, her breath catching in her throat.

And all around them the trees stood witness, as still as ghosts.

I OWE SO MUCH TO SO MANY THAT IT’S HARD TO EVEN KNOW where to start. So I’ll start at the beginning: To Kyoko Mori for fostering in me the very first sense that this writing thing might actually be something worth doing. To Northern Michigan University’s MFA program and my cohorts there who saw the very first, rudimentary versions of this book and encouraged me to keep going with it anyway; but especially to Ron Johnson and Katie Myers Hanson, without whose encouragement the manuscript would have never seen a thesis committee, much less publication. To one of my best friends and former roommates, Stolze, who kept me plied during the writing of that very first draft with supportive words and cheap red wine and had faith in this story long before I did.

Much of this book was initially written where it is set—overlooking the gorgeous Strait of Georgia—and I’d be remiss not to thank the Cockburns and all the fantastic people of Campbell River for welcoming me to your beautiful part of the world, your homes, and your lives during the summers I spent on Vancouver Island.

A big thank you to fellow Inkwellians Marysa, Carrie, Nick, and Maggie; and a special thanks to Dean Bakopolous for your sage and always generous advice; and to Theresa Roetter for your expertise. To Angela James and to Sandy, Mel, and Anson Kaye for your valuable feedback—but moreover, just for being you. To Andrea Somberg and Ellen Edwards for your patience, time, patience, guidance, patience, and vision (and did I mention patience?) in making this a better book than I ever imagined possible.

To my family, whom there are not enough superlatives in the English language to describe: I love you all so very much, and this book is as much yours as it is mine. Your love and support mean everything to me. You mean everything to me.

And finally, to my Chief of Stuff, without whom any of this would hardly be possible. You are my sun, my rock, my North Star, my best cheerleader/friend/critic, my muse. (Cliché? Perhaps. But also so very true.) How did I get so lucky? To borrow your own words, “What a world.” I’m so glad you decided to stick around.

Erin Celello
was born in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where she also earned an MFA in fiction from Northern Michigan University. She now lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband and two unruly Vizslas who have somehow trained her to let them sleep under the covers. When not writing or spending time with her favorite boys, Erin can almost always be found at the barn or competing with her American Quarter Horse, Gino (a.k.a. the Ironman), training for triathlons and marathons, or cooking.
Miracle Beach
is her first novel. Please visit her at erincelello. com.