Wild Thing (5 page)

I started evening mucking early, stabbing the spade into piles of manure. Harder and faster I scooped and heaved until sweat poured down my neck. I hated the scrape of the spade on the cement stall floors just under the shredded rubber covering. At our ranch in Wyoming, Mom insisted on straw flooring clean enough to eat off of.

I dug in harder, every muscle exploding with anger.
How could Richard Spidell take credit for handling the Arabian?

When I’d filled the wheelbarrow, I pushed it to the stallway and hoisted the manure onto the dump wagon. Mornings I worked the north stalls, evenings the south.

I’d left the end stall for last, Scar’s stall. That was my name for Summer Spidell’s high-strung American Saddle Horse. The name on the gold plate tacked on the stall door read Spidell’s Sophisticated Scarlet Lady. I imagine they got the
Scarlet
from the mare’s reddish roan coat.

Scarlet, Scar, was the only horse who refused to make up to me. From all the pictures of Summer holding trophies and ribbons, her horse was good for horse shows but not much else.

I couldn’t blame the mare. As I raked her stall, Scar was taking up space in a hot walker, a contraption like a playground merry-go-round, without seats or fun. Spokes radiate from a center pole, like one of Dad’s bike wheels on its side. When owners don’t care enough to ride their horses, they stick them in the hot walker for exercise.

Poor Scar circled round and round, her ears lopped in boredom.

Dumping my last load into the manure wagon, I noticed that the stall across from Scar’s had both the top and bottom doors closed. It was bad enough that Spidells held horses prisoners in their stalls day and night. But top halves of stall doors were usually left open so the horses could at least see other four-legged creatures.

This stall belonged to a sweet-natured Appaloosa, who always hung around while I cleaned his horse-prison “cell
.
” I’d never been in that stall when the gelding wasn’t. Solid brown in front, with a white rump dotted with brownish-black spots, he would have made a perfect example of the horses known as Palousa, prized spotted horses of the Nez Perce Indians, who broke away from the Palouse tribe in Idaho.

I glanced both ways. A little girl was brushing her horse five stalls away. Half a dozen horses trudged in hot walkers. A handful of ponies jogged around a small arena, their riders intent on posture and form.

Nobody was looking.

I crossed the stallway and pushed back the top door. The Appaloosa let out a grateful nicker. As I slid inside the stall, he turned toward me.

I gasped. “You poor baby!”

Someone had put a mechanical cribber, a wide leather strap that latches tightly around a horse’s throat, on that beautiful animal. And this cribber looked like one of the cruelest styles, with a small, metal spike sticking out of the strap. Horses will sometimes grab the top of a board of their stall with their front teeth and chew, and a cribber is designed to prevent the horse from arching his neck enough to reach over the wood and inhale. The first day I worked at Stable-Mart, I’d noticed several stall boards gnawed at the top—sure signs of cribbing. In some cases, the horse goes one step further and gulps air while chewing. It’s called wind sucking. It’s not good for the horse, and it’s not good for the stall.

But no horse deserved what they’d done to the Appy.

He walked toward me, nodding a greeting. I saw him wince as he stretched out his neck and a small metal spike poked him in the throat. There was no need for that spike! The strap alone would have kept the horse from cribbing.

Anger flashed in me like a struck match. I reached up and unbuckled the strap, letting it drop to the ground. It landed in a fresh mound of horse droppings.

“Good place for it, huh, boy?” I said, rubbing his outstretched neck.

I eyed the cribber covered with manure. “Looks to me as if your stall needs cleaning.” I scooped up manure with the spade. The cribber “just happened” to come along.
Next stop—the manure wagon.

With the spade braced in front of me, I leaned my back against the stall door, pushing it open again.

“Winifred, what are you doing in there?” Summer Spidell frowned down at me as if I were making snowmen out of the mess instead of shoveling it.

“What’s it look like I’m doing?” I asked, hoping she wouldn’t study my shovelful and see the cribber.

Summer would probably be in some of my classes if we stayed in Ashland until school started.

Mom used to say, “Winnie, there are owners who love horses as friends. And there are owners who show horses for the applause it brings the rider.” I’d known two minutes after I saw Summer with her horse which kind of owner she was.

“Weren’t you supposed to clean this stall in the morning?” she asked, smoothing the blonde hair that flowed over her shoulders as if it weren’t a thousand degrees in the shade.

“I did,” I said truthfully, keeping my body between Summer and the spade. “But whoever owns this gelding sure doesn’t take care of the stall. And I can’t stand to think of the Appy standing in muck all night. So if you’ll excuse me . . .”

I sidled around the door, keeping my back to Summer. If I could just pitch the load . . .

I hauled back for all I was worth, ready to fire into the muck wagon.

“Squawk! Hello? Who’s there?”

The screeching, unearthly voice made me jerk my arm. It threw off my aim. The spade flew upward, and the manure rained down—down onto Summer Spidell.

“Help! Help me!” Summer screamed, as if she were drowning in quicksand. She slapped her lavender shorts and top, although only a couple of clumps had actually stuck.

“Sorry,” I said, trying not to laugh.

“You’re going to be!” Summer snapped.

“Help! Help me!”

This time I spotted the mimic. Behind Summer stood a tall, slender girl with straight, shiny black hair that parted in the middle and hung down to her waist. On her shoulder sat the brightest red bird I’d ever seen. It was a foot long, counting the red tail, with bright green- and-yellow wings.

“Help! Help me! Uh-oh!”
it squawked.

“What is that?” I asked. I’d never seen anything like it.

“This is an Indonesian breed of parrot—the talking bird of the sun and dawn,” said the girl, who could have passed for an exotic Native American princess. “It is called a chattering lory. His name is Peter.”

She didn’t crack a grin. Her words came out one at a time, almost too clear, as if they’d been cut from ice.

Summer was still shaking her hair and stomping her sandaled feet. “Did you see this idiot throw Towaco’s manure all over me?”

“I didn’t—,” I started to protest. “Towaco? Is that the Appaloosa’s name? Well, if Towaco’s owner cared anything about him, none of this would have happened!”

Summer sneered, as if she’d just gotten me in trouble with the principal. “Allow me to introduce you to Towaco’s owner,” she said, pointing to the dark-haired girl. “Victoria Hawkins, as in
Hawkins and Hawkins Attorneys at Law.
”

Summer pointed at me. “This is Winifred something. She works for my father cleaning stalls—although after today—”

“Summer,” Victoria interrupted, “you said the spike on that cribber would never touch my horse.” She paused, easily peering over my head into the stall. “Where’s the strap? I thought we had to leave the cribber on.”

Summer stormed around me to look for herself. “We do have to leave it on!” Then as if she’d just noticed the stall’s top door, she asked, “Why is this door open? And where is that cribber?” She wheeled on me. “What do
you
know about this?”

I’d probably lost my job already. Anger relit, so real I felt it knife behind my eyeballs. “I took that stupid cribber off!” I shouted, kicking it out of the manure.

“Who gave you the right—?” Summer screamed, scurrying out of the way.

“Towaco!” I shouted back at her. “That’s who! Couldn’t you see his pain?” My throat felt raw, as if
I
were wearing the cribber and stretching my neck out too far. Maybe I was. But I couldn’t help it. “How could anyone who even pretends to like horses use that thing?” I asked.

“You are so ignorant,” Summer said. “It’s for the horse’s own good.”

I kicked at the cribber again, splattering up straw and muck. “Own good? Then
you
wear it!”

Summer faked a smile to Victoria Hawkins, who hadn’t so much as blinked during the shouting match. “Winifred doesn’t realize cribbing is catching. We can’t have our entire stable chewed to the ground.”

It was all I could do not to shove her face-first into the manure wagon. “Cribbing isn’t a virus!” I cried. “Horses don’t catch it!”

Summer’s gray eyes narrowed like she knew she had me now. “Then how do you explain the fact that half of our horses chew on the stalls?” She folded her arms in front of her.

“How do I explain it?” I demanded, stepping closer, forcing Summer to take a step back. “Easy! They’re all cooped up like Towaco! They hate Stable-Mart! What else is there to do in here?
I’d
chew wood if you locked me up here! They’re
bored!
” I pushed past Summer and almost slammed into Victoria and her bird.

“Bored! Bored! Bored! ”
squawked the parrot.

“Well, at least one of you has a brain,” I muttered, storming down the stallway to the nearest exit.

“Don’t bother coming back!” Summer yelled after me. “I’m telling Daddy to fire you!”

Not until I got outside and inhaled the dusky air did it hit me.
Fired?
I’d just lost my job.

Without the trainer’s job, maybe I never would have had the Arabian anyway. I would have had to muck a lot of stalls to buy the mare. But at least I could have stayed close to her. I could have seen her morning and night. I could have looked out for her.

Now I didn’t even have that.

I hadn’t just lost my job. I’d lost the Arabian. And it felt like losing everything all over again.

A loneliness burned in my chest as I ran to the south pasture. I had to see Wild Thing one more time.

She was racing the wind at the back fence. With her neck stretched into the sunset, she looked like she might jump into the sky. For an instant I pictured my mom riding the Arabian bareback across heaven.

Suddenly the mare tossed her silvery mane, slid to a stop, and craned her neck in my direction.

She saw me. I knew she did.

I would have given anything to hear her nicker. A nicker is the warmest, friendliest greeting in the world. I could almost have stood not seeing her again if only I could hear her nicker.

“Hey, Winnie!” Richard Spidell joined me at the gate. “Think we can catch her—like in a couple of days?”

“You’re asking
me?”
I said sarcastically.

“Come on,” Richard said in a mushy voice that probably worked with most girls. “We could work together.”

I turned to glare at him. “Don’t they tell you anything? I won’t be around. Your sister fired me.”