A Kingdom in a Horse (10 page)

When Sarah came back in dry clothes, he was finished.

“You have a well-behaved horse. Had I known that, I would have given her her shot in the hindquarters rather than in the neck.”

“Will she be allright?”

“Yes, she’ll be all right now. Call me in the morning, anyway, and tell me how she spent the night.” He reached into the bag and brought out a bottle. “There is enough here for five doses. I’ll give her some now, and you give her some later tonight and twice tomorrow morning, at eight and ten.”

He showed her how to force the bottle into Gypsy’s mouth behind her teeth and pour the medicine down her throat.

“Is it all right if she lies down now? ”

“Yes, she won’t get colic anymore.”

A few minutes after the veterinarian left, Lee Earl drove in. “I saw the doc on the road,” he said, looking at Gypsy and smiling at her woeful expression. “He said you’ll be all right, you greedy mare.”

“But she still looks so sick,” the woman said, grateful for his presence.

“Well, she got herself into a mess of trouble, that’s why she looks this way. But she’ll be fine. You leave her alone now and make yourself some hot coffee.”

“Will you have some?”

“Sure, but I bet you haven’t had any dinner. I brought you a ham sandwich.”

Tears came again to Sarah’s eyes, this time tears of gratitude and relief. Suddenly she was sure that her horse was going to be all right.

As soon as Sarah and Lee left the stable, David walked over to Gypsy and put his arms around her neck and stood for a long while not speaking, not crying anymore.

He did not know why, but suddenly he felt himself at peace with the world. Maybe, he thought, it was because Gypsy was going to be all right now. Maybe that’s why he felt as though everything else would be all right.

“One day,” he whispered to Gypsy, “I’ll make it up to you. I promise I will. I don’t know how yet, but I’ll make it up to you and to her.” He waited until his father’s car pulled away before getting on his bike and pedaling furiously toward home.

Sarah went to the stable to spend the night. Lee had assured her that there was nothing to be worried about anymore. Gypsy had been given only a carton of lettuce leaves, and she had barely touched them. The medicine must have tasted very bad, for she kept making faces long after swallowing it.

“Lee was telling me,” Sarah said to her horse, “about getting some horses ready for a show. I didn’t tell him, but I would so like to take you out into the world. I’d like to take you to a horse show. You are the most beautiful of all the horses who ever lived, and I’m sure the judges would know it.” She laughed. “Oh, but you must have been in many horse shows in your life! You must have won many ribbons, and maybe you were even a great champion! How I wish I knew something about your past! ”

Throughout that night Sarah would fall asleep for a few minutes and wake up and see that Gypsy was standing up and not lying down as was her custom. By the time the dawn came, Sarah noticed that Gypsy’s neck had become very stiff. She no longer moved it up and down to search for food or to either side of her. Something is wrong, terribly wrong, she thought, frightened. As she led Gypsy out of the stable, the horse swayed weakly on her legs. Outside, although her eyes looked hungrily toward the green of grass, Gypsy would not lower her head. Sarah handed her a few handfuls of grass, then left her standing in front of the house while she went to call Dr. King.

“Her neck is stiff, and so are her legs! What should I do? She looks as sick today as she did last night.”

“I gave her a shot in the neck. That’s why it’s stiff, but the stiffness will go away in a day or two,” he told her. “And she is weak on her legs because she was a pretty sick horse. Give her time to recuperate.”

“But she can’t reach the grass!” Sarah almost shouted. She was angry at the man. Why had he sent her away to change her clothes? Why had he given Gypsy a shot in the neck instead of the flank? The needle might have damaged a muscle.

“I can’t help you there,” he said. “As I said, the stiffness will go away. If you want anything else, don’t hesitate to call me.”

She was furious at his indifference and let the receiver bang down. She walked her horse slowly toward a hill, muttering to herself about the inefficiency of veterinarians. She made Gypsy stand on the flat area of the ground and placed her stiff neck toward the steep slope. That way Gypsy grazed for a while, moving around the hill. All through the day Sarah nursed her horse. She gave her a hot liniment bath, then massaged Gypsy’s legs gently. She held the hay and feed up for Gypsy to reach, watering her the same way. She walked her around slowly on a lead line; she brushed off the flies and stayed with her all that day long, never leaving her, not even to eat herself. Toward evening Lee came and made her rest and eat while he stayed in the stable with Gypsy, rubbing her legs and her neck.

Unable to stay away from her horse, Sarah was back within minutes.

“How is David these days? “ she asked.

“He’s got a bad cold today after being out last night in the rain. He wasn’t home when I got back, and when he did come in he was soaking wet. He told me he had played hooky from summer school. And for a while last night we talked to each other. Almost the way we used to.”

Sarah nodded absentmindedly. She could not concentrate on anything but Gypsy.

The next day Gypsy was much better, although still weak. The stiffness of her neck was not as pronounced, and toward evening she could reach the grass and hay, but did so gingerly.

“We’ll wait until spring,” Sarah told Gypsy that night. “In the spring there is a big western horse show in Burlington, and nothing on this earth is going to prevent us from going. In the spring both of us will go out and show the world that you deserve the biggest, the brightest, and most beautiful ribbon. And we’ll hang it in a frame, right over your feeder.”

She was in the stable giving Gypsy her breakfast when she heard the hoofbeats. Gypsy heard them first, for she raised her head away from the oats and her ears folded back against her neck.

“We have company,” Sarah said. “Thank goodness I’ve already brushed you and you look beautiful.”

Gypsy snorted. Sarah could see that she was nervously excited. Her oats went unfinished; the hoofbeats getting closer made her turn completely away from her feed now. She stood, her nostrils wide, her tail high, her head next to Sarah’s, looking out of the stable door toward the road.

“It’s Margaret Evans and Father Connen! And look at the beautiful horses they’re riding! ”

Gypsy scraped the floor with her hoof and shivered slightly.

“You are excited, aren’t you? Oh, Gypsy, you poor darling, you haven’t seen a fellow horse since you’ve been with me.”

“Happy birthday!” Father Connen and Margaret Evans shouted as they drew near.

She had completely forgotten about her own birthday, and was very surprised and pleased that they had remembered.

“We hired these horses so that we could take you two on a pack trip,” Margaret announced, getting off her gray and white gelding. “This was going to be a surprise for you, but judging from Gypsy’s face, the surprise is on her.”

Gypsy, her neck extended out of the stable door, did indeed look terribly surprised, and they all laughed.

“We brought lunch for three,” Father Connen said, “and this bag you see on the back of my palomino is full of hay, just in case our mounts run out of grass.”

“So get ready, you two females,” Margaret commanded.

When they set off, it was Gypsy who insisted on leading the way, her feet prancing, her head turning back to see that the two geldings were following her.

“I do believe,” Margaret said, laughing, “that this mare of yours thinks the whole world revolves around her.”

“Well, doesn’t it?” Sarah said.

Fall had come suddenly that year, turning the leaves overnight into a splendid riot of outrageous colors. They rode under the sapphire of a cloudless sky, surrounded by the loveliness of the land and the warmth of the day. They trespassed merrily over the fields that were turning golden, through forests that echoed with the crushing of twigs and dry leaves. They rode around a lake and came across six geese noisily guarding some young. The geese fluttered their great wings angrily, and the horses waited patiently for the birds to take to the water.

On a great open field, Father Connen suggested they play a game of hat snatching on horseback. He produced three paper hats and explained that the point of the game was to try to reach for and take off the hat from the other person’s head. The one who remained wearing his own hat and those of the other two was to be the winner.

Amidst laughter and the snorting of the pursued and pursuing horses, Father Connen won easily. But at another game, the game of tag, it was Sarah who won twice, Margaret once, and Father Connen not at all.

They ate a picnic of sandwiches that tasted better than any sandwiches they had ever had. From amidst the hay, Father Connen pulled out a bottle of French wine, and over cupcakes with candles they toasted Sarah and Gypsy. The three horses grazed peacefully, not paying any attention to the picnickers or to one another.

Sarah discovered the fun there was in riding with others. After lunch they galloped, three abreast, as though they were Indians attacking a cavalry outpost. And so the day passed in carefree play, the priest and the two women feeling as if youth itself could be recaptured.

The sun was setting in red flames jaggedly invading the deep blue of the sky when they turned back, singing at the top of their voices and purposely off key in remembrance of the church choir that no longer existed.

With the coming of fall Gypsy began to play a game of her own with her mistress. She would hide from her among the leaves that had turned the red copper of her body. It was only by the white of her face that Sarah would now spot her among the foliage.

“I could swear,” Sarah would say, “that you were in the war—not in the cavalry, mind you, but in the infantry. You were probably teaching the soldiers how to camouflage themselves. But you mustn’t frighten me so! I’ve been looking for you for an hour. I thought you’d run away. But you wouldn’t, would you? You’d never leave me any more than I would leave you.”

After the incident with the corn, David did not stop spying on the woman and her horse. He was drawn to them as if they inhabited a magnetic field. Every moment he could spare from his studies, he would ride his bicycle over and stand hiding behind some bush or outside the stable window. He had seen the woman’s awkward love for her animal develop into an easy, deep, and endless affection. They had become so used to each other, the woman and Gypsy, that they seemed to David extensions of each other, as if one could no longer exist without the other. There was no more jealousy in him. Rather, he was filled with a wistful feeling of being part of them, and the peacefulness of their relationship filled him with peace. Yet he knew he was living a borrowed life.

His own life, at home and at school, seemed to him quite gray. Although he was closer to his father again, he could not recapture the friendship that once had been his whole life. His father, having ceased to be his hero, was merely a parent. David knew that they both needed each other, but there were other, more obscure, needs that left him with a melancholy feeling of unfulfillment. Sometimes during the day, but most often at night, he felt his loneliness so acutely that it seemed like physical pain.

When he was able to ride Gypsy, always in secret and always afraid of being discovered, he was most keenly aware of that aloneness.

“You don’t feel sorry for yourself, do you?” he would whisper into the horse’s ear. “I mean, you don’t feel sorry for yourself just because you have no one to talk to? The thing is I probably would hate it, to have someone around all the time, bugging me with questions and things. It’s probably just as well not to have friends and things. If you don’t have anything much, then you can’t lose anything, isn’t that right?”

There was no answer to his question. But it was Gypsy and only her he could talk to. She alone had taken the place of his father, the place of friends. Often on nights when the woman would be asleep in her house, he would not even ride Gypsy but would sit on her straw, or the rocking chair, talking to her. But on nights he did ride her, there was no need for talk. They both enjoyed those excursions into the dew-covered, darkened world. He took good care of Gypsy, not letting her run more than she should, and walking her along the grassy bank of the highway before bringing her into the stable. He always made sure that she was dry and would rub her chest with feed bags.