A Kingdom in a Horse (4 page)

She leaned against the gate of the stall. It would be marvelous, she mused, to have a horse. The thought was so unexpected that she laughed. But it persisted, the crazy idea that she could now make a forgotten dream of her childhood come true. And why not? she reasoned with herself. Why not indeed? Paul would have thought it very sensible. It was as if he were present in the stable now, urging her to go ahead, not to hesitate. “You’re one of the meek,” he had once told her. “The world belongs to you and you don’t even know it.” Belonging. That was the most valid thing in life. Now she belonged to no one, and no living thing belonged to her.

I shall buy myself a horse, she decided.

With a light heart, humming to herself, Sarah walked around the stable, deciding which pieces of furniture she would give away, which she would burn, and which she would keep. “I’ll keep this rocking chair,” she said aloud, “and I’ll keep it right here, so I can sit and watch my horse while it eats and rests.”

She laughed suddenly. With the years, her laughter had become very much like her husband’s.

The night after the auction Sarah was too excited to sleep. Several times she laughed aloud at her happiness, and several times she felt strangely afraid of her deed.

“It is a crazy thing that I have done,” Sarah muttered to herself, watching the big horse van coming up the winding dirt road.

Her back ached from the work she had been doing since early that morning. The stable was ready, clean and empty. She would have liked to have had time to paint it, but she would do that later. She had found enough salt hay to carpet the box stall a foot deep. There would be a lot of things she would have to do later, but she wasn’t sure what they might be. She knew nothing of a horse’s needs.

The red horse van disappeared in the spring foliage for a moment and then reappeared around the bend. Its redness moved among the leaves of the old maples that lined the road, and as it drew closer her heart began to pound faster. I’m scared of what I’ve done, she thought. She hoped that no one would see the horse van, for what would people say about a woman of sixty-four, living alone, who had gone off to the auction and bought herself a horse?

“Here we are,” the man said. He got out of the high driver’s seat with great difficulty and hobbled in one place for a moment. “To limber up my bum leg,” he explained.

Sarah could hear the muffled sounds of a hoof scraping the floor of the van. She was most impatient to see her horse. The man got his cane and wanted to see the stable first.

“Once,” he said, “I delivered a horse to a stable that wasn’t fit for a pig. I always make it a practice to look first and then unload.” Apparently he was satisfied with what he saw. “Sunny and dry,” he said.

“You brought the hay and straw and the feed?” she asked.

“Yep. Brought all of it, enough to last you a month. Say, you wouldn’t want to sell that mare, would you? After you left the auction, a young lady took a fancy to her and wanted to buy her. Wanted to pay two hundred for her. You’d make yourself thirty dollars.”

“No, I wouldn’t want to sell,” she said firmly.

“She sure took a fancy to your mare,” the man continued. “Funny thing, she insisted your horse wasn’t yet nine. Anyone can see she’s more than that, fifteen or sixteen, maybe. But it’s a darn good horse you’re getting. Who’s going to ride her, your grandchildren?”

She didn’t want him to know that she’d gotten the horse for herself.

“Couldn’t we get her out?” she said, hoping he wouldn’t repeat the question. “She must be very uncomfortable in that van.”

“Are you kidding?” He laughed. “She’s all alone in it. You should see how many horses this here van can hold. I can pack eighteen.”

She remembered with a shudder having seen the horse with a gash in its forehead and Lee telling her about the unscrupulous horse traders who overpack the animals.

“I don’t think she’ll come down with shipping fever on you,” the man was saying, “although you never know.”

“What if she does? What should I do?” She was frightened by this.

“To tell you the honest truth I don’t know how far she came from. If she came from out West, she might come down with the fever, but she certainly wouldn’t have gotten it from just coming here from Burlington.”

“But what should I do if she does get sick?” she repeated, angry now at the man for talking so much and saying so little.

“You might get a vet or you might try to cure her yourself,” the man said, spitting tobacco juice out of the side of his mouth.

“But how will I know that she is sick? ”

“Oh, you’ll know all right. Her nose and eyes will start running and she will cough a lot. It’s sort of like pneumonia with people.”

“Goodness,” she whispered, terrified.

“You don’t know much about horses, do you?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Thing is with horses, they can’t breathe through their mouths, so it’s important to keep their noses clean and free.”

“But what should I do?” she asked once again, not angry but quite desperate.

“Keep her warm. You should make a hood out of a feed bag, get it over her head, and put a bucket underneath it with scalding hot water, bran tar, and Vick’s VapoRub. Make her inhale it until her nose clears up. If that don’t do the trick, then call the vet. There’s one in Middlebury, Doc King. He’ll give her a shot of penicillin.” He spat the tobacco again and shifted his weight to his good foot. “As I said before, I don’t know where she came from, or who brought her over. The good horse traders always give their horses inoculations along the way if they bring the animals from way off. If it was one of them cheap guys or a private party who don’t know anything about transporting horses, she might come down with the fever on you.”

How could I, Sarah thought, hold the horse’s head in a feed bag, and how could I keep the water scalding hot? I will never be able to help her if she does get sick.

“But don’t you start worrying before it’s time. She didn’t look to me as if she was coming down with anything.” The man started walking to the van. He had frightened her so very much, and now he was giving her hope.

I won’t worry, she decided, I won’t worry at all. But she prayed all the same. Oh, don’t let her get sick!

As the man was opening the door of the van she almost shouted to him to take the horse back, to sell it. Once again the feeling that she shouldn’t have done it, that she shouldn’t have bought the horse, intensified in her, now even more strongly than last night when she was driving back from the auction, because of the threat of the sickness. But she didn’t cry out to the man. The horse, her horse, was coming down the plank.

The mare’s ears quivered with excitement. Her eyes, the blue and the brown, were wide with expectation, and her whole body was tense. She walked down, shivering nervously, yet there was something regal in her. Maybe it was the head held high on the lovely long neck, maybe the steps—composed—or the expression on her face—haughty.

“She sure’s got a lot of thoroughbred in her,” the man said. “And lady, if you ever come across a more gentle horse than this one, just let me know.”

He was holding on to her straw halter and leading her toward the stable while she looked all around her, moving her head from side to side. Sarah was walking slightly behind, yet the horse was watching her too, throwing side glances to see if she was still following.

“Most horses,” the man was saying, “when they leave the van, if they let you get them off at all, act up and rear and get real nervous. Not this one! No siree! She walked into that van confident and she comes out like a queen surveying her new domain.”

The man took the straw halter off when the horse was in the stall, looking for the hay that was not there.

“We better give her some hay. But don’t feed her the oat mixture until tonight. She had some this morning.”

“Do I just feed her twice a day?” Sarah asked.

“That’s all, twelve hours apart. Like, let’s say you feed her at seven in the morning, then don’t feed her again until seven at night.”

“How much of it should she have?” The man was still inside the stall, and the mare was still trying to find something to eat inside the salt hay. Then giving up, she raised her head and listened, her ears turning toward the person who spoke.

“I brought you an oat mixture that’s got molasses and crushed corn in it. You give her about two quarts in the morning and two at night. Maybe a little more if she is going to get a lot of exercise.”

“And the hay?”

“All she will eat. She needs to put on about two hundred pounds to get back in shape. The bales come in sections. Give her two, three sections at night when you bed her down, and maybe one or two in the pasture too, because the young grass don’t have too much nourishment yet. You kept cows in that enclosed pasture, there, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Well, I better get your stuff in here. Say, you should get her some water. A bucket. She hasn’t had any water, because of the trip.”

Left alone with her horse, Sarah discovered to her great surprise that she was afraid. She was even too afraid to approach the animal. It looked so gigantic. She had not realized, when she was buying her, how large the mare was. And those eyes, the eyes that she had fallen in love with, were actually frightening now.

What will I do about this fear, she thought, and then, not wanting the horse to guess at her thoughts, she said aloud: “Last night when I couldn’t sleep I was thinking of all sorts of names for you. I’d like to call you Gypsy. I don’t know if you’ll like it, it’s rather plain, but I think it fits you.” She looked hopelessly at the horse that was staring at her. “Oh, Gypsy, please don’t get sick!”

“Where do you want it, lady?” the man was asking. On his back he carried a bale of hay—or was it straw?—she wondered.

“Oh, right here will be fine,” she said, pointing to the closest spot to the stall.

The man laughed.

“If I leave this hay here the horse will help herself to it and scatter what she doesn’t get at.”

He took the bale to the farthest corner of the stable, kicking over the rocking chair Sarah had left in the corner. She picked it up and placed it next to where she had wanted the hay to go. When he left the stable, she spoke to the mare:

“I wouldn’t mind it if you scattered the hay. I wouldn’t mind it at all picking up after you. That’s what I’m here for, to take care of you and to spoil you.” She smiled at the animal, who was listening to her. “You see”—she pointed to the table where she had placed all the purchases she had made: the saddle, bridle, brush, and curry comb—”all of those things are yours. The only thing that is mine in here is the rocking chair.”

She stopped speaking when the man came in with the second bale.

“I thought,” he said sternly, “that you’d have given her some of this timothy by now. And water, you better get some.”

She didn’t say anything but blushed instead. She hated herself for this helplessness and ignorance as much as for the continuing fear she felt.

“That salt hay you’ve got for her bedding’s no good. It’s too expensive for one thing and won’t make a good compost.”

With a pitchfork he started pushing aside the hay she had so carefully placed in the stall and began to replace it with the yellow straw he had brought in.

He thinks that I can’t do anything at all for Gypsy, she thought angrily, turning on her heels and walking to the well. She drew a bucket of water and carried it to the stable. The man was not inside; he had already given Gypsy a section of hay, and Sarah said to her, “I’ll walk right in and put this bucket in the corner. Please don’t do anything like kicking me.”

The horse lifted its head from the hay at the sound of her voice. Sarah hesitated, frightened once again by the animal’s eyes. Instead of going inside the stall, she raised the bucket gently over the partition.

“I’m ashamed of myself,” she admitted softly.

“Well, that’s all,” the man said, setting down the bag of feed. “You better get yourself a chest or a closet or something to keep the feed in. A horse, if it can get itself into the oats, will eat itself to death.”

As she paid him for the delivery of the horse and the things he had bought for her she felt that he had guessed it was she alone who would take care of the horse. And in his silence she felt his disapproval.

Sarah felt very discouraged as she went up to the attic to find something in which she could keep the feed. That morning she had burned what probably was the feed container. She was so afraid of her horse that it would be quite impossible for her to take care of it if it became sick. She didn’t even know where she would get the courage to do all the necessary things such as feeding Gypsy. And as for riding her, only a miracle could help both of them.

An old plywood chest would have to do as a hiding place for the oats, she decided, and proceeded to carry the heavy thing down from the attic, across the house and into the stable.

Gypsy snorted.

“Your nose!” Sarah exclaimed letting the chest fall down. “It’s not at all stuffed up!”

Before she realized what she had done, she was hugging the horse, holding its neck in both of her hands.