A Kingdom in a Horse (7 page)

It was truly a beautiful walk. The path was shady, with the sun visible only in rays of light, cool with the moisture of the water and green with the new foliage. They were walking up to the top of a hill, and Sarah had to dodge the branches by putting her face next to the horse’s neck. The feeling of fear did not vanish, but during the walk it subsided. And talking to the horse, she realized, was the fastest way of pushing the fear away.

The hill had a flat plateau, and it was here that Sarah tried to make Gypsy do her turns. She remembered how Lee leaned slightly toward the side he was turning to and how he placed the reins on the horse’s neck.

“Now, barrel horse, do your stuff,” Sarah whispered in Gypsy’s ear. Amazingly enough the horse obeyed the neck reining quite well. At first, however, it did the turns at barely a trot and Sarah bounced up and down in the saddle, not liking it a bit. She loosened the reins and said, “All right,” and Gypsy broke into a canter. After a pat on the neck and high praise, Sarah let the horse do what it wanted. And it wanted to run. They cantered out of the shade cast by the maple trees and into the sunlit fields and down a grassy road. Gypsy broke into a gallop, and Sarah loved the speed and the feeling of freedom that came with it. Her eyes filled with tears from the wind.

They reached another hill and they stood motionless for a while, the horse and the woman both looking down into the valley below them. They could see the house and the barn but not the stable, and beyond the winding dirt road, the highway. And on the four sides of them there lay the land that Sarah owned, fields coming alive with the new green of grass, and to the north, the green roof of the maple grove.

“It is a beautiful place, isn’t it?” Sarah said to Gypsy. “Look out there. Do you see that smoke? Besides the smoke, all you can see of Cornwall is the spire of the church. We’ll ride there one day. I’ll have to show you off sometime to all those people who know about you. Once I stop being afraid, we’ll have so much fun together!”

By the time they returned to the stable, Sarah felt that she had gotten to know her land much better than ever before. And it was Gypsy who taught her how to look at it. Gypsy was constantly aware of everything around her. For the first time in her life Sarah noticed the beauty of the light playing on the ground. She heard the music of the cracking branches and the moving leaves, the timid noise of a bird unwilling to fly off, and the powerful swish of the wings from those that took flight at the sound of the hoofs. She looked at the rabbits standing and then taking off, and she even saw a deer staring back at them, motionless; and she was glad that Gypsy feared nothing but noticed everything.

Ever since her marriage the coming of spring had filled her with an acute realization of happiness. The feeling of belonging intensified for her in the springtime. It was as if the renewal of nature welded her closer to the land and to everything she held dear. This, her first spring without Paul, was not going to be different. This spring it was Gypsy who was making the wonder of spring once again miraculous for Sarah.

It was no use. The harder David stared at the questions, the harder they seemed. Looking out of the window was no help either, and noticing that Miss MacKean, his teacher, was glancing at him worriedly made it all much worse. He wasn’t even sure if any of the test questions, except one, were answered in his book. I must be stupid, he decided angrily.

There were only five kids besides him in the seventh grade, and most of them looked so much younger than he that that alone could spoil his day. Even if he didn’t dislike them all he couldn’t imagine any of them becoming his friends. The twins, who had already handed in their test papers, were the only ones who tried to find out anything about him; the others weren’t even interested in where he came from. The two boys, whom no one could tell apart, were now looking toward him, and they, like Miss MacKean, looked worried. He bent down over the paper, and this time he just tried to guess at the answers.

If only they wanted to know something about the rodeo! If only, instead of South America, they could be studying about George Washington. Of course not the George Washington who was the first President of the United States, but the Negro of that name who in Canadian, Texas, one day in 1880 got on a bucking bronco and rode him right out of the arena and down the railroad tracks all the way to the depot. Or he could tell them about Thad Sowder, a real hero, a kind of hero they should be studying about in school anyway. He was about the greatest rodeo figure around the turn of the century. In later years when Thad was paralyzed and penniless—for in those days bravery was paid more with fame than with money-he ended his days peddling pillow covers carrying his picture as the world’s champion broncobuster. David even had been to Thad’s grave in Ovid, Colorado. He had made his father take him there one winter. And if they wanted names, why couldn’t they be asking who Tom Threepersons was? He was a Cherokee, and there was no greater Indian in rodeo than Tom. And how about Yakima Canutt, John Rock, Earl Thode, Pete Knight, Doff Aber? Of course they were all dead now and lay buried in lonely graveyards out West, but that was no reason to forget them. They were, after all, a heck of a lot more important than whatever it was that was exported from Ecuador.

And whoever Magellan might have been, he couldn’t have been half the man Jazzbo Fulkerson was. Jazzbo was the first rodeo clown to use the barrel. He devised it to give the bull a hard target to hit. He fashioned it out of a steel drum with rubber tires around it, and he would crawl into it and all curled up would wait for the terrifying crash of the animal’s impact. If they would only ask David how many bruises and how many gorings Jazzbo had suffered he’d be able to tell them. And he could tell them about the time a bull’s horn took one of Jazzbo’s eyes and how Jazzbo came back into the arena in three months to work again, a one-eyed, fearless clown who delighted the ones who didn’t know about the danger and petrified the ones who did. And he could tell them about Jimmy Schumacher, and about the time he got twenty-four stitches after one horn wound, plus broken collarbones, legs, and ribs, and a mangled foot.

As the bell rang for recess David was sure that he was not stupid. He knew a lot more names and a lot more dates than all the other kids put together. It was just that they were names and dates no one in school seemed to care about.

And knowing that he wasn’t really stupid was responsible for the fight that he got into that morning.

“The dummy didn’t know any answers,” he heard Peter Pollock say behind his back. David didn’t want to ask for an apology, but swung out with both fists at the boy. It didn’t even matter that Peter was smaller and that David had once promised himself never to hit a smaller kid. They rolled in the mud of the schoolyard, hitting each other, until the cries of the other children brought Miss MacKean.

David followed his teacher to the classroom. She did not speak until she reached her desk and sat down. Then she looked at him, and her blue eyes were dark with anger.

“David,” she said, “I cannot allow such behavior from you. I had great hopes for you. When you came in that first day, I thought that you would be one of the few students I’d remember when I grew old. You have been a complete disappointment to me.”

She lifted his test paper from her desk and held it at arm’s length.

“This was to be more than a test,” she continued while David looked down at his muddied shoes. “This was going to prove to me whether or not you’d pass to the eighth grade without going to summer school. Well,”—she slammed her hand down and let go of his test—”you had one, a single, answer right.” She waited for him to say something and when he did not, she cleared her throat and more calmly asked, “What is your explanation? First for the fight, and then for your failure to answer the questions correctly.”

It would have been much better had she just hit him, or punished him, but she had to choose the hardest thing, questioning. One thing he could not do was to tell her he hit Peter for calling him a dummy.

“Well?”

“I don’t know,” he said very quietly. “I don’t know why I got into the fight.”

“Did Peter say something to you?”

He didn’t answer.

“I shall find out about that from the other children. Now, tell me, did you or did you not study for the test?”

“I did.”

“But if you did, how come you did not know the answers?”

“It must be,” he said, “that I can’t concentrate.”

She sat down at her desk, and he looked up at her, hoping that the answer had satisfied her. He was sorry for her for caring for him and the others, for being a teacher.

‘Would you want to tell me anything?” she asked softly. “Maybe you have a problem I could help you with. Maybe all you need is talking to someone. I know how it is sometimes. I was brought up without a mother, too.”

He wished she’d leave him alone, and yet he could not be angry at her for wanting to help him.

“I’ll be all right,” he said. “I’ll just have to try harder, that’s all.”

“Well, David,”—the bell rang when she said this— “I’m here to help you. Anytime you feel like talking. And I do believe you about wanting to try harder.”

David was grateful to her. But he felt more discouraged than ever, for he really had been trying.

“Well!” No one who had ever heard Margaret Evans’ voice could ever forget it, it was that unpleasant. “Sarah! I’ve been calling you all day yesterday and today!” She waited for an explanation, but receiving none, continued: “Of course
I
don’t believe it! I
refuse
to believe silly gossip about you going off and getting yourself a horse! Are you there, Sarah?”

“Yes, Margaret,” Sarah said with a sigh, “I’m here.”

“Well! You were not at choir practice! ”

“Oh, I forgot all about it,” Sarah said and then, making a sudden decision, she added, “I won’t be coming to sing in the choir anymore.”

“What!”

“I shall call Father Connen and tell him I can’t be in the choir since I no longer have the time for practice.”

There was an ominous silence on the other end of the wire, and Sarah smiled to herself because she could, in her mind’s eye, see the expression of outraged fury on Margaret’s face. She had known Margaret Evans for more years than she cared to recall. They had gone through school together, and even before that they used to play together. Margaret had not changed in all those years; even as a child she was much too bossy, too quick to anger over unimportant things. For the last forty years Margaret’s main preoccupation had been the church choir. She played the organ and was in charge of the choir composed of the ladies of the parish. Periodically Margaret Evans tried to enlist young people and men into the choir, but the young people didn’t seem to like her, and the men were openly terrified of her. The choir, never too pleasantly in harmony, had become dreadful in the last few years.

“Sarah Tierney!” Margaret exploded into the telephone. “I never would have thought
you
capable of such treachery!”

“But Margaret—”

“Don’t Margaret me! Then it’s true. You did get a horse, didn’t you?”

“Yes, Margaret, I did get a horse and it will keep me much too busy.”

“And
I
refused to believe it!” Margaret screeched. “What in heaven’s name possessed you to do such a stupid thing?”

Sarah looked out of the window. She could see her horse lying down in the grass, its eyes shut to the rays of the sun. She smiled at the beautiful sight of that big copper body on the green of the pasture.

“Sarah! Why don’t you answer me! ”

“What do you want me to say, Margaret? ”

“Well! Give me an explanation if you
can!”

“There is no use talking,” Sarah said quietly. Her patience was beginning to wear thin. “You’re much too excited and angry—”

“Wouldn’t you be excited and angry,” Margaret shouted, “if you found out your best friend was making an utter fool of herself? A horse! At your age!”

Sarah Tierney had never suspected that Margaret considered her her best friend. She was touched by this unexpected confession. It was in a much milder tone that she spoke.