Boy on a Black Horse (6 page)

Actually I can't imagine being a guy, with my ego hanging out all the time. I wish Adam were here. He would explain things to me, like why guys put girls down and call them sluts and airheads. I guess not all guys have to be like that. Adam wasn't. He really cared about people, all people, even his pest of a little sister. I used to go along with him to play tag football or whatever, and the other boys would try to make me go away, but Adam would say, “Let her alone, she's as good as you are.” Then they would laugh as if he were insulting them, but I don't think he meant it that way
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Why do girls and boys have to be so different? Boys get a stadium, girls get a hockey field. Boys get sports cars, girls get horses. Not that that's bad. But why is it only girls love horses? The only guy I've ever met who understands about horses besides Topher is Chav
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I can't figure Chav out. He's not like the other jerkhead boys, but he's not like Adam either, except that he cares about Baval and Chavali. That, and one of these days he's going to leave and I'll never see him again and I'll spend my life missing him the way I miss Adam
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When I got home from school and there was a cop car in the driveway, I should have known right away that things were about to go wrong. But I wasn't worried at first.

“Hi, Grandpa,” I said as I walked in the kitchen door and dumped my book bag on the table.

“Hey hey, Gray.”

He sounded real glad to see me. But I saw he had his tie on, and that tipped me off, because usually when he came in the house he unclipped it and laid it somewhere. Not like he was ever off duty—a cop is a cop all the time—but sometimes he was more Grandpa and less cop, and this didn't look like one of those times.

“Give me a hug.” Grandpa grabbed me. I hugged him back, but I ducked away when he tried to rub me with his whiskers, and I said, “What's going on?”

“Can't pull the wool over your eyes.” He tried to joke around. “No flies on you.” I kept looking at him, and he said, “I'm just killing a little time before I go back out to the old Altland place. Nobody home the first time. Just some smelly blankets. Somebody's been squatting there. And horse piles.” He asked me, “You know if anybody's been keeping a horse out there?”

He wasn't killing time, really. He was questioning me. I tried not to panic or lie. I just said, “Why would I?”

“I thought you knew every horse in three counties. You and Minda ever ride out there?”

“No.” It wasn't a lie, because Minda never went with me. Before he could ask me another question I tried to find out what was going on. “Did Mr. Fischel call you or something? He says there's Gypsies camping there.”

“I don't always believe everything Peck Fischel says, but he's got a right to be upset.” Grandpa sat down at the table. “Somebody vandalized his family burial plot last night.”

“Knocked down the headstones,” my aunt said. I hadn't noticed how quiet she was, but now I understood why. There were tears in her voice. “Broke some of them. That's a terrible thing to do.”

“Nobody's going to do that to Dan's grave,” Grandpa told her, and he reached across to hold her hand. “Or Carrie's, or Cassie's.”

At the time I was just worrying about Chav, I didn't really understand how the adults felt. Later on, when I saw the white marble angels lying in the dirt with their heads broken off, I began to understand.

I said to Grandpa, “Mr. Fischel thinks the Gypsies did it? Why would they?”

Grandpa squeezed my aunt's hand, then let go and got up again, like he was getting ready to leave. “From what I hear it's just three kids out at the Altland place, not a tribe of Gypsies.”

I got scared and furious at the same time. “So why would they do it?” I yelled. “Why does everybody always have to blame everything on kids and Gypsies?”

First he looked mad that I yelled at him, but then he started to chuckle. “Kids and Gypsies,” he laughed.

“Well, why do they?” Then I made myself calm down. “Do you think they did it?”

He shrugged. “I won't know until I find out. But even if they didn't, they're probably runaways. And they're trespassing on the Altland place.”

Trying to make it sound like I was just kind of joking around, I said, “So what do you do with trespassing runaways? Take them to jail?”

“Take them to Children and Youth Services, probably.”

I knew right then I had to do something. I wasn't stupid—I knew Chav had stolen Rom. They would find out and put him in a juvenile delinquent home, which meant they would take Baval and Chavali away from him, and that was the worst thing that could happen to him. Without his brother and sister—without his brother and sister I didn't know what Chav would do. I just knew I couldn't let it happen.

Trying to make my voice stay calm and light, I said to Grandpa, “You going out there now?”

“Yep.”

“Give me a ride as far as the stable?”

On the way I said to Grandpa, real casual, “You might want to talk to Topher.”

“Who?”

“Topher Worthwine. The guy who runs the stable. He might know something.”

“Why would he?”

I shrugged. “I just think he might. He lives right across the hill from the cemetery. He might have seen something.”

Trying not to show it, I was almost holding my breath. Everything depended on this. If Grandpa went straight to the Altland place I'd never make it in time.

“Huh,” was all Grandpa said. And I knew I didn't dare push it anymore. If I overdid it, he'd get suspicious. I stayed quiet, but I was so scared my hands were cold.

When we got to the stable Grandpa got out of his car and went looking for Topher.

It had worked! I ran out to fetch Diddle and hustled her to the barn and slung the saddle on her without even brushing. Now my hands weren't cold, but they were shaking. Getting Grandpa out of the car gave me a couple of extra minutes, but was that going to be enough?

By the time Grandpa left I was leading Diddle out of the stable. Grandpa had to drive down the road and turn onto another road and then a long rutted axle-breaker of a lane to reach the old Altland place. With a little luck I might just get there before him.

Topher gave me a strange look when he saw me getting on Diddle in such a rush. He asked, “Does all this hurry happen to have anything to do with the Gypsy kids?”

“Why would it?” This was turning out to be a good comeback for almost everything. And before he could answer I got out of there at a trot.

I put Diddle into a canter up the hill past the cemetery—and even at a canter I saw all the markers knocked down, and ugly words spray painted on some of them, and seeing it hit me like a slap. I felt my stomach start to ache. If anybody ever did that to Adam's grave, I'd—I'd—I didn't know what I'd do. Cry, probably. As if I hadn't cried enough. It probably was kids who did it too. Kids didn't believe in death, they didn't understand unless they loved somebody who had died.

But Chav was not like that. He believed in death—he wore black for death. He had loved his mother who had died. He couldn't have done this.

After we got past the cemetery and down the hill Diddle really stretched out her fat furry little body and galloped. She must have felt some of what I was feeling, because she had never run like that before.

I slowed her down to a trot on the gravel of the railroad tracks, then ran her again when we reached the meadow. Rom was grazing not far away, and I didn't see any sign of Grandpa yet. I was in time.

“Chav,” I yelled. I couldn't see him anywhere. But then there was movement in the dark entry to the silo. I saw Chav look out at me a moment, then turn away.

“Chav, come on!” I cantered over and pulled Diddle to a cowboy halt. “The cops are coming. You've got to get out of here.”

He didn't answer or look at me again. All I could see was the back of his shoulder, bent over.

“Chav, the cops are coming!” Was he deaf or what? I didn't want to get down from Diddle, because then I'd just waste time getting back on her again, but it looked like I'd have to. I jumped down, let her reins drag to ground-tie her, and ducked into the silo.

“Chav, are you crazy? Get a move on!”

He didn't seem to hear me. He said something, but it wasn't like he was saying it to me. “She's sick,” he said hoarsely.

It was hard to see much in there—too dark. All I could tell was that Baval was crouched against the back wall and Chav was holding Chavali in his arms.

“She's sick,” he said again. “She's really sick.” He sounded like he might break in half any minute. “I should have gotten her out of here. It's my fault.”

C
HAPTER

6

“Get her out where I can see her,” I said.

I said it twice, and he moved like a sleepwalker, but he did it. He had Chavali wrapped in a blanket, so all I could see was her face. She kept her eyes closed, and she was flushed, feverish, and there were little red spots all over her cheeks.

“Chicken pox.” I wasn't just guessing, I was sure, because I remembered from when I had it. You could tell by the blister in the middle of each red spot. It wasn't anything serious—chicken pox wouldn't kill anybody. When I had it, my mother called family practice and they didn't even want to see me. They made sure there were blisters in the middle of my spots, and then they just told her to keep me in bed and not let me scratch. Chavali was going to be okay. I had to take a couple of deep breaths, though, before I could stop being scared.

“Give her here,” I said as I gathered Diddle's reins and swung up into the saddle.

Chav just stood there looking at me. I reached down and lifted Chavali out of his arms—wow, she was hot. The first thing to do would be to get her fever down. She peeked at me once, then played possum again because she didn't feel good. I cradled her in front of me with one hand and picked up the reins with the other. “Get on Rom,” I told Chav.

He didn't move. Baval was dragging blankets and clothes out of the silo, trying to bundle them up. “Leave that stuff,” I snapped, and I started Diddle toward the tracks. “Both of you get on Rom and come
on
!”

I heard the car coming in low gear down the lane.

Chav must have heard it too, and he finally got himself in gear. He ran and vaulted onto Rom, and gave Baval a hand to help him up behind him—he didn't even bother with the halter and the rope reins. He guided Rom with his knees and headed for the closest hiding place, the woods. I kicked Diddle into a reckless canter and followed, hanging on to the horse with my legs and Chavali with my arms. For a minute it felt like I was going to either fall off or drop Chavali, and I was scared silly again.

Then I was ducking branches. Hidden in the trees, I pulled Diddle to a walk, got myself collected, and looked back over my shoulder. Grandpa's cruiser was just nosing out from behind the farmhouse.

“Sheesh,” I breathed. Another minute and he would have seen us.

Up ahead, Chav slipped off his belt and put it around Rom's neck and pulled on it to slow down the black horse so that it walked next to Diddle. He looked over at Chavali with a hard face. “Is she breathing?” he asked, and I realized his face got hard like that when he was afraid. His voice was tight as a drum.

“Of course she's breathing.”

“Where are we going?”

“My place. We'll put her to bed. Get her some medicine.”

“It's my fault she's sick.” Now his voice sounded dead. “If I'd gone south when I should have, she would have stayed warm, it wouldn't have happened.”

“Yes, it would've,” I told him. “Everybody gets chicken pox. She'll be okay.”

We came out of the woods, rode down the tracks, and then cut across the fields toward the stable. Not too fast—my heart was thumping with hurry, even Diddle wanted to hurry, but I held her in. We had to be careful with me carrying Chavali.

I was so intent on Chavali that we got within sight of the Fischel family cemetery before I remembered how this had all started. “Oh my God. Chav, listen, they think you pushed over the stones in Mr. Fischel's graveyard.”

“Huh?” He didn't know what I was talking about.

We were close enough so I could point to the broken angels. Then he understood, and his face flushed, and he said angrily, “They think I did that?”

“Mr. Fischel wants to blame it on the Gypsies.”

“They're crazy. I wouldn't do that to dead people.” He had his voice under control, but I could practically hear the black horse of anger thundering in his chest, and the black horse he was riding must have heard it too. Rom started to swerve and plunge.

“Go easy,” Baval said softly, hanging onto his brother's back. “Everything will be all right.”

Chav didn't answer. Rom settled down some, but he was still prancing when we got to the stable. Topher watched us ride in—he was standing there holding the hose, filling water troughs. His sandy-brown eyes widened when he saw Chav guiding the stallion with nothing but a belt looped around its neck. “Whooooa, boy,” he said softly, leaving what he was doing and coming over, putting out a hand to get hold of Rom.

“Never mind them! Chav can handle it,” I called. “Come help me with Chavali.” I had definitely taken charge, which I guess some people would call being an obnoxious bitch. But Topher did what I said. When I handed the sick little girl down to him his mouth opened as wide as his eyes.

“What the hell—”

“I have to call my aunt,” I said.

“This kid's sick.”

“I know. Topher, can you keep Rom here for a few days? The black horse.”

He blinked about five times, but then he nodded. Later he told me it was the way Chav rode the horse that made him do it. He had a prejudice: he just knew a boy who rode like that couldn't be all bad, no matter what Peck Fischel said. “Stick him in a stall,” he called to Chav. “I'll drive you,” he told me. “It'll be faster.”