Buckskin Bandit (16 page)

As quickly as I could, I told Madeline everything. About Kaylee. About Bandit. About Leonard.

“We couldn't just let Leonard get rid of Bandit!” I pleaded. “He hurt that buckskin, Madeline. And Bandit's just starting to get over it, to trust people again.”

Please, God! Please make her understand!

“And Kaylee's there at Happy Trails right now?” Madeline asked.

I nodded. I stared at the phone, still clutched in her fist. “Are you going to call Dad?”

Madeline looked back at Mason, who hadn't budged during my whole account. Then she shook her head slowly. “I'm not saying that I won't tell him later, Winnie. And actually, you should be the one to do that. But right now I think you better get back to that horse.”

“You do?” I couldn't believe it. She didn't even like horses.

Madeline nodded. “Abuse is a terrible, terrible thing.” Her eyes got watery. It was the closest I'd ever seen her to tears. “Well, don't just stand there! Go! Hurry!”

I threw the saddlebag over my shoulder and grabbed the bag of tools. Then I tried to pick up the saddle.

Madeline snatched it out of my hands. “Come on! I'll drive.”

“You?”

She grinned. “Consider it a happy-birthday gift.”

She'd remembered.

She scooped Mason onto her shoulders and jogged all the way to her van.

We were barely off our street when Mason fell asleep in his car seat. He's seven, but he's so small that his car seat is toddler-sized.

I watched Madeline as she leaned over the steering wheel and drove faster than Dad would have. I couldn't figure her out. “Why are you being so nice, Madeline?” Then I realized how it sounded. “I mean, not that you're not always nice. It's just . . . why are you helping me?”

She was quiet for so long that I was afraid she was mad at me for saying she wasn't nice all the time. Then she whispered, “Winnie, I think you're old enough to hear what I have to say. I know that you love Mason and would never say anything that would upset him.”

She waited for me to nod. I did.

“Have you ever wondered about Mason?” she began. “Why he is the way he is?”

I'd thought about it a lot. I'd even asked Dad. All he'd ever tell me was that something had happened to Mason, something that left him with nerve damage in his brain. “Yes.”

Madeline gripped the steering wheel so hard her long fingers went white. “You know I was married before. I married young and unwisely. Then we had a baby. Mason was the cutest baby in the world.” She smiled, as if she had a photographic memory too, and was seeing Mason as a little baby right now.

“I'll bet he was a cute baby,” I agreed.

She smiled at me. It was funny. She hardly looked like Madeline. Her nose didn't seem so long, and there was nothing odd-looking about her.

“Well, as cute he was,” she continued, “our little Mason was a handful. He fussed and cried a lot, but not that much more than other babies. I don't suppose either Miles or I knew much about raising an infant.”

Madeline's back stiffened, and she bit her lip and squinted at the road ahead. “Mason's father had a very short fuse. One night, after I'd been up with the baby for hours until he dropped off to sleep, I went back to bed. In the middle of the night I awoke to a thump.”

She stopped, and I was afraid she wouldn't finish. I wanted to know. I had to know.

“I ran into the nursery. And there was Mason, lying on the floor next to the wall. He wasn't moving.”

My chest burned. I could see Mason as a baby, lying there, and Madeline running to him. I could see it as clearly as if I'd been there.

“Mason's father had thrown his son against the wall to make him stop crying.”

I turned around to see Mason. He was asleep, his head leaning back. I could see the dimple on his cheek, and he looked like an angel. How could anybody do that?

“Madeline, I'm sorry.” I couldn't say anything else.

“Me too,” she said. “It was the last time either of us saw or spoke to his father. For the first year after the divorce, I blamed myself for not seeing it coming. I should have known Miles had violence in him. But I didn't, Winnie. Or maybe I did, but I didn't want to admit it.”

“It wasn't your fault,” I said, wishing somebody else were in the car with us. Somebody who'd know what to say, like Dad or Lizzy.

“After I was finished blaming myself, I suppose I blamed God, although I wouldn't have said that. I'd look at other boys Mason's age, and I'd get angry all over again. Why should they live normal, happy lives while Mason disappeared into himself almost every day? It wasn't fair.”

It wasn't fair. How many times had I said or thought those exact words in the last couple of weeks?

She was crying softly now and driving so slowly that three cars zoomed past us. “Your dad asks me every week if I'll go to church with him. And every week I turn him down. I guess I haven't finished blaming God yet, have I?”

I knew how she was feeling. I'd blamed myself for Mom's accident. And then I'd blamed God. “Madeline, you didn't hurt Mason. And neither did God. Mason's dad did it.” My voice was so raspy that I didn't know if she could understand me.

I glanced back at Mason again. “Look at him, Madeline.”

She looked in her rearview mirror and almost ran off the side of the road. But the sight of Mason made her stop crying. Her eyes softened. There was joy written all over her face—in the crinkles under her eyes, in the way her mouth grew soft.

I prayed that I could find the right words. “Madeline, even with all his problems, Mason Edison is the most totally joyful person I've ever met. He makes everyone around him smile. He gets excited about colts. And have you ever seen anybody get so much happiness out of an Appaloosa spot or a smudge on the ceiling?”

She laughed softly, then stopped. “I know you're right, Winnie. But when I see other children playing together . . . I just can't get past that moment when everything changed, when I found Mason on the floor and knew what his father had done to him. That's what I keep seeing, even now.”

Madeline didn't have a photographic memory, but she didn't need one. That picture of Mason was burned into her mind as deeply as the picture of Mom's accident was carved into mine. As deeply as the memory of Leonard's cruelty had been stamped into Bandit's brain.

“We're all leaf-blocked.” I wasn't sure if I'd said it out loud or not.

Madeline frowned over at me. “What?”

“It's what Catman and M taught me, what they did on our trail ride. They held up a leaf and blocked out the sun.” I turned in my seat belt so I could see her better. “Did you know that you can block out a whole sun or moon if you hold a tiny leaf in front of your face?”

Madeline nodded slowly.

“That's what I do—hold the wrong things in front of my face. I'm leaf-blocked, Madeline. I can't see past the leaf.” Thoughts were coming fast. I could hardly piece them together for myself. How could I ever make her understand?

“Go on, Winnie,” Madeline said. “What are you holding in front of your face?”

“Mom's accident.” But I knew there was more.
God, help me get this,
I prayed. “And maybe Lizzy. Lizzy and Dad.”

“You mean because Lizzy won at the science fair and you didn't?”

“That, and other stuff. Lizzy's pretty easy to envy.”

We both laughed a little. It helped. Maybe I'd been leaf-blocked about Madeline too.

I made myself go on. “When Lizzy won, Dad seemed to forget about me, except when it came to assigning me Lizzy's chores. It felt so unfair.”

“But didn't she do your chores when Jack was working on your invention?”

Madeline was right. Totally right. And I hadn't noticed it at all, not even once. Lizzy had cleaned stalls for me while I went off to ride with Kaylee. She'd done her chores and mine for a week. And I'd never once thought of that as unfair. “Guess that's what I mean about not seeing things when you're leaf-blocked.”

Madeline glanced at Mason again. “Leaf-blocked. Hmmm. No one else has a more loving son than I do. He's full of surprises, most of them great ones. The little I know about joy, I've learned from Mason.”

Her fingers drummed the dashboard. “Leaf-blocked,” she repeated. Suddenly she smacked the steering wheel. The car swerved, then straightened out. “Winnie, you may be right about that leaf! I think I'm starting to see the sun.”

“I want Buddy,” Mason mumbled. He yawned and stretched out his little arms. When he smiled at us, his dimple shone like the sun, filling Madeline's van.

We were almost to Happy Trails. “Madeline, you better stop here,” I said.

She pulled the van over to the side of the road, letting one wheel slide into the ditch.

“Thanks for driving me, Madeline,” I said, lugging the saddle out of the van and dumping it on the ground. “You don't have to wait or anything. I can come back for the saddle.”

“Oh, we're not going to wait, are we, Mason? We're coming with you.” She hopped out and started unbuckling Mason's seat belt.

“You shouldn't come, Madeline. We might get in really big trouble. I'm going to have to break the padlock to get Bandit away from here.”

“Then it seems to me you're going to need all the help you can get. Now toss me that saddle.”

Nobody who saw Madeline Edison for the first time would ever guess how strong she is. With Mason tucked under one arm like a football, she hoisted the saddle under her other arm and took off at a trot toward the back pasture.

I grabbed both bags and ran after her. “That way!” I shouted.

Kaylee and Bandit were waiting at the far end of the pasture. Bandit trailed behind her, as if Kaylee were the herd's dominant mare.

“Looks like a friendly horse,” Madeline commented as we got closer.

“You should have seen him a week ago,” I said. I thought about how much Bandit had changed. His leaf had come down, and the world looked brighter to him. He was a happy horse again. We couldn't let Leonard ruin that.

Kaylee waved, then dropped her arm and frowned when she saw Madeline.

“She's okay!” I called out. “Madeline's helping!”

“Mason helping too!” he cried.

I reached over and ruffled his hair. “Mason is helping big-time,” I agreed.

Madeline set him down and walked up to the pasture fence. “The horse is so skinny. Poor thing.”

Kaylee pointed out the scars on Bandit's rump and chest. “Spur marks here. And these have to be whip marks.”

Madeline's face got bright red, and her eyes bugged out. “If I get my hands on this . . . this Leonard, he's going to wish he'd never seen a horse!”

I dug out the tools and started to work on the padlock. I tried banging it with the heavy hoof cutters. Then I tried to pry open the lock. Using the wire cutters, I tried cutting the thing off. Nothing worked.

“Hurry, Winnie!” Kaylee shouted.

“I'm trying!”

Suddenly Madeline sprang from the fence and kind of pranced a few feet in the direction of the stable. “Somebody's coming!” she whispered. “Somebody big!”