Gib Rides Home (18 page)

Gib went on studying with Miss Hooper, but not quite as often, since spring was such a busy time for him, with the hayfield and Mrs. Perry’s kitchen garden to be plowed and planted. But before the plowing could start, Hy had to teach Gib about how to handle the stubborn old mules, and how to steer them with the reins around his shoulders so his hands would be free to hold the plow. Hy seemed to know all about it, even though he liked to say that plows were for good-for-nothin’ range-spoilin’ sodbusters, and any real stockman hated the sight of them.

“How come a real stockman like you knows how to plow, then?” Gib asked him when Hy was showing him how to sight across the field to keep the furrow going in a straight line.

Hy grunted disgustedly. “A man learns how to do what he has to do,” he growled, “just like you’re doing, Gibby Whittaker.”

It didn’t take Gib long, however, to discover that Hy sure enough meant it when he said he hated the sight of a plow. Leastways he hated it enough to find a lot of other things he absolutely had to tend to while Gib did most of the plowing. Of course, you did need good strong legs to plow all day, and Hy’s bum leg was still giving him quite a bit of trouble.

But when the planting was finished there was a little more time for Gib to catch up on some of the things he’d missed out on. School subjects like the Revolutionary War, and Milton’s
Paradise Lost
. Not to mention roping practice and working with Black Silk.

As soon as there was time, and good weather, Gib went back to working Silky in the corral whenever he got a chance. And when June came and Longford School was out for summer vacation, Livy started watching the training from the roof again. Gib kept telling himself that someday he was going to ask her why she was watching, without really believing that he ever would.

Even though it was a school vacation month, Gib went on studying nights in the cabin and meeting with Miss Hooper now and then. And it was on one of those now-and-then afternoons, when he’d been parsing sentences, that Livy came in. She said her mother had sent her to get Miss Hooper, but after Miss Hooper left, Livy sat down at the table and began to ask Gib questions about what he was doing. When he showed her the parsed sentences, she said, “Oh yes, I learned how to do that a long time ago. Look.” She pointed to the sentence Gib was working on. “That’s not right. That part is a prepositional phrase.”

Gib didn’t think so, but he didn’t argue because right at the moment he had something else on his mind. Something like asking a few questions his own self. “That right?” he said, shutting his notebook. “I’ll fix it later. But look here, unless you’re specially in the mood for parsing sentences, I’d like to change the subject. There’s something else I’ve been thinking to ask you about for quite a spell.”

Livy blinked and swallowed. “About what?” she said suspiciously, as if she felt a lot easier with questions that she’d had the choosing of. “What do you want to know about?”

“I’d like to know why you watch me and Black Silk so much. You know, from up there on the roof?” He grinned. “I thought you said you hated ... He stopped then on purpose, waiting to see how she would finish the sentence.

Livy stared at him for a long moment. Wide-eyed at first and then with her lips curling in a teasing smile, the way she always did when she wanted to rile somebody. “Oh, you mean what I said that day in the barn about hating you?” she asked.

“Um,” he said, “yeah, I guess you said that too. But I meant when you said you hated Black Silk. Seems kind of strange, you spending all that time watching something you hate so much.”

Livy’s eyes blazed. “You quit grinning at me like that, Gibson Whittaker,” she said between anger-thinned lips. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You just don’t know.... You just don’t know anything.” Suddenly the anger seemed to have burned itself out, and what was left looked like the beginning of tears.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” Gib said hastily. “I’m really sorry, Livy. You don’t have to tell me....

But suddenly she tossed her head, narrowed her eyes, and said, “All right, I
will
tell you. I promised I wouldn’t tell you anything, but I will tell that much. About Black Silk and why I said I hated her, anyway.” She took a deep breath. “I guess you know that she’s the reason my mother can’t walk. Because Black Silk threw my mother and broke her back and almost killed her. Did you know that?”

Gib nodded. “I heard that. But the way I heard it was that she didn’t mean to throw your mother. She just reared up because something scared her and she slipped and fell over backward. What I think ... Gib paused, remembering how Silky had greeted Mrs. Thornton that day when she came out to the corral. “What I think is that Silky really likes your mother a lot and she’d never mean to—”

“All right! All right!” Livy interrupted. “I don’t care about that. I don’t care about what she meant to do. That’s not the reason I hate her, anyway. The reason I hate her is because they fight about her. My mother and father. Way back when I was only four or five years old, I used to hear them fighting about Black Silk. About what to do with her.”

“What to do with her?”

“Yes. My father wanted to shoot her, I guess, right at first, but even after he’d promised he wouldn’t do that, he wanted to sell her. He said no one was riding her anymore and no one ever would, and he couldn’t bear to look at her, and they ought to get rid of her. And my mom said that Hy would ride her, and that if my father got rid of Black Silk, she would leave too. I heard them fighting and fighting and I—I thought it was Black Silk’s fault. I guess I thought if it wasn’t for that stupid horse everything would be all right again.”

Gib understood then. At least he understood a lot more than he had. Livy had turned away so he couldn’t see her face, but there was something about the way she was holding her head that made him feel real sorry that he’d brought it up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have asked you about it.”

She nodded, still looking away. They sat that way for a long time before she sighed and turned around. “I didn’t answer your question, did I?”

“My question?” Gib had almost forgotten what he’d asked.

“About why I watch you and Black Silk.”

“Well, maybe you didn’t,” Gib said. “But that’s all right. I don’t really want to know anymore.”

“I don’t know why I do,” she said. “I don’t ... She stopped talking then and her eyes went distant and dreamy. “Except that when I watch her it’s like ... I don’t know what, except it’s like looking at all kinds of beautiful things, like paintings or sunsets, only better, because she is so proud and alive and—” She broke off, looking embarrassed. Then she laughed and shrugged. “I don’t know why. It just makes me feel ... Putting one hand on her chest, she sighed deeply. “It just makes me feel something in here.”

Gib knew exactly what she meant. Did he ever know. He didn’t know how to tell her and he didn’t think it would be a good idea to try, but he was pretty sure it meant she had the same kinds of feelings about horses that he had. Feelings like he had, and Livy’s mother had, and probably the way his own mother had felt, too. But all he did was nod some more and try to make his face say something helpful.

After a while Livy jumped up and said, “Oh, I’d better go and let you finish your sentences.” She sounded like her normal self again as she added, “You’d better fix that prepositional phrase.”

At the door she stopped, looked back, and said, “I hated you for the very same reason.” Then she went out and slammed the door shut behind her.

R
IGHT AT FIRST GIB
didn’t know what to think. He didn’t have any idea what Livy was talking about when she said she’d “hated him for the very same reason.” It wasn’t until he was finishing the milking that evening that it finally dawned on him what that reason might have been. What she must have meant was she hated him because her parents fought about him, just like they fought about Black Silk. It was so obvious once he figured it out, he wondered why he hadn’t known immediately. That evening at supper he made a point of noticing things that proved that he’d guessed right.

Like how Mr. Thornton was always silent and unsmiling, busying himself with a newspaper, not speaking much to anybody, and never to Gib. Of course, Mrs. Thornton didn’t talk to Gib much, either, but she did ask him how many eggs he’d found that day and, like always, whenever she caught his eye she smiled at him. So he supposed that meant he’d been right in guessing that Mr. Thornton wanted to get rid of him and Mrs. Thornton didn’t. Just like Black Silk. The only thing was, in his case, he couldn’t figure out why.

It wasn’t too hard to see why Mrs. Thornton wanted him to stay. She wanted him to go right on exercising and caring for Black Silk. That wasn’t hard to understand. And the mare was probably the reason that Mr. Thornton wanted to get rid of him. Because if Gib wasn’t there to take care of her, he’d have a better reason to insist on selling her. But the hard part to figure was why Mr. Thornton had gone to all the trouble to go to Lovell House to get Gib and bring him home, if he hated having him around so much.

For a while he considered the notion that Mr. Thornton had agreed to take Gib on and then something had changed his mind. Like maybe he thought Gib wasn’t doing a good job. But he couldn’t really believe that was it. Maybe he hadn’t done as good a job as a full-grown man could do, but he’d certainly worked awfully hard and the other people at the Rocking M, Hy and Mrs. Thornton and Miss Hooper and even Mrs. Perry, were always saying what a good hard worker he was.

So why had Livy’s parents fought about him? The more he thought about it, the more he felt he just had to find out. He thought of asking Hy, but he was pretty sure Hy wouldn’t answer. He’d quit answering any question that had anything to do with the Thorntons. And he hated to try to ask Livy again, since she’d gotten so upset about it before. But maybe he’d just have to. He’d have to get up the nerve to ask Livy why her father wanted to get rid of him. He’d do it, he promised himself, the next time he got a chance to talk to her alone. But then, when he started having a lot of good chances, he kept putting it off.

The chances to talk happened because not long after she’d told Gib how she felt when she watched Black Silk, Livy started watching a lot more, and from not so far away. It began one afternoon when Gib was saddling the mare for their afternoon workout.

He had just finished cinching up the girth and was fixing to lead the mare out of the barn when he realized that Livy was there again, just outside the stall door, exactly where she’d been more than a year ago when she’d yelled that she hated Black Silk and Gib too. But now there was a different expression on her face, and it didn’t look much like hate.

“Hello,” she said as soon as Gib turned around. “How did you get the bridle on her head? I watched you put the saddle on, but you’d already finished with the bridle when I came in.”

So Gib took Black Silk’s bridle off and put it back on again while Livy watched and asked questions. “What if she bites you?” she wanted to know. “What if she bites when you hold the bit up there to her mouth that way?”

Gib laughed. “Well, if she bit me, I reckon I’d be pretty sorry,” he said. “But she’s not going to. Silky’s real sweet about taking the bit. You don’t even have to stick your finger in her mouth, the way you do with Lightning sometimes.”

“You stick your finger in his mouth?” Livy sounded horrified.

“Sure do. Like this.” Gib pulled Silky around and lifted up one side of her lip so Livy could see how horses’ grazing teeth end before their chewing teeth begin. “See this gap right here where there’s no teeth? You just stick your finger in here and ...

He stopped then to swallow a grin. Livy was staring wide-eyed, looking horrified and fascinated at the same time. “Ooh,” she squealed. “Ooh, ooh.” But then, noticing the expression on Gib’s face, she calmed down and said, “Ugh, that’s disgusting.” And as Gib opened the stall and started to lead Silky out, Livy backed up hastily and then ran out of the barn.

But she kept coming back. Almost every weekday in the early afternoon, about the time Gib finished with his other chores and before it was time for Mr. Thornton’s return from Longford, Livy would suddenly show up in the barn. She’d watch and ask questions while Gib saddled up, and when he led the mare out, Livy would run ahead to open the corral gate. After that she would climb up on the fence and sit there watching and asking questions.

Right at first she only watched from a safe distance, but one day when Gib was unsaddling, Livy opened the stall door and stepped inside. Gib went on with what he was doing, pretending he didn’t notice, until Livy asked in a breathy whisper, “Could I touch her? Would she let me touch her?”

“Sure,” Gib said. “Just reach out slow like. Horses don’t like sudden things. Okay?”

“Yes,” Livy breathed, being so careful she even nodded slowly. “Slowly.” So then Gib untied Silky’s reins and turned her head around, and as the mare stretched out her neck and sniffed curiously, Livy reached out and touched the velvety nose. Touched and rubbed slowly and gently—but with an expression on her face that looked to Gib like some kind of explosion was happening inside her head.

Afterward, when Silky and Lightning had been fed, Livy said it had been the most exciting moment of her whole life, and when Gib laughed she said angrily, “It was. I mean it. Don’t you remember? Wasn’t it the most exciting moment of your life the first time you ever touched a horse?” And when Gib said he didn’t think he could remember back that far, she suddenly sighed and said, “You’re lucky. You’re so lucky.”

But when Gib laughed and said, “Lucky? I’m lucky?” she shrugged, “You know what I mean. You’re lucky you’ve been with horses all your life that way, instead of—instead of being taught terrible things about them.”

“Taught?” Gib asked, and she nodded.

“My father. My father talks about horses like they were worse than rattlesnakes. He always has. He hates horses. That’s why I thought I hated them, I guess.”

They were standing outside Silky’s stall at the time, watching as she picked up each mouthful of hay, shook it, and then chewed contentedly, occasionally turning her head to see if they were still there. Watching horses eat had always given Gib a contented feeling, but now suddenly the contentment was invaded by the sudden remembrance of the promise he’d made himself.