Winter Run Page 5

  The negotiation for her purchase was complex. Messages were sent via Jimmy. In the beginning, Aaron didn’t really want to sell her. It wasn’t that he needed her. He didn’t, but he collected horses the way Luke Henry collected hounds. He must have had ten horses and ponies on the twenty-five-acre hardpan red-clay plot that he called a farm. In addition to shoeing, he was a part-time horse trader who didn’t really trade horses very often because he seemed to like them all and want to keep them.

  The Price’s house and barns were made of logs, the fences of field-pine poles. The place looked like something out of old times, like a little fortified compound. There was no plumbing, and water was dipped from the dug well right behind the kitchen. There were three cows and three steers and the usual hog pen over the hill behind the house. Add the money from Aaron’s shoeing, and they were self-sufficient.

  The lane into the compound was solid red clay, between banks that were nearly as high as the cab of Matthew’s old black pickup. Charles Lewis wondered aloud how the Prices got in and out in bad weather.

  “They leave their truck out to the hard road and walk,” said Matthew. “No way on earth you going to get a truck up this lane if it’s wet.”

  Aaron was trying to retire. That meant he wanted Jimmy to take up the slack of the shoeing so Aaron could sit on the porch and chew, take a pull at the jug every once in a while, and look out at the stock—and maybe buy and sell some horses. Jimmy didn’t necessarily mind the work. It was just that he liked all kinds of other things as well—horse shows in the spring and summer and livestock sales in the winter, and just plain wandering around the countryside visiting with people. But Jimmy had real talent. At sixteen, he was already a master horseshoer. His work was in demand.

  Aaron was sitting on the front porch. As Charles and Matthew and Charlie approached, he spat over the porch rail and smiled his nearly toothless grin and said come on up and have a seat. Matthew did the talking while Charles looked bored and Charlie fidgeted.

  Finally Aaron summed it up. “Well, Matthew, I never did really want to sell that little mare and $150 don’t sound like enough, but”—here he spat conclusively over the rail—“I’ll think on it and let you know.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Lewis. Charlie, you sure are growing like a weed. That little mare would suit you …”

  Back in the truck Charlie talked a mile a minute as if to make up for the time lost while Matthew and old Aaron hemmed and hawed.

  “When can I take her home, Matthew?”

  “Don’t you go getting all hotted up over it, Charlie. That old man don’t do nothing in a hurry.”

  “How long? A week?”

  “Do you think he’ll sell her at all?” Charles asked. “Mr. Price didn’t seem anxious to me.”

  “Don’t you be fooled by that, Mr. Lewis,” Matthew replied. “You can bet your life Miz Price was back in the kitchen listening, and no sooner we was gone she come at him about getting rid of that pony cause they had bills to pay and how he didn’t need her nohow … No, he’ll let her go. We just might have to wait a week or two.”

  Two days later the Price’s log house caught fire and burned to the ground along with the main barn, which was only forty feet from the back door. Everyone got out, people and livestock. The three older boys had already moved out and were starting families, so at the time of the fire only Jimmy and Aaron and the old lady were at home. The community rallied round. The three humans moved into the vacant cottage at the back of Mill Creek Farm. The cows and steers were sold and the horses split up between Silver Hill and Mill Creek. Much to Charlie’s disgust, Tricksey—because she was a mare and the mares were kept together—went to Mill Creek.

  And then, just like out of the Bible, Aaron had a heart attack and, the day after that, died. Everyone said it was the strain of losing the place where he had lived all his life.

  Whatever the reason, Mrs. Price was now in charge. She was an old-fashioned lady who was tall and up-right and wore long dresses and a sun bonnet, summer and winter. She had put up with Aaron and Jimmy’s horse foolishness for years, but the morning after the funeral, she marched into the post office and told Mr. Dudley that the horses were for sale—cheap. And please tell Matthew when you see him to come and get that pony mare, and $150 was just fine. This scene was watched with interest by everyone in the store/post office. Normally Mrs. Price only came into the store to buy groceries. The rest of the time she sat in the truck while Jimmy and Aaron stood around inside and talked.

  But not now. It was as if she had been waiting all her life to step into this situation. Within two days the horses were sold except Princess. Mrs. Price had made arrangements with a cousin to rent a house in a village ten miles north of us. Jimmy suddenly had a new outlook on life because his mama told him if he didn’t spend his time shoeing horses, Princess would go somewhere else along with the rest of the useless horses. She meant it. And Jimmy knew it.

  So the deal was struck for Tricksey. And for another fifty dollars, a flat English saddle and a bridle were thrown in. The money was delivered. All that was left was to get the pony home from the back pasture at Mill Creek. Of course, Charlie wanted to ride her home but Gretchen put her foot down. After all, the boy really knew nothing about riding. She just would-n’t hear of it. Matthew had not been on a horse since he was a little boy. And, anyway, he was too big for that pony. Or so he said.

  That left Charlie’s father, who quickly realized he was stuck with it. Sitting on the pony, his feet were only a foot from the ground. He had himself not sat on a horse or pony since he was a boy at camp. Matthew and Charlie watched as Charles made his way across the field, headed for the Corn House. Charles had one hand on the reins and the other on the top of his head holding down his hat as if in wind. But there was no wind. Just a late October afternoon with the leaves in full color and the air mild and dry.

  “Hurry, Matthew!” Charlie said. “We need to be at home just as soon as he gets there.”

  “There ain’t no hurry. It’ll take him an hour and even my old truck can make it in ten minutes. No hurry.”

  They stood next to the white fence. Matthew leaned on the top board, his black hands resting lightly on the whitewashed oak. Charlie watched through the second board as the little mare and his father disappeared over the hill.

  A young red-tailed hawk came across the woods from the steep hill behind them, lightly riding the air. He was young enough that his body was still white with dark spots. He whistled his harsh “keeeeer” and for a second halted his journey and looked down.

  “Look, Matthew, he’s hunting. How can he do that? I mean just stop in midair like that.”

  Before Matthew could answer, the hawk dove like a rock, falling into a clump of broom sage. He paused and spread his wings. His red tail feathers were the color of the clay soil. When he rose up into the air again, he was clutching a vole with one foot. Then he was gone, over the hill and gone.

  Hawks were coming back now that the number of people keeping chickens steadily declined. They were no longer shot on sight. Charlie took them for granted, while Matthew was always surprised to see one after the long years when there had been none. Gradually they were becoming part of the backdrop of our lives, the sound of their cry part of the rhythm of our world.

  “How did he know where the vole was?” Charlie asked. “He just stopped all that way off the ground and then dove. How did he know, Matthew?”

  “I don’t know, Charlie. I just don’t know. When I growed up, they’d been shot out to where you never saw one. I never had a chance to watch when I was little. Maybe if there had of been a lot of them to look at, I might have seen how they did it. Maybe you can figure it out what with there being plenty to watch.” And then he said abruptly, “Let’s go. Time to be home and get ready for that pony.” Charlie’s mind turned away from the hawk’s eyesight and came back to the pony.

  “Yes, let’s hurry. Come on!” and headed for the truck.

  Everyone was lined up in the
lane in front of the Corn House, when Mr. Lewis came over the hill at Silver Hill and started down the lane to home. First there was Gretchen, looking slightly apprehensive but happy that Charlie would have a horse of his own. She thought of the pony as a horse because she had never been around them growing up, so a horse was a horse no matter what the size. Matthew and Charlie completed the human delegation, with Matthew standing between Charlie and his mother. Next was Bat the one-eyed mare mule, Charlie’s friend despite the fact that an eight-year-old boy seldom if ever had a mule for a friend—at least as far as any of us knew. And finally Brown, an amiable, longhaired mongrel dog of that color who belonged to a family in the village but spent most of his time on the road scavenging. One of his ears stood straight up and the other flopped over, as if he could understand questions and answers at the same time. He had a regular route and today was his day to be at the Corn House.

  As Mr. Lewis came down the hill, obviously in some discomfort from the long, unaccustomed ride, Bat cocked her head, flopped her ears forward, and produced an appropriate bellow of welcome that frightened the pony, who whirled around, nearly leaving Charlie’s daddy behind, and started back the way she had come. It only took a couple of strides for Mr. Lewis to regain control, but it was typical. Over time, the pony was to gain some local fame for independence, and almost unloading Mr. Lewis before he had even got her home was her first shot. Charlie was beside himself with excitement.

  “Get off, Daddy. Get off so I can ride.” This even before Mr. Lewis had recovered from almost being ditched. Then he was down and Charlie was up, pulling at the stirrup leathers to make them a couple of feet shorter. But it didn’t work. There weren’t enough holes. Charlie tensed all over and looked up with something like panic in his eyes. Matthew said later that he had never seen a kid tie himself in such knots over a pony.

  “Now what, Matthew? They won’t work. There aren’t enough holes.” Charlie, of course, turned to Matthew in this time of emergency.

  “Come on, Charlie, there’s a harness punch up to the shop at the big house. I’ll punch the holes.”

  A little later the two of them were at the top of the hill in front of the garage, Matthew with the punch and the leathers pulled out, intent on the task, and Charlie looking down at Matthew’s hands, his eyes locked onto the leather and the old rusty punch, with the slanting October light coming over his shoulder, illuminating the pony’s head as she dozed on her feet, ears relaxed, uninterested.

  When the stirrups were the right length, Charlie pushed his feet into them and stood up, holding on to the pony’s mane and looking around as if he were seeing the familiar scene for the first time, smiling as the yellow light fell across his pale features. When he sat back into the saddle, he looked from Matthew’s smile to the ends of the stirrup leathers, which were so long they fell beneath the pony’s belly.

  “Cut them off, Matthew. They look dumb hanging down like that. Cut them off.”

  “Now Charlie,” he said, “one of these days you going to grow up and need those leathers long.” Here he paused and said, no longer smiling, “Surely you’ll need these here leathers. Don’t you dare cut them off. Here’s how to fold them up into the keeper straps …”

  That evening after he had taken his first ride and put the pony away in the barn to eat an ear of corn, Charlie hurried up the hill to the big house, looking for Matthew.

  “Why, Charlie, what you limping about? What happened?”

  The boy was livid. “That damn pony kicked me! That’s what.”

  Matthew said it was the first time he’d ever seen Charlie angry like that. And certainly it was the first time he’d heard him use bad language. Matthew smiled as he told the story to Fred Henry that evening in the store.

  “Fred, that boy was mad. He was so fussed it took a while to get the story out of him. What happened was he led the pony into the barn and tied her next to the manger and went to get her an ear of corn. I reckon he felt like he needed to feed her something after the ride. He thought it would be a nice thing to do. So over to the barrel he goes and pulls out an ear and starts back to her. Now of course that pony ain’t used to eating grain, so she gets all excited and puts her ears back and starts switching her tail. Charlie don’t know no better, so he walks behind her to get to the manger. And, whap, she kicks him right in the knee and knocks him down. Hit his funny bone. That boy flew hot! He jumps up and turns around to her and raises his hand. He’s still standing right behind her, mind you. Well, she slaps her ears down again and cocks a leg. By this time Charlie has figured out that this pony ain’t no workhorse. And not only that, she got a mind all her own and won’t put up with any foolishness from nobody. He still has a mind to take a poke at her with a broom handle. But after what he seen Clarence do to that mare last summer, he ain’t going to be mean to no horse no matter what. So he’s stuck. He thinks it ain’t fair. That pony didn’t have no cause to kick him, seeing as how he was being kind, not mean. ‘So why did she do it?’ he asks. Well, what’s to say? That she’s just a pony mare and that’s the way she is? Anyway, that’s what I told him. One thing for sure, though, that boy ain’t going around that mare’s back end again without he looks at her ears first.”

  They smiled at Charlie’s dilemma as they always did. Even at eight, Charlie had grown deep into the community.

  From the beginning, relations with the pony were strained. For starters and much to the amusement of everyone in the store, Charlie had been told by his father that he was not to canter the pony until he had had her for at least six months. It was Charlie’s daddy’s way of having Charlie start his riding career slowly. Of course, Charlie being Charlie, that didn’t work. He cantered everywhere from the beginning and as a result didn’t learn to post to the trot until he was eleven. But when the pony didn’t want to canter, which was nearly always, she had a way of jerking along at a gait that was technically a canter but was in fact a very rough way to ride indeed. Finally exasperation overtook Charlie’s pacifism toward horses and he cut a switch from a maple behind the barn. The next time the pony did her herky-jerky gait, he was ready and slapped her good behind the saddle with the switch. The results were deeply satisfying. Suddenly the pony was floating over the ground in a lovely canter that was completely comfortable to ride. It had taken Charlie until November to figure this out, so there had been a lot of rough riding in between.

  Another problem was catching her up from the field. The field in this case was over a hundred acres, because when Silver Hill had ceased to be a real working farm, the cross fences were let go and the gates left open. As a result, the four original fields became one. There were groves of trees interspersed throughout the field along with two creeks. The whole thing had gone wild. The result was occasionally rented out for pasture, but even the outside fences were going bad, so most people didn’t think it was worth it to have to chase cows that even inside the fences had only broom sage to eat.

  The morning after he got her home, Charlie turned the pony loose in the field. She disappeared for two days. He walked and walked and called and called. The third day, as he crossed the first ridge, he saw her standing next to the creek at the foot of the hill. There were some small walnut trees growing next to the stream alongside a clump of multiflora rose and honeysuckle, long past blooming. She was standing with her back end to him, inside the tangle of vines, slowly swishing the late fall flies with her tail. Had it not been for the tail, he would have never seen her. Following Jimmy Price’s instructions, he rushed back to the barn and got an ear of corn. He circled around to get in front of her and whistled the horse-calling whistle and held out his hand with the corn. She raised her head, looked at him, and trotted off next to the creek on a path cut nearly a foot deep by hundreds of cattle hooves. Then she disappeared into a pine thicket at the head of the stream.

  Charlie followed, calling her name. He’d never been in the thicket before. He walked the path carefully, looking down. The thicket consisted of cedars interspersed with fiel
d pine. Twenty-five feet in, it suddenly opened into a clearing with three large oaks in the middle. The clearing was more than an acre. It startled Charlie to break suddenly into the open after the prickers of the cedars and the twisting of the path. He looked up.

  The pony was standing beneath one of the oaks, facing him, ears up, looking right at him, still almost white from the dry summer. She was surrounded completely by a sea of white, bleached bones. Dozens of bones. There must have been thirty cow skulls lying in the clearing. But not just cows’. Charlie recognized the elongated skulls of horses and mules, and wide horse hooves and the unmistakably round and narrow hooves of mules. They were scattered around haphazardly. Charlie recognized some of the other bones. The hipbones looked huge and circular and the long bones of the legs were easy to recognize. Some of the rib cages were still intact, but mostly the ribs had been strewn about by the creatures that had eaten the flesh from them, leaving sections of verte-brae in piles. The thick wall of cedars and pines kept out the breeze. It was still, the day cloudy and cool with the hint of winter. The pony looked at him. Charlie looked at the bones and then at the pony.

  Of course he’d heard of it, the boneyard. But he’d never known where it was exactly. This was the most remote place on the farm. No one came here except to drag a dead cow or horse or mule, and because the land was no longer farmed it had been years since this place had last been used. He’d had no previous interest in it. But it was different now. The boneyard was her hiding place. She had found it by crossing and re-crossing the hundred acres, grazing at night, her head never far from the ground, searching for the best grasses and the places humans seldom went, until she found the one place where people didn’t venture at all. And knew immediately that she had escaped, until, as horses will, she led Charlie to the very place where in the end she could have lost him.