Before They Rode Horses (11 page)

She glared at me and then stormed upstairs. My victory was complete.

The rest of the visit was easy. She hardly said a word to me and I hardly said anything to her. She spent all day, every day, playing with Maggie, and I spent all my time over at the old house, by myself, reading some of the good books we’d brought along. When I wasn’t there, I spent time with my mother. I actually enjoyed being by myself, and even better I enjoyed the time I spent with my mother. It was a great trip.

“What were you doing at the haunted house?” Deborah asked Stevie. “I mean, that place sounds pretty scary.”

“There’s no such thing as a haunted house, Deborah,” Stevie said.

“But all those sounds, coming from all over the place,” Deborah said. “How did that happen?”

“It’s a story,” Stevie said. “You don’t expect me to tell you exactly everything that happened, do you?”

“Stevie!” Carole said.

“Well, it was mostly true,” Stevie said. “And the part about Madeleine and Maggie being scared out of their wits was definitely true, but the fact is they were so easy to scare that it wasn’t much of a challenge.”

So, ten days later, Mom and I flew home on a plane. The trip had been good, but returning home was even better. Mad-uh-lane had been such a pain that she made Chad, Alex, and Michael look like saints. I was never so happy to see anyone in my whole life as I was to see the three of them, plus Dad, when we got home. I decided right then and there that I would never again be a bully to Michael or try to compete with Chad and Alex.

L
ISA
,
CAROLE
,
AND
Deborah all hooted with laughter because everybody knew that Stevie rarely did anything but compete with her brothers, unless she was trying to bully them!

“Oh, go ahead and laugh,” Stevie said. “I know it looks as if nothing changed, but that’s not the case. The way I compete and bully since that trip is very different from the way I competed and bullied before the trip.”

“Right,” said Carole. “And that makes all the difference.”

“But stop a minute,” said Deborah. “Where’s my role model for mothering? I’m supposed to expose
my little child to the worst behavior in the world and see what happens?”

“Oh, no, that’s not the point at all,” said Stevie. “You mean you missed all the wonderful things my mother did?”

“I liked the part about hugging in her room that first night,” said Deborah. “I can do that.”

“Good idea,” said Lisa. “Hugs are always good.”

“So’s encouragement,” Carole agreed. “Be sure to tell your kids when they’re doing something right, not just when they make mistakes.”

“But there’s more,” said Stevie. “Lots more. First of all, my mother took me to a place where there was a kid who was so much worse than my brothers that she made them look good. There’s a little reality check. Next, the part about reading out loud: Remember how much we all loved that and I especially loved the Uncle Remus tales? Remember the story about Brer Rabbit who gets caught by Brer Fox, and Brer Fox is trying to figure out the most painful way to finish off Brer Rabbit? Brer Rabbit keeps saying that Brer Fox can roast him or skin him or hang him or cut off his legs, but no matter what, he shouldn’t throw him into the briar patch. Of course, that makes Brer Fox decide to throw Brer Rabbit into the briar patch. Brer Rabbit outfoxed
Brer Fox that time, because rabbits were born to live in briar patches. So he runs away, laughing at Brer Fox, and Brer Fox gets furious at him. See, that’s why I begged Madeleine and Maggie not to make me go past the haunted house—because it was the one thing I wanted the very most. So be sure to read good stories about clever characters to all of your children, okay?”

“Well, I do love to read, so that will be easy,” Deborah promised Stevie.

“And next, what my mother did that was wonderful was put me with the Miserable Madeleine, who was such an awful person that the only way to get back at her was to play a practical joke. I’d never played a practical joke on anyone before. Madeleine was the inspiration I needed to take up the fine art of practical joking. It’s a skill I’ve been honing ever since.”

“I’m not sure the rest of us should thank her for that,” Carole said dryly. Lisa just groaned.

“And there’s one more thing,” said Stevie.

“Yes?” Deborah asked expectantly.

“Well, when we got back to Willow Creek, my grandmother told my mother that the best thing she could do for me was to find something that I
could do that my brothers wouldn’t do, something that would be mine and mine alone, something where I wouldn’t be competing with my brothers at all.”

“Let me guess,” said Deborah. “Riding?”

Stevie smiled proudly.

“A perfect mother,” Lisa said. Carole nodded. There was no disputing that.

Deborah’s eyes rolled up to the ceiling. “There’s no stopping you girls, is there?” she asked. “No matter what I ask you to do, you are completely incapable of telling a story that doesn’t actually have to do with horses and riding.”

“Well, we are The Saddle Club,” Carole said. “Horses are what we like the best.”

“But there was all this talk about how The Saddle Club can do anything when its members work together. So, what’s so hard about just telling me a little story that isn’t about riding? I’m here, doing something that’s very hard for me. Seems to me that you ought to be able to do that, even though it’s hard for you. It’s not that I haven’t enjoyed the stories you’ve told me, Lisa and Stevie. It’s just that, well, a promise is a promise. Now I want to hear a story from Carole that doesn’t even mention one
word that has to do with horses.” She grinned proudly because she knew it was going to be a gigantic challenge.

Lisa and Stevie both looked at Carole. Telling stories that didn’t have much to do with horses had been very hard for each of them. Telling one that didn’t have anything to do with horses might prove to be absolutely impossible for Carole. But it was what Deborah wanted.

“I can do it,” Carole said. “I really can.” And so she began.

I
CAN TELL
a story that doesn’t have to do with um … er … the
h
word, but I can’t tell you a story that happened to me before I rode
h
words, because I started doing that when I was so young that I don’t remember anything at all before that. Or maybe I just never have considered anything that happened before I first rode
h
words to be worth remembering. But I will tell you something that happened to me the summer I was nine. That makes it nice and even, doesn’t it? Lisa told a story about when she was ten, Stevie was eight when she met up with Madeleine, so it seems properly balanced that I be nine when this happened.

This is almost as much a story about my mother as it is about me. None of you ever knew her, and I don’t talk about her much with you. Sometimes I
think you’re afraid I’ll be uncomfortable talking about Mom, but really that’s not the case. Dad and I talk about her often. It’s a nice way of keeping our memories fresh. Even though she died a few years ago, I remember a lot of things about Mom, and most of them are really nice. I don’t think I’ll tell you about the time she bought me a sundress that was the wrong size or the time she tried to help me learn Roman numerals, only she got them all mixed up and I never have been able to tell the difference between D and L. Sometimes she’d forget to do things she really meant to do. There was one time she locked the keys in the trunk of the car when we were ready to leave on vacation, and she was forever forgetting to pack things she needed, like a toothbrush.

Carole had to stop her story for a few minutes because Lisa and Stevie were laughing so hard. They weren’t laughing at Carole’s mother, they were laughing at Carole. Forgetfulness was one of Carole’s best-known traits—next to being
h
word–crazy, of course.

“All right, all right,” said Carole. “So now you know that I can’t help my faults. They are inherited traits!”

“Oh dear,” said Deborah. “Does that mean that my child is going to make all the same mistakes I do?”

“Not necessarily,” Stevie assured her. “In our family
, Mom
and Dad are always astonished at the new kinds of mistakes my brothers and I make, so don’t worry. There’s hope.”

Deborah didn’t seem comforted by those thoughts, but there wasn’t anything Carole could do about it, so she went on with her story.

Mostly, though, my mother was wonderful. Sometimes I think I can still hear her laughter. She loved to laugh and she loved to make me and my dad laugh. It always seemed to me that when I was feeling blue, for whatever reason, Mom found a way to make me laugh and feel better. Just sitting on her lap or watching her work in the kitchen or sew on a button made me feel that I was loved and safe. Mothers can be like that, you know, only often we don’t stop to think about it. Now I think about it a lot.

Mom and I spent a lot of time together when I was little. It wasn’t just because I don’t have brothers like Stevie—or sisters, for that matter. And it wasn’t just because Mom was a stay-at-home mom like Lisa’s. Even though both of those things were true, we were often together because we were sometimes the only people around that we knew.

Dad loves the Marine Corps, and Mom and I
both liked a lot of things about his job, too. One thing we all agreed on, though, was that we hated having to move, and we did a lot of that. There was a time when we were moving every three years or so, and that means that by the time I was nine, my parents and I had already lived in three places. And then the summer I was nine, we were moved to the fourth.

Most of the time when we moved, it wasn’t so bad. For one thing, we were living on bases where there were other families who moved a lot, other kids who had learned to make friends quickly, other kids who knew a lot about other places. Sometimes we went to schools on the bases. More often we went to schools in the towns. I liked meeting kids who weren’t Marine Corps brats, like I was, but the most important part was just meeting other kids. The problem with the move we made when I was nine was that it was just a temporary assignment for Dad. We weren’t going to be there for more than three months, and it was summertime. That meant no school.

Now, I know that some people, like my friend Stevie, for instance, think the idea of no school is just about heaven, but when you’ve just moved to a new place, school is the fastest way to meet kids
and make friends. Even tougher was the fact that the base didn’t have any extra housing, so we had to rent a house off the base, where there were no other Marine Corps brats around, and, worse than that, it was way out in the country. I mean, I really actually liked all those things, except that every one of them made it impossible for me to make friends. It wasn’t any better for my mom, either.

Even though we weren’t there for very long, I remember that house well because it was a really nice one. It was a big old farmhouse with a huge yard and a big barn behind it. The first day we were there, I spent the whole morning just exploring the barn. It had once had a lot of animals in it—um, there might have been some you-know-whats—but definitely there had been cows and sheep. There was a chicken coop and a pen where they’d kept pigs. The old tractor was still there. The farmer who owned it was retiring, but he didn’t want to sell his house yet, so he’d sold most of his farm equipment and all of his livestock and rented the house to us while he and his wife rented an apartment in Florida. They wanted to try it for three months before they sold the farm. It was a perfect deal for us all.

My room was on the second floor, down the hall from my parents’ room. My window looked out over
the fields. They seemed to go on for miles. When we arrived, in the early summer, they were already green with the hay that would cover them soon. I remember the smell today, sweet, moist, rich. Everything about the whole place was perfect, except for one thing: no friends.

The first few days, Mom and I spent all our time putting things away. Well, to be perfectly honest, she spent all of her time doing it, and I spent some of my time arranging my collection of model h—oops—the stuff in my room. Once I’d finished that, I explored, like the barn and the fields. There was a small pond next to the barn where I’d found some tadpoles that were just beginning to get legs. They were a little weird and very cute. I was lying on my stomach, looking into the water, when I heard my mother call me.

“I’m here, Mom,” I called back.

“Carole?” She hadn’t heard me.

“Here, Mom!” I called back louder.

“Where are you?” She sounded frightened.

“I’m by the pond, Mom. I’m over here.” I waved to her. She didn’t see me at first. She was standing by the back door of the house, with her hand shading the sun from her eyes, staring out over the miles of field and forests that surrounded our house.
There was a strong wind, tugging her dress around her and brushing her hair back. It was just a moment, but there, by the big house, with a big sky above and the wind whipping at her, she seemed terribly alone. I stood up in a hurry and called back as loudly as I could, realizing then that the wind was carrying my voice away from her instead of toward her.