Firehorse (9781442403352) (18 page)

Then I took up my reading again, glancing toward the doorway at the end of each page in the hope that Mr. Stead would stop by and find me—worthy student—studying. But that whole day the only person who stuck his head through the door was James. On his way home from work, he stopped in to thump down a bag of oats, a different brand this time and one already ground into meal.

“The man at the feed store said this might be easier on her digestion.” He looked over his shoulder, then back at me. “Are you waiting for someone?”

My pulse quickened. “No, just reading.”

“Out loud, I'll wager.” He nodded toward the Girl. “You're not trying to teach her veterinary medicine, are you?”

“She understands a lot more than you think,” I countered.

Shaking his head and laughing, he turned to leave. “You two
are
a pair. I'm going to go wash up.”

Father didn't come home for dinner that evening, and he sent no word or explanation. On another night Mother might have been perturbed, but she seemed so taken with her new curtains that she positively hurried us through the meal just so she could arrange us in the parlor in front of them. When she had the three of us seated in such a way that passersby could admire our model family through our elegantly curtained window, she brought in jelly cake and coffee. Rarely had I seen her so animated. She perched on the edge of her chair like an exuberant lark and began reciting what she'd learned of the day's events at the International Peace Jubilee here in Boston.

Her tidbits were interesting enough—Johann Strauss himself had conducted an orchestra of one thousand musicians—but I had the chapter on “Diseases of the Heart and Blood” to get through yet, and that wasn't going to be a waltz in the park, so to speak. So as soon as I'd finished my cake, I tried feigning fatigue and gaining an excuse to go to my bedroom. Mother smiled sweetly, almost masking her disapproval. With the flourish and authority of an imaginary baton, however, she pointed toward my embroidery basket. I heaved a pained sigh, eliciting no sympathy whatsoever, and moodily arranged the sampler across my lap. Grandmother opened her Bible and James quickly pulled one of the newspapers from Father's stack and bent over it. Mother admonished him to sit up straight.

The parlor clock played metronome to Mother's informative
jabber, marching us through an evening that could only be described as starched. I embroidered halfheartedly, carelessly even—my mind everywhere but the parlor. I thought about the Girl, her ever-more-noticeable ribs and her terrible burns. I thought about Mr. Stead and his peppermints and, feeling a blush warm my cheeks, redirected my thoughts toward Queenie and her colt. At once my hands got that pleasant tingly feeling. How I longed for the day when I'd have enough skill to lay my hands on a suffering horse and ease his pain. To have enough knowledge to help a colicky horse or a foal stuck inside his mother.

Faster and faster I stitched, the silver needle piercing the linen with a rapid rhythm of faint pops, the drab green thread swooshing through in its wake. A spray of leaves, decidedly ragged, began forming at the sampler's border. Mother would have me ripping out the evening's work for certain.

I shoved my hair behind my ear with mounting impatience. This wasn't important work; this was nothing more than sand trickling through an hourglass, stitches in time for the sake of passing time. Saving horses'
lives
was important work, and I shoved the needle so hard it jumped through the linen and jabbed my thumb. A crimson drop plopped right into the middle of the Garden of Eden.

The sampler was ruined. What was I going to do? I glanced up to see if anyone had noticed, but Grandmother was carefully tracing a verse with her finger and Mother was listening to James read an account of the Jubilee from the newspaper.
In some horror I watched the linen suck up the red liquid like a parched tongue.

Clamping thumb to finger to staunch the bleeding, I racked my brain for a solution. I surveyed the unfinished scene—the leafy garden, Eve modestly cloaked in ivy, the tree of knowledge with its round red apple—and at once it came to me. Hastily, albeit clumsily, I rethreaded the needle, and in a matter of seconds I'd disguised the bloody splotch with some red silk stitches. There, just another shiny apple to tempt Eve.

“Be sure your sin will find you out.”

Grandmother's spoken Scripture nearly knocked me off my chair.

“What was that, Mother?”

“Numbers Thirty-two: ‘Be sure your sin will find you out.' It's a good reminder to us, isn't it? We're all being watched. We're all accountable.”

I blanched, I'm sure, and stuffed the sampler into its basket with such haste that Mother raised an eyebrow. “I'm perfectly used up,” I lied, bolting to my feet. Deceit was becoming ever easier. “I really can't keep my eyes open any longer, so I'm going to go to bed.” Without waiting for her permission, and folding my bloody thumb inside my fist, I hurried up the stairs.

Guilt needled me all through that night. I'd gone too far this time, it warned. I'd galloped across one too many boundaries.

But I awoke the next morning, Wednesday, determined to put the sampler incident behind me. What was one more apple
in the Garden, anyway? Eve was already reaching toward the tree, destined to take a bite. I'd merely provided her a choice of sins.

I dressed as quickly as I could and went down to the kitchen to find Grandmother frying more doughnuts. “I don't know what became of yesterday's doughnuts,” she grumbled. “We must have mice.” She cast a suspicious glance toward me while scooping golden rings from the bubbling grease.

“We must have,” I responded with a grin. I wrapped three of the cooled ones inside a napkin and headed out to the carriage shed.

To my complete and utter chagrin, that's when Mr. Stead chose to make his appearance. And instead of discovering a dedicated student, he caught me feeding freshly made doughnuts to the Girl. I flushed with embarrassment and tentatively offered him one last half. When he shook his head, I stuffed the evidence into my mouth.

In a voice edged with uncharacteristic harshness, he asked, “Does your manual include
doughnuts
on its list of cures?”

I was so near to choking that all I could do was shake my head miserably.

He stepped into the stall and checked the Girl's pulse. Nodding, he examined the silver pin still twisted in her neck. With one quick movement, he pulled it out. A red bead bubbled up, and he pressed his thumb to it. “You can remove what's left of her bandages,” he told me. “She's obviously not going to keep them on.” He peered into one of the jellylike wounds. “Try
dredging these weepy sores with flour. That will help dry them up.” He shooed away a fly. “Who's cleaning her stall?”

I swallowed. “I am.”

“Why isn't your brother doing it?”

“I told him I would. I want to be the one taking care of her.” I hoped that showed how serious I was about learning to be a veterinary, but it only led him to another critical question.

“Have you spoken with your father?”

I looked away, feeling my chance slipping away too. “No,” I replied, “but I'm going to soon. I promise.”

“It's not to me that you need to make that promise.” For some reason, and I was certain then it was my incompetence, newly come to light, Mr. Stead was wasting no time in gathering his things and heading out the door. Still, like a hopeful puppy, I trailed after him all the way to the street and to his buggy.

The weather had turned threatening. Gusts of wind sent leaves clattering across the pavement. Ominous gray storm clouds piled above the city skyline.

“I think she's through the worst of it,” Mr. Stead was saying as he climbed into his buggy, “so I won't need to stop by as often.” My heart sank. I petted Balder and sneaked him some doughnut crumbs, hoping to keep them both a little longer, but Mr. Stead gathered up the reins. “Have your brother contact me if she takes a turn for the worse.” And then he was driving off.

For a heavy, wind-knocked-out-of-me minute, I watched the black silhouette of him and his buggy grow smaller. “Your
brother,” he'd said. Not me. No “good girl” or “well done.” Not even “good-bye.”

Underscoring my mood, the iron gray clouds ensnared the sun at that moment, casting a shroud over the entire street. The wild smell of the ocean blew in beneath them. At once miserable and restless, I turned for the house, only to realize that a young woman was standing a little apart from me, staring up at our parlor window. She was dressed stylishly in unbleached linen, though her bodice was cut noticeably looser than those shown in the store windows. Her straw bonnet, set forward over her brow, was trimmed in black, which matched her neck ribbon. I would have thought her one of the Beacon Street ladies if she weren't holding a brick in her hand. The eyes she turned on me were as dark and stormy as those of any bit-soured horse.

“Is that the Selby house?” she asked. “Mr. August Selby's house?”

Wondering if my answer made me a traitor, I nodded. “Is something wrong?”

“Not with me,” she said, tossing her head defiantly. A gust of wind rattled the trees. She measured the brick's weight in her hand. “Never mind what
he
says.” I knew at once she meant Father. “Are you one of his?”

I nodded again, hoping that didn't qualify me for a crack over the head, though she certainly didn't appear to be a murderess. She looked more like … I knew! “You're the woman from his newspaper, aren't you?”

“I used to be with the
Argus
, if that's what you mean. He's mentioned me, has he?”

“Yes.”

She tossed the brick expertly and caught it. “Spare me the details or I'll heave this through his window for sure.”

There was a desperate bravado in her voice that I somehow found thrilling. “What
are
you going to do with it?”

She looked down at the brick, almost as if seeing it for the first time. “I don't know,” she said suddenly and quite solemnly. “I really don't know.” A stronger gust whipped down the street. It stirred her into action and she hurled the brick to the ground, which split it into uneven chunks. “It won't get me back what I've lost,” she spat, “I know that.” She kicked at one chunk, sending it skidding along the pavement.

A boy who was passing with his mother and older sister kicked it farther on. He ran after the fragment, booted it again, and kept up the game until the trio rounded the corner.

The woman followed the skittering rock with her dark eyes. Air seemed to be leaking out of her from an unseen tear. Gradually her shoulders sagged. “It's not that I don't love my children,” she mused, “or my husband. I do. But writing gives me something they can't, and seeing my name in type is … well, it's like getting a little drunk, you know?” She let out a husky laugh, and at that I began to suspect the source of her black pupils. Grabbing hold of my arm, she spoke with all the urgency of one accused, and I the judge. “I wrote better, my research was better … and I worked longer hours. I didn't even
ask for a desk; I polished my columns at home, after my family was asleep and before they were awake. But what did that get me? A boot out the door.”

Glancing at the remains of the shattered brick, she let go of my arm to pick up a small chunk. She turned it over and over in her hand, pondering something unspoken, then dropped it. A look up at the scudding clouds made her rub her arms vigorously. “It's going to storm like the devil, isn't it?” As if we'd been talking about nothing more than the weather. “I'm getting a chill.” And just like that, hugging herself, she wandered on down the street. Only when she got to the corner did she pause to look back. She shook her head sadly and shrugged her shoulders. Before turning and walking off she mouthed something to me. The words carried on the wind were: “It's no use.”

A dreadful foreboding squeezed the very air out of me. My future was slipping away. I had to talk with Father that night. No matter how he stormed, I had to stand up to him and I had to gain his approval. And amid the flurry of emotions threatening to sink me, I screwed up my courage.

Solely as if to plague me, it seemed, the wind blew harder, then harder still. All that afternoon it kept up, and by evening it was blasting the house with an unrelenting fury. It whistled round the corners, flapped the shingles on the roof, and hurled leaves and twigs at the windows. I startled at each attack. I tried to school my nerves, but by then I'd become so thoroughly jumpy and skittish that I fumbled everything put into my hands.

“Honestly, Rachel,” Mother said, taking the clinking goblets
from me. “The way you're trembling, you'd think you'd never heard a storm brewing. Go light the gas in the parlor and the lamp in the hall. James needs to stay at the fire station for a few more hours, but I'm sure your father will be home early tonight.”

“It'll be a race between him and the rain,” Grandmother said as she methodically arranged the silver on the table.

That evening the acrid odor of the match was especially nauseating and the hissing of the parlor burners, once lit, did nothing to settle my nerves. I hurried into the hall. As the yellow globe of fire grabbed the wick, an earsplitting thunderbolt crashed directly overhead. I jumped, jostling the small table and sending the lamp rocking wildly. I reached out to steady it but—too late—it fell over with a tinkling of broken glass and a sudden bang as the kerosene exploded. I yelped as tall flames lashed over my hands and sleeves.

For a moment … and an eternity … my arms became the branches that fed the fire. Sensations ran together before shattering. Orange tongues. Hot. Consuming me.

Grandmother appeared. “Rachel, what have you done?” She rushed to bury my arms in my own skirt. Just as fast, she lifted and dragged the hall rug over the table to douse the flames.