Firehorse (9781442403352) (20 page)

I shook my head. Stinging bees had taken up residence beneath my bandages and my heart was beating faster, but I hated that foggy, confused feeling that the laudanum gave me. I wanted to be able to go see the Girl.

“I know you're going to be bored up here all by yourself. Would you like me to read to you?” she asked. A magazine was pulled from beneath the napkin. “I've brought the newest
Godey's
, and from what I can tell they're predicting lace collars for the fall.” She flipped it open and pointed cheerily to an
illustration. “They're even showing lace flounces for the wrist. Now what do you think about that?”

Buying
Godey's Lady's Book and Magazine
was a huge extravagance for Mother. I knew she'd done it for me, and I did glance at the illustration of the overdressed woman, lace piled at her throat and bunched around her wrists. But if I was going to have anything read to me I still wanted it to be
The Reliable Horse Care Manual for American Owners
. My eyes left the billowy lace embellishments for the billowy gold manes of the three horses embossed on the book's cover.

She saw what I wanted, though she didn't understand. She couldn't. “Rachel, dear,” she said softly, persuasively, resting a hand on my leg, “that won't lead anywhere, and I really think it's time you give it up. I know it's been a fancy of yours, but treating horses is men's work, as it should be. Now, why don't we look through this magazine together and find a new dress style, and I'll talk to your father about getting some money for some fabric and we'll sew up something new for you while you're recuperating.” She tested a little laugh. “Goodness knows you've damaged enough since our arrival. A dress really isn't suited for horse care, is it, dear?”

The door that I thought had been opened to me just days ago was being nudged shut. Softly, persuasively. I shook my head and closed my eyes. “I think I'll just rest some more,” I said. “I'm really tired.”

“All right,” she replied. “I'll leave the magazine here and we'll look at it later.” I heard it placed on top of my gilt-edged
manual and knew the horses' shimmering manes had been snuffed out. “There are some lovely fashions in it, and I know that a project like a new dress will be just the thing to lift your spirits. You'll see.” Picking up the tray, she left. I never heard her feet on the stairs. She always moved as silently as a ghost, as if she had no substance, no weight. Was that my future? To fret about fashions and curtains and float around an empty house waiting for someone to notice me?

The attic room fell as quiet as a vault then. I could hear my breath going in and out of my nose. Bound in linen and cotton, I lay motionless, hearing, smelling, breathing, but not moving. In the stillness I noticed how the damp intensified the odors of rotting wood and musty paper in the house. I heard the mice stirring within the walls, behind the bureau at first and then invisibly over the stairwell, but even their scratchings seemed subdued on such a gray day. Far below me, in what seemed like another world, the parlor clock faintly chimed the quarter hour. I counted in my head, waiting for it to chime again, but couldn't concentrate and had to let time tick by unreckoned. The muffled voices of Mother and Grandmother, and sometimes a cabinet's faint squeak or the soft clunk of a mixing bowl on the wood table, rose high enough to disturb the attic air. I felt myself slipping into that void again, and I gave up and let myself go. This time I dreamed of bread baking inside an oven. I was certain I could smell it, doughy and golden. Hot.

EIGHTEEN

A
DISTANT BANG AWAKENED ME, STILL ON THE SAME DAY
, I was fairly certain. At first I thought the thunder had returned, but there was no advancing rumble, just a sharp pop immediately followed by another and another. Gunfire. It had to mean the Independence Day celebration was beginning.

I blinked my eyes open, tried to focus them. Staring up at the sloping ceiling, I thought about James and the firehorses, and all the other horses that would be in the parade, and wished I could somehow be there to see them. Out on the street, the hurried clatter of a horse and wagon grew loud and then faded.
They
were probably on their way to the parade, I thought enviously.

I'd been to the street that ran along the Common—that's where the parade was passing by—so I could easily imagine how it looked. The expectant crowd would be pushed onto the pavement, necks craning in the same direction. A dog would probably trot across the empty corridor and a child would chase
after him, ignoring his mother's calls. But then a commanding whistle would split the air and invigorating drumbeats sound their
rat-a-tat-tat
, and everyone would clear the way and even the sun would obediently scatter the clouds.

That's how I imagined it, and upon the blank slate of my sloping ceiling I made the parade unfold. First would come the grand marshal, a captain in the army, on a handsome bay. Then a commercial entry, perhaps a local coal company driving an enormous pair of black Percherons. In my mind's eye, the horses' massive haunches rippled from blue to black as the harness bells shook. After them I placed a team and wagon entered by a bakery and then one by a candy maker. I imagined the driver tossing wrapped samples to the crowd.

They'd be peppermints, of course, and out of the crowd a hand rose high to grab one; it was Mr. Stead, and he turned and smiled straight at me, and I had to push him out of my mind.

Annoyed, I conjured up the firemen. They burst onto the scene with their shining, hissing steam engine, and the onlookers went wild. James strutted among the other red-shirted men, and they encouraged the crowd to greater noise by whooping and waving their hats.

To my surprise, Mr. Benton Lee charged into view, nearly clipping the fire engine's wheels and—whose parade was this, anyway? I watched in confused horror as the black stallion harnessed to his two-wheeled gig ran backward, squatted, and lifted into a rear. The single seat tipped dangerously, but Mr. Lee—who took the time to give me a sly grin—coolly flicked his
beribboned whip and sent the stallion plunging forward and out of the picture.

The parade images evaporated. I became acutely aware of the room's chill and of the unsettling odor of soot in the air. How dare Mr. Lee shove his way into my amusement? And for that matter, how dare Mr. Stead turn up? They did nothing but plague me with their deceptions and then vanish.

Feeling sorry for myself, I kicked against the bed's covers. Mother had them tucked in so tightly I was practically pinned to the sheets. Suddenly I couldn't breathe. I gasped for air like a bluegill heaved onto a pond's bank and abandoned. With my chin brushing the fuzzy rolled edge of the coverlet, I fought to calm my heaving chest. Determinedly I focused my attention on the ceiling again, seeking salvation.

For some time all I saw was the spiderweb of cracks running through the chipped plaster and the brown water stains forming a murky band of clouds across the ceiling's middle. But gradually that murky band became a herd of wild horses thundering across some distant prairie, and recklessly I threw my leg across one, clutched the mane, and galloped. I didn't notice the sunlight slipping away or the clouds returning, the walls fading from ivory to ash to iron gray. As rain began spattering the roof, blending with the drumming of the horses' hooves in my mind, I was lulled into another sleep.

When I awoke, the room was again gloomy, bathed in that thin light that masqueraded as both dawn and dusk. I didn't know what time it was. I did know the laudanum had completely
worn off because my arms burned with a relentless fire. And yet there was some air in me. I felt as if I could breathe again, and I sensed the stirrings of something hopeful. The horses had done that. They were better than any tonic.

Out of habit, or maybe unrepentant stubbornness, I gazed toward the spine of my horse care manual. I longed to open its pages and read; but I couldn't light the lamp, let alone lift the book into my hands. Heaving a sigh of frustration, I turned my thoughts to the Girl. If I could just go see her … But I knew Mother would never let me past the door, especially now that it was raining again. So I lay there, as helpless as a gasping fish, muddling stupidly about ruffles and samplers, and what made something so right when everyone else thought it was wrong, and wondering with a dull ache just how I was going to fill the long days ahead.

When Mother floated up to my room again, she carried an early dinner and something flat wrapped in tissue. “I have another gift for you,” she said in an unusually bright singsong voice. My incapacitation seemed to have breathed new life into her. She set the tray on the bureau to light the lamp, then pulled a rectangular card, about four by six inches, from its tissue sleeve. “It's just now arrived from the gallery, just this very minute.” Proudly she held out the photograph that we'd posed for on Saturday.

Three pale faces stared from the gray frame, and it struck me at once that we looked as trapped and lifeless as Father's butterflies. There was Grandmother, grim as ever in her black
widow's weeds, awaiting the world's end. And Mother, neat as a pin in white, her lips pinched together so tightly they'd vanished. With a newly churning stomach, I leaned closer to study my own face. At first glance it seemed just as pale and flat and ordinary as the other two, except—I squinted—what was that beside my ear? A fragment of straw? It was. I quashed a smile. Now I remembered: I'd been cleaning the carriage shed, preparing it for the burned mare. Quickly I examined my hands in the photograph. They were dutifully clasped in my lap as the photographer had directed, but—hardly anyone would notice—that shadow between my thumb and forefinger was actually dirt, rubbed in by the pitchfork's handle. I couldn't hold back my smile then. I was sure I was never going to be the perfect specimen; no camera or glass or bandage was going to contain me.

Mother took my smile as appreciation. “This one is yours. Your father ordered a cabinet card for each of us,” she said. “Wasn't that generous of him?”

I nodded, wondering with wry humor if he'd ever notice the flaws in the image that he'd paid to have captured.

After she'd propped the card against my horse care manual, she took up her perch on the bed and began spooning chicken and dumpling stew into me. “It seems I have my baby back,” she murmured happily, and I could have choked. When the bowl was scraped clean, she brought out the bottle of laudanum and unscrewed the cap. The skull on its stark label leered.

“Do I
have
to take more of that?” My burned arms
screamed “yes,” but I couldn't stay drugged the rest of my life. I had work to do.

“The doctor said it will help you sleep, dear.”

“I've been sleeping most of the day,” I argued. “Couldn't I just wait a while and take it later?”

She looked at me with some misgiving. “Well, all right. We'll wait another hour or so. Can I bring you anything else?” I shook my head and forced my lips to widen into an agreeable smile, and she left.

I could feel those pale faces staring at me.
This is your future
, they seemed to say.
Your present and your future. Why fight it? I
already was. Gritting my teeth against the pain, I lifted one bandaged arm and knocked the photograph flat.

That revealed my manual and Mother's magazine. My dreams and hers. And that did give me another twinge of guilt. One of the Ten Commandments was “Honor thy father and thy mother.” I'd stitched those words onto a sampler when I was just six. But what if your father and your mother were wrong? Just plain wrong. What then?

I did what I'd always done: I galloped.

Mother had loosened my covers enough that now I was able to kick free of them. Keeping my eyes trained on the horse care manual, I gingerly twisted onto my back. Every little movement disturbed the bandages, yanking them across my raw and oozing skin and burning it anew, but I clenched my jaw. Clumsily using my toes for fingers, I wangled the heavy manual toward the edge of the nightstand. Inch by tantalizing inch it came closer.
The
Godey's
was still on top, so when the book finally tumbled onto the bed, the magazine came with it. A very pretty lady corseted into a suffocating S-shape and balanced upon her furled umbrella beckoned me with a smile. I smiled back and kicked the magazine onto the floor.

I hated having to poke my dirty toes under the leather cover, even more to pry apart the gilt-edged pages. But with my hands in bandages, it was the only way. When the manual finally flopped open, my heart quickened. It was like a crack in that door, a door that hadn't been latched quite firmly enough to keep me out. Gathering myself again, I managed to get up onto my knees. The pain almost knocked me back. But like a horse stretching to water, I gradually bent over the book. The words and their knowledge rippled in front of me just as precious as water to the thirsty. It didn't matter that the pages had fallen open to the middle of a chapter, one entitled “A Brief History of the Horse in the Wild.” I began drinking them in.