Firehorse (9781442403352) (23 page)

“What makes it men's work?” I argued.

“Well, for one thing it takes a man's strength to handle horses—”

“I'm stronger than I look,” I shot back, my eyes narrowing. “And besides, it doesn't take strength so much as it takes understanding.”

“Well then, there so much that's—well, unpleasant about it. That poor animal you're keeping alive out there is hideous to look at.”

That struck a nerve. “Like me?” I retorted, holding up a bandaged arm. “Is that what people are going to say about me when my bandages come off? ‘She's hideous to look at'?”

Mother was taken aback. She glanced to Grandmother for help but found her intent on picking the meat from a nut. “Of course not, dear,” she continued on alone. “Your arms can
always be covered up—I mean, I'm sure they'll heal just fine eventually; the scars will fade. But if they don't, you can always wear gloves, and no one—”

I stood, ready to bolt.

“Sit down, Rachel,” Grandmother ordered. Mother opened her mouth but was hushed by the upheld hand of her own mother. “Have you truly thought this through? You have a tendency to go rushing into things, you know. Just how badly do you want to be a veterinary?”

The words came gushing out of me with the force of a spring flood. “It's all I ever think about. It's all I read about, all I dream about. I sneak out to see the Girl every time you leave the house.” I glanced guiltily in Mother's direction.

She returned a wry smile. “Do you think I don't know that? I've been scrubbing the muddy footprints off the stairs for close to two months now.”

“I'm sorry.” I blushed even as I charged on. “I know I'd be a good one. I understand horses; I know what they're thinking and what they're feeling. And I've studied hard. Even Mr. Stead told me once that I know more than most horsemen in Boston.” Turning to Grandmother, I said, “From the moment I saw that foal being born—you were there, remember?—when it breathed on my hands, I've felt certain that this is what J was born to do.” Whether from the heat of the oven or the heat from my words, I felt my face flush even hotter. It all sounded so foolish here in the middle of the night. I slumped in frustration.

She continued shelling nuts. “God speaks to us in mysterious
ways, even when we're not listening. I felt a little inspired myself that morning. You should have been there, Nora.”

Mother took on a wistful air. “I guess I missed quite an event,” she said softly, all the while looking at me. “Babies can do that to you.” She reached over and shook my knee. “But … a veterinary? That's such awfully dirty work!”

“Yes, it is,” I answered, remembering Emilyn's horror at my hands. “And yet … I simply love it. I love the idea of helping sick horses.”

“You always did have a big heart,” she mused. “Mother, do you remember when Rachel brought that moth-eaten baby squirrel home, the one that had fallen out of the oak tree?”

“And took it into her bed with her?” Grandmother let out a belt-busting laugh. “I near jumped out of my skin when those beady eyes looked up at me from her pillow. Curled right up in her hair it was! Gracious!”

They revisited their memories awhile, punctuating the silence with chuckles and sighs.

“You'd upset a lot of people,” Mother said finally.

I stiffened.

“Oh, Nora,” Grandmother began, but it was her turn to be hushed with an upraised hand.

“And it wouldn't be easy, especially with your father's views. But,” she eyed me with a steely determination I'd rarely seen, “nothing worth having ever is.”

I squealed with utter surprise and delight and threw my bandaged arms around her neck.

“I'm not saying I'm
agreeing
to your being a veterinary,” she cautioned. “And I'm not even certain you can do it. But some things that your grandmother and I were discussing earlier tonight have influenced me enough to at least consider it. Now, I assume there's some additional schooling involved.” Mother was already working out the details, bless her.

“Mr. Stead told me it's a three-year course. A while back he said he'd teach me some of the basics, but now I think it would be better if I went to a veterinary school and did it on my own. There's one here in Boston, I know. It's where Mr. Stead studied.”

“Are you certain you wouldn't rather enroll in some upper-level courses at a high school? I've learned of a very respectable one on Essex.” I couldn't blame her, really, for making one last effort.

“I want to attend veterinary school.”

She nodded and the three of us fell silent again. We could plot a course readily enough, but that didn't clear the hurdles.

Teetering toward frustration, I said, “I know Father will say no.”

Mother pursed her lips in a manner that could only be described as sly. “Get your facts in order first—the cost, the admission requirements, if they'll even admit a young woman— and an argument for how your studies will be to his benefit. Then wait for the right time.”

“He's still going to say no.”

“Rachel,” Grandmother scolded, “your mother was pounding
pianos at fourteen. She knows something about getting her way, so listen to her.”

“But how can my studying as a veterinary be to Father's benefit?”

“That is a puzzle,” Mother replied, tapping a finger against her cheek. “We'll have to think on it. Now go on back to bed.”

“We'll both put our thinking caps on,” Grandmother said. “Morning's still a ways off.”

TWENTY-ONE

P
UZZLED DIDN'T EVEN BEGIN TO DESCRIBE HOW
I
FELT
. The very next morning, though, I took out paper and pen and as neatly as I could manage wrote to the Boston College of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery. I politely asked when the next set of classes began and if I, a girl nearly sixteen, could enroll. I carried it personally to the post office to drop it in the box. And then I waited, day after day, for my fate to be decided.

Mother and Grandmother said nothing more about our middle-of-the-night conversation, so I could only trust that they were still wearing their invisible thinking caps. At the dinner table Father continued to debate with Grandmother the events of the day, unaware that she and her daughter, his own wife, were sizing him up for another kind of argument. James confided to us that the discovery of the kerosene can, which Father had immediately featured in one of his columns, seemed to have scared off the firebug. There'd been no suspicious fires in weeks. I kept studying.

By early September I could stand beside the big gray mare, lay my hands on various points of her body, and proudly call out the names of underlying bones and organs and ligaments. The manual had given me an almost magical ability to see right inside her: to see her four-chambered heart, as large as a melon, beating deep in her chest; to count each of her upright vertebrae marching like soldiers along her back; to follow her long latissimus dorsi muscles, “essential for galloping and leaping,” behind her shoulders. She was so much more complex than I had ever imagined. Everyone around me was. Who would have guessed that Mother had a spine or that Grandmother had so many layers to her?

On the morning of September 12, which just happened to be my sixteenth birthday, I received a wonderful gift: My bandages came off for the final time. I have to admit that while I'd previously brushed aside Mother's concern for my arms' appearance, that morning a certain nervousness poked my insides. I didn't know where to look. At the doctor's serious face, frowning slightly as he tussled with my frayed bandages. At the tatters themselves, grimy with sweat and fuzzed with horse hair. Or at Mother, her hand covering her mouth at first, then propped under her chin, then smoothing her hair—a restless moth that couldn't alight, more worried than anyone, it seemed.

When the air splashed like cold water against my unprotected skin, the doctor cocked his head and nodded approvingly, and mother's face didn't show too much disappointment, and so I looked too. The scars were only slightly faded from the
last time, as I had expected. A webbing the color of dried apple peelings spanned both inner arms and thickened into a deeper, mulberry-colored scar on my left wrist. Extralong sleeves, gloves, powder—one glance showed me what was going through Mother's mind. I guess she couldn't help it. What I saw was that I'd be forever twinned with the Girl. And that didn't bother me one bit.

After the doctor left, I had a late birthday breakfast with Mother and Grandmother, who'd fried up some of her wonderful apple fritters especially for the occasion. Everything felt so new against my exposed skin: the silverware cool and hard, the napkin nubby. At first neither one of them would so much as glance at my hands. They each took such pains to look only at my face, in fact, that it became a game of mine to see how many times I could brush back a stray hair with a scarred hand or wipe my lips while exposing a purplish wrist. Grandmother finally caught on and chuckled behind her napkin, but Mother stirred her tea with doubled concentration.

A knock at the door finally rescued her. She returned to the table carrying a fancy, store-bought package in stripes of pale blue and amethyst. Astonishment showed on her face. “Your father has had this sent over from C.F. Hovey's,” she said, setting the package in front of me. “I have no idea what it could be.”

I licked the sugar off my fingers. Suspicion tempered my curiosity. It just wasn't like Father to spend money in a store as high-flown as C.F. Hovey's.

“Well, aren't you going to open it?” Grandmother urged.

Still growing accustomed to my newly functioning hands, I carefully unknotted the ribbon, laid it flat on the table, and lifted the lid. Perfume wafted out with the rustling of tissue. I folded back the tissue to reveal a pair of fawn-colored gloves.

Mother pounced. “Oh, Rachel,” she gasped, “aren't they beautiful?” She draped one across her arm and stroked it as if it were a kitten. Passing its limp mate to Grandmother, she exclaimed, “Six buttons, do you see that?” Grandmother examined it cursorily, nodded, and returned it, looking across the table at me.

I was schooling myself to hold back a flood of ungenerous emotions. I'd never worn gloves back in Wesleydale and I'd resisted wearing them here, giving in only for church. Father knew that. And now, just as if our nighttime conversation had never taken place, Mother smiled at me and said, “You won't have to worry about your hands showing at all.”

I tried to be appreciative. I ran my finger over the row of smooth, lustrous buttons. But it was difficult.

She saw my hesitation. “Your father spent a good sum of money on these,” she warned. “You know he'll be angry if you don't wear them.”

“I'll wear them,” I answered quietly. Grandmother raised an eyebrow.

I wore them that very afternoon, in fact. With those gloves cushioning my hands, I could comfortably grip a pitchfork again and happily began a thorough cleaning of the Girl's stall. James would be glad to be relieved of that duty. And stabbing the soiled
bedding, turning it over and out, was its own therapy. The sweat that trickled down my back felt cleansing.

The Girl was freshly attired as well. New skin, pink as a baby mouse, had finally managed to knit a covering across her face and most of her exposed flesh. Snowy hairs dusted the tender sheathing, though the ridge of her neck, where a mane should have been, was still creased and naked.

As I went poking through the straw around her, she stepped sideways and snorted and shook her head almost playfully. She nibbled at the fork's handle. She bumped her big head against my shoulder, seeking attention. When a gust of wind whistled through the window, filling the carriage shed with the invigorating crispness of coming autumn, she let out a squeal and bucked in place. My heart kicked up a little too, in answer to the call. Time we both got some fresh air.

A week ago, James had brought the Girl's halter and lead from the station for just such a moment as this. I knew I was supposed to wait for his permission, or at least his presence, before handling her, but the Girl's eyes were so bright, so eager, that I couldn't keep her confined another minute.

With my heart thumping a little uneasily, I carefully buckled the halter around her head. Her nickers built in excitement. She started prancing in place and even half-reared, which gave me second thoughts. I was certain I could manage her, though; we had an understanding.

The moment the bar was let down, however, I discovered just how lopsided that understanding was. She charged right
through me and over me, knocking me aside with her shoulder and yanking the rope clean out of my hands. Straight toward the street she trotted, her ears pricked, her whinny piercing my ears. Panic-stricken, I gave chase. All sorts of terrible thoughts crashed through my head: She was going to run away. She was going to collide with traffic. She was going to injure herself again. And it was all going to be my fault.