Ivy Takes Care (11 page)

Billy Joe put the saddle neatly back on its rack under Ruben’s old silks in the tack-room closet. As soon as his chores were done, Billy Joe left for his mysterious mission on Spooner Summit.

One day in December, as he took off on Texas’s back, Ivy said, “I’ll bet I know what you’re after, Billy Joe. You’re looking for that old silver mine they closed up when Virginia City went broke.”

Billy Joe just smiled and gave Texas a little flap on the neck with his reins to speed him up the mountain.

Ivy could not figure out why Billy Joe would go hunting for an old mine in the cold of winter. And if he were, he’d need just a shovel, not an ax.

The day school closed for Christmas break, Ivy rode the bus, as always, out to the last stop.

On foot she led Andromeda on her usual walk around the paddock. Tumbleweed skittered in big tangled balls across the paddock. Ruben waited in the stable door because the wind hurt his eyes. Still, he “watched” in his own way. Ivy gave Andromeda no more than twenty minutes of exercise, so she wouldn’t get all sweated up in the late December wind. According to
The Home Vet,
the slightest chill could cause a race horse’s muscles to go into spasm. There was always something to look for: colic, muscle spasms, heaves, dark urine. You name it, they got it.

“You’re a big baby,” she said to the filly when she brought her in. Ruben’s hand waited in the air, at just the right level to grasp the bridle while Ivy dismounted. Then he tucked Andromeda away for the night.

“Now I must go to take care of my
abuelos
and
abuelas,
” Ruben said. “My grandpas and grandmamas.”

As always, Ruben got his bus exactly on time.

Snow had been forecast for that evening. Ivy gave the paddock horses extra hay. She broke up a big clot of ice in their tub and refilled it. The cat got an extra piece of chicken breast Ivy had saved from her lunch. The bunnies got carrots and half a head of lettuce too old for Ivy’s mother to keep.

Ivy checked everything twice to make sure that, big and little, the details were covered in the stable. Then she slung her book bag onto her back, went out to the highway, and waited by the mailbox for the mail truck to come by and pick her up. She stamped her feet in the cold and watched as the dark gathered over the mountains and blacked out everything in the valley.

Ivy spotted the mail truck’s familiar headlights rising a mile down Old Creek Road. Out of habit, she turned to double-check that everything was right at the Montgomery stable and saw a light blink on!

Heart pumping, Ivy ran back up the drive. This meant she would surely miss her ride. The mailman only pulled up if he saw her standing on the road. She would have to call her father to come get her, which he didn’t like doing. But she had no choice. There was no question that someone was in the stable with Andromeda.

Ivy reached the stable. Winded, she threw open the stable door, and peered in. Someone called her name, and there stood Billy Joe Butterworth, looking for all heaven like he’d just seen a ghost.

“Billy Joe, what are you doing here on a Friday?” asked Ivy, her breath coming hard in steamy clouds on the dark winter air. “You made me miss my ride home!”

“Ivy,” Billy Joe gasped. “I’ve got big trouble. Get a flashlight!”

Ivy grabbed a flashlight and followed Billy Joe into the night. He raced ahead of her, up and up a twisting path onto Spooner Summit.

The path was nearly invisible in the moonless dark. It wound around and over rock outcroppings, chinquapin bushes, and spiky scrub cedars that could rip the shirt off your back. About half a mile up the trail, Billy Joe stopped at a clearing. He looked right and left, getting his bearings in the dark and looking for something. Ivy flashed her light from tree to tree. Then she saw Billy Joe’s horse, Texas, leaning against a live oak, breath coming hard. Billy Joe unwound his reins from a low limb where he’d tied him. Ivy went up to Texas and shone the light up and down his head. A gasping noise came out of the horse’s mouth. His face looked weirdly heavy.

“What happened?” asked Ivy.

“Snakebite! Rattler!” said Billy Joe. “He put his nose down and the snake just bit him. I killed it.”

“Rattler?” said Ivy. “Billy Joe, there’s no rattlers out in December. They don’t come out until spring, when it warms up.”

“This one did!” said Billy Joe.

Beneath a twisted manzanita stump by the trailside writhed the beheaded body of a six-foot diamondback rattlesnake. It was half alive, whipping back and forth in the night. A big drop of sweat ran down Ivy’s backbone. Snakes were the only critters she didn’t like, and she really didn’t like them at all.

Texas’s face had swelled up to twice its usual size. “Cut the bridle off him. He’s gonna suffocate,” said Ivy. Billy Joe got out his knife and sliced through Texas’ noseband.

“Now hold this flashlight,” Ivy said. She put her hands on either side of Texas’s head and listened carefully to his breathing. “He’s having trouble getting air. Let’s get him down to the Montgomerys’ stable. He’s gonna need a shot of antivenom, fast. We’ll have to call Dr. Rinaldi.”

They led Texas slowly down the trail, Billy Joe carrying Texas’s saddle so there was less weight on the exhausted horse. Holding her flashlight, Ivy guided Billy Joe and Texas away from the snake, down the curling path. The horse seemed not to know what was happening or where he was. Texas snorted, pulling air through his mouth. He went slower and slower, stumbling on the loose, stony path, unable to see or breathe.

“Soon as we see the light of the stable, I’ll run ahead to the house and the phone,” said Ivy. “Do you think you can get him into the spare stall?”

“I’ll try,” said Billy Joe.

As soon as the stable light came into view at the end of the trail, Ivy gave the flashlight to Billy Joe and sprinted like a deer toward the dark house. Freezing hands shaking, she fumbled for the key to the main house, then let herself in. She prayed the Montgomerys were not on a six-family party line, but the phone was not busy.

Dr. Rinaldi had just left his office. Irma, his secretary, said she’d see if she could flag him down in the parking lot. Time ticked by on the Inca watch, second by second. Finally, Dr. Rinaldi came on the line.

“Ivy, what’s wrong?”

“I’m out at the Montgomery place,” she said. “Billy Joe’s horse, Texas, has been bit on the nose by a rattler.”

“In winter?” said Dr. Rinaldi. “Are you sure?”

“Believe me, I saw ’im. A six-footer, right on the trail,” said Ivy.

“Okay, but it’ll take me twenty minutes to get there,” said Dr. Rinaldi with a sigh. “In the meantime, the horse’s airway could become blocked completely by the swelling. I need you to go into the tack room, Ivy. Get the stable hose out. Take a shears. You’ll find one somewhere in that big drawer. Cut two nine-inch lengths of hose. Jam ’em into the horse’s nostrils to open his airway until I can get there. Don’t worry that the hose is too big — a horse has big nasal tubes to the lungs. You’ve got to really push the hose up. D’ya hear?”

“I hear.”

“Can you do it?”

“I’ll try.”

“That’s my girl!”

After he hung up and the empty telephone line buzzed in her ear, Ivy felt keenly alone.

In the stable, Billy Joe had led Texas into an empty stall next to Andromeda’s. Texas’s front legs buckled. Slowly, the horse slid down the side of the stall and lay on the floor. Next door, Andromeda stamped and whinnied.

“Spit that gum out, Billy Joe,” shouted Ivy. “Your chewing and snapping make Andromeda nervous. You know that.” Ivy’s fingers fumbled on the freezing hose. It took long minutes to find the shears. Then she found she didn’t have the strength to cut through the reinforced rubber.

“Billy Joe, can you cut me two nine-inch lengths of this hose?” said Ivy. “Your hands are stronger.”

Billy Joe had to put the heel of his boot on the shears to get the blades to cut through the stiff, frozen rubber. He swore. Ivy ignored him. She had a terrible certainty that he had somehow invited this snake trouble, but this was no time to ask.

The swelling on Texas’s face increased by the minute. His head was a deformed thing in Ivy’s hands, like a nightmare horse from some Greek myth she’d seen in a book.

“Easy, boy,” Ivy said. “Easy.”

The horse tried to lift his head.

“Hold his neck, now,” said Ivy. Billy Joe stretched his body over the horse’s neck and face so she’d have a clear shot at the nose. Ivy’s hands barely managed to hold the end of the dirty green hose. With one push, she inserted it deep into his right nostril. Then she pushed the other one into the left side. Texas lifted his head. His eyes were glassy and, as quickly as he had looked up, his head dropped back onto the cold floor. But he could breathe again. He snorted air into his lungs in deep drafts that burbled as the air went up the artificial openings.

Billy Joe took off his wool jacket and tucked it under Texas’s head. If the horse was a little more comfortable, he didn’t show it. His big body twitched and shook from cold and shock.

“About ten more minutes now,” said Ivy, checking her watch.

Billy Joe’s face was as white as a candle. His eyes, fierce, scanned the bit of road visible through the stable window. If there was a beam that he and Ivy could have sent to Dr. Rinaldi to get him there one minute faster, they would have used it.

Texas was quiet now, yet Andromeda still fidgeted. It was well known that horses didn’t like the smell of snakes, but the snake was far behind them, back up on the trail.

Ivy rubbed Texas’s neck and whispered a chatter of little sounds into his ears to reassure him, and maybe reassure Andromeda, too. A cat stretched on the cobwebby windowsill, then turned and leaped down to visit them. Ivy breathed the cold and dusty stable air in and out, in and out, and listened that Texas was breathing, too. Her knees froze on the stone floor next to him. She didn’t care. Andromeda still stamped and huffed.

Billy Joe had pitched Texas’s saddle and blanket into the corner of the stable. Ivy noticed with mild interest that the leather saddlebag lay awkwardly beneath the blanket but that the ever-present ax and shovel were missing. Ivy’s focus then shifted back to the road outside, and she willed Dr. Rinaldi’s truck to turn the corner and fill their anxious darkness with the light of his kindly hands and voice.

Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw the leather saddlebag move.
I must be tired,
she thought. And then it moved again.

“Billy Joe, what is in that infernal saddlebag over there?” asked Ivy.

“Nothing’s in it,” Billy Joe’s voice squeaked. “Leave it.” He stood and went over to the corner where the blanket and bag lay.

Ivy spoke between her clenched teeth at Billy Joe. “There is something moving in that bag, Billy Joe, and you better tell me what it is, because Andromeda smells it and she’s going to kick down her stall. I don’t like this one bit, Billy Joe.”

“You’re imagining things is all,” said Billy Joe. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll go put the saddlebag outside.”

But even Billy Joe was not prepared to have the leather bag buck and flip in his hands. Out of the saddlebag and onto the stable floor spilled a five-foot rattlesnake, its head not quite severed. The jaws spanned open and then snapped shut, again and again, while the body writhed.

Ivy screamed. Andromeda’s hooves beat against her water bucket and feed crib.

“I thought it was dead!” Ivy shouted. “I saw it up there on the trail!”

“This is a different one!” said Billy Joe.

“Get the fire ax off the wall behind the tack room, Billy Joe!” she yelled. “Cut that snake’s head off before it bites Texas again, or me or you or Andromeda!”

The rattler’s body was as big around as a weight lifter’s arm. It switched and levitated off the stable floor. Billy Joe backed away from it toward the tack room.

“Hurry up!” said Ivy. “Andromeda’s going to break down her stall door any minute!”

Billy Joe hesitated. “I’m saving the skin!” he shouted. “You can get five bucks a dried skin from boot makers in Reno. If the head’s attached, you get a buck more.”

“
Your
head’s not gonna be attached if that snake isn’t dead in two seconds!” shouted Ivy. Still Billy Joe didn’t move.

Andromeda butted the top hinge off her stall door.

Ivy sprang to her feet, closed Texas’s stall door on the way, and grabbed the Montgomerys’ rusty fire ax from the wall. She flew back, to within five feet of the snake, and brought the blade down flat on its snapping head. Then she slammed the sharp edge of the ax blade through its writhing vertebrae until it stopped moving.

“You wrecked the skin!” yelled Billy Joe.

“How can you talk about a stupid old snakeskin, Billy Joe, when your daddy’s horse is about dying? That what I’d like to know,” said Ivy, tossing the ax in a corner. “Just wait and see how wrecked you are with your pop and mom if Texas doesn’t make it.”

Billy Joe stood with his hands in his pockets, looking completely stupid.

Ivy gave him a disgusted snort and went over to Andromeda’s stall where she tried talking the horse down. She brought her hand, full of sweet feed, under Andromeda’s muzzle to distract her. Andromeda shook herself but stopped stamping and backing around her stall.