Ivy Takes Care (9 page)

Ivy lay on her bed with her hands folded under her chin. She listened to the night sounds: the tree frogs and cheeping cicadas mixing their voices with Cora Butterworth’s, talking on the phone to her sister through the late-summer night.

In the morning, Ivy overheard Billy Joe in conversation with his mother.

“Let me read you this, son,” Billy Joe’s mother said. “ ‘Dear Mrs. Butterworth, I know how hard it is to pay for the medicines we use to save animals’ lives. I am going to forgo all charges for the recent porcupine incident. But it would be nice if I could have a few hours of help cleaning up the premises here at the animal hospital at the end of the day. Sincerely, Bob Rinaldi.’ Every day till Christmas, Billy Joe,” said his mother. “That’ll learn you to be careful of other people’s property.”

Hearing this through her window, Ivy smiled for the first time since Inca had left. She knew no list of chores was going to teach Billy Joe Butterworth a thing he didn’t want to know, but Billy Joe wasn’t all bad. He’d stayed out all that terrible night looking for Inca. He’d found Inca and carried him for miles off that mountain. So she figured she’d pitch in and help Billy Joe at Dr. Rinaldi’s. Taking care of animals wasn’t her idea of hard work. And who knew where it might lead?

“I
vy,” Annie warned her in a whisper.
“Don’t wear that new dog watch of yours in school. Leave it here in your locker. Wear it at home but not in front of you-know-who.”

“Why not?” Ivy asked.

Annie squirmed uncomfortably in front of their newly assigned hall lockers. “Because . . .” Annie started. “Just because it looks like a boy’s watch. It isn’t a stylish watch at all. And certain people are going to notice.”

“Who?” asked Ivy.

“You know perfectly well who,” snapped Annie. “Take it off, Ivy. I don’t want to spend the whole year with MLM and her friends iceberging us.”

But Ivy did not take off her Inca watch. Later, as they were filing into the lunchroom, Mary Louise Merriweather shook her blond curls dizzily and presented every girl with a challenge. Who could get a Star Crazy watch like hers and wear it to school the next day? Would all the different-colored jewels and wristbands make it into the sixth grade?

“Those Star Crazies are the fakest things I’ve ever seen!” Ivy said to Annie as they unpacked their lunches.

“Shhhh,” said Annie quickly. “MLM is listening.”

And so she was. Mary Louise sauntered by on the way to her popular girls’ lunch table. “Got a new watch, hunh, Ivy? Look at that. A dog! Isn’t that cute. Look, girls!”

“You shouldn’t have said anything, Ivy,” Annie scolded. “Now it’s too late.”

“Too late?” Ivy asked. “Too late for what?” But Ivy knew. Mary Louise could create a little warm heaven for whomever she blessed and she could just as quickly assign you to Siberia. Ivy was now in Siberia, and Annie didn’t want to be there with her.

Mary Louise’s best friend, Jennifer, strolled over to the table where Annie and Ivy were eating. “Hey, Annie Evans!” said Jennifer sweetly, “Come and see this!”

Annie stood. “I told you you should have taken the dog watch off,” she whispered, and wrapping up the second half of her sandwich, Annie followed Jennifer to the popular girls’ lunch table.

As easily as being snatched into the doors of a flying saucer, Annie walked up the ladder that had been extended down to her and entered Mary Louise heaven.

It was no good telling anybody about this. Ivy’s mom and dad would just sigh and say Annie would soon forget about whatever foolishness went on at school and be herself again. Ivy knew this was not going to happen.

Fridays were paydays for Ivy. She got a silver dollar a week from Dr. Rinaldi for her assistance at his clinic. Sometimes in the evening, Ivy clinked the big dollar coins out of their envelope and counted them out on the table. Her mother found her doing this one night after supper.

“Penny for your thoughts, honey,” she had said.

“Just counting,” said Ivy.

“We don’t see Annie,” said her mother. “We haven’t seen her since school began.”

“Annie,” said Ivy, “is taking Eastern show-riding lessons three times a week in Reno. Her mother drives her. There’s some indoor ring there with jumps and hedges and stuff. I think she got into it at camp this summer. They do English riding and show jumping there.” Ivy said nothing about Annie’s new friends.

Her mother sniffed and cast around her chair for her sewing box. “That kind of horse show business’ll run you into the poor house sooner than a one-arm bandit,” she said, taking out a sock that needed darning, holding its ragged toe up to the light, and inserting the darning egg. “Of course, Annie’s people don’t have to worry about such things as money.”

Annie had been invited to sit at lunch permanently with Mary Louise and her gang. Each day Ivy watched her friend breathe in the Mary Louise laughing gas and then, after school was over, quickly disappear into another world. Ivy was too shy to ask Annie if the tourmaline ring ever made it in the mail to Camp Allegro.

Ivy rode alone to the animal hospital after school. Without a bike of his own, Billy Joe had managed only three work days in September and October combined to pay off his debt to Dr. Rinaldi. In the end, Cora Butterworth paid up Inca’s bill, because the trouble of driving Billy Joe to work and fetching him again wasn’t worth it.

But Ivy never stopped going. At the vet’s, Ivy cleaned up the dog runs and the cat boxes. She fed the animals, watered them, and exercised the ones that needed it. She liked the work. She was allowed to take temperatures, remove stitches with a tiny pliers, and change IV bottles. Dr. Rinaldi had promised that in a month’s time, she could assist at a spaying surgery.

One day in November, Ivy stopped at Dr. Rinaldi’s examining room before she left the vet’s building. Someone’s collie was on the table, whimpering about an ear examination. Ivy hopped up to sit on the table and took the dog’s head in her hands, holding him steady for the otoscope.

Dr. Rinaldi asked her, “Ivy, did you ever hear of the Mexican Derby at the Agua Caliente track down in Tijuana?”

“I’ve heard of the Agua Caliente track,” said Ivy. She loved all things horse and so read the track news in the sports pages of the
Reno Gazette Journal.

“Filly named Andromeda beat the big champion, Seabiscuit, by four lengths at Agua Caliente some years back. That’s the race they call the Mexican Derby. Not quite Santa Anita or the Preakness, but it’s a big race all the same.”

“Seabiscuit! He’s the most famous horse since Man o’ War!” said Ivy. “Seabiscuit was famous before I could read the papers!”

“Well, Andromeda beat him by three lengths. She was going to be the best filly champion of all time,” said Dr. Rinaldi.

“What happened to Andromeda?” asked Ivy, supposing this story might not have such a happy ending.

“Apparently she stumbled at the finish line in her next race. Threw her jockey and nearly killed him. She got a bowed tendon. Had to quit the track.”

“Can a bowed tendon be fixed?” asked Ivy.

Dr. Rinaldi squirted yellow ointment into the collie’s ear. The dog shook her head violently, spraying ointment all over Ivy and the vet.

He answered, squirting more ointment into the other ear. “Sometimes the leg comes back healthy. Sometimes not. Now she’s too old to race again. That leg’ll always be a little hinky.”

“How do you know all about this, Dr. Rinaldi?” asked Ivy, massaging the base of the collie’s ears so that the medicine would spread out inside.

“A few years ago, family named Montgomery out at Spooner Lake found her at an auction. The Montgomerys buy down-and-out off-track horses, and she sure was down-and-out. They bought Andromeda. She’s fine now!” Dr. Rinaldi added. “She’s my patient.”

“I’m glad for her,” said Ivy. She hated animal stories that ended badly. “What happened to the jockey?”

“She came with him,” said Dr. Rinaldi. “Name is Ruben Velez. After he got out of the hospital, he followed Andromeda. Auction to auction. Wherever she lived, he lived. But Ruben needs a little help from time to time. The Montgomerys called me up last night. They have to go east for a while. Their daughter’s baby is being born. I recommended you to help Ruben out with their five pasture horses, Ivy. Interested?”

“Can’t Ruben see to the pasture horses?” asked Ivy.

“Well, they need water and hay.”

“But what about Ruben? Can’t he do that?” asked Ivy.

“Ruben has another job that takes him from the farm for a good chunk of the evenings. He’s also blind.”

“Blind!”

“He lost his helmet in that race and a couple of horses stepped on his head. He’s lucky to be alive.”

Ivy held the trembling collie’s head under her arm and made clucking noises to calm him. “Can Ruben walk and all? Is he in a wheelchair?” she asked.

“He’s fine,” said Dr. Rinaldi. “In the day Ruben cares for Andromeda, but then he takes the bus to his night job at the old folks’ home.”

“Does Ruben still ride?”

“Oh, yes. He says Andromeda is like a mother to him.”

“Spooner Lake,” said Ivy. “That’s way off west of here. It’s ten miles or more on Old Creek Road. It’ll be dark by the time I get there. I don’t think my folks’d let me bike it.”

“Yes, but there’s a school-bus route out there. On weekends if you rode over on horseback instead of biking, you could go over the mountain and shortcut it,” said Dr. Rinaldi. “The holiday season ain’t the divorce season. You got Mirabel and Texas and that old paint mare just standin’ around eating hay. You could get over to Spooner Lake on Mirabel in no time if you cut across Mule Canyon.”

Ivy had to agree. The Mule Canyon trail was her dad’s favorite guest ride. Even the Never-Been-on-a-Horse-Befores could manage it.

“Not only that,” said Dr. Rinaldi. “The Montgomerys’ll pay a buck a day. Good money for your vet-school savings, if you ask me. More’n I can pay you!”

“What would they want me to do?” asked Ivy.

“You gotta throw five flakes of hay into the pasture every day and make sure the horse water in their trough isn’t frozen. Rabbits need feed and water. Barn cat, too. Chickens need their feed, and their eggs collected. Lot of busy work.”

“Dollar a day? I’ll do it,” said Ivy.

Ivy presented the Montgomerys’ request to her parents after the supper dishes were done, when they were in good moods.

“Honey,” said Ivy’s dad, “you can take Mirabel over the mountain, no problem, but we don’t want you going alone as far as Spooner Lake.”

Her mother added, “It’s dark at four o’clock nowadays. You gotta go in the early morning, and you gotta have company on that ride over the mountains.”

Ivy knew who the company would have to be. She didn’t want to go over the mountain with Billy Joe. She didn’t want to share her pay with Billy Joe, who was sure to demand half her salary. She would have to say no to the Montgomerys.

“But Ivy, you come so well recommended by Dr. Rinaldi,” said Mrs. Montgomery encouragingly on the telephone. “How about this? Weekdays after school, you could ride as far out as our place at Spooner Lake on the number-six school bus. The school bus goes right by our mailbox. After you feed and water the animals, you could catch a ride back to town with the mailman; he never gets out to our ranch much before five in the evening anyway. I’ll speak to him and see if he can pick you up and bring you home on his way back to town each weekday. Then on the weekends, you can ride your horse back and forth in the daylight.”