One Unhappy Horse (11 page)

Mattie shook her head as if to clear it. "I don't know why I keep forgetting," she said. "Valerie quit that job last spring, right after she moved me into the home."

She tilted her head as if she were thinking about something. "It was strange," Mattie said. "First, Valerie told me that she couldn't take good care of me—even though I was the one got dinner on the table every night. And I kind of thought I was taking some care of
her.
Then she up and quits her job when there's nobody home to take care of but herself. Can you figure that one out?"

Jan took a deep breath and dared to ask, "Was she angry when she saw you didn't have the ring?"

"Oh, she had something to say all right. Said she can't believe how careless and forgetful I've become. I told her most of the other old ladies in that house were a lot worse off. Anyway, she put up a sign on the bulletin board in the kitchen. 'Substantial reward for return of emerald ring.' That's 'cause she thinks one of the part-time girls took it. Of course,
we
know where it is." Mattie giggled.

"But what if she finds out somehow?"

"How? I hid the pawn ticket good. That and the I.O.U. paper your mother signed. You'll never guess where."

"Where?" Jan asked.

Mattie was eager to tell her. "In my closet in my high-heel silver shoes that I wore once and never got a chance to wear again. Now, as old as I am, I'd break my neck in them. I should give them away, but they're so pretty. It's fun to take them out and look at them. It makes me remember being young."

"It sounds like you found a good hiding place," Jan said with relief.

"I thought so," Mattie agreed.

Jan told Mattie about her mother's waitressing job.

"I'm sorry she's got to take on more work."

"Me, too," Jan said. "But I'm going to do the evening watering and feeding of the horses for her."

"That's nice," Mattie said. "You're such a good girl. I'm lucky to have a granddaughter like you."

Jan was so startled by the slip, she blurted out, "I'm not your granddaughter, Mattie."

"No, no, I know that." Mattie looked confused. "I meant, if you
were
my granddaughter ... I always wanted my daughter to get married and have children, but she never did, and now she's past fifty. Well, anyway." Mattie shook her head yet again, as if she were trying to clear it. "Oh, me," she said. "Some days my mind's in such a muddle."

That admission frightened Jan. Quietly, she asked, "Mattie, what's my name?" Because the thought that Mattie never used it had leaped out of the back of Jan's mind.

"Your name? Why, it's—I know it, of course. You're my friend. But—it's hard to remember names. Lots of people can't remember names, you know."

Mattie settled her feathers soon enough, but Jan remained disturbed. She'd discomforted her friend—and worse than that, it seemed that Mattie really didn't always know what she was doing.

"Dove!" Jan yelled joyfully as she ran toward his corral Friday afternoon after school. There he stood with his head held high, ears perked toward her, and his eyes alive with interest again. The only bad thing was that he was still standing on three legs. His right front leg was thickly wrapped in bandages.

"How are you feeling?" she asked him. "Better? You're going to feel much, much better soon. And before you know it, you and I'll be trail riding again. We might even get Mom to trailer you over to Sabino Canyon to ride there. Wouldn't that be fun?"

She fussed over him, scratching the underside of his jaw and brushing his mane, checking his hooves for dirt. But she didn't find any. They'd sent him home from the hospital in good shape.

Except that he didn't seem to want to use his leg.

For the next three days, Jan rushed to Dove's corral as soon as she got up, only to find him standing in the tripod position. He was lively from ears to body, but reluctant to move his feet even to get to treats. She kept trying to follow doctor's orders and walk him, but Dove seemed convinced that he was a three-legged horse. He
acted
like a three-legged horse as he hobbled reluctantly along while she tugged at his lead. She coaxed him with words and with treats, and even, when she got frustrated, with scoldings, but he stubbornly refused to use his right front leg.

"You want me to get behind you and push?" she asked him. "Wouldn't that look silly? Wouldn't you be embarrassed?"

He muttered at her obligingly, but whether he was agreeing or not, the result was the same. She was still trying to figure out how to make him put weight on his right front leg on Thursday when Lisa came home from school with her. Lisa's parents had said they might consider letting her lease a horse as a Christmas present, since Mom had quoted them a reasonable price.

"So I'd better meet Dove to see if he's the right horse for me," Lisa had said.

"Well, you can't ride him for months or maybe never, the way he's acting," Jan told her. "Mom says he probably expects it to hurt if he puts any weight on the leg that got fixed."

"I still want to meet him," Lisa had said.

The two girls had gone straight from the bus stop to Dove's corral.

"Boy, he's big," Lisa said when she saw Dove. "I guess moving him is like the joke about letting a two-ton gorilla sit wherever he wants. I mean, you can't pick him up. Unless you had a crane or something. What are you going to do?"

"Beats me. I've run out of ideas," Jan said. "You don't have any, do you?"

"How about if you scared him?"

Jan looked at Lisa doubtfully. "Well, we could try it."

The only scary thing Jan could think of was banging on a metal pail. She found one in a corner of the barn. If she hit it with a shovel, it should clang loud enough to spook even a horse as unflappable as Dove.

"We'd better try it in the arena, where he's got more room to run," Jan said. It took a while for her to get Dove to hobble into the arena. She had Lisa follow with the pail and shovel, staying back behind Dove, where he couldn't see her. At Jan's signal, Lisa banged away so loudly that horses' heads appeared over pipe fences and out barn stall windows all over the ranch. Dove, however, merely looked calmly over his shoulder to get a better view of the pail.

A horse neighed as if asking what was going on. Jan had to laugh as Dove nonchalantly pushed at the pail with his nose, still careful not to put any weight on his right front foot.

"I guess he's not very scareable," Lisa said.

"No, that's one of the good things about him. He doesn't spook easy."

Jan remembered that she'd asked her mother to buy some
watermelon. Watermelon rind was one of Dove's favorite treats, and he never got any out of season when it became expensive. She took Lisa back to the casita. Sure enough, Mom had stowed a small hunk of plastic-wrapped watermelon in the refrigerator. Lisa looked around the tiny kitchen and living room space without commenting.

"Want some watermelon?" Jan asked.

"No, save it for Dove if he likes it so much," Lisa said. "Where do you sleep?"

"With my mother."

"I have my own room," Lisa said.

"You're lucky," Jan said.

"No, you are. You have your own horse," Lisa said. They both laughed and returned to the arena. When they tried to tempt Dove with the rind, he tossed his head and hopped toward them eagerly on three legs.

Disgusted, Jan climbed up the pipe rail fence and flopped forward over it like a rag doll.

"What's with you?" Lisa asked. "If you're trying to hang yourself, you're wrong end up."

"Very funny," Jan said. "I just don't know what to do with him." She stood straight up on the round bottom rung with her back toward Dove. "I could try lying down and playing dead," she said. "One time when Dove and I were trail riding, I took a rest by a stream, and Dove came over to sniff me. I guess he wanted to see if I was still alive."

"Now you're going to lie down in the
dirt
for that dumb
horse that doesn't know he's cured? What if he decides to use your chest as a footrest?"

Lisa was right. It wouldn't be safe to risk having Dove step on her. "Well, you think of something, then," she said in frustration.

Lisa climbed the fence and sat on the top rail next to Jan. "When do I get to meet this grandmother-friend of yours?"

"Mattie? We could go over there and see her anytime. She's always at home. Unless she takes a walk. And then she might stop by here." It occurred to Jan that she hadn't seen Mattie since she'd gone over to report that Dove's operation had been a success. Mattie had said she was coming by when Dove got back from the hospital, but she hadn't come. Why not? Jan asked herself.

She was about to suggest they go to the big house right away when Lisa whispered, "Stay still. He's coming."

Sure enough Dove was ambling toward them, a three-legged amble, but at least he was moving on his own. He stretched his neck out and sniffed at the back of Jan's head.

"Now what? You think I stink?" Jan asked him over her shoulder.

Dove jerked his head up and did his lip-curling grin.

"I know my hair needs washing," Jan said. "But I didn't think it was that bad."

Lisa giggled and said, "You and that horse are a comedy team. I didn't know horses could smile."

"Horses are a lot more human than you'd think by
looking at them," Jan said. She climbed down off the fence and pulled off Dove's halter. "I might as well leave him out here while we go see Mattie. He might forget about his leg and start moving by himself."

"I wouldn't bet on it," Lisa said. But it was worth a try and an easy thing to do.

On the way to the big house, Jan described the women who lived there. "They're really old, but they're still people, you know? I mean, just because they're old doesn't mean they're not like us anymore. I mean, they're not like you and me exactly, but—"

"But what?" Lisa was frowning.

"Well, they're individuals," Jan finished lamely.

"Isn't everybody?" Lisa asked.

Jan couldn't think of a reply to that. It shamed her to remember that not so long ago she hadn't thought of the very old as individuals.

Amelia was sitting in the shade of the ramada with her face turned to the mountains quite as if she could still see them. "That's Mattie's roommate," Jan whispered to Lisa. "She's mostly blind."

When they were standing in front of Amelia, the old woman turned toward them inquiringly. Jan said, "Hi, Amelia. Remember me? I'm Mattie's friend, Jan. I'm here with a girl from my class in school. She came to meet my horse." Amelia's blindness obliged Jan to fill in the picture with words. She stopped and waited awkwardly for a response.

Amelia said, "Hello, there. Are you here to see Mattie?"

Jan nodded, then remembered and said, "Yes."

"Well, she's gone. They took her to the nursing home." From the gloom in Amelia's tone, it sounded as if she'd said Mattie had been taken to a funeral home.

Jan gasped. "No!"

"Last weekend. She didn't get to take her things. I suppose they'll come back for them. I'm alone in the room now—for a while, anyway."

"But, Amelia, why did—What happened? Did she get sick or something?" Jan asked.

"You'll have to ask Stella. Nobody tells me anything." Amelia took out a tissue and blew her nose. "About the only thing Mattie and I agreed on was we had to keep out of that place somehow. I don't know what happened to her. All I know is they took her away." Suddenly, Amelia's cheeks crumpled and her long, thin fingers flew to screen her face.

Jan reached out to touch her shoulder in sympathy, but the tall woman shook her off in an unspoken wish to be left alone.

Quietly, Jan led Lisa into the house to look for Stella. Another attendant was there instead, an owlish lady who said she was new and that she was filling in for Stella, who'd taken a day off. When Jan asked her what had happened to Mattie, the woman said, "I don't know one of them from the other yet." Again she said, "I'm new."

"What are you so upset about?" Lisa asked as they
walked away from the big house. "You look like you're going to cry."

"I've got to get Mattie out," Jan said. "It's my fault she's there. Her daughter thinks Mattie's gotten senile now because Mattie told her she lost the ring."

"I don't get you," Lisa said.

"If you're really mental or half dead, they put you in the nursing home, and then you die," Jan said. "At least that's what Amelia and Mattie think happens."

"So your grandmother-friend's dying?"

"Not if I get to her fast enough," Jan said. "I'll make them let me take her home with me. Mom will understand. We can get a folding cot and fix it up for her at night in the living room."

"Yeah, I'll bet!" Lisa said as if she thought Jan was dreaming.

But later, with Lisa standing silently beside her in the shed where Mom was hanging up bridles, Jan told her mother what had been done to Mattie. "Could we bring her to live with us?"

Mom chewed her lip for a minute, then said, "Well, we don't have any room or any time or any money, but ... Seems like we ought to do something if we're the cause of her trouble. Let me think about it."

"Maybe I should tell Mattie's daughter what really happened to the ring and that we're going to get it back," Jan said.

"Before we do anything," Mom said, "we had better go over to that nursing home and see what's what."

"Let's go right now."

"No," Mom said. "Right now I've got to go help the farrier shoe our prime boarder. He can't handle that horse alone. We'll go tomorrow."

"I'll stay home from school so we can go in the morning," Jan said.

"No, you won't," Mom said. "I can't leave the ranch until I finish my morning chores. What we'll do is, I'll pick you up at school after your lunch hour, and we'll go from there."

"But how do you know which nursing home she's in?" Lisa asked.

"It's got to be the one that's owned by the same organization that bought our house," Mom said. "It's where their head office is, near the old shopping mall in the middle of Tucson."

Lisa's mother honked for her from the dirt road. "I've got to go, Jan," Lisa said. "I'll see you in school. Meanwhile, if I can do anything, call me."