Nightwoods - Charles Frazier [54]
—I liked that book. So, maybe.
SALLY STOOD THREE-LEGGED, getting a hind hoof picked. When Maddie finished, she knocked the crud against a fence rail and rose from her stoop, grunting deep from her diaphragm like an old man lifting from his armchair. Dolores and Frank crowded so close around Sally that they nearly got their feet stepped on. They held brushes, impatient to start grooming.
Maddie couldn’t convince them to go with the lay of hair. They scrubbed at Sally’s sides like scraping a wall for painting. With less provocation, for two decades, Sally had nipped many purple bruises into the arms and thighs and necks and scalps of farriers and vets and even people getting too insistent about putting a blanket on her for a frigid night. But she stood still for the children, lowering her head, ears up.
Maddie called out to Luce and Stubblefield on the porch: If all you are is ignorant, Sally gives you a pass.
As they groomed, Maddie sang “Back in the Saddle Again.” Mostly joking with herself, barely louder than a hum. But the second time the chorus rolled around, Dolores and Frank came in very faintly on the Whoopi-ty-aye-ohs. Voices thin and high like ordinary children’s, except their pitch was perfect.
Maddie stopped and said, Didn’t know you two could sing.
They both shut up and worked the brushes.
Sally switched her tail at them when they came in range of her hindquarters. Swept so lightly across the face by Sally’s thin tail, the children almost danced with the sensation. Frank’s hands rose above his shoulders, fluttering like bird wings, as if the power of flight could be the only possible enhancement to the moment.
When Maddie figured Sally couldn’t take much more grooming, she swung the children up by their armpits and put the reins in Dolores’s hands and said slowly, one word at a time, Don’t pull on these. Let ’em droop. Look where you want to go and squeeze with your legs. She’ll go that way, if she feels like it. Curve with the fence, so look left.
Dolores looked at Maddie and then turned her head to the right like she was trying to see what was over her shoulder, which was Frank.
Maddie said, Other left.
Dolores kept looking over her shoulder at Frank, and Maddie snapped her fingers to get Dolores’s attention and made a leftward-curving motion with her hand.
Dolores looked where she needed to, and Frank touched Sally’s sides with his heels. At a slow walk, she went forward, following the fence line of the paddock.
Maddie unhooked the gate chain and went to the porch and very deliberately sat in the space between Stubblefield and Luce, knees drawn up nearly to her chin and the skirt of her cotton print dress stretched tight between the bony joints. They all watched the children ride with high interest. Goldenrod and joe-pye weed and ironweed rose above the top boards of the fence, and the autumn colors of their blooms worked well with one another and with the dry blue sky.
The children came back around to the gate, and when Sally started to slow down, Frank gave her a nudge to keep her moving. She made a slight effort toward a jog, but when the children started bouncing she settled back to an eager walk, with her ears forward. And around they went. It was a great success. Like Dolores and Frank might quit being little glum reavers out to wreck their world.
Luce said, That’s a happy sight.
Maddie witnessed a rare occurrence, Luce’s unedited smiling face. Then Maddie looked at Stubblefield, who was looking at Luce and smiling too.
—How long have you known her? Maddie asked Stubblefield.
—Couple or three weeks, Luce said real quick. She held up three fingers. Preemptive in case Stubblefield wanted to start talking about his teenage memories.
Maddie said, Three whole weeks? Her tone was actorish, pitched to an audience not currently in attendance except inside her head, and meant to convey, at minimum, a couple of things at the same time.
—Yup, Stubblefield said.
Maddie said, I’ve known your family way back. When I was a little girl, I knew a Stubblefield who still had a minié ball in his leg