The Eighty-Dollar Champion - Elizabeth Letts [6]
This time, in spite of the snow, Harry made it home with no problems. Later that evening, the knacker’s truck pulled into the de Leyer driveway. The driver had stopped at Northport first, unloading the unlucky horses into the cramped pen where they would be held crowded together on this bleak winter night, awaiting their sad fate.
Only one horse remained on the truck, and as it rattled into the driveway that night, the weary beast could have looked through the vehicle’s slatted sides at the lights of the house. He would have seen the people come out, in spite of the cold, to greet his arrival. Every sight, every smell, every sound was unfamiliar.
The family stood in the front yard, waiting. The beat-up, nearly empty open truck looked like no place for a horse, especially on a frigid night like this. The burly driver untied the horse’s rope and put the ramp down, then tugged on his tail.
The big gray stumbled as he clambered down, then stood blinking in the light glowing from the windows of the house. At first, nobody said a word. Harry had already forgotten what a sorry state this animal was in—scrawny and underfed, covered with sores, his unkempt mane matted. Even at night, he could see the dark stains, the knocked-up knees and harness rubs.
But when the giant creature turned his head and caught Harry’s eye, he felt it again—that sense of connection.
Harry’s three towheaded children were lined up in a row, bundled up in jackets and boots. Johanna was carrying the youngest, Marty, in her arms. They looked the horse over carefully, saying nothing.
The gray stood still, ears pricked forward, eager as a puppy wanting to be adopted from the pound. Snow drifted down, leaving a dusting across his broad haunches.
The piping voice of Harriet, age four, chimed out through the silence, clear as a bell:
“Look, Daddy, he has snow all over him. He looks just like a snowman.”
Yes, the other children agreed, a snowman.
Green stains from sleeping in his own manure marred his coat, making it hard to imagine that he would ever clean up or ever look anything but dingy. But the children did not see the stains or the shaggy mane. They didn’t notice the untended hooves or the missing shoe. To them, the horse was a white and gleaming wonder. A snowman. That soon became his official name.
It was a hopeful beginning.
Harry grasped the lead rope and Snowman followed along quietly, as though he knew he was home. The big old knacker’s truck rattled out of the driveway and away. Nobody knew if the gelding had any idea of his close brush with death, but he went calmly into a stall and started munching on hay without so much as a skittish look around. Harry had given him one of the box stalls, knowing the horse needed to move and stretch his legs after the long, hard ride in the crowded truck. Now he filled the stall with straw, even adding a little extra to make the bed soft. Before he went back into the house, he slipped off his wooden shoes, leaving them by the door, then turned to look back at the quiet stable. This horse would clean up just fine, and he would be useful. The de Leyer family had just grown by one.
In the de Leyer household, everyone did everything together, so a new horse in the barn was a project for the whole family. The first order of business was to nurse Snowman back to health. It took several sudsings from top to toe to get him clean. The coat that emerged from under the filth was the color horsemen call “flea-bitten” gray: white with small brown flecks. Harry pulled his mane,