TWO

AS SOON AS I RODE ONTO OUR PLACE, I SLID OFF PEACHES and tied her in the barn. I didn’t see Mother anywhere, so I rushed into the chicken pen, slowing just enough to keep them from squawking alarm, and quickly gathered up a dozen eggs in the waiting basket. I realized I was holding my breath. I ran to the house, opened the back door, and peeked inside. The kitchen was empty. I set the basket on the table and hurried back to the barn. I gulped another breath. Pausing at the doorway, I yanked up some handfuls of thick-stemmed weeds and heaved them into a conspicuous pile in the sunlight. I glanced around again, then dived into the cool barn and exhaled in a whoosh. My chest heaved. Finally I could breathe.

In Mr. Moore’s science class we’d learned that all of Earth’s creatures need oxygen to survive. In a process called respiration, we breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. Creatures that live on land get their oxygen from the air. Creatures that live underwater get theirs from dissolved oxygen. Well, I got my oxygen from horses. From riding them and touching them and listening to them and learning from them.

Having bought a little time, I belatedly began grooming Peaches, my fleet-footed racehorse, my winner. I pulled the burrs out of her fetlock hairs and scratched her underbelly and combed her mane until it lay as smooth and silky as the fringe on Grandmother’s shawl. I gently traced the whorled hairs on her forehead and wiped the dust from the velvet plain beneath her eyes. She consented to my fussing for only so long before shaking her head free and snorting with the force of the west wind.

Coated in a sticky mist, I laughed and snorted myself. “Oh, thank you. Thank you so very much. Well, if you’ve had enough grooming, your ladyship, let’s have a look at your feet.”

Trading the brush for a hoof pick, I sidled up to her near foreleg. Peaches responded to my pinch by agreeably lifting her foot, which I balanced across my knee. She’d had a bout with thrush the past few weeks, but as I bent close and sniffed, I couldn’t smell any of the black rot. I couldn’t see any either. I scraped each side of the V-shaped crevice and went on to the other three hooves, finding lingering signs of thrush in only the off hind one. Dutifully I soaked a small rag in the turpentine I’d bought at the hardware store and packed it into the questionable hoof. Then I led Peaches to the rain barrel for a long, slobbery drink and returned her to her stall. While she munched her hay, I took up a pitchfork and combed through the straw bedding until it was clean and dry enough for any human guest.

When she was finished, Peaches gave a good shake and cocked one hip in preparation for a nap. I didn’t want to leave, not yet, and rested my forehead against hers. “Tell me what you’re thinking,” I whispered.

That I love you, I imagined her nickered response. That you bring me everything I need.

I stroked her cheeks and tugged on her nostrils and braided and unbraided her thin red forelock. With swallows flitting in and out of the wide door, swirling the dust motes suspended in the golden air, Peaches and I shared the silence and each other’s company.

There’s no better place than a stable, I’ve found. It’s the only place with solid footing. When I’m standing beside a horse, I feel that I’m neither girl nor boy, child nor adult, strong nor weak. I’m accepted just as I am. And there, and only there, I can breathe.

For the rest of the day I tore through enough chores to keep Mother from heaving any of her sighs, at least in front of me. I even managed to mend and wash out my chemise, and I ironed my sash for church. The day was clear blue sailing. Until supper brought a rumbling of thunder.

James had returned from making deliveries for Mr. Hubbard’s feed store, taking his seat just before we said grace. Even though he’d stopped to wash up at the kitchen sink, he still smelled warmly of sweat and dust and hay. A burnt redness tinged his nose and cheekbones. His easy, lopsided smile spilled across his face like sunshine. One eyebrow rose with mischief. “Did you have a good ride this morning?” he asked.

I took the plate of boiled carrots he was passing me. His expression said he knew something. Was it my tardiness? Or my trespassing into Mr. Jude’s orchard? And why was he raising the subject in Father’s presence? “Yes, we did,” I answered cautiously. “We rode out past the Murdocks’ and came home by way of Gilead Creek.” I sneaked a glance at Father. He’d not mentioned my riding in the past months, even after Mr. Jude’s visit. To be honest, I don’t think he had any idea how often I rode, or how far.

“Some of the Murdocks’ cows got out night before last,” was all Father said. His eyes, neatly framed by the gold rims of his spectacles, narrowed to black pinpoints of disapproval. “She’s not keeping the place up.” What he wasn’t saying was that Mrs. Murdock, a recent widow, should have sold her husband’s farm and moved in with her sister’s family. Father didn’t hold with female self-reliance. It wasn’t natural.

“Well, it doesn’t look like rain,” Mother said with an effort at cheeriness. “There’ll be some nice weather for getting fences mended. Or for traveling.”

Traveling? My ears pricked. Who’d said anything about traveling?

She poked at the fricasseed chicken on her plate, her face smooth and emotionless.

“I almost forgot,” James said, still addressing me. “William asked about you today. And Nathaniel did as well.”

What was he up to?

“Something about … apples.” He gazed at the ceiling, tapping his chin with feigned thoughtfulness. “Oh, that’s it. They wanted to know if you’ll be sharing any of your apples.”

I would have kicked him if I’d been able to reach him. Instead I impulsively tossed my napkin, hitting him square in the face.

“Rachel!” Mother exclaimed.

“That’ll be enough of that!” Father warned.

James wadded the napkin in his fist and laughed. “Don’t blame her. You can see she’s a sorrel-top through and through, and you know how temperamental they are.”

It was another poke in the ribs, but I couldn’t help grinning. Unlike most girls with copper-colored hair, I took pride in mine. That’s because horses with red coats—be they chestnuts or sorrels or roans—were known to be high-spirited. Dangerous. Some people even refused to own them. How often I’d imagined someone trying to smash a bit against my teeth and my striking out in refusal. No one was going to own me.

Still, I changed the subject. In an effort to placate Mother, I asked, “Isn’t Grandmother feeling well?”

Her mother ate with us most evenings, but tonight, for some reason, she’d stayed in town. Mother shot an inscrutable look at Father before fixing her gaze on her plate and softly replying, “I think she’s feeling a little uprooted is all.” Somehow that put a damper on things. The atmosphere in the dining room took on that peculiar itchy quality you feel on hot summer evenings when the sky is empty but the air is so thick and heavy you just know a storm’s on the horizon. I glanced from face to face, finding them all veiled with secrets. James stopped his teasing and spooned food into his mouth with a voraciousness unusual even for him. Father cleared his throat and reached for the bread. I self-consciously drained my goblet of milk, trying not to gurgle under Mother’s pensive gaze. We finished our meal to the sound of scraping forks and the weighty silence of something left unsaid. Really, the air pressed on us—or on me, anyway—like an iron. So as soon as the table was cleared, and the leftovers returned to the icebox, and the dishes washed, dried, and stacked, I hurried upstairs. Each of us, in fact, settled in solitude into some part of the house: Father to pore over his newspapers (he was editor of the local one, the Plowman’s Dispatch); Mother to embroider her apron; James to black his boots; and I to curl up with my favorite book of the past six months, The Reliable Horse Care Manual for American Owners. They could have their secrets; I had some of my own.

“Rapturous” was the only word to describe my horse care manual. It was two inches thick, its gilt-edged pages bound in mahogany leather and embossed with three Arabian horse heads in brilliant gold, not the least bit dulled for the fingering they’d endured since last Christmas. That’s when James had given the book to me. It was an extravagant present and must have cost him nearly a week’s wages. My pulse quickened each time I lifted it onto my lap.

With the crickets humming and the light fading, I turned up the flame on my lamp, settled against the bed pillows, and began reading. After horses, that was my most pleasurable way to spend time.

Over the past six months, I’d worked my way through selecting a horse (already had one, thank you), structure of the perfect horse (that would be Peaches), and diseases of the bones, the glands, the muscles and tendons. Now I was up to page 293 and struggling through diseases of the chest and lungs and their horrific cures. Thank the Lord I hadn’t had to attempt any of those on Peaches. The only time I’d been able to apply any practical knowledge at all from the manual was in treating her thrush. And for that I’d had to skip ahead to the chapter on diseases of the feet.

Turning the pages in chunks, I located the spot where I’d left off and dived into the sea of tiny type. I was soon finding it hard to swallow, as I waded through paragraph after paragraph on coughs and consumption and corrosive liniments.

I suppose I was so immersed in my book that I didn’t notice the house going to sleep around me. Only when the mantel clock chimed in the parlor below did I look up to check the oil in the lamp. I realized then that James had gone to bed, and Father and Mother were in their bedroom next door. The uneven rise and fall of voices on the other side of the wall sounded as if they were quarreling. Or rather, as if Father was speechifying and Mother was listening, pale-faced and mute for the most part.

A drawer slammed shut and I heard Father mutter something about “backward thinking” and “small potatoes.” Another drawer opened and closed. Some shoes hit the wall, low and in the corner. “… thinking they could fire me? he said with heavy sarcasm. “There are bigger newspapers.” My stomach pitched a little and landed unsettled.

I struggled to focus on my book. Any disease that affects the respiratory organs, I read over for the second time, can give rise to inflammation and fever, and in consequence to cough. Father’s grumblings faded into the background. Should the inflammation and fever be neglected and thus become chronic—

“What about her horse?” It was Mother’s voice this time, quiet as a breeze riffling through her lace curtains, yet clear as a jangling alarm to me. I sat up fast, straining to hear Father’s response.

“Time we all made changes,” is what I thought I heard, along with some less than flattering comments about “willfulness” and “a disturbing lack of propriety.” But then, “For God’s sake,” he said, loudly enough for the neighbors down the road to hear, “she doesn’t even wear shoes.” My face burned.

For a while, a silence as heavy as a roar enveloped our house. I remained rigidly upright in my bed, imagining it a small boat on a storm-tossed sea. I braced for the wave that would drown me.

There was more talk, more planning, which I only made out in syllables and phrases. My heart beat faster and faster. Right on the other side of the wall, my life was being decided and all I could do was grip the sheets and listen. What about Peaches? I wanted to scream. I heard Father climb into bed, heard him punch his pillow into place. There was more silence. Out by the garden, an owl hooted. I kept listening. Before long Father’s snoring took up a steady rhythm.

Then I heard Mother. Her voice sounded pinched and achingly sad. “She won’t understand.”

“What?” Father had been startled awake.

“I said, she won’t understand.”

The bedsprings creaked as Father harrumphed and rolled over. “It’s just a horse,” he said all too clearly. “And she’s just a girl. She’ll forget about it the minute we get to Boston. Now, good night.”

The next day dawned clear and sunny, with no trace of a storm, though one had surely blown through. And one of their secrets was revealed: It was a plan to change me—to tie me to a tomato stake, as it were, and fasten me up tight and make me grow a certain way. Father had ordered it and, in compliance, Mother had quietly paired my shoes and set them by the nightstand before I awoke. She’d laid my corset on my bed too, where I couldn’t miss it. She always complied. Much earlier in her life, someone had tied her to a stake, and while she’d grown tall and rigid, there wasn’t much color to her. She hadn’t had enough oxygen.