TWENTY-TWO TWENTY-TWOIT COULDN’T BE AS BAD AS ALL THAT. I REFUSED TO BELIEVE it. After such a wonderful day—and having my bandages off and with the Girl improving, I just didn’t want to think of more horses getting sick.
I could understand James’s distress, though. Chester was his favorite at the station, a prankish white gelding whom he’d been teaching tricks. For nearly two months I’d been hearing how Chester could tuck his nose between his knees and bow on command, how he could search out carrots hidden around the station, and how he was “this close” to ringing a handbell as long as you first helped him get it in his teeth. He’d planned on demonstrating Chester’s cleverness some upcoming morning when the firehorses were brought out for public display. Now, slump-shouldered with despair, James returned to the station.
To add to the gloom infiltrating our house, Grandmother fell again and broke her spectacles, and then she came down with such a headache that she took to her bed. She pulled her faded red quilt up to her chin and crossed her wrinkled hands on her chest and lay so still that sometimes I had to stand in the doorway and hold my own breath to see her breathing.
Only Father seemed immune. He kept up his attacks on city officials in his columns. This week the subject was their utter failure to improve the water mains and hydrants in the burgeoning commercial districts. He even went so far as to order a huge box of matches and a thimble filled with water delivered to each of the area’s aldermen, with an accompanying note inquiring, “Which is the greater?” That set off the fireworks, so to speak, and for the next several days he devoured his dinner and his newspapers with the same self-indulgent speed and rushed back to his office to create even more combustible columns. I think we all breathed momentary sighs of relief when the door slammed shut behind him.
But in his absence a melancholy air settled over our house. The stair railing sagged, the floorboards felt sticky, and Mother’s new curtains slumped under the weighty task of trying to add cheer to such a dismal abode. One afternoon when I came in after examining the Girl, I found Mother sitting alone in the dining room. She was huddled over a steaming cup of ginger tea, looking especially pinched and pale.
“Oh, there you are,” she said. A small stack of coins sat beside her saucer and she slid it toward me, creating a ripple in the tablecloth that she didn’t bother to smooth. “I need you to go to the optometrist’s shop on Boylston Place—you know the one; it’s beside Dr. Safford’s office. Your grandmother’s spectacles should be ready.”
“How is she?”
“Her head’s still throbbing with that awful ache, and it seems to be catching.” Mother rubbed small circles into her temples, her eyes shut. “I don’t know the optometrist’s hours; the store may be closing soon, so you’d better take the horsecar.”
I gathered up the coins with a smattering of guilt. I was so thrilled to head back outside on such a splendid day, the first day of autumn, that I would have gladly walked the mile-and-a-half distance. But Mother had said to take the horsecar and, well, where horses were involved, who was I to argue?
Sailing through the afternoon shadows that stretched between the brick row houses, I hurried the five blocks over to the stop. All the while I wondered which “grandfather” horse would be ferrying us along this time. I’d always called them grandfather horses because they invariably wore long whiskers and plodded steadily, deaf to the city’s distractions. I imagined them settling into their straw beds at night, recalling youthful exploits, complaining of rheumatism and humming tunes from the war.
When I turned the corner, hoping it might be the kind-faced chestnut with the thinning mane, I found more than a dozen impatient people crowding the stop. The horsecar was nowhere to be seen.
A man with a white beard chewed on his pipe, forcing little blasts of smoke from the edge of his mouth. He paused long enough to fish his watch out of his pocket and, cradling it in one hand and his pipe in the other, grumbled, “It’s been over twenty minutes.”
“We could have walked half the way there by now,” his wife complained. “I’ll never get all of my shopping done. Don’t they have watches of their own?” She surveyed the bystanders for support. In casting her gaze across me she happened to spot my scarred hands. Her mouth fell open ever so slightly. But in the next instant she caught herself and turned away, squinting over her husband’s watch. I self-consciously tucked my hands beneath my crossed arms. For a fleeting second I missed Father’s gloves.
Two tall, pale gentlemen standing closer to the street exchanged glances. Inclining his head, the one murmured, “I told you something’s wrong with the horses,” to which his friend returned a sober nod. The worry that I’d tried shoving aside bared its teeth.
We went on waiting, craning our heads time and again down the street. Under my armpits I had both sets of fingers crossed. More than anybody else, probably, I wanted the horsecar to appear, if only to prove that the horses were all right. None showed. The tracks stretched long and empty into the distance.
Muttering an oath, one agitated man with a hawkish bent to him adjusted the overcoat he’d draped over his arm and strode away. That’s all it took, and in twos and threes and singly the rest of us, including me, began following in his wake. James’s awful news clawed through me like a fever. I scanned the cross streets as we proceeded, hoping to prove him and those two men wrong. But everywhere I looked I sensed a change. It was almost undetectable, like a tide having receded a little ways down the shore when you were busy gathering shells. Eventually I had to admit it was because there were fewer horses than usual clip-clopping along the streets.
A horsecar finally came rumbling along the tracks, but it was loaded almost beyond the poor horse’s ability. So many people hung from the leather straps, swaying like smoked hams, that you couldn’t even see those that were seated, so of course none of us could get on and we kept walking.
The pavements in Boston had always been crowded, but as we neared the Common, people actually began elbowing others onto the street. A thick-waisted woman clutching the wrists of two children shoved past me so hard I was spun into the path of four surveyors and their arsenal of rolled plans and sharp-edged clipboards. Unfamiliar hands set me right and on my way.
With its rolling carpets of lush green, the Common appeared more than ever as an oasis, a reward for negotiating the city’s brick maze. I stowed away my worries long enough to admire its splendor. Golden sunlight slanted between the black arms of bejeweled trees. A playful wind caught up the burgundy and yellow and splotched-orange leaves and swirled them across the carpet like paper fancies. Crows bobbed and called. Squirrels dashed in a game of tag. Only the deer were beyond resuscitation. Inside their meshed cage, they flicked their white tails anxiously and raised their noses to the air, sniffing for something only dimly remembered.
Aware that the afternoon was waning, I hurried on to the optometrist’s shop. Grandmother’s spectacles were ready, and in minutes I was back outside. Only then did I realize that those horrid, clunky shoes of mine had once again dug painful blisters into my ankles. The walk home was going to be torturous unless the horsecar headed out was less crowded.
The crescendoing clatter of a reckless trot tore through my pondering. It erupted in an awful scrambling—and then a loud crash. People began running toward the Public Garden and I ran with them.
A crowd already ringed the scene. I caught a glimpse of a dark brown horse stretched flat amid a tangle of harness and an overturned buggy. My heart squeezed. Someone shoved in front of me to bob up and down with curiosity, and so I had to search for another view. Sidestepping behind a wall of shoulders, I twisted between jostled packages and pointy elbows and stood on tiptoe myself. At last I could see the driver, staggering, holding a hand to his blood-streaked face. I couldn’t see if there was blood on the horse. Was he dead? A young man had left the crowd to straddle the horse’s head. “Hurry now!” he shouted to the driver. “Unbuckle the check.” But the man was either too dazed or too stupid to help. Others leaped in, and soon there was such a pile of people atop the poor horse that if he wasn’t dead already, he certainly risked suffocation.
A burly man in an overcoat reeking of fish guts moved in front of me, and suddenly I couldn’t see a thing again except his greasy collar and the fringe of untrimmed hair below his hat. A terrible thwacking sound accompanied a panicked whinny. The crowd gasped in unison. What was happening to the horse? Spotting a streetlamp, I grabbed hold of its iron pole and pulled myself onto the base. A sea of heads and hats rippled around me, parting at the fallen horse. To my immense surprise Mr. Stead was kneeling beside the prostrate animal. I couldn’t hear what he was saying over the crowd’s din, but I recognized that, in his calm, confident manner, he’d taken charge of the situation. He pointed to this person and that one, and buckles were unfastened in an orderly fashion and the buggy slid away and righted. All the while he kept a hand flat on the horse’s neck, soothing the convulsive trembling. At least the poor thing was still alive.
Something, I don’t know what, made Mr. Stead look up and drift his gaze across the crowd. As he did so, he caught sight of me. To my surprise, he smiled and nodded a greeting before returning to his work. My face flushed warm. A heady feeling raced through me, the kind you get when bobbing to the surface of a cold pond or swinging into the sky on the jerking end of a rope.
When enough of the harness was unfastened, Mr. Stead rose and ordered the young man to release the horse’s head. Immediately the dark gelding began flailing like some giant black water bug trapped on its back. As he searched for a hold, his iron-shod hooves scraped the cobblestones in a frantic staccato. Eventually he got his front end up but then, gasping like a half-drowned creature, he sank back, his hindquarters still twisted uselessly on the ground. Sweat slicked his coat. Violent tremors shook his body. Mr. Stead slapped the horse’s flank, urging him to try again. The gelding swayed, obviously in a state of shock and exhaustion, but mustered his strength. Grunting with the effort, he lunged forward. One hind leg found footing beneath his massive body, and the other one joined in, and together they pushed him off the street.
Onlookers applauded, relief on their faces. The horse, on the other hand, a finely bred gelding as dark as polished mahogany, looked completely emptied. He whinnied anxiously, and somewhere down the street an unseen horse whinnied understanding. I longed to throw my arms around him and stroke his neck and tell him everything was going to be all right.
Mr. Stead began helping the same young man refit the harness, and together they drew the buggy forward. Its folding canopy tilted and sagged like a sprung umbrella, and the men had to force it into place. With the crowd thinning, I was able to hear some of their conversation.
“Have you got it on that side?”
“Almost, just give me a … there, that’s it.”
The driver, meanwhile, was retrieving fallen packages from the street’s windblown debris. He dumped a couple into the buggy with such a careless clatter that the gelding startled and leaped forward. Mr. Stead grabbed the reins.
Turning to pick up another package, the driver said irritably, “I owe you my thanks, I suppose. That blasted animal intended on lying there the livelong day.” It took every ounce of Mother’s training for me not to race over and kick him in the shins.
Mr. Stead didn’t acknowledge the man’s callous words. He was carefully running a hand down each of the horse’s shivering legs, murmuring reassurances. When he’d worked his way back to the top, he cupped the horse’s jowl in his hand and gazed into the animal’s eye. That relaxed the gelding enough that he tried nibbling the brim of Mr. Stead’s black bowler hat.
“I’m behind schedule,” the driver said, leaping into the buggy and reclaiming his whip, “so if you don’t mind?”
Mr. Stead closed his fist on the reins. “I do mind. And I’d advise you to take this horse more slowly until he gets his confidence back.” The driver waved away the advice but found the veterinary not as easily dismissed. “He has some bad scrapes the length of his near hip and on his hock, and a nasty cut below this fetlock here.” He indicated it with the toe of his boot. “They’ll need warm bandages tonight. You’ll see to that?”
A silent stare-down ensued. When the driver realized he wasn’t going anywhere until he agreed, he said, “Yes, yes, of course. I’ll have someone see to it. Now, if you don’t mind?” He wriggled like a spoiled child and tugged on the reins. This time Mr. Stead released them. Without even looking for an opening, the man yanked the gelding into traffic, brandished his whip, and went rattling away at a wobbly trot.
Shaking his head, Mr. Stead picked up his satchel and came walking straight toward me. Nonsensically, I froze against the lamp. That put us eye to eye.
“Have you ever seen such reckless driving on a city street?” he asked. “And they’ll upend themselves again, no doubt—more’s the pity for that nice gelding.” Doffing his hat and cocking a sideways smile at my unusual position, he said, “How are you, Miss Selby?”
“Fine,” I replied, though the scrolled metalwork was carving into my ribs. “Thank you.”
“Good.” His single glance at my hands made me want to hide them away again. But there they were, for all the world to see. I expected him to comment; the thought formed on his face, I saw it. Instead he asked, “How’s our mare doing today?”
And that one little word “our” gave me another bubbling chill. “I’ve led her out,” I told him. “She trotted as sound as ever and even bucked some. I think she’s feeling much better.”
He looked impressed. “You took her out all by yourself? She can be quite a handful, you know, even for the men at the station.”
“I know,” I said, giddy with pride. “We get along splendidly.”
I needed to move off the lamp base; the situation bordered on lunacy. Yet I was so eager to sustain the conversation that I clung to that pole as tightly as one of Mother’s climbing ivies.
Mr. Stead cleared his throat and shoved his free hand into his pocket. His face lit. “Would you care for a peppermint?”
“Yes,” I answered, and decided that was reason enough to hop down. “Thank you.”
Another awkward silence ensued as we each rolled the hard candies in our mouths, clacking them against our teeth, spinning them with our tongues. I watched two boys flinging leaves off the bridge in the Public Garden. I breathed in the smells of marigolds and roasted meats and chimney smoke, all cleansed by the bite of peppermint. As a chill gust of September wind parted around us, I realized the shelter Mr. Stead provided and felt newly warmed.
“I believe I owe you an apology,” he began abruptly, “for not … well, you see, some of my clients warned that I … oh, it’s this distemper business as much as anything. It’s spreading like smallpox. Everyone has sick horses, it seems.” He crunched his candy into nothing and swallowed. “In fact, I’m on my way over to McLaughlin’s Livery, where I keep Balder, to see some more right now. I’ll be driving on to the fire station near your house afterward and”—he dropped his gaze to his boots and I found myself admiring his sandy-colored eyelashes and the sprinkling of freckles across his eyelids—“and I’d be pleased … um … to offer you a ride home.”
Now this could be a day to end all days! “Well, yes, thank you,” I sputtered. “I’d like that.” And just as easily as that, we headed back up Boylston and past the public library. If there had been storm clouds on that last occasion at our house nearly three months ago, they were gone now. I couldn’t be happier walking at his side.
“Are you still reading that manual of yours?”
“Almost finished,” I answered.
I expected a look of surprise or maybe a small compliment, but he walked on without saying anything. The man could be maddeningly close-mouthed. We turned up Tremont Street.
“Your father is certainly making a name for himself with his columns,” he said. “I hear everyone talking about them.”
Oh, so that was it. I hadn’t received Father’s permission yet, and he was holding it against me. “Yes, he does like the front page.”
“He seems to keep long hours. Just last Wednesday evening I was seeing to a horse over on Atlantic—a case of bog spavin—and as chance would have it, a fire broke out in one of the warehouses, and there he was, already on the scene, furiously scribbling notes.”
As chance would have it? At once I could smell the smoke that always seemed to cling to Father like an invisible cloud, and a cold wave of suspicion rolled over me. “Yes,” I replied with an involuntary shiver, “he does work hard.”
A stamped metal horse head advertised the location of McLaughlin’s Livery, though a cloud of blackflies did the same. As we approached its cavernous entry, Mr. Stead stiffened slightly. He seemed to be having second thoughts, and his hand tightened on my arm. “Stay close,” he murmured. Day became night as we stepped into the murky stable.
“Ah, the veterinary! Here at last!” An elfin liveryman hobbled from his office to clasp Mr. Stead’s hand. His legs bowed wide in parentheses, reserving the space for a missing horse. “My thanks for coming. It’s gone from bad to worse for us here. Say, do you want Balder harnessed?”
“Yes, if you will. I have more calls.”
The man motioned to a rail-thin stableboy, who hurried away. “And who is this angel at your side?” His leer was softened just enough by his grandfatherly age to keep me from bolting. “She’s a welcome sight.”
“Mr. McLaughlin, allow me to introduce Miss Rachel Selby. I’ve offered her a ride home—to see to her horse,” he added quickly. “She has a wonderful way with them.”
I cringed as Mr. McLaughlin examined me as critically as he would an animal up for auction. “Does she now?” he replied. “My granddaughter does too.” Maybe I’d pegged him all wrong. “I think the horses come to appreciate a female hand. They’re not so dumb as to turn away from a soft pat when they’re more used to the whip, eh?” His metallic blue eyes glinted. “Some of my drivers could probably learn a thing or two from you, miss.”
“Well, maybe not. I’ve … never actually driven a horse. I’d like to learn, though.”
He and Mr. Stead exchanged raised eyebrows and I winced. Too bold.
“Well, we’ll just have to see about that now, won’t we?” Switching to the subject at hand, he gestured for us to follow. “The first one’s this way.”
The enormous livery was more like a cave than a barn, and the deeper we traveled into it, the heavier the air became. It was practically dripping with the dank odors of ammonia and manure and mildewed leather. Yet for all its lack of light, the stable was bustling. Horses rattled their tie rings and stamped and nickered. Boys whistled as they mucked stalls, their sidelong glances marking our passage. Others scurried here and there, shouting orders and filling them. Squeaking carriages were rolled out to the vast, planked center of the barn, where horses were led singly or in pairs to have harnesses slapped across their broad backs.
As we passed one of the carriage rooms, I marveled at the beautiful vehicles stored there: oil-black coupés sporting curved glass fronts, emerald-green rockaways accented by carmine or violet seats, a charming basket phaeton awaiting next summer’s country excursions. The room even held an ominous-looking hearse, somberly painted in black and silver and ornamented with dusty, drooping plumes. Even without a casket inside, the sight gave me gooseflesh.
“Bartley!” Mr. McLaughlin hollered down one long aisle. “Bring up Firecracker.” A smoke-colored cat trotted across his path just then, dangling a limp rodent from her mouth, and in the same breath, though more kindly, he said, “That’s a good puss.”
During the wait Mr. Stead opened his satchel and donned his apron. The stableboy finally returned from the livery’s dark recesses, dragging behind him a lethargic dappled horse who could barely stagger. When the animal caught a hoof on a loose plank and tripped, he very nearly pitched onto his nose. That set off a series of explosive coughs.
“How long has he been like this?” Mr. Stead asked the livery owner.
“About a week.”
The man received an exasperated look.
“I know, I know. I should’ve had you look at him sooner. But there’s near three hundred horses here. I can’t pay for a veterinary every time one gets a snotty nose.” The smallish man tried a defiant glare, but it was shot through with guilt.
Laying an ear to the horse’s throat, Mr. Stead asked, “What have you been doing for him in the meantime?”
“I had the boys drench him with some Epsom salts and I’ve upped his ration, but he’s not eating any of it.” The man glanced meekly at me and tested a smile.
Mr. Stead examined the horse’s crusted nostrils. He felt for heat in the ears and ran his hands down the legs, frowning all the while, then laid his own ear against the horse’s throat again. Finally he straightened. “Well, I don’t think it’s pneumonia—yet. But he’s got the distemper for sure.”
Mr. McLaughlin groaned.
“How many more like him?”
“Five.”
Mr. Stead cocked his head, questioning.
“Well, five for sure. Maybe another ten or twelve on their way.”
“That’s only the beginning, I assure you.”
Poor Firecracker could hardly breathe. Braced on splayed legs, he drooped his head nearly to the floor. Each strangled gasp required a spasmodic wrenching of his neck. Mr. Stead pulled some bottles from his satchel.
“How much is this going to cost me?”
Mr. Stead glanced over his shoulder reprovingly. “My normal charge is fifty cents a horse, but if you don’t have it, you can take an equal amount off Balder’s bill.”
The liveryman nodded, though he didn’t agree to anything.
One by one, half-dead horses were dragged to the spot to have a black, cily liquid forced down their throats. They didn’t have the strength to struggle and stumbled back to their stalls just as spiritlessly. When Mr. McLaughlin called out for Buddy to be brought up, however, the stableboy returned empty-handed, as pale as if he’d witnessed a ghost.
“He’s dead, sir,” he told the man. “Dead, right in his stall—stiff as a board.”
A crushing sorrow gripped me. Every bone in my body ached to do something to help, but I was ordered to stay in my place while the men went to examine poor Buddy’s remains. They returned somberly, the liveryman looking all the more shamed.
“It’s not your fault,” Mr. Stead reassured him. “This distemper is a nasty piece of work. But move the others up closer to the front of the barn, if you can. They need the fresh air. And try scrubbing their stalls and mangers with a strong decoction of tobacco. That will help keep the disease from spreading.”
Mr. McLaughlin nodded humbly as we climbed into the waiting buggy. “Thank you. I’ll do it right off, that I will. And Balder’ll be getting extra rations this week—on the house.”
As if he understood, the bay gelding whinnied exuberantly. It was the only happy note in an otherwise gloomy place, and we drove away in silence.