Trouble turned out to be more like a disaster. I got there just in time to see Tumpoo fling himself from the cabin, his ears flat back and his little cloven hooves flying. Mom was right behind him, wielding the broom like a sword and screaming, “Bad moose! Bad moose!” at the top of her lungs.
I pulled Rusty to a stop and for a moment considered turning him around and heading for the hills, but then Mom saw me.
“Do you know what he did?” she shrieked. My shock must have shown on my face because she collected herself somewhat and said in a slightly calmer voice, “He broke into the cabin when I was down refilling the horse’s water trough.” Tears studded her eyes. “You should see the mess he made.”
I slid from Rusty’s back.
Keep Tumpoo out of trouble? I asked Rusty.
Rusty snorted his assent and trotted off in search of the little brat.
I walked back to the cabin with Mom. “We have to do something, Evy,” she said, still brandishing her broom.
“I know.”
“He can’t keep terrorizing us like this.”
The damage he’d done to the cabin was amazing. First was the front door. Because it was a warm day, Mom had left the wooden door open and shut the screen door when she went to the barn. The screen hung in shreds where his sharp front hooves had sliced it into streamers. And that was just the beginning.
An ugly mess waited in the kitchen, where he must have been looking for treats. Flour spread across the floor, along with moose tracks and moose poop. The sugar bag had been sliced open by those same sharp hooves. The oatmeal was dumped and cans of soup and fruit and fish rolled about in the disgusting mixture. He’d even ripped one of the curtains in front of the cupboards.
Chairs were knocked over and the table was pushed up against the bookcase at the far wall of the dining area – which saved our books, thank goodness. But Tumpoo hadn’t been finished yet. The floury tracks moved on. I followed them with a growing sense of dismay. He’d walked into Mom’s room and jumped up on her bed, leaving behind dirty flour hoof marks. Her chair was knocked over – and on the other side of her room, so were her completed paintings! I felt my blood run cold, and for a moment, couldn’t move.
In a slow motion nightmare, I walked toward the paintings. Bent. Picked them up, one by one. And was infinitely grateful each time that he hadn’t perforated the painted canvas. They seemed damage-free except for a slight dusting of flour. He must have brushed up against them and knocked them over, that’s all. What a relief!
I walked back into the living room/kitchen area to see no tracks leading into my room. He must have thought the curtain across my door was really a wall. Mom was standing in her work area by the front windows, her head in her hands. Her shoulders trembled. Oh, no. Had Tumpoo done something to one of her paintings?
He had.
I could have cried.
Mom was crying.
What could I do but put my arm around her and lean into her side? “I’m so sorry, Mom,” I whispered. My mom loves her paintings, which is probably why she’s such a great artist. This one she’d finished last week, and it was a beauty too. In the foreground, a graceful red osier dogwood spiked the canvas, and behind the ruby stems, Rusty and Twilight stood like benevolent royalty watching the viewer. A steamy meadow spread behind them. The painting looked otherworldly and mystical, as if the viewer had chanced upon a concealed doorway to a secret world where horses reigned.
And in the bottom right corner? A neat rip the size of a small moose hoof.
“Come sit down,” I said to Mom and led her to the big chair. She crumpled on the seat and stared out the window. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she kept her mouth firmly shut.
I sat on the arm of the chair beside her and rubbed her shoulder. “I’ll figure out something, I promise.”
She looked up at me with red eyes, and nodded, too sad to even yell at me for bringing Tumpoo into our lives. I almost wished she would. Anger I could take, but sadness? Tears? That was the worst.
Trouble, thought Rusty.
“I’ll be right back. I want to put him in his stall.”
Mom didn’t say anything as I left.
Of course, the water trough had been dumped again, already. Rusty was standing at the barn door, looking inside. I paused to thank him and give him a hug, then walked into the barn. Tumpoo was trying to climb the ladder into the loft, for a reason known only to himself. There was nothing up there but our two cats, Socrates and Plato – both of whom were staring down at Tumpoo and hissing. We hadn’t bought our hay for the coming winter yet, and all the grain was in the tack/feed room. He’d probably tried that door first and found it too strong.
“Tumpoo!” I yelled, and the calf turned his head. Both hooves slipped on the ladder rung, one hoof toward the floor – and the other behind the rung. His leg squeezed between the ladder and the wall and slid down to the knee. I rushed forward. “Hold still, buddy,” I said, trying to make my voice calm. If he struggled, he could so easily break that long spindly leg. I wanted our Tumpoo troubles to be over, but not that way.
Even as the blood pounded through my skull, even as my shaking hands took hold of his thin foreleg, even as I pulled his leg gently up and out from its prison, I marveled that he didn’t struggle. He was frightened – I could see it in his eyes. But there was something else there too: complete and total trust. He knew I’d only ever help him.
Once he was standing on all fours, I ran my hands over his leg. No lumps or bumps or injuries. I straightened. “Tumpoo, what am I going to do with you?” I asked, looking into his deep brown eyes. He rubbed me with his head, bleated, then picked up a strand of my hair in his mouth and tugged.
“You monster,” I said and jerked my hair from his mouth. “You got us in so much trouble. And you wrecked Mom’s painting. She’ll never forgive you for that.” I put my arms around his neck. “You have to start behaving. I don’t want to lock you in your stall all the time.”
Tumpoo pulled away from me and headed toward the open door. Enough mushy stuff for him, I guess. I followed him until I reached Rusty, then stood beside my gray gelding and watched the moose pest join Twilight in the unfenced part of the meadow. As usual, he spread his front legs and stretched his short neck, and reeeaaached until he could just nibble the tips of the grass.
What was I going to do with him? Right now, he was neither horse nor moose. Would he ever fit in anywhere? Was I irreversibly damaging him by allowing him to hang out with the horses? But how could I stop him? And worse, I could be causing the same damage, or more, by spending time with him myself.
I sighed and undid the cinch of Rusty’s saddle, then pulled it from his sturdy back. Next I removed his bridle and carried the two into the tack room. I came out with brushes and a small bucket of oats, and found Rusty already grazing outside the barn door. He accepted the oats politely.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said aloud as I started to groom him. I didn’t expect him to answer, even telepathically, as he doesn’t understand English, but I felt better talking it through. “Mom likes having the door open in the summer, but we need some way to keep Tumpoo out of the house. Or even better, inside the pasture.” The problem was it would take huge amounts of money to make the fence moose proof. Posts bought and transported and pounded. Roll after expensive roll of livestock wire strung. And then Tumpoo would probably just find some other way to escape – even good fences are pretty ineffective when faced with a wild moose who doesn’t want to be stopped. So fixing the fence wasn’t really a solution, even if we could afford it, which we couldn’t.
But how else could we protect the house? The woodpile? The water trough?
The water trough was the easiest one. I always filled the water buckets in the stalls if the horses were locked in at night. I could just use those buckets all the time, leaving the big water trough dry. With the stall doors open to the pasture during the day, the horses would have access to their private water, plus Tumpoo would be encouraged to go to the lake for his, which was something he needed to learn anyway if he was ever going to become a wild moose.
Rusty bobbed his head to chase a fly away from his chest, and I moved behind him to comb his glossy dark tail.
Now what about the woodpile? What we really needed was a woodshed with a strong door. Since we didn’t have that, maybe I could cut off his climbing access to the pile somehow… yes, that was the answer. If the woodpile was too tall for him to jump on to begin with, he wouldn’t be able to knock it down – and I could make it taller by putting upright boards at both ends and restacking the wood yet again. Basically, I needed to turn the woodpile into a tall wall, right next to the windowless, doorless outside wall of our house.
Rusty snorted and took a couple of steps toward a new patch of grass and I followed him with the body brush in hand. He was looking so good, glimmering like shiny steel in the afternoon light.
I searched the unfenced part of the pasture. Where were my two miscreants? For a moment I didn’t see them, but then I noticed Twilight’s gold beneath the shade of the trees at the edge of the meadow, and beside her, a brown lump. They were both reclining, taking their afternoon nap. It was safe to keep thinking.
So what about the house?
What we needed was a way to open up the house without allowing access for an errant moose. We could just open our windows, but both Mom and I liked more air than that when the weather was nice.
So I could either be sure to always lock Tumpoo up on the nicest days – which would really be too bad for him – or … we could open up part of our front door. Brilliant! We could cut the door in half horizontally, put on some extra hinges, and turn it into a dutch door. Surely he wouldn’t try to climb over the bottom half of the door if it was closed. We could make it as tall as the door in his stall, just to be sure. With dutch doors, the worst that Tumpoo could do would be to stand with his head in the house and bawl for treats – and Mom with her broom would certainly stop that from happening too much.
I finished with the soft brush, then led Rusty to the pasture gate. He walked inside and nickered to Cocoa. His old friend looked up from where she grazed, bits of green poking from her mouth. Rusty sniffed at the dumped trough – I’d have to haul some water for their stalls right away – then he and Cocoa, two old comfy friends, wandered off, side by side. Soon, they too would be napping in the shade.
I grabbed the stall buckets, made the trek down to the lake and back, and placed the full buckets in the two stalls. Then I looked for Tumpoo and Twilight – still sleeping. And now, since I had a reprieve from animal antics and duties for a while, I would talk to Mom about my ideas. Afterward, I could get started on the woodpile.
Mom was still staring off into space, looking lost, when I walked into the house.
“Mom, I have the solution.”
She looked at me with tired eyes. I explained how we could fix the water and wood situation, then made my suggestion of dutch doors, to which I added that I always thought they looked cool anyway. “And I was wondering,” I added, thinking this was my opportunity to ask for something I’d always wanted. “You know how I’m forever asking to keep one of your paintings? Well, can I have that one?” I pointed to the damaged canvas. “I don’t care if it has a hole at the bottom. I love it.”
Mom winced when she looked at the painting again. Then she climbed out of the chair, picked it up and held it in front of herself as she examined it. “I’d like you to have one that isn’t ruined.”
“It’s not ruined. It’s beautiful. And I could stitch up the canvas.”
“But it’ll always show.”
“I don’t care.”
She looked at me. “Are you sure, honey? I’d like you to have a perfect one.”
I smiled at her. “It is a perfect one, Mom. It was painted by you and it’s a picture of Rusty and Twilight. How much better can it get?”
She seemed to melt, either because of my words or my smile. I guess I hadn’t smiled at her much lately. “Then it’s yours.” Her voice was hushed.
A thrill shivered through my heart. Finally, I would have one of my mom’s gorgeous, remarkable paintings to hang on my own wall. This one was extra special to me too because both Rusty and Twilight were in it, plus the painting was so fitting. Rusty and Twilight were my glorious pathway to a magical world of wild adventures and talking horses. And since I’d never have gotten the painting if it wasn’t for Tumpoo, this one thing I was grateful to him for. The hole in the bottom corner was no big deal. In fact, it made the painting better in a way. It was Tumpoo’s contribution, and the story of how the hole came to be only made the painting more interesting.
Mom carried the painting gingerly into my room as if it were the most fragile thing she’d ever held, even though the poor thing had just been through a war zone with Tumpoo rampaging through the house. I fetched a hammer and nail and minutes later, the painting was hanging on my wall, looking as stunning as I knew it would. The sad look on Mom’s face lightened a bit as we stood back to look at it.
“It belongs here,” she said, her voice soft. “This is its home.” Then she looked around the rest of my room. Uh-oh.
“I’ll clean my room right after the rest of the house is done,” I said, quickly.
Mom turned back to the painting. “Enchanted. That’s what I called it.”
“It’s perfect,” I said, and breathed deep. My painting, Enchanted. “Thanks so much, Mom.”
She put her arm around me and pulled me close, and for a moment I leaned against her shoulder and closed my eyes. She smelled so good, like oil paints and lavender soap, just as she always did. Just for a moment, I felt the way I used to when I was a little kid and climbed on her lap and listened to her tell me about colors and brushes and lighting and how she believed that creating a painting was like casting spells.
A minute later, we were picking up paint tubes and brushes, and when we finished in Mom’s working area, she went into her bedroom to strip the bed while I went to check whether or not Tumpoo was still hanging out in the meadow with Twilight. He was, which kind of surprised me. Twilight must be feeling extra patient today if she hadn’t run him off yet.
I moved reluctantly to the kitchen and grabbed the broom. It was disheartening to brush up all that flour and sugar and oatmeal. It all cost money and I knew that Mom stressed about money all the time these days. Even the loss of a bag of flour was bad.
I wiped off all the cans and knelt down to replace them on the shelves, then removed the ripped and dirty curtains from the front of the cupboards. Finally, I hauled water from the lake, heated it, and started to scrub. And as I wiped the cupboards and scrubbed the floors, something weird happened. I started to feel all sappy. Our house was just so little and cute and rustic, and, well, it was our home – and I was gloriously proud of it. I scrubbed harder. Polished more thoroughly. I started to hum.
“Evy?”
I stood up. Mom was in the doorway to her room. Her face was white and her mouth a thin line. She was wringing her hands, something she only did when she was super stressed about something. Maybe she’d found a pile of moose turds behind the door and wanted me to clean it up.
“Yeah?”
She stared at me for a long moment, looking as if she was trying to will words from between her clenched teeth. When it didn’t happen, she finally forced her hands to her side. Then she spoke. “You can go.”
“Go? Where?”
“To the…” Cough.
“What?”
“To the… to the rodeo.”
“What? Really?” For a second I couldn’t take it in. “Oh, wow! Awesome!”
“But you promise me you won’t wander away from Kestrel or someone in her family, okay?”
“I promise.”
“And you have to be back home by sunset, okay?”
“No problem.”
“And I don’t have much money to give you.”
“All I need is enough to get into the rodeo, that’s all.”
Mom nodded, then turned back to her bedroom.
“Mom?”
She stopped. Turned back.
“Why are you letting me go?”
She tipped her head back and blinked for a moment, not wanting to cry again. I waited. When she spoke, her words were soft. “Because you’re growing up. You’re incredibly capable and resourceful, and I can trust you.”
Wow. I didn’t expect all that. And that’s when the idea jumped into my head – now was the time to ask that other question. “Kestrel might be going away this fall to a boarding school in Vancouver. I… well… if I think it’s the right thing to do, can I go too?”
A good way to phrase the question, I thought – until her pale face became impossibly whiter. She inhaled sharply and leaned on the doorpost, choked out an indistinguishable sound that I assumed meant, “No way, not ever, not in a million, trillion years,” and then rushed into her room. You’d think I’d just told her I’d gotten a full body tattoo or was running away to Tibet to join a commune or something equally devastating. What was so terrible about boarding school in Vancouver? Other than my mom being a hermit. Other than her being afraid either of people in general or a specific someone or something, and thus hiding in the bush.
Oh, wait. There was that one other bad thing about Vancouver.
My dad had died there.
I could have kicked myself. I should’ve first told her the what, and then when that was okay – if it ever was okay – told her the where. Apparently, my dad was in a car accident in Vancouver, just months after I was born. My mom hardly ever spoke of him, and because she was reluctant to tell me about him, because I’d never known him, and because as far back as I could remember it had only been me and Mom, I didn’t think about him much.
I did miss not having a dad in some ways though. What kid wouldn’t? It was especially hard when Kestrel joked with her dad, Seth. And sometimes I wondered what my dad was like. Was I like him in any way? Could he talk to horses too?
Feeling both terrible for upsetting my reclusive mother and irritated with her for being so easily upset, I left the house with the wash bucket in my hand. I threw the soapy water out onto the grass and then looked across the meadow. Twilight and Tumpoo were gone.
Twilight? Where are you?
Lake.
Tumpoo?
Watching him.
I felt my shoulders relax just a bit. My filly was keeping an eye on the calf for me. Fantastic. Had she realized that Tumpoo was causing too much trouble? If so, I was grateful. Maybe between me, Rusty, Twilight, and the new setup around the house, we’d keep him under control.
I walked down the porch steps and around the side of the cabin, the bucket in my hand. I really didn’t need clean water to finish the floors, but I had to get outside for a bit. Some fresh air to help me think.
The whole time that I walked, watched Twilight and Tumpoo splashing in the shallows, hauled more water, heated it again, and finished the floor, I thought and not happy thoughts. I wanted to focus on the rodeo and being allowed to go, but I couldn’t. Avoiding being separated from Kestrel for almost a year was far more important than one fun day at a rodeo. There might be a solution I was overlooking. Like maybe Mom would let me go if the school was somewhere other than Vancouver?
And where would we find the money? It would cost a lot.
But even if Mom didn’t mind a boarding school in some other city and we could find the money, how would I convince Kestrel’s parents to send her somewhere else? How would we find another school in time? It seemed an impossible task, and I wondered if I’d be smart to give up – but I’m not the type to surrender. Getting permission to go to the rodeo had made me optimistic. That had seemed unattainable too but look what happened! Maybe this boarding school thing would work out too.