CHAPTER FIVE

WHEN LILY WAKES UP, it is early, and the house is quiet. Lily dresses quickly and runs downstairs. Big wet green tracks lead across the frosty lawn to the barn. Gramp is there already.

He is looking into Beware’s stall. When he hears Lily, he turns and shakes his head. For a second fear reaches inside and squeezes Lily’s heart.

“She seems about the same.”

“Then she isn’t worse?” Lily opens the stall door. Beware’s ears twitch forward for a moment and then drop back. The pile of hay is still in front of her. The water pail is full. There are no tracks in the bright orange shavings and no manure. “She’s no better,” Gramp says, “and she ought to be.”

Lily puts her ear against Beware’s right side. The propane tank sound is still there. On the other side there is no sound at all. The two lines of muscle stand out. When Lily offers a handful of hay, Beware turns her face away, as if the sight of it makes her feel sick.

“Can I call the clinic this early?” Lily asks. “Will they be open yet?”

“There’s somebody on call for emergencies,” Gramp says.

Lily runs up the path. The cold air freezes her throat. Her mind feels frozen, too. With a cold red finger she dials the clinic number.

A strange voice answers. It’s not the nice lady from last night. “This is the answering service. Give me your number, and Dr. Brand will call you right back.”

Lily sits down to wait. Mom comes downstairs in her warm bathrobe. “No better?”

“She won’t even try to eat hay,” Lily says.

“Maybe a piece of carrot,” Mom says. “She might—”

The phone rings loudly. Lily jumps and answers it.

“Hello, Dr. Brand here.” Dr. Brand is the woman vet. Lily knows her. “Horse with colic?”

“Yes. She was sick last night, and Dr. Shore said she should be better soon, but she’s just the same.”

“Okay, tell me what he said it was, and what he did.” Dr. Brand talks Lily through everything Dr. Shore did last night—listening to her sides, the shots, the nose tube.

“Have you been walking her?”

“He said not to,” Lily says, “because she wasn’t rolling. He said to let her rest.”

Dr. Brand is quiet for a few seconds. Then she says, “I’d start walking her now if I were you. I’ll be there in about an hour.”

Lily hangs up the phone, and Mom hands her a bowl of hot cereal. “Eat this before you go out.”

“We should have been walking her!” Lily says. “I knew it!” She can’t put even one spoonful of cereal in her mouth. It makes her feel just the way hay makes Beware feel.

Gramp is haying the other horses. “Dr. Brand says walk her!” Lily yells. She snaps a lead rope into Beware’s halter and pulls. “Come on, Beware! Walk!”

“Whoa, Lily. Calm down.” Gramp steps into the stall. “She’s stood still all night. She’ll be stiff, just like when you found her.” Gramp puts his shoulder against Beware’s rump. “All right, now.”

Gramp and Lily push and pull Beware outside into the frosty morning. Beware hangs her head. She doesn’t want to walk. “I’ll get my whip,” Lily says. Beware has to walk. Dr. Brand says so. But it seems horrible to haul her around and maybe even hit her when she is sick. When Lily has a stomach ache, she stays in bed, and Mom gives her ginger ale.

“I’ll just push her along,” Gramp says. “Lead her in a circle right here in front of the barn. Come on, little mare. It’s the best thing for you.”

Dr. Brand is a small woman with a thick black braid. The braid is streaked with silver, and Dr. Brand is getting wrinkles beside her eyes, just like Gramp. Those kinds of wrinkles come from working outside and squinting against the sun. They come from smiling.

“Hello, mare,” she says to Beware even before she says hello to Gramp and Lily. She holds her hand out for Beware to sniff. Then she takes hold of Beware’s halter, gently and firmly. She lifts Beware’s lip and looks at her gums.

“If a horse is in shock, the gums change color,” Dr. Brand explains. “Hers look pretty normal. That’s a good sign.”

Dr. Brand takes Beware’s temperature. She finds Beware’s pulse and counts, looking at her watch. “Vital signs aren’t bad.” She takes out her stethoscope and listens and taps all along Beware’s sides, just the way Dr. Shore did.

“Well, we could tell a lot more if we could see inside her,” Dr. Brand says finally. “But I think Tom was right. She has an obstruction—a hard mass of food stuck over here on the right side of the bowel.”

“Why would that happen?” Gramp asks.

“Sometimes they don’t drink enough water. Sometimes in the fall they’ll eat something strange along the edge of the pasture, when the grass is getting low—acorns, or some weed that forms a mass instead of moving through. Most times we don’t know why, and it doesn’t matter. We’ll give her a shot for the pain and tube her again.”

Dr. Brand doesn’t give Beware a tranquilizer. Instead she gets out a twitch—a stick with a short loop of chain on the end. Gramp puts the chain around Beware’s top lip and twists the chain tight. It squeezes and scrunches Beware’s velvety lip. Beware’s eyes show white around the rims. She stands perfectly still.

“It doesn’t hurt, Lily,” Dr. Brand says. “The pressure on the nerves makes her stand still. It’s better than a shot because it wears off right away.”

“Should have seen your gran when the doctors put her nose tube in!” Gramp says. “They put a twitch on her, too. Had to get the janitor in to hold it!”

Lily tries to smile because that is what Gramp wants. She holds the tube up while Dr. Brand pumps. In a minute all the water is inside Beware. Dr. Brand slides the nose tube out, and Gramp untwists the twitch. Beware shakes her head and steps away from him.

Dr. Brand says, “Give her water if she’ll take any.”

“Hay?” Gramp asks.

“I wouldn’t like to put more food in on top of what’s stuck,” Dr. Brand says. “A wisp of hay, maybe, or a carrot—that might help get her system moving. And walk her.”

“How much?” Lily asks.

“Half an hour, rest her a couple of hours, then walk her again. Gentle exercise can help the gut get moving.”

“How come Tom Shore didn’t tell us that?” Gramp asks. He sounds angry at Dr. Shore.

“Everybody has a different idea about colic,” Dr. Brand says as she packs her bag. “Some people think that it’s cruel to make a sick horse walk and that it doesn’t do much good. I think it helps, but none of us can see inside the body, so nobody’s really sure.” Dr. Brand looks at Lily. “Still, if she were my horse, I’d walk her.”

“I will,” Lily says.

“Call me if she doesn’t pass some manure by late afternoon,” Dr. Brand says. Then she laughs. “Funny, isn’t it? I went to seven years of college so I could talk about horse manure. Oh, well. Everything is beautiful in its proper place.”

As they start up toward the house, the school bus stops at the end of the driveway. Gramp just looks at Lily and shakes his head. The bus waits a moment with the door open. When Lily doesn’t come, the door closes, and the bus rattles on down the hill.