Boy on a Black Horse Read online

  It was a terrific day. Indian summer. The way the sun hit the orange and yellow trees they were blazing like fire. I walked to school real slow, scuffing through the leaves on the ground, and I took the long way around, through the fields behind the elementary school and into the beech grove at the bottom of the nature trail. It’s like a hollow down there, hidden from everything, peaceful. I walked deep into the woods.

  All this is to explain that I wasn’t trying to spy on Chav. It just happened that I saw him.

  I saw him riding a black horse between the golden trees.

  I don’t know which I saw first, the horse or Chav. It was like they were both part of the same king-crowned-in-gold thing, the black stallion—I could tell it was a stallion by its thick arched neck—the black horse treading through the fiery leaves and the black-haired boy on its back. The horse was small and slim, like Chav, and it carried its head high like him. It curved its neck and struck out with its forefeet like a dancer as it walked. Its head was long and Roman-nosed, not pretty at all—it was way better than pretty, it was fierce and proud. This horse was a real black, with not a white or a brown hair on it anywhere, so black it seemed awesome, packed with itself, like it was more of a horse than other horses. And it was headed toward me.

  It would have been lucky-day amazing to see a horse, any sort of horse, on my way to school when I wasn’t expecting it, but a black stallion yet! I couldn’t believe it. I stood there hugging a tree trunk and gawking so hard I didn’t see the other two kids at first. They were on the horse too, a little girl in front of Chav and a not-so-little boy behind him, all three of them riding bareback to school as if this black stallion were a tired old mare, with just a halter and a couple of rope reins.

  Then Chav glanced over toward me, his face changed, and his whole body went stiff. The black horse stopped in its tracks that minute, before he even touched the rope reins. I knew it had to be because the change in his seat had signaled for a halt, but how many horses will respond that way? It was eerie, almost like he and the black horse were sharing a mind.

  From about ten feet away they were staring at me, and I realized from the spooked look in their eyes that neither of them had known I was there, or they probably wouldn’t have come anywhere near me. The little girl riding in front of Chav twisted around and hid her face against his chest, shy or scared. All I could see was her long dark hair. The not-so-little boy looked at me with wide dark eyes from behind Chav’s shoulder.

  “Hi,” I whispered, and I unlatched myself from my tree and walked a few steps toward them, slowly, trying not to startle the horse. “Hello, wild horse,” I said softly to the stallion, taking a guess that it was some kind of mustang. I wanted to make friends with it. “What’s his name?” I asked.

  He looked stone-faced but answered me. “Rom.”

  “Huh?” It didn’t seem like enough name for such a horse.

  “Rom.”

  I realized I reminded me of somebody. “Spell it,” I said, straight-faced. “We beg your pardon? What is his last name? We need his last name for the records.”

  That cracked Chav’s stony face open. He actually laughed, a happier laugh than the one he’d given Matt Kain. The way he laughed made the little kids decide everything was all right. The little girl squirmed around and looked at me—her face was petal-smooth and pretty, like a brown flower—I wished I was half as pretty. The boy behind Chav slipped down off the horse and grinned at me as soon as his beat-up sneakers hit the ground. “I’m Baval,” he announced like it was important, “and this is Chavali.” He helped the little girl down. When she stuck her feet out I noticed her sneakers looked real old, like Baval’s, yet they were too big for her, and she didn’t have socks on. “Say hi,” Baval told her once she was down, but she didn’t. She smiled at me, then got shy again and ducked her head against Baval. They both wore blue jeans and T-shirts, plenty old and worn out, but still Baval and Chavali seemed basically like regular kids. Their strange names and dark skins made them different than me and my friends but not as different as Chav. Their faces were soft and young, not flinty like his. Their eyes were clear and sunny, not hard like black ice. Something about him was a lot more different.

  “I’m Gray,” I told Chavali and Baval. “Hi. Do you always ride Rom to school?”

  They looked at each other and kind of smiled, but nobody answered. Chav did not even look up. He was down off Rom and had the halter off him and was crouching in front of him, using the rope reins to loop hobbles around his forelegs. Rom put his head down and nuzzled Chav’s hair, and Chav did not push his big black nose away.

  “Hi, Rom,” I said to the stallion. He swung his head up and looked at me with deep, wise eyes, and I knew he would allow me to pat him, though I meant nothing to him. I went over and stroked his neck. There were some scars on his back and shoulders, which was a rotten shame, but none of them seemed fresh. His coat was smooth and shiny. Somebody had been taking good care of him.

  Chav got the rope hobbles adjusted just right and stood up so that all of a sudden he was facing me. “Do people come down here?” he asked. “Will anybody find him here?”

  I couldn’t answer for a minute, because the question meant so many things. It meant that for some reason—I didn’t want to think what reason—Rom was not supposed to be found. It meant that I was not “people,” not just anybody, but someone who knew a secret. It meant I could not tell. Chav wanted me on his side, even though I was not sure who the sides were or what they were fighting over. He trusted me not to tell.

  He was right. I wouldn’t.

  “Nobody much comes down here during the week,” I said finally. New rules: Science teachers were supposed to keep kids up top because kids kept getting “lost” down in the hollow. “But people hike here weekends, and they’ll find the hoof-prints and horse piles and stuff.”

  Chav shrugged as if the weekend were so far away only an idiot would think about it. He looked at Baval and Chavali, and without another word all three of them walked off.

  “Wait,” I called, and I tossed my paper sack at them. Chav caught it.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “Lunch.”

  He stared at me.

  “Take it,” I told him, and I headed toward my school, the middle school, which was across campus from the elementary school. Probably Baval and Chavali were going there. I didn’t look back to make sure, because Chav was behind me in the hollow somewhere, and he was more like a wild horse than the black horse was. Like a spooked colt. I had to be careful not to scare him.

  I saw him in language arts, but he didn’t look at me, so I didn’t say anything to him.

  I didn’t tell anyone, not even Minda, but all day I thought of the black stallion not far away, moving softly through the woods, eating the golden leaves.

  At lunchtime Chav borrowed money from a teacher and bought himself a barfburger. What had he done with the lunch I gave him? Gave it to Baval and Chavali, maybe?

  Who was he? Where did he come from? Where did he live?

  “Earth to Gray,” Minda teased me as I watched him. She was sharing her lunch with me, but I wasn’t talking. “Earth to Gray. Is there life on your planet?”

  I shook my head.

  “None at all?”

  “Nope.” I wasn’t about to tell her what was going on inside my head.

  Sitting there thinking, I had made up my mind what I was going to do.

  Just because it was such a beautiful day, Liana knew I would want to go to the stable right after school. So there she was in the car waiting for me, and she’d brought along a pack of Twinkles for me and a carrot for Paradiddle.

  “Way to go, Lee!” I called her that sometimes.

  “What’s new in school?” she asked me.

  “Nothing, really.” I got out of my shoes and into my riding boots while she drove. Other than that, I didn’t have to change anything. I wore the same jeans to school and to ride. Liana didn’t mind when they got stained with h
orse sweat—we would just go out and buy more. I’ll say one thing for horrible accidents: between Uncle Dan’s life insurance and my parents’ life insurance and the money from my parents’ house and stuff, we didn’t have to worry about getting by. I mean, we weren’t millionaires, but we had enough.

  That’s the only thing I’ll say for horrible accidents, though. Believe me, it was not the best way to get money.

  So anyway Lee drove me out to the stable, which was really more like a farm, not a fancy place where people wore breeches and schooled for shows. Those places are okay, I guess, but I like Topher the Gopher’s stable better. There was a wooden sign up, Agony Acres, but that was just one of Topher’s lame jokes. Nobody really called it that—everybody who rode there just called it the stable. It was just a sort of down-home place in the country, and he was just a sort of sandy-haired guy who loved horses. His wife had left him because she was jealous of the way he loved horses—she wanted him to work a job with regular hours or something. She was named Chris, short for Christina, which was why people called him Topher, because his name was Christopher and it would have been confusing to call him Chris too.

  “Why didn’t she just change her name to Tina?” I asked him once.

  “She didn’t like it.”

  “But you like the name Topher?”

  “Not really.” But he grinned. “I got to admit it’s different.” He drawled a little when he talked because he came from Texas or someplace, and he always wore his cowboy hat and boots even though he rode English, and he knew dressage, but he taught all his horses to ground-tie like cow ponies. I liked him a lot.

  Now he didn’t want to be called Chris anymore because it reminded him of Christina. And he didn’t have a wife anymore, but he still had horses, all kinds. He had Arabs, Appaloosas, a big old Belgian mare, a Paso Fino, a white Thoroughbred filly off the track with a blown tendon, a dapple-gray Connemara, Tennessee walkers, quarter horses, and of course Paradiddle, who seemed to be at least part Bashkir Curly. He’d got her at an auction when she was a foal, and, surprise, when she grew up she had curly hair.

  Paradiddle’s name, by the way, means a certain kind of drumbeat. Kind of like the way her hooves sound when she’s trying to keep up with horses that have actual legs instead of caterpillar appendages.

  “Hi, Topher!” I yelled as soon as I got out of the car, because there he was, leaning on a paddock fence and looking at his new Thoroughbred to see if the tendon was getting any better. “Can I take Paradiddle out for a long ride?”

  “Sure.” Most of the time Topher saved Paradiddle for me, I guess because he could see we got along. If other people came to ride, he put them on the quarter horses, which were more like what people expected, horsewise. “Is Minda coming? I’ll get Dude.” Dude was the pretty palomino and white pinto Minda usually rode.

  “Not today.” She had a dentist appointment. Usually I liked to ride with Minda, but today I had a plan that didn’t include her.

  Liana handed a check out the car window for me to give to Topher. She hardly ever got out of the car at the stable. No reason why. She just didn’t. There were a lot of fun things Lee didn’t do.

  “Don’t worry if I’m late,” I told her. I had maybe four hours before dark. It was still daylight saving time for another week or two.

  “Okay. Have a good ride. Call me when you need to be picked up.” She drove off.

  Topher didn’t have to help me do anything. The check was a rental fee because he owned Diddle and fed her and took care of her. He wasn’t a gofer really—he had taught me to ride, but now I was on my own. I went down to the pasture and caught Diddle myself, and gave her her carrot and told her what a pretty girl she was, and led her up to the barn. But Topher hung around while I curried her and brushed her, because he was a friend.

  “How’s stuff?” I asked him.

  “Better.” That was what he always said, “better.” Better than what?

  “How’s Red?” That was the white Thoroughbred filly. He called her Red because Thoroughbreds aren’t supposed to be white. Topher had a strange sense of humor.

  “Better. Gonna be fine, just needs a good long rest. By spring that tendon ought to be sound again. Then I can think about retraining her.”

  “Can I help?”

  “Sure.”

  Out of nowhere I said, “I wish I had a horse of my own.”

  I guess Topher was used to hearing this. He just said, “You sort of do,” and nodded at Diddle, who was standing there with her big blimpy belly sticking out and her big blinky eyes half closed and her brown curly forelock hanging down over them.

  “Oh, poor Diddle.” I kissed her on her fuzzy forehead. “Don’t listen to me.” I combed the poodle curls of her mane like my life depended on it, but I said to Topher, “I think Liana might get me a horse for Christmas.”

  This was true. We had enough money, so she had promised she was going to get me my own horse sometime soon. And Christmas was coming.

  “Think so? What kind?”

  “I don’t care. Any kind or color is fine with me as long as it’s a real horse.”

  “Real?”

  “You know, big and strong and fast. Like—you know. Didn’t you ever want a black stallion or something?”

  He smiled, and I guess he sort of understood, because he said, “I want them all.”

  Ten minutes later I was riding Diddle across the fields, and she trotted along like a big dog, and her fuzzy little brown ears were tilted forward happily as always. She was such a good horse. But I was thinking about a black stallion and the boy who rode it.

  CHAPTER

  3

  It took me an hour to get to the school. I had never ridden there before—why would I? It wasn’t as if I didn’t spend enough time there already. And the roads went the long way around, and paved roads aren’t the best place to ride horse-back anyhow, because of stupid people in cars, among other reasons. So I had to find ways through woods and housing developments and cow pastures with barbed-wire fences. It was sort of challenging.

  When I finally got to the hollow where the black stallion had spent the day, he was gone, of course. I was expecting that.

  “Okay, Diddle, here we go,” I told her, and I guided her along where I could see scuffed-up leaves. We were going to try to follow the black stallion’s trail.

  At first it was easy. The cornfields below the hollow were marshy from runoff, and I could see the black horse’s hoofprints between the stubble. I could even tell that he wasn’t shod. But after that it got harder. We came to an overgrown field, and all I had to go by was a faint whitish line in the grass and weeds where he had passed through. Then on the far side was a gravel road. I could only guess which direction the black horse had gone on that, and I spent maybe half an hour riding around in circles. Any other horse would have thrown a fit, but Diddle didn’t mind.

  This was taking a lot of time. “We should head back,” I told her.

  But we didn’t, because finally I found a mark in the mud and weeds alongside the road that might have been a hoofprint—I wasn’t sure. So I went farther and, all riiiight! I found the trail again in a farmer’s dirt lane. Then I lost it in a clover field.… I could spend an hour telling how I kept losing those hoofprints and finding them again, going across the fields to the railroad track, then along the track to—

  The trestle?

  “You have to be kidding,” I begged. But Chav and the black stallion were not kidding. I could see the oval-shaped depressions in the gravel between the ties, going straight across, sixty feet above the deep part of the river, on a narrow bridge with no side rails. At least this railroad bridge was solid, made of steel and concrete—it was not the spindly kind of trestle that was full of holes. But even so, what if a train came? What if the horse acted up? What if a bird flew across in front of Diddle’s nose and she spooked? I could end up in the—water—and to make it worse, I was scared of water ever since … ever since a couple of years before. Water was a ba
ck stabber to me. On the surface it twinkled and sparkled and smiled, but underneath, it was drowning deep.

  “Oopsie, it’s really getting late,” I told the world. “Time to go home.” But I didn’t go. I hated being scared and I didn’t like to give in to it. Maybe it was okay to be scared, maybe it was even reasonable under the circumstances, but something in me wasn’t being reasonable about this Chav-and-Rom thing.

  If they could do it …

  There Diddle stood with her ears sideward, swishing her curly tail and waiting for me to make up my mind. If any horse in the world could take me safely across that bridge, Diddle could. All of a sudden I was mad—at myself, mostly, for being a back stabber about Diddle. No black stallion was better than her.

  “Okay, girl, let’s do it.” I listened hard—no train was coming. Then I sent her forward.

  She nodded along, stepping between the ties, never even looking at the river glinting too far below. What a trail horse she was. The best. I let her handle it and sat tight and tried not to look down. In a way it was nothing.

  And in a way it was the most important thing I had ever done, because on the other side were Chav and the black horse.

  At the corner where the railroad and the river met, screened off by trees, with nothing around it but woods, was an abandoned farm. I saw the top of the yellow brick silo first, with the low sun hitting it and turning it gold. In the shadows were the falling-down barn and farmhouse. Then I saw the black stallion grazing where the sun hit the top of the meadow, and I stopped Diddle on the tracks because my breath had stopped. There were no fence, no hobbles, no halter line. The grazing stallion was as free as a wild thing, and lying on its back like he was asleep, like being rocked in a black-horse cradle, with his face in its mane and his arms down around its shoulders, was Chav. He had his shirt off, and the heat of the horse and the sunshine were keeping him warm. His bare skin pressed against the horse’s skin. His black hair hung down and mixed with the black horse’s mane. He had his eyes closed; he didn’t see me.