Authors: Natale Ghent
I hand Queenie a pitchfork and we work at cleaning Smokey’s stall. Then all three of us groom him very carefully and slowly, waiting for the Gorilla to put his colt away and get out. I don’t want him seeing us hitching Smokey to the sled. He’d just have some comment about whata bad idea it was and how stupid we were, or something.
My arm is sore from brushing by the time the Gorilla finally leaves. We wasted half the morning waiting for him to pack up and go. As soon as we hear his truck leave, I walk down the aisle and open his tack box.
“What are you doing?” Cid asks.
“Getting something.”
“If you take his stuff, he’ll kill us.”
“He won’t know. Besides, he can afford to replace it. And if he’s going to accuse us of stealing anyway, we may as well make the most of it.”
I pull an expensive leather halter from the box and eye the sheepskin noseband with certain intention. “This will do just fine.”
“Nathaniel, don’t you dare!” Cid says. “It’s bad enough we’re stealing hay!”
“We’ll put it back. Do you want the rope to hurt Smokey?”
Cid shakes her head in disbelief. Queenie watches with interest.
“We’ll just use it until I can get enough money from my paper route to buy the proper thing. Christmas is coming, so I should have some money soon.”
Queenie and I gather binder twine and braid several pieces together as thick and flat as we can, designing it harness-like to fit across Smokey’s chest and along his sides. We even braid long reins and a piece to go behind his withers to hold the harness in place. Before we attach the two pieces, I work the borrowed sheepskin noseband from the Gorilla’s halter along the length of the braid and to the centre of the rope harness. Then I tie it all together and hold it up.
“Looks pretty good,” Queenie says approvingly.
I don’t even look at Cid for an opinion, because I know she thinks I’m a creep for taking the sheepskin. I’m sure she’s scared we’ll get caught, and I am too—just a little—but I don’t want to hurt Smokey with the rope. So the borrowing can’t be helped.
“Let’s try it out.”
I grab the sled and we lead Smokey from his stall into the field. He snorts and blows at the snow, tossing his head with excitement at the transformed landscape. The snow makes the tufts of grass in the field look like cupcakes. The sun is so bright it mixes the field and sky and everything in shades of blue. Queenie holds Smokey’s head while I tie the twine reins to his halter. Then I slipthe harness over his head, tying the ropes to the front of the sled. Smokey eyes me suspiciously as I secure the final knot.
“We’d best lead him around a bit to get him used to it,” I tell Queenie.
Queenie leads Smokey around, the sled sliding behind him. Smokey pins his ears back, then lunges forward, setting Queenie off balance. I grab the halter and hold him steady. We lead him around and around but Smokey’s ears stay pinned to his head.
“He’ll be okay once he understands what the sled is for,” I say.
“Let me get on,” Cid says.
We let Cid get on, Queenie and I holding either side of Smokey’s halter. Cid takes the reins in her mittened hands.
“Come on, Queenie, get on. We’ll go for a ride.”
But before Queenie can take a step toward the sled, Smokey rears forward and bolts, sending me and Queenie flying. Cid pulls on the reins with all her might, but Smokey doesn’t pay any mind. He gallops full speed towards the fence, Cid sliding and tipping on the sled behind him.
“Hang on!” I yell.
But it’s no use. Smokey breaks to the left, sending Cid tumbling off the sled like a bag of oldclothes. Smokey gallops and kicks furiously, the sled dipping and flapping angrily behind him.
“He’s going to hurt himself!” Queenie yells, as Smokey bucks and kicks towards the fence.
At last the rope can hold no more and the sled breaks free, sliding to a stop at the bottom of the hill. It takes us nearly half an hour to catch Smokey and calm him down. And the sled sure doesn’t look new any more. There are a bunch of dents at the front. I wouldn’t want Ma to see that. She’d think I didn’t appreciate the sled. But I do. It’s just going to take Smokey a bit to get used to it.
“If at first you don’t succeed …” I say, moving slowly behind Smokey while the girls hold his head and soothe him with gentle talk.
“He’ll never get used to it, Nathaniel,” Cid says.
“We’ll see. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
“Rome wasn’t a frightened pony.”
“He can do it. We just have to be patient.”
When I have the sled tied on properly, I tell Cid to get on again—only this time, more to the back of the sled.
“Forget it! I’m not stupid.”
“We need the weight,” I explain. “I’m getting on, too. The weight will slow Smokey down so he can’t run as fast.”
I get Queenie to hold Smokey’s head while I carefully lower myself onto the front of the sled. Smokey pins his ears back, just like before, but this time when he lunges forward, he can only pull us along at a walk. I cluck with my tongue and gently snap the twine reins against his back. Smokey swings his head from side to side, lifting his hooves like a Pasa Fino stallion through the snow.
“He’s doing it!” Queenie yells.
I rein Smokey to the deeper snow so the sled can slide more easily. I can feel the grass cupcakes bumping along the bottom of the sled. Cid is holding me tightly around the waist.
“This is so fun!” she laughs.
I give the reins another little shake, and Smokey quickens his pace to a trot. We move nicely up the hill back towards Queenie and the barn.
“Can I go next?” Queenie asks.
Cid doesn’t argue as she stands up from the sled and moves to hold Smokey’s halter so that Queenie can get on. Queenie sits carefully behind me, holding me around the waist the way Cid did. I cluck my tongue and snap the reins against Smokey’s back. “Hold on!”
Smokey moves forward more gracefully now, his bright eyes shining, his mane tossing and waving. I cluck again and Smokey breaks into atrot. Queenie and I glide smoothly along the length of the fence, the cold air biting our cheeks and noses, the sound of the sled swishing across the snow.
“I told you it would work!”
Queenie hugs me, pressing her face against my back as we circle around and around the field. When it seems like Smokey is used to the idea of the sled, I get off and let Cid take the reins. She trots Smokey over and across the field, Queenie sitting proudly behind her. We go on like this for most of the afternoon, until the sun starts to sink low in the sky.
Inside the barn, we carefully groom Smokey and towel the sweat from his coat so he won’t catch a chill. We cover him with one of Ma’s old wool blankets, fastening it at the chest and under the belly with clothes pegs from the laundry basket. I fill Smokey’s trough with hay from the loft. So far no one has even noticed that we’ve been taking it. I guess I would feel guiltier if they were around more or keeping an eye on things, but they aren’t. Besides, we feed Ted Henry’s horse all the time too, so he can consider the hay and straw we take as payment of sorts. I fluff straw around the stall, then pour fresh water into Smokey’s bucket. Then I return the sheepskinnoseband to its rightful place. When we leave, Smokey is munching happily on his hay, glad to be back in his stall.
“You were right, Nat,” Queenie says. “He did go just as pretty as you please.”
For some reason this makes Cid and me laugh. I run ahead to the street and slide with my boots on the packed snow. Cid and Queenie follow, and then we’re all sliding and laughing down the hill towards home.
I’m jolted awake first thing in the morning by the sound of Ma’s angry voice. I think she’s yelling at me, so I snap on my little bedside lamp to see what I’m in trouble for now. Then I realize she’s on the phone. Ma’s voice gets really high and it cracks when she’s particularly mad. I can’t imagine who could possibly deserve the kind of tongue-lashing Ma’s handing out right now, so I lie in bed listening. Better them than me, is all I can think.
While I’m listening, I blow out my breath and watch it steam in the air. It’s only four days before Christmas and the house is colder than a dead star. Ma keeps the house so cold the pipes freeze from time to time. She says she keeps the heat low to save money. I don’t see this as any kind of savings because it means that Ma has to call the plumber when things go wrong. He replaces a few things, then tells her to turn up the heat in the house. Sometimes she even lets the taps run at a trickle to keep the lines open. This must cost money too, I think.
I wish she would just turn the heat up in the first place, because I have to sleep in my long johns to keep from freezing like the pipes. I almost never go to bed without socks. In the morning I usually jump straight into my jeans without taking off my long johns, because it’s too cold in the house to bear the idea of undressing all the way. All of a sudden my little table lamp goes out. I hear the phone slam down in the cradle and Ma swearing a blue streak. This makes me sit straight up in bed, because that’s something Ma never does unless she’s ready to kill somebody. But she’s swearing now—like the best of them. I sit there in the dark, straining to hear what’s going on. Then Cid bursts into my room.
“What’s going on?”
Queenie is right behind her, padding along in her fuzzy pink pajamas, the ones with the feet cut off because she grew too tall for them.
“I don’t know. But Ma was yelling just a second ago and now the lights are out.”
I whip the covers off me and push my sock feet into a pair of hand-knit slippers that are missing the pom-poms and whose soles have been patched so many times you can’t tell what the original colour must have been. I pull on some sweatpants and a sweatshirt and go out into thehall to hear better. That’s when I realize that Ma is crying. I rush down the stairs without even thinking, Queenie and Cid right behind me.
“Ma! What’s going on?”
“Oh, those horrible people!”
“What horrible people, Ma?”
“The Hydro. They turned off the hydro because I’m late paying the bill. I told them, Friday at the latest, but they wouldn’t listen.”
This makes me more than just a little scared. We’ve been hungry before and we’ve had to make do with old clothes, but we’ve never had to face anything like this. And only four days before Christmas. Suddenly I hate my dad more than ever. How could he go and leave us to freeze with no hydro, while he and his new family eat steaks and things? I’m not sure about the steaks, but that’s the first thing that comes to my mind and it makes me furious.
“That can’t be legal, Ma, to shut off the hydro.” This is all I can think to say at this time. To my surprise, she doesn’t treat me like an idiot.
“No, it’s not legal. And I’m going to do something about it.”
I look over at Queenie and Cid, who haven’t said a word. I can tell they’re scared, too, because they’ve never seen Ma like this before either. Matears the phone book open to the government pages, flipping angrily through until she finds the number she wants. She dials the numbers so hard she has to redial twice just to get it right.
“May I speak with the mayor, please?”
I look at Cid and Queenie as though to say,
do you believe Ma’s guts?
Then I shrug because I have no idea what’s coming next.
“I have to speak to her. It’s very important….”
There’s a long pause.
“Then, I’d like to leave her a message. I’m a single mother struggling to survive with three children. I’ve always tried to pay my bills on time. I try to do my best but the Hydro won’t wait for one more day and decided to just cut us off. My children are here in the dark and we can’t even put the kettle on the stove for a cup of tea. This is a disgrace, and I want something done about it immediately.”
After bending the secretary’s ear, Ma leaves her name and number and hangs up. She folds her arms across her chest and disappears into her room, leaving us standing in the hallway by the phone with no explanation as to what’s going to happen.
“We can light the fire,” I tell Queenie and Cid to make them feel better. “It’s kind of excitingwith no electricity. Just like
Little House on the Prairie.”
“Are we going to freeze to death?” Queenie asks.
I look at her in shock and then laugh to let her know that everything will be all right. But honestly, this whole thing has me really scared. I don’t know if the mayor will call us back, and even if she does, what good can she do? She won’t pay our bills or make Dad come home and take care of us. I feel sorry for Ma, having to call the mayor and embarrass herself like that. I feel sorry for the whole lot of us.
“Get some newspaper from the garbage,” I order Queenie, to keep her busy. “Go get the matches in the kitchen drawer,” I order Cid for the same reason.
They don’t argue, but just obediently get what I asked for, which means they’re depending on me to get them through this. I hate being in this position, but I do it all the same because somebody has to take charge.
I don’t even have a chance to light the newspaper in the fireplace when the lights snap on. The phone rings as this happens, and I shake out the match and rush to answer it. I can’t believe my ears when I hear it’s the mayor. I yell for Ma tocome to the phone, and she appears like summer lightning, snatching the phone from my outstretched hand.
“Hello …”
I think Ma is as surprised as the rest of us that the mayor actually called back. We all stand there listening. There’s a long pause, and I’m desperate to know what’s being said.
“Yes. Yes. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate this very much.” Ma returns the phone to its cradle, then leans her chin on one hand and just stares off into space.
“What’d she say, Ma?” the three of us ask together.
“She phoned the Hydro and told them to turn on the electricity and not to turn it off again, no matter how late we are paying the bill.”
Cid, Queenie and I exchange astonished looks. “That was nice of her,” I finally say.
“Yes, it was. She’s a woman with a family of her own. I knew she’d understand.” Ma suddenly looks at her watch in alarm. “Good lord, you kids are going to be late for school!”