The Journey Prize Stories 27 (19 page)

The girl finds him in the bedroom, touching a bundle of dead leaves that are wrapped in string and hanging from the ceiling.

“It looks like voodoo,” the boy says.

“Voodoo? They’re just dried herbs. That’s how my mom hangs them.”

The girl reaches up to touch a sprig of mint but withdraws her hand when she sees that the silvered, pale green leaves are wrapped in cobwebs and blanketed in dust.

“Come look at the kitchen,” she says, taking the boy’s hand. “Look at all the food Margaret bought us …”

They sweep through the cupboards, pulling down boxes of things they want to eat, not bothering with the kettle or the range or even utensils, but eating out of packages with their bare hands. They talk excitedly about what they’ll do with the money they earn.

When they have combed through the lower cupboards, the girl stands on the counter so she can see what’s in the upper cabinets. She finds that they are filled with pots and pans that have rusted through with filth. They’d have to be thrown away. But when the boy asks her what she sees, she says: “Nothing, just some cookware.”

He helps her down from the counter, and the girl wraps her arms around his neck. She presses her body against his and kisses him on the lips.

“I’m so glad we found this place,” she says.

“We’re very lucky. We won’t stay long,” he says. “Just until we have enough money to go someplace better.”

As they walk down the hill toward the farm, they have a better chance to view the property. The land falls down into the valley at a steep drop-off just behind the barn and house. The bottom of the valley looks like it might have once been a riverbed. The ground is sodden; mud coats the legs and tails and bellies of the horses standing in the paddocks that divide the valley floor into tile-like squares.

The house and barn are surrounded by a courtyard that’s closed off from the rest of the property by another fence with a tall gate. They can see the top of a large chicken coop at one end of the courtyard, and three large cages—maybe for ducks or rabbits—at the other end.

When they reach the gate they find it open.

The first thing the girl notices is the sulphurous, rotting-vegetable smell of fetid water. Wine-dark liquid has settled in stagnant pools on the cobblestones, amidst piles of blackened hay and bits of broken wood. A large haystack stands in one corner, next to a shed that’s been stripped of its siding. The girl thinks the haystack must have been there for a very long time; its decomposing strata are distinguishable from each other because of a slight variation in the tint of its layers, which change from crisp green at the top to rusty black at the bottom. A tiny creature skitters out from the bottom of the pile and disappears into the shed.
Moles
, she thinks.
Or rats
.

She glances up at the boy, but he seems to notice nothing out of the ordinary.

“What a beautiful horse,” he says, pointing to the corner of the yard, where a blood-bay mule is pulling hay down from a rotten stack.

“That’s not a horse,” the girl says. “Why’s it loose in the yard?”

“I’m just about to catch It!”

The girl turns around to see Diane emerging from one of the stalls, towing a little brown pony behind her. The pony looks as though she’s pregnant, or has foaled recently; her bulbous body sways beneath the saddle on her back with every step she takes.

“This is Its mother. It only comes to Its mother.”

“Whose mother?” the girl asks.

“That mule,” Diane replies. “I’ve never dealt with mules before. I don’t know what to do with It. It’s why I was late picking you up today. It gets out of Its paddock and then It
goes all around the property, wreaking havoc. Margaret owns fifty acres. Sometimes, It disappears for days.”

“Its mother is that horse?” the boy asks. “I thought you said It’s a mule.”

“Its father was a donkey. Its mother is this pony. So It’s a mule.”

“Is It a boy or a girl?” the girl asks.

“Never checked. Doesn’t matter either way. All mules are sterile. It’s God’s way of saying they’re a mistake. Margaret says It’s having separation anxiety.”

“Separation anxiety?” the girl asks.

Sensing movement just above her head, the girl looks up. She thinks she sees a shudder run through the curtains in the uppermost windows of the house.

“It doesn’t want to leave Its mother, but it’s high time It was weaned,” Diane explains. “It’s almost two years old. We put It in a pen right across the property. But It jumped the fence. We tried putting It in with the other horses, but It kicked the latch on the gate. And then It gets Its mother out too. She never goes further than the round bale. But that mule is a different story. It gets into everything. The feed room. The house kitchen. Once, It tried to climb up the stairs—”

There’s a sudden, loud grinding noise from the bottom of the valley where the paddocks are. The ducks and the chickens beat their wings against the bars of their cages as the steadily building hum of distant machinery grows louder and louder.

Diane curses. “Don’t tell me that fool is coming up the hill!” She drops the pony’s reins on the ground and runs toward the path that leads down into the valley. “Stop!” she yells, waving her arms. “What are you doing?
Stop!
”

The tractor’s raised bucket precedes its appearance in the courtyard, as if it’s straining bodily to make it up over the final lip. Upon seeing it, the mule bolts from the bale and tears across the cobblestones. But instead of running away from the tractor, It runs directly toward it.

The man driving the tractor swerves violently to avoid the mule, and the tractor’s front wheels skid on the mulch of rotten hay that covers the wet cobbles. The tractor teeters dangerously at the hill’s highest point before beginning to roll back down the path.

A few seconds later, there’s a loud crunching noise followed by the sound of glass breaking. Everyone in the courtyard rushes to the top of the path to see that the tractor has crashed through a paddock fence and into a large rock that is embedded in the valley floor. Its bucket lies on the ground beside it. The mule is cantering along the fenceline, in the near distance. It throws a buck in midstride.

“Oh God,” Diane breathes, holding a hand to her chest. “Margaret’s going to throw a fit. You,” she says to the boy, “go get that mule, please.” She turns to the girl. “You, catch the pony and un-tack her. Margaret’s going to want me to ask the driver what the hell happened.”

The boy gives the girl a wide-eyed, terrified look before taking the halter Diane is proffering toward him. He has never caught a horse in his life. But Margaret hired them with the belief that they both had experience working with horses.

“Hurry!” Diane barks. “I can hear her coming down the stairs!”

The girl watches the boy walk toward the path that leads down into the valley. At the head of the path, he meets the
man who’d been driving the tractor. The man walks slowly and dazedly. His overalls are muddy up to his chest, and he’s missing one work boot.

A loud voice cuts across the courtyard, issuing from the direction of the house. “What happened? What happened to my tractor and my paddock?”

A stout woman strides toward them. Her cheekbones are patched with ruddy splotches, and her chest heaves in and out with exertion. “Who has done this?” the woman asks.
“Who?”

“It was the mule, Margaret,” Diane says. “The new boy’s gone to get him. This is the new girl.”

Diane introduces them, and Margaret clasps the girl’s hand between her small, clammy palms. “Oh,” she says. “I am so terribly sorry that you have to see this on your first day, your first hour, on my property! What must you think of me? Did you have a pleasant trip up?” she asks. She’s looking across the courtyard, down toward the valley. “You know, you really should have planned it so you wouldn’t be late for the train.”

“I’m so sorry,” the girl says. “There were no signs marking the stations—”

“What is the pony doing with her saddle on, walking loose in the courtyard?” Margaret asks Diane.

“I was going to use her to get the mule,” Diane says. “But then the tractor rolled down the hill. The girl’s going to catch her right now.”

The girl rushes to grab a lead line from a hook on one of the stall doors. Then she stalks the fat pony, who’s grazing on the rotten hay that’s strewn atop the cobbles. The girl does her best to listen to what Diane and Margaret are saying.

“Ask him what happened, please,” Margaret says, speaking to Diane and referring to the man in overalls. He’s standing nearby, a clueless expression on his face.

Diane says something to the man in Romanian, and the man quickly replies.

“He says he doesn’t know how to drive the tractor,” Diane says.

“Of course he can drive it,” says Margaret. “That’s why I hired him.” The man says something to Diane.

“That’s not what he says. He says he never knew how to drive it.”

“Ridiculous! He’s been driving it all week. Ask him why he was driving so fast.”

“He says he was afraid of rolling back down the hill if he didn’t drive fast enough. He wants to know why the mule wasn’t in Its stall.”

A strange look comes over Margaret’s face; her eyes narrow, as if she cannot comprehend the question.

“Diane, can you please ask Vasil to come into my office?” she says.

Diane laughs nervously. “Oh, sure. But do you mind if I have a quick cig first?”

When Margaret leaves, the girl brings the pony over to where Diane’s puffing on her cigarette.

“What’s going on?” she asks, taking off the pony’s saddle.

“She wants me to fire him,” Diane says. “I’m the only one who can speak Romanian, and she needs me to tell him to get off the property.”

Vasil seems to have just noticed he’s missing a boot.

“How do you know that?” the girl asks.

“Because she’s done it two times before, in just the time I’ve been working here. Just put the pony in a stall when you’re done with her. It doesn’t matter which one.”

Diane flicks her cigarette onto the cobbles, stamps it out, and then disappears through the door of the house, calling Vasil’s name and motioning for him to follow her.

The girl suddenly remembers the boy. She’s just about to go looking for him when he appears at the top of the path, with the mule in tow.

“I can’t believe you did it!” the girl says.

He’s holding the line as one would hold a dog’s leash, but the mule’s trailing behind him, Its large, dark eyes mild and attentive.

“How did you get a halter on It?”

“I just walked up to It and—”

“No!”

The boy and the girl turn around to see Margaret standing in the doorway of the house. “No!” she shouts again. “No, no,
no!
There must be nothing, no halter upon that horse’s head!”

“What’s wrong?” the girl asks.

“I have not yet introduced It to the halter. Take it off. Right now, please!”

The boy begins to unclip Its halter, but before he can lift it over the mule’s ears It jerks Its head away and wheels around. It throws a buck and then bolts across the courtyard, sliding to a stop in front of the rotting round bale.

“There must be no processed … no manufactured threads upon the horse’s skin,” Margaret says. “It is unnatural. It demeans and dominates the horses.”

“None of your horses wear halters?” the girl asks.

“Most of my horses come from other farms, and have suffered irrevocable damage at the hands of those who have mistreated them. Those wear halters. But I bred this horse myself. It has been submersed in my training techniques since birth. At the moment we are struggling because I am attempting to separate It from Its mother, and I have been so busy that I have neglected to take the proper measures to ensure that the separation goes smoothly.” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a small glass vial that contains a colourless liquid. She presses the vial into the girl’s palm.

“Here,” Margaret says. “This should take care of It.”

The girl looks at the vial; she opens her mouth to ask a question.

“I trust you are comfortable, up in the cabin?” Margaret says, cutting her off.

“Oh yes. It’s very nice. Thank you for getting us groceries—”

“Good. I am glad you are happy. I have more woodchips for the stove, should you run out. I apologize for the business with the tractor.” Margaret lowers her voice. “But I believe that man was trying to vandalize my property. I caught him stealing just yesterday evening. He took eggs from my hens and he picked through my root cellar, and he even took a pint of milk from my goat. What did he do with this milk? Did he drink this? It’s filthy, disgusting behaviour.”

The girl stares at Margaret.

“Now, I have prepared a schedule for the both of you,” Margaret continues. “The girl will wash the floor in the kitchen and clean the bathroom at the top of the stairs. The girl will also please keep the fires highest in the kitchen stove and in my study. Come in, follow me, come in here …”

Margaret leads the girl in through the front door of the house and turns immediately to the right, into a large farmhouse kitchen. A white enamel woodstove sits in the corner by the windows, which are heavily shuttered by shrouds of lace curtains. Diane is standing by the sink, her arms folded across her chest. The Romanian man is nowhere in sight.

“Do you see how cold it is?” Margaret asks. “It is terrible. Terrible. Keep the fires very high. This fireplace is very big and hot, so the wood must be restocked continuously. You can find wood in the barn opposite, and you can use the wheelbarrow to move it in here. Diane will show you. But before the house chores—though not before you’ve stoked up the fires—you must help to clean all of the horse’s stalls. And you must help with the morning turnout, and the preparation of the evening feed. If you have any spare time, you will help to muck out the paddocks.”

Margaret’s eyes fall upon the boy. “Do you have experience with the chickens?” she asks.

“No.”

“Diane will show you what to do. And you will feed the ducks, as well. And muck the paddocks. Can you drive the tractor?”

The boy shakes his head.