Ivy Takes Care (10 page)

It was a deal after all. Weekdays Ivy would travel by school bus and mailman. Billy Joe and the trip across the mountains would be weekends only. Ivy figured she could pay Billy Joe fifty cents out of her dollar a day, two days a week. A dollar a week would keep him in bubble gum and fireworks for the four weekends required. She wished she had Inca for company instead of a troublemaking boy like Billy Joe.

“Don’t think for one minute you’re gonna get rich, Billy Joe,” said Ivy. “I can only afford to pay you half my weekend salary, and you gotta help me, too.”

But Billy Joe’s eyes sparkled at the mention of Spooner Lake and Spooner Summit. “I have a secret plan!” said Billy Joe. “I bet you straight up I come out of this richer ’n you! I know something about that mountain east of Spooner Lake.”

Ivy knew better than to ask what Billy Joe’s harebrained secret plan was.

After school let out on her first Montgomery day, Ivy waited for the number-six bus to pull up and load its kids. A voice behind her piped up.

“Ivy! What are you doing on the six bus?”

It was Annie. She stood in the wind in full riding habit, shiny black paddock boots, fawn jodhpurs, and a velvet hard hat under her arm. The wind blew her tweed hacking jacket open for a moment, and Ivy could read the label on the silk lining:
YOUNG RIDERS’ CLUB. SAKS FIFTH AVENUE. NEW YORK
.

“Oh, I’m working,” said Ivy, “taking care of someone’s horses out at Spooner Lake.”

“Working!” said Annie. “You didn’t tell me!”

“How could I have told you?” asked Ivy. “When?”

A cloud seemed to pass over Annie’s eyes. But at that moment, her mother drew up in their car, scattering school-yard gravel underneath.

“Let’s talk, Ivy!” said Annie. “I hate those girls!”

Ivy longed for Annie to explain who “those girls” were, but there was no time. Annie tossed her hard hat onto the backseat, onto a pile of mail, and jumped into the car.

Ivy could smell Annie’s mother’s perfume as the car door stood open. She knew it as well as the smell of her own kitchen.

“Dear!” said Annie’s mother. “We’re all going to Colorado to ski the day after Christmas. Won’t you come along? We have an extra ticket!”

Ivy hesitated. She wanted this badly. But she answered, “I have to work. I’m taking care of some horses out near Spooner Lake.”

“But surely . . .” began Annie’s mother.

“Couldn’t Billy Joe take over for you? Come on, Ivy,” said Annie.

Again Ivy hesitated.
Why did I take this job?
she asked herself angrily. But there was no getting around it. “Billy Joe is not responsible,” she answered in a small voice. “It’s . . . I’ll make thirty dollars toward college, and I can’t get out of it.”

In Annie’s eyes and in her mother’s was the flicker of recognition of another world. One they would never touch, just as Ivy would never touch the world of Camp Allegro. Ivy’s was the world of carefully marked money envelopes. Ivy wished she could take both Annie’s and her mother’s hands in hers and reverse time to last year, but only a cheerful “Another time, then! We’re late!” rang out from the familiar bright-red lips and white teeth. Then Annie and her mother waved good-bye.

Ivy took a seat by a window on the number-six bus. She watched Mrs. Evans’s taillights disappear north on the highway to Reno. Would Annie ask that tent mate instead? Was there really an extra ticket on an airplane to Colorado? There was no way of knowing. Maybe Annie had a whole bevy of new friends at the Reno riding place. There had been mail on the backseat of the car where Annie’s helmet was tossed. Ivy had only a second to see a mess of forms with a familiar emblem on the pages: a hand holding a lamp. That emblem held an answer, Ivy knew suddenly. She had seen that hand and lamp emblem somewhere, but just where, Ivy could not put her finger.

Spooner Lake was half an hour by bus from the school. The Montgomery place was the last stop before the bus turned around. To a visitor the ranch looked tiny against the huge landscape of pastures and mountains surrounding it. Ivy walked down the frozen muddy driveway and held out her hand to the five horses who gathered along the fence. A man appeared then, in the stable doorway.

Ivy went up to him. “Hi, I’m Ivy,” she said. “You must be Mr. Velez!” Ivy had never met a blind person in her life.

“Ruben,” he answered. He extended his hand. “This here’s my horse, Andromeda,” he said, indicating the occupant of the stall behind him. “Where she goes, I go.”

Ruben stood an inch shorter than Ivy. He scooted around the stable like a small chef in a big kitchen. He knew exactly where he was in the stable at all times and just what he was doing. Ruben showed Ivy the ropes in no time.

“Andromeda don’t go out in the pasture with the othern,” he explained to Ivy. “She could turn an ankle in a gopher hole. Wind’s too cold for her. Anything can happen to a Thoroughbred racer, and usually it does happen. You like horses?”

“I love them. All animals,” said Ivy.

Andromeda stood patiently on her cross ties. Ruben had two brushes in his hand — a stiff one and a finishing brush.

“Put your hand on her,” Ruben instructed Ivy. “Right on the withers. That’s it. Now take this brush and give her coat a good once-over.”

Ivy did. Andromeda’s coat gleamed under her hand.

“She liked that,” said Ruben. “She likes your hands. Do you know how to ride?”

“All my life,” said Ivy. “But I only ride trail ponies. I’ve never been on a big horse like this one.”

“Oh, Andromeda’s like an old rocking chair,” said Ruben. “Next time I take her out, I’ll let you ride. Would you like that?”

“I’d love it,” said Ivy.

“I have to go to work in a few minutes. You all right here alone?” asked Ruben.

“I’m fine,” said Ivy.

Ruben removed his boots and put his feet into black city shoes. “I take care of the old,” he said. “Most of ’em can’t see me, and I can’t see them, but it don’t matter. I love them. When I come in the ward, they all know. They love my stories. I tell them all the stories from the track in the old days.”

Ruben had prepared Andromeda’s dinner beforehand. She got hay and some sweet feed. Her water bucket was full.

“It’s ten to four,” he said. “You mind feeding her? The bus will be here soon, so I have to go.” Ivy heard no clock or chime. How did Ruben know the time?

Before he left the stable, Ruben turned to Ivy with a mischievous smile. “I have a clock in my head,” he said.

Ivy handed a carrot to Andromeda, who took the treat in her velvet lips, as gently as a baby.

There was no water in the stable pipes, so Ivy had to pump the horses’ water into two buckets at an outdoor pump. She carried it to the pasture and sloshed it, bucket by bucket, into the old bathtub that was the water trough. Before pouring new water, she had to break up any ice that had formed. She pitchforked the ice pieces out onto the grass. The bathtub took an easy twenty buckets, but she stopped at ten.

After the watering, Ivy climbed into the hayloft and kicked a new hay bale down on the stable floor with a thump. She put five big flakes of hay into a wheelbarrow and wheeled it out to the near pasture, where the horses were waiting for her. Then she fed the rabbits and cleaned their cage, and scattered handfuls of cracked corn in the chicken yard, where there were a dozen Rhode Island Red hens. Ivy collected the day’s eggs in a small basket.

Ivy’s last chores were sweeping the barn, wheeling out Andromeda’s old bedding, forking it into the manure pile, then feeding and watering the barn cat, Striper. She made sure Andromeda needed nothing.

Most days that followed were just the same. Ivy could only fit in a short half hour in the paddock on Andromeda’s back, with Ruben leading her, before the dark came and Ruben had to catch the bus to his job. Ruben knew exactly where Ivy was, and exactly where the horse was, as if he could see.

“You are a good rider,” said Ruben. “I can hear it and feel it.”

Each night Ivy said good night to Andromeda before switching off the lights and closing the stable door. Carrying her book bag, Ivy whistled as she walked down the drive to the mailboxes. There she waited in the night wind to flag down the mail carrier on his last run of the day. Ivy worried that the mailman wouldn’t linger if she wasn’t out there promptly.

Weekends meant going over the mountain, Ivy on Mirabel and Billy Joe on Texas.

“I am going to make a fortune on Spooner Summit,” Billy Joe crowed to her on their first morning out.

Ivy was tempted to call Billy Joe a birdbrain, but she didn’t, because he would start on back calling her Miss Climbing Vine.

Ivy did notice that on one side of Texas’s saddle, Billy Joe had strapped a big ax and a shovel and on the other side, a large empty leather bag from the woodpile.

“What’s that ax for?” Ivy asked him while they saddled up for the trip.

“That’s a state secret!” said Billy Joe.

On Saturdays and Sundays, Ruben gave Andromeda her full workout. This included a walk, a trot, and a canter on the flat and sandy trail that ran around the Montgomery ranch. But before Ruben allowed Andromeda to set a hoof on it, he had Ivy check the entire track. How fast Andromeda could go was something that Ivy would likely never know.

“Take that trail horse of yourn,” said Ruben. “Ride around this half-mile track. Use your sharp little eyes and make sure there’s no new holes to trip up our girl.”

A mild Saturday came, and Ruben decided he would let Ivy ride one circuit at a trot on his precious Andromeda’s back. Every moment Ivy sat up on the big, graceful horse felt like a moment in another world. While trotting her perfectly around the well-inspected half mile took only two minutes, she knew those two minutes would stay with her a long time.

Riding Thoroughbreds is Annie’s life now, Ivy reminded herself, dismounting and giving the reins to Ruben. Annie gets to do this three times a week and go over jumps, too, with that hard hat and those boots. Ivy had found the price of Annie’s paddock boots in one of the Montgomerys’ tack-room catalogs. They cost more than all the silver dollars in her university envelope.

Billy Joe leaned on the paddock fence and watched. He chewed his bubble gum slowly and snapped it loudly.

“She don’t like your chewing gum, boy,” said Ruben to Billy Joe. “See how she steps to the side when you’re in the picture? She don’t like that snapping noise you make.”

“I’ve been riding horses just as long as Ivy here,” Billy Joe argued.

“Yeah, but this one don’t want you near her,” said Ruben, “not with that gum smell on you. Makes her nervous.”

When Ruben was out of earshot, Ivy turned to Billy Joe, both of them leaning up on the fence, watching Ruben canter in a perfect oval.

“Billy Joe,” said Ivy patiently, “you want to get up on this filly, don’t you?”

“Never said that,” said Billy Joe.

“I know you, Billy Joe,” Ivy said. “You want to tell the guys at school you went a flat mile on the horse that beat Seabiscuit. Well, Ruben won’t let you, and that’s that.”

“I’ve got better things to do,” said Billy Joe. He blew an enormous pink bubble and popped it with his finger.

Three Saturday mornings in a row, Billy Joe jumped on Texas’s back and mysteriously disappeared up into the mountain that lay just to the east of Spooner Lake. His ax and shovel and leather bag dangled from the saddle. Every time, he came back empty-handed and never said what he’d been doing.

Ivy warned Billy Joe to be back at the stable in time to break up the bathtub ice or she wouldn’t pay him his fifty cents. “You come late and you pay for it,” she warned him.

“Surprise of the world!” he said with a big grin, each time he returned from his mountain wanderings.

Andromeda was a huge mass of horse muscle on four delicate racer’s legs. Ivy and Billy Joe were used to quarter horses, strong all the way up and down. Andromeda’s value and her precious race horse legs kept even Billy Joe on his toes.

After her exercise, Ivy and Ruben cross-tied Andromeda in the stable across from her stall. Ivy removed the saddle and let the saddle blanket dry separately, everything on its own rack or peg. The bridle had to be cleaned with leather cleaner and the bit soaked in soapy water. Ruben made Billy Joe spit out his gum and wash out his mouth before he was allowed in the stable to help dry Andromeda after her hot walk. There was no washing Andromeda in the cold weather. That was an invite to trouble.

“You know what’ll happen if we mess up anything with their horses,” whispered Ivy. “I’ll lose my good name and never get another job, and your mother and father will kill you.”

One night, Ruben told Ivy to look up on the tack room wall behind where the halters hung. Thumbtacked to the wall were faded news clippings and photos of the triumphant race against Seabiscuit at the Agua Caliente track.

“Would you read ’em to me?” Ruben asked.

“ ‘Andromeda,’ ” Ivy began, “ ‘a filly from Intermountain Stables in West Texas, triumphed over racing’s biggest star today . . .’ ”

She read all three of the newspaper accounts of Andromeda’s great victory. Each one mentioned Ruben by name.

“Again,” said Ruben when she had finished.

“Look what I found!” crowed Billy Joe one morning. It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and he’d been poking around in the Montgomerys’ tack room. He came out holding Andromeda’s little racing saddle from her winner’s circle days. Above its rack hung the helmet with the blue and white Intermountain Stable colors that Ruben had worn in the Mexican Derby on the day Andromeda’d been covered with glory. Billy Joe lifted the little saddle up in one hand. “Doesn’t weigh a thing,” he said.

Ruben cocked his head. “Three pounds,” he said. “That’s as light as they can make ’em and still have the saddle hold up during the race.”

“Do you miss it awful bad?” asked Billy Joe.

“Racing,” Ruben said, “is a cruel and terrible thing to do to a beautiful animal. All the same, sitting on that horse’s back, flyin’ like the wind itself, and winning. . . . That’s what I miss. Until you do it, you don’t know. It’s like the stars up close. It’s not a wonder I’m blind.” He put his hand to his eyes. “Put that gear back where you found it, boy,” Ruben said, and added, “I wouldn’t want a spot on it.”