Trickster (7 page)

The bells on the front door jangle, jolting me out of my thoughts. It’s the ferret guy, Erik, carrying Rascal’s cage and looking stressed.

“I called Dr. MacKenzie,” he says. “Is she here?”

“Here I am,” Dr. Mac says calmly as she walks down the hall from her office. She lifts the reception counter and enters the waiting room. “Oh, Rascal,” she says as she peers in his cage. “What have you done now?”

“He was in the drawer,” Erik says. “I don’t know how he got in there. I didn’t see him. He was hiding. It’s his paw. It’s really smashed.”

Dr. Mac puts on her glasses. “That would explain the blood. We need to take a look at this. Let’s go into the Doolittle Room,” she says, standing up and showing him into one of the exam rooms. “David, I’ll need your help. Come on in and wash your hands.”

As I scrub away, Dr. Mac takes Rascal’s cage
and sets it on the examination table. “What’s the first thing I need to do here, David?”

“Um …” I stall by putting more soap on my hands. I’ve never helped with a ferret before. “Take his temperature?”

“Good guess, but not yet.”

“Check his heart?”

“Even before that,” Dr. Mac says.

Three strikes and I’m out. Got to get it right this time. I turn off the water an dry my hands on a paper towel. “I know! You have to take him out of the cage.”

“Very close,” says Dr. Mac. “The first thing we need to do is close the door and make sure the cupboards are latched. It’s hard to treat a patient you can’t find. Ferrets can squeeze through openings only an inch wide.”

Once I’ve locked everything up tight, Dr. Mac opens the cage door. Rascal slinks out onto the cool surface of the table. He isn’t as perky as the last time we saw him. His eyes are half closed, and he doesn’t try to run around at all.

Yikes. His front paw is a mess, swollen and bloody.

“That looks painful,” Dr. Mac says. “What happened? Exactly.”

Erik looks nervous. “It was my fault this time,” he says. “I left my sock drawer open. Rascal loves socks—he must have gotten in there. When I went in the bedroom later, I slammed the drawer shut without checking.”

“Hmmm,” Dr. Mac says, slipping on her bifocals.

She gently scoops up Rascal, cradling him in her arm. She pets him gently, but I can see she’s checking him out at the same time. She feels along his backbone and tail, then frowns. She moves her fingers along the bones in each one of his legs until she’s ready to examine the paw.

Rascal pulls back and squeaks in pain.

“I know, I know, that hurts,” Dr. Mac tells Rascal as she strokes his head to calm him down. “When did he injure his tail?”

“His tail? There’s nothing wrong with his tail,” Erik answers quickly. “Is there?”

“Well, the fact that it’s not moving would be the first sign, plus there is some swelling. My guess is that it’s broken.”

“But how?”

“Think,” Dr. Mac says. “When you’ve been playing with him, has he gotten his tail pinched in anything?”

Erik’s face turns bright red. He has
guilty
stamped all over his forehead.

“You
have
been playing with him, haven’t you? We talked about this a few days ago. Ferrets need time and attention.”

“I’ve been busy,” he confesses. “And he’s so hard to catch. I can barely find him half the time. When I sat down in the recliner last night, he screamed and took off. He had been hiding in the chair. Freaked me out.”

Dr. Mac stops petting Rascal. “You have a recliner?”

“An old one.”

“Recliners are death traps for ferrets. They love to take naps underneath them. When someone leans back in the chair, they can be killed. Rascal is a quick fellow. I bet he broke his tail trying to get out of there.”

“Oh, man,” Erik says. “This wasn’t supposed to be so hard. The guy who sold him to me said he was the easiest pet in the world.”

Dr. Mac pauses, like she’s searching for just the right words. Her right eyebrow is way up on her forehead.

“If you want an easy pet, a ferret is a bad idea,” Dr. Mac says. “I need to do some X rays,
but I’m pretty sure that Rascal has a broken tail and some broken bones in his paw.”

“Is that going to be expensive?” Erik asks. “If he keeps costing me money, I’m going to have to get rid of him. Maybe I should just turn him loose.”

What
!? How can he say that? He doesn’t care about Rascal at all.

“I have a better alternative,” Dr. Mac says. “I know a woman who runs a rescue shelter for ferrets in situations like this. You pay for the X rays, and I’ll arrange for Rascal to go to the shelter. Fair?”

He hesitates for an instant, then says, “All right.”

“What a moron,” I say after Rascal’s owner—his former owner—has gone. “What an idiot, what a rat! Can you believe that guy?”

Dr. Mac puts Rascal into a roomy cage and closes the door. “You seem surprised.”

“Of course I’m surprised. Aren’t you? He thought it would be easier to dump Rascal than to take care of him! That’s … That’s …” I can’t
think of a word strong enough. Where’s Sunita when I need her?

“That’s
irresponsible
?” Dr. Mac asks, as she adjusts the water bottle hung from Rascal’s cage.

“Way more than irresponsible,” I protest.

Dr. Mac writes a note in Rascal’s file. “When taking care of Rascal got boring, he took the easy way out. It happens all the time. Drives me nuts.” She slaps the file closed. “Know what I mean, David?” she says pointedly.

I nod my head slowly. She’s talking about me.

“You have been known, on occasion, to cut corners, too.”

“But I would never do something to hurt an animal the way that guy did.”

Rascal’s cage rattles as he limps over to take a drink.

“What about Trickster?” Dr. Mac points out.

Ooh
—
that hurt
.

I slump on a stool. “I know. I keep trying not to think about it, but it won’t go away. How can I explain this, Dr. Mac? It’s like there’s a piece of me that I can’t stand, the corner-cutting part. I start doing things and then, they’re boring, or it takes too long, and I … just … stop.”

“It’s too bad you can’t take that piece out.”

“Exactly! Like a sliver or a wart. A big, ugly wart. But it doesn’t work that way, does it?”

“You already know the answer to that. Maybe you need to grow a new piece, a ‘do-things-right’ piece.”

I spin around once on the stool.

“I was responsible today, taking care of Ashley. I sort of flooded the kitchen, but I cleaned it all up.”

“All of it?”

“All of it.” I get up and follow Dr. Mac to the file cabinets behind the reception desk. “Honest. When I wanted to quit, I kept thinking about Trickster, how my corner-cutting hurt him. Not that me cleaning the floor would help him. I guess that’s stupid, isn’t it?”

“Not really,” she says as she opens the file drawer. “Seems like it’s all connected, if you ask me.”

The phone on the desk rings, and Dr. Mac picks it up. “Veterinary clinic,” she says crisply. “Lucas?” She pauses. “When did it happen? Have you taken his temperature?”

“What’s wrong?” I ask. “Is it Trickster?”

She motions for me to be quiet. “I’ll be right
there. Don’t get upset. It’s probably nothing, just a little colic.”

I can’t stand this.

“We’re on our way,” she says.

“What?” I ask as she hangs up.

“Quinn has a sick horse.”

“Trickster?”

“No—it’s Starfire.”

D
r. Mac drives without a word, pushing the van above the speed limit once we get out of town. At first I was pumped about going with her and seeing Trickster, but the closer we get, the more I wish I had stayed at home. What if Mr. Quinn kicks me out of the barn?

“Maybe I’ll just stay in the van,” I say as we turn down the lane to the stables.

“Fine,” Dr. Mac says, driving fast enough to create a cloud of dust behind us.

“Or I could just find the girls and, you know, steer clear of Mr. Quinn.”

Dr. Mac hits the brakes, and the van skids to
a stop behind the barn. “Do what you want, David.” She grabs two equipment boxes out of the back, slams it shut, and jogs into the barn.

I wish I had the guts to follow her. I want to see how Trickster is doing. I owe him an apology, too. If I had tied him up the way I should have, he’d be fine by now. We might even be out riding together.

I feel like a pile of manure just thinking about it. No—I don’t want to go in the barn.

I sit on the bumper of the van. If my dad were here, he’d tell me to march right into the barn and deal with what’s bugging me. “Get back on the horse when you fall off” was one of his big mottoes. It was easier to do when he was around. Everything was easier when Dad was around.

“Come on, boy, you can do it.”

It takes a second to realize where the voice is coming from. It’s Mr. Quinn, talking to Starfire as he slowly leads the horse into the courtyard. Dr. Mac is behind them, watching closely.

Starfire looks like a different horse from the one who rescued Brenna yesterday. His head and tail are down, and he walks slowly. He stops suddenly, jerking at the rope held by Mr. Quinn, and swings his head back toward his belly.

No wonder Dr. Mac was in such a hurry to get here! Starfire is Mr. Quinn’s favorite horse—his most expensive one, too. If anything happens to him …

“See, this is what I was telling you about,” Mr. Quinn says. “His belly is sore.”

Starfire shakes his head and takes a few steps forward.

“Has he been rolling around in his stall?” Dr. Mac asks.

Mr. Quinn shakes his head. “Not that I’ve seen.”

“Still, it could be colic,” Dr. Mac says. “The symptoms point to it.”

“That’s what I thought at first, too,” Mr. Quinn says. “But he’s not having any trouble going to the bathroom. He’s had diarrhea for the last hour. Do you think it’s colitis X—that disease that kills racehorses?”

“Relax. I doubt that’s it,” Dr. Mac says. “That’s pretty rare. I’d suspect a lot of other things first. Let’s get him in a stall. I’ll start an I.V. to replace the fluids he’s lost. Where can we put him so he’s isolated from other horses?”

“How about the foaling barn?” Mr. Quinn
asks as he strokes Starfire’s back. “It’s empty now.”

“Great,” Dr. Mac says. “If he has a virus, or something contagious, we don’t want it to spread to the other horses.”

That doesn’t sound good.

“Come on, Starfire.” Mr. Quinn leads the sick horse across the courtyard. Starfire stops suddenly and whinnies loudly, his neck arching up and his hooves pawing at the ground. While Mr. Quinn is distracted, I slip into the barn to check on Trickster.

My footsteps echo on the cement. The barn is clean and empty, the stalls all mucked out, with hay waiting in the hay nets for when the horses come in from the pasture. The girls must have worked really hard to get all the chores done.

I walk faster.

A familiar whinny comes from a nearby stall.

It’s Trickster.

“Hi,” I murmur as I walk toward the stall. “How are you doing? How’s the leg?”

Trickster bobs his head up and down. His sore leg is wrapped to keep the swelling down, and he’s still not putting weight on it. As I lean over
the stall door, Trickster whinnies again and knocks over his empty water bucket with his nose.

Not only is his water bucket empty, but hay from the hay net is spread all over the stall, and the floor has a lot of manure and urine on it. Yuck. Not a nice place to recuperate in.

“What happened? Did the girls forget about you?” I can’t believe they missed Trickster’s stall. That wouldn’t have happened if I’d been here. “Come on, boy—we’ve got to get this place cleaned up.”

First, I lead Trickster into the aisle and tie his lead rope firmly to a metal ring on the stall door so he can’t run off. Then I grab a shovel and wheelbarrow from the supply room and quickly clean the stall floor. Once the stall is clean with fresh straw on the floor, I fill the water bucket.

When I lead Trickster back into the stall, he immediately takes a long drink of water. He lifts his head, shakes his forelock, then drinks again.

“Thirsty, huh?”

He lifts his head for another breath of air, then puts his entire nose back in the water. I’ve never seen a horse drink that way before.

“What are you doing, you goofball, learning how to swim? You are the strangest horse I ever
met. Take it easy, there. If you drink too fast, you could get a stomachache.”

I reach for Trickster’s halter to distract him. How long has he been without water? I gently tug his face toward mine so I can straighten his forelock. Wait a minute … what’s this?

Trickster has strange bumps on his lips. They look like blisters—small, clear, and tender.

“I don’t think these are supposed to be here,” I tell the horse. “What have you been doing?”

Trickster snorts and pulls away from me. His ears flick toward the aisle of the barn. Then I hear footsteps. Someone is coming. Good. If it’s Dr. Mac or Mr. Quinn, I want them to see this.

“Hello?” I call, sticking my head out the stall door.

“David!” Maggie says. “What are you doing here?”

The girls are leading their horses in single file behind Jared.

“Hey, how come you guys went riding before you cleaned Trickster’s stall?” I ask.

Jared looks puzzled. “We didn’t. We cleaned everything before we left.”

When I describe the condition of Trickster’s stall, he shakes his head.

“No way, man. I cleaned that one out myself. And I gave him water.”

That sounds like the kind of excuse I’d give if I were caught not finishing a chore.

“Whatever,” I say. “I took care of it. But I think something is wrong. Trickster has bumps by his mouth. They’re really weird.”

Jared frowns. “He’s probably been chewing on his stall. Horses do that when they’re bored. I’ll go get the doc to look at him. Can you help the girls groom their horses? Just a quick brush-down. These critters were acting a little antsy on the trail. I think they want something to eat and a nap.” He shakes his head. “What a day.”

“OK,” I say warily. There certainly seems to be something strange in the air today.