Bea and the New Deal Horse: Chapters 4–8

The original part of the house was relatively small, made of fieldstone, three big windows, one per room across its second floor, one window on either side of the front door and its wide, whitewashed portico.

Beside it, three ancient oaks stood sentry, lending shade.

Slender, posture perfect, the lady moved with a quick, easy grace that would make her seem younger than her full-on gray hair suggested. She wore it shorn in a bob, glasses on her head.

Her blouse was loose, sleeves rolled up, tucked into blousy jodhpurs, topped with green wellies.

And judging from the overgrown lawn and weeds, no more gardener, either.
I chewed on that information. That would mean Mrs. Scott was having to economize, didn’t have the money to pay those workers.

Dropping the basket she hurried—moving right spritely for a grande dame, I must say—calling, “Malachi! We need to get to the cornfields to stop riders from jumping my fences and trampling the corn shoots. In case the fox comes this way. Those nitwits could ruin the whole crop if they yahoo through. Fools.”

Working my way through the boxwood, I took several dead-end turns, discovering new little alcoves with statues or birdbaths, before finally finding the path leading directly to the lily pond.

“Mm-hmm,” I murmured, and carefully turned over the little quail eggs I was frying in the iron skillet we carried with us.

She flipped herself down as deft as any circus acrobat and kicked sod onto the flames.

Back up in the hayloft I laid out the eggs, the dandelion greens I’d sautéed to get the bite out of their taste, and the cut-up peaches.

If I said something as if it were for certain—even if just a little fib to soothe her through a hard moment—and then it didn’t happen, Vivian would spend the next day discombobulated, murmuring, “But you said....”

The fireflies wafted higher, tiny beacons of incandescent life, bobbing as they floated higher and higher into the dark trees.

“Like a bossy boss?”
Catching her insinuation, I bristled, itching to shout: You try being in charge of keeping us fed, of having to be a mother to a squirt like you.

“Well...once upon a long time ago, Viv was a mere insect. A beautiful one—”
“Of course, she is, given her name!” Vivian prompted.

“So, one day, Viv-Viv-Viv climbed the mountain to speak to Mother Nature. No one else would have been so brave...or so impertinent. At first Mother Nature was put out by”—I paused for emphasis—“her moxie!” referencing Vivian’s favorite soft drink.

“So, one day, Viv-Viv-Viv climbed the mountain to speak to Mother Nature. No one else would have been so brave...or so impertinent. At first Mother Nature was put out by”—I paused for emphasis—“her moxie!” referencing Vivian’s favorite soft drink. Its name had become slang for nerve, since its gentian root was supposed to perk up even the slowest slug of a person.

Mother Nature threatened to squish the brash little bug with a lightning bolt for not respecting her elders, but Viv-Viv-Viv thought quickly and said, ‘Oh, Mother Nature, the wisest and prettiest goddess of them all. If, in your infinite kindness, you will let me fly, I will find a way to thank you with each flutter so the whole world and all the silly humans in it will marvel at your great artistry.’

Mrs. Scott’s plumb forgotten about the summer swelter, she’s so worried about other things.

I swear the hair on my head about stood straight up, too, with my thinking maybe Vivian had actually conjured up some ghost with that darn Ouija board of hers.

I looked through the iron grating of his stall.

Horses’ innards were ridiculously delicate, she’d said, with seventy feet of intestines snaked up inside their torso. Any blockage, any twist in those bowels could kill them because they can’t vomit. They don’t even burp.

The chestnut writhed. The more he wrenched around, the greater danger of getting a complete and deadly twist in his intestines.

He was staggering, balking, but he followed.

The chestnut stamped but rested his head on my shoulder for just a moment before starting to jog and weave, his natural, standoffish defiance coming over him again.

I think you might have just saved that horse from a colic.

Her voice was calm, smooth, not mean. But clearly she brooked no foolishness or fear.

“I had a pony. And Mama rode. Before the crash.”
Mrs. Scott mulled that over a bit. “Where is your mama now?”

I am beholden to you, young lady, for saving the chestnut, or at the very least saving me from an expensive visit from the vet.

Go get your things. You can stay in the boys’ room upstairs where there are twin beds, so you can be together. Quick, at a canter. We have work to do, don’t we?

They’d gotten so dangerously ripe we had to be extra-special careful, cradling each peach in our palms as we twisted to loosen the stem. Then we gingerly placed them one atop another to not bruise and ruin them.

She didn’t complain, though, even when she didn’t see the yellow jacket sucking on a peach and got stung. Just went into the house and came back out, her hand wrapped to hold a poultice of wet baking soda to draw out the venom.

“Ha-ha-ha,” Ralph broke into a resounding belly laugh.

His silver-gray eyes totally disappeared as he guffawed.
He buttoned his mirth, though, when Mrs. Scott replied, her voice sharp, “My father was the county’s commonwealth’s attorney and a gentleman farmer..."

“That family? Oil, tobacco, street railways. The other tycoons riding the train down to hunt—tires, baking powder, chemicals, mouthwash, department stores. And now they think they’ll make even more fortune breeding racehorses.”

Mrs. Scott seemed to have two sons and one daughter, at least. And a husband at some point to have had them. But where were they all now? I wondered especially about the daughter, since according to Daddy she was the one I should appeal to.

In the truck, I sat wedged between Mrs. Scott and Malachi. Stuttering and belching smoke, jolt-bouncing over dirt roads gutted with holes, the jalopy made so much noise, Mrs. Scott had to almost shout as she drove.

She took it from him through the window and marched up a knoll to a wooden sign.

She hates billboards in particular because people are just sticking signs up willy-nilly along the road—‘uglifying our lovely vista,’ she says.

“They might like some peaches for cobbler. Folks will be curious and testing them out, ’specially since they’re calling it the New York Café. Nothing better than peach cobbler to impress new customers.”

Before stepping out of the truck, Mrs. Scott checked herself in the truck’s rearview mirror, pulling on a tight-fitting, mauve-colored cloche hat with a purple grosgrain rosette on its side.