Midnight was a cussed buster. Such were Uncle Welland's words. He knew of the pony from Mr. Rampal's place and also said that, "Dougie Rampal's knack is that he could sell water to a whale. I says, 'Dougie why in bejesus are you wasting that fine blarney on pigs? Cry for shame man, you ought to be in Parliament.' "
Mr. Rampal bred pigs on his farm and it was rumoured his many trophies at the fair were due to his soothing the pregnant sows with ridiculous flattery. He gave them names like Venus, Sophia, Lovey, and Cleopatra. They consistently produced champion children. Perhaps Midnight had been too wise for his sugared conversation. Now the pig farmer was happily minus one cranky pony. Mr MacGint thought she was a bargain.
Trisha led Laurel and I across the MacGint's lawn to a horse yard.
"Where is she?" I asked too eagerly for my eyes had skipped over to where their car was parked. A frantic thought had occurred to me, supposing Jack was still in the trunk?
"Right there in the bushes. Midnight, here girl!" Trisha bent and gestured toward a stand of alders growing along the back fence. A black shape moved among the twisted thin trunks. "She don't come too good. I'll get Dad." And she was off to the house.
Laurel and I began calling "Midnight, come on girl!" and clicked our tongues, making that useless sound that people believe will instantly command any animal's attention. We clicked and clucked until we happened to glance at each other and break into laughter. I could feel Midnight staring at us from her little forest. I imagined she was amused too.
Mr. MacGint was not a gangly shadow. In fact he had a compact body and there was a fresh baby cheek appearance to his face. He was all pink and soft sandy brown. My bogeyman looked like a cheerful fellow who might sell things on TV, like ultra white toilet paper, or pine scented floor wax. He arrived with a small western saddle which he neatly balanced on top of the fence post.
"Hiya, you girls want a ride?" Without waiting for a response, he carefully pushed down the top line of the barbed wire fence and swung himself into the pasture. Two minutes later he emerged from the woods with one hand firmly pulling Midnight's halter.
"You there!" He pointed at me, "Come give a hand, just hold'er while I get the saddle."
I squeezed under the fence and ecstatically held the pony's head as he fumbled with the cinch and stirrups. The saddle seemed even smaller atop her rotund barrel. Her coat was a dark chocolate brown that lightened on the inside of her delicate legs and chest folds. The little horse's head seemed extraordinarily beautiful to me. She had a soft fawn muzzle. I caressed the elegant architecture of her skull and then noticed that a horse's face is oddly shaped like a coffin. I touched her poll, straightened the forelock, and watched the tilt of her ears for signs of discontent.
"Me first!" Trisha squealed and clapped. She and Laurel had followed me and were now spastically trading small pushes and pinches as they lined themselves up for ponyrides.
"Whoa-down Nellies! " Mr. MacGint smiled at the jostling girls. He picked up Trisha and hoisted her onto the saddle. "You don't need reins, just hold the pommel." As he reached for the halter, I let go and stepped away.
"Harley! Phone!" Mrs. MacGint was leaning out the back door.
"Damn, well you take her 'round." He handed the halter back to me and disappeared into the house. I nervously began to guide Midnight in a slow walk intending to circle the pasture. She stepped docilely along, keeping her head just slightly ahead of me. Her nose bobbed gracefully near my waist. It was going to be a lot easier than I thought.
"OHHH!" The pony's head snaked sideways and long yellow teeth reached for my belly. I slammed my halter fist into the side of her jaw and she jerked her head back. We stopped and looked at each other. I was shocked by the vicious attack and expected to be confronting an angry fighting animal, but she regarded me calmly and simply snorted.
Then the pony looked straight into my eyes and the silent word "bitch!" came sailing through the air from nowhere. It was not a thought that belonged to me.
"I wanna get down!" Trisha wailed, sensing trouble.
"Yes-mam!" I helped her off. Laurel had already scooted back under the fence to a safer position. We left the pony with the saddle still on, quietly watching us from her dark retreat under the trees.
I couldn't stop looking up our lane at the distant figure of Midnight wandering around her yard. Although she spent much of each day hiding among the alders, I frequently saw her standing by the fence near the road or sometimes facing the house, staring over the top wire at the people who never came. It seemed the MacGints had discovered that her feisty temper was the real cost of the bargain. I heard that Mr. Rampal refused to take her back. Trisha reported that her dad was going to sell the pony at the end of the summer and get a real horse, a trotter that would win races. So they occasionally threw hay over the fence and put water in the trough and otherwise left the little horse alone.
"Maaa, do we have carrots?" I was really informing my mother of an imminent fridge raid. Nevermind she couldn’t hear me, the answering silence meant permission. An idiotic idea had struck me. I pulled out three carrots and an apple from the bottom drawer. As far as I could tell, the MacGints were away and I had decided that perhaps I could convert Midnight to a state of friendship with some choice horse bribes. Just as well we had no sugar cubes as I wasn't too confident about approaching her mouth with such small items. Fruit and vegetables were big enough to be thrown down for her to find easily.
To my surprise Midnight came striding over to me and stopped a couple of feet away from the fence. As we regarded each other, the barbs in the wire hung between us like a shield. I began talking to her quietly about things like her rich colour, honey apples, and the warmth of the day. She raised her head, blowing softly through rounded nostrils as if so much more depended on my scent. I cautiously stretched my hand over the fence with a carrot in the middle of the flattened palm. The velvet muzzle gently investigated the offering and her lips moved. The carrot disappeared and I slowly withdrew with great relief. I could see she was mouthing and testing the treat. Then I heard a champing sound as she firmly snapped the carrot and spat the two halves out upon the ground.
Perhaps she had dropped it by mistake. I retrieved the pieces and tried again. Snap and spit. She moved closer to the fence and I fed her all the carrots and then the rejected pieces again. Broken bits of orange root lay scattered among the grass and clover. Not a single molecule of carrot entered her digestive tract, but she greatly enjoyed biting it apart.
"Little bugger! You wish they were my fingers." I said with some peculiar awareness of an equine joke. I should have been upset, but it seemed strangely amusing, despite the crushed carrots and more unspoken words, "aahh yes...if only." Slowly I moved my hand up to her cheek and felt the powerful muscle beneath the warm fur. Here her coat was short and sleek, while under her chin there were longer tufts.
I brought out the apple and was happy to find at last there was something she would accept as a gift. Afterwards, when she discovered I had no more, she casually wandered away to graze and I took it as the cue of enough for one day.
"I just bought apples this week!" My mother knelt in front of the open fridge, making piles of food around her knees. She had excavated right down to the lowest levels of the fruit drawer. Her voice sounded distant as she called out, "You girls can't have already eaten a dozen apples! Where are the blasted apples?"
Mother was not amused at my confession, but I was now able to climb into the yard with Midnight. The pony allowed me to untangle her mane and run my hands along her back. As long as she was eating apples I could lean over her flanks, rubbing my face against her smooth shoulder. My own hair and skin took on the sweet smell of horse. I had absolutely no desire to ride her. I would have been happy to have woken up one morning with hooves and a long flowing tail. I was one of those horse girls. Some of them turn their obsession into bright fluttering championship ribbons tacked up beside their beds. But I went to sleep secretly praying for the powers of metamorphosis.
"You smell like a barn, when was the last time you took a shower? Look at the dirt!" Mother lifted the hair away from the back of my neck, finding new evidence of a secret wild child. I was herded into a hot shower, my horse skin to be scrubbed away. Fortunately Mother never said a word about staying away from the pony, and I gratefully washed more often.
The last time I visited Midnight was on a cloudy afternoon. A brisk wind was condensing the skies over Townsend Bay, yet I had nearly an hour of outdoor play time left. The MacGint's driveway was empty. I stuffed an apple and some rolls in a bag and charged up the lane. I found Midnight grazing on the MacGint's front lawn. She nervously raised her head as I approached and, as she recognized me, went back to nosing a patch of dandelions.
"Jee-zussss!" Thin ribbons of blood were drying on her front legs. I could see several triangular rips in the delicate skin, peeled back to reveal the pink and white of inner tissue. She took several firm steps and then absently rubbed her nose against the shredded areas. The wounds seemed shallow and just an annoyance to her.
One of the paddock fence posts had collapsed or been pushed over. The barbed wire had enough tension to suspend the wooden post just above the ground, leaving a garden of knotted razors to walk through. It was no use putting her back, so I went in search of a rope. The MacGint's shed was unlocked and there was a rope hanging on the nearest wall. I slung it over an arm and, feeling important, went back to Midnight.
It was a good thing that I had arrived, just in time, to save... Thoughts tumbled as I considered the situation. I kneeled down near her head and laid out the bread and fruit. It would have been easy to slip the rope through her halter and tie the other end to the hose hook hanging right there on the side of the house. The MacGints would arrive home to find a strange occurence had happened in their absence. Mr. MacGint would fix the fence and put Midnight back in her pen. Later I would inform Trisha of my good deed and she would tell her father. Mr. MacGint would thank me very much. I shifted back on my heels and stared out across the darkening fields at the storm now riding the bay. From a distant cluster of barns came the faint barking of a dog.
Midnight's halter was easy to remove. I gently pulled it off her face while she ate the food, ignoring me as if I had less presence than a fly. I stood up and wandered back to the broken fence. I had never been a good pitcher. I was one of those who throws with great effort and flourish just to have the ball land at my feet, but the angel of odd wishes was with me that day, for the halter went sailing across the yard and was caught by the highest branch among the alders. I walked back to the shed, placed the rope neatly back on the wall.
The clouds let down their curtain of rain as I was galloping home. I looked back at the MacGint house to see if I could spot Midnight. I felt a surge of joy as a blurred form appeared. She had taken herself across the road and was heading up a dirt track that led into a pine forest opposite the MacGint property.
One of my cousins owned this land for a bit of scrap logging. The trees were old and scraggly, trailing Spanish moss. They grew densely in places around strange deep hollows. These were extremely buggy, making the area intolerable for people. Occasionally the trees stood back to allow a small meadow to spread its quilt of green, white, yellow, and purple. The faint sound of running water could be always be heard, but I had never found the stream. Midnight would be lost in there for a good long time. I turned and jumped over the high grass in the middle of our lane.
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