The Mare

Velvet

I always came to talk to Fugly Girl in the twilight, when I knew Pat was gone and nobody else would be around either. During the day I just said hello to her with my eyes when I walked by, and usually she said it back. Pat never said nothin’, but she saw. I was sure she did.

Then one day when I was raking shit up from Graylie’s stall, Beverly and Pat took Fugly Girl out to work her so she wouldn’t go crazy. I’d never seen her out of the stall before; her tail was high up, she was trotting kind of sideways like she was trying to push on something, her eyes were bugged-out white, and her whole face looked raw, like her hair was on the wrong way, even though it wasn’t. Beverly had her tight by the lead rope and I saw there was a chain across her nose. Pat was walking on the other side of her like she was a police lady, and it still looked like they barely had her. Gare Ann and the retarded boy came out of the stable to look. Right then Fugly made a twisty hump with her back and kicked out with her hind feet. “Knock it off!” Beverly yanked down on the rope and yelled with her mouth big and tight and her jaw stuck out to the side. “You hear?”

I came out of the stall and tried to catch Fugly’s eye.

“Stay back, Velvet,” said Pat, all quiet.

“She thinks she’s the damn ‘horse whisperer,’ ” said Gare.

“Whisper-ess,” said the boy. “Whisper-ass!”

Pat threw them a look over Fugly’s back. But she kept going.

I didn’t look at Gare. I said, “I do not know what you are talking about.”

“Yeah you do.”

“Why does a Mexican kid walk around like she owns the place?” yelled the boy.

Gare said, “The way you act with that horse, and you don’t even know shit about horses, like, that’s dangerous.”

The boy yelled, “Because her father built it and her mother cleans it!”

And Gare said, “You’re gonna get deported outta this barn if you keep that up—word.”