Colt (6 page)

Altogether Colt was working his body harder than he ever had in his life, and Mrs. Berry, who saw him twice a week for physical therapy, was amazed at the results.

“His large-muscle strength in his torso has improved so much I can't
believe
it,” she reported to his mother. “He's sitting better, standing better, his endurance is a
lot
better, his balance is better, his walking gait has improved. I'm really hoping someday he'll give up the wheelchair except for shopping malls and such, and just use his braces and crutches most of the time.”

During his weekly lessons at Deep Meadows Farm, Colt practiced staying up off the saddle in “forward position” for as long as he could, at first with Mrs. Reynolds's help and later by himself. There were problems. Because Colt had no strength or feeling below his knees, he could not rely on his stirrups to support him. Sometimes his feet dangled out of the stirrups and he didn't even know it. He had to maintain his riding seat entirely with his upper body and thighs. This, Mrs. Reynolds assured him, was as it should be in any event. Judges at horse shows often asked advanced contestants to ride without their stirrups to show that they were not dependent on them. The lower leg was needed mostly to urge on and signal the horse. But Colt could use his body position and reins for signaling, and a stick for urging on.

Liverwurst stood or walked patiently through all this. Good old big-headed Liverwurst. Colt had come to love the horse's homely, anxious, hairy, snot-nosed face.

Finally, one evening in late August, just before school was due to start, Mrs. Reynolds came over to Colt, took hold of his safety belt and said, “Okay, let's try a trot.”

Okay, sports fans, this is it, the moment you've been waiting for
… Even though he tried to joke with himself, Colt felt so nervous his head throbbed.

The hardest thing, Mrs. Reynolds told him, was going to be learning to feel the rhythm and post to it. Because of his back, she couldn't let him just bounce around on top of the horse for a while as she did the others. She had put a fleece cover on the saddle for him, but even so, it would not be a good idea for him to bounce.

“Stay up in forward position for now,” she told him, and she stood beside him, her arm between him and the saddle, just in case. “This time I'll let you cheat and use a voice command.”

“Trot!” Colt told Liverwurst.

The horse could not believe him. It had all been walk, walk, walk with Colt up until now. Liverwurst raised his head anxiously but did not move.

“Try again, and tap him with the crop,” said Mrs. Reynolds.

“Trot!”

Liverwurst trotted. It was just a quiet jog, but to Colt it felt like one of the delightful, scary amusement park rides he had never been allowed on. His stomach fluttered, his shoulders tingled, and he had to concentrate on staying up out of the saddle. His knees acted as shock absorbers, and his bottom waggled in the air. Mrs. Reynolds ran alongside, keeping her arm between him and the saddle.

“Neat!” Colt panted happily. His breath was being jounced out of him. From her seat outside the ring, his mother lifted her glance from her paperback romance and watched anxiously.

“Liverwurst has a pretty smooth trot,” puffed Mrs. Reynolds. “For an Appaloosa. Had enough?”

“No.”

She had him stop Liverwurst anyway, because
she
had had enough. But after she caught her breath, they tried it again.

“Now this time try to signal with your knees for the trot.”

A normal rider would have squeezed with the lower leg. But it didn't matter: Liverwurst, having learned that he was allowed to trot, jogged forward happily at the light pressure Colt was able to exert on him.

“Try to feel the rhythm! Go up and down! ONE-two-ONE-two …”

It was not easy. Several times Colt bumped down into Mrs. Reynolds's arm. Then she ran out of breath again and had to stop. By the end of the lesson all she would say was, “We'll see. Things take time.”

Colt's mother was quiet for a change as she drove him home.

The next week school began, and Colt's riding lesson time changed. He came late Saturday afternoon.

“Hey, Liverwurst!” He rubbed the horse's mottled forehead. Liverwurst thrust his nose down and nuzzled Colt's chest. Then it was time to roll the wheelchair up the ramp and get onto the horse. Mrs. Reynolds and Colt had come up with a way he could mount with only one person to help him. He could get on his knees at the edge of the ramp and reach up to grasp Liverwurst's withers and the saddle cantle, just the way regular riders did. Then Mrs. Reynolds would give him a “leg up” the way she sometimes did with anyone trying to mount a tall horse. She would cradle both hands under his left knee and lift while he pulled with his arms, and as she lifted, he could swing himself into the saddle. (His right foot dragged across Liverwurst's rump, but Liverwurst didn't mind.) This was all Colt's idea. In a few years, he knew, he would be too big and heavy to be lifted onto a horse, and he wanted always to be able to ride. He didn't want anything, ever, to keep him from riding horseback.

Colt's mother went and took her seat on her bench. Even though she no longer had to help him get on the horse, Audrey stayed to watch his lessons anyway, pretending to read.

“Okay,” Mrs. Reynolds said once Colt was settled on top of Liverwurst and had gathered up his reins, “take him on down to the ring.”

Colt had done this a dozen times, maybe more. He turned Liverwurst toward the ring and gave him a gentle squeeze with his knees to tell him to walk.

Liverwurst snorted happily and jumped forward into a brisk trot.

Colt had never in his life been bounced, not even on a grandparent's knee, and the shock of what he was feeling stunned him so badly that he couldn't react. Every functioning muscle in his body stiffened in protest. He heard Mrs. Reynolds shouting, “Pull on the reins! Make him whoa!” But her voice sounded as if it were coming through ten feet of water, and he could not do what she said—he had lost the reins. He tried to get in forward position, but his knees weren't tight. He was hanging on by the mane and felt himself slipping farther sideways at every jounce. He was going to fall off! And he felt hurt to the heart.
Liverwurst, how can you do this to me
? Colt had thought the horse was his friend. Tears blinded him so that he couldn't even see, and, dammit, he hated crying.…

The horrible jouncing stopped, Liverwurst stopped trotting and stood still so suddenly that Colt almost pitched forward over his neck. But his hands caught him. He straightened and started automatically fumbling for the reins. He blinked away tears and found that he had come perhaps thirty feet from the mounting ramp, only halfway to the ring. Mrs. Reynolds was running up beside him. His mother stood in front of him, holding Liverwurst by the bridle. Audrey Flowers, who had never handled a horse in her life, had jumped out in front of Liverwurst and made him stop trotting.

“I'm so sorry!” Mrs. Reynolds panted, taking hold of Liverwurst's bridle from the other side. “He must have got it in his head last time that he's supposed to trot. And they're always full of themselves around feeding time. Liverwurst,” she scolded the horse, “I'm ashamed of you!”

But Audrey Flowers wasn't listening to her explanations. “Are you all right?” she demanded of Colt.

He nodded, flushed and angry because he knew there were tears on his cheeks.

“Does your back hurt?”

He shook his head, but Audrey was not convinced.

“Does it hurt
at all
?”

“Mom,” Colt said, starting to get some of his poise back, “it's too soon for it to hurt.”

In fact he felt weak and achy all over. His mother looked hard at him, then turned to Mrs. Reynolds. “I believe I'd better take him home.”

“Whatever you think is best,” said Mrs. Reynolds quietly. “I'm very sorry this happened.”

Colt did not look at Liverwurst as Mrs. Reynolds and his mother got him off the saddle and into the car.

Audrey Flowers did not say much in the car on the way home. She had her serious, wait-and-see look on, and she drove carefully, as if afraid of hurting something. At supper she told Brad about the trotting incident in quiet tones that fooled no one: Audrey was upset. Colt ate his supper without saying much—he didn't know what to say. He went to bed early, lay in the dark, and begged whatever authority was in charge of spina bifida to please not let his back act up.

It was no use. The throbbing of his lump woke him early in the morning.

His mother came into his bedroom as soon as she heard him thump down headfirst from his bed. “How's the back?”

“Fine, Mom.” He scooter-boarded past her toward the bathroom, not looking at her. She followed him.

“Does it hurt
at all
?” she yelled at him through the door.

Colt managed to convince her he was all right until time for Sunday breakfast, when she noticed how stiffly he was sitting in his wooden kitchen chair, how he was not letting its rungs touch his back. She laid down her fork and gave him a hard look. “I'm taking you straight to Dr. DeMieux,” she said.

Colt sighed. The spina bifida specialist at the medical center was not going to be happy to see him between regular visits. On a Sunday, yet.

Not that Dr. DeMieux said much. She pursed her lips and inspected the critical area of his back. Lying on his belly on her examining table, Colt swiveled his head around to see if she looked somber. She did. “Inflamed,” she said. She prescribed medication. “What have you been doing, Colt?”

“Exercises,” he said.

“Horseback riding,” his mother said.

“It was just the trotting,” Colt protested.

“Don't you remember I specified no trotting when I signed permission for your horseback riding?” Dr. DeMieux looked perturbed.

Colt faltered, “But that was just for, like, the summer program. I've been taking private lessons. I'm a lot-better rider now.”

“It does not matter. If your horse is going to trot, I am afraid I have to say, Colt, that you must not ride horseback anymore.”

Obviously she did not understand. All he had to do was make her understand and it would be all right. “But I've got to ride,” he told her, calmly explaining. “I love riding, especially trail riding. I won't let Liverwurst trot with me anymore until I've really learned to post. I—”

“Young man, it's your life we're talking about here,” Dr. DeMieux interrupted.

“Yes,” Colt said, a stubborn edge nudging into his voice. “It is.”

“Colt!” his mother warned. “He's getting a mind of his own,” she said, apologizing to the doctor.

“That's all right. But in that case he must learn to reason things out.” Dr. DeMieux sat down on her rolling stool so that she faced Colt at eye level. “Colt. You have heard certain things before, but think what they really mean. When I say it is your life, I mean that little mass protruding from your spine: It is your life. If you make it sore, if you cause more nerve damage, then a little bit of you dies. If you rub it open and it becomes infected, there is nothing to keep the infection from entering your spinal cord and going straight to your brain. You could die.”

Colt swallowed hard but said, “Anytime I walk I could fall down and hurt myself, break my neck and die.”

“This is true. But on horseback you are twice as far from the ground as when you walk. If you fall, you will hurt yourself twice as badly. And you have seen what happened when you didn't even fall! No more horseback riding.”

It was no use talking to Dr. DeMieux.

The car was very silent on the way home. Colt sat scared silent. Never ride horseback again? It was unthinkable. Horseback riding was the one thing that made him feel complete, whole, really alive. He had to do something, say something to keep his horseback riding, and he knew his life—the life he wanted to live—depended on it.

“Mom,” he begged, “don't pay attention to Dr. DeMieux. Please. She doesn't understand.”

His mother sighed, stared straight ahead over the steering wheel, and said nothing. She was driving slowly. Colt knew she had to be feeling almost as bad as he did, to be so silent, to be driving so slowly.

“Mom,” he tried again, “of course she said not to ride. She's a doctor. She'd like me to never do anything.”

All his mother said was, “Let me sleep on it, Colt.”

He slept before she did. The medication made him groggy. He went to bed right after lunch and lay there, too doped to feel awake, too heartsick to really sleep. He heard his mother on the phone with somebody who must have been Mrs. Reynolds: “Please don't feel bad. You know what they say: hindsight's twenty-twenty … I guess horses are like kids, full of surprises. Colt wants to come back and try it again, but I'm not so sure … Uh-huh … Might the horse trot with him again when he's not expecting it? Yes … So there's no way of being certain the horse won't trot with him … I see … well, thank you for everything. I'll let you know what we decide.”

Mom, please …

Later he heard her talking with Brad. “He's been so—so grown-up about this horseback-riding thing, that's what breaks my heart. That's the main reason I let him do it in the first place, because of the way he asked. For once he didn't whine.”

Brad's deep voice: “And he hasn't whined or asked for much since.”

“And all the exercising he's done, the way he's gotten so much more strength and endurance … I could just cry.”

Don't cry, Colt thought blurrily.
Just say I can ride
.

“But it's just not safe,” said his mother as if she had heard him. “I mean, I know nothing's ever truly safe. But horseback riding—it's like you said, it's really risky. He could fall, or get thrown—”

“Not so likely with a calm horse,” said Brad.