Missing (3 page)

The heavy door creaks when I push it open. I'm immediately hit with the smell of hay. An image of another barn slams into my head. Not a clear image, not like one of Tully's photographs. It's actually more of a bombardment of my senses. The pungent odor of horse sweat, the rustle of straw, the rhythmic chewing of hay, the smell of saddle soap and leather. There's a hard choking feeling in my chest, and I take a few big breaths to steady myself.

It's four years since I've been in a horse barn. Four years since Mom died.

In a few seconds, my eyes adjust to the dim light. A cement aisle runs up the middle, with a row of box stalls on either side. I count twelve stalls altogether. I peer into one. Old straw is scattered on the ground, and a black feed bucket rests on its side.

If I close my eyes, I can feel the horses standing like ghosts in the silent stalls. I push open a door and look into a small room filled with horse tack, all jumbled up: saddles stacked on top of each other and leaning against the wall, a tangle of halters and bridles and ropes, some hanging on hooks, some fallen on the ground.

A shroud of dust on everything. Not like that other barn, everything saddle-soaped and in its place, bridles hanging under the name of each horse engraved on a wooden sign. I still remember some of the names.
Dancer, Tippy, Major, Skipper, Magic.
And
Monty.
I will never forget Monty
.

Something deep inside me stirs. I could fix this up, clean up the tack. I deflate rapidly.
What for?
Dad shuts right down if I even talk about getting horses again.

There's one more door at the back of the barn, and it leads outside. Behind the barn is a long rectangular corral of hard-packed dirt, weeds growing in the corners. Inside the corral, at one end, there's a small circular pen made of metal rods. At the other end of the corral is a slope-roofed wooden shelter with a bathtub full of water beside it. On the outside of the fence, hay bales are neatly stacked and covered with a blue tarp. A bale has been pulled from the pile and lies on the ground, split into flakes. It's pale green and fresh-smelling.
New
.

My heart thumping, I stare at the shelter. I see just a shadow at first, hidden in the back corner. Then the shadow shifts. A dark eye is watching me, and my heart starts to race even faster. I lean over the corral fence and softly say, “Hey.”

Tully said they got rid of all the horses, but for some reason this one must have been left behind. I can see now that it's a big horse—more than sixteen hands, I bet—black with a white stripe down his face and one white sock on a front foot. A piece of hay hangs from his mouth, but he isn't chewing. He looks wary.

I scan the corral fence and find the gate. I unhook the latch and let myself into the corral, closing the gate carefully behind me. The horse keeps watching me. I can see the whites of his eyes now.

“Hey,” I say again. I approach slowly and extend my hand.

Nothing prepares me for the explosion of sound and movement. The horse bolts from the shelter, kicking out at the thin wooden wall with a cracking sound. I jump back but his heavy body slams into me and knocks me to the ground. Dust swirls in my eyes. I can't tell where he is, but I can hear him snorting and blowing through his nostrils. In a panic, I pull myself up and stumble to the fence. I manage to climb over and drop to safety on the other side.

I take a few huge breaths. I'm okay, not even a little bit hurt. Just scared. I wipe my dusty hands on my jeans. The horse has galloped across to the far side of the corral, behind the metal pen. He's quiet now, but I can tell he's upset. His sides are heaving and the whites of his eyes still show.

I stay outside the fence, watching the horse for a few minutes. My eyes drift to the round metal pen at the far end of the corral. Something jogs my memory. We had one just like it beside our barn. It's where Mom and Dad used to work with the young horses that came to our stable for training
.

I push those thoughts away. Soon it's too dark to see properly, and the horse is swallowed up by the night. I hear his hooves clumping on the hard ground as he moves, shadowlike, back into the safety of his shelter.

As I walk back to the lodge, my head is whirling with possibilities, but I have already decided not to tell Dad about the horse.

Not tonight, when he can still change his mind about staying here.

T
hree

Tully said Dad can have a job at least until the snow flies. That means I won't have to change schools and be the new kid again until probably November. And by then,
maybe
, with this streak of luck we're having, something else will have turned up and we'll be able to stay.

Dad gives one week's notice on the trailer, and we move out to the ranch the following weekend. Our truck is loaded with boxes of groceries and everything we own, which isn't much. Four years ago, Dad sold everything that reminded him of our old life.

Cabin three is one of the bigger ones, with two large bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen and a sitting area. Tully has opened all the windows and swept out several years' accumulation of dust, dirt and pine cones left by squirrels. A fresh breeze blows the curtains, and the lake glitters in the sun.

After we've put everything away in the cupboards and closets, Dad goes up to the lodge to talk to Tully. There's half an hour until dinnertime, so I slip away to the barn, where I go straight to the back corral.

The horse is standing in the shade of his shelter, his nose pressed to the wall. Flies buzz around his ears. I can see a whole lot better in the bright daylight, and I hate what I see. His coat is scruffy, his mane a tangled nest. Several thick corded lines, which look like scars, cross his hocks.

I know better than to go inside the corral this time. I talk to him for a few minutes, hoping he'll turn around. I wish I had something to offer him; next time I'll bring an apple. I stay as long as I can and then whisper, “Goodbye.”

He knows I am there, I'm sure of it, but he doesn't even twitch an ear.

I ask Tully about the horse at dinner. I figure it's safe now. After all, we've taken over the cabin and Dad can hardly change his mind. We're all sitting at one end of the long table, eating ham, scalloped potatoes and peas. It's delicious.

Dad doesn't say anything, but his fork pauses over his plate and he stops chewing. I feel nervous and hopeful at the same time. After all, Dad always loved horses. Before.

“So you found Renegade,” says Tully. He helps himself to more potatoes. Tully has a huge appetite. He's already devoured more than Dad and me put together.

“Is he yours?” I say.
Renegade,
I think. The name suits him.

“In a manner of speaking,” says Tully. “I don't think you can say that Renegade belongs to anyone. But he came with the ranch so I guess that makes him mine.”

Dad is still not talking.

I swallow. “There's scars on his legs,” I say. “And his coat's a mess.”

“I know,” says Tully.

“Someone should clean him up,” I say. I can't help it; my voice sounds accusatory.

Tully shrugs. “He won't let anyone near him. I throw him some hay and a little grain every day and fill his bathtub with water. That's the best I can do.”

There's so much I want to know about Renegade. “Where did he come from?”

“The guy I bought the ranch from picked him up at a horse sale. Said he seemed tame enough. He figures he was drugged for the sale. He had no idea what kind of trouble he was buying until he got him home. Turns out the horse has never been broke to ride, even though he's eight years old.”

“What a waste,” I say.

Tully sighs. “I'll have to deal with him one of these days, but right now I feel he's not really hurting anything by being here.”

I chew my piece of ham slowly. Ideas turn round and round in my head.

We're not finished dinner yet, but Dad stands up. I hope that he is going to say something about Renegade, but he doesn't. He thanks Tully for the meal and leaves.

Tully and I load the dishwasher together, and then Tully whistles to the dogs, who leap up from under the long table and follow him outside.

At dinner, Tully had told us that he's been cleaning up the small office off the kitchen. He calls it a work in progress and says he only gets to it when the weather is too bad to go outside. There are piles of stuff from back before there were computers: receipts, lined notebooks filled with bookings, bills of sale from horse sales, even a book of old recipes.

Tully says he's chucking out most of the stuff, but he's discovered some boxes of old guest books that he says are keepers. He's been reading through them, trying to get a flavor of what the ranch was like in its prime. He says it's amazing how far away guests came from: Australia, France, Germany.

He's cleared off a shelf in the main room under the windows and he plans to arrange the guest books there in order of their year. The books are spread all over the floor in front of the shelf now. There must be fifteen or twenty of them. I've got nothing else to do, so I take over the job, sorting through the books to see which one comes first.

Some of them have the year on the spine but for most I have to look inside. The oldest books have black-and-white photographs of the guests. Then there are some with color photographs, but the newest books have no photographs at all, just written comments.

There are huge gaps in the dates, and I remember Tully saying that the ranch wasn't always run as a guest ranch. I can't find any books between 1965 and 1985 or between 1998 and 2004. When I'm finished organizing the books on the shelf, I take out the oldest book—dated 1953—and plop down in a leather armchair to look at it. It has a worn brown leather cover. The paper is yellowed and the writing faded. The pages are divided in half; on one side are the comments from the guests and on the other side are slightly blurry black-and-white photographs. Most of the photographs were taken in front of the lodge. Families lined up in a row, parents' hands around their children's shoulders, everyone smiling stiffly into the camera.

The date on the first page is June 7, 1953. I turn pages, studying the faces that stare out at me, deciphering the handwriting. Some of the writing is tight and cramped, some sprawling, some with big rounded letters. After a while the comments all start to sound the same:
fantastic place…a bit of paradise…
terrific food…we'll be back
.