Tea Cups & Tiger Claws (19 page)

One afternoon, a few months after Uncle Bill had died, Mr. Perkins, the butler, came into the sitting room while Sarah visited with her aunt. He said, “Ma’am, there’s a young man at the front gate who is looking for work.”

“
And why are you telling me this, Perkins? We don’t need anybody. Send him away.”

“He’s
a cowboy, ma’am. He works with horses.”

Aunt Judith studied
Mr. Perkins’ face, even though it rarely changed from one moment to the next. “Did you put out an advertisement without consulting me, Perkins?”

“No, ma’am. I only mentioned something in passing to the delivery man from the feed store.”

Aunt Judith put down her cocktail. “And what exactly did you
mention
?”

“That the stable hands seem to be lost and
that I’m more lost than anyone when it comes to telling them what to do. I said we need a manager down there.”

“You did, did you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Aunt Judith stared at Perkins, who maintained his steady, dignified gaze over the top of her head.
Sarah had never seen Perkins in a standoff like this with her aunt. After a few seconds he said, “From what I understand, the young man has quite an impressive reputation.”

“Alright Perkins, you win. I like cowboys today after all.
Open the gate and let him in.”

Sarah
had always been fond of Mr. Perkins. He didn’t smile much, but he didn’t frown either. She’d never heard him tell a joke, but she’d also never heard him raise his voice, not when she and Veronica broke things, not even when Nanny Sally bickered with him all day long. He spoke calmly, walked quietly, and stayed the same—always old, with furry eyebrows, gray hair, and sagging chin, but somehow never getting any older. And he’d always been kind, inventing special drinks for the kids and slipping candy into their pockets.

Aunt Judith ruled the roost
, but Mr. Perkins ran the show at Sunny Slope Manor, including supervision of the entire household staff, both inside and out. It didn’t, however, include anything to do with the horses, until the last two months.

The horses had been Uncle Bill’s baby, his hobby.
He used to ride some, on Peruva, his beautiful Peruvian Paso mare that he rode in all the parades, but mostly he sat on the front porch of the little stable office talking with vets and trainers and friends from the hill who boarded their horses at the manor. He smoked his cigar and kept an eye on things. Now, for the last two months, the creaky rocking chair on the porch had sat empty and the place had started to slip. That’s why Aunt Judith gave in and decided she liked cowboys.

And that’s
also why Sarah most decidedly did not. She wanted to run things. After all, she’d be seventeen in a few months and nobody in the family loved horses like she did. She’d been one of those little girls who spent her allowance on saddle pads and currycombs and pretty halters well before she ever even owned a horse. That’s how much she loved them. Not like some cowboy who wore spurs and drooled tobacco juice onto the withers and mane. And she knew what to do, too. She’d been watching and helping Uncle Bill for years.

Aunt Judith
snubbed out her cigarette, drank the last of the cocktail, and went to the front door to meet the cowboy. Sarah followed right behind, ready and willing to protect her territory. She never got the chance. When she peeked over Aunt Judith’s shoulder and saw the baby face and blue eyes that stood on the front porch, she decided that there are cowboys and then there are cowboys, and this one definitely belonged in the second category, the handsome category, of the downy blond hair and honest looking face variety. And young, too, maybe only a few years older than herself. She especially liked that part, but Aunt Judith didn’t seem too excited about it.

“How old are you?”
she said, completely skipping “hello” and “nice to meet you.”

“
Twenty, ma’am.”

“
Twenty? That won’t do much for me. I’ve got two twenty-one year-olds down there now.”

“Do they know how to shoe?”

“No. But my farrier does and he’s been doing it since before you we’re born. You can leave your name and phone number if you like, but I don’t think I have anything for you.”

“I’m good at doctoring too, ma’am. I know how to float teeth and fix abscesses and deliver foals.”

“Yes, and that’s why we have a very good vet.”

“But I can do it at midnight when the vet’s not here.”

“Are you an arguer young man?”

“No, not usually ma’am, but
I’m the right person for the job and can’t think of a good reason not to argue about it.”

Aunt Judith stood up straight
and didn’t seem to know what to say. Sarah hid her face and tried not to laugh.

“You can put me to a test if you
like,” continued the young cowboy. “The man at the feed store said you’ve got a six year old gelding that won’t take a saddle. If you give me forty-five minutes, I’ll have a saddle on him and a rider too. And you can watch the whole thing. Do we have a deal?”

“You’re a cocky thing aren’t you?”

“No, ma’am, not usually.”

“What’s your name?”

“Mack. Mack Brimwahl.”

“
Mack?”

“
McKinley, ma’am, but I go by Mack.”

“I see. Alright
Mack Brimwahl, you’ve got forty-five minutes,” Then she looked back at Sarah and smiled. Aunt Judith liked cockiness.

“And this is my niece,” said Aunt Judith, out of the blue
, stepping aside. “Her name is Sarah.”

“Nice to meet you,” said
Mack.

Sarah
knew all the customary responses. At any other time in her life she could’ve come up with five or ten of them, could’ve said them in Spanish, French, and pig Latin, but not on this day. Her brain froze and her mouth went into lockdown. Aunt Judith stared. The cowboy smiled—nice teeth, not a hint of chewing tobacco—and then jammed a black cowboy hat onto his head and bounced down the porch steps to an old blue pickup truck that looked like it had died in the driveway. Sarah wanted to die too…but not for forty-five minutes.

He leaned
over the side of the truck bed, rummaged through a green duffel bag, and pulled out a rolled up white rope. Sarah had expected him to load up with mean looking hobbles, and tie-downs, and probably a whip too, not a flimsy rope that looked like it couldn’t hold a goat, much less a bad-mannered and unbroken horse.

A few minutes later,
Mack stood in the middle of the round pen, a small arena about forty feet across formed by a tall rail fence. When the horse, a big, black thoroughbred named Getonto, saw that a stranger waited for him, he shied away from the gate and tried to pull free. The two stable hands hustled him through the opening, closed the gate, and then stood nearby to watch the fun. Aunt Judith and Sarah sat in the small set of bleachers which bordered one side of the pen.

Getonto
faced Mack. He snorted and bobbed. His right front hoof pounded at the ground like a bull. Mack faced him right back, and whenever Getonto moved, even just a few feet, Mack moved too, so that he always faced the animal square on. After a few minutes of this Mack said, “Put the saddle on top of the fence.”

One of the stable hands threw the saddle up to the
rail, and it landed with a thud. Getonto jumped. He then squealed loudly and charged back and forth a few times in front of the gate before resuming the stare-down with the stranger. Mack continued as before, but now he didn’t just face the horse, he also took the rolled up rope and threw it into the air so that it unfurled right toward Getonto, who didn’t care for this in the least. He galloped and bucked, blew air like a locomotive, and kicked up massive clouds of dust. Sarah had never seen a horse so agitated. She started to wonder if the cowboy knew what he was doing.

As
Getonto exploded along the perimeter of the ring, sometimes galloping, sometimes slamming on the brakes and changing direction, sometimes pounding his hoofs in a majestic prance, Mack calmly reeled in the rope and continued to keep his face and shoulders square to the horse. When the horse suddenly stopped and faced Mack, out flew the rope and Getonto went berserk all over again.

Is that what it’s all about,
Sarah wondered, not letting the horse face him? If so, it seemed kind of silly.

After a while, Getonto
stopped trying to face Mack, but Mack kept unfurling the rope at him. If anything, he did it more. He kept the horse constantly on the move, less explosive maybe, but always moving.

Sarah
watched closely and wondered what she might be missing. That’s when she noticed Getonto’s inside ear flicking in Mack’s direction. It hadn’t done that before. His ears, like the rest of his body, had been all over the place, but now that inside ear had definitely locked onto the cowboy in the middle of the ring. That went on for a good five minutes when something else changed: Getonto lowered his head as he ran. Then, shortly after that, he started chewing and licking his lips. Around the ring he went, ear focused, head lowered, chewing and licking. What did it mean? She’d seen horses do these kinds things before but had never really thought it meant anything.

It meant something to
Mack. He dropped the rope to the ground and turned sideways. For the first time since the two had been thrown together, Mack no longer faced the horse. Getonto stopped. He looked at Mack. Then, with head still low, he walked to the center of the ring. Sarah held her breath. He walked right up to Mack and lightly touched his muzzle to Mack’s shoulder.

Five
minutes later Getonto had Mack on his back and looked more tame than a drowsy trail horse. And Sarah tried unsuccessfully to hold back the tears. She’d heard about these kinds of things before, but to see it in person, to actually see such a magical conversation between horse and man, was a little more than her horse crazy heart could handle.

After seeing how Mack Brimwahl handled Aunt Judith on the day he got hired, Sarah had taken him for somewhat of a smooth talker, not conniving or shady, as far as she could tell, just a little too smooth. After a while, though, she decided that while Mack had no problem talking in a friendly, easy manner, he seemed by nature to be more of a listener.

And the same proved true in the charm department; he had charm, in a simple, Montana kind of way, but didn’t go around trying to be a charmer.
That might’ve been for the best because when word got around about the handsome, young cowboy at Sunny Slope Manor, a small herd of middle aged women who’d previously had little dedication to their horses, which they boarded at the manor, suddenly became very dedicated indeed. Except they didn’t seem to be able to get on their horses anymore because the mounting block just didn’t do the job like it used to. So they stood by their horses, in their form fitting tailor made riding pants and their frilly white blouses, and called out to Mack for a leg up. And then, because of an outbreak of sprained ankles, these same ladies also found it difficult to get back off their horses without a big, strong cowboy putting his hands on their waists and lowering them to the ground like feathery ballerinas. Mack got good at politely tipping his hat and going about his business. After a while these ladies gave up and went back to their tennis pros and pool boys.

Another Prospect Park female, not part of the gang of idle rich wives, had a great deal more success with the new cowboy
: Veronica Newfield. And Sarah couldn’t have been happier for her twelve year old cousin. For one thing, Sarah knew that the hours Veronica spent at the barn were hours where she wouldn’t be tormenting her fragile mother. For another, it gave Sarah a chance to visit with Veronica, who’d struggled since the death of her father; besides her usual demons of anger and jealousy, she’d recently begun spending too much time alone in her bedroom. Then Mack came along and Veronica started showing up at the barn with a smile. She usually made eyes at him while he helped saddle up her horse and then she and Sarah went riding off together, where Veronica talked about things, and Sarah tried to gently nudge her along in the right direction, just like she used to.

Veronica’s little crush also had the added benefit of opening another window into
Mack Brimwahl for Sarah to look through; she watched how he treated her little cousin and listened to their conversations, which often sounded something like this:

“
Mack, do you like girls with curly hair or wavy hair?”

“Wavy hair, definitely, as long as it’s not waving goodbye like a bald man.”

“Oh, Mack, you’re just being silly.”

“No, really, the answer is wavy.”

“Do you think I’d look good with wavy hair?”

“The best, ‘cause you’ve got the perfect face for it.”

“I do?”             

“Definitely.”

Then Veronica would show up the next day with wavy hair and Mack would stop dead in his tracks and tell her that if he were five years younger he’d ask her out on a date that very second and die of a broken heart if she said no. Veronica’s face then turned ten shades of red and she smiled for a week.

Scenes like this reminded
Sarah to put up her guard lest she say something that made Mack think that she had a crush on him herself—assuming, of course, that she first untied her tongue and actually said anything to him at all besides hi and goodbye. In some ways this silly awkwardness confused Sarah. Truthfully, it might’ve been a crush and probably looked like it to anyone with eyeballs, but something about it also seemed different. Maybe it had something to with the fact that Mack, at twenty, just a few years older than Sarah, looked like a young person, acted like a young person, but of his own free will had pushed off from the young persons’ world to live as an adult. He’d left his parents’ home, not to move into a college dormitory, or to travel Europe on mom and dad’s bank account, or even to take a job in the next town over. He’d moved a thousand miles away, to a new state, to a new culture, to make it on his own. Infatuation? Yes, but not without a generous portion of fascination. Mack Brimwahl fascinated Sarah. Especially when she considered her own sheltered existence and the fact that she’d never made a single big decision in her entire life.

Fortunately the whole talking issue began to work itself out when
Mack approached her and said he couldn’t make sense out of some scribbling on an order form. Before having a chance to think about things, Sarah said, “Oh, I can do that. I did all the ordering for Uncle Bill. He couldn’t read their writing either.” So, thanks to the stable hands and their bad penmanship, they had a conversation, which led to others, which pretty much took care of the blushing school girl problem. They became what they’d been all along: a couple of young people who seemed to enjoy each other’s company. And that was how they acted. Not experienced and bold, but young and curious. They watched and listened and, of course, talked. They draped their arms over fence rails and talked about Prospect Park (Mack said it sometimes felt like Mars to him; Sarah laughed but didn’t entirely understand), and college (Sarah planned to attend Radcliffe, like her aunt; Mack had never been), and life on a Montana ranch, a hundred miles from a shopping center or drive-in movie theater (Mack never minded; Sarah said she wouldn’t have either, but didn’t think she sounded very convincing).

They
became acquainted in measured degrees, with smiles and wisecracks and the crisscrossing of their paths, and in unmeasured, as they sometimes talked quietly on the office porch at the end of the day. They enjoyed having things in common, like their love of horses, dogs, old books, and outdoor activities; and didn’t mind the differences, like upbringing, family background, and tastes in music, because it gave them a chance to explain and share and even debate. They had everything it took to become genuine friends and that was exactly what happened.

Sometimes
Sarah wondered if they had enough to become more than that. And sometimes she thought Mack wondered the same thing, but she didn’t know for sure.

One late afternoon, after
Mack had put in a full day at the barn, and Sarah had split her time as usual between school, where she was finishing her senior year, and at the barn, Mack said, “You wanna get some pizza?”

For a second, even less than that,
Sarah wondered if she’d just been asked out on a date. Then she told herself to get real, nodded her head, and hopped into Mack’s blue pickup truck. Mack kept his truck washed and tidy but the thing was definitely an old-timer. She liked it for that reason alone; by all rights it should’ve been dead and buried, but it kept on rolling. It had gumption. She couldn’t say that about Aunt Judith’s shiny limousine.

As they drove up toward the house and then back down toward the front gate,
Sarah admired a picture of a middle aged lady that Mack had taped to the dash.

“That’s your mother, isn’t it?”

Mack looked at the picture, tried to hide a smile, and said “Yep.”

“Do you talk with her very much?”

“Is every day very much?”

“It depends. Before she goes to bed tonight will she know who you had pizza with?”

“Yes.”

“That’s not so bad
I suppose. After all, she is your mother. Will she know what toppings you had on your pizza?”

“Yes.”

“Alright, that’s getting a little weird.”

Mack
laughed.

By this time, about six months after
Mack went to work at the manor, Sarah had run up against his quiet side on several occasions. He especially didn’t like to talk about himself, which created a problem because that was what she wanted to know. Now, with an hour or two to themselves, and not being one to waste an opportunity, she said, “Mack, I want to hear how you learned to train horses the way you do and I don’t want the cheap fifty word version either. I want the whole story.” She looked sternly at him. He smiled, wrestled with the fact that she had him cornered, and started talking.

~~~

When Mack turned six years old, his father made a big deal out of it. He called him a big boy and asked if he wanted to start learning big boy things. Oh boy did he ever. His father asked if he wanted to watch him break some new quarter horses, maybe even help out a little himself. Mack couldn’t believe his ears. He had three heroes in his life: the Lone Ranger, Lassie, and all the horses on the ranch. Out the door they went, Mack running ahead of his father and older brothers as they headed over to the breaking corral. He sat on a wobbly bench just outside the ring and eagerly peeked between the rails as his brothers led four skittish horses into the arena and tied them down, each horse to a heavy post sticking out of the ground. They looked afraid but that didn’t matter, they were still his heroes.

His dad then took
a piece of tarp attached to a rope and started throwing it onto their backs. With big eyes and terrible squeals, the place suddenly turned loud and scary. They pulled fiercely against the posts, jerking their tied-down heads from side to side and lowering their butts until they almost touched the ground. When they felt the tarp drag against their hips or around their rear legs, they panicked even worse, and rolled their eyes, and tried to kick and buck even though they were tied down.

This went on for a while, until lather dripped from their bodies and they didn’t have enough strength to fight any more
. “That’s good enough for today,” said his dad.

The next morning
Mack didn’t bound ahead as they went to the breaking corral. The “sacking out,” as his father called it, continued. Mack mostly studied the ground that day, and the next. By the fourth day the horses had swollen necks and heads from the constant pulling, and they didn’t fight nearly as much. At the end of the session his dad looked at Mack and said, “See how they’re not fightin’ anymore, son? That’s what I want. The only problem is they’re not fightin’ ‘cause they’re tired. It’ll take a while, but when I’m done with ‘em, they won’t fight ‘cause they know they’re licked. You wanna come down and give it a try?” He held out the tarp.

Mack
shook his head.

“Now don’t be
like that son,” he said. “You want your brothers to think you’re afraid?”

“I’m not afraid, I just don’t want to.” Then
the tears flowed, and he said what he really thought, “And I’m not gonna watch anymore...you’re mean, you’re mean....” And off he ran to the house.

From that day on,
Mack had nothing to do with the breaking of horses. He hid behind his mother whenever his dad tried to force the issue or when his brothers teased. And when he got older, he just refused to participate. Since he generally stayed on top of his chores and did everything else his father expected of him, the whole thing eventually became Mack’s strange little sore spot that nobody bothered talking about. That didn’t mean Mack stopped thinking about it or that he didn’t have questions, because he did.

What he
’d seen as a child—the cuts and swelling and terror—had been only part of it; the whole ordeal dragged on for a minimum of two weeks and in the end, if the horse didn’t have more serious leg injuries, it had open wounds where the ropes had cut into it and bare spots where friction had burned it to the hide. And what did his father get for all that? A horse with a broken spirit and a fear of mankind, just what he wanted. Broken and fearful—and it didn’t make any sense to Mack. If God ever made a more willing creature, other than a dog, he’d never heard of it. Every horse has herd instinct, an overwhelming need to belong, not only to the herd, but even to a person. This fear of isolation and willingness to cooperate is an essential part of their spirit. He’d seen it time and again, with countless horses, with countless temperaments. Why did that need to be snuffed out? Instead of turning the horse into a fearful zombie, why not build upon those good instincts? There had to be a better way.

As he grew older he occasionally heard about so called “horse whisperers” and “natural
horsemen,” who did things differently, but on a ranch that broke thirty to forty horses a year, and needed to do it fast, this kind of talk didn’t get a warm welcome. Then one day, as a defiant, miserable eighteen year-old, he ran across an article in
Horse and Rider
about a man in California named Charles “Doc” Leckey who could take almost any unbroken horse and have it accept bridle, saddle and rider in less than thirty minutes. Simply by using the body language of the horse he did in minutes what took weeks by traditional methods, and without the terror or cruelty. And the real kicker: the article had been written by a skeptical rancher who’d challenged Doc Leckey to come to his ranch and prove himself on ten horses, sight unseen. Leckey accepted the challenge and did everything he claimed. And there it was, with pictures and everything, in his dad’s own magazine!

With
that magazine firmly in hand, Mack tracked down his dad in the calving barn, bent over a newborn.

“Yea
h...I saw that story,” mumbled his dad.

“And...so, what do you think?”

“I think that guy’s puttin’ people on unsafe horses.”

Mack
’s hands fell to his sides. “Did you see who wrote this? It’s a rancher…like you. I think he knows when a horse is unsafe.”