ʺIt’s hopeless, isn’t it?ʺ said Leslie.
ʺIt is not hopeless, damn it,ʺ said Miri. ʺStop trying to make it hopeless, you know?ʺ
ʺSorry,ʺ said Leslie, and sighed.
Once Miri was (relatively) sure Leslie wouldn’t fall off at the walk, she took her out on the trail, thinking that a change of scenery would be good for both of them. Leslie was on the (bombproof) Peggy, and Miri on Balthazar. Balthazar was disappointed by all the walking, but he was accustomed to such disappointment. And Flame came with them.
At first they did the baby loop which only took about fifteen minutes and you were never really out of sight of the barn. But Miri’s sharp eye took in that, out on the trail, Leslie occasionally forgot that she was all left feet and couldn’t possibly learn to ride, and relaxed. Once, when she’d forgotten for more than a minute, Peggy put her head down and blew.
ʺThere,ʺ said Miri.
ʺWhat?ʺ said Leslie. ʺDid I do something wrong? Isn’t she supposed to do that?ʺ
ʺNo, you did something right. You stopped perching on her like a bird on a wire and she relaxed and started to enjoy herself.ʺ
ʺOh, am I hurting her?ʺ said Leslie in deep distress.
ʺOkay, I take it back,ʺ said Miri. ʺYou are hopeless.ʺ
There was a brief tortured pause, and then Leslie laughed. ʺOh. I get it.ʺ
ʺGood,ʺ said Miri.
But after that Leslie did begin—just a little—to learn to ride. Miri stopped trying to teach her anything in the arena, and they went straight out onto the trails, leaving the baby loop behind and diving deep into the preserve. And Flame always came with them. Once, when Leslie began one of her (regular) apologies for how much time she was taking away from all the other more important things Miri should be doing (which would then lead into another attempt to pay for lessons), Miri interrupted and said, ʺYou’re doing me a favor. I’ve been worrying about giving poor Flame enough exercise.ʺ
Flame, hearing his name, came lolloping up to them, tongue flying, his eyes so crinkled up from grinning that he looked almost ordinary.
ʺI wonder what his background is,ʺ said Leslie, and Miri could see her immediately as the zookeeper to be: focussing on the strange animal she has been presented with. ʺThere’s a lot of sighthound in there somewhere—deerhound maybe.ʺ
ʺVery likely,ʺ Miri said neutrally. He looked as much like a deerhound as he looked like any dog. Since she was the only one who brushed him, she was the only one who knew that he had not merely the common system of a longer coarser outer coat and finer softer undercoat, but a third coat beneath the second, dense and almost prickly, almost as if it might be suitable for repelling hellfire. He also had two extra pairs of ribs, disguised by the length of his back. If it had been only one extra pair she probably wouldn’t have noticed; but she’d thought, stroking him, that his ribcage seemed to go on a surprisingly long time, and so she counted, and checked the result with a helpful website on dog anatomy. She might have asked the vet about this, except that she had recently observed, while checking for ticks, that his testicles had regrown. He had, of course, been castrated at the pound. She didn’t want to get Ronnie in trouble for having released an unneutered dog, and if Flame stayed healthy, the vet might not notice the testicles. She wondered if the pound’s vet had noticed the ribs and the third coat, or if he’d just been totally distracted by the eyes.
There were other anomalies. The last inch or so of his tongue had a narrow smooth white streak down the center, like scar tissue, as if his tongue had once been forked. He ate charcoal out of the fireplace. (He would have eaten charcoal briquettes too, only Miri felt sure that the chemical stuff that made them burn faster and hotter wouldn’t be good for anything to eat, even a hellhound.) She’d known Labradors that ate anything including charcoal, but Flame did not also eat bricks, shoes, houseplants and small pieces of furniture—just charcoal. And while he liked to lie in front of the fire like a normal dog, he liked to lie facing it, staring into it like a philosopher—or a hellhound. The flicker of the flames on his wide-open red eyes looked like the reflection of a forest fire.
But he had perfect manners around the stable, the horses, and the clientele. There were one or two nervous parents who didn’t like him, but Miri simply learned who they were and made sure he was tied up under his tree when they were due to arrive. And he was now proving to have perfect manners on trail rides.
It was still only Leslie, Miri and Flame. Miri had suggested they invite Mal some time—even that Leslie was ready to go out with Mal by herself—but Leslie said, ʺOh, not yet. Please. If you can stand it a little while longer. I can almost relax now, when it’s just you, but I know I’ll stiffen up again as soon as anyone comes with us—especially Mal. But I’ve been thinking, what I’d like to do is tell Mal I’m taking him on a picnic for his birthday—and then tell him at the last minute it’s going to be on horseback. Is that a good idea, do you think?ʺ
ʺIt’s an excellent idea,ʺ said Miri.
ʺOh, I hope so,ʺ Leslie said in her earnest way. ʺI mean I’m trotting now and everything. You are so patient. I guess you have to be, to be a riding teacher, but it’s still pretty amazing. And I really don’t understand why you’ve put so much time into me. It’s not just Flame.ʺ
ʺDon’t you worry about that,ʺ said Miri, who found taking Leslie for a trail ride twice a week a nice change from her nervous kindergarteners, ʺI’m going to get it out of Mal later.ʺ
During this conversation Miri hadn’t been paying attention to how far they’d come. It was true that Leslie could trot, and Miri was considering whether it was time to risk a canter. It would be really great—not to mention having Mal in his sister’s hip pocket for the rest of his life—if his girlfriend could canter by the time his birthday picnic happened.
And then Peggy, bombproof Peggy, shied.
She didn’t shy very far, and she shied into Balthazar, who put his ears back and held his ground. Leslie, who was only clumsy and not a fool, merely said ʺughʺ and dragged herself back upright again; a good instinctive convulsive grab for Peggy’s mane had kept her in the saddle. Both horses were standing, tense and alert, looking in the same direction. Miri now noticed that Flame was standing right in front of them, looking in the same direction too, with his tail and his hackles raised.
ʺDamn,ʺ said Miri. ʺI didn’t notice where we’d got to. I wouldn’t have brought you here, although it’s not usually as bad as this.ʺ
ʺWhat isn’t?ʺ said Leslie.
ʺOur haunted graveyard,ʺ said Miri. ʺDon’t tell me you haven’t heard that story?ʺ
ʺOh,ʺ said Leslie. ʺI guess. But I thought it was like Pegasus and unicorns.ʺ
ʺWhen I got old enough to answer back, I used to tell my parents that if they’re going to bring a six-year-old whose favorite bedtime stories are all fairy tales to a haunted farm then they deserved what they got. There’s still a rumor for anyone who remembers that my parents got the place cheap because of the graveyard, although the fact that the house only had electricity downstairs and the only indoor plumbing was the pump in the kitchen might have had something to do with it too.ʺ
ʺWow,ʺ said Leslie.
ʺYeah. We moved in the beginning of the summer so we had all summer to get a toilet and a shower put in. Mom and Dad decided I was old enough to have my baths in the pond but Mal had to have his in a plastic tub in the kitchen.ʺ She smiled reminiscently. ʺI don’t think he’s ever forgiven me. Anyway. I don’t know what the graveyard’s problem is and a lot of the time it’s perfectly fine, you can go in there and look around and nothing happens. There’s only six tombstones—all the same family—they all died within a few weeks of each other, in 1871. Probably flu or something, Dad says. It must have been awful for whoever was left, whoever buried them. When I started school here the kids all said that nobody had lived in the house since. It took me a few years to figure out that they didn’t have electricity out here in 1871.ʺ