Ellie Ever Read online

  Before Mrs. Taylor could find the right button to punch on the intercom, the gate opened up. The Blue Goose began to bounce over the cattle guards embedded into the sides of a shallow pit.

  “Is that where we’re going to live?” Ellie exclaimed as she eyed the mansion at the end of the long driveway.

  “Just who do you think you are?” her mother asked, laughing.

  As the Blue Goose pulled to a stop, a grizzly of a man in khakis and a heavy green jacket waved them to a spot on the circular driveway. Ellie and her mom got out of the truck. He lumbered toward them. “Looks like you made it,” the man said. “I’m Grover Cook, the farm manager.” Ellie thought his voice sounded gruff.

  “I’m Annie Taylor, and this is my daughter, Ellie.”

  Mr. Cook shook Ellie’s mom’s hand before taking Ellie’s tiny hand in his big, calloused one.

  “Glad to meet you both,” he said.

  “Have you worked here long?” Mrs. Taylor asked.

  “About forty years for the former owners, the Angles. They sold the place to Mr. Hunter a few months ago. I told him I’d stay on for a while, until he found somebody to take my place. Now that you’re here, my wife and I will be taking off for California in the RV the Angles gave us.”

  Ellie looked at two workers straining to carry a long slab of gray granite into the mansion. “The Hunters are having the house renovated while they are in Florida for the winter,” Mr. Cook explained, “though if you ask me, the place looked just fine the way the Angles left it.”

  Ellie wondered where they would be living and what their house would look like. It had to be bigger than Noah’s Ark. Maybe about the size of her house B.H.—that’s what her mother called the time Before the Hurricane.

  “Looks like you’ve come well-equipped,” Mr. Cook said, peering into the window of the metal enclosure that tented the truck’s bed. Without even looking, Ellie knew what he would see: a few cardboard boxes of personal items; racks loaded with metal shoes in different shapes and sizes; hoof rasps for filing; big pliers called clinchers; a few hammers; an anvil heavy with scars; her father’s well-worn leather apron; and, best of all, a gas forge that breathed fire—the Dragon, her father had nicknamed it. Her father had joked that a farrier only needed three things to go into business: something to hammer, something to hammer with, and something to hammer on. The Blue Goose, bulging with the latest in footwear for the well-shod horse, proved otherwise.

  “You’re smaller than I imagined,” Mr. Cook said to Mrs. Taylor. “Smaller than most farriers, I mean.”

  It was true, Ellie thought. But somehow she had never thought of her mother as small, and her mother wouldn’t let something like being short stand in the way of a challenge. She didn’t make excuses for herself, and she didn’t like anybody else’s excuses either.

  “I’ve got a way with horses,” Mrs. Taylor said confidently. “They don’t seem to mind that I’m small. My husband used to say that every horse I meet falls in love with me at first sight, just like he did.”

  “Wrestling with a horse that doesn’t want to wear shoes can be awfully hard,” Mr. Cook warned. “Do you know what you’re getting yourself into?” He sounded doubtful.

  She nodded. “I’m a novice, but I watched farriers work on the farm where I grew up. Sometimes I’d go out to the stables to watch my husband shoe, hand him tools, that sort of thing. I wish he had taught me more, but we never thought . . .” She didn’t finish her statement.

  “The Angles wouldn’t have had a novice shoeing horses around here, that’s for sure. Not that it matters much anymore.”

  Ellie wondered why it didn’t matter much anymore. She wished Mr. Cook would stop talking that way to her mother.

  “This place used to be one of the best stables anywhere when the Angles owned it. A winner in every stall. Now it’s just a stable of”—Mr. Cook paused, groping for the word he wanted—“of misfits.”

  “I think we’ll like it here just fine,” her mother said.

  “Well, you must be anxious to settle in—with school starting for you both tomorrow.”

  Ellie hadn’t really thought of her mother’s beginning her job as a farrier’s apprentice being the same as starting school.

  “I need to get the keys from the house before I take you to your apartment,” Mr. Cook said. “You all can come in and look around if you like.”

  Ellie stood just inside the doorway gawking at the massive mahogany spiral staircase. She could hear hammering and sawing on the second floor and smell varnish on newly refinished hardwood floors. The varnish smell reminded her of her dad and of the tree ornaments they had made B.H.

  Mr. Cook retrieved the keys from a small hook in the coat closet and then stooped to pick up a package resting on the bottom step of the staircase. “Here’s a package for you from that school you’ll be attending,” he said.

  Ellie glanced at the distinguished-looking return address.

  TWIN CREEKS

  PREPARATORY SCHOOL

  Twin Creeks, Virginia

  “Don’t worry, Ellie. You can’t already be in trouble,” he said a little more softly, handing her the package. “You haven’t even started school yet.”

  Mr. Cook ushered them toward their truck. “I better show you where you’ll be living. Follow my van.”

  Ellie and her mother climbed back into the Blue Goose.

  “I don’t think he likes us,” Ellie said as they bounced their way over cobblestones toward the stable.

  “He just doesn’t like that everything is changing. His bark is probably worse than his bite.”

  The Blue Goose bucked into second gear.

  “I think your father would be proud of us,” Mrs. Taylor said.

  Ellie’s heart wrinkled at the mention of her father. She remembered what her mother had told her after her father died. “We Taylors are strong stock,” she had said time and time again. “We don’t stay down, and we don’t stay out. And we don’t let our hearts stay broken forever. Wrinkled, maybe, but never broken.”

  So Ellie and her wrinkled heart bounced along a bumpy road all the way to their new home.

  4

  Their new home wasn’t exactly what Ellie had been expecting. Mr. Cook unlocked the door to a small building painted light blue and white—a miniature replica of the handsome stables a few hundred feet down the hill. There was a horse-shaped weathervane on the roof—just like the one that sat on the stable roof—and a horseshoe-shaped knocker on the door. He handed the keys to Mrs. Taylor and ushered them into a room still thick with the smell of fresh-cut wood. “Your living room used to be my office,” he explained. “Makes a nice apartment, if I do say so myself.”

  Ellie wound her way through their quarters, which the carpenters had renovated before they started on the Hunters’ house. She pulled her mother along by the hand. Mr. Cook turned on a light sprouting from the head of a porcelain horse. A warm glow settled over a well-worn leather sofa and two overstuffed club chairs in the living room next to the tiny galley kitchen. Ellie ran toward one of three small windows that overlooked the paddock, where two horses stood quietly, the bay resting his dark brown head on the buckskin’s tan withers.

  “Say hello to your neighbors,” Mr. Cook said.

  Mrs. Taylor opened the window and made clicking sounds to get the horses’ attention.

  Both horses looked up and neighed at the same time as if to welcome Ellie and her mother to the neighborhood.

  “Glory, the brown one, is really old, forty years, maybe more, though it’s hard to tell exactly because he’s lost most of his teeth. They tell me he used to run with the best of them, but now . . .”

  “He’ll like the soft molasses mash I’ll make him. An old family recipe.” Mrs. Taylor smiled. “The buckskin’s good-looking.”

  “That’s Buttermilk. She splintered the pastern of her left hind leg a year ago. You can’t tell by the way she’s standing now, but she’s real limpy.”

  “What about that one, Mr. Cook
?” Ellie asked. She pointed to a pinkish-colored horse, a roan, two hands shorter and a whole lot stockier than the other horses. “He’s really beautiful.”

  “From one side, maybe. Wait till he turns around. His name is Pogo. He was burned in a stable fire in Connecticut over Thanksgiving. His left shoulder’s still one big scab. They tried to get him out of the fire, but he was so scared he ran back into the stable, where he thought he’d be safe. If they’d just have put blinders, even a wet rag, over his eyes . . .”

  Ellie winced. “What about that one? What’s that horse’s name?”

  “Hannibal. Got into a corn crib and foundered. Founder’s a bad inflammation of the hoof. It’s real painful for the horse,” he explained, looking at Ellie. “The vets did what they could, but his owner discovered the problem too late.”

  Ellie hoped she would be able to cure horses like Hannibal when she became a veterinarian.

  “What about the horse way off in the pasture? The one all by himself?”

  “That mustang? Outlaw. Can’t get anywhere near him. Nobody can. Wildest horse I’ve seen in a long time. A trainer—if you can call him that, and I can’t say I would—cracked Outlaw between the ears with a two-by-four when he reared up at him. You can still see the scar. Hasn’t trusted a human since. He’s a biter. Kicker, too. Got to keep him by himself. Took four of us to load him in the trailer and bring him here. I’m still sore from where he kicked me.” He rubbed his right leg.

  “What about that pony?”

  “Raffles. Mr. Hunter said his daughter won her in a drawing twenty-five years ago. She’d paid five dollars for the winning ticket. Said she was so proud of her prize that he didn’t have the heart to tell her the filly was overpriced, even at that.” He laughed. “Said his daughter proved him wrong. Won the national three-day event with her. I guess you never know how things will turn out.”

  “Is something wrong with Raffles?” Ellie was almost afraid to ask.

  “Her owner grew too old for her, that’s all. And she’s up in years.”

  “I’m glad he’s rescued them all,” Mrs. Taylor said. “We’ll take good care of them.”

  “On nice days we let them out in the paddock all day for exercise, but they stay in their stalls at night,” Mr. Cook said. “All except Outlaw. We drop his food off in the shed at the corner of his pasture and let him come to it when he’s good and ready. Remember to check his water, make sure it’s not frozen. And he likes salt.”

  “I’ll remember to check,” Mrs. Taylor said.

  “Could I learn to ride on any of them?” Ellie asked. She had wanted to learn for a long time.

  “Not here. They’re all too old or too lame or too wild.”

  “Can I pet them?”

  “Sure can, if they’ll let you. Except for Outlaw. I wouldn’t try to pet him unless you’d like a hoof-print for a tattoo. Don’t you want to see the rest of the place?” he asked them, changing the subject.

  Across the hall, Ellie saw a bedroom. Painted a pale blue, it had photographs of jumping horses on every wall and a white spread over the double bed.

  “I guess you’re wondering where your room is,” Mr. Cook said to Ellie. “See those stairs?” He pointed toward one corner of the bedroom. Ellie’s mom and Mr. Cook followed as she bounded up the stairs two at a time. Ellie’s loft hung over her mother’s room, blocked off only by a sturdy rail. It was handsome in a horsy sort of way: a colorful patchwork quilt covering a white iron bed; horse pictures all over the wall; even a rocking chair with a horse’s head carved into the top. Beside the bed, a lamp seemed to grow out of a tall riding boot.

  “Everything’s great!” Ellie exclaimed. She wished she could think of a better word, but surprise had shocked the better words right out of her head.

  When they all went back downstairs, Ellie’s mother went out to the Blue Goose and came back with the package from her new school. “Aren’t you going to open it?” she asked.

  Ellie pried open the box. A handbook of rules. White blouses with little round collars monogrammed TCPS. Tartan-plaid skirts. A navy blazer with a brightly colored emblem.

  “I got a letter from the school just before Christmas, asking about your size. They wear uniforms there,” her mother said. “I like that idea. You never have to wonder what to wear.”

  Ellie was glad they’d all be dressing the same. She had outgrown the few clothes she had taken from home when they evacuated, and there hadn’t been money to buy new ones.

  “You ought to see those girls strut around town in their uniforms,” Mr. Cook said. “Acting like they own the place. Scratch any one of them and you’ll sniff a snob.”

  “Sniff a snob, and you’ll get a whiff of scared,” Mrs. Taylor said. “Besides, all the girls can’t be like that. You probably just ran into a few bad ones.”

  “Hope you don’t turn out that way,” Mr. Cook said to Ellie.

  Ellie had never met a real snob before, but she knew she would never be one. “I won’t. I promise.”

  “She better not, if she knows what’s good for her,” Mrs. Taylor said, shaking her finger playfully at Ellie.

  “What about shoes?” Ellie asked. “I wonder what kind of shoes they wear at”—she stuttered the letters out—“at T-C-P-S?”

  “Maybe it says in the handbook,” her mother suggested.

  Ellie quickly thumbed through the pages.

  “It says either black or brown. No high heels. No tennis shoes.”

  Ellie knew she had the perfect shoes carefully packed away in the Blue Goose.

  5

  Mr. Cook insisted on carrying all the heavy boxes himself. Then he took the rest of the afternoon to show Mrs. Taylor just how things should be done at Hunters’ Hill. When he was finished, he wished Ellie and her mother good luck and walked out to the paddock.

  “Come here, Ellie,” her mother said after he had left.

  Ellie stood beside her mother, sneaking a look out the window from behind the curtain.

  Mr. Cook walked around the paddock, glancing up as if to be sure nobody was watching. He stopped to nuzzle each horse—except, of course, Outlaw. He head-rubbed some, shoulder-patted others. He took a chunk of carrot from his coat pocket, dropped it in a bucket, and set it on the ground in front of Pogo.

  “Mr. Cook’s bark is worse than his bite,” Ellie said.

  “Most barks are,” Mrs. Taylor agreed.

  Ellie climbed the stairs to her loft, carefully pried off the top of the box her mother had labeled ELLIE’S VALUABLES, and stacked each valuable in a neat pile at the foot of her new bed. She knew her valuables weren’t as great as the ones in the box of valuables labeled with her mother’s name. That box had family pictures and the old family Bible. It had a letter from their governor calling her father a true American hero for trying to evacuate people after the hurricane.

  Ellie opened her box and thumbed through pieces of her own history:

  — all her report cards (straight A’s; works well with others; perfect scores on the state test; needs to practice her penmanship);

  — the photograph of her old soccer team (third from left, next to her best friend, Emma; Most Improved Player trophy sitting on her lap);

  — her baby book (light brown curl from her first haircut; favorite toy—Leroy the Lion; favorite song—“Wheels on the Bus”);

  — the shoes (black patent leather ballet flats with a bow; wrapped in a velvet shoe bag)

  Ellie cradled the shoes in her palms, slipped the left one over her fingers like a hand puppet, then rubbed a fingerprint from the leather. She tried it on. At last—it fit!

  They’ll dress up that old-fashioned uniform, she thought.

  “Mom, will you tell me the shoe story again?” Ellie called over the rails of her loft bedroom. “I think I’ve forgotten exactly what Daddy said when he bought them for me.” She could remember perfectly well, but she loved hearing her mom tell the story.

  “Oh, Ellie Taylor. We’ve got so much unpacking to do.” Ellie thoug
ht her mother sounded tired. “And I haven’t fed the horses yet. Besides, you’ve heard that story at least a million times. You know it better than I do.”

  “But I can’t remember exactly anymore,” Ellie said. Her mother kept on unpacking. “Maybe I could help you feed the horses.” Ellie changed the subject. She knew it was not a good time to beg.

  “Well, go see if you can find the halters and the leads,” her mother said, hanging a crisp blouse and some blue jeans in the closet. “I’ll try to bribe the horses into their stalls with some corn.”

  “Do you remember all their names?” Ellie asked.

  “There’s Glory and Buttermilk, Hannibal and Pogo, Outlaw and Ruffles.”

  “Raffles, Mom. Not Ruffles. Remember how Mr. Hunter’s daughter won Raffles in a drawing?”

  Her mother nodded. “Raffles.”

  A little later, Ellie and her mom went outside, and Ellie stood at the paddock gate watching as her mother made friends with the horses Mr. Cook had called misfits. All of them—well, all except Outlaw—seemed to trust her right away, Ellie thought proudly. Horses really did fall in love with her mother at first sight, just the way her father had said! One by one, Mrs. Taylor led each horse back into its stall.

  Then her mother pitched hay into the hayracks and measured grain into the troughs. She mixed warm water into Glory’s senior feed, smashing it soft enough for the old horse to gum. Tomorrow, she promised him, she would make him some special mash.

  “Want to walk with me to feed Outlaw?” she asked Ellie. “I’ll tell you that story on the way there.” The sun was setting winter orange as they walked down to the pasture.

  “It was a few weeks before the hurricane,” Ellie’s mom began, “and your father had taken you and me to eat lunch at a fancy French restaurant.”