Ivy Takes Care Read Online Free PDF Page B

things,” he said with seriousness. “You were fixed in heaven to do vet work, Ivy. Someday you will. Sure as Sunday.”
    By then, the storm had cleared. Dr. Rinaldi walked out into the sunny yard, his boots making a satisfactory clopping on the cobblestones. He tossed his vet bag into the back of his pickup. The truck bed was full of cow slings, large forceps, and other mysterious equipment.
    “Go on home, now. Your ma’ll have supper waiting. Cut out the aspirin. These pills are better, and throw in one of these antibiotic tablets with her hamburger every day. That critter’ll come around quick,” he said. Then he got into his truck and started the engine. It sputtered and choked to life. Out the window he said, grinning, “Now, you’re not going to tell a living soul I used an expensive antibiotic on a wild critter, are you? Your dad’d laugh me out of his barn.”
    “Cross my heart and hope to die,” answered Ivy.
    Biking home, Ivy felt the sun warm her face. She cruised up Mule Canyon hill, pedals flying with no effort at all.
    The world was full of invisible powers. There was, across the state of Nevada, the power of the slot machines. Those were called one-arm bandits, and they had the power to make people drop their money into a black hole of nothingness.
    There was Annie’s San Francisco tent mate. She had the power to make Annie into someone entirely other than who she’d been just the day before.
    And then there was the power Ivy had discovered in Chestnut’s stable. It was the power to bring back life and to stop suffering. That power was Dr. Rinaldi’s. Maybe it could be hers, too.
    When the supper dishes had been cleared and Ivy sat down to her summer reading, her mother scooted her chair over.
    “Honey, your dad and I were talking,” Mrs. Coleman said softly.
    Ivy waited for the direction of this wind.
    “When school starts again, we want for you to keep up some to the other girls, with their nice things.”
    “It’s all right, Mama,” said Ivy.
    “We’re real proud of you having a job,” her mother added, looking down at her feet, taped up with special Dr. Scholl’s supports. “So, Dad and I did a little calculating last night.”
    Ivy’s mother reached over to the desk and picked up an envelope from her bill-paying file.
    “This is a new envelope,” her mother said. She turned it over so that Ivy could see it. The word
Ivy
was written on it in her mother’s careful, Palmer-method penmanship. “Cora’s full up with guests till November. Let’s hope they’re rich guests who tip Dad nicely and maybe leave something in the kitchen for me.”
    Everything depended on tips. The guests left room tips on their pillows when they left. These were collected by Cora Butterworth. But Ivy’s dad took the guests riding into the mountains. If some New York City fellow found a nice rack of antlers for over his fireplace without having to kill a buck, her dad was likely to get a consideration at the end of the guest’s six-week stay.
    During the winter months, when the guests were few, Ivy’s dad rode out on the trails, planting racks of sun-bleached antlers. If the squirrels didn’t gnaw them to pieces, he’d know exactly where to find them in the summer.
    “Well, look at what we’ve got here!” he would always say, pulling up his horse. Then an excited guest would jump off Texas’s or Mirabel’s back, pull the rack of antlers out of the brush where it had been carefully posed, and struggle it onto the saddle ring, where Ivy’s dad solemnly tied it.
    This was usually worth a couple of dollars, handed over at the end of the ride. Once in a while, if Ivy’s mother cooked a guest’s favorite dish just right, that guest might leave a silver dollar under their dinner plate.
    With two fingers, Ivy’s mother removed and handed over a five-dollar bill.
    “That’s for the ring you want, honey. Don’t want you snooted down by anybody.”
    But Ivy did not take the money. She had already