Marvel and a Wonder Read Online Free PDF

down the ramp. He whistled through his front teeth once the animal was standing there in the full sun where they could take in its shape.
    “It’s a racehorse, Mister Jim,” Rodrigo grinned, patting its sleek flanks, then looking under, apprising its sex. “And a lady.”
    Jim reached out a tentative hand in the horse’s direction, feeling the humid moistness of the animal’s nose, placing his palm against its neck. Its ears flicked, the blue-black eye staring back, expressionless. In its stoicism, in its stony quiet, the grandfather saw what he most often loved about the land, the country, the world. It was enough to say he had not nor would never have dreamt of standing this close to a horse on this day or any other, and the unexpectedness, the absolute un-reason of the animal’s arrival, is what gave the grandfather a sense of joy.
    “What you going to call her, Mister Jim?” came Rodrigo’s voice.
    The grandfather studied the animal’s shape, tried to take in its perfect, imperturbable appearance, and then, looking down at the pink paper, he said, “It says here her name’s John the Baptist.”
    “John? For a lady?”
    “Yes, John. For a lady. That’s what it says.”
    “From the Bible?”
    “I guess so.”
    Rodrigo shrugged, and then searched inside the trailer and found an expensive eastern saddle and bridle. He whistled once again through his front teeth and then set to tack up, the horse remaining completely still as the blanket, then saddle was fit into place, then the bridle. It huffed once, not even a snort, and became silent again.
    “You ride her, Mister Jim?”
    Jim stared at the ghostly creature, at its formidable stature, and shook his head with a frown. “Not in this life, buster.”
    Rodrigo shrugged his shoulders again, holding the leather reins in his hand, asking a serious question by raising his eyebrows slightly.
    By then the boy—having heard the unfamiliar pickup rambling back down the gravel drive—walked out of the house and stared at the animal suspiciously. He stood a dozen feet away, pushing his glasses up against his face, trying to decide if this interruption was going to be worth his time. “Whose horse is that?” he asked.
    “Fella said it’s ours.”
    “Ours?”
    “Mine, I guess.”
    “But what for?”
    “He didn’t say.”
    The horse gave a soft whinny, which would have gone unheard if it wasn’t for the open air of the farm and the nearby highway—quiet at this time of day.
    Rodrigo pulled lightly on the reins, turned to face Jim once again, a daring smile crossing the farmhand’s face, the question having already been answered, in his mind at least, awaiting a sign, which Jim gave without begrudgement, nodding in a curt manner.
    “Okay,” Rodrigo said, slipping his left boot into the silver stirrup, then pulling himself up and fitting in his right. The horse took no notice of the stranger upon its back, its nostrils flaring slightly, its tail alighting back and forth, until the lean-faced man gave a short, gentle kick and the horse, as if having heard some celestial trumpet, was off, bucking and rearing in a flash of dust and dirt, clearing the low wire chicken fence, wreaking havoc in the dry-looking field of corn. Before the man on its back could whisper, “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” the animal seemed to have made one full pass of the entire property, galloping breakneck alongside the culvert, its hide speckled with sunlight.
    “Good God,” was all the grandfather could get out.
    It was clear from the first that the horse had been bred as a racer; standing fifteen hands high, it was lean-muscled with long legs, the hindquarters a rig of fibrous muscle. Four years old, it looked as spry as a filly.
    By the time Rodrigo had slowed the animal down to a canter, then a trot, then was heeling the horse before them, the farmhand’s face had lost none of its expression. There was a wide smile frozen below his black mustache, creeping from one ear to the other,