The Mare Read Online Free PDF

other was regular. They were leading a huge horse and talking loud, like they thought they were hot. When they saw me they stopped and stared. Suddenly there was this loud, mad-pissed-off banging, and I heard a horse making angry
wanting
noises. The other horses answered like,
We hear!
The boy-girl yelled, “Shut up, Fugly Girl!” And the other said to me, “We don’t mean you.” And the boy-girl laughed.
    I walked away from them toward the office. One of the girls muttered, “Sorry.” The banging got louder. And then I saw where it was coming from. There was a gold-brown horse kicking and
biting
the hell out of her cage. Her eyes were rolling in her head and you could see the white around them. But she was the best one so far, not the most beautiful, the
best.
There were no ribbons or toys or even a name on her cage, just a sign that read “Do Not Touch.” I came close to her and she looked at me. That’s when I saw the scars on her face, straight, deep scars around her nose and eyes. She turned her head all the way to one side and then the other. I thought, Your scars are like the thorns on Jesus’s heart. She stopped biting and kicking. I could see her think in the dark part of her eye. The white part got softer. The girls behind me went quiet. The wonderful horse came up to me. I put my hand out to her. She touched it with her mouth. I whispered, “You are not fugly.”
    “Hey, can’t you read?” the boy-face girl yelled at me. “That horse is dangerous, get away from it!”
    “She’s only dangerous if she doesn’t like you,” said Pat. I turned and saw her and Ginger coming out of the office. Pat came up to the horse and rubbed her on the nose. “The trouble is, she doesn’t like anybody except me—and sometimes she doesn’t like me.” Pat looked at me, straight on this time. “So I’ve got a slot open tomorrow. Does that work for you?”

Ginger
    When we got back to the house she wanted to eat a sandwich, so I fixed her a ham and cheese with tomatoes for health. She asked if there were any pickles and I said, No, I’m sorry. She looked at me quizzically while she ate. Tomatoes dripped out. She asked if those girls would be at the barn when she went for her lesson. I said I didn’t know. I wondered if they said something racial to her, but I didn’t want to embarrass her by asking. I didn’t think there would be direct racism in this town. But it might come in a subtler form.
    “What did you think of them?” I asked.
    “I dunno,” she said.
    “Would you want to see them again?”
    “No.”
    I asked if she’d brought a swimsuit. She said yes. I told her we’d gotten a life jacket for her, for when we went to the lake. She asked to see it, and when I brought it, she put it on and frowned; it was too small. My heart sank a little. We both went out to the garden, where Paul was pulling weeds, and told him we were going to the store to get a new life jacket. He said he would go with us. She wore the life jacket into the car, and I was aware of her fiddling with it as we drove. When we went over the Kingston Bridge, I sensed her stop fiddling for a moment; I turned and saw her hands still in her lap, her soft, responsive profile as she looked out the window, reacting to the huge bright sky and sparkling water. I felt pulled by big feelings, but I didn’t know what they were.
    When we got to the parking lot of the store and found a place, she said, “I made it fit.” And she had! She had worked out the adjustable straps and fasteners that we hadn’t even thought to look for. Paul said, “You’re smarter than we are!” and her eyes sparkled shyly.
    We decided that since we were at the mall, we would buy her a bike. It took a long time because she was so uncomfortable about choosing one. We kept asking, What about this one? Do you like this one? Do you like the color? And she would say, “I dunno” and look down, as if confused. I asked her, Do you
want
a bike? She said yes, but