All The Hollow Horses
A Tale of New Moon Farm
Preface
We do not own a gun.
This was my father’s decision—deliberately made.
My father has a passion for restoration. My mother has a passion for justice.
I am Xan, heir to it all.
Chapter One
“It’s a mistake, bringing him around here,” I warned, ripping the seal off a fifty pound bag of crimped barley. “I’m telling you, Mama—something terrible is going to happen.”
Together, my mother and I hefted the bag and poured the feed into the big barley bin. “Too much drama, Alexandra,” Mama grunted.
“Not by half,” I told her. The barley was rushing out, flowing down like cake batter. “He has no humility,” I promised. “You can’t tell him anything because he already knows it all, and it’s going to put – every – single -one of us at risk.” We gave the bag one more lift and shake.
“Empty,” my mother said, taking the bag out of my hands.
“Arrogant, stubborn, mouthy,” I went on, muttering under my breath. Then I could feel her eyes on me. “And why are you looking at me like that?”
My mother smirked. “This wouldn’t be yourself you’re complaining about, now, Xan?” She leaned over and grabbed the top of a bag of oats.
“Not funny,” I told her, stung. I went over to help her drag it. A barn cat shot out from behind the bag. “You have to listen, okay? Because I’m serious. That boy needs a babysitter in the worst way, and I’ve got too much to do to be keeping an eye on him. I can’t do that and run a new therapy group and do everything else I’ve got to do around here. Mama, he’s nothing to us. He doesn’t have to do his community service here. Let him go do it somewhere else. Like at the land fill. Or the prison.”
“It’s not up to us,” mother said through her teeth, pulling off the seal on the oats. “It’s up to the courts.”
“Not up to us,” I muttered. “You could’ve said no. You still can.”
“Your daddy and I could decide not to let him work it off here.” She wiped her hands on her jeans. “But we’re not going to. Hart!” she called, “Xan and I have some office work to do. You finish up, okay?” Hart answered from somewhere out front. She pointed at me. “Leave that,” she told me, meaning the new bag. “Let’s go look at those files.”
I followed her down the breezeway of the barn, past stall after stall, black railings and blond wood walls. All ship-shape and brindle fashion. Beautiful. I always think that when I’m in this place. And I’m always in this place.
“Have fun,” Hart said as he passed me. Beautiful. I always think that when I pass him. And I never pass him often enough.
“Come on,” my mother said, smirking again.
We headed down the breezeway, out into the early summer light, the dogs surging around our ankles like we were wading through some canine river. The gravel yard between the house and the barn keeps down the spring mud, but we still had to take our work shoes off at the back door of the house. The lilac beside the porch was just starting to bloom. I got a whiff of it as I followed my mother inside. “You better stay out,” I told the dogs.
“You done?” I heard my mother say as she got into the kitchen.
“Almost.” Charlotte, my next youngest sister, sounded cross about it.
“Well, take it upstairs,” Mother said. “Xan and I have some work to do.”
“I want to finish it right here,” Charlotte complained, but she was picking up her papers and shoving them into her notebook. A little resistance is healthy in this family, but rarely ends up being productive.
“Sit,” my mother told me, “and I’ll get the files. Or, maybe you could make some toast—“
So I made toast, and was digging around in the pantry for the Skippy when she came back in with an armload of manila envelopes.
“You’ve still got how many weeks of school?” she asked me.
“Two,” I said, “if you count the last week. Just yearbook and stuff. I think they still take roll the first two days, is all.”
She rubbed her forehead thoughtfully. “I think if we wait even a week longer to start, it might be pushing fate for a couple of these kids. And the horses are ready, now. Are you going to be okay, starting this group now, with your finals and all? Can your Dad handle it?” she finished, almost talking to herself.
“I can start,” I said. “Finals aren’t going to bother me. But I’m not going to be able to do all that and manage Stolzgeld, too. Mama, you gotta cancel on him. I mean it.”
“Which I am not going to do.” She reached for the toast. “Just what, exactly, did that boy do to make you go on like this?”
“Mom,” I said. “He got us arrested.”
“You were not arrested. Where’s the jam? Not that stuff—Aunt Donna’s.”
“They hauled us down to the station—it’s the same thing as. You had to come down and get me. Cody was humiliated. I was humiliated. And frankly,” I said, giving her a look she’d taught me herself, “I do not understand your attitude about this.”
“Judge Almos asked me for a favor,” Mother said, sitting down next to me. “I want you to tell me again—dispassionately, this time, please—exactly what happened.”
“Dispassionately?”
“Yes,” she said. “If that is possible.”
I suppose I was raised under unusual circumstances. When I think about it, I live on a balance point; the same way our place is poised between the country and the city, it also walks a fine line between what might be called normal, and what, I hope to Heaven, is not normal at all.
My parents are both interested in potential. My mother sees it in horses. My father in broken people. So, way back when they were first starting out, it was natural as anything for them to have taken a big old, beat-up “For Sale” sign, half buried in an overgrown, down-at-heel property, as an omen.
They uncovered the driveway, beat back the mess of trees and brush, and found this house—ancient, neglected, empty. In other words, perfect. And the fact that it came with twelve acres and a big old sagging barn was considered the stamp of destiny. It was only twelve minutes from here, on the highway that runs right past the place, to my dad’s office at the university; that was the deal maker.
They camped out in the house, ripped out the old lath and stripped all the floors and the woodwork, rewiring, re-plumbing, dry-walling, painting, building a wide veranda across the front, all the time moving their cots from room to room. And at some point along there, they started the herd—with two Morgan mares and me.
My father is a psychologist specializing in recreational therapies. My mother breeds Morgan horses. My siblings and I are slave labor.
This is our business and our life, New Moon Farm: we breed horses and kids; we rescue horses a few at a time, and we rescue kids that way, too. Then we pair the kids with the horses in what some people like to call therapy. But when I watch what happens, I know I’m seeing miracles.
“First of all, he wouldn’t let Cooper drive.” This was a fact. Cooper is one of my best friends, and—don’t ask me why—she had asked Stolzgeld to Morp, which, if you do not know, is “prom” backwards. I asked Cody, another one of my friends, and there were three other couples in our group. True to form, we travel in herds.
“I thought Cooper came and got you in that twelve seater of theirs,” my mother said.
“She did. She picked up Kyle and Corrine first, and then Bethany and Jeff and then me. And then we got Cody, and then she stopped for Stolzgeld. She went to the door and got him, and when they came back to the van, he just walked up and opened the passenger door for her and stood there like some kind of butler or something.”
“And—“ my mother said, opening the first of the manila envelopes.
“And Cooper laughed. She said, ‘I’m taking you out, remember?’ But he just kind of ushered her into the seat and said, ‘Believe me, your parents are gonna feel a lot better if I’m driving,’ and went around and got in the driver’s seat.”
“Really,” my mother said. “And Cooper just sat there?”
“He was so nice about it, you didn’t realize it was happening till it was done. And Cooper didn’t want to make a scene.”
My mother looked sour and muttered, “Making a scene can be such a good thing.”
“And it just kept going like that. Like, never mind our reservations—he took us someplace else entirely. He just said, ‘Oh, this place is so much cooler.’ Cody and I sat there in the back, rolling our eyes the whole time.”
Mother straightened up the little pile of papers she’d pulled out of the file. “So, he drove after the dance, too?”
“Yep. He said, ‘Your parents aren’t going to mind if we’re a little late,’ and he headed out on the highway for some place in Springfield. Like it wasn’t half an hour away. I objected. Corinne objected. He just laughed and kept on driving. Cooper finally made him turn around, but by that time it was past curfew, and Officer Luthy stopped us. ‘My, my,’ he said, looking at all of us sitting in the back. We were so mad. And Cooper’s going out with him again, after all that.”
“She is?” my mother said, eyebrows up.
“Yeah,” I said. “She still likes him. Because she thinks he’s respectful. Because he’s polite, and he doesn’t come on to her. But I don’t think hi-jacking a date like that is polite, I don’t care how nice he is about it. You can’t tell him anything. He just knows best.”
“Oh, goody,” my mom said, and reached over to pick up the file’s cover sheet.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I want you to remember I told you—somebody like that here, at a horse farm? There’s going to be trouble.”
“That’s why I’m expecting you to manage him,” Mother said, and put the cover sheet down in front of me. “Client number one.”
“Hey, wait,” I said, picking up the paper.
“This is going to be an older group than you’re used to,” my mother said. “I wouldn’t have accepted the referrals if I didn’t think you could handle them.”
“But she’s from my school,” I said. I usually work with younger kids, fourth grade, ten, eleven, twelve year olds.
“I know,” my mother said. “She’s a school counselor referral. Ms. Hyde sent the file. You know her?”
“Just to say ‘hey’ to,” I said, looking at the picture of a girl in a wheelchair.
“Ms. Hyde said she feels like it’s a crossroad time for this girl,” Mother said. “It’s not so much that chair. More of a confidence thing. I’ve got her paired up with Chessy.”
I thought about that. “I don’t know, Mama,” I said. “He’s a pretty big horse.”
“He knows where his feet are,” my mother said, unconcerned, and pulled the cover sheet off the next file. “Client number two. Also from your school. You know this one?”
“Not really,” I said. Not likely, I meant. The kid in this picture had so much dead black hair combed over his face, you couldn’t see more than one eye and his mouth. He was wearing a black T-shirt with some skull thing on it and little old skinny pants. I started reading the case history. “Holy cats,” I said. “This guy nearly beat his father to death with a kitchen chair.” I flipped the sheet over and looked at the back. “Court referral?” I said. “We don’t take this kind of case.”
“Not his father,” my mother said. “His mother’s shack-up. You’re going to have to read the whole thing. Court and counselor referral.” And, just like that, she put the last cover sheet in front of me.
“Mama,” I said, putting my hand down flat on that next sheet—you have to stop her when she just goes on that way. “We don’t take kids like that. We don’t take horses like that, either. Violent like that.”
“Not usually,” she agreed, and picked up my hand, pointing at the next picture.
I let my breath out between my teeth. This group was truly was a far cry from shy twelve year old girls and dyslexic ten year old boys.
The girl in this picture could have been any one of fifty girls at my school. Pink hair, all done up in spikes, coming right down the middle of her head. She had a studded leather wrist band on her left hand, and all kinds of chains wrapped around over it, and she had on maybe four long chain necklaces, and she had a safety pin through one ear lobe, like an earring. She was looking away from the camera.
“From Springfield,” mother said. “Don’t get hung up on the stereotype.”
I consider myself a professional. I’ve been working with kids since I was knee-high, and I try never to make a final judgment till I see what I’m really dealing with. But I’m not going to kid you—sometimes it’s hard. Especially when it’s somebody your own age. They say, “in the eye of the beholder,” but when people so merrily lump themselves together into stereotypical patterns, what are you supposed to do?
I don’t like to think of people judging me wrong. That’s why I take care that what I show is what I am. If I want people to see me as a cowgirl, I wear western boots and big belt buckles. No apologies. If I want boys to stare at me, I’d wear tight shirts and low-waisted pants. Which I do not. If I make a point of looking out of the ordinary, it’s because that’s what I want people to see. And I imagine that’s how most people do. When you look at me, what you see is pretty much what you get. If somebody draws conclusions from that—so what? I’m telling no lies. If somebody sizes me up and figures they don’t like me much, that’s their look out. They probably wouldn’t like me any better if they “got to know me.” Anyway, I like myself well enough, somebody else’s opinion isn’t going to worry me much.
This said, I felt like that picture I had in my hand was just about yelling in my face. Daring me. Warning me off.
Part of my job was to wonder why.
“Her mama helped her do her hair like that,” my mother said, mildly.
“You’re kidding,” I said, having a hard time imagining that, and feeling pretty sure I was in way over my head with this group. I looked at that girl, the pale, oval face, the little eyes with way too much make-up on, the pouty mouth, the up-yours way she held herself, and I thought about pairing that up with one of our fragile horses; I started feeling sick.
“I don’t know about this,” I told my mother. “I really don’t.”
“You just do the same as you always do,” Mom said. “You have a gift for this work, Xan. That’s why people send us these cases. Ms. Hyde knows what she’s doing—she knows how we work. And you know her. If she sent these to us, she did it for a reason.”
“This girl’s in a wheelchair, Mom,” I said. “What am I supposed to do with that? And this violent kid. And this—girl.”
She smiled at me. “Just teach the principles, Xan. I think you’ll find that they’ll figure things out just fine. And don’t worry about the wheelchair.”
“Unless Chessy tries to sit in her lap,” I said.
“Well, yes,” my mother said, getting up. “There is that.” She looked at the clock. “You just need to read the files,” she said to me. “Oh. And you’re going to need to be especially discrete about these kids who are from your school—“
“I know,” I said. “You don’t have to tell me that.”
She looked down at me, one corner of her mouth pulled up, almost like a smile. “We’ll see,” she said. “You’ve got an hour before your dad gets home. I expect you better do some studying. I’ll be out there working with Jazz; come Monday, he’s going to have a lot to think about.”
Jazz. For this Lyza with the pink hair.
“I don’t know,” I said again.
“Just read,” she said, and left it at that.