The Pony That Walked Back to the Ring

The Chance I Gave Him

I want to be honest about this part, because people have asked me whether I ever gave Burl a chance to make it right. I did. Once.

The last Saturday in September I drove up Burl’s lane in the middle of a bright afternoon. It was the first time I’d been up there since we shook hands on his porch in May.

The yard was mowed. The house was kept. But when I looked over at the barn, the door was standing open and there was nothing inside.

Not a cat. A pair of women’s gardening gloves still hung on a nail inside the door.

Burl was on the porch. He stood up when he saw who it was and then didn’t seem to know what to do with himself. He didn’t come down the steps.

“Lacey,” he said.

“Burl,” I said. I didn’t get out of the truck. I rolled the window down and kept my hands on the wheel.

“Penny’s gaining,” I said. “Odell’s been doing her feet. She’s coming back.”

He nodded. He didn’t look at me. He looked at the barn.

“Junie’s showing her at the fall festival on the tenth,” I said. “In the Shetland halter class. Saturday afternoon. You ought to come see what that child has done.”

He didn’t answer. I sat there long enough that it got awkward, and then I put the truck in reverse, and I backed down his lane, and I went home.

I didn’t tell Junie. I didn’t want her watching the rail for somebody who might not come.

October

By the first of October Penny taped at 385 pounds. By the morning of the show she taped at 395.

Odell had been out four times by then, every four weeks like he promised, and one extra time to check the bad crack.

The cracks weren’t gone. Odell had told us they wouldn’t be. But they had grown down a good half inch, and above them was new hoof, smooth and dark and hard as a bowling ball.

She stood square. She walked sound on gravel, on grass, on the barn floor.

Odell watched Junie trot her up and down the lane on his last visit and said, “That’s a sound pony,” and that was all he said.

Her coat had come back with the beet pulp and the flax. You could see the dapples on her hindquarters in the sun.

Her mane hung thick again, and Junie had worked every burr out of her tail by hand.

The fall festival show is held in a small outdoor ring at the edge of the grounds, with a white rail fence all around it, and folding chairs and hay bales set up for people to sit on.

The morning of the show Junie walked Penny to the creek bridge and back one last time.

Then she brushed her for an hour and a half, and braided her mane in tiny braids, and tied Opal’s ribbon into the front braid, just like she said.

Clell loaded Penny into the borrowed two-horse trailer. He’d taken the day off from the timber crew, which he does about twice a year.