Gib Rides Home (11 page)

G
IB WENT TO SLEEP
that first night at the Thorntons’ dreaming about horses, but he woke up the next morning wondering about school. It was a school day, and if he had still been at Lovell House he would soon have been in the seniors’ classroom studying history and the parts of speech—and trying to keep from smiling when Jacob made faces behind Mr. Harding’s back.

It was surely a school day in Longford too, although nothing had been said about whether Gib would be attending. Perhaps he wouldn’t be going to school at all? He smiled, thinking what Jacob would say about some people having all the luck. But Buster hadn’t been feeling that way when he said that some farmed-out kids didn’t get to go to school at all.

Gib was planning to ask Hy about school, but he hadn’t yet mentioned it when the subject came up without his asking. It happened as they were on their way to the cow barn in the pale half-light of early dawn, on what was looking to be the start of an extra-warm spring day.

“Gotta shake a leg,” Hy was saying. “Way the boss has things laid out, we gotta get the feedin’ and milkin’ done afore breakfast time, and the bays hitched up to the buggy too. Elsewise Miss Livy’ll be late for school agin.”

Gib’s opinion of Livy and small girls in general went up a notch. “Livy drives the bays to school?” he asked, surprised and impressed.

Hy chuckled. “Naw. I guess she’d like to well enough, but she rides into town with her pa when he goes in to the bank, ’cept when the weather’s real bad. But she’s the one who has to hurry. Guess schoolmarms like to get things goin’ a mite earlier than bankers do. From what I hear tell, the boss drives her to school and then goes to the downtown cafe and has himself a second cup of Java afore he opens up the bank.”

“And what happens when the weather’s real bad?” Gib asked.

“Why, then Miss Livy stays home and her mother and Miss Hooper take care of her schoolin’.” Hy turned to look at Gib questioningly. “What you asking about schoolin’ for?” He grinned. “You itchin’ to get back to school already?”

“Well ... Gib hesitated, thinking about all the things Miss Mooney had said about the importance of learning. “Well, I was just wondering....

Hy chuckled. “Don’t remember as how anybody discussed your eddication afore they decided to take you on. Leastways not in my hearin’. But maybe you can ask the missus ’bout it today. She wants to see you this morning when your chores are all done.”

Gib found it disturbing that Mrs. Thornton wished to see him. He wanted to know more. He wanted to ask where and why, but they were in the cow barn by then and Hy was busy with advice and instruction. But as Gib put the silage in the feed pan, let Belle, the spotted cow, into the milking room, fastened the stanchion bar around her neck, and proceeded to demonstrate his skill as a milker, he went on wondering why Mrs. Thornton had asked to see him.

It wasn’t until the milking was done and the fresh milk delivered to the cooler on the back veranda, the chickens and horses fed, and the bays hitched to the buggy that Hy said it was time to head on in for breakfast. Gib was standing at the stall door at the time, watching the black mare. This time Hy had let him take her oats into the stall, and while she hadn’t wanted him to touch her, she had stood quietly enough, watching him with her ears pointed forward instead of flicking back and forth. As she ate she raised her head two times to look at him and quivered her nostrils in a way that was halfway between a snort and a nicker. Gib chuckled, thinking how she looked to be deciding that he wasn’t such a dangerous hombre after all. But then Hy said again that it was time to get going, and Gib told the mare good-bye and tore himself away.

Breakfast that morning was pancakes and applesauce and fried eggs. Gib couldn’t help smiling when he remembered Lovell House’s gooey oatmeal, with a few raisins on special occasions, and how he and Jacob used to count the raisins and bet on who was going to get the most. He grinned, looked up to see Livy staring at him, and grinned at her too.

Livy Thornton was wearing another fancy dress. Red plaid this time, with a low waist and a big square collar. When Gib smiled at her, she frowned, looked away, pushed back her chair, and got up from the table.

Picking up a coat and a stack of books, she said, “I’ll be in the buggy, Father,” and went out the door. Mr. Thornton was still eating, and except for Hy and Mrs. Perry, who was busy at the stove, no one else was in the room.

When Mr. Thornton left a few minutes later, with only a brief nod in the direction of Hy and Gib, no one else had shown up. Not even Mrs. Thornton, who, according to Hy, wanted to talk to Gib today.

Hy was pushing back his chair. “Mighty fine flapjacks, Delia,” he said. Hobbling over to where the cook was pouring a new batch of batter onto the griddle, he went on, “Can’t understand for the life of me how the menfolk around here can let a fine-lookin’, fine-cookin’ lady like you stay a widow. I’d pop the question myself if I was the marryin’—”

Whirling around, Mrs. Perry said, “Get out of here, you scallywag,” and swatted at Hy with the pancake turner.

Hy limped away, pretending to be scared to death. Gib couldn’t help laughing, and when Hy looked back at him and wiggled his eyebrows, Gib laughed even harder. And went on laughing even after Hy stopped clowning and headed for the door. And then went on laughing even after Hy turned around and gave him a puzzled frown.

Afterward Gib wondered why he’d laughed so hard. Because, after all, what Hy had done hadn’t been all that funny. He couldn’t figure it out, really, except that maybe it was just a sudden relief that the worst had happened—he’d been farmed out just like Herbie and Georgie—and he was still able to laugh. And right out loud, too.

He was following Hy out the door when he remembered about seeing Mrs. Thornton. Grabbing Hy’s arm, he whispered, “The missus. When did she want to see me?”

“Later,” Hy said. “Said she wanted to see you when your morning chores were done.”

Gib almost said he thought he’d finished them, but it soon became obvious that he was a long way from it. He wouldn’t be finished, it seemed, until he’d staked Belle out in the orchard, watered and hoed in the vegetable garden, and started in on cleaning out the box stalls, all of which looked to be in real bad shape.

Hy hung around most of the morning, leaning on his crutches, showing Gib where things were and commenting on how he was doing. And now and then reminding Gib that it had been the boss, Mr. Thornton himself, who had made up the list of chores that Gib was supposed to get done that day.

The garden was hard work, particularly the hoeing. Weeds had grown up in all the rows, and the hoe was old and not very sharp. Gib had done some hoeing in the orphanage garden that spring, but not a great deal, and his hands hadn’t yet developed their summertime calluses. And then, with his hands already blistering from the hoe handle, there was the stall cleaning to look forward to, which would mean a lot of shovel work. Gib was starting on the second stall when Hy decided to go back to the cabin.

“You get that one finished and then wash up and go on in to see the missus,” he said. “You can do Lightnin’s later, and I’ll come out to help with Silky’s. I got to get off my feet for a spell.”

The sun was high in the sky when Gib went back to the big house and washed up on the veranda, wincing when the soap made the blisters on his palms smart. Some of them had broken and dirt had worked its way in under the loose skin. He washed as best he could, took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and went into the kitchen.

Miss Hooper and Mrs. Perry were seated at the kitchen table talking and drinking coffee. They stopped talking when Gib came in.

“Oh yes.” Miss Hooper’s voice, like the rest of her, was thin and sharp. “Mrs. Thornton said for you to go right on in.” Getting up from the table, she led the way to a door, opened it, gestured, and then, as Gib passed her, she sniffed and said, “You’re smelling a bit ripe, boy. Did you wash up? Here, let me see your hands.” Taking his hands in hers, she inspected them carefully, squinting her pale eyes and frowning when she saw the palms.

“They’re not dirty,” Gib said hastily. “I washed just before I came in. Those are just blisters.”

Miss Hooper nodded. “Just blisters,” she said, nodding sharply. “So they are. Just blisters, indeed.” Then she led Gib down the hall, knocked once on a door, and went in.

The large room was lined with bookshelves. Gib had never seen so many books in one place, except back in Mrs. Hansen’s time, when a good reader could win an occasional trip to the Harristown Library. Across the room Mrs. Thornton was seated at a large desk in her high-backed wheelchair.

“Look at his hands, Julia,” Miss Hooper said, and then went out, closing the door behind her with what was clearly a slam. Without meaning to, Gib put his hands behind his back.

The beautiful woman in the wheelchair smiled and motioned for him to come closer. “Your hands?” It was a question. And then when Gib reluctantly held them out, “Oh dear. How did you do that?”

“It was the shoveling and the hoeing, I guess,” Gib said. “They’ll toughen up. They have before. I just haven’t been doing as much shoveling lately and ...

Mrs. Thornton turned back to the desk and rang a bell. “I’m sure they will toughen up,” she said. “But in the meantime I think we’d better get them a little cleaner.”

The next half hour was spent doctoring Gib’s hands. Miss Hooper, whom Julia called Hoop, came back and was sent out for a medicine kit and then was sent out again looking for gloves. “Look in my cedar chest,” Mrs. Thornton said. “My old riding gloves will have to do until we can get some heavy work gloves that are small enough to fit him. And while you’re at it, bring a measuring tape. Henry says he hasn’t any other clothes, and he can’t go on wearing these awful things.”

Gib looked down at his Lovell House uniform of bulky dark blue serge. Of course the material never had been the best, and perhaps it had thinned out a little on the knees and elbows. And right at the moment the pants particularly were maybe a bit barnyardy. But he hadn’t thought they were all that bad.

After a while he began to realize that while all the fuss over the blisters and clothing was embarrassing, it was turning out to feel kind of good, too. Good in the way it had felt when, once in a great while, he’d managed to get Miss Mooney’s full attention. But it wasn’t until his hands were doctored and bandaged and all his measurements taken that he began to find out why he’d really been sent for.

“A
BOUT LOVELL HOUSE,” MRS.
Thornton said when Miss Hooper finally disappeared, taking the medicine chest and tape measure with her. “Let’s see. You must have been there since you were five or six years old?”

“Six,” Gib agreed. He was sitting in a big armchair with his arms and hands resting on the fat plush-covered arms. He didn’t like looking at his bandaged hands because, even though the bandages were much smaller and cleaner, they reminded him of ... So he looked away—and noticed a shiny new telephone on Mrs. Thornton’s desk, and then a glass bowl of hard candy.

“So you were in the orphanage for almost five years,” Mrs. Thornton was saying. Then she handed Gib the bowl he’d been noticing and said, “Please have a peppermint. And then tell me all about Lovell House.”

Gib hadn’t meant to stare at the candy, but he’d had a peppermint just last Christmas and he couldn’t quite keep his mouth from watering as he remembered the taste. So he quickly said thanks, put a big round candy ball in his mouth, and began to talk around it. “It’s a great big old building,” he said, trying to keep the peppermint from rattling against his teeth. “Made of stone, and with a tower at each end, like a castle.”

“Yes, I remember seeing it some years ago. But what was it like living there, Gib?”

He thought a minute. “Like?” he said. “Well ... He found it hard to go on in words that would mean anything to someone who’d never lived there. Who’d never lived in Junior Hall with dozens of other kids and not nearly enough of a lot of things to go around. And not nearly enough people like Miss Mooney to go around, either.

So he started by saying, “Well—I was a junior at first,” and then hurried on to tell about how you were either an infant or junior or senior, depending on your age. Once he got that explained, it got easier, and he went on, telling about Miss Mooney, the housemother, and old Mrs. Hansen, who had been the headmistress for so many years. When he got to the part about Miss Offenbacher, he tried not to say too much about how she’d changed things, which wasn’t easy because Mrs. Thornton seemed especially interested in the changes.

Now and then Gib tried to steer the conversation back to what had happened before Lovell House. “Hy says my folks lived near here. Did you know my mother?” he managed to ask once, and when Mrs. Thornton began to answer he felt a shiver of anticipation crawl up the back of his neck.

“Yes, I did.” Mrs. Thornton paused and smiled. “She was a wonderful woman. Strong and brave and ... and wonderful with horses.”

Gib sat up straighter and almost choked on what was left of the peppermint. Mrs. Thornton was looking away—far away—as if remembering. Gib was getting ready to ask something he couldn’t quite find the words for when Mrs. Thornton went on. “You’ve seen my Black Silk?”

“Yes. Yes, I have. She’s beautiful.”

“Yes, she is, isn’t she.” Mrs. Thornton smiled thoughtfully. “Your mother rode her once.”

“My mother ... Gib’s voice had gone strange on him, high and wobbly. “How did ... how come ...

“It was a long time ago. Hy had started training Silk, but she was still pretty unpredictable. Your mother had come to see my husband about some banking business, I believe. But she saw me on Silk. No one had ridden the mare except me, and Hy of course, but I could see how well she reacted to Maggie—your mother, that is. So I loaned her a divided skirt and let her take Silk around the ring a few times.” Mrs. Thornton’s eyes were dreamy again. “Silk went amazingly well for her. Settled and quiet. Hy said that was what Silk needed. That kind of quieting skill.”