* * * * *
The bus ride home was agonizingly long. I was not returning home; I was returning to an empty shell of a house. All my animals were gone, except for Gallant Rose and Mouser. My stomach churned at the thought of losing them both. I could only deal with one at a time. I chose to concentrate on Gallant Rose. Losing Mouser would be too painful.
Galli’s new owners arrived about an hour before the sun went down. I glared at them as they got out of their pickup truck. Their horse trailer was shiny and expensive. The girl herself, Melissa, wore English riding garments. She grinned at us.
I felt sick.
Mom led them down to the barn. I had loaded all of Galli’s equipment into her feed bucket: her currycomb, lead rope, lines, medicine, and miscellany. I kept the saddle soap as a reminder.
Galli pranced in her stall as the new people drew near to her. I reached up and grabbed her by the halter. “Easy, baby. Come on, now. Try to impress your new owners, hey?”
“She’s gorgeous!” exclaimed Melissa.
I led my darling into the aisle. My emotions were dreadfully mixed. I wanted my horse to go to the best possible home, of course, but I didn’t want her to leave me and forget about me, either. I handed the lead rope to Melissa. “If you make a signal like this,” and I demonstrated the gesture, “then she’ll shake hooves with you. Galli, say hello to Melissa.”
Gallant Rose lifted her hoof and placed it in Melissa’s outstretched hand. Melissa giggled. “That’s so clever! What else can she do?”
“She gives kisses. She can take a bow – I usually do that before and after her workouts – and she likes to speak.” I made another motion, and Galli started moving her lip. I ad-libbed the words for her. “It’s nice to meet you, Melissa. I’m glad I’m going to be your new friend.” I could not continue the joke; my heart was too heavy. I choked on the words.
Melissa noticed. “This must be really hard for you. Thank you for letting me have her. I’ve always wanted a horse. It’s a dream come true.”
“Yeah. I know how you feel. Just take good care of her, okay?”
“I will.”
Mom gave Melissa’s father some instructions while I taught her the signals for Galli’s tricks. They even exchanged addresses, in case I wanted to write a letter and find out how my filly had adjusted. After a short time, they loaded her into their trailer and drove away. I knew I would probably never see Gallant Rose again.
“I’m going to bed,” I announced, my throat thick and sore.
“So soon? It’s not even dark out.”
“I’m exhausted. Plus we have to be up early to unload the truck and return it before we get a late charge.”
“Do you need anything? Do you want me to bring dinner up to you?”
“No, thanks, Mom. I just want to be alone.”
She tousled my hair and let me retire to my bedroom.
I stepped over the boxes and suitcases, which were the only remaining items in the room. My dresser, desk, and bed frame had been loaded into the truck already. I flung myself on my mattress. The tears would not flow. They simply refused to start. What was wrong with me? The familiar ache was there. My throat was tight, my eyes burned, and my heart felt like someone’s hand was squeezing the blood out of it. Yet my tears would not cooperate. I shook my head in frustration.
A tiny ‘meow’ reminded me that I was not alone in the room. Mouser crawled up beside me, and then climbed onto my chest expectantly. She wanted to be petted.
“Oh, Mouser,” I sniffed. “You’re the last one. I can’t stand it. I just can’t stand it.”
What was I going to do? Losing Galli was terrible enough; but I had invested my soul into earning Mouser’s trust. She didn’t even suspect that I was on the verge of abandoning her. She just knew that something was wrong, and she licked my face to make me feel better. Her tongue was rough and scratchy, but I let her lick my cheek raw. I couldn’t push her away. Not on our last night together.
She finally fell asleep, her paw touching my chin. Her breath was milky sweet. She didn't know that this was her last night on a mattress, and that tomorrow she would return to the hay.
I stayed awake long into the night, stroking her fur. She tried to get off me a few times, but I held her firmly in place. She didn’t seem to mind, although she did adjust her position once or twice before falling back asleep.
In the morning, after all the boxes and odds and ends were packed, and we had eaten our last meal, I steeled myself against the deed I did not want to perform. I picked Mouser up and cuddled her in my arms, and then walked outside toward the barn.
Mom called my name, but I could not stop. Whatever she needed me for could wait. I had to say
goodbye to my Mouser, before anything else happened.
The tears that were so absent last night now flooded my eyes as I opened the barn door. I wept, burying my face in Mouser’s soft gray fur, and apologizing to her again and again for breaking her trust.
“Beverly!”
Not now! Couldn’t Mom leave me alone for just a minute? Why did she have to intrude on this sacred moment, this final farewell?
Mouser licked up my tears. Her tongue irritated the raw patch on my cheek where she had almost scrubbed it clean of skin. I hugged her one last time. Then I knelt down and set her on the ground.
She begged to be picked back up. She tried to crawl back into my lap, but I stood up and began to walk away.
“Beverly. There you are. Why didn’t you stop?” asked Mom from the doorway.
I froze. She was holding a crate.
I knew at once what it was for. She was going to take Mouser to the pound! She and Roger had talked about it last week. I couldn’t let her!
“No, no, no, no, no,” I babbled. “Don’t take her to the pound. She’ll be fine out here. She’s a stray – she can take care of herself. Nobody will adopt her; she’s too old. Don’t take her to the pound!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Mom. “I thought you wanted to take her with us, to the new house.”
“What?”
“Did you think… Oh, Beverly. No. I couldn’t make you give everything up. Not this time.”
I burst into tears again. I was too weak to move. Mom set the crate down and held me tight, stroking my hair. “Shh, shh. I don’t know if your cat has ever been in a car before. I didn’t want her to hurt herself or us, so I bought the crate…”
“I thought… I thought…” I sobbed. “You said all the animals… And Peter already gave the kitten away…”
“Shh. It’s okay. Right? Everything’s okay.”
I frightened Mouser with my outburst, and it took a few minutes for me to calm her down. Then I had to coax her to me so I could stuff her into the crate. She meowed pitifully. I knew that she hated being cooped up, but I didn’t care. She would never be able to understand that the crate was the only way to get her to our new home. I had to smile at the irony, though. Sometimes good things come from bad situations, even if we don’t realize it at the time. I made a mental note to add that to my List, when I unpacked it later.
So, that was it. I sat in the back of the pickup truck, wedged in between Becky’s toy chest and Peter’s bunk bed and all the other things that didn’t fit into the U-Haul. I watched my beloved farm grow smaller and smaller with distance. We turned the corner, and it disappeared. Poof – just like that. Gone forever. Just like Matt. Just like my first name. Just like Mom’s other husbands, never to be seen again. Just like Erika and Margaret and the other fourteen houses. It simply vanished as we turned the corner, leaving green fields and old white farmhouses behind us and the long abandoned stretch of gray highway in front of us.
We drove toward our new life. I wondered what adventures it would hold this time. I only knew one thing for certain: with some luck and smart choices, I would never become a statistic.
THE END