Centaur Rising

  “You’re talking about Lis Hartel,” Mom said. “She won two silver medals.”

  “That’s the name!”

  Mom sucked in her upper lip, something she did when she was thinking hard. “There are a couple of places in America that do a kind of riding for the handicapped, though not around here. I never paid much attention. I thought Robbie would never be able to sit on a horse, much less ride. Even yesterday in the stall, seeing him on Kai’s back, I didn’t make that connection. I was too afraid he was going to fall.”

  “That’s the beauty of it, Mom. With Kai’s help—”

  “We’ll have to ask Kai,” Gerry said. “Not tell him.”

  “Of course,” Mom said. “Consensus.”

  “I can’t imagine anything that would please him more. Except…” I smiled. “Except maybe when he finds out you two are engaged! He already calls you his mom and dad.”

  They looked at each other as if ready to burst out laughing.

  “So he does,” Mom said.

  Gerry added, “It’s what gave me the courage to ask your mom to marry me.”

  They looked at each other again with those goofy smiles.

  I turned to go upstairs and said over my shoulder, “I’m going back to sleep, you guys. My work here is done.”

  * * *

  I woke with such a sense of relief and joy, I couldn’t wait to break the news about the marriage to the boys. I thought they’d probably be stunned.

  Mom and I told Robbie and Martha about the proposal at breakfast.

  Robbie didn’t look stunned at all. “I wondered how long it would take him to ask. I knew you’d say yes, Mom.”

  “How come I didn’t know?” I said.

  “You were too busy hoping,” he told me. “Instead of paying attention to what was really happening.” He turned to Mom. “Guess it’s okay for me to call him Gerry now?” He smirked. “Or Dad! I’ve never had anyone to call Dad before. I think I am going to like that. A lot.”

  Then he burst into song.

  Oh Dad, oh Dad,

  The first and best

  I’ve ever had.

  A vet to care

  For seal and pony

  He will be our

  One and only.…

  “I made up that song a while ago when I figured it out.”

  “Pretty smart for a kid,” I said.

  As for Martha, she gave one of her huffing noises, folded her arms across her chest, and said, “It’s high time we had some good news.”

  * * *

  We all trooped out to the barn to tell Kai, and he was just as unstunned as Robbie had been.

  “Now Hannah Mom will be married to my dad,” Kai said. “I like that.”

  “There’s a question we need to ask you, Kai,” I said. “It’s about…” I stopped, not sure how to put it.

  But Mom knew just what to say. “Kai—you know that everyone at a farm has a special job. We have an idea for yours. Or rather, it was Ari’s idea.”

  “Tell me, tell me!”

  “We think you could help children like Robbie, letting them ride, helping them have strength and faith in themselves,” Mom said.

  “You’d be their special friend—” I began, thinking he needed more encouragement.

  “Today?” Kai squealed. “Can I start today?” He clapped his hands.

  “When you’re bigger and stronger,” Mom said, “and we have all learned the best way to work together.”

  “I’m going to help,” Robbie added.

  “Help, shmelp,” I said, “you two are going to lead the way.”

  Robbie was aglow with this thought.

  “You know, it was you on Kai’s back yesterday that gave me the idea. Oh, and the dream.”

  “What dream?” Robbie and Kai asked together.

  So I told them.

  “This new venture needs a name,” Mom said. “How about the Robbie Foundation?”

  Robbie shook his head. “No, it’s not about me. It’s about Kai.” He looked up at the ceiling for a moment, then said, “How about Kai’s Kids?”

  * * *

  We waited four months till Kai was big enough and strong enough to start his actual training. By then, Mom and Gerry had gotten married at the farm, outside under a big striped awning near the fence. The guests included all our riders and horse owners, Dr. Small, Gerry’s lawyer, who had become Mom’s new best friend, and the horses watching from the meadow.

  I was maid of honor in a light blue dress. I got to push Robbie, who was in a light blue suit. He carried a big blue pillow, with the wedding rings sewn onto it with a single strand of thread so they didn’t roll off.

  Mom wore a short white dress and a crown of white roses twined with cornflowers. I wore a similar crown. Robbie had a single rose and blue cornflower in his buttonhole, just like Gerry.

  Kai stood near the fence in an actual shirt that Mom had made for him. It had puffy sleeves and a floppy collar, like something a medieval swordsman would have worn. He had a garland of flowers around his neck, matching Mom’s crown. As the minister spoke, Kai translated his words into Horse for the herd in a wonderful cascade of whinnies and snorts.

  Martha—who actually owned a blue dress and sandals—gave away the bride, saying, “But I’m not giving her away too far!”

  At the end, when Gerry and Mom kissed, Bor bugled and reared up on his hind legs. Agora made a sound that was very much like a chuckle before racing along the fence in an ecstasy of emotion.

  “Cool!” Joey Angotti said.

  Even Angela Angotti smiled, which must have been a first.

  Mr. Angotti was there with his wife. He was not at all what I’d imagined, being tall and handsome with very white teeth, hair long enough to braid, and a gold hoop in one ear.

  The Proper kids applauded wildly.

  Professor Harries wiped a tear away. I guessed she thought no one had seen her cry.

  The newspaper reporters and photographers and the UPI guy and even the awful, weaselly Mr. Fern were there, too, all standing farther back, kept in place by several town cops. Mom and Gerry had given them permission under the advice of Adam Harding, the New York publicity man we’d hired to work on the newspaper and television coverage of anything to do with Kai and the plan to start up Kai’s Kids.

  Mr. Harding was nothing like my father’s old publicist, whom Martha once described as “slick as snot.” Instead, Harding was a quiet-spoken man who looked like a teacher or a librarian. He didn’t argue a bit when Mom and Gerry made it clear that, apart from running expenses, all profits were to support the Kai’s Kids Academy. Which made it a charitable foundation, an organization that raises money to support a good cause.

  By this time, Kai (the human part) was as large and as smart as a teenager, and he loved speaking in public. He gave a big interview, talking with ease in front of the cameras. It turned out the rest of us were tongue-tied and shy in a studio and worse in front of a live audience. In fact, Gerry had twice threatened to pass out if we made him go on either radio or TV. And no one wanted Martha to say anything on TV in case it was something too sharp to help the cause.

  The following month, Mr. Harding got Kai a huge photo shoot for Life magazine with Robbie—dressed like a cowboy—in his wheelchair by Kai’s side.

  Mr. Harding also helped us get smaller articles in This Week Magazine, a story and then later follow-ups in Reader’s Digest, a spot on the Steve Allen Show, and a special appearance by Kai on Captain Kangaroo.

  “Captain Kangaroo!” Robbie crowed. “That was my favorite show when I was little.”

  “You still watch it,” I reminded him. “And you’re not so big now.”

  * * *

  While Mr. Harding’s publicity plan unfolded, Kai was learning how to carry children safely on his back. We started by using some of my dolls. I had two large ones that Mom called my “sleepers” because they shared the bed with me. Each one was the size of a three-year-old. Wolf Dad had bought them in New York when he’d play
ed a major concert in the city, back when we were a family. Now they were Kai’s.

  I liked the idea that Kai was using the dolls given to me by Wolf Dad. At almost fourteen, I was well into irony.

  We tied the dolls to a saddle on Kai’s back. I walked on his right side, Martha on his left. Kai wore a set of leather straps, like a baby’s halter, around his chest and over his shoulders. These were the reins that a handicapped child could hold on to, giving some feeling of control. Martha and I, walking by Kai’s side, said things like slow down, turn left carefully, back up. In reality, Kai didn’t need us there.

  But after a day’s work with us, Kai would take off into the field to run. He was still very much part horse and needed to “get out the kicks.” We’d pulled down his fenced-in run when Mr. Harding said it gave the impression we were trying to hide something, not let the world in on the wonderful story of Kai.

  The hardest part of our whole training was making sure Kai wore a shirt. Horses can stand a higher temperature than humans can. Their body temperature runs regularly between 99.5 and 101.4 degrees. And young horses run even higher. In that area, too, Kai was completely horse.

  But as Mom told him, “It’s more about being polite and professional. The parents will want you to have a shirt on before they’ll allow a child to get that close to you.”

  More pointedly, Martha said, “No one wants a naked boy around their kid.”

  Kai smiled, that slow smile that always won us over. “Can I wear a T-shirt?”

  Martha and Mom nodded.

  So we went to a print shop and had several kinds made up. One said I’M NOT HORSING AROUND and had a picture of a pony on it. Two others said I LOVE HORSES. And one even had a centaur with a child on his back, with this line underneath: I’M ONE OF KAI’S KIDS.

  I tried to convince Mom to get extras to sell to the riders. “They’ll all want one.”

  She shook her head. “What happened to protecting Kai and not exploiting him?”

  “I’m trying to make lemonade here, Mom.”

  “You’re trying to make money.”

  I stared at her. “Well, of course, that too. It’s all for the foundation.” And then, realizing I was sounding just like my father, Wolf Dad, I threw my arms around her. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

  “It’s a thin line, sweetie,” she said, “between making lemonade and running a lemonade factory.” She paused. “But as we seem to be starting a factory, we need to be sure it’s an honest one. Mr. Harding is helping us do just that.”

  We ended up with a policy, suggested by Mr. Harding, that every child who rode in Kai’s Kids Academy got a free T-shirt. But if they wanted more, they would have to buy them. It had taken us about twenty seconds in a family meeting to come to full consensus on that one. Even Martha had nothing bad to say about the idea.

  * * *

  By the end of the year, Kai’s first rides had been thoroughly documented by a company in a full-length documentary that was nominated for an Oscar, though it didn’t win. Robbie and a few local handicapped kids starred in it. The money we got for that quadrupled what we already had in the foundation account.

  Gerry and Mom, with Mr. Angotti’s help (turned out he’s a builder), made Kai a much larger stall that stood next to Martha’s house, with a front entrance for guests and a back entrance into the paddock and a covered breezeway that ran between his stall and Martha’s kitchen. He had a floor-to-ceiling bookcase, a dresser filled with T-shirts, a small closet with room for more than the one jacket he owned, a phone jack and phone, a writing table with plenty of pens and paper and paints, a bigger refrigerator, a TV stand with a full-sized color TV, and shelves for all his board games.

  Thirty handicapped children come regularly at least twice a month to ride Kai. And we’re training other therapy horses as well, though none of them seem to be as popular as Kai.

  Wolf Dad has written two or three times demanding a share of the foundation’s profits, each time using a different lawyer. But Mom got a legal injunction against him, and he didn’t demand money again. The mere threat of exposing what he called Robbie and Kai seemed to have scared him off.

  * * *

  Have things always gone smoothly for us?

  Nothing at a horse farm always goes smoothly. But it is working—better than I’d hoped for and much, much better than any of us ever expected.

  AUGUST 1966

  A New Shower of Stars

  AND SO WE COME AROUND TO SUMMER AGAIN, a full year since Kai was born. He looks, speaks, and acts as if he is all grown up, but he’s never quite lost his sense of play, loving to kick up his heels in the meadow. He’s not as tall as Gorn or Bor, but is quite a few hands higher than Agora and can now carry children up to the age of thirteen or fourteen, as long as they aren’t terribly heavy.

  Our family went out to watch the Perseid shower.

  Kai carried Robbie on his back, with Martha walking alone on one side just in case either one of them panicked in the night.

  I’d packed a picnic basket filled with oat cookies and juices for Kai, sugar cookies and milk for Robbie and me, and a thermos of chamomile tea for the grown-ups, plus napkins and cups for us all.

  Gerry and Mom hauled the blankets. Once in the paddock, the blankets all laid out, Gerry got Robbie down and settled him on the blue blanket. Then he and Mom collapsed on the red. Martha kept standing next to Kai, as if she expected something bad to happen. Agora trotted around us once, then went over closer to the barn to graze.

  Meanwhile, I spread out the old army blanket slightly away from the others, then lay down on my back. It took a minute for my eyes to adjust and then I could make out the stars shooting across the sky.

  “Look!” I called out.

  “Look! Look!” Robbie echoed and pointed.

  Then Kai chimed in. “I see them!”

  Mom and Gerry laughed at the sight of all those stars. Martha just rolled her eyes, but I think she was pleased.

  I recalled that night two years earlier when something white and glowing had sailed over the fence between the Suss farm and ours, something I’d thought was a shooting star or ball of lightning.

  I hadn’t known it then, but it had been the beginning of the magic that I’d longed for. A different kind of magic than I’d expected. It had brought us Kai and a dad. It had brought my mother laughter and happiness.

  So this time when a huge ball of light leaped the fence, I was prepared. But not prepared enough. This time the ball of light carried with it a large and glowing centaur in its center, who stepped sedately out through the light as if through a door.

  He trotted up to the six of us, then stood still, hands on his waist as if waiting for an introduction. I could see he was very old. There were threads of white in his long mane, and his face was full of lines.

  Kai moved toward him, stopped about two feet away, and made a half bow.

  The old centaur greeted him with a series of whinnies, and Kai at first nodded, then shook his head.

  “Speak the human tongue,” Kai told him, “for this is my family, and only one of them speaks Horse.”

  “I will try, my son, but this is not my language. And I am not comfortable with its words,” he said a bit stiltedly.

  Turning to us, the old centaur continued. “First, I bring greetings to my son and then to all who have helped him in this year. He looks well cared for.”

  “He is well cared for,” Martha grumbled. “No thanks to you.”

  The old centaur nodded at her politely as if she’d said something nice. “I am Chiron, and I have told my son it is time for him to come home.”

  Robbie pushed himself into a sitting position. “Kai is home, Mr. Chiron. Here. With us.”

  Chiron turned and addressed Robbie. “Your Kai does not belong here, human child. He has a duty—”

  I jumped to my feet. “He has more than a duty here. He has a … a family. He has a calling. He has love.”

  Chiron wrinkled his nose at me. Perhaps he was thi
nking hard, perhaps he was smelling something bad. At that moment, I couldn’t tell.

  “We, his people, have great need of him. It is why he was made.”

  I couldn’t help myself. Speaking almost without thought, but with a great deal of passion, I said, “Whatever he was made for, he is his own person now. He can make his own choices here. He chooses to work with children who aren’t perfectly abled, and helps them gain power and a sense of their true worth.”

  That may have sounded like a quote from one of the articles about Kai, and in fact I’d said it first to a reporter.

  “Ahhh.” Smiling, Chiron raised a huge hand. “You are a young Diana. Well said, well challenged. I felt the arrow here.” He held his hand over his heart as if mocking me. Or as if speaking like an alien on The Twilight Zone, which Mom and I used to watch.

  Kai’s shoulders went back as he steeled himself for some sort of confrontation. “Father Chiron, Wise One, Teacher of Princes, let me introduce you to my family. The girl you call Diana is my sister, Arianne, and she’s as smart as she is beautiful.”

  Me, beautiful?

  “My brother, Robbie, the heart of the family.”

  The centaur nodded. “I see the resemblance,” he said, “for he is a dolphin child. You have the same eyes.”

  “My father-of-the-heart, Gerry. He’s a doctor who heals animals.”

  “Ahhh, Hippocrates.” Chiron nodded once more.

  “And my three mothers—Mom.”

  Mom stood and made a sort of curtsy.

  “Marmar.” Martha held her hand up in the peace sign. I didn’t even know she ever watched the news.

  From the meadow, Agora whinnied, a series of rapid notes that sounded like a challenge.

  “That’s Mama,” said Kai.

  “Aha,” Chiron said, and answered her in Horse, his voice low, as if he was sweet-talking her.

  Martha had already started toward Agora. “I’ll get her,” she called over her shoulder, “but don’t expect her to be glad to see you.” And then she was gone into the dark.