Chapter 2
A DUCK IN THE HORSE TROUGH
When Misty's stall was mucked out and her manger filled with sweet hay, Paul and Maureen burst into the kitchen, laughing and out of breath.
"You say it, Maureen."
"No, you."
Paul shuffled his feet. He glanced sidelong at Grandma. "Me and Maureen ... I and Maureen ... Maureen and I.... Well," he blurted, "we'd like to say some Bible verses, with a little change to one of them."
Grandma almost dropped the cup she was wiping. She spun around, smiling in surprise. "There's no call to blush about quoting from the Good Book," she said. "It's a fine thing."
Paul swallowed hard. His eyes flew to Maureen's. "You say it," he urged.
Maureen looked straight at Grandma. "Last Sunday in church," she spoke quickly and earnestly, "Preacher read: 'There's a time to sow and a time to reap.'"
"Yes, that's what he said," Paul nodded. "And he said, 'There's a time to cry and a time to laugh.'"
"'And a time to love and a time to hate,'" Maureen added.
Paul began shouting like the preacher. "'There's a time to make war and a time to make peace.'"
"How 'bout that!" Grandma's eyes were shinier than her spectacles. "You heard every bit of the message, and here I thought you two was doing crossword puzzles all the time! Now then, what's the made-up part?" she asked encouragingly.
The answer came loud and in unison: "There's a time to go to school and a time to stay home."
"And just when is that?" Grandma demanded.
"When a mare is ready to foal," Paul said with a look of triumph.
The kitchen grew very still. Grandma shook out the damp towel and hung it above the stove. To gain thinking time she put the knives and forks in the drawer and each teaspoon in the spoon rack. Then she glanced from one eager face to the other. "You two ever see a wild mare birthing her young'un?"
They both shook their heads.
"Nor have I. Nor yer Grandpa neither." She looked far out on the marsh, at the ponies grazing peacefully. "Well, the way the mares do it," she said at last, "is to go off a day, mebbe more, and hide in some lonely spot. And the next time you see her come to the watering trough, there's a frisky youngster dancing alongside. Why, one mare swum clean across the channel to Hummocky Isle to have her baby, and three days later they both come back and joined the herd—even that little baby swum."
"But they're wild, Grandma," Paul said. "Misty's different. She's lived with people since she was a tiny foal."
Grandma took an old cork and a can of powder and began scouring the stains on her carving knives. She nodded slowly. "And Misty's smart. If she needs help, she'll come up here to the fence and let us know right smart quick, same's she does when she's thirsty. Now you both wash up and change yer clothes. You touched off the wrong fuse when you quoted Bible verses to get excused from school."
"But, Grandma," Paul persisted, "how can Misty tell anyone she needs help when Grandpa's in town shucking oysters, and we're trapped in school and...."
Grandma didn't answer; yet somehow she interrupted. She handed Maureen a pitcher of milk and a saucedish. As if by magic Wait-a-Minute, a big tiger-striped cat, appeared from under the stove and began lapping the milk even before Maureen finished pouring it.
"Tell you what," Grandma said after a moment's thought. "I promise to go out every hour and look in on Misty."
"You will?"
"That I will."
"And will you telephone school in case she needs us?"
"I'll even promise you that. Cross my heart!"
Somewhat appeased, Paul and Maureen washed and hurried into their school clothes. When they dashed out of the house, Grandpa was climbing into his truck. "Hop in," he said. "I'll give ye a lift." He put the key in the ignition, but he didn't start the car. A blast of surprise escaped him. "Great balls o' fire! Look!"
"What is it, Grandpa?"
He pointed a finger at a big white goose up-ended in the watering tub. "Jes' look at him waller! Now," he said in awe, "I got a sure omen."
"Of what?" both children asked.
Grandpa recited in a whisper:
"A goose washin' in the horse trough
Means tomorrow we'll be bad off."
"Who says so?" Paul wanted to know.
"My Uncle Zadkiel was a weather predictor, and he said geese in the trough is a fore-doomer of storm."
Grandpa started the car, a troubled look on his face.
The day at school seemed never-ending. Maureen answered questions like a robot. She heard her own voice say, "Christopher Columbus was one of the first men who believed the world was round. So he went east by sailing west."
"Very good, Maureen. You may sit down."
But Maureen remained standing, staring fixedly at the map over the blackboard. Her mind suddenly went racing across the world, and backward in time, to a tall-masted ship. Not the one that Columbus sailed, but the one that brought the ponies to Assateague. And she saw a great wind come up, and she watched it slap the ship onto a reef and crack it open like the shell of an egg, and she saw the ponies spewed into the sea, and she heard them thrashing and screaming in all that wreckage, and one looked just like Misty.
"I said," the teacher's voice cut through the dream, "you may sit down, Maureen."
The class tittered as she quickly plopped into her seat.
In Paul's room an oral examination was about to take place. "We'll begin alphabetically," Miss Ogle announced. "Question number one," she said in her crisp voice. "With all books closed, explain to the class which is older, the earth or the sea, and where the first forms of life appeared. We'll begin with Teddy Appleyard."
Teddy stood up, pointing to a blood-splotched handkerchief he held to his nose. He was promptly excused.
"Now then, Paul Beebe, you are next."
Dead silence.
"We'll begin," the teacher raised her voice, "with Paul Be-ee—be-ee," and she stretched out his name like a rubber band. But even then it didn't reach him.
He was not there in the little white schoolhouse at all. In his mind he was back at Pony Ranch and Misty had broken out of her stall and gone tearing down the marsh. And in his fantasy he saw the colt being born, and while it was all wet and new, it was sucked slowly, slowly down into the miry bog. There was no sound, no whimper at all. Just the wind squeaking through the grasses.
Tap! Tap! Miss Ogle rapped her pencil sharply on the desk. "Boys and girls," she said, "you have all heard of people suffering from nightmares. But I declare, Paul Beebe is having a daymare."
The class burst into noisy laughter, and only then did the mad dream break apart.
Back home in Misty's shed all was warm contentment. There was plenty of hay in the manger, good hay with here and there some sweet bush clover, and a block of salt hollowed out from many lickings so that her tongue just fitted. She worked at it now in slow delight, her tongue-strokes stopping occasionally as she turned to watch a little brown hen rounding out a nest in a corner of the stall. Fearlessly the hen let Misty walk around her as if she liked company, and every now and again she made soft clucking sounds.
Out on the marsh Billy Blaze and Watch Eyes, pretending to be stallions, fought and neighed over the little band of mares. Misty looked out at them for a long time, then went to her manger and slowly began munching her hay. The hen, now satisfied with her nest, fluffed out her feathers and settled herself to lay one tiny brown egg.
Contentment closed them in like a soft cocoon.
