Unadilla was a small town with one main street. A grocery store and not much else. A funeral parlor run by the same people who owned the furniture store next door and a small, hometown hardware. I stuck out like a sore thumb. A lone kid wearing a backpack and hiking into and through town.
I passed the library and found the town park. It was just a couple of acres of lawn, a jungle gym, baseball mound and open space but it had park benches and a portable outhouse that I could use. I ate my rabbit leftovers at a picnic table while eyeing the grocery store. A Great American. I’d never heard of them, just Piggly-Wiggly. I sure could use a few dollars. I wanted to eat chocolate covered donuts. Drink soda and snack on Cool Ranch Doritos or sourdough pretzels. Without any cash, I was unable to buy a piece of penny candy. And I was too chicken to try and shoplift. Although, I might be forced to do that pretty soon.
A State Trooper SUV cruised by. He did not see me hiding by the picnic table and as soon as he passed me, I found somewhere else to be. I could see him through the open window, a stocky man with gray hair and deep blue eyes that were not still. He watched everything, but he did not see me. I hadn’t seen any other kids my age out on the street which meant they were still in school and I was not. That was enough to catch the eye of anyone in authority.
The convenience store was tiny – more like the ones back home where mom and I had lived. One pump with six nozzles, a cramped box loaded with quick snacks, milk, eggs. A few newspapers and magazines. The newspapers were all local rags.
In the back near the toilets was the bulletin board. I read the notices hoping to find something that might help me get out of town without walking or hitching. I saw notices for used cars and tires, snowmobiles for sale, piglets ready to wean, round bales and square kept in a barn and never rained on. On the bottom I saw an ad for a man looking for a driving partner to split the cost of gas on a trip to Disneyland in Gainesville Florida. He was leaving in two weeks from six days ago. It wouldn’t help me out, but I tore off the little tag on the bottom anyway. The phone number was from the local exchange, the same three numbers ‘829’ on many of the other handwritten ads.
“Can I use your phone?” I asked the acne-scarred clerk. He was just a teenager.
“Dude, where you from?” he asked. “You talk funny.”
“Not to me,” I retorted. “Your phone?”
“We’re not supposed to – is it local?”
“Yeah.” I rattled off the number.
“Hey, that’s Josh’s phone. You don’t have a cell phone?”
“No. I’m eleven. Why would I need a cell phone?” I returned. Same thing mom used to say to me. I stifled a sob.
“You looking to go to Disney World? Won’t your parents take you? Wait, how can you pay for gas? Are you running away? What’s your name?”
I turned and hurried out the front door before he could get around the counter, ignoring his shouts to stop. I knew that small towns were the pits. Everybody knew your business and strangers were always noticed. I had to get out before he called the cops and they caught me.
I kept to the backyards for a while, most of the yards out here were segregated with wrought iron fences with spears on top. Or privacy fences that I couldn’t see over. Split rail or had big dogs in the back. I turned down another street and came to a large graveled parking lot filled with big trucks and horse trailers. It smelled like horses and pigs. I wandered into the barns and saw horses milling around in pens with other animals tied to posts. There were a few mules and some dairy cows. Another pen held pigs and yet another, sheep.
I looked at all of them and found myself in the auction house– a large room with tiered levels going up nearly to the roof. There were pillows, cushions and fold-up camp chairs sitting on the tiers. For old butts, I guess.
A few people wandered in and took their spots opposite the booth high up on the wall where the Auctioneer and secretary sat. there were photos of passed employees on the wall with something about hanging up their spurs, but the plaque was paper and so marked with cigarette smoke, I couldn’t read it. Photos of top-selling horses and milk cows.
I sat near a couple, so people would think that I was with them. Still didn’t see any kids other than me. We waited for the selling to begin. The tack started at one and they were already bringing in boxes of stuff. At 2pm, they were auctioning off brushes and bridles, manure forks, bits made in china and crap, blankets and spurs. After an hour, I was bored, so I got up and sneaked back to the holding pens.
More horses had come in and one caught my eye. Along with the big burly man in a Carharrt coat. I knew he was the killer buyer. The horse we both were staring at was bigger than all the rest but not by bulk. He was longer legged and built like a race horse, not draft. And he was clearly a stallion. He fought the handlers and charged the fences every time someone came close to the rails.
As soon as I approached the stud, the handlers warned me to stay back. I waited until they forced the horse into a solitary pen near the back and we were alone before I walked up to the boards. Thick 2 inch by 6 wide planks of solid oak. He charged toward me and when I did not retreat, he stopped. Curious, he put his ears forward and sniffed.
When I didn’t move, he came so close that I could feel the heat from his nose. Talking softly, I reached my hand through and touched his shoulder. The muscles shivered beneath my fingers. They were solid and hard. He turned his neck and sniffed at my hair, lipping gently at the tangled strands, pushing my hood back off my head.
Emboldened, I slipped between the solid 2×6 boards and stood at his side, scratching his shoulder near his neck. He was sixteen hands, dark bay with not a white hair on him. His neck was heavily crusted, he could have been a Morgan with that neck, or it could just be because he had not been gelded. His mane and forelock were heavy, thick with burrs and sticks. It was fine, silky hair, his tail a club because of so many burdocks hitching a ride in the hair.
He had scars on his sides and the corners of his mouth. When I lifted his upper lip, I found a tattoo. Only registered Thoroughbreds were tattooed on the lip and only those that had been raced on a recognized track. Which meant that he had been trained and ridden.
I murmured nonsense to him and led him around by a strand of hair hanging from his neck. “That was the killer buyer, Hoss. Ain’t no way I’m gonna let that man buy you.” He snorted and pushed me with his nose. “You wait until I can find a bridle for you, okay? I’ll get you outta here.”
With this horse, I could travel faster and in places that no one could follow me. I could head home, even though I knew home wasn’t the place for me without mom.
I left the stud and went out into the parking lot, looking for a trailer left open with tack in it that I could borrow. I found a nice two-horse Kieffer that was parked so no one could see me slip inside the tack compartment and pull out a snaffle bridle. I liked the feel of the leather, but I thought a western one with split reins would be easier to handle. I could tie him up, the reins were long enough to use for a tent, tie up bundles of firewood and other uses. The owner of the trailer had several fancy ones with silver and colored braiding, but I took the training bridle because it was the one buried under everything else. I thought it wouldn’t be missed since they rarely used it. Good leather and seven-foot reins. Might need the extra length, the horse had a long neck.
I waited until the very end of the sale but before they ran the stud through the ring. The only way to prevent them from realizing that he was missing was to put another horse in his place. Which meant that I had to get him out of his.
He let me fit the western bridle on his head and if he hadn’t dropped it, there was no way that I could have done it without climbing on something higher.
I led him out back, up a small hill covered in thick brush and tied him in a thicket. Warning him to be quiet, I went back for a substitute and the only thing close was a big drafty gelding with a small star. He let me rub soot on it and I put him in place of the stallion. In the dim light, hopefully no one would notice the difference.
I was a little bit afraid to climb on his back, especially bareback. But he let me do it and from the side of the hill where I was suddenly taller than he was. He was so tall that I felt like a king on his back, like looking down on the rest of the world.
With only a vague idea of where I was and wanted to go, I aimed him in the direction South through the woods. We kept under cover and I rode him long past midnight. We stayed at a walk, I didn’t want to run into a branch or fence risking my eyes or his legs.
Occasionally, I heard sirens. Once I rode parallel to the Interstate and saw State Trooper cars go flying by, lights and sirens flashing. When I finally did stop, it was on a back road that wasn’t paved. In the distance, I could see a big barn. No lights and no houses were nearby. There hadn’t been any traffic on the road since we’d stumbled on it. I worried about what the rocks were doing to his feet, in Tennessee it was mostly red clay and all sand in Louisiana.
“See that barn, Hoss? It sure would be nice to sleep inside. Maybe it has hay for you and pigeons for me,” I said. The sound of my voice scared me. It sounded sad, lonely, and like I’d given up. I knew one thing, I was never going back to my Dad.
The barn was huge and spooky. Half the roof had fallen in; the broken rafters a tangled mess. The hay that was left in the loft had rotted and smelled awful. Full of pigeon poop. The side where the milk house stood, that was still in good shape.
I slid off his back and nearly fell. My legs felt like rubber. Sweaty and sticky, his hair prickling through my new jeans. The door opened with a squeal of tortured metal and inside were a dozen box stalls for horses. Not for cows even though there was a milk house. The roof above that section looked okay to me, the walls solid and no wet spots indicating a leaky roof.
I led the stud into the first stall, took off his bridle and patted his shoulder.
“I’ll go see if I can find you some hay and water. Maybe a brush or two. I might find a bucket around here somewhere,” I told him. I went searching and found buckets in the milk house along with a plastic carry-all filled with brushes and hoof picks, hoof knives and a fly roll-on for their eyes. There was also a frost-free spigot but no electricity to pump the water.
I didn’t see a stream or a pond. There had to be one or the other, every farm I’d ever seen had a pond. I almost fell in it. I’d found it by looking for the ghostly white limbs of the sycamore tree, they always grew near water.
Carrying two buckets of water even half full and back to the barn was a chore. My arms ached, and I prayed that the horse wouldn’t drink it all, so I wouldn’t have to make a second trip. Then, I was ashamed at myself. If Crispin could carry two buckets at the age of eight for the French dudes, then so could I.
There were bales of hay still stacked neatly in the mow over that part of the barn. I had climbed the stairs behind the rows of tie stalls and looked them over. There was no telling how old they were yet the ones I kicked down didn’t smell moldy or were dusty.
I shook four flakes and carried the fluffy timothy hay to the stall door and tossed it over. Checked the water buckets and he had drank one to the bottom. Immediately, he went to eating, I watched for a while, the sound of crunching grass soothing to me.
“I need to give you a name, Hoss. I can’t keep calling you Hoss, stud, or boy all the time. You need a proper name. not Prince, too common. You’re a dark bay, not black, not that I would call you Blackie,” I said in disgust. “No Blackie for you. Course, I did steal you out from under the killer’s nose, but I still wouldn’t name you Lucky. I wonder what Crispin would name you?”
I remembered reading about his Dad’s riding horse, an Irish race horse he had brought from Ireland. He too, had been a stallion, dark bay and sixteen hands.
“Ballycor,” I said. He stopped eating to nuzzle me. “You like that? Then, Ballycor it will be. I’m going to sleep now.”
I took the rest of the bales I’d dropped from the hay loft, broke them open and shook them out to make a big, fluffy nest. I crawled into the hay and pulled it around me until I was almost completely buried. My body heat warmed the air inside the pile, and I fell asleep in minutes, knowing that Ballycor would warn me of anything bad.