Willow Chapter 10: Willow Falters
The week after Sonia’s talk with Miss Sarah, she returned to the stable on Tuesday as always. Sonia didn’t miss a lesson if she could possibly help it, and waited expectantly for her turn. But something was wrong, she did not see Willow trotting patiently around the ring with the beginner girl who always rode in the lesson before hers. In fact, she could not see Willow anywhere in the ring.
The instructor was holding the reins of a small mare when she called Sonia over. The mare’s roan coat made her a tawny peach color.
“You’ll be riding Sugar today.” She handed the reins to Sonia and gave her a leg up into the saddle.
Sonia’s heart was pounding. She rarely asked questions, and never interrupted her instructor, but she had to know. “Where is Willow?”
“Willow strained a tendon and she needs some time off. But don’t worry, Mack is taking good care of her. If you want to, you can go up and see her after your lesson.”
On hearing the names Mack and Willow spoken together, her mind immediately returned to the shock she had felt on hearing Miss Sarah reminisce about a horse and a man by the same names. Of course, it wasn’t something she could talk about with her instructor, it would sound too crazy. She just nodded and nudged Sugar out onto the edge of the ring.
Sonia tried to concentrate during her lesson. Sugar was a good, if slightly lazy, mount. However, she couldn’t help but think about Willow, and worry whether she would be all right. She didn’t know how old Willow was exactly, but she knew the mare was older. Sonia feared that perhaps the stable owner would retire Willow, or worse yet, sell her to a slaughter buyer.
When the lesson was over, Sonia went to the base of the ramp that led to the stable upstairs and hesitated. Going up seemed like trespassing on the province of the grooms. As she wavered, wanting so much to see Willow, but also feeling shy, she caught a glimpse of a man leading Willow past the second floor landing. That was all the motivation she needed. She climbed the ramp quickly.
The dark haired man looked over at Sonia. He had tied Willow in a cramped grooming stall, and was hosing her right front leg with cold water.
“Excuse me sir, I just wanted to see Willow. Will she be all right?”
“Ay, she’ll be good enough, that’s all any of us can ask for.”
Sonia edged closer to Willow’s left side and rubbed her on the neck. The mare dropped her head at little and sighed.
“What’s your name, missy?” The man asked abruptly, while still keeping the cold water flowing onto the lower part of Willow’s leg.
“Sonia.”
“Well Sonia, people call me Mack. I’ve seen you riding Willow, you have a good feel for a horse. There’s a lot of work I need to do. Can you hose her leg for another fifteen minutes while I clean stalls?”
Sonia’s eyes widened, and she jumped at the chance to be part of Willow’s recovery.
“Yes, if you show me what to do…”
So in short order, Sonia had taken over hosing Willow’s leg while Mack went trundled a wheelbarrow down the row of stalls. He was soon out of earshot.
“Willow” Sonia whispered to the mare, who stood patiently even though the water streaming down her leg was very cold “how is it you and Mack have the same names as Miss Sarah’s horse and stableman from fifty years ago?”
Willow snorted softly, then was silent again.
A note to readers: Thank you for giving this book chapter a chance, I hope you enjoyed it. I am sharing one chapter at a time of Willow. In case you are wondering, publishing this book chapter is part of my new goal to share my fiction. Unlike my work on historic African American schools and sharecropping (which has been published in various venues and featured at dozens of film festivals), I have not shared my fiction widely. For links to my documentary films and history articles, please see: