Dandelion: The Extraordinary Life of a Misfit Read online

  “Don't be counting me out yet!” she wanted to call out after them. “Many's the one of you I beat in me time and I'll be coming back to show you.” But she never uttered a sound. Instead she turned her head the other way, pretending preoccupation in her own work as though what they did was of no interest to her.

  A wise move it was, nevertheless, to work Dandelion alongside her mother, for with Daisy there, her anxieties lessened, her trembling and sweating at McCree's approach stopped and she began to understand, at last, the meaning of the various shouts, snorts, whistles and hisses that were his commands.

  A certain confidence began to grow in her then, and as it did, McCree's angry shouts lessened and her mother beamed her approval. Dandelion liked to think she helped her mother, too, in those times, for Daisy was a very old horse indeed by the time Dandelion took her place at her side. Her eyesight was failing and sometimes her stride faltered and she stumbled. If a morning were cold or damp, Daisy's limbs would stiffen, and she'd work half a day before they moved freely.

  If Dandelion had known there was such a thing as death, she would have doubled her efforts and tried so much harder to be the heir she was supposed to be. She would have given Daisy peace from her everlasting complaining, and thrown all her heart into her work so that McCree, delighted, would have retired Daisy to the small field she loved and let her finish out her life in peace.

  But Dandelion knew nothing of death until Daisy taught her of it with her own.

  SIX

  It remained a hard thing for Dandelion, all of her life, to think of her mother's death and the events leading up to it. Such ordinary goings-on they were that had they not been the final acts of a life, not one of them could have been brought to mind a day later. As it was, every second, every detail of that terrible day, was blazed into her head forever.

  Rain had started in the night so the dawn was late in coming, but not their master. A punctual man he was. As punctual as he was stubborn and Daisy, knowing this, roused herself each dawn to watch for a light in the cottage, that being her signal to make her way to the gate with Dandelion, an unwilling partner, whining at her side.

  Misery it was that day to leave the snug shelter of wall and trees and stand about in the cold at the gate to accommodate McCree.

  With the heavens pouring and the earth deep in mud, McCree passed over their grooming that morning and set them straight to their breakfast. Daisy was single-minded when it came to her feed. She wanted no interference. No idle chatter. Only privacy. And McCree obliged her in this, busying himself with other things until she turned away from her trough, ready to be sociable again.

  “It's me ruin that's falling this morning,” McCree called to her from the open door where he stood watching the rain gust across the yard. “The work of a summer out there drowning... Going for naught... And me horses standing idle besides...”

  A dozen alternatives to his disrupted plans he voiced and rejected before fetching out their harness. “It's the old stump we'll be clearing away today, me darling,” he told Daisy. “The one up on the hill yonder we was talking about the other day. A blemish to me land it is and a long time I've had a mind to pull it out.”

  To Dandelion the old stump was a part of the landscape, and once McCree's intentions were clear she wondered why a man would tax himself removing such a natural thing. But she knew better than to ask her mother the whys of it. She was not so young anymore as to not know there were things even Daisy could not fathom.

  Wind and rain alike slapped at them as they made their way up the hill and waited in the half-light for McCree to see to his part of the work. A long, nerve-wracking time it took him too, chopping away at the roots with his ax. A time in which both horses grew cold, and Dandelion began to fidget as though perhaps she sensed what was to come.

  However that may be, McCree was satisfied at the last and backed Dandelion into place, positioning her so that she faced downhill. With only a nod from him, Daisy backed her self into place in front of Dandelion and waited while McCree attached long chains to both their collars.

  He stood a way off from them then and, raising his arm, waited for their ears to be listening, particularly Dandelion's, and when he was sure they were, brought his arm down sharp, gave a shout, and both horses threw their weight forward into their collars. Dandelion heard the chains snap tight and in front of her, saw her mother's massive haunches strain and her great hooves chew the earth. Sweat broke on both of them and they felt their eyes bulge and sting at their efforts.

  There came another shout and Daisy, understanding it, stopped her pulling while McCree strode back to determine their progress.

  “Devil an inch the brute's given,” he called and reaching for his ax, set to chopping again.

  A dull, thudding sound the blade made as it bit into sodden wood and earth, and at each thud Dandelion shivered, fearing the ten feet of tree still standing would come crashing down on her back.

  Daisy, her patience as long as the day, had no such foolish notions in her head and stood as she always did, head drooping, one hind leg resting, sweat and rain dripping off every side of her. She straightened up sharp enough though at the sound of McCree squelching back through the mud to her head.

  Again he raised his arm and Dandelion readied herself, throwing her weight forward at his command at the same time as her mother.

  Again and again, as the rain worsened and the ground beneath their hooves churned into a slippery mire in which they fought for a foothold, they pulled and stopped, pulled and stopped.

  McCree's determination to see the job through grew with each failed attempt and yet, at each new effort, they were brought up short. He thought to loosen the roots by working the horses sideways. A few measured paces to the left, the command to pull, then a few to the right...

  Around them the air grew thick with the smell of deep earth uncovered and decaying wood and the sweat that lathered and guttered off both horses.

  As the day wore on, Dandelion felt the tension in her growing so that, even in times of waiting, she could not be still. She shook where before she had trembled. She tried, foolish as it was, to free herself, going up on her hind legs until McCree's whip brought her down sharp. But she'd reached the limits of her patience and was no longer capable of the concentration he demanded. She was numbed by the everlasting shouts to pull and to whoa. The cries for more of this and less of the other. She was sick of the mud sucking at her hooves; the chafe of harness rubbing through to her flesh, the thirst in her throat, the sweat stinging her eyes. Most of all she was sick of that ancient tree clinging as firmly to its hill as McCree clung to its removal.

  Oh, he had his way in the end. Over the roar of the wind, the grinding of the chains, their own blood pounding in their ears, they heard his shout of triumph, felt the immovable begin to move.

  He was at their heads then, directing them to pull at angles, first this way, then the other. Inches at a time they fought that stump out of its centuries-old bed.

  And still he asked for more, calling for their dregs. And as he asked, they gave. Time after time until abruptly, Daisy was done with her giving. She was dead. Dead as she had lived, on her feet.

  A stranger to death Dandelion had been until then, but seeing her mother slowly sinking before her, she knew Daisy would never get up again.

  So it was her mother Dandelion pulled off the hill that day then, her heart as heavy as Daisy's weight, with McCree stumbling and sobbing at her side, and the stump, its exposed roots pointing skywards, that remained. A fitting monument, Dandelion always thought, to the stubbornness of a man like McCree.

  SEVEN

  At her mother's death Dandelion understood what she had begun to suspect while she lived: that Daisy's life, as humble and simple as it had always seemed to her, was as spectacular in its own way as any of Lord Harrington's fine champions. A simple soul she had thought her and dull as well until she took her place at her side. Then Daisy's skill and knowledge, her way of making difficult
tasks appear easy, earned her love and respect. Daisy had given dignity and class to everything she had touched. And with her grand majestic presence gone from the place, everything seemed smaller and shabbier, and McCree a lesser man.

  A lost soul he was without her, as though Daisy striding at his side had given him his identity and without her he forgot who he was. She had been the best part of his life and when she died, his ambition died with her. Certainly he grieved more for Daisy than the two sons killed in the Great War. More, doubtless, than he would have for his shrewish wife, had he outlived her. For Daisy had never argued with him to waken the dead nor made demands of him, nor called him an old fool gone soft in the head, words often hurled at his back as he left of a morning.

  Dandelion grieved for her mother too, and saw herself, too late, as Daisy had done: excitable and nervous one moment, petulant and uncooperative the next. Too late she tried to be like her, hoping Daisy would somehow know that her last offspring, though small, had a heart as big as her own and the willingness, at last, to fill the role she was born to play.

  Filled with good intentions she was and determined to win the respect of McCree with her hard work and willingness, as Daisy had done. Gladly she threw herself and all of her heart into her work only to be brought up, time after time, by his harsh words and the sting of his whip. And each night she was returned to her field, her ears ringing with his curses where her mother's had rung with his praise.

  A long time it took her to understand she could no more be her mother, so different were their temperaments, than she could turn herself into a cabbage. A double burden she put on herself then with her efforts at patience and interest and willingness - all foreign to her - together with the heavy burden of her work. One life we have to live, as ourselves, and not as poor imitations of others.

  Little by little then, a day at a time, Dandelion's high ideals left her. The self-confidence she had begun to feel at her mother's side wore away under McCree's unkind criticism and comparisons. She became tentative again, unsure of herself, and then, because she had no liking or interest in her work, bored and frustrated. She turned surly and defiant for a while and then she stopped feeling at all. She gave up on herself.

  She was exhausted - numb - not knowing that when a mind is not taken with its work, no matter that it consume all of its time, a boredom and irritability sets in more exhausting than any labor devised.

  A sorry, sorry pair they became, McCree and Dandelion. Not a shred of trust or affection was there between them, and each taking the other for a fool besides. Not for him would Dandelion bestir herself of a morning to watch for his light but made him wait, knowing that his hand on her halter would be rough and unkind, her food meager, and her work hard and thankless. Nor did he bother with the grooming of her or cleaning her harness or stringing leaves and flowers about her bridle to help with the flies as he had done for her mother.

  And so they dragged through their days, each lost in their own bitter thoughts, each blaming the other for the miserable entrapment of their existence, yet neither knowing how, nor having the energy, to make a change.

  At times it gave Dandelion a certain pleasure to act clumsy and stupid when she saw her actions added to McCree's difficulties. And she was not above taking her cart through a gate too sharp so that it clipped the post or better yet, got stuck.

  And McCree, too, could look the other way and pretend ignorance if Dandelion's harness started to rub her sore or if there were mice droppings scattered throughout her food.

  Well, had Dandelion known then, as she did later, that it is expectations that make a day or a life, and not circumstances or what others say or think, she'd have changed her attitude very quickly. But she was not so wise, and her days therefore, were no more nor less than what she expected with no end in view to their dreary repetition until, quite by chance, or so it seemed, she set herself free.

  EIGHT

  Not that Dandelion's disappearance can be seen as the act of a rebel though doubtless her story would have more “dash” if she had been so bold. But by then she had become far too much of a mindless drone to plan or execute so daring - not to say wicked - a deed. And if the truth is to be told, Dandelion didn't even run away. Rather, she walked, amazing herself at every step, and with many a backward glance.

  Her vanishing, as it were, took place on a summer's night. An unusually hot night it was and insects plaguing the life out of her. Half-crazed by their bites and stings she was and she rolled herself more than once in the flat, worn earth by the side of the gate. When that failed to stop her itching, she rubbed herself up against the gate itself, and as she did so, she heard a sharp cracking sound that frightened her half out of her wits and sent her flying across her field in a panic. A long while she waited before venturing back to determine the cause of the noise.

  Astonished she was to see the old iron latch pulled free of its rusted nails and the post securing the gate tilted sideways. Still, she had no thought of leaving and it was only a vapid curiosity that made her nudge that teetering post with her nose. There was a soft thump, and a puff of dust, and the old post lay on its side, half buried in weeds and nettles that quivered at its impact. The gate swung free.

  It must have been instinct that carried her forward since the part of her brain given to thinking and making decisions was in such a sorry state of disuse. It was as though a sharp voice commanded, “Go!” and, without a moment's hesitation, she went.

  All night she obeyed that other part of herself. Unerringly, it took her off the path where her hooves might have been heard and into the thicker grass bordering its sides, while her usual, everyday self looked back over its shoulder, askance, dismayed, wondering at what was happening.

  Not hurrying, but not dawdling either, she skirted the farm yard and, still without a thought she could call her own, yet without a moment's hesitation, turned away from the paths that made up her daily rounds. Nothing stopped or hindered her. She pushed through hedges, jumped walls and waded streams.

  As the night wore on, the shock of what she was doing lessened and her thinking processes started up again. She wondered, as she advanced through the moonlight, if there were a part of her that never slept but waited, biding its time, for the chance to set her on a path of her own.

  In no time at all she was in country unfamiliar to her for, in all her life, she had never traveled more than a few miles in any direction from her birth place. The land she now covered was hillier and wilder than any she had trod before.

  For a long time she puzzled over the ease with which she traveled until it came to her that she was without her wretched cart and all the trappings that went with it. That long it took her to realize she was free! No longer a beast of burden! Free to do as she pleased for the rest of her life! The thought of it brought her up short to shake her head and then the rest of herself in amazement.

  With the shackles of her previous master gone from her body, the fatigue she associated with them was gone too. Likewise, the frustration and boredom that had made of her a poor dumb beast of burden.

  Pride in what she had unwittingly done infused her like a tonic. Her head, that had not been higher than her withers in years, came up sharp, and she arched her neck to hold it firm. Making a banner of her tail, she turned herself sideways to the path a little and broke into a canter. Then seeing ahead of her an open stretch of land, she barreled into it, half mad with the joy of herself and the freedom to do as she pleased.

  Not one of her paces had she forgotten. As fast as she remembered one, another came to mind. She went from tight circles to ever-widening ones, and then she remembered her figure eights and the flying change, and she performed them all as though there had been no intervening, wasted years.

  There were no walls where she played in the moonlight and yet, because she excelled at stopping from full gallop to pivot, and because since her earliest days she had been forced to develop the muscular control it required - a control none of her thoroughbred friend
s had ever equaled - she did that too. Time after time she brought herself up short and whirled off in another direction just for the fun of it.

  The breath was gone from her before she remembered she was running away and took herself back to the path she followed.

  She was hungry and tired, too, but dawn had come. Doubtless, she thought, McCree even then was staring in shocked disbelief at the sight of the open gate and the empty field. She wondered how long he'd search for her before asking for Lord Harrington's lads and horses and dogs to help him.

  She took to her heels at the thought, but not as a fool. She had sense enough not to cross open fields or walk along the crest of hills, but stayed close to hedgerows and walls and plunged through thickets and woods that otherwise she might have skirted.

  As the days passed, however, with never a sight nor a sound of pursuers, her sense of urgency let up and she gave herself the pleasure of fine grazing and good shelter when she came upon them, though she was not so careless as to tarry long in any one place.

  Not that she saw no humans as she traveled. She did. They were everywhere for her to see as she skirted cottages and farms and small villages. But the fact was she developed a sixth sense, as it were, and always knew if they were about well before they knew of her, and not once, in all the time of her freedom, did she ever come face to face with any of them.

  There were many horses for her to see, too, as she traveled. Some she saw working in the way she had worked herself and others in ways she had not known existed. Contented creatures they were for the most part, going through their days as her mother had done, with never a question. But she also saw cruelty. Abuse that saddened her and made her think that McCree, for all his stubborn, stupid ways, had been a mild master by comparison.