More than Words Volume 4

The old horse stepped through a shimmering curtain of angled rain, stately as a unicorn for all its diminutive size, muddy hide, overgrown hooves, tangled mane and too-prominent ribs.Callie Dorset stood in front of her tilted rural mailbox, one of a row of them jutting from the ground like crooked teeth, a sheaf of bills and flyers clasped in one hand. She stared, momentarily trans-fixed, heedless of the downpour.Cherokee?It couldn't be. Her childhood pony had been sold off years ago, along with most of the family ranch. Taken somewhere far away, in a gleaming horse trailer from an auction house, never to return.And yet here he was.Callie stuck the mail back into the box, slogged down one side of the grassy ditch separating her from the horse and up the other, then stood close to the rusty barbed-wire fence, spellbound."Cherokee?" she said, aloud this time, the name barely audible over the fire-sound of the relentless spring rain.He nickered, nuzzled her shoulder.Callie felt almost faint, stricken with a hopeless joy. Her hand shook as she reached out to caress his soft, pink-spotted nose.She repeated his name, wonderstruck.Blinked a couple of times, in case she was seeing things.Somehow, he had found his way back.But how?Behind her, snug in the ancient Blazer, Callie's seven-year-old daughter, Serena, rolled down the passenger-side window. "Mom!" she shouted, in her sometimes slurred, always exuberant voice. "You're getting wet!"Callie turned, drenched with rain and tears, and smiled. Nodded. "Shut the window," she called back. "You'll catch cold."Serena's round face clouded with concern. Her exotic, slanted eyes widened."Doesn't that horse have a house to live in?" she asked, scanning the pasture, which was empty except for a few gnarled apple trees, remnants of an orchard planted so long ago that only ghosts could recall it as it had once been, green-leaved and flourishing with fruit. An old claw-footed bathtub served as a water trough, and someone had dumped a bale of hay nearby. "Serena," Callie said, trying to sound stern and not fooling the child for a moment.Serena closed the window, but she watched from behind the silvery sheen of steam and water droplets, troubled.Callie turned back to Cherokee. Stroked his coarse forelock, trying to find it within herself to leave him--again--here in the cold gloom of an ordinary afternoon, and failing utterly.But she had to do it.She had to take Serena home. Start supper. Try to figure out how to pay all those bills, lying limp and soggy in the mailbox.As if he understood her dilemma, Cherokee nudged her once more in the shoulder, then turned and plodded slowly away to stand, distant, hide steaming with moisture, under one of the lonely apple trees.Callie ran the sleeve of her denim jacket across her face and oriented herself to Serena, her North Star. She retrieved the bills and the flyers from the mailbox, sniffling, and got behind the wheel of the Blazer, cranking up the heat."You're wet, Mom," Serena reiterated sagely, visibly relaxing now that Callie was back in the car.Callie tried to smile, wanting to reassure the child, but fell short. She'd seen so much loss in her thirty-one years--her parents, most of the homestead, Denny--and Cherokee. There were times when it was impossible to pretend it didn't matter, all that sorrow, even for Serena's sake.Callie looked back once more, knowing she shouldn't, and saw her old friend watching her. She bit her lower lip, then shoved the Blazer into gear and made a wide turn in the mud of the road, headed for home.The house was small, its shingles gray, its porch slanting a little to one side, like the mailbox she'd just left. The roof needed patching, and the yard was overgrown, but the windows glowed with warm welcome, because Callie had left the lights on when she drove to town to pick Serena up after school. It was an extravagancWoods, Sherryl is the author of 'More than Words Volume 4', published 2008 under ISBN 9780373836222 and ISBN 0373836228.