If Only They Could Talk: The Miracles of Spring Farm
320
If Only They Could Talk: The Miracles of Spring Farm
320Paperback(Original)
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Overview
Something magical is happening on a small farm in upstate New York. Animals of all shapes and sizes are living side by side — talking, listening, learning, and loving — along with caring people who have come to learn the secrets of interspecies communication. It's a gift that all of us are born with, as long as we're willing to open our hearts and minds to the gentle creatures who share our world.
This is what happened at Spring Farm when two very special women gave shelter to animals that were sick or abandoned. As trust and affection grew between them, so did their capacity to exchange feelings and thoughts. Today, the miracle of Spring Farm CARES is shared through communication workshops for visitors, students, and animal lovers. So come discover the magic of Spring Farm. Humans are more than welcome....
You'll meet Ricardo the duck, who explains that he won't leave his warm nest in a nearby chimney even if the house owners disapprove...Chubby the horse, who shares her feelings of despair when her barn catches fire...Elvis the kitten, who wiggles like a rock star...Sugar the Shetland pony, who dedicates a poem to her long-lost herd...and a whole menagerie of mouse-friendly cats, loving llamas, gregarious guinea pigs, delightful dogs, and other amazing critters.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780743464864 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Gallery Books |
| Publication date: | 10/18/2005 |
| Edition description: | Original |
| Pages: | 320 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Bonnie Jones Reynolds was raised at Spring Farm, near Clinton, New York, and is the bestselling author of The Truth About Unicorns, The Confetti Man, and Bikram's Beginning Yoga Class. Her cofounder Dawn E. Hayman is one of the world's foremost Interspecies Communicators, and helped establish Spring Farm CARES in 1991.
Read an Excerpt
If Only They Could Talk
The Miracles of Spring FarmBy Bonnie Jones Reynolds
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0743464869
To my dying day I'll relive the moment in that Halloween night of 1993 when Dawn burst into the bedroom where I was sleeping.
"Bonnie! The barn's on fire!"
In Spring Farm parlance the "arena" and the attached "stable" were the places where we kept our horses. "The barn" was home. Everything.
I pulled on sneakers and, in my nightgown, ran behind Dawn out the back door of my mother's house into the darkness and fog and fourteen inches of wet, heavy snow that had fallen in a freak snowstorm that night. Flames were dancing behind the windows of the kitchen in the barn.
"Call the fire department!" I cried to Dawn and began running through the snow as best I could.
"Let's see how bad it is first," she said, running beside me.
Surely it was already so far out of control that we couldn't put it out by ourselves.
Yet as we plowed toward the barn, I wondered wildly about the quickest source of water.
Snow! We might be able to throw snow on the fire.
We knew that if we opened the eight-by-eight-foot overhead door that was the entrance to the barn, we'd be feeding oxygen to the fire. We knew it could flash over and engulf us. But some of the small animals of the Spring Farm CARES sanctuary were in there. There were twenty-eight of them throughout the barn.
The door was warm to the touch, not hot. We threw it up.
Two of the dogs were right inside, in the spots where they always slept. Cookie, a miniature German Shepherd crippled in the back legs, snapped to attention and pulled herself out into the snow. Spangles, a black Labrador cross, seemed drugged. We dragged him out. None of the others could be seen. Or heard.
Any thought of extinguishing the fire was gone. We were looking at a wall of smoke -- black, ugly, hot, and noxious. In that smoke was an inferno in what had been the kitchen. There was no hope of saving possessions or structure.
But please God. The animals.
The evening had begun as usual. We finished our chores in the stable at 7:30. Remarking on the sudden heavy snow and sodden mist, we went to the barn -- the old Spring Farm cow barn, converted into home, Spring Farm CARES offices, small animal and conference facility, thrift shop, library, and workshop. There we fed and walked dogs and topped off water bowls and cat food dishes. We'd recently turned the old granary in the second-floor haymow into an office, where Dawn could conduct her animal communication consultations in peace. There we covered the parakeets Babcock, Chartreuse, and Dove for the night and left the cats George Bump Bump, Peaches, Blackie, and Cauliflower curled in favorite spots. In the main nave of the haymow, the cats Tessie and Thistle were crunching on their kibble. In our second-floor apartment, connected by a spiral staircase to the first-floor bathroom, a dog named Keisha and ten cats -- Marsha Mellow, Archibald Peabody III, Pazazz Purr, Sidney, Sylvanna, Timothy Tyler Butts, Rikki, Julie, Otto Sharie, and Heidi -- were settling into their preferred spots, as were the animals on the first floor, in the large open area that was our office, kitchen, and meeting room -- the dogs Buddy, Zoe, Daffy, Spangles, and Cookie, and the cats Oliver Augustus Perrier, Queenie, and Pink Flower. Never thinking that it might be for the last time, we bade our friends "Sweet dreams" and went to the house for supper and TV with Mother.
With us, in his carrier, was a six-week-old kitten named Georgie Belinda. I nearly left him in the barn that night. He'd begun sleeping right through, never crying for a bottle. But at the last I couldn't leave him. "I'll keep him with me for just one more night."
My eighty-six-year-old mother hadn't been feeling up to snuff of late, so I'd been sleeping in the house with her. We'd usually all sit late watching TV, but that night I turned in early. Dawn habitually watched the first fifteen minutes of the eleven o'clock news, then went out to the apartment to sleep. She'd check on the horses in the arena, then enter the barn through the haymow door, entering the apartment by the door from the haymow. She'd be asleep within minutes, blanketed by Keisha and the cats.
Had she followed her usual routine, she'd have died in the fire, overcome by smoke.
For we know when the fire started. The electric clock in the stable stopped at 11:35, the moment the power surge entered the downstairs of the barn, frying our electrical entrance and setting the refrigerator on fire.
But both Dawn and Mother fell asleep watching the news. Dawn woke at 11:45 and started for the barn. Once out the back door she stopped, staring at the kitchen window of the barn. Had we left a light on in there?
The light began to dance.
She ran to my bedroom.
"Bonnie! The barn's on fire!"
It's all a blur, really. Comfortable in our beds, we've all often wondered, "What would I save first in a fire?"
We learned that night that smoke, even before fire, will make your decisions for you.
Desperately, with Cookie and Spangles out, we called into the smoke for the other three dogs and the cats. No response.
We ran to the bathroom windows just beside that door, smashed them, and began calling there. The cats Archie and Rikki sometimes slept in that bathroom, and maybe some of the others would come down the stairs from the apartment above.
If anything, however, the smoke in the bathroom was worse than in the main office. Only silence answered.
"Call the fire department!" I cried again. Dawn sped off while I ran back to the main door.
Then I heard a meow. I dived into the smoke and snagged Pink Flower -- our shyest cat, yet there she was, letting me grab her. Quickly I stashed her and the two dogs in Mother's car, then ran to the back of the barn and up the barn bridge to the haymow door, hoping to save the animals in Dawn's office, in the haymow, perhaps even some from the apartment.
But as I opened the door, fire from the kitchen below exploded through the floor and shot up the wall opposite where I stood. A wave of heat seared over me. It was impossible to reach the apartment door just in front of that sudden wall of flames and smoke. Surely, though, I could reach Dawn's office and save the cats in there. That door was only twelve feet away.
Just twelve lousy feet.
I couldn't make it. I had to back out.
Writing this, I conjure the scene in memory and say, "You could have done it, Bonnie, you could have saved them."
But nothing is ever as bad in memory. There in the heat and smoke, unable to see, unable to breathe, not knowing if or when the fire would flash over and engulf or trap me, there was no going forward.
I propped the door open, hoping that at least Tessie and Thistle would escape and ran back down to the front door. By now Andy Magyar, who lived upstairs in Mother's house, was there with a flashlight. And we heard a dog crying in the smoke. I got down on my belly and crawled into the blackness, calling out, groping toward the sound. Twelve, fifteen, twenty feet. From the cry it was either Zoe or Daffy. So close, right there in the smoke ahead of me. But my flailing arms couldn't connect with a body. And I couldn't breathe. I should get out. Immediately. Or I wouldn't get out at all.
I got out. Leaving my friend still there, crying, lost and confused in the smoke, was the hardest thing that I ever had to do. But shock is a blessing, insulating from pain, and certainly all of us were running on pure shock at that point. Still calling, Andy and I propped the main door open and prayed.
Dawn was back, moving her truck away from the building and calling out that firemen were on their way. Realizing that I was still in my nightgown, I raced to the house for clothes.
Mother was waiting inside the kitchen door, looking, I remember with a stab of guilt, bewildered and alone.
"Is it bad?" she said.
"It's gone, Mother. We can't save a thing."
I wish I'd stopped, taken her into my arms. But I had no arms to give at that moment, I was on autopilot. I raced to the bedroom, got on slacks and a sweater and ran back out.
"Bonnie!" cried Dawn. "Thank God! Where were you?"
"Getting clothes on."
"I thought you'd gone back into the barn to try to save animals. I thought you were in there!"
Several volunteer firemen, including our neighbor Alan Lloyd, had arrived. One of them, tall and authoritative, took me by the shoulders to be sure I was paying attention.
"Is there anyone in there?" he demanded.
"Yes!" I cried. "All our animals." And I started telling him how many and where.
He sort of shook me and said, "Do you know where the main electrical breaker is? Go and throw it. We need all power off."
Dawn ran with me, back to the house. We found a flashlight. Dawn went down into the cellar and threw the breaker while I turned on the burners of Mother's gas stove. Leaving her with the stove and flashlight for light, we ran back to the barn.
The tall fireman, who turned out to be the fire chief, was waiting.
"How many horses are in your stable?"
Dawn and I stared at him stupidly. "About twenty-five," I said. Then the light dawned.
"They're in danger, too?"
The fire chief laid heavy hands on both of our shoulders and said, in tones calculated to pierce the smoke in our brains, "They've got to be evacuated. Now. Not out this way" -- he gestured at the arena door, so close to the barn bridge -- "all of them out the other side of the stable. They've got to go away from the fire."
It was a blessing, really. We didn't have to stand there and watch our dear old barn burn. We didn't have to watch as flames reached our trapped friends.
Yet as we plowed through the snow to the arena, I was thinking that he was crazy. Why drive the horses out? Surely the fire couldn't get to them where they were.
Shows you how well you think at a time like that. The west wall of the arena was just a dozen feet from the burning barn.
One step into the arena brought me to my senses.
"My God," said Dawn. "I can't believe the smoke in here already."
"That alone could kill them."
"Oh, Bonnie! How are we going to do this?"
We felt almost more frantic about driving the horses out into the night than we'd been about the fire. Sure, I'd been careful to plan a fire route when constructing the stable and fences. We had only to drive the animals quartered in the arena and in the stable proper out the back door, along a fenced runway about thirty feet wide, and into either of two pastures. The smallest, of about three acres, was the domain of the mares Deeteza, Scherry, Tina, and Dulcie. All the rest would have to be driven into the back, eighteen-acre pasture. Many of them had never been in that pasture or even out the back door, accustomed to being led to paddocks on the barn side. Many of them had never met, so there were sure to be fights and injuries. Plus which we had three colts who'd not yet been castrated and several mares who were infamous for producing instant heats. There went our antibreeding policy. On top of it all, there were two Shetland pony mothers with five-month-old foals, one foal 90 percent blind, plus a crippled Shetland pony, a foundered horse, and two goats. The ducks and barn cats we assumed would make their own escapes. Accomplishing this exodus would be difficult even in daylight. In total darkness it seemed impossible.
"Let's get Deeteza's bunch locked out into their pasture," I said.
We felt our way through the blackened arena, down the aisle of the stable proper and out into the run-in shed occupied by the four mares. They went like lambs down the runway into their pasture -- Deeteza told us afterward that they had been very scared, but they had known they could help best by cooperating. We then kicked snow aside and managed to get Deeteza's gate closed and the gate to the big pasture yanked open.
Ominously, as we worked, we began to see better. A faint red glow began to illuminate the night. We refused to think about why.
I returned to the arena to drive horses out the back door, leaving Dawn to get them through the gate and make sure they stayed in the pasture. Calculations were split second as I stumbled through the darkness. Who to loose first?
The arena is 60 by 120 feet; it had originally been intended for riding, but, as Spring Farm CARES had gathered needy horses, it had been given over to stalls. At the east end, away from the fire, were nine horses. Along the outer wall were our goats, Roo and Rosebud.
At the west end, against the wall nearest the fire, were the most vulnerable horses. Chubby, our Quarter Horse founder case, ambulatory but only just. God only knew what this would do to her. Then there were crippled Sugar and the other four Shetland ponies, Missy and her baby, Mr. Bubbles, and Dream with her blind baby, Corri. Closest to the fire, those special cases should be evacuated first. But handicapped, slow, and vulnerable as they were -- Lord, the snow was half as tall as those pony babies! -- they might be trampled, injured, even killed when the other horses went charging out.
The others must go first so that the handicapped could exit safely. Actually, if need be, the handicapped could be taken out the front way.
Then everything became academic. Suddenly I was not alone in the dark. Firemen and neighbors with flashlights began to appear, the beams darting crazily. I had no chance to give instructions, they were shouting and yelling, people with no horse savvy at all, loosing horses right and left, slapping at them, trying to drive them out the back door.
Of course the horses panicked and ran in every direction except the desired one. The arena became a bedlam of men shouting and of horses racing round and round in terror. While what had begun in darkness grew brighter as the barn became totally involved.
All the while Dawn was out there alone, not only trying to drive the horses into the pasture as they came out of the stable but trying to keep them there. Many turned and ran right back in, so that just as the people driving them out would get one or two horses started down the aisle of the main stable to the outer door and safety, some horse would come rushing back in with all the finesse of a runaway freight train.
In deference to the horses being driven out, I should describe the gauntlet through which they had to pass. The main stable was in darkness. At the end of what was in effect a black tunnel, about fifty-five feet away, outside the run-in shed, was soft light, a reflection from the flames of the burning barn. So that ahead of the horses was an abyss and then dim light, while behind them was a lot more light, from flashlights and the burning barn, and frantic, shouting men. But horses are accustomed to frantic, shouting men, and ahead lay the great unknown. Most went down the aisle only because they ended up with a phalanx of frantic, shouting men behind them. But horse people know what horses who do not care to go down the aisle can do to a phalanx of frantic, shouting men behind them. So three cheers for our horses, who sometimes acted more reasonably than us humans.
One in particular was a Thoroughbred named Lady, the self-appointed leader of the Thoroughbred herd that used the large pasture. Lady was the first out, but then she turned and stood at the gate beside Dawn. As horses ran out, were driven into the pasture by Dawn but then either ran back into the stable or remained milling around just beyond the gate, threatening to run back in, Lady grew agitated.
"This is no good. Those men aren't getting them out fast enough. I should go back in and help them."
"No!" Dawn told her frantically. "If you want to help, make the others stay in the pasture once I get them in there."
Just then two of Lady's herd mates, the dependable Four Bales and her daughter Lamoka Bo, came galloping up the chute from the stable.
"Let's take them out!" Dawn heard Lady call to them.
All Dawn knows is that from that point on no horses remained milling around the gate, threatening to run back in. Lady and her crew were "taking them out"!
And they kept them out. Minutes passed, and no more horses emerged from the stable. Had it caught on fire? Dawn ran back to the arena to see what was going on, encountering a horse running hysterically hither and yon, being chased by volunteers. The horse ran up to Dawn.
She pointed toward the stable aisle and said, "Go out there! Now!"
And the horse ran out.
Dawn saw the volunteers exchanging glances. The community was rife with stories about the crazy women at Spring Farm who believed they could talk with animals. They'd just seen that craziness in action.
Satisfied that the arena was not on fire, Dawn followed the horse back out to her post at the gate.
Meanwhile I was doing my best just to breathe. I hadn't realized how much smoke I'd inhaled when I'd crawled into the barn. My lungs felt ready to explode. My mouth was so dry that when I tried to speak nothing came out. I had little to do with the exodus of the sound horses from the arena; there were volunteers enough for that. Instead I worked with the cripples and ponies.
The foals had never been away from their mothers' sides. As we dismantled their pipe corral enclosures, foals and mothers panicked in the confusion and became separated. The nearly blind Corri ran off, screaming. I and two others chased him from one end of the arena to the other as he crashed into this, then that, falling, scrambling up, running headlong into something else, breaking free each time we caught him and tried to comfort him, screaming ever more pitifully for Dream, who was herself running about lost in the confusion, calling for him. I could hear a like performance from Missy and Mr. Bubbles. All this with thousand-pound, terrified horses running right along with us. You could only do what you had to do and hope to hell that you came out in one piece.
Suddenly one of the men chasing after Corri with me called out, "He's trying to follow flashlight beams!"
Of course! I realized. Light was the only thing he could see and cling to. I snatched the man's flashlight and made a dive for Corri, getting him around the chest and the rump with the flashlight in the hand around the chest, its beam pointing forward. I then walked Corri forward.
And he was suddenly calm, "safe" in my encircling arms, with something that he could see traveling in front of him. In this fashion I walked him down the long dark aisle of the stable abyss, praying that no horses would come running out or back in.
Lord, the snow was half as tall as he was.
Dream was still screaming for him back in the arena, but we marched on, out to where Dawn waited. I abandoned Corri to her and ran back in. Others were just managing to herd Dream, Missy, and Mr. Bubbles out after him. But we worried about Corri all night. The last time Dawn saw him, he was falling down a hill, out of her sight.
By the time I returned, volunteers had removed the stock gates from around Sugar and Chubby. They were both very calm. The burning barn was now casting so much light that I could see them well. I went to Chubby first.
"You have to go out, girl."
Clearly I heard "I can't do it. Just let me stay here and die."
Unsaid but strongly received by me was the thought "I'm not worth it. Don't bother."
I got angry.
"You are not going to give up now. You and Dawn and I have worked for a year and a half to grow your new hooves. You are worth it."
I spanked her hard on the behind, got her moving, and consigned her to the many waiting hands.
"She's terribly crippled. Take her very, very gently over the cement."
To Dawn's utter amazement, when they got her out to the pasture she literally galloped off to join the others!
So much for being ready to die.
Sugar gave no trouble when asked to ski forward on her deformed front feet. She was a serene, undemanding little thing, and her calm comforted me. Again I consigned her to volunteers and cautioned them to take her gently. Dawn had her put into the small pasture with Deeteza's bunch, friends all, where she wasn't in danger of being trampled.
By now volunteers were working to get the horses out of the main stable -- the three young stallions, Tutti, TLC, and Meloudee, a partially blind gelding named Cody, and a high-strung filly named Breezie. I left them to it and ran to the wing that we call the nursery, to loose Topaz, Amber, and Mariah through a separate door into their own yard, where I then opened a gate into the alley leading to the big pasture.
Just then, however, TLC, the first young stallion, burst out of the main stable, acting like a complete airhead (as young studs of whatever species often do). He first tried to go back into the stable, then rushed into the nursery yard and into the nursery itself. Topaz, Amber, and Mariah followed, all four of them squeezing into one of the nursery's stalls. I yelled for help, and we finally got them out into the pasture.
In the main stable I found half a dozen men trying to coax the very last horse, the young stallion Meloudee, out of his stall. He wouldn't budge. Nor would he let the men get hold of his halter. I was able to go in and talk to him quietly, take hold of the halter, and get a chain lead onto him, but he still wouldn't budge.
He was going to have to. The smoke was getting really bad. Three strong men got in front, one pulling on the lead, one on each side of the halter, with a reckless Andy Magyar behind him, slapping and pushing as the others pulled, till Meloudee fairly exploded out into the aisle. He then allowed himself to be led out to the alleyway and driven into the pasture.
Relieved, we closed the gate.
There were only the goats now, Roo and Rosebud. They gave almost more trouble than the horses. Determined not to go out into the snow, they kept breaking away and running back to their stall. We finally just shut the stable door and left them bleating pitifully in the run-in shed.
Alan Lloyd and others had begun moving items stored in the grandstand on the wall closest to the fire away from that wall.
"We're moving anything flammable," he told us. "The wall could spontaneously combust."
Horrified, we pitched in.
"You don't seriously think this building will catch on fire," I said.
"We hope not. We're keeping it cooled down with hoses."
Even so, at the end, the steel siding was glowing cherry red, and we later found that the interior beams had been singed.
Finally -- the animals out, the grandstand cleared -- there was nothing for us to do except look at the sight from which we had, until that point, been spared. We went to the arena door and looked at the barn.
It was just at that point that someone shouted, "Get back! The roof's gonna go!"
The barn had been waiting for us. For one instant it was all still there, the magnificent cathedral roof, every upright, beam, and brace etched in brilliant red. Then it collapsed, an inferno of flame and sound that sent a million sparks climbing toward Heaven itself.
I bent and scooped up some clean snow, ate it, scooped up more. My lungs were on fire along with the barn, but snow couldn't cool their fire, nor quench the dryness of my mouth.
We kept watching, silent. Only at one point Dawn turned and laid her forehead against my shoulder.
"Oh Bonnie," she said. Which said it all.
But then, after we'd watched for many more minutes, she said, "You're going to think I'm crazy, but I'm getting a peaceful feeling. It's all okay somehow. They're all right."
She meant, of course, our animal friends, being consumed there in the flames.
"Yes. Of course they are." We'd talked with enough dead animals to know that. "Have you gotten anything from any of them?"
Dawn shook her head. "I'm not up to trying yet."
"Same here." I, whose specialty, by force of circumstance, had become taking messages from just-departed animals.
Overhearing us, a fireman said, "I'm sure they didn't suffer. They probably never even woke up. They were all dead of smoke inhalation before the fire got to them."
Dawn and I exchanged glances. All except one -- the one who'd been crying.
I saw my brother-in-law, Bob Miller, then, arms folded, leaning against my scorched van. I ambled over and stood beside him. Bob, too, had memories of the barn. He'd kept heifers there for several years after my father had gone out of farming.
"I wonder if Harwood is watching this. I wonder what he thinks" was all he said, referring to my deceased father.
"He's probably very sad. I'm sure that Grampa's here."
Francis Jones, he who'd built this barn, who'd made Spring Farm an internationally known name with his champion Holsteins back in the first decades of the twentieth century -- who'd lost two previous barns to fire -- Grampa Jones, who, for years, had been one of our benign "haunts."
Nan Labrecque, from next door, came to me, put her arms around me and started to cry.
"It's all right," I heard myself saying. "We all create our own realities, and everything happens for a reason. Dawn and I just have to decide what the reason for this one is."
Only then did I begin looking at faces -- at some of the people who'd come to help, even to put their bodies on the line. The Labrecques, my nephews Scott and Bobby from across the road, and our neighbors Jay Burmaster and Tom Willis from farther on up the road -- while my sister Peggy and niece Helen, I was told, had taken Mother across the road to Helen's during the worst of it.
Bits and pieces of information were floating around. How the Clinton Fire Department, three miles away, had already been out on calls, for two different cars that had hit light posts, when our call came in. How the county roads hadn't been plowed yet and there were tree limbs down across some of them, how they'd had to try two different routes before they could get to us. How the Paris Hill Fire Department, two miles away, might even have been in time to save the structure, but the firefighters had driven right past us in the fog, continuing for a couple of miles before turning around. How one of the fire trucks had caught on fire, so that as the firemen were trying to put out our fire they were also putting out their own. How, in the middle of the whole mess, an eighteen-wheeler coming down Route 12 had lost its brakes and barreled right through the fire department's roadblock at Burmaster Road, half a mile away. "Eighteen-wheeler runaway and he's coming at you!" was all the warning that the men in two fire trucks parked on the road had had. How, in desperation, they had driven up onto our lawn, one of them becoming hopelessly stuck. How a rookie fireman had fallen off the barn bridge into the fire and nearly been killed. Or how the sides of the barn had heaved in and out as the fire, like an asphyxiating monster, had gasped for oxygen until it burst the sides, got a big breath...and the barn was totally engulfed in flames.
Dawn and I realized that we were very cold. And wet. We went to the house to warm up and stayed there. There was nothing we could do. And we didn't want to watch anymore.
It was twelve-thirty. Had only forty-five minutes elapsed? How quickly one can lose it all.
We'd been told we could turn the electricity back on, but there wasn't any. Another car had hit a light pole somewhere, and the entire neighborhood was without power.
Andy got Spangles, Cookie, and Pink Flower out of Mother's car and brought them into the warmth of the laundry room; then he went across the street to get Mother. The animals seemed okay -- confused, but okay. Same with Mother -- at least so we thought at the time.
Pink Flower's was the amazing rescue. She'd been born in the bathroom of the barn and named Janice, after Dawn's sister. But as "Janice" grew, we noticed salmon-pink markings around her mouth, like little pink flowers. And she'd repeatedly pull pink flowers out of a vase of artificial flowers that I kept on my desk. Naturally she became Pink Flower.
"Pinkie," Dawn asked her that night, "how did you get to the north end of the barn?"
For Pinkie always slept on a windowsill at the south end.
A strange little smile touched Dawn's lips as she listened to the cat and repeated what she'd said.
"She was sleeping in her regular place. She woke up and saw the fire and heard you calling. She started to come to you, but the fire was too hot. Then a man with strong, kind hands picked her up and set her down in front of you."
"Grampa Jones," I breathed. "I told Bob he'd be there. Does she know about Queenie or Perrier?"
Just maybe they'd gotten out the front door when we weren't looking, for both of them slept near that door.
Dawn was silent, listening to Pinkie again.
"She doesn't know about Perrier, but she says Queenie got out. She saw her fly out the door. Like a bird."
"Oh."
"Her soul," Dawn murmured.
It was comforting to know that the souls of our friends had taken flight, that one soul had even been spotted as it left, and that Grampa had been there in that terrible fire with them.
And we needed comfort now. Dawn told me that the dog who'd been crying, who I'd crawled into the smoke trying to save, had continued to cry.
"I'm sure it was Zoe," she said.
Yes. Buddy and Daffy slept too near the kitchen. The smoke would have gotten them right away. But Zoe slept at the south end, near Pink Flower.
"I started to run around to that end," said Dawn.
Suddenly she could hardly get the words out.
"I was going to smash the plate-glass window and try to get her to come to me. But then Alan arrived, and the fire chief, and then we had to turn off the electricity and empty the stable -- "
Our poor screwed-up Zoe, a basket case to begin with, running and screaming, experiencing all the horror.
We stopped talking about it. Some memories haunt you for life. This would be one of them.
Andy and Mother raided their closets and gave us dry clothes. Then we four sat down at the kitchen table. We sat there for the rest of the night. I can't remember what we talked about. What-ifs. If-onlys. I-should-haves. But mostly we worried about the animals out in the snow and cold of the pastures. Mostly Sugar, Chubby, the ponies, and their foals. And the stallions. Had there been fights? Injuries? Deaths?
By three in the morning the smoke had lessened to the point where we thought Sugar might be able to go into the run-in shed with the goats. Andy went out, ascertained that indeed the run-in shed was relatively clear of smoke, and put Sugar in there.
Poor Sugar. She told us afterward that, abruptly expelled into the snow with no shelter, she thought her dream had ended, that she was back in the hell from which we'd rescued her two years earlier. Then, safely in the run-in shed, she'd come to her senses and begun to worry about Dawn and me. She'd thought we had no place to live now. But she and the goats had gotten on well. So the three of them had decided that the goats could live with Sugar and Chubby in their enclosure and Dawn and I could have the goats' stall.
Without Mother's house to go to, we'd have taken them up on the offer.
At 4:30 the fire chief came in.
"We're ready to pull out. Watch for flare-ups. Call us if anything substantial develops. Now -- what kind of insurance did you have on the place?"
I was ashamed to admit it. Oh, if only!
"None. We didn't have the money to renew it."
I saw a flicker of surprise.
"Gee, that's rough. Well, so it won't have to be inspected." He laughed awkwardly. "And there's no question of arson for insurance."
"Arson?"
We hadn't thought of such a thing.
Dawn and I looked at each other. There was resentment against us in the community. Not so much in our own little neighborhood of Chuckery Corners but throughout a greater community, taking in many towns and many square miles. It all got back to us one way or another, the gossip, the vicious and envious comments. Though I'd been raised on Spring Farm and my family had been on the place since the 1820s, I was regarded as an outsider, a traitor even, by some people who wouldn't forgive me for having left after high school and lived away for twenty-eight years. Adding to the resentment were my supposed riches -- "millions," according to the gossip. While Dawn and I were jointly derided as kooks and crazies.
Mainly though, we'd come to realize, our real sin was that we were women, who lived together on the same property, who'd created something worthwhile together, and who might even be making a go of it.
But no, I put the thought aside. "No one would do such a terrible thing. We could see through the kitchen window and when we opened the door. The fire was in the area of the refrigerator at first."
"Yeah," said the chief. "A garden-variety electrical fire. An accident."
And he made the decision not to ring the ruins with yellow tape to keep the scene from being disturbed until it could be inspected.
It was a decision over which I would cry bloody tears in days to come.
First light found us in the pasture, lugging bales of hay and anxiously taking inventory.
Meloudee had jumped a fence and broken it partly down. He was in the small pasture with his grandmother Deeteza's bunch, one thoroughly neutralized stallion, for Deeteza was keeping him firmly in his place, threatening to kick his lights out whenever he approached any of them.
Tutti was trying to work up the nerve to jump the busted fence. Luckily the way to his heart was through his stomach. Hay diverted his attention long enough for us to repair the break.
Lt. Columbo had a minor cut over his eye.
Chubby actually seemed to be enjoying herself. A vet later pointed out that the deep fresh snow had both numbed the pain in her feet and kept them clean.
The other horses had separated themselves into small, congenial herds.
And all the ponies were safe. Snug as bugs. For our third young stallion, TLC, had appointed himself their lord and nanny. He'd driven his four-pony herd into one of the two run-in shelters and stood like a Gorgon in its doorway, forestalling the inclinations of other horses to enter.
Everyone was okay. It was a miracle.
And we still had Spangles. And Cookie. And Pink Flower.
And ourselves.
So a new day began. A night of horror that would never be over...was over. Feeling like Baby-New-Years in diapers, with sashes across our chests, stripped of the past, Dawn and I -- and Spring Farm CARES -- faced a new beginning.
Copyright © 2005 by Bonnie Jones Reynolds and Dawn E. Hayman
Continues...
Excerpted from If Only They Could Talk by Bonnie Jones Reynolds Copyright © 2005 by Bonnie Jones Reynolds.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
| Chapter 1 | The Halloween Inferno | 1 |
| Chapter 2 | Chuckery Corners: You Can Go Home Again | 21 |
| Chapter 3 | Crazy Over Horses | 35 |
| Chapter 4 | A Killer Horse and a Ride from Coast to Coast | 47 |
| Chapter 5 | California Weirdos and the Mare from Hell | 64 |
| Chapter 6 | Dressage Disasters and Talking to Four Bales | 81 |
| Chapter 7 | The Great Voice and the Philosopher and Architect | 96 |
| Chapter 8 | The Girl from Paris Hill Road Meets Mr. Magoo | 114 |
| Chapter 9 | Passengers and Ghosts on Spring Farm's Ark | 126 |
| Chapter 10 | More Passengers and the Birth of Spring Farm CARES | 141 |
| Chapter 11 | Spring Farm CARES and the Universal Party Line | 158 |
| Chapter 12 | Reincarnated Cats and Pet Mice | 173 |
| Chapter 13 | Lord Love a Duck and Other Watery Critters | 189 |
| Chapter 14 | Miracle Recoveries and the Origin of the Ghost Brigade | 209 |
| Chapter 15 | New Hooves and a Taste for Glazed Doughnuts | 229 |
| Chapter 16 | George Kigercat Finishes the New Barn | 247 |
| Chapter 17 | Out of the Ashes | 260 |
| Chapter 18 | The Best Is Yet to Be | 278 |