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Part
Eight
The consequences were all fairly predictable. Stacy was suspended
for a month, she accused Nick and his friends of trying to attack her but
they denied it, her parents were very disappointed in her and very concerned;
they were also mad at Dane for letting her know where he kept his gun.
That wasn't fair because he hadn't told her, she'd simply noticed it one
day when she was helping him clean house. Dane asked her the names
of the four boys and she told him what she knew. Murph's parents
agreed not to press charges if she would get counseling, and so she was
being driven to Omaha twice a week to talk to a psychologist. Their
chats were somewhat interesting but not, in Stacy's opinion, especially
helpful. Every time Stacy brought up the subject of self defense,
the only options the counselor would discuss were yelling for help and
running away.
One of the counselor's first suggestions to the Tilssens was that they
should find her something wholesome to do, since she was excluded from
band practice and track for the rest of the spring.
"We could just give her enough chores to occupy her time," Jon Tilssen
said during a family meeting after the counselor's first report.
"She could repair all the fences, that's a couple weeks' work right there."
"She could clean the stalls and the corral every day," his wife suggested.
Stacy groaned and hung her head. She didn't particularly like horses.
They were boring, stubborn animals and they pooped way too much.
"Maybe she could have a horse of her own," Dane suggested. "I had
one when I was her age."
Wait a minute. Not all horses were boring. She could get a
pretty one that would love no one but her and would do whatever she wanted.
Stacy looked up and said, "I'd like a paint or a palomino."
Her mother and father looked at each other. Mrs. Tilssen said, "We
don't have a lot of money for a horse, but..."
A couple of days later, she was sitting between her parents at a horse
auction down at the sale barn. A couple of nice-looking paints had
already been sold for too much money. Good horses were expensive.
Stacy was starting to be afraid she was going to end up with some sort
of depressing old nag.
A young apaloosa yearling colt was led in. He was beautiful and obviously
spirited; he was balking and rearing and giving his handler quite a bit
of trouble. The auctioneer said he was half Arab.
"Bid on that one!" Stacy urged her father.
"No, he's too wild," Jon Tilssen said. "He'd hurt you."
That meant he wasn't going to buy her a horse with any spirit at all.
Stacy slumped in her folding chair, losing all interest in the auction.
Four or five horses later, there came a heavy clumping sound and the biggest
horse in the world was led into the arena, his shaggy white feet shaking
the ground with each step. His shoulders and thighs bulged with muscles
the size of half-buried basketballs. Stacy's jaw dropped. She
looked at her program and saw that the horse was "Moby Dick, half Clydesdale
and half Percheron gelding, gray, 15 years old, 18 hands high, trained
to pull or ride." There was a horse that could carry an armored knight
into battle. Besides that he wasn't gray, he was white. A shining
white charger. He followed his handler very meekly, though.
Maybe his spirit was broken.
The bidding started low, and it wasn't very lively. It seemed no
one wanted a horse that big. Her parents were talking with each other;
they weren't interested. Stacy watched with half a mind until she
suddenly saw the horse raise his enormous white head and shove his handler
in the back, knocking the man down into the soft dirt. There was
some laughter from the crowd but the bidding stopped.
"We have two seventy," the auctioneer said. "Do I hear three hundred
dollars? Two seventy, going once, going —"
"Three hundred!" Stacy shouted, jumping to her feet.
"Stacy, sit down!" said Emma Tilssen, pulling her down by the arm.
"We don't want that huge thing."
"You're not authorized to bid, anyway," Jon Tilssen said, shaking his head
and waving his hand at the auctioneer in a "never mind" gesture.
"Sold! To the man in the plaid shirt for three hundred dollars.
You've got yourself a hay-burning tractor, sir!"
Stacy's father clapped his hand to his forehead and groaned as the other
farmers around him laughed.
Back to Part Seven
Continue to Part Nine
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