“Pony, I presume?” Abraham nodded toward the beast that stepped out from beneath the old apple tree.
Pony was made from parts, just like all Dad’s beasts. The hind of it was zebra, the middle, neck, and head of it horse, and the four chunky legs were bison.
I didn’t know where the horn came from, but it sat the center of its flat forehead just like a unicorn in a storybook. Altogether it wasn’t that bad-looking.
It whickered, but didn’t come any closer to us.
“Who made it?” he asked.
“My dad.”
I stopped by the chute. Neds and I had gotten tired of dragging feed out here in the winter, so we’d built a two-story shed, the top of which held a couple dozen bales of hay—or enough to keep the pony happy for half a month, if needed. It burned through a lot more feed than a horse would.
“He stitched it?”
“Piece by piece.”
“The lizard too?”
“He had a restless head and hands full of ideas. Stand that side of the chute. We’ll need eight bales down and broken.” I pulled the chain. Pulleys got the track moving, and bales of hay lined up nice and smoothly in a row, coming down the ramp tothunkat our feet.
“And the horn?”
“No idea.”
I picked up the first bale, carried it a few yards away from the chute, dropped it, then pulled my knife and cut through the twine.
The pony trotted out away from the tree, then back, unsettled by the commotion.
Abraham had stayed at the chute and was stacking the bales as they fell to keep them from clogging up the system. “What does it do?”
“Mostly? Eat hay. But it can pull or plow if I need it to.”
I rested my hands on my hips and studied him. He moved with a steady grace of a man used to hard work and content in it. The wind caught at the collar of his coat and stirred his hair, pushing it into his eyes as he bent, pulled, twisted, stacked. He looked like he could do this sunup to moon down.
“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”
He glanced over his shoulder and gave me a smile that made me hold my breath from the joy in it.
“Once or twice.”
“Well, well. City boy’s lived out in the scratch. Were you a farmer or stitcher?”
“Back when I lived in the scratch, there wasn’t such a thing as a stitcher. I owned a cherry orchard, raised some livestock and such.”
The bales had stopped falling and the track stilled. He picked up one of the 150-pound bales like it was made of air. “Your turn to answer my question.”
“About?” I strolled over, hefted another bale, and carried it to the feed spot.
Pony was walking our way slowly, head down, sniffing the ground.
“Who made you? How long have you been out here hiding?”
“I was born to my mother and father.”
“In that body?” he nodded at me as he walked back for another bale.
Weird question for most folk. But, I suppose, not for him and me.
