riding horses whinnied softly, thrusting their noses to the day. Josie’s pony nuzzled her hand, wanting to hear his name dripping in honey. And Cleo moved away. Anybody could ride an old pony. She wanted to ride General Beauchamp’s roan stallion, who shied at any touch but his master’s.
She marched back to Josie. “Dare me to ride the red horse,” she challenged. Her eyes were green as they bored into Josie’s, the gray gone under in her passion.
“No,” said Josie, desperately trying not to flounder in the green sea. “He’d throw you and trample you. He’d kill you dead.”
“He can’t tromp me! I ain’t ascairt of nothing alive. I dare you to dare me. I double dare you!”
“I won’t, I won’t! I’m bad, but I’m not wicked.”
“I’m not wicked neither! I just ain’t a coward.”
She streaked to the stall and flung open the barrier. The wild horse smelled her wildness. Her green eyes locked with his red-flecked glare. Their wills met, clashed, and would not yield. The roan made a savage sound in his throat, his nostrils flared, his great sides rippled. He lowered his head to lunge. But Cleo was quicker than he was. She grasped his mane, leaped on his broad neck, slid down his back, and dug her heels in his flanks.
“Giddap, red horse!” she cried.
He flung back his head, reared, and crashed out of the stall, with Josie screeching and sobbing and sidestepping just in time.
Cleo hung on for ten minutes, ten minutes of dazzling flight to the sun. She felt no fear, feeling only the power beneath her and the power inside her, and the rush of wind on which she and the roan were riding. When she was finally thrown, she landed unhurt in a clover field. It never occurred to her to feel for broken bones. She never doubted that she had a charmed life. Her sole mishap was a minor one. She had split the seat of her drawers.
She got up and brushed off her pinafore, in a fever now to get home and brag to her sisters. She knew that she ought to let Josie see that she was still alive. The riderless horse would return, and Josie would never tell who had ridden him off. But she would be tormented by fear for as long as Cleo stayed away.
Josie would not want to eat, no matter what fancy things the white folks had for breakfast. She would not want to ride in her pony cart, no matter how pretty a picture she made. She would not want to go calling with her stylish mother, not even if she was let to wear the dress that came all the way from Paris. On this bright day the sun had darkened for Josie, and nobody but Cleo could make it shine again.
The four sisters sat around the kitchen table, eating their salt pork and biscuit and hominy, shipping down their buttermilk. Charity was nine, two years younger than Cleo, Lily was eight, Serena four. Their faces were tear-streaked. Cleo’s was not, though she was the one who had got the whipping. Mama couldn’t keep track of the times she had tanned Cleo’s hide, trying to bring her up a Christian. But the Devil was trying just as hard in the other direction.
There Cleo was this morning, looking square in Mama’s eye, telling her she must have been sleepwalking again. Couldn’t remember getting dressed or tying her sisters’ braids together. Just remembered coming awake in a clover field. Mama had tried to beat the truth out of her, but Cleo wouldn’t budge from her lie. Worst of all, she wouldn’t cry and show remorse. Finally Mama had to put away the strap because her other children looked as if they would die if she didn’t.
They couldn’t bear to see Cleo beaten. She was their oldest sister, their protector. She wasn’t afraid of the biggest boy or the fiercest dog, or the meanest teacher. She could sass back. She could do anything. They accepted her teasing and tormenting as they accepted the terrors of night. Night was always followed by day, and made day seem more wonderful.
Mama stood by the hearth, feeling helpless in her mind. Cleo was getting too big to beat, but she wasn’t a child that would listen to reason. Whatever she didn’t want to hear went in one ear and out the other. She was old enough to be setting an example for her sisters. And all they saw her do was devilment.
With a long blackened fireplace stick Mama carefully tilted the lid of the three-legged skillet to see if her corn bread was done. The rest of Pa’s noon dinner — the greens, the rice, the hunk of fresh pork — was waiting in his bucket. Gently she let the lid drop, and began to work the skillet out of its covering of coals that had been charred down from the oak wood. As the skillet moved forward, the top coals dislodged. Their little plunking sounds were like the tears plopping in Mama’s heart.
Sulkily Cleo spooned the hominy she hated because she mustn’t make Mama madder by leaving it. Mama bleached her corn in lye water made from fireplace ashes. Pa spit tobacco juice in those ashes. He spit to the side, and Mama took her ashes from the center, but that didn’t make them seem any cleaner. Mama thought everything about Pa was wonderful, even his spit.
Cleo made a face at Mama’s back, and then her face had to smile a little bit as she watched the dimples going in and out of Mama’s round arms. You could almost touch their softness with your eyes. A flush lay just under the surface, giving them a look of tender warmth. For all the loving in Mama’s arms, she had no time for it all day. Only at night, when her work was done, and her children in bed, you knew by Mama’s silver laughter that she was finding time for Pa.
Mama loved Pa better than anyone. And what was left over from loving him was divided among her daughters. Divided even, Mama said whenever Cleo asked her. Never once would Mama say she loved one child the most.
On their straggling way to the mill with Pa’s dinner, Cleo told her sisters about her wild ride. They were bewitched by her fanciful telling. Timid Lily forgot to watch where she was walking. Her toes uncurled. She snatched up a stick and got astride it.
Serena clung to Charity’s hand to keep herself from flying. Cleo was carrying her away, and she wanted to feel the ground again. She wanted to take Pa his dinner, and go back home and play house.
Charity saw a shining prince on a snow-white charger. The prince rode toward her, dazzling her eyes with light, coming nearer and nearer, leaning to swoop her up in his arms. And Cleo, looking at Charity’s parted lips and the glowing eyes, thought that Charity was seeing her riding the red horse into the sun.
Her triumphant tale, in which she did not fall, but grandly dismounted to General Beauchamp’s applause, came to its thrilling conclusion. She turned and looked at Lily scornfully, because a stick was not a horse. Lily felt foolish, and let the stick fall, and stepped squish on an old fat worm. Serena freed her hand. Released from Cleo’s spell, she felt independent again. Charity’s shining prince vanished, and there was only Cleo, walking ahead as usual, forgetting to take back the bucket she had passed to Charity.
Pa was waiting in the shade, letting the toil pour off him in perspiration. His tired face lightened with love when they reached him. He opened his dinner bucket and gave them each a taste. Nothing ever melted so good in their mouths as a bite of Pa’s victuals.
He gave them each a copper, too, though he could hardly spare it, what with four of them to feed and Mama wanting yard goods and buttons and ribbons to keep herself feeling proud of the way she kept her children. Time was, he gave them kisses for toting his bucket. But the day Cleo brazenly said, I don’t want a kiss, I want a copper, the rest of them shamefacedly said it after her. Most times Pa had a struggle to dig down so deep. Four coppers a day, six days a week, was half a day’s pay gone up in smoke for candy.
Pa couldn’t bring himself to tell Mama. She would have wrung out of him that Cleo had been the one started it. And Cleo was his eldest. A man who loved his
