Blind Love 17
I spent the last thirty miles or so searching intently for familiar signs of our farm. When the car finally pulled in to the dirt drive, I opened the door without waiting for it to stop. As I had done many times before when the bus brought me home from school, I ran down the path to the barn. But this time it wasn’t with the same eager expectation. I dreaded what I would find. Even before I entered the barn, I could see her inside. I froze in my tracks. Flash was no longer just white. She was white with red stains all over her beautiful coat. Dad must have heard the car because he came running out of the barn. “Sweetheart, something’s happened to Flash, but she’s alive.” There was that word again. “What happened?” I asked, trying to understand what could cause the red half-circles that spotted her once gleaming coat. “She delivered her foal while you were gone.” “Thunder?” “Yes, I named him Thunder.” Flash had been ready to deliver when we left for Arkansas. I had asked Dad before I left if we could name the foal Thunder, thinking it was the perfect name for Flash’s baby. Then I would have Flash of Light and Thunder. “I want to see Flash.” He took my hand and slowly walked me into the barn. As we got closer, I could see that the red marks covered her entire body. “Those are teeth marks!” I said. “What would do this to her?” Underneath Flash, Thunder was suckling. Normally, the cute baby horse would have distracted me, but my eyes and my mind were fixated on Flash. Although Dad had tried to clean her up, the bright red wounds revealed hundreds of inflamed gouges in her coat. “It was Trouble,” my dad said, referring to the black stallion, the oldest and angriest horse in the herd. “Female horses are very protective of their foals. Trouble tried to attack Thunder, but Flash wouldn’t let him. The vet said Flash took over three hundred bites to save her foal.”
One Call Away galley.indd 17
5/2/11 11:08 AM