None of us spoke right up. I knew that was because we all had the same fear. My daddy’s voice was soft, but we knew his mind. That was his prized horse standing there bleeding, and we knew he wasn’t about to take that lightly.
“I asked a question,” said my daddy, and his voice was still low. “I expect an answer.” He looked straight at Mitchell’s daddy. “Willie?”
Willie Thomas eyed his son, then cleared his throat. “W-well, now, Mister Edward,” he began, not looking at my daddy but at Ghost Wind instead, “th-these here two boys jus’ done brought this here stallion from them woods yonder, and they done brung him back all torn up like this. Seem like t’ me Mitchell, he done rode this horse knowin’ he ain’t s’pose t’, and I done told him that time and time again—”
My daddy cut him off. “How bad is he hurt?”
Willie Thomas now looked at my daddy. “Muscle all torn up on this leg here,” he said, moving toward the stallion’s right foreleg. “Don’t know if it’ll heal or not. Now, I can tend t’ it, but I can’t go lyin’ and sayin’ it’ll heal like it’s s’pose t’.”
“What else?” demanded my daddy, glancing at the scratches.
Willie Thomas followed his look. “Well, them there, they’ll heal all right. It’s jus’ that leg I ain’t so sure of.” He turned to my daddy. “It’s my boy Mitchell done this, Mister Edward, and I know there ain’t no way t’ make it up t’ ya if this here horse don’t heal right, but I jus’ ’bout t’ put a strap t’ Mitchell my own self ’bout what he done. I’m gonna put a strap t’ him right now, matter of fact!” With that said, he positioned his whip and turned toward Mitchell.
“But it wasn’t Mitchell!” I blurted out, stopping him and surprising myself. After all Mitchell had put me through, I shouldn’t have cared if he got whipped or not. “Wasn’t Mitchell rode that horse! It was me!”
Willie Thomas’s whip stopped in midair and my daddy’s gaze turned from Willie to me. Mitchell, though, stood stock-still. He didn’t look at his daddy, he didn’t look at my daddy, and he didn’t look at me. He was gazing off somewhere else.
“You?” questioned my daddy. “Paul, you did this?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, looking straight at him. “I did.”
My daddy took a breath deep, then walked around Ghost Wind, inspecting him long and hard this time, before he came back and stood right in front of me. “Paul,” he said to me, “you’re a good horseman, one of the best I’ve ever seen, and you know how to handle Ghost Wind. Now you going to stand here and tell me you rode this horse and let this happen to him?”
I looked straight up at my daddy and lied again. “Yes, sir.”
“How?”
“Sir?”
“How’d it happened?”
I glanced at Willie Thomas, still holding the strap, and at Mitchell, still looking off to God knew where. Then my eyes turned again to my daddy. “He . . . well, he just got away from me, Mister Edward,” I said. “Ghost Wind . . . he . . . he was just too much horse for me, I reckon.”
After I said that, there was only silence. My daddy’s look pierced me; then he moved back to the stallion and stooped to take another look at his leg. He motioned Willie Thomas over. “Looks like to me,” he said, “the leg’s not that torn up. It should heal in time.”
Willie, too, again studied the leg. “Yes, suh, I believes so,” he agreed. “But not time ’nough for them races you was plannin’ on.”
My daddy straightened and nodded. “You just do what you need to do to make him right.”
“Yes, suh.”
“And, Willie . . .”
“Yes, suh?”
“Put that whip away. Paul says he rode the stallion. That’s all I need to know.”
Willie Thomas bit his lip, looked at Mitchell, then back at my daddy and said quietly, “Yes, suh.” My daddy nodded as if an understanding had just been struck, and watched as Willie Thomas hung the whip back on the wall.
Then my daddy turned to me. “Paul, you come with me,” he said, and left the barn.
I glanced again at Willie Thomas, but he didn’t look at me. He turned his attention instead back to the stallion. I looked then at Mitchell, and for the first time he was looking at me, but I couldn’t read his eyes.
“Paul!”
I hurried after my daddy. When I caught up with him, I walked alongside him in silence until we were almost at the house before I said, “I s’pose you real mad at me.”