Wild Horses by Linda Byler Page A

meticulous. Her housekeeping was her pride and joy. Her garden was tended lovingly.
    Mam was always hoeing, mulching, or spraying, and her vegetable garden produced accordingly, which kept them busy canning and freezing all summer long.
    One of Mam’s secrets to gardening was how she kept the weeds at bay. She attacked them with vengeance, using old, moldy mulch hay. She brought it in and spread it until the weeds had no chance of maturing or taking over everything.
    Sadie could still feel the slimy hay in her arms, the outer layer scratching her legs as they lugged the gruesome stuff from the wagon to the corn rows. The cucumbers and zucchini squash grew in long, velvety spirals over thick chunks of “old hay,” as Mam called it. The old hay kept the plants moist. So they produced abundantly, as did all Mam’s vegetables even though the growing season was short in Montana.
    Lime was absolutely necessary, Mam said. Pulverized lime was like talcum powder in a bag, and so smooth and cool, it was fun to bury your hands deep into the middle of it.
    The strawberry patch was weeded, mulched with clean, yellow straw, and sprayed so it produced great, red succulent berries every year. There was nothing in the whole world better than sitting in the straw beside a plant loaded down with heavy, red berries and pinching off the green top before popping the berry into your mouth.
    They grew their peas on great lengths of chicken wire, held up by wooden stakes that Dat pounded into the thawed soil in the spring when the stalks were still tiny. As the rain and sunshine urged them to grow, the peas climbed the chicken wire, and little white flowers bloomed with vigor. Later they would turn into long, green pods, heavy with little green peas.
    Picking peas was not the girls’ favorite job, but sitting beneath the spreading maple trees on lawn chairs with bowls and buckets of peas to shell definitely was. They would spend all afternoon shelling them—pressing on one side with their thumbs and raking out all the little, green peas from inside the pods.
    They talked and laughed and got silly, Mam being one of the silliest of all. And they would make great big sausage sandwiches with fresh new onions and radishes from the garden along with a gallon of grape Kool-Aid that was all purple and sugary and artificial and not one bit good for you, Mam said.
    After the pea crop was over, they all had to help with the most hateful job in the garden. Taking down the pea wire and stripping off all those tangled vines was the slowest, most maddening task, and every one of the sisters thoroughly disliked it.
    They always fought at one time or another. Often the sun got too hot, and no one was particularly happy, so they argued and sat down and refused to work and tattled accordingly.
    Mam was always busy and … well … so very normal. Canning cucumbers, making strawberry jam, canning those little red beets that smelled like the wet earth when she cooked them soft in stainless steel stockpots. She would cook them, cool them, cut them into bite-sized pieces, and cover them with a pickling brew. Oh, they were so good in the wintertime with thick, cheesy, oniony, potato chowder.
    All this went through Sadie’s mind as her eyes met Leah’s. Then Sadie turned her head to look away, out over the valley.
    “We didn’t have red beets for a long time,” she whispered.
    Leah nodded.
    “It’s the little things: dust under the hutch in the dining room, unfinished quilts, the pills, the endless row of different homeopathic remedies…”
    “But Sadie, she’s still all right, isn’t she?”
    “Yes. She’s just changing. Getting older.”
    “Hey! Why is there no supper?”
    “Well…” Leah began.
    Then she looked down, bending her head as great, tearing sobs tore at her throat. Sadie’s horror rose, a giant dragon waiting to consume her, maybe even slay her.
    How could she? How could Mam be like this?
    Hot tears pricked her own eyes, and she sat