Jimmy's Sweetheart
Jimmy always was a quiet and somber boy. His large, awkward feet often tripped over one another and did nothing to help his personality. It was only when his father sat him on Marlene, the family's old Quarterhorse mare, that the boy seemed to light up. As the boy grew year after year, he cheerfully took to chores around Marlene.
One year, a terrible storm raged through town and a tree crashed through the stable while Jimmy and his family hid out in the storm cellar. When the storm finally subsided, Jimmy and his parents were dismayed at the damage. They rushed to the damaged stable, worried terribly the damage might have hurt Marlene, only to find her not there - no blood either, so she hadn't been seriously hurt, but she seemed to have escaped through the hole in the stable smashed by the tree. Jimmy found her a few blocks away with several other neighbors' horses that apparently had also escaped during the storm. She was jittery from the storm, wet and smelled a little strange, but she obligingly followed Jimmy's lead to return home.
The stable was repaired, but it and other damage cost the family precious money. The factory Jimmy's father worked at was destroyed in the storm, and money quickly became tight. Jimmy tried to find work to help out, but being a shy young, clumsy teenager made such a search difficult. Jimmy's father managed to find another job after several months, but it paid less and bills remained tight.
Marlene became tense and anxious following the storm, and although Jimmy and his parents blamed the storm, some eight months afterward a different reason surfaced as Marlene noticeably started eating more and putting on weight. More and more feed was needed to appease her hunger, and she began drinking more water. Jimmy's father, an experienced stablehand before he had found a job at the factory, could read the signs - she was with foal.
Jimmy's parents were worried about the expense, but still being a boy who didn't work, Jimmy felt only excitement at the idea of a new equine family member. Marlene became moody and pensive, seemingly sharing Jimmy's parents' anxiety, even kicking once in awhile at anyone near her, even Jimmy and his parents. An eighth month passed, a ninth and she grew ever larger and hungrier. Bills were paid later and later as Marlene needed more and more feed. Ten months, eleven ... at long last, on a summer eve as Jimmy was spreading fresh hay in her stall, he noticed Marlene begin to pace. Her coat dampened with sweat, she raised her and looked back at her flanks several times, and she began yawning.
Jimmy brought his parents out to her stall. Marlene snorted and continued to pace for hours as they waited for her foal. A few minutes shy of midnight, she finally laid upon the hay and within half an hour, a new filly emerged. The foal stood within minutes and spent much of the night alternating between suckling and sleeping.
Jimmy's parents went to bed and dragged him off as well to allow the filly to bond with her. Knowing how obsessed he'd be, his parents gave him an all-important task: name the filly! Jimmy stayed up for hours, looking out toward the stable from his window thinking about it.
It was not easy at all for him to sleep, so excited - more excited than he'd been trying to sleep on Christmas eve - but he managed it. He dreamed about the filly in his sleep, running through lush green fields and playing with him ... only he wasn't clumsy, and she was older.
He woke up quite cheerily, rushing to get out of his nightclothes and into his jeans. He ran out to the stable, then quietly walked to Marlene's large stall. The filly was asleep, tucked tightly into herself laying on the straw, but awoke as Jimmy entered the stall. Marlene nickered softly and the filly got to her hooves. She cantered, albeit clumsily, toward Jimmy, her eyes wide with curiosity. She jetted out her muzzle to him and he gently reached out with his hand to gently rub her neck and scrubby mane. She blew her little nostrils in his face, causing Jimmy to giggle, then she arched her muzzle upward to nibble on his hair. Jimmy laughed and lowered his head to let her nibble her heart's content as he softly stroked along her neck and her forechest.
"You're such a sweet lil' baby sister," he smiled harder than he'd ever smiled in his life. "You make me so happy ... I know exactly what I'm gonna call you!" he said cheerily to her. She pulled her head back a couple inches and gave him a curious gaze. "Sweetheart!"
Sweetheart was small, but she grew ... and grew ... and grew. Jimmy spent every moment he wasn't at school or asleep with her. Jimmy's father fretted more and more over the bills, and money blew up into arguments between his parents.
Jimmy saw and heard none of this with his attention on Sweetheart. He tended to Marlene and gave the dam her scritches, but mostly the boy played with Sweetheart. The months went on to winter, and Jimmy wasn't even bothered that all his parents could afford for him for Christmas was one new set of clothes.
Jimmy never felt so happy in his life, but a bombshell struck after the new year. As he was in the pen playing with Sweetheart in the snow, Jimmy's father appeared.
"Jimmy, we need to talk."
The words struck hard at Jimmy, causing him to stop in his tracks from his playful charge at Marlene. She looked at him worriedly as he turned around and trudged over to his father. "Yeah, dad?"
"Jimmy, I know ... I wish there were some other way .... but there just isn't any way we can keep Sweetheart. I can't afford her feed ... I'm afraid we're going to have to sell her, as soon as she's weaned in a couple months ..."
Jimmy's pleas and breaking down into tears couldn't bring another dime to the family. He struggled and managed to find a job delivering newspapers, but even it wasn't enough. The electricity was disconnected several times, as was the telephone. Jimmy felt a dark cloud looming, and the thought that Sweetheart would just be sold like an unwanted toy or barrel of apples weighed heavily on his own heart. When he was with Sweetheart, he would hold her and cry; when he was not with her ... nothing mattered at all. His grades, which had been passable, plummeted month after month. His 'favorite food' tasted bland anymore. Nothing mattered ...
Jimmy's father took a photograph of the filly as she suckled the last milk from Marlene at over a year old, and began posting fliers around town - QH filly, $600 OBO. Dread became panic to Jimmy. He stumbled even worse than his normal self, his large feet just not having the care to take his body anywhere. He skipped school and stayed home, earning him yells from his father and even more yelling between his parents.
A man from an auction house called one evening, curious about the filly. He wanted to arrange to drop by the next day to check her out; Jimmy's parents agreed. Jimmy was mortified; he ran out to the stable and clung to the yearling filly. He held Sweetheart, scritched her mane and cried. She sighed and tucked her head over and around his shoulder in a hug. Jimmy sobbed, crying to her how he wanted to be with her forever.
Marlene stepped over to them and whuffled Jimmy's hair, then her filly's mane, and finally draped her own head and neck over Jimmy's other shoulder from behind, her muzzle to her filly's shoulder. The three remained in their embrace for some time, even as Jimmy's parents went to bed.
Jimmy didn't feel tired, he felt ... panic. It was time to go, he had to go with Sweetheart and her mother, too! ... go where? Just go!
The filly, mare and Jimmy each paced. Jimmy's heart raced as he opened the stall door; Marlene and Sweetheart followed behind him. Out of the stable, into the pen and out the gate to the road they cantered. Jimmy tripped over his own shoes and in frustration, he took them off and flung them into the brush along the side of the road. Jimmy had no idea where he was going, but he just kept going ... to the edge of town, to a steep hill as the crickets chirped. Without a second thought, Jimmy kept going, filly and mare close behind, up the hill. He didn't feel a thing as he walked through thistle and blackberry and as he surmounted the top of the hill, ten hooves clamored over a patch of gravel. Forward, faster, into the night trotted the trio, not a hint of clumsiness among any, just the grace and might of horses migrating toward a new home.
By break of dawn, the trot raged into a gallop of twelve hooves. Mare, filly and colt found at long last a land of vast lush grass to sow the seeds of a brand new herd ...