A View from the Buggy Read Free Page B

“That’s far enough.”
    But somehow wild King didn’t hear my command. Both horses kept going, spooked by the sound of the corn. Jumping out of my cornrow with my heart pounding in my throat, I yelled with all the force of my 12-year-old vocal chords. “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!”
    Nothing slowed them down. In fact, they picked up speed.
    Tears pushed their way into my eyes as I thought of what could happen when King and Queen reached a gallop. They were headed straight for the road and the barn beyond. Visions of them meeting the milk truck barreling down the road flashed before me. And how would the barn door look after these two had tried to funnel themselves through its narrow opening?
    But when the team was only a few yards from the road, I saw that King and Queen were galloping headlong into another kind of problem. My breath was lost and my heart raced as I watched in disbelief as the two horses made straight for an electric pole. Wild-eyed King, every muscle straining, pulled to the right as he tried to avoid the pole. He might have succeeded but for Queen’s 1,800 pounds that pulled in the other direction, also to avoid the pole. Straining with all her might, Queen held her course. The thundering noise seemed to put wings to the team’s feet as the two hit the pole with the wagon tongue in the middle, flying like an arrow from the bow.
    The almost empty wagon careened wildly sideways across the corn rows, crashing nearby stalks to the ground. Harnesses strained as the heads of the two horses met on the far side of the pole in a face-to-face encounter. With heaving breath, they pulled their heads apart.
    My brother and I approached with knees shaking. Would there be pieces of their harness and wagon tongue left to pick up?
    Amazingly nothing was much amiss, other than King and Queen regarding each other in puzzled wonderment.
    Unable to contain our pent-up emotions, we burst out laughing. What had started as a world-sized catastrophe ended with two boys holding their sides over two horses with 12 acres and a road to run away in, but who had been stopped because they couldn’t agree which side of the pole to go around.

An Eventful Evening
    Janice Hochstetler
    What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? (Psalm 8:4)
    I T WAS HUMID THAT S UNDAY , AND EVERYONE FELT HOT AND A BIT grumpy as we drove home from the three-hour church service. Our horse, Lady, plodded along, her hooves beating rhythmically on the pavement. Moments later, Mom turned around in the front seat of the buggy to ask, “Why don’t we go down to the pond for a picnic supper?”
    There was a chorus of, “Yes, let’s,” from the rest of the children, and I joined in with enthusiasm.
    â€œMay we go swimming?” nine-year-old Jeffery asked from his perch between his brother and sister on the back seat of the surrey.
    â€œNot today,” Dad said. “It’s Sunday.”
    Jeffery groaned. “It won’t be any fun if we can’t swim.”
    Dad kept his voice firm. “You can go wading, but no swimming.”
    Jeffery accepted the verdict with a sigh, and there were no more protests. We soon arrived home and were on the way down the dusty cow path behind the barn. Down the lane that led to the woods where, inside the leafy shadows, lay the pond.
    I watched as Dad started a fire when we arrived. He planned to grill the hamburgers Mom had brought along. They would be scrumptious, since they came from our own Angus beef, raised on the farm.
    While the fire died down, Dad and the boys decided to move the paddleboat we kept at the pond. As they lifted the boat near the shore, a skunk scurried away toward the field nearby.
    â€œEeeek!” I squealed and jumped back a few feet.
    Six-year-old Jaylin held his nose. “I’m glad she didn’t spray me.”
    The smell was bad enough already. What would it be like to have skunk spray all