The Blizzard Read Free

it had a shingled roof, well-chinked walls, and two insulated windows. Next to it, under a snow-covered lean-to, stood the sledmobile. Crouper plowed through the snow in a fast, bowlegged gait, reached the stable, stuck his hand under his shirt, pulled out a key on a string, and opened the hanging lock.
    From behind the door came an intermittent, shrill sound, like the trill of a large cricket. Then three more chimed in, then more, more, and more, until suddenly it seemed an entire swarm of crickets was chirping away noisily. Then came a grunt. The chirping in the stable grew even louder.
    “Now, you lot, I’m here, I’m comin’…” Crouper unlocked the door, threw it wide open, and entered the stable.
    He was met by pleasant, familiar smells. Leaving the door ajar so there would be more light, he walked through the smithy and tack room straight to the horses’ stalls. A joyous chirping filled the stable. In contrast to Crouper’s miserable hut and yard, his stable was exemplary: spanking new, clean, and tidy, a clear indication of the owner’s true passion. The stable was divided in half: the smithy and tack room began right at the door. There was a workbench with a small forge, also a tiny oven the size of a samovar, with a bellows fashioned from a beekeeper’s fumigator, and instruments neatly arrayed on the workbench: knives, little hammers, tiny pincers, a gimlet, saws, and a jar of horse ointment with a brush inside. In the middle of the workbench was a ceramic cup filled with tiny kopeck-sized horseshoes. Next to it was another cup that held tiny nails for the shoes. Little wooden yokes were strung in rows on the nearby wall, like dried mushrooms. A large kerosene lantern hung over the forge.
    Beyond the forge and tack was the feed in a large woven basket filled with finely cut clover. Then came a partition, and behind it—the horse stalls. Smiling, Crouper leaned over the partition, and the modulating whinnies of fifty small horses filled the air. They occupied various stalls: some in pairs, some five together, some in threesomes. Each stall had two wood troughs—one for water, the other for feed. In the feed trough lay the white remains of the oatmeal Crouper had fed the horses at five that morning.
    “Now, the lot of ye—we gonna go for a drive?” Crouper asked his horses, and they neighed even louder.
    The younger ones reared and bucked; the shaft horses and the steppe horses snorted, shook their manes, and nodded. Crouper lowered his large, rough hand, still holding the piece of bread in the other, and began petting the horses. His fingers caressed their backs, stroked their manes, and they neighed, tossing their heads and stretching their necks. They playfully nipped his hand with their tiny teeth and pressed their warm nostrils against his fingers. Each horse was no bigger than a partridge. He knew every single one of them and could tell you what its story was, where it was from, and how he got it, how it worked, who its parents were, and describe its likes and dislikes—its personality. The backbone of Crouper’s herd, over half of it, consisted of broad-chested bay mares with short, dark red tails. Then came the chestnuts and dark-maned sorrels, eight more bays, four grays, two dapple grays, and two roans—one black roan and one red.
    There were only stallions and geldings. Little mares were worth their weight in gold, and only horse breeders could afford them.
    “Righty, a nice bit of bread,” said Crouper as he crumbled the bread and threw it into the troughs.
    The horses leaned over. When he’d handed out all the bread crumbs and the horses had finished eating, Crouper clapped his hands and commanded loudly:
    “Ha-a-a-rness!”
    With a jerk he lifted the gate that opened all the stalls at once.
    The horses walked along the cleanly swept wooden chute and mingled in a herd, greeting one another, nipping, whinnying, and bucking. The chute led to a partition wall, behind which the sled