The Amish Blacksmith by Mindy Starns Clark

to me. I had learned how to recognize stress in a horse by noting the physical cues, but nothing in farrier school or my own experience had instructed me on how to hear a horse tell me he’d been abused by a man.
    Priscilla tipped her head. “What?” she said, in an annoyed tone.
    â€œI’m just… I was just wondering how Patch told you he’d been… uh, abused by a man. That’s all.”
    Priscilla shook her head and continued tossing forkfuls of hay into the open stall. Stubble flew everywhere. Was she not going to answer me?
    â€œCan’t I ask?” I said, laughing lightly.
    â€œCan’t you guess?”
    I paused to sort through any possible ideas I might have as to how Patch communicated such a thing. I was stumped.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œYou think he whispered it in my ear?” she said crossly.
    I couldn’t help but laugh again. “Did he?”
    Priscilla stood erect and leaned the pitchfork against the stall’s back wall. “According to Scripture, only two animals have ever spoken,” she said, hands on hips. “The serpent, to Eve, and the donkey, to Balaam. Otherwise, it’s not a part of God’s plan for animals to talk to humans.”
    â€œHey, you’re the one who said you were listening to him.”
    â€œI wasn’t implying actual speech!” She stared at me for a long moment, her eyes narrowing before she added, “And here I always thought you were different.”
    She started to come toward me and would have passed me and gone out of the barn had I not stepped in front of her.
    â€œWait! Come on. I thought you could take a joke.”
    She blinked at me. “Is that what we’re doing here, Jake? Joking? Well, then in that case. Yes, Patch leaned in and whispered it in my ear. Ha-ha.”
    Again, she started to move past me. Before I could think it through, I reached out and stopped her. She looked down at my hand on her elbow, and I quickly dropped my arm.
    â€œPriscilla, please. We used to be friends. Why are you acting like this?”
    At least she had the decency to blush.
    â€œFine,” she said. “It was clear to me just by interacting with Patch that he had been abused by someone. Then, when Uncle Amos came into the stable this morning to tell me about the auction, Patch reared up and became very upset. When you came in a little while later, Patch didn’t react at all.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œSo the big difference between you and Uncle Amos was that he had his hat on when Patch saw him and you didn’t. Patch was afraid of the person in the hat. Men wear hats. Thus, I concluded that he was abused by a man. Simple, see?”
    She left me in the stable to think on this, which I did as I finished up with Big Sam and put the buggy away. While I appreciated Priscilla’s interesting deductions, I doubted she was right. It couldn’t be that easy.
    Still, it wouldn’t hurt to test out her theory. When I was done with Big Sam and finally free to work with Patch, I intentionally kept my hat on as I walked into his stall. My presence hadn’t been all that disturbing to him before, but this time, to my surprise, the moment he saw me, he pawed the ground at his feet and whinnied as though he’d been poked with a hot iron.
    I took off my hat.

S EVEN
    E ven hatless, the only way I could get Patch to calm down was to walk off and leave him alone for a while. My stomach was growling, so I decided to go back to the cottage, where I made myself a giant glass of iced tea and two ham sandwiches. As I sat at the table and ate every last crumb, I wrote out a fee schedule for my services and went over my notes from farrier school. Then I cleaned up my dishes, shoved four apples into a paper bag, and headed off. I still had nearly an hour before Natasha’s driver would pick me up, which gave me enough time to work with Patch a little more, assuming he’d calmed down by