Determined to keep Joey, Albert does what he must: His “gentle words and kindnesses of the past” (14) are replaced with shouts and flashes of a whip “whenever felt giving it best” (14). Infuriated, Father threatens to shoot the horse but instead says that Albert must train the horse in one week or Joey will be sold. When Father raises the whip, Joey kicks him. He tells Joey that he has made a bet that he can tame the horse to plow a field within a week and will do whatever it takes to win. Two years after Joey’s arrival, Father staggers into Joey’s stall with a whip. Father’s drinking continues, and he returns home drunk every Tuesday. When he isn’t at school or working, Albert takes Joey on long walks, and Joey learns “to come at his whistle, not out of obedience, but because always want to be with ” (8). Mother insists that Joey can’t understand Albert, but the boy believes there is an “immediate and instinctive bond of trust between ” (7). Albert begins to clean the sweat-soaked horse tenderly, talking to him as he does so. The farmer’s wife and his young son, Albert, visit Joey, and Albert and the horse are immediately drawn to one another. Joey doesn’t go without a fight, however, and by the time they arrive at the farm, he is “soaked with sweat, and the halter rubbed face raw” (3). A few years before the start of World War I, a spirited Red Bay colt named Joey is born in Devon, England, and is quickly bought by a drunken farmer.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |