Life's Minor Collisions

by Frances Lester Warner; Gertrude Chandler Warner

It was time to start. The band led off. Joy to the world, thought the horse, the band is gone. The rest of the cavalry moved forward in docile files, but not he. If that band was going away, he would be the last person to pursue it. Instead of going forward, he backed. He backed and backed. There is no emergency brake on a horse. He would have backed to the end of the procession, through the Knights of Columbus, the Red Cross, the Elks, the Masons, the D.A.R., the Fire Department, and the Salvation Army, if it had not been for the drum-corps that led the infantry. The drum-corps behind him was as terrifying as the band in front. To avoid the drum-corps, he had to spend part of his time going away from it. Thus his progress was a little on the principle of the pendulum. He backed from the band until he had to flee before the drums.

The ranks of men were demoralized by needless mirth. Army life dulls the sensibilities to the spectacle of suffering. They could do nothing to help, except to make a clear passage for Geoffrey as he alternately backed from the brasses and escaped from the drums. Vibrating in this way, he could only discourse to his horse with words of feigned affection, and pray for the panic to pass off. With a cranky automobile, now, one could have parked down a side street, and later joined the procession, all trouble repaired. But there was nothing organic the matter with this horse. Geoffrey could not have parked him in any case, because it would have been no more possible to turn him toward the cheering crowds on the pavement than to make him follow the band. The crowds on the street, in fact, began to regard these actions as a sort of interesting and decorative manœuvre, so regular was the advance and retirement—something in the line of a cotillion. And then the band stopped playing for a little. Instantly the horse took his place in the ranks, marched serenely, arched his slim neck, glanced about. All was as it should be.

Geoffrey's place was just behind the marshal, supposedly to act as his aide. During all this absence from his post of duty, the marshal had not noticed his defection or turned around at all. Now he did so, hastily.

“Just slip back, will you,” he said, “and tell Monroe not to forget the orders at the reviewing stand.”

Geoffrey opened his mouth to explain his disqualifications as courier, but at that moment the band struck up, and his charger backed precipitately. The marshal, seeing this prompt obedience to his request, faced front, and Geoffrey was left steadily receding, no time to explain—and the drum-corps was taking a vacation. There was, therefore, no reason for the horse ever to stop backing, unless he should back around the world until he heard the band behind him again. As he backed through the ranks of infantry, Geoffrey shouted the marshal's message to the officer of the day. He had to talk fast—ships that pass in the night. But the message was delivered, and he could put his whole mind on his horse.

He tried all the signals for forward locomotion that he could devise. Mother had told him that some horses wait for light touches from their master's hand or foot. Geoffrey touched his animal here and there, back of the ear—at the base of the brain. He even kicked a trifle. He jerked the reins in Morse Code and Continental, to the tune of S O S. The horse understood no codes.

They were now in the ranks of the Knights of Columbus, and the marching boys were making room for them with shouts of sympathetic glee. Must they back through the Red Cross, where all the girls in town were marching, and into the Daughters of the Revolution float where our mother sat with a group of ladies around the spinning-wheel? Geoffrey remembered that the Red Cross had a band, if it would only play. It struck up just in time. The horse instantly became a fugitive in the right direction. On they sped, the reviewing stand almost in sight. The drum-corps had not begun to play. Could they reach the cavalry before it was too late? Geoffrey hated to pass the reviewing stand in the guise of a deserter, yet here he was cantering among the Odd Fellows, undoubtedly A.W.O.L.

But Heaven was kind. The drums waited. Through their ranks dashed Geoffrey at full speed, and into the midst of his companions. The reviewing stand was very near. At a signal, all bands and all drums struck up together. The horse, in stable equilibrium at last, daring not to run forward or to run backward, or to bolt to either side, fell into step and marched. Deafening cheers, flying handkerchiefs; Geoffrey and his horse stole past, held in the ranks by a delicate balance of four-cornered fear. If you fear something behind you and something in front of you, and things on both sides of you, and if your fear of all points of the compass is precisely equal, you move with the movements of the globe. Geoffrey's horse moved that way past the stand.

People took their pictures. Our father, beaming down from the galaxy on the stand, was pleased. Later he told Geoffrey how well he sat his horse.

But that evening Geoffrey had a talk with his mother, as man to man. He told her that, if these Victory Parades were going to be held often, he should vote for compulsory military training for the horse. He told her the various things his horse had done, how he went to and fro, going to when urged fro, and going fro when urged not to.