A Good Horse (12 page)

“He’s a character,” said Jane.

But he had done everything—cleaned the horse, cleaned the tack, pinned the number to the saddle pad, oiled Black George’s hooves so they shone, combed the mane and the tail. As I rode along, I felt rather proud of how we looked, and then, of course, I had to hope that pride wouldn’t goeth before the fall in this case.

As if she were reading my mind, Jane said, “Now, Abby, you are a lovely rider. I don’t know where the natural talent ends and the years of experience begin. But the sort of lovely rider you are is very modest, if you know what I mean: you do your job and stay out of everyone’s way. That’s fine in your over-fences classes—you want the horse to seem as though he is taking care of everything in a hunter class. But in your hack class, where you’re all together and going around the ring not jumping, you want to make sure that every time the judge looks at a horse, your horse is the one he sees. I wouldn’t say this if you had a poorly trained horse, but you have a well-trained horse, nice-looking, with good conformation and movement. He is not flashy, though, and he doesn’t have any white markings to draw the judge’s eye. Therefore, my dear, put yourself out there where the judge can’t miss you, okay?”

“Okay.”

But first there was the jumping class. The course was once again fairly simple, a figure eight followed by a long loop across the center of an in-and-out followed by a chicken coop, and then a turn to the brush, around the first jump and across the center, over a jump set perpendicular to the others. I walked the course with my feet and then with my fingers, and then I jumped in the warm-up and did everything Jane told me, and then I was in the ring, and Black George was trotting, circling, cantering, and the next thing I knew, we were turning left down the long loop, right over the brush, then around the first jump and across the center, over some natural poles. I sat up, came to the trot, and left the arena with a smile.

It wasn’t until I was back out in the warm-up arena that I felt my left leg throbbing inside the boot. I took my foot out of the stirrup and twisted it around and around, first to the outside, then to the inside. Jane came over. She was very pleased. She said, “That should be a winning ride. We’ll see. Depends on how big a hangover the judge has this morning and whether he’s seeing double or not.” She grinned, then became very serious. She wasn’t exactly the same person I had thought she was.

She watched the other rounds—there were eight after me. Three horses had refusals, which was very bad for a hunter, and one of those plus one other knocked rails down, which, according to Jane, wasn’t good but wasn’t terribly bad if the horse’s form was good. Sophia Rosebury’s gray mare had a good round. The lady who had fallen off the day before did not fall off this time, but her horse bucked twice, also not good for a hunter. A hunter was supposed to buzz around like a robot, so that you, the rider, could keep your mind on the fox or blow your horn
for the hounds or something like that. I said, “Jane, have you ever gone foxhunting?”

“Oh, I grew up doing that, in Pennsylvania. Radnor Hunt. Twice a week when I could skip school. But then I moved out here.”

“Can you hunt here?”

“If you want to hunt coyotes. But it’s not the same when you’ve done the other. My favorite place to hunt is France. They hunt stags in the forests. I love Picardy. You go out into the forest all day, and then you eat ham and cheese omelets and drink brandy by the fire at night.” She smiled. “I only did it once, but I can’t wait to do it again. No jumping, but it’s fun.”

The last horse, a small bay, completed his round. I thought he had seven good jumps, but one was bad—he paused in front of the brush and leapt from almost a standstill. When they called us in for the ribbons, Sophia’s mare was first and Black George was second. Jane said, “She was third in the class yesterday, did I tell you that? So you’re ahead, but just. This hack class will tell the tale.” She turned and put her hand on my stirrup and stared up at me. She said, “That’s a very expensive mare, Abby, and Black George has her beat at this point. She’s perfect in the hack class and often wins, but she has a bit of a Roman nose.”

“What difference does that make?”

“The judge will
always
go for the pretty one, if all things are equal.”

“Daddy says a pretty head is worth money.”

“Sad to say, he’s right. It’s only English people who think a Roman nose is a sign of character in a horse.”

The hack class was called, and the other horses began to
file into the ring. Jane sent me in right after Sophia and her mare, which I now knew was named Lorena, as in “The years creep slowly by, Lorena,” one of Daddy’s favorite non-hymns. I knew without Jane saying anything that my job was to stick with Lorena and get between her and the judge as often as I could without seeming rude or pushy. Sophia knew that, too. I could tell by the way she sometimes looked at me that even if the day before she might not have known my name or who in the world Black George was, now she did. I also knew that she could see that my sleeves were too short and my boots too tight and my breeches too big.

The announcer asked for a trot, and I lifted my chin and floated by her, sort of the way the Big Four floated by the rest of us in seventh grade, as if we weren’t to be looked at. No, that was wrong. The real thing to do was to float by everyone the way the Goldman twins did—not feeling self-conscious at all, just going about your much more interesting life because it actually is much more interesting. I thought, Alexis Barbara Alexis Barbara, and passed two of the others, too, including the woman who always fell off. I could hear her talking: “Easy now. Easy now. Settle down!” Her horse did not look excited, though. We were asked to reverse. This time, I didn’t pass Sophia and Lorena. I stayed two lengths behind them and matched them stride for stride. Only when we came to the end of the arena did I let Black George go to the inside and pass them. Sophia gave me a dirty look, which I
felt
but did not
see
.

Now we were told to canter. I sat down, lifted my inside hand. I felt Black George lighten up his shoulder and rise to the canter like a bird rising on a breath of air. It was delicious.
Frankly, it was so pleasant that I forgot for a moment about Sophia and winning and eleven thousand dollars, and just cantered to the end of the arena for fun. Then we were asked to hand-gallop. I got into my half seat, and Black George extended his stride. It occurred to me that the easiest thing to do right then would be just to keep going and jump right out of the arena.

But I didn’t do that.

When I passed Jane, she was smiling.

Halt.

We halted.

Trot on.

We trotted on.

Reverse.

We reversed and then cantered again.

I guess it was about then that I realized that I had lost track of Sophia and Lorena completely and in fact was more or less off in my own little world.

Then the others were lining up, so we came down to the walk and turned across the center. In the row of horses and riders, I stood between the little bay and the falling-off lady. The announcer called my name and the ringmaster held up the blue ribbon, and I walked right up to him as if I had expected that very thing. I held out my hand. He put the blue ribbon in it. I was so excited without realizing it that I headed the wrong direction, and Jane had to wave to me to get me to come out of the arena.

Five minutes later, I had a little silver dish in my hand. It was very pretty, small, with six petals, like a flower, and writing—the
name of the horse show and the word
Champion
written on it. The championship ribbon was larger than the regular ribbons, with a long blue streamer, a long red streamer, and a long yellow streamer. Jane hung it from Black George’s browband, down the side of his face. He looked very elegant.

Jane was grinning, and as we walked by Colonel Hawkins, she looked him in the eye and said, “Congratulations!” in a high, singsong voice, but what she really meant was “Take that!” The colonel smiled at her—he was her boss, after all—but Sophia gave us a very dirty look.

Rodney met us at the gate with a rag in his hand. While we were walking back to the barn, he wiped Black George’s mouth and face, then ran the rag down his neck. He said, “That all for the day, then, miss?”

“For now,” said Jane.

For now? My ears should have pricked up, but they didn’t. Half of me was still staring at those waving streamers in the championship ribbon, and half of me was starving. When we got back to the barn and I dismounted, though, I nearly fell down—my leg was numb from the boot.

Rodney caught me and stood me on my feet.

“Oh my goodness,” said Jane. “That boot is killing you! Why didn’t you say anything?” She led me over to the mounting block and sat me down, then started pulling off the boot. It wasn’t easy, and once Rodney had put Black George in the stall, he had to help. It felt like they were pulling off my foot. They pressed on the toe, then pulled on the toe, then wobbled the heel, then pressed on the toes, then pulled on the heel. Rodney finally stood with his back to me, bending over and
holding the heel. Then he said, “Put yer foot right on me arse, lass, and give me a push.”

Jane said, “Rodney!” But she laughed.

I did what he told me, and he managed to pull the boot off. Then Jane slipped off the stocking, unbuttoned my breeches leg, and began to rub my calf. It started to tingle and then started to burn, and then Rodney started slapping the bottom of my foot and rubbing my ankle. First it felt normal, and then the muscle down the side of my leg started to hurt. Miss Slater said, “You need to walk around. Get the circulation moving! I’ll go to the office and get your things.” While she was doing this, Rodney got Black George out of the stall and took him over to the hose. There was something very nice about sitting on the mounting block and having someone else take care of the horse. I thought I could get used to that really quickly.

Jane came back with my jodhpur boots and the World War II twill jodhpurs, and I went into Black George’s stall and changed. Then I walked around, as she had told me to do, until my leg was no longer throbbing, just aching a little bit. Then she said, “Abby, you must be starving,” and took me to the food tent, where she bought me a cheeseburger and fries and that Coke that I had had in the back of my mind since breakfast. Mom and Daddy and I were not the kind of people who went to the food tent—we were the kind of people who packed along some sandwiches and fruit and drank from the drinking fountain—so sitting in the food tent with a juicy cheeseburger and some very crisp fries was fun. I said, “Thank you for everything, M—Jane, but I am a little afraid of getting used to this.”

“You mean, getting to be like Sophia Rosebury. I know. That girl hasn’t cleaned a stall in her life.”

“Well, I didn’t mean that, exactly, only that if I get used to this, then—” But at that moment I thought about my regular life, the life of the geldings and the mares and rubbing down Jack and having lessons from Jem Jarrow and riding down to the crick and up to the cows and calves, and I realized that this was fun, but a whole life of it wouldn’t be. So I said, “You should come visit us sometime.”

“Try it your way? I would like that. I could wear jeans instead of breeches and high boots all the time.”

I nodded. Then I said, “Does Rodney ride?”

“Oh, my dear. Makes your hair stand on end. He’ll ride anything. I think he was born riding chasers in Newmarket.”

“Chasers?”

“Steeplechasers. They race over jumps.”

“Like in
National Velvet
.”

“Exactly. Did you like that book?”

“I liked the parts I understood. I couldn’t picture some of it.”

“Very English. Did you see the movie?”

I shook my head. “We don’t see movies or have a TV.”

“Well, the riding parts were filmed right around here. That was twenty years ago, but you can tell. The sunlight is not like England, that’s for sure. Anyway, Rodney had a bad accident and lost his nerve a bit, so Colonel Hawkins got him over here to do something different.”

“He seems nice.”

“It’s been two years and he still rides, but I don’t know if he’ll ever race over fences again. Anyway, here’s a Rodney story. There’s a lady who has a stud farm out in the valley. She
breeds racehorses. She had a very tough two-year-old that they had not been able to break, and her farm manager happened to meet Rodney at a party. The two of them had had a lot to drink, and Rodney started to boast about how he could break anything, horses in England are a lot tougher than in California, et cetera. Then he woke up the next morning to a phone call taking him up on his boast—which he could not remember, in fact. But he got up and went out there.

“They had the colt in a stall. Rodney got on him in the stall, and at once, the colt leapt up and bashed Rodney’s head into the ceiling. Fortunately, he had his hard hat on, but it sort of knocked him out and pushed the hard hat so far down on his head that he couldn’t get it off. Then the horse leapt forward and rammed his own head into the front wall of the stall, and knocked himself out—he went to his knees and sort of reeled around, but he didn’t fall over. A minute or so later, both Rodney and the horse came to, and Rodney was still sitting on the horse. After that, the horse was broke—Rodney stayed on, the horse was convinced, and he was good. Rodney has been a little more cautious since then, I must say.”

I was impressed by this story—it reminded me of Uncle Luke. I said, “That lady should get to know Jem Jarrow.”

“Who’s that?”

“He helps us with the difficult horses. He lives on a ranch.”

“Hmm.” But I could see that she had lost interest already.

After we threw our paper plates into the trash can, Jane said, “What time do you expect your dad?”

“Church is over about four. Sometimes, if the singing is really good, they go to almost five.” Suddenly, I hoped that the singing would not be really good today. It made me sad to
miss it. Jane looked at me for a long moment, then said, “How many hours are you at church on Sunday?”