A Good Horse (19 page)

Rodney had now come into the ring, and Daddy and he shook hands. Rodney was about half the size of Daddy—well, not quite, but Daddy was clearly a cowboy and Rodney was clearly a jockey, and it was funny to watch them together. Daddy looked a little stiff and Rodney looked a little sassy. They all ran around putting the jumps up a hole. I did the course again, then they put the jumps up two holes.

Now Black George was interested. His ears were pricked, and he was taking hold of the bit, and he was tucking his hind end so that his back legs came under me. I could feel this, because it made him incredibly springy and comfortable. I made my circle and headed for the first jump, which was a green and white vertical with some painted boxes underneath the poles. Then there was a triple bar, which is three poles that rise from front to back, which looks scary but isn’t because it always seems to draw the horse upward and over; then there was a
chicken coop; and then a big crossbar, which doesn’t look scary but is, because the horse sees and jumps over the high sides rather than the low middle. Then down over the in-and-out, vertical, and oxer; then back over the brush, this time with a pole across the top; and then the last vertical. They had set the gate in the middle of the last vertical, but Black George just flicked his ears and was over. We made our circle and came down to the trot. I looked over at the three of them. They were all smiling.

Rodney was the first to speak when I got to them. He said, “Are we shippin’ this harse to Cheltn’m for a chaser, then? I’ve got a friend in Lambourn.…”

Jane said, “Much too good a horse for that, Rodney.”

Daddy said, “You all right, Abby?”

I said, “Sure I am.” But they were standing by one of the jumps I had jumped, and I noticed something about it for the first time—the top of the top pole was up to Rodney’s chin and the middle of Daddy’s chest, and that wasn’t even the biggest jump. I said, “How high are these?”

Jane sniffed and opened her mouth to speak, but Rodney said, “Ah, goodness, four feet and a bit. They’re hardly jumps, really. Yer lucky the harse notices ’em.”

Jane said, “Rodney, don’t you have some tack to clean?”

Rodney laughed and didn’t move a muscle.

Daddy said, “Black George did it easy.”

I nodded. But those words,
four feet
, made my heart pound in spite of everything. Once again, I was having two things happen at the same time. One thing was going around the course on Black George, easy and happy, and the other thing
was knowing how big the course was and being scared through my whole body.

It was Rodney who noticed, or at least Rodney who said something. He said, “Give the girl a dram, miss. That’s how we make up our minds to do the big courses, ya know.”

Jane took her whip and smacked him, and said, “Go, please!”

He left, laughing the whole time, and she turned to Daddy and said, “Colonel Hawkins is crazy about Rodney, and he’s a good horseman, but he goes too far at least once a day.”

“Why is he crazy about the fellow?” said Daddy.

“Oh, Rodney makes him laugh. He takes him foxhunting, too. I guess he’s good with the hounds. Drives me crazy, though. Sometimes I think it would be easier to do the work myself. So. Abby! Very good, dear. Do you want to do some more?”

Daddy looked at me. Right then, it was up to me, and there was part of me that had had enough (though I might not have said that if they hadn’t told me how high the fences were), and there was part of me that was ready for another round. I sat there for a moment, then I said, “Don’t you think he’s had enough?”

Daddy said, “We can come back Saturday. For a short time.”

And Jane said, “Let’s do that, then,” and that was the worst thing we could have done.

I
SHOULD HAVE FELT GOOD ABOUT OUR SESSION, AND
I
DID, IN A
way. Daddy was proud of me, Jane gave me a little hug, and I knew that teasing was Rodney’s way of being impressed—with me or the horse, but what was the difference? After we got home and were eating a late lunch, Daddy told Mom, “Well, Sarah, these two are getting better and better, thank the Lord.”

“Of course they are,” said Mom, but she gave me that look that said there was no “of course” about it. Then, while she was rinsing the lunch dishes, she started whistling. But everyone around me was feeling good—including Black George—and I wasn’t. That number, four, was stuck in my head, and I knew we would do that again on Saturday. No big deal, just like Rodney said, at four feet, you’re only starting to be a jumper. Even a regular working hunter jumps four-six.

After lunch, the weather got nice, so Mom and I took Sunshine and Jefferson up the hill, and then we took Lincoln and Sprinkles down to the crick. Daddy spent some time roping the sawcow from Happy’s back, while I rode Effie in the arena, because a friend of Mr. Tacker’s was going to come try Effie sometime soon, either tomorrow or next Monday. Mr. Hacker had bought two horses from us in the spring. The whole time we were riding in the arena, Rusty sat in the middle, keeping an eye on us. She was a funny dog. Sometimes, she came to the window and looked in, and when she saw Mom, she wagged her tail, which was long and bushy. But she knew she couldn’t come inside, and she never asked to. Once, Mom said, “I don’t think we’ve taken Rusty in as much as she’s adopted us as her charges.” That seemed about right. The funny thing was that late that afternoon, when Daddy went into town and Danny and Jake Morrisson showed up to shoe Sprinkles and Effie, Rusty walked right up to Danny and offered him her paw. She seemed to read Mom’s mind, really.

After they were finished shoeing, Jake went into the house for a cup of coffee (and, I’m sure, to give Mom the latest on Danny), and Danny asked me to get out Jack and show him how he was doing. “He’s doing fine,” I said.

“Don’t you want to get him out?”

“It’s almost five o’clock and I’m bushed. I had him out yesterday.”

“Let me get him out, then.”

I shrugged. Danny gave me a look, but then he went and got the training halter and went to the gate of the gelding pasture. Jack didn’t come to him, but Danny didn’t care about
that. He just walked into the pasture and stood quietly, and when the others came over, Jack came with them, and Danny patted him a few times along the side of his neck and stroked around his eye, and Jack dipped his head, and Danny slipped the halter on him. Then he turned and walked toward the gate. Jack walked right after him like a good boy.

I followed them to the pen.

Danny went into the center and sent Jack first to the left and then to the right, on the rope. Then he had him step back a few times, and then step under in both directions. Jack was good, but not perfect, because he was curious about Danny. He kept wanting to sniff his hands, then his chest, then his hair. Finally, Danny laughed, took off his hat, and bent his head, and Jack snuffled around his forehead and down over his ear.

I said, “Why does he want to do that?”

“Just being a baby, I guess.”

Then they did some more stuff—picking up Jack’s feet and dropping them, getting him to stand there quietly on a loose rein. Once he had been allowed to satisfy his curiosity about Danny, he behaved himself a little better.

Danny held the end of the rope out to me. It made me a little irritated. I shook my head.

“What is the matter with you?”

“I said I was tired.”

“What did you do that made you so tired, then?”

“Well, we took Black George out to the stables and jumped him around everything. That was a day’s work right there, but then we had to come home and do everyone else.”

“Hmmp.”

“What do you mean,
Hmmp
?”

“Can’t I say
Hmmp
if I want to?”

I turned around and walked away, mostly because I was getting mad, and I didn’t know why. I went in the barn, but I peeked out and watched Danny work Jack for a few more minutes, then walk him over to the gelding pasture and turn him out again. I stayed in the barn until I saw him drive away with Jake Morrisson. By then it was dark, and time to feed the horses, so I carried out the hay and checked the water.

When I went into the house, Mom was pulling a baked chicken out of the oven. Daddy drove up right then.

Over supper, we were all a little gloomy, I would have to say. I was mad because I was mad because I was mad. Didn’t know why. Mom was always quiet after seeing Danny, and I was sure she had plenty to tell me about what he was doing, but she wouldn’t tell me in front of Daddy, and Daddy knew Danny had been there and that Mom had a lot to tell, but he was too proud to ask her.

It had been a year now since Danny left after he and Daddy had a big fight at supper about whether Danny could go to a worldly movie (about space monsters). Daddy still expected him to come in remorse and ask to move back, but Danny was in the habit of living his own life, and Mom and I knew there was going to be no moving back, and therefore no apology.

Once, in the summer, he had even told Mom that moving out was the best thing he ever did in his whole life, and that night, Mom cried and Daddy marched around alternately saying, “Fine, good for him,” and “The Lord knows what he is doing.” The next day, which was Sunday, Daddy read a lesson
about the Prodigal Son, and everyone at the service got dead quiet, and then, all of a sudden, Mr. Hazen started a long prayer, and frankly, I thought it was embarrassing.

But tonight, I didn’t care about that. I was just mad. I went upstairs to my room after dinner and read an old book I liked, not about horses, a Nancy Drew where Nancy has to climb out of someone’s chimney in order to save herself, and I fell asleep. But of course I knew why I was mad. I was mad at myself because I had been scared of those jumps, and I was still scared of them. Usually, like after the horse show, I liked to lie in bed with my eyes closed and imagine my way around the courses I had taken that day. If I really thought about it, it seemed like I could remember every stride and every jump and every turn, and it was both fun and comforting. The jumps in my mind were beautiful, and I could even see Black George’s ears right in front of me, pointing at them. The feeling of the strides was smooth and easy, and more often than not, I got partway round the course and fell asleep.

But now that I knew those numbers, thinking of the course was like poison. It did put me to sleep, but a bad sleep, not a good sleep. All night long, the jumps looked huge and I was scared. When I got up in the morning, I had to give myself a little talking-to while I was brushing my teeth, about how I was being silly and it was no big deal and I must be crazy to think like this. The jumps were ones I had jumped. It was one thing to be scared of something I had not done, but it was another thing entirely to be afraid of something I actually had had no problem with. But this argument was depressing, too.

Finally, I made myself
not
think about those jumps, and
when it was time to ride Black George, I took him up the hill and rode him along the fence line, looking at the cows. The calves were big now—it’s amazing how fast they grow—and they were jumping around and playing while the cows ate their hay.