A Summer Without Horses (7 page)

T
HIS HAS GOT
to be the worst summer of my whole life. All my problems began when my three brothers built a tree house. At dinner one night, Dad got all misty-eyed about some tree house that he’d had when he was a kid and how the happiest memories of his boyhood all seemed tied to that tree house. No girls were allowed inside. Dad went on and on about how he and his best friends spent their finest hours there. You get the idea, I’m sure. Chad, he’s my oldest brother, and Alex, he’s my twin, got this idea that they should build a tree house for Dad for a birthday present. Michael, our youngest brother, said he’d like to help. I thought it was an okay idea and said they could count me in. What a mistake.

I didn’t even have a chance to remind them that I got an A in woodworking (it was my only A that semester)
before they all reminded me that Dad’s tree house was “No Girls Allowed” and said that theirs was, too.

Both of our parents are lawyers so it’s not unusual for us to draw on The Law in family disagreements. Naturally, I informed them that the Constitution guaranteed equal treatment of all. They reminded me that the Equal Rights Amendment hadn’t passed. I tried to explain to them that it hadn’t passed because the majority felt that the Constitution already guaranteed equality to women. The discussion went along in that vein for a while. Then it reverted to a screaming match and I took the opportunity to explain to each of my brothers just exactly how I really felt about them. There’s no need for me to go into the specifics of what I said because it didn’t work anyway. I wasn’t going to be allowed into the tree house at any point—even during construction.

All through the week of summer vacation that it took the three of them to build the tree house, there was a big sign outside saying
NO
GIRLS
ALLOWED
. This is what my mother would call waving a red flag in front of an angry bull. In this case I’m the bull.

One night my brothers were all getting ready to go out to a baseball game with their scout troops. Nobody was near the tree house, so I climbed up to explore. I wasn’t all that high, either. I have to confess that I thought it was a pretty neat tree house, though I’m sure my friends, Carole and Lisa, and I could build an even nicer one and I’ve got a tree in mind for just that purpose when I get
better. As soon as my friends get back from their trips, I’m going to get them to do it. It’ll be a good project for us since we can’t go riding together the way we usually do, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Just as I was trying to see how my brothers had made the walls so nice and snug, I heard voices down below. It was the three of them. Apparently they wanted to look at the tree house just one more time before they left for the game.

There was no way I’d let them have the satisfaction of seeing that I couldn’t stay out of the tree house. I had to get out, but I couldn’t go back out the door because my brothers were on that side, climbing up the ladder. Instead I went out a window on the other side of the tree house. I could see there was a tree branch right there and I thought maybe I could sit on it, sort of below the window.

It didn’t work. I got out of the window and onto the branch all right, and I even straddled the branch. But that was the last thing that went right and it was partly my brothers’ fault. They were jostling the tree as they climbed up and that jostled the branch I was sitting on.

Everybody dreams about how much fun it would be to slide down a bannister, right? Keep on dreaming about that, but don’t
ever
dream about sliding down maple branches. It’s not a dream, it’s a nightmare. I slid all the way down—bannister style. I’ve been back to check it out since that day and I counted all the smaller branches,
twigs, and shoots I slid over: twenty-seven. In about eighteen seconds, the place on me where I usually sit got severely bumped twenty-seven times! The final indignity was when I landed on the ground.

My brothers watched a lot of this from the tree house and have told everybody it was very funny. This will give you an idea of their idea of humor and it will show how obnoxious my brothers can be.

“She went
thud
! ‘
Yeoooooowwwwwwwch!
’ ” Michael says, when he can tell the story without laughing too hard to get through it.

It wasn’t funny. It hurt—really hurt. My hands were scratched, there were bruises on my legs, and my face was red where it had been slapped by a branch that popped up at me. Those all healed quickly. What didn’t heal quickly was another part. The doctor called it a bone bruise on my coccyx. That’s the part of the spine that would be a human’s tail if we humans had tails. It’s a part of your body you just never think about until it’s not working right and mine doesn’t work right, especially when it comes to sitting down.

There isn’t much they can do for me. I got a pillow to sit on that’s shaped like a donut. That’s the polite way to describe it. When it comes right down to it, it bears a close resemblance to a toilet seat. This was pointed out to me by my brothers who think it’s hysterically funny. As far as I’m concerned, they spend entirely too much time
in the tree house, laughing at me and my pillow and thinking things are hysterically funny that aren’t.

This all sounds pretty horrible, I know, but it’s not even the worst of it. Sitting down is something a person can do without for a long time, unless that person happens to be horse-crazy. If you want to ride a horse, you’ve got to be able to sit down and there’s nothing I like better than riding horses. I even like riding horses better than wreaking revenge on my brothers and that’s a lot. And now I can’t ride. I’m totally off horses for almost a month and I think it’s the worst thing that has ever happened to me.

Now that I’ve told you how awful my brothers can be, and you’re probably feeling sorry for me, there’s a good side of this, too. My friends Lisa and Carole have been totally wonderful.

As soon as I got back from the doctor, I called both of them. We’ve got three-way calling on our phone and it’s a lifesaver when it comes to The Saddle Club because it means we can have Saddle Club meetings even when we’re not together. Before my parents got three-way calling, I’d spend the whole night on the phone talking with one or the other of my friends. Now I can spend the whole night on the phone, talking with both of them. It’s perfect.

Anyway, I called them both and told them I’d hurt my bottom and I couldn’t sit down.

“You mean you can’t
ride
?!!” Carole said. Of course, she got it right away. So did Lisa.

“Oh, no, how are you going to get into a saddle?” Lisa asked.

I explained that I couldn’t. We talked about how awful that was for a long time. See, it’s very awful, so there was a lot to talk about.

The next day, we met at Pine Hollow. The two of them had convinced me that even if I couldn’t ride, I could be around horses and besides, they wanted to see me. Since it’s summer and we don’t have school, we usually all go to the stable every day. It only makes sense, even if I couldn’t ride.

The problem with going to Pine Hollow that morning was that I’d spent the whole time I was walking there thinking about how hard it was going to be to watch my friends ride when I couldn’t. I could see Carole on Starlight, having a wonderful time as she worked on his training—and hers. And then there was Lisa, still working hard to catch up to learn as much as Carole and I know because Lisa started riding after we did. She was doing so well that I realized she might even catch up and pass me while I was grounded.

By the time I reached the stable, I was crying all over again. Carole and Lisa immediately hugged me and they took me into the grain storage room where nobody could see how awful I looked, or laugh at my pillow, or overhear our conversation.

My friends told me it was going to be okay and then they hugged me some more. That made me cry some more
because it didn’t seem to me that there was anything that could happen that would make it be okay.

“It just isn’t fair that one of us can’t ride,” said Lisa.

“Right,” said Carole.

“If one of us can’t ride, maybe none of us should be able to.”

Lisa blinked a few times, then said, “Right.”

That’s how it happened. I swear it. I had nothing to do with it. They thought of it themselves.

I was still crying when Lisa turned to me and said, “I promise, Stevie, that as long as you can’t ride, I won’t ride.”

“Me, too,” said Carole.

That made me stop crying. I could hardly believe it. When I think back on it, it was the craziest thing any of us had ever done, but at the time, it seemed totally logical. My friends were trying to make me feel better and I’ve got to tell you, it made me feel better. How could anyone ask to have more generous friends than I do?

“It’s a pledge from our hearts,” Lisa said, putting her hand on her heart. She can be very dramatic sometimes.

“Absolutely,” Carole promised.

Now, that would have been enough for me and I would have been glad to have it end there, but Lisa decided to carry it one step further. The next thing I knew they’d added an “or else” to the pledge. If any one of the three of us rode a horse before the doctor declared me well, that person would have to invite Veronica diAngelo to join The Saddle Club.

A word about Veronica diAngelo:
Bleaaaaaaaaauuugh!

If, for a second, I had doubted my friends’ sincerity about their pledge, all doubt was now gone. The very idea of inviting Veronica to join us was so horrible I knew neither one would break the pledge.

I couldn’t imagine how they’d manage to do it, but over the next few days they each dropped a bomb. Lisa and her mother were going to Los Angeles to visit a sick aunt. Carole was going to New York with her father. That simplified the whole pledge thing for them. As long as they weren’t going to be around horses, they wouldn’t even be tempted!

The problem was that that left me all alone in Willow Creek, Virginia, with nothing to do.

“Don’t be silly,” Carole said in her most matter-of-fact, motherly voice. “Of course you’ve got lots of things to do. First of all, you can spend every day here, helping out. You know there’s always a lot to be done with horses that you can do standing up.”

“Sure,” I said. “Then what’s the second thing I can do?”

“Get into trouble!”

Lisa and Carole laughed at that one. I’ll even admit that I did, too.

Later on, I figured out that Carole is a very wise girl, because I proceeded to do both of the things she’d suggested!

I
NEED
TO
tell you a little bit about Max Regnery and his mother. They own and run the stable. We call Max by his first name and we call his mother Mrs. Reg. Max is our main riding instructor and he’s a really great teacher. I can’t say that about everybody who teaches me things (like don’t get me started on my science teacher!), but Max is wonderful. He makes us work very hard and he doesn’t take any nonsense. He won’t even let us talk in class. I swear he can see out of the side of his head, too, because he can give instructions to three riders at once and he never makes a mistake about what they’re doing wrong.

Mrs. Reg is the stable manager. She takes care of the business of the stable and that includes chores. Everybody at Pine Hollow is expected to work. We all tack up our
own horses before we ride and then untack, groom, and water them when we’re done. If Mrs. Reg catches anyone standing idle, the next thing they know, they’ve been handed a pitchfork and pointed toward a stall that needs mucking out.

When I realized I wasn’t going to be able to ride for at least three weeks, I was afraid I’d spend the entire time mucking out stalls. It didn’t turn out that way at all. I reported to Mrs. Reg for job assignments and she turned me right over to Max.

“Oh, Stevie! This is terrible!” Max said. Of course he understands how awful it is not to be able to ride. Then he got a look on his face that said that maybe this wasn’t so bad after all.

“But if you can’t work on your own riding skills, perhaps you’d like the opportunity to help others work on theirs.”

“Huh?”

“First Session starts today. Would you like to help?”

During the summer, Max runs a day camp for riders. There are three two-week sessions, beginning with the youngest, most inexperienced riders and working up through the intermediates to the experts. They are all grouped by age rather than experience, though they tend to go together. First Session was for six- through eight-year-olds.

“You want me to be like a counselor?” I asked.

“Well, more like a counselor-in-training. I know it’s
not the same thing as riding, but it’s as close as you can get. And think about what good you’ll be doing as a role model and helping our very newest, youngest riders to get the right start.”

I could feel a grin coming. I’m a sucker for that kind of sales pitch.

“I’ll try, Max. I’ll really try,” I said, and I meant it, too. “When a rider gets the right training from the very first, there’s no limit to how far they can go, is there?”

“None whatsoever,” Max assured me. “And as long as you stick to horses and stay out of trouble, you can be an enormous help.”