Bingo (39 page)

M
ay opened her luscious arms for the horse show. Azaleas blazed, the robins returned in squadrons, and the light shimmered and danced. Our annual show was held at the indoor ring of The Barracks, a high-powered show-jumping stable owned by Claiborne Bishop. Claiborne was an inactive Delta Delta Delta alumna but she made up for it by donating the ring, her expensive jumps, and the announcing system.

At The Barracks at the crack of dawn, the field crew trudged through the deep soft footing to set up the first course. Regina, designer of our course, directed us from the spectators’ platform, which ran the length of the huge indoor arena. Michelle, Mr. Pierre, Diz, and I sank up to our ankles in the brown loam as we hauled around rails, standards, brush, and potted plants. Even at that early hour, children and adults trotted and cantered in the schooling area off the main ring.

Kenny, shining and braided, lounged in his stall and so did Regina’s horse. It wasn’t enough that we worked this damned show, we had to ride in it too; Ursie wanted the classes jam-packed. She huffed and puffed that Tri-Deltas must be out in force to combat the Kappa Kappa Gammas, Kappa Alpha Thetas, Chi Omegas, Delta Gammas, Alpha Delta Phis, and whatever other sorority alumnae showed up to ride or to push their children into it. Ursie’s devotion to Delta Delta Delta, misplaced though it might be, was genuine. We would outshine those other “girls” no matter what.

Verna BonBon was our ringside announcer. Verna didn’t go to college but we’d made her an honorary Tri-Delta last year because she possessed the best voice in town. Also, Verna gave out a lot of free food to hungry people over the years and this was our chapter’s small way of thanking her for community service that we should have done ourselves.

Ursie, staggering under the weight of her crystal foxhead jewelry, actually wore her Delta Delta Delta pin on her expensive Valentino dress. A crescent moon with a trident passing through it snagged holes in the silk pattern but Ursie was beyond caring. This was a small price to pay to be the center of attention. The audience area, decorated with silver, gold, and blue bunting, our sorority colors, must have taken Ursie and her daughters half a day’s work.

“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to our eleventh annual Delta Delta Delta horse show. A big round of applause, please, for Ursie Yost for her spectacular organizing. She vows this year’s show will run like clockwork. Take a bow, Ursie.” Verna’s rich alto crackled over the loudspeakers.

Ursie, in high heels, cheerfully plunged into the middle of the show ring. She took her bows at nine
A.M
. on the dot.

“If she bends over too far she isn’t going to get back up.” I smirked.

“You’re jealous of the jewelry,” Diz commented.

Our little ground crew stayed at the ring level behind a swinging door. The setup was a bit like what you see in the bull-ring. The clowns have a place where they can hide from the bulls. We were the clowns.

The first class of the first division was Small Pony Hunter, which meant the little kids would be up. We’d get the worst spills out of the way immediately. The low jumps discouraged bad accidents but little ones do get pitched over ponies’ heads, slide off the sides, or dismount in terror. As the tots popped over jumps I scanned the audience. The turnout was the best ever, helped by the good weather. Our Runnymede gang showed up: Mom
accompanied by Ed, Louise sulking, Orrie, Mutzi, various BonBons, Muffin Barnes and Gloria Fennell from our stable, Elliwood Baxter, Shirley McConnell, and our entire hunt club. Hunt clubs from Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania showed up for the adult classes. Jill Summers, M.F.H. of Farmington Hunt, brought her kids and adults. Jake Carle II came in with Keswick, a wild and woolly bunch. The Maryland clubs like Goshen Hunt came splendidly appointed, along with Green Spring Valley, Iron Bridge. Mr. Hubbard’s Kent County Hounds were easy to spot: The men wore scarlet with an orchid collar. Apart from Farmington Hunt Club and Keswick, the other Virginia clubs that crowded into the area were Deep Run, Middleburg, Orange County, Warrenton, and Piedmont. From Pennsylvania we drew Rose Tree, Plum Run, Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds, Beaufort, and Radnor. We even had a visitor from Roaring Fork Hounds near Aspen. She wanted to observe how we did things to see if she could run a similar event for the club back home in Colorado.

Ursie’s cleverness was in combining two upscale groups of people, fox-hunters and sorority alumnae, to garner funds. The turnout even stunned Ursie, by nature an optimist.

The morning clicked along right on schedule. Clockwork. Tiffany won a blue ribbon for Large Pony Hunter. Harmony came in a disappointing third in her division but as she was entered in some afternoon classes her hopes remained fresh.

Michelle, smudges on her face, big gloves on her hands, took a lunch break while Diz and Mr. Pierre and I kept working. We’d need to stagger our breaks. Lolly and Pewter sat with Mother and Goodyear. Mom made herself conspicuous by cheering when I’d drive the tractor. I waved my baseball hat at her.

“Amateur owner over thirty years. Next class. All aboard.” Verna’s voice rang out.

“Mr. Pierre, I’m in this one. Can you handle it?”

“Is Michelle coming back?” he sensibly asked.

I pointed to Michelle, eating on the run, already moving toward our holding pen.

“All right, darling, I’ll brave it without you.” He winked at Diz, who winked back.

Riding in a competition is my idea of hell. I become self-conscious and lose my rhythm. Fortunately, Kenny’s a pushbutton horse and he packs me around when I begin to falter. I put on my hunting coat, gray with the gold facings and the B & G hunt buttons. Our club was unusual in that you could wear a black coat or a dark blue one or a gray one. The club was formed by veterans of the War Between the States, and they kept their colors. The worn elbows on my coat shone like peach stones. My cap was nearly bald but if you didn’t peer too closely at me, I looked properly turned out.

Regina brazenly wore a pink coat and top boots. As Master of Foxhounds she could do what she wanted, although traditionally pink coats were worn only by men who have earned their hunt colors. Regina’s one rebellion caused chatter whenever people from other hunt clubs beheld her. I loved it and thought she looked sexy, kind of like when Marlene Dietrich wore a top hat and tails. The mixture of sultry femininity with masculine attire is a high-voltage combination.

Regina rode before me, even though as course designer she shouldn’t have. We figured Ursie could eat a fig. Let Regina have her moment in the sun or under the fluorescent lights.

My turn came next and my throat tightened. Kenny pricked up his ears and trotted out. I cut my teeth on two-and-a-half-foot jumps; actually, it was more like extraction. By this time, theoretically, I knew what to do. Well, I made it around and looked ridiculous. I quickly untacked Kenny after my turn, whipped off my jacket, and hurried back to my post.

A few luncheon drinks enlivened the crowd. Verna got cute on the P. A. system. Ursie swanned about. A perfect day. A perfect
show. Mr. Pierre, Michelle, Diz, and I, physically weary, became punch-drunk. We laughed at everything. One of the lessons a show like this teaches you is that the hunt seat is not superficially acquired. There’s a lot to laugh at.

We were down to the last class and the biggest, Green Working Hunter.
Green
referred to the horse, not the rider. It was a coveted class because people wanted to take their young horses and get in the ribbons. If selling the horse was a future goal, those ribbons would be important.

By now, happily filthy, our little fence crew leaned behind its protective enclosure. Eleven green hunters cantered by us. A fence was chipped here or there, a rail down, but so far so good. The twelfth horse, Tallulah, groomed to perfection, was ridden by Harmony. Harmony’s hands, soft and responsive, nudged up on the animal’s neck as they cleared the first fence. Ursie commanded the center box in the audience. From out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw movement by the far wall of the ring.

“What’s that?” Mr. Pierre pointed.

Michelle, with her twenty-twenty vision, laconically said, “Looks like a skunk to me.”

“It is a skunk.” Diz began laughing, which set off the rest of us.

The animal had endured as much of this show as she could possibly take and had decided to emerge from her carefully concealed hole to put a stop to it. She scolded. She sat up on her hind legs. Harmony didn’t see her. The horse did and refused the fence. Properly taught by Muffin Barnes, Harmony collected the horse, got into a rhythm, made a small half-circle, and again approached the jump. Dutifully, the horse approached the jump, again perceived the mephitic animal on the other side. Harmony sailed over the jump. The horse didn’t. The chestnut mare wheeled and thundered around the ring. By now the audience had spied the source of excitement. The field crew tore out to Harmony. Apart from her pride she was fine. Harmony beat a hasty retreat. The
horse continued to circle the ring. Ursie held her hands over her eyes like a visor and grasped the situation.

“Nickel, get that skunk out of the ring!”

This order displeased me but I had an idea. “Lolly, Pewter, come here.” Pewter rushed into the ring, caught sight of the skunk in full regalia, and rushed right back, the craven coward. Lolly, having encountered this type of creature before, merely stood next to Mother and wagged her tail in cheery encouragement. She had no intention of helping me.

The horse walked up to me. She’d tired of her escapade.

“Tallulah, good girl.” What else do you call a flaming chestnut mare? Tallulah let me lead her to Diz, who walked her into the schooling area.

By now Ursie was fit to be tied—or as Mother would say, “All beshit and forty miles from water.”

“Do your job!” Ursie bellowed at me, her antique-rose lipstick framing her cavernous mouth.

I moved toward the skunk, who wisely scampered away and, as I carefully pursued from a distance, decided to circle the ring. Her tour was accompanied by flicks of her terrible tail but no action as yet.

“Can’t you do anything right!” Ursie vaulted into the ring and as she did, the skunk returned to her nest. Ursie, sweating, stumped up next to me. “There, that takes care of that! Honest to God, you tick me off. Standing here in the middle of the ring. Doing nothing. We’re behind schedule. Do you hear me? Behind schedule! I want this show to run like clockwork!”

Mr. Pierre came alongside me, and Michelle took up a position on the other side.

“Ursie, that’ll do.” Mr. Pierre’s voice conveyed the message that she ought to lay off.

“Oh, shut up, you silly faggot!”

Before we could recover to reply, the skunk made a reappearance, this time with four little heads sticking out of the hole. She
turned, gave a signal, and the skunklets followed. By now Ursie no longer teetered on the brink of hysteria—she plummeted over the edge. Up to her ankles in loam and horse droppings, she made a beeline for the skunk. The stands cheered the skunk, not Ursie. The skunk stood her ground and shooed her babies back into the nest. She waited with cool precision for the arrival of this rabid human.

Ursula Yost received a blast at close range and fell on her knees screaming, “I’m blind! I’m blind!”

Momma skunk, with dignity, sauntered back to her hole and disappeared.

I was laughing so hard I feared all my mother’s potty training would go out the window. Diz sat in the turf, tears rolling down his cheeks as he screamed with laughter. I glanced up in the stands. Mother and Aunt Louise were propping one another up as their sides heaved with wrenching howls. Ed had his arms around both of them and the three of them leaned like the Tower of Pisa. I hoped Aunt Wheeze wouldn’t break a hip if they went over.

I noted that Ursula’s two darlings made no effort to rescue their mother. Foaming at the mouth, Ursie crawled around the ring on all fours. She was unintelligible but I heard a reference to Braille.

Finally the fence crew pulled themselves together. We jogged over to Ursie. Our eyes watered from the potent perfume. I hauled her up.

She could see enough to snarl at me, “Get your hands off me. I never want you to touch me—you—you—”

I let her drop. Mr. Pierre and Diz picked her back up. They turned their faces from her but the aroma was not to be escaped. Michelle reached into her shirt pocket and wiped Ursie’s eyes with a red farmer’s hanky.

Ursie, half sobbing, half growling, lunged at me. “You’re behind this, Nickel Smith, I know you are.”

Michelle, in a firm, gentle voice, said to Ursie: “Jesus loves you but the rest of us think you’re an asshole.”

Out of the mouths of babes. Mr. Pierre and Diz nearly dropped their unwanted burden again. The laughter made them weak.

Michelle Saunders had learned more at the
Clarion
than how to churn out good copy.

T
he message of Christian forgiveness fell upon deaf ears. The pastor droned on. I avoided Mother’s eye because we’d giggle. She’d make references to yesterday’s debacle and that would set me off. Also, Carolyn Chapman, impeccably dressed and sitting in the pew ahead of us, had forgotten to take two curlers out of the back of her hair. We couldn’t look at the pastor without looking at her. That would set us off again. Her husband, Ken, must have been half asleep this morning. You’d think he would have seen the pink sausage-shaped rollers.