Catch Rider (9780544034303) (19 page)

I went into the other room to watch television, and they stayed in the kitchen to put dishes away. I could hear them talking.

“You're only going to have one day in New York before the show?” she asked. “Most people take three or four to get the horses used to it.”

“Can't afford it, Melinda.”

“I know,” she said.

“She can do it,” he said.

They cleaned up for a few more minutes.

She spoke again. “How long before I stop worrying he's gonna come get us while we're sleeping?”

“To tell you the truth,” Wayne said, “I think he's too much of a chickenshit.”

And then I heard her laugh—“Ha!”—just the way Wayne did. They sounded exactly alike.

T
HAT NIGHT
, I tried on my coat and breeches and polished the boots. Melinda knocked and opened the door. She looked at me like she wasn't sure I wanted her in there, and that made me feel bad.

“The coat's a little big in the waist,” she said. “See—hold your arms out.”

I held my arms out like a scarecrow and looked in the mirror. There was too much material hanging on the sides.

“Want me to take it in?”

“No time.”

“I can do it.”

There was a long silence after that. I couldn't remember the last time she'd done anything to help me, and my brain just froze.

“All right,” I said at last. “If you're a hundred percent sure, because I don't have a backup.”

“I'm a hundred percent sure,” she said. “I tell you one thing, your daddy would be riding up to New York with you and Wayne. He'd be so proud of you.”

I wanted to be happy that she said that, but it made me kind of angry. “I wish you'd said this a long time ago. You've been letting that scumbag run our lives for a long time.”

“Well, he's out, ain't he?”

“He's out 'cause I got him out,” I said.

“If I'd known . . . I would have done it myself.”

I wasn't sure she would have, but I knew she believed it.

“I'm sorry that's what it took.”

I shrugged, not wanting to say any more and make her feel bad.

“Your daddy would want you to win.”

She pinned the jacket and pulled the seams apart. She didn't have her sewing machine at Wayne's, but she told me she'd finish the coat before I left.

The next day, I met Ruthie for lunch and told her what had happened. She went with me to our house so I could get the sewing machine. Donald's stuff was still at the end of the driveway. I looked up and down the street for any sign of him.

Ruthie and I sat on the front porch and talked. She was mad at me for disappearing and not telling her what was going on. I said I was sorry. I told her my mother was exhausted and shaken up, and she said she would come by and check on her while I was gone. She wished me good luck and said to beat their pants off, and I laughed. Then I asked her what I'd been dreading: “Are you going away to boarding school?” She said she was. Some fancy school near Staunton. I felt my heart sink. She said she was coming home every weekend, and she made me promise her that we would do something together every Saturday. She asked if I would drive Dorine to school once I got my license, and I said I would, even though it would be a year or so.

She handed me a tiny box, and I opened it. It was a little piece of rose quartz on a thin gold chain. I put the necklace on and she fastened it for me.

“I found it on our trip to the Trueheart Mine. I thought it might bring you some good luck.”

She looked shy when she said this, and I realized that it wasn't about luck at all. She was giving it to me so I wouldn't forget we were friends. But I knew we'd stay close, because things were always the same with us. She told me I could come visit her at boarding school and that there were a lot of horses at the school that I could ride.

 

On the way back to Wayne's, when I got to the top of the main road, I found myself peeling down toward the hollow, toward where June lived. I parked at the ram and walked through the woods. I knew where the house was—I could have found it blindfolded if a bear didn't get me first. I had absorbed the map of these woods by osmosis. I had learned that word in biology, and I loved it. Osmosis is when molecules move across a membrane on their own, without anyone pushing them. They just do it. I liked the idea of things happening on their own, without anyone pushing them.

The woods were very thick. June and his brother and sister wanted it that way so no one would find them, and they didn't clear the underbrush. I picked my way through the black locust, bull thistle hedges, and autumn olive. I knew that June had a trail somewhere but I couldn't see it. One time
National Geographic
came to look for the family, and the lady at the post office sent the reporters to the wrong hollow on purpose, just like the locals used to do to the revenuers back during Prohibition.

I saw smoke and knew I was almost there. I rounded a ridge and saw the little cabin. Boy, that wood fire smelled good. I wondered if they would invite me in and we'd sit down and eat biscuits together, like in a fairy tale.

Before I had taken another breath, there was a shotgun in my face. Maybelle was on the other end of it.

“Damn it, Maybelle, I'm Jimmy's daughter!”

“You ain't,” she said in a high mountain squeak.

“The hell I ain't.”

Maybelle was about eighty. She wore an old sweater and pants and men's boots. She had long gray hair and steely bright blue eyes that didn't even look real. Her face was so wrinkled that she looked like one of those apple-faced dolls that had been sitting in a closet too long.

June came out of the house, and then I saw the older brother, Clifford, behind the house chopping wood, his eyes on me like a hawk.

“June, tell your sister who I am,” I said.

“That's Jimmy's girl, Maybelle!”

She lowered the shotgun. “I thought it was a b'ar,” she said. “I was going to shoot him and can him for the winter.” She smiled and showed her gums.

Good Lord,
I thought.
Canning bear.
“I just wanted to—”

“Well, darn it, girl, I ain't seen you since you was about this tall.” June held his hand out in front of him. He was lean, weathered and wrinkly, a little stooped, about seventy. He had a big toothless grin, thick glasses, and short gray hair that his brother must have trimmed for him.

I'd forgotten how chatty he was. Once he got to talking, he didn't stop. He was like a child living deep in the woods. He knew very little about life outside. One time, he spent the night on our couch because the next day was the beginning of revival week at the church. I got up in the middle of the night to find him watching static on the television, sitting up straight as a board, his eyes wide. He had never seen it before, and he couldn't look away. Boy, that gave me the shivers.

I remembered Wayne telling June about Jimmy's accident when June was standing outside the gas station eating a candy bar. He came out to buy one about three times a year. After Wayne told him, June took the candy bar and threw it away.

June seemed to read my mind now. He stopped talking and looked down at the dirt. “I bet you miss him something awful.”

I nodded.

“I reckon it was his time.”

“Sure didn't seem like it to me,” I said.

June just looked up into the trees and we listened to a woodpecker.

“I'm going to New York City to show a horse in a couple days.”

“What for?” he said, like I was telling him about some kind of tragedy.

“Wayne's taking me. We'll be back in a few days. Can I get something for you?”

“From up thar? Oh, I don't need nothin'.”

“Chocolate?”

He smiled. “Chocklit would be nice.”

Walking back to the truck, I thought about why Jimmy had loved him so much. June was innocent. He was hidden away from the world. He knew everything he needed to know, and because of that, he never worried about a thing.

I wondered what it was like not to want more. I held it against the kids in Covington that they didn't aspire to anything beyond what they had. But I admired June's satisfaction with his quiet little life in the hollow.

June knew a side of Jimmy that no one else did but me. One time, June broke his hip falling out of an apple tree, and his sister had to push him into town in a wheelbarrow. Jimmy saw them coming down the road and drove them to the hospital, where June had to stay for three weeks.

Jimmy was worried that being in a hospital so long would kill June. I was standing by June's hospital bed when Jimmy said to him, “How are you going to lie here for three weeks?”

June smiled. “I reckon I just will. Then there will be a day when it's time to go home.”

T
HURSDAY NIGHT
W
AYNE
and I stayed up and loaded the trailer. Tack, brushes, braiding supplies, buckets, extra hay nets, feed, blankets, leg wraps, shipping boots, muscle rubs, a salt block, vet supplies, extra shoes, extra bits and tack.

Before I went to sleep, I opened
Hunter Seat Equitation
and read a few pages at random.

 

Once definite controls and an established position have been set at home, the rider is free to concentrate on getting his horse to perform well at a show.

 

George was right, except he was assuming he was talking to a normal kid with a normal horse. A kid who was following a training program with a real trainer and taking lessons four times a week on a made horse, not a rider who had pulled a gun on a crazy man in her own house just a couple of days earlier. Not a horse that had to show his ability by jumping over four feet of barbed wire and rotting boards.

 

It is much too late to worry about form while in a class.

 

It's never too late to worry about anything,
I thought.

 

Riding well is all that counts, and if faults are spotted, they must be put off as homework for the next week. One has enough to think of in controlling his horse's pace, smooth transitions, riding proper lines and turns, and getting his fences. The very worst thing an instructor can do to a rider before entering the ring is to clutter his mind. It just makes matters worse.

 

If he only knew how cluttered my mind was already.

 

Friday morning we got up at five. Wayne made us breakfast while I wrapped Sonny's legs and fed him hay. I didn't give him grain because I didn't want him to colic on the road.

“You got hoof polish? Mineral oil?” Wayne asked. Wayne had replaced his belt buckle with a shiny new one.

I nodded.

Wayne got in and started the truck. I got in and closed the door. Melinda was still asleep and I hadn't wanted to wake her up, but when I turned, she was standing by the truck window in her bathrobe. “Call me when you get there.”

“Okay.” I lowered my voice. “Let the cat inside.”

She nodded and smiled. It was nice to be on the same side as her again.

“You be careful,” she said to Wayne.

“Bye, Mama,” I said. I hadn't called her that in a long time.

“Bye, honey.” She kissed me on the forehead.

I looked back at the farm, but it was too dark to see anything. We were rolling, and Wayne shifted gears slowly as the truck powered up. A few moments later, Sonny started stomping and slamming around in the trailer.

“What in the devil . . .” Wayne said.

The trailer shook hard and Wayne grabbed the steering wheel. He slowed down and looked at the side-view mirror.

“What's his problem?” I asked.

“He misses his buddy,” Wayne said.

“We gotta bring Sub.”

“Damn it all!” he said.

He pushed down on the brake and the horse kept pawing loudly. We made a U-turn through a gas station.

Chester, one of Wayne's old buddies, was filling his tank. “Y'all goin' up to New York City?”

“We sure are,” said Wayne.

Chester laughed. “Y'all are crazy.”

Once we were facing home, the horse stopped pawing. When we pulled in, Sub was standing at the fence, calling loudly to Sonny, who called back and stomped in the trailer. Mama was at the window shaking her head.

“Pathetic,” Wayne said, looking at Submarine. “I ain't heard that horse make a sound in years.”

I put up a hay net for Sub, and Wayne walked him to the back of the trailer. He hopped right in.

I thought about Kelly and her team of grooms. I bet they were loading her horses into a rig with a camera on every horse and monitors in the front. On second thought, Kelly was probably flying and meeting the horses there.

We drove through the winding roads of Bath County with the mist rising off the fields, up and over Warm Springs Mountain, through Goshen, past Craigsville, through the hilly streets of Staunton. Then we climbed onto Route 81 and powered up, getting in line with the tractor-trailers heading north.

We listened to the radio without talking.

After about half an hour, Wayne asked me if I was nervous.

“No,” I lied. “I just hope luck is on our side.”

“Sidney, if you work hard, day after day, you create your own luck. Thomas Jefferson said, ‘I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.'”

“He didn't say that.”

“He sure as hell did.”

“You got that off a coffee mug at White's Truck Stop.”

“Look it up. He said it.”

“Then what's your excuse?” I challenged him. “You seem like one unlucky old bastard.”

“I ain't talking about me. I'm talking about you.”

We stopped in Winchester to check on the horses. We gave them some water and got back on the road. The sun was bright, and Wayne put on his sunglasses.