Champion Horse (11 page)

On Monday, Danny stayed for supper after we rode Blue, Oh My, and Nobby. He also helped me work Jack, and he did a funny thing: as we groomed him, Danny put his arm over Jack’s back several times, at first just standing there, but then kind of leaning on him. I knew what he was doing – getting him ready to be ridden, but we still had not heard from Mr
Matthews
, who owned the other half of him. I didn’t think there was any rush, myself.

We had fried chicken, and tried to pretend that having Danny for supper was not a special occasion. The apple pie? Well, there were some apples in the store, cheap because it was fall now. All through the meal, Dad and Danny talked about Happy, the horse Dad had sold Danny, and who was now getting to be a good cow horse, and then about the fact that Danny had taken her to a branding. It had been pretty interesting, because they did it as slowly as possible, not as quickly. The horses were never to get out of a trot, and there was no running around for the hands – they were to approach the calves slowly and easily. Danny had liked it in some ways, but it was hard to get used to. He said, ‘Now, Russ Jarrow is totally opposite Jem in looks, he’s got to be six-four, and he would just jog over to where the cow and the calf were and the rope would slip out of his hand and around the back end of the calf, and the calf would ease to a halt, and then just lie down, or that’s what it looked like. I mean, whatever part of the calf Russ wanted to rope, the rope would go there.’

‘Must have taken forever.’

‘Well, it was slow, but it was smooth. I mean, if the guy never misses a toss, then that saves time.’

Mom said, ‘If you drive your car at eighty all the time instead of sixty-five, you’re still only going to get there a few minutes before your appointment.’

Danny pretended that he didn’t understand this. He said, ‘The other thing is that the horses are never running past where they’re supposed to be, because they are completely not excited. They pay attention, though.’

Dad said, ‘I wouldn’t mind seeing that.’ He pushed his plate away, and I finished my mashed potatoes and gravy. Everyone was quiet as Mom brought over the pie and the plates. I don’t know why that is, but it happens every time. She said, ‘I found some pippins. They make the best pie, I think.’

Dad and Danny were staring at the pie like they were going to plop their faces in it. She cut the slices and passed them around. When we had all taken our first bites, Danny sighed and said, ‘Well, I guess I’m going to work at the ranch where they had the branding. It’s called the Marble Ranch.’ He said it just like it was no big deal.

Mom said, ‘Where is that?’ and Dad said, ‘What’s your job?’

‘About half shoeing and half looking after the cows. They have a few colts to work with, too. I guess Jake told them they might like the way I go about things. It’s kind of a famous place – they have a big arena and they put on rodeos every so often, but it’s really famous for the house, which is a beautiful hacienda that some rich people built in the twenties. Movie stars used to come up from Hollywood and stay. Legendary parties.’

Mom and Dad exchanged a glance.

‘But they don’t have those any more. It’s just trying to be a plain old cattle ranch these days.’

I said, ‘What about Happy?’

‘My guess is they like her better than they like me.’

We all laughed.

‘There’s an apartment that goes with the job. Two rooms.’

And so supper ended and I went up to my room and started my homework, but not without putting on my new album,
Sounds of Silence
. The songs were kind of sad, but that was good for doing homework. I was already thinking about how much it might cost to buy another album, but I hadn’t decided which one I wanted yet. The thing to do was to get Danny to drive me somewhere, and listen to the radio the whole time.

It was when I was going into the bathroom before bed that I heard Mom and Dad talking. The sound of their voices was coming up from the living room, and so of course I stopped and listened in to see if they were talking about me. They weren’t. Mom was saying, ‘But I have been thinking about this for weeks. I can’t get it out of my mind. I try to tell myself it’s none of my business, but I don’t believe myself.’

‘It’s just a rumour.’

‘But she told me! It’s not a rumour if her own nephew’s wife said what was going on.’

‘Why don’t we let sleeping dogs lie?’

‘I tell myself that every single day.’

I stood absolutely still. My main thought was that if it wasn’t Mom’s business, then it certainly wasn’t my business, and so I had better just keep walking and not listen any more.

A rustle of pages. Dad opening his Bible. Well, if it was big enough for that, it was pretty big. And the other thing was that I’d never heard Mom talk in quite this tone before. Mom was the one of us who always knew what to do. I heard a sigh – it sounded like Mom. I said to myself, Time to go to bed, but I stood there anyway. Finally, Dad read, ‘“And he says to them, Because of your unbelief; for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say to this mountain, Be transported hence there, and it shall transport itself; and nothing shall be impossible to you.”’

They were silent. This was a pretty familiar verse, since it was one of Dad’s favourites. Finally, Mom said, ‘But should I
do
anything?’

‘It doesn’t say to.’

She said, ‘Okay.’ And then they kissed. I could hear them. I went back into my room, and came out again and stomped around a little bit.

When I thanked Sophia for letting me ride Pie in the Sky and said how nice he was, she just nodded, smiled, and said, ‘Colonel Hawkins thought you did a good job, and I did, too.’ And even though I had been planning to ask her what was wrong with Onyx and why she wasn’t riding him, well, I didn’t say a word. And then, all day, half the time I thought it wasn’t my business, and half the time I really wanted to know. At lunchtime, I looked around our table, and wondered what each of the girls would do in my place. Stella wouldn’t have cared. Gloria would have waited for Sophia to say some tiny little thing that let Gloria ask the question. Mary would have said, ‘So, why didn’t you ride your horse?’ Luisa would have passed her a note in class, since Luisa was pretty shy. Leslie would have told about something that happened at camp, like fording a rushing river, and then said how afraid she was, and waited for Sophia to chime in about being afraid to ride her horse. What was my way of doing things? Well, just to worry and mind my own business. I did try one thing, which was to sit down after lunch next to Alana, who was Sophia’s old friend from her neighbourhood. Sophia had introduced us, and we had talked about a couple of things, like assignments, since she was also in my biggest class, geology. I asked her if she had read the chapter about volcanoes, and she had. So then I stood around, and after a while I finally said, ‘You heard that I rode Pie in the Sky over the weekend.’

‘Sophia said you did a good job.’

‘So, does Sophia like Pie in the Sky, do you think?’

‘Sort of. Not as much as Onyx.’ Then, ‘You wanted me to say that, right?’

‘Well, if it’s true.’

‘It’s true.’

‘But Pie in the Sky is a wonderful horse.’

‘You should buy him.’

I laughed – not a real laugh, but polite. Then I said, ‘So she really does like Onyx?’

‘She rides him every day. Believe me, if she didn’t like him, she would tell me. Sophia is not tactful.’ Then she rolled her eyes.

So even Alana didn’t know that Sophia wasn’t riding Onyx.

Dad suddenly got a bee in his bonnet about Jack needing to learn about loading into a trailer. And it was true – most of our horses came to us from far away. By the time they arrived, they knew all about trailers, and even though some horses didn’t enjoy the experience, they were willing to put up with it. But Jack had never left the property, so what if—

Whenever Dad started on the what-ifs, I tried not to listen. He was right, though.

Thursday after school, I came home to find the trailer and the truck parked in the arena, Danny’s truck by the barn, and Nobby, the oldest and most easy-going of the other horses, waiting to be of service.

There is really no reason why a horse should go into a trailer. Trailers are dark and small, and in the wild, a horse would never go into a dark, small place that he had to back out of. But horses go into trailers all the time, and then they are rattled and rolled around, and they get out, and go in again. Either it is a sign that they trust us, or it is a sign of complete stupidity. I prefer to think that they trust us.

It was a pleasant day – calm and a little overcast. By the time I got home, Danny had already had Jack in the pen working off his excess energy. Nobby was in there with him now, and I could see Jack nibbling at her mane, which made her put her ears a little back, though she didn’t squeal or snap at him. She walked away, and he followed her. I went and got the flag and let myself into the pen. I didn’t do much with them, but I did keep Nobby walking, which meant that Jack kept following her. I thought that was good practice for following her right into the trailer. After a few minutes, Dad called me over to the arena. I put lead ropes on both Jack and Nobby and opened the gate. Nobby, of course, waited until being told that she could follow me through the gate, and Jack found her so much more interesting than anything else that he waited, too. The three of us walked calmly over to the arena. Danny took Jack from me, and I held Nobby.

The first thing that Danny did was pretend that he was just standing there while Jack sniffed the trailer. It was the kind with a ramp that the horse was supposed to walk up, so Jack had to sniff the ramp and jump back a few times. Then he had to carefully avoid the ramp, step around it, and stretch his neck to stare into the darkness of the trailer. Then he had to sniff the mudguards and the wheels and the window and even the hitch. Then he had to stare at the truck. Then he had to do all of these things on the other side. After that, he decided to ignore the trailer. At that point, Danny unclipped the lead rope and let him go, and our job was to pay him no attention and pretend that all we cared about was Nobby. After Jack had skittered away with his tail in the air, Dad made a big deal of giving Nobby a carrot, and Nobby obliged by chewing it very loudly.

As soon as Jack came over to see what was going on, Dad marched Nobby up the ramp into the trailer. I latched the chain across her hind end so she wouldn’t back out, and Dad went under the front bar and came out the front door.

Danny and I sat down, him on the mudguard of the trailer and me on the pole of one of the jumps, while Dad made a big deal of putting some oats in a couple of buckets. When Jack came zipping over, Dad kind of pushed him aside and walked up the ramp. He set one bucket down at the front of Jack’s side of the trailer, and then he hung Nobby’s bucket on her side, where she could get it. He left the front door open so that if Jack came around, he could see her eating.

Then Dad came to the back of the trailer and leaned against the side. All this time we were pretending that Jack was not staring into the trailer, that he was not putting his two front feet on the ramp and leeeaaannning forward trying to see or sniff something, that he did not give a little whinny, that he didn’t sort of bounce up in frustration and trot away. Nobby rattled her bucket. It was like she had been coached on exactly what to do.

Danny was still holding the lead rope, and finally Jack went over to him and nosed his leg. Danny snapped the lead rope back on him, then just eased himself off the mudguard and started walking him. Jack went along willingly. They walked all around, and then Danny walked up the ramp and into the trailer. The lead rope had a loop in it, but Danny was watching. He wanted Jack to follow him into the trailer, at least as far as his nose, but he didn’t want him to avoid the ramp and then get caught with the rope around the side of the trailer. But Jack was good. He stepped up onto the ramp and got as far as putting his front feet into the trailer. Danny gave him a bit of carrot, and asked him to back down the ramp before Jack got the idea of doing that himself.

Now it went pretty smoothly. They walked in and out several times, waited longer after going in and waited less time after going out, and sometimes Danny gave Jack the carrot and sometimes a handful of the oats. After a while, Jack was going in and backing out easy as you please, in fact looking to do it. The next thing Danny did was give Jack to me, untie Nobby in front, undo her chain, and let her back out. Now it was her turn to wander around the arena. Then he lifted the ramp and shut the door, closing up the trailer completely, and we all walked away, leaving Jack and Nobby to do whatever they wanted. They went over to the fence and started reaching for bits of grass underneath the bottom rail. We went into the house and had some water.

We went out again. Danny walked over to the trailer and let down the ramp. Now it was like Jack couldn’t wait to get on there and see what was inside. We had to hold him back long enough to put the lead rope on him, and then he led Danny right in. He ate a bite of the oats, and Danny backed him out. The second time he finished the oats, and then he had to stand there for a few minutes before Danny let him out. The third time there were no oats, and I attached the chain in the back and Danny tied him up (you never ever tie a horse before attaching the chain). Next Dad put Nobby back in her place, and we closed up the trailer. There was a little shuffling, but I looked in the window – no panicking. Dad got into the truck and eased it away, around the arena and out the gate. Then he stopped. Still no panic.

By suppertime, Jack seemed happy and sane in the trailer, so we put the horses out, gave them some hay, and started cleaning up. At one point, Danny said, ‘Ralph Carmichael taught a horse to jump today. Took him about twenty minutes.’

I said, ‘Who’s Ralph Carmichael?’

Danny said, ‘Do you remember Andy and Daphne, at the show? Andy was riding the Appaloosa.’