Champion Horse (20 page)

We all laughed.

Then Ralph made us do the circle exercise. The first time around, we watched where we were going, and we all got around fine. The second time around, we were to look away from the track, and one by one, each of the horses galloped around the next jump and off to where we had been looking – I made myself look at the gate, and sure enough, we almost went through the gate. Ralph gathered us in the middle and said, ‘See, it doesn’t matter why it happens. It only matters that now you know that it happens.’

He didn’t want to end on a bad note, though, so he had us get back on and jump a small looping course of four jumps, easy turns, first one direction, then the other. It was as natural as could be, just cantering and having fun. Then we untacked the horses and left them with Ralph. We took some apples that he produced from a bag, and walked to the far end of the arena, past where we had been before, maybe thirty feet beyond the end of the chute. When we were all gathered there and quiet, he sent the horses through the chute. They came with their ears pricked, their nostrils flared, and their manes flying. They looked graceful and free and happy. Barry Boy was in the lead, and Parisienne and Blue were right behind him, and they all came down to the trot and found us as soon as they were out of the chute. And all of us – Nancy, Andy, Elizabeth, Riley’s owner, Mary, and Dalliance’s owner, Linda, and I – we all petted them, gave them their apples, told them how wonderful they were, and promised them not only more apples but feed tubs full of carrots.

When we walked them around, cooling them out, everyone was smiling and talking, and telling everyone else what nice horses they had. It was not like a show at all.

By the time Blue was cool and untacked and we had all his stuff cleaned up and put away, it was getting dark, and by the time Dad and I had loaded him up to take him home, it was really dark, and we were ploughing through the forest with only our headlights showing the way. I always thought that was a spooky thing about the stables, that in spite of the golf course and all the houses around, you felt lost in the woods even driving down the road. I was pretty tired, and I just sat there most of the time, and even Dad didn’t say much, except ‘Ralph Carmichael is something of a horseman,’ but I could tell that he was happy and excited.

Finally, he heaved a sigh and said, ‘Well, now. What time are we supposed to be here tomorrow?’

I said, ‘Tomorrow is Sunday.’

‘Well, this . . . well . . .’

I looked at him. I said, ‘One lesson is enough, Dad. We can skip tomorrow. I just wanted to try it.’ Then, after a long pause in the dark, I said, ‘I guess Sophia is going to be riding her own horse now.’

‘I guess so.’

‘Well, there you go.’ I didn’t mean to say, ‘There you go,’ which sort of means ‘I told you so,’ but he didn’t get mad at me for being sassy.

He just said, ‘Yup. There you go.’

‘Maybe, since Ralph and Andy and Daphne come here pretty often, we can do it again some time.’

‘Maybe. I’d like to see whatever he does.’

‘I would, too.’

But the fact was, I didn’t mind missing the next day. For one thing, how could it be better than today? I needed some time to think about today, and everything else. To understand it, maybe, or maybe just to let it replay over and over in my mind. Another day, at this point, seemed like a whole bag of Halloween candy when you really just wanted to eat a few small sweets and enjoy them. Church would be a rest, listening to the brothers talk and the sisters gossip and eating something good – tomorrow was the Hollingsworths’ turn, and they often brought a dish I liked, chicken fricassee with dumplings. I dozed off and half dreamed, half remembered what those five horses looked like coming down the chute on their own, just because they liked it, just because they were with each other, just because they were horses and horses were born to move. 

Sophia didn’t come to school on Monday, but on Tuesday she told Leslie, Stella, Gloria, Mary, and Luisa all about it. I didn’t say much, just watched her as she smiled and talked and drew a picture of the chute on a page of her notebook. I had never seen her so bouncy. Gloria kept looking at me and saying, ‘You did this, too? Why didn’t you call me?’

‘We didn’t know what was going to happen. Next time we will. I’ll tell you when they come back.’

‘Where are they going?’

‘Down south. Los Angeles.’

‘And she—’

‘Daphne,’ said Sophia.

‘And Daphne just goes to various schools?’ said Leslie.

I nodded. Then I said, ‘They are not like anyone we know.’ I described that day on the bus when the paper wad flew and Daphne caught it without even looking, as far as I could tell.

Leslie said, ‘I want to watch, too. You know, there’s this sport called pentathlon. You swim, fence, shoot pistols, run cross-country and ride.’

‘What do you shoot?’ said Stella.

‘Targets,’ said Leslie.

‘You are so weird,’ said Stella.

But she meant it as a compliment.

Dad didn’t say anything about the clinic, and all Mom said was that the Carmichaels seemed like a very interesting family and she hoped to have them for supper some time when they came back. But as the week progressed, I noticed that our arena started looking like a good place to lunge a horse over a few jumps and even make a chute, if only a small one. Dad stacked all the jump poles in one place, and when I counted them, I saw that we had about sixteen. But I had another idea. On Thursday, I set up a fairly low jump right next to the fence, maybe two feet, and I gave it a very long wing on the other side, three poles end to end, maybe forty-eight feet.

I hung my tack on the gate and went to get Blue as if there were nothing special going on, then I brushed him off and brought him into the arena and let him go. Even though he had been out all night with Jack and the others, he was happy to play, and in the meantime, I fiddled with this and fiddled with that, pretending that his sniffing the hay bales and the cones and inspecting the jumps and my line of poles was not really my business. I did have the flag with me, and from time to time I waved it. At first, he took this as an excuse to bounce around and kick up his heels, but pretty soon he was just walking around, putting his nose under the fence, and looking here and there. When he came over to me the next time, I showed him a carrot. But I didn’t give it to him.

Instead, I walked briskly over to the chute I had built, not paying any attention to him. He followed right behind me. I picked up the trot, and without looking at him, I jumped over the jump, trotted another ten feet, and turned around. Blue was on the other side of the fence, but when I waved the carrot, he hopped over it and came to me. I said, ‘Yup!’ and gave him a piece of the carrot.

We did this about six more times. I would walk Blue around to the beginning of the chute and stand him there, then walk to where I had been standing before, stepping over the jump, and I would call, ‘Hey, Blue! Jump!’ And lo and behold, here he came, trotting to me over the jump, looking for his carrot. It made me laugh every time.

When I brushed him and tacked him up, we went over the jump twice without doing anything else ahead of time – I wanted to do it while it was still in his mind, and he went straight over, no problem, seeming to enjoy it. Each time, I gave him a piece of a carrot. It wasn’t until after I had gone on to other things like circles and transitions that I noticed Dad watching. When we came up to where he was leaning against the fence, he said, ‘He seems to like that.’

‘Almost as much as I do,’ I said. But we didn’t talk about it any more. Dad did leave the chute in place, though.

That night, Jane called. She told me that Melinda could not make her lesson Saturday, so Ellen would be there half an hour early, and asked if that was okay with me. Next she said that she didn’t know if I would be disappointed or not, but Sophia had ridden every day that week and was signed up for a lesson on Pie in the Sky with the colonel Saturday. Since I would be there already, I was welcome to ride Onyx, if only hacking around. Sophia seemed to want the company. I said, ‘She should trailer him out here and ride with me. Onyx knows all the trails and they’re really nice.’

There was a pause, then Jane said, ‘I’ll suggest that. I think she would like that. I think she should do that. I’ll tell her dad.’

I laughed out loud.

Then her voice got serious. She said, ‘Abby.’

‘Yes, Jane?’

‘I have been thinking about our clinic all week, and I have to tell you one thing.’

‘What?’

‘Ralph Carmichael is not like any horseman anywhere else that I know of. He does things his way, and he’s been doing them his way for years and years. I would not, and I think that the colonel would not, send a herd of horses pell-mell down a line of jumps. Too much potential chaos. Ralph is able to control the chaos, but I’m not sure someone who didn’t know his methods inside out could do the same. Do you know what I mean?’

I did, and said so. Then I added, ‘He’ll be coming back. I won’t do anything really weird until I take some more lessons from him.’

‘Okay,’ said Jane.

‘But I got Blue to jump for a carrot today.’

Jane said, ‘Well, dear, he is a carrot sort of horse rather than a stick sort of horse. That seems obvious.’

After five days, I still felt good, though, and what good felt like was that I could think about Peter Finneran without grinding my teeth. I could see that he had his ideas, and they were meant to work in a certain way, and the real problem when I took Blue to his clinic was that Blue wasn’t ready for Peter Finneran’s ideas. He knew some things, but not enough things. Who had been prideful? Well, me, for one. Without knowing anything about what Peter Finneran was going to do, I expected to do it all perfectly, and for everyone to admire Blue, and me as well. Maybe I had been going to the clinic not to learn but to show off.

We all knew where that would get you.

And there was another thing about pride, I realised. If you were really having fun, then you didn’t have time to be proud. I guess even Sophia had learned that. But even if she hadn’t, she had had some fun, and I thought we both would always remember that better than we would remember the bad times.

That night, before I went to bed, I went out to check on the horses and give them a last bit of hay. When Blue and Jack came over to the fence, I said, ‘Let’s start over. Whatever we do now, we do it because we like to do it.’

Blue tossed his head, and Jack nickered, and I took those responses to mean ‘Yes.’

Jane Smiley is the author of many books for adults, including
Private Life
,
Horse Heaven
and the Pulitzer Prize-winning
A Thousand Acres.
She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001. Jane Smiley lives in Northern California, where she rides her horses every chance she gets. She is the author of three books  for young readers,
Nobody’s Horse
,
Secret Horse  
and
Mystery Horse
,
all featuring Abby Lovitt and her family’s ranch.

by the same author

NON-FICTION
Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel
A Year at the Races
Charles Dickens
Catskill Crafts
FICTION
Private Life
Ten Days in the Hills
Good Faith
Horse Heaven
The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton
Moo
A Thousand Acres
Ordinary Love and Good Will
The Greenlanders
The Age of Grief
Duplicate Keys
At Paradise Gate
Barn Blind

FOR CHILDREN
Nobody’s Horse
Secret Horse
Mystery Horse