Gee Whiz (18 page)

“Tomorrow?” said Jane.

“Yes, but I’ve only ridden western. I would love to try this, though.”

I, of course, had been eavesdropping on this whole conversation. I said, “She has a good seat and great balance. And a good sense of rhythm.”

I walked away on Blue. I had not meant to encourage this. We moseyed along the far side of the arena. The other thing about the woods was that they smelled piney. The trees were hugely tall and close together, growing in a bed of brown pine needles that lay up against the bottoms of the trunks. They were also filled with birds that flew here and there, and sat up high and cheeped and muttered. There was a woodpecker on the trunk of one tree at the far end of the arena—he was stashing an acorn in a hole he or another woodpecker had made; the entire trunk of the tree was a pantry of holes filled with acorns. I saw Jane and Barbie hurry away, chatting, and I kept walking Blue.

Of course they came back, and Barbie was in riding clothes, with a hard hat. Jane had a room full of used breeches, boots, shirts, coats—some right out of old movies like
National Velvet
. I went over to the gate, and Jane said, “Why not just try it out? Even if you only have twenty minutes, that’s enough to get a sense of how far along you are.”

I jumped off.

I didn’t mind seeing Barbie on Blue—she’d ridden him several times, anyway, but here I was seeing her on him in
this place
, where he didn’t have the air of being my horse, where horses of all kinds came and went and were trained and shown. This was a place where horses had jobs that they worked at every day. They might be your friends and they might be happy to see you, but their lives were their own, somehow. Barbie stepped onto the mounting block and got on.

Of course, Blue was perfect. Barbie was a little shaky to begin with, and Blue was careful with her, even shifting his weight to stay with her when she lost her balance a bit. An English saddle asks different things of you than a western saddle—to sit more forward, to put more weight in your heels, to use your back differently. After about ten minutes, Barbie seemed to get this, and she did make a nice trot circuit, posting rhythmically, first one direction, then the other. When the twenty minutes was over, she almost had it. I said to Jane, “She’s very musical.”

“That’s evident,” said Jane. “He’s good with her, too.”

I knew that.

Barbie changed her clothes and left to go to an afternoon
concert at the Mission, and Rodney took Blue, though only after I’d given him a carrot and two more lumps of sugar. Of course Mom wasn’t there yet, and so I had to go into Jane’s office and be told something, or a few things. Most people would have thought they were good things.

Jane said, “My heavens, girl, you have done a wonderful job with this horse! He is solid as a rock!”

“He was always a good boy.”

“Yes, he was, and well disposed and responsible, but now he actually knows things, and he’s very good at translating.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, your way of telling him what to do is not the same as Melinda’s or Ellen’s or your friend Barbie’s, but he pays attention and figures it out. He’s patient, but more importantly, the way they are doesn’t make him nervous. You can find very nicely trained horses, but when they can’t understand what the rider is getting at, they get irritated or worried, so they have a hard time being school horses. Most school horses are just dull, frankly. That’s the safest type to have, and that’s what most riding schools have. But he’s responsive. He’s quite nice.”

She put her elbows on the desk and her face in her hands. The sun was shining in the window. She looked at me. She said, “I want him.”

This was Dad’s dream—a person he trusted asking to buy a horse that he had trained. I knew it should be my dream, too. And in a distant way, I did feel pleased with the praise.

Jane said, “You were watching Pie in the Sky. Do you wish you were riding him again? He’s doing well.”

I said, “I don’t know what I do wish, but I don’t wish that. I enjoyed him, but maybe it’s because he’s so good that Sophia never seems to do anything on her own, or for fun. I asked her to bring Onyx out to our place for a trail ride, but she never has time. Has she even gone down your trail to the beach?”

Jane shook her head, then said, “Sophia is very focused.”

I thought that was a good word for Sophia. When she set her mind to do something, she always did it, but she always also set her mind to do something. Even at Barbie and Alexis’s party, she didn’t know how not to be serious.

Jane said, “What would you like to do with Blue?”

“It might be fun to take him to some shows, but he isn’t going to be comfortable jumping more than three feet or 3′3″, even though he’ll do it.” This meant, we both knew, that he would never be a star—a star jumper has to jump high, whatever his style; a star hunter has to look as though everything is easy for him and still jump four feet or 4′6″; and a star equitation horse has to go like a machine, no matter what the exercise, so that the rider can look perfect.

Jane said, “I don’t know what he would have become if we’d started early with him, but he’s seven or eight. What most horses can do is set by then. It’s like a person being twenty-five or thirty—the years of education are behind them, and they have to make the best of what they are.”

I suddenly thought of Gee Whiz jumping over the chute when the bird flew at him. I said, “What about ex-racehorses? We have one now who’s eight, seventeen hands, anyway. He seems ready to do anything.”

“Hmm,” said Jane. “Was he good?”

“Apparently he was,” I said. “He won a lot of money, raced for a long time, and remained sound.”

“Well, racehorses are a little different. They often have plenty of energy and a good deal of untapped potential. They are kept fit their whole lives, so fitness is second nature to them, and they can be very intelligent—I mean, don’t tell the jockeys, but it’s the horse who runs the race and decides to win or not. And some sire lines have a lot of jump in them. Whether you can enlist those qualities for something new varies from horse to horse, but lots of them prefer activity to boredom. I’d like to see him.”

There was a tap on the door. Jane said, “Come in!” Then she looked at me and said, “I’ll give you a thousand dollars for Blue. And if I sell him to someone else for more, I’ll give you ten percent of that.”

The person at the door was Mom, and she was smiling. I wondered if all of this had been arranged. I said, “I’ll think about it.”

Jane said, “May I keep him through Monday, so that Melinda and Ellen can have another lesson on him? And your friend Barbara, too, maybe.”

I said, “Okay.”

I was in bed, reading. We had to read a book for English class called
A Night to Remember
, about the
Titanic
, which was a ship that they said would never sink, and then it sank first time out. The homework was due when we got back to school, in four days, and I was only to the part where the people feel a little something, but don’t know that that little something is
that they’re hitting an iceberg. I heard the phone ring twice, and then someone must have picked it up, because it stopped ringing. A few minutes later, there was a knock at my door. I called, “Come in!” and there was Mom. She said, “Are you still awake?”

I said, “It’s only eight-forty-five.”

“That’s true. Well, I have some bad news.”

I felt myself sort of turn to stone. I was sure that the phone call had been Jane, and that something had happened to Blue. I didn’t say anything.

Mom said, “I guess Sister Brooks went by to check on Brother Abner.” There was a pause, then Mom hurried to say, “He was in his bed, and he had passed away.”

“When was that?”

“Well, she went over there this afternoon, but when the police came, they said he had been dead since last night. They called a funeral home. We’re going to have a service tomorrow, at the funeral home and the cemetery, and then another memorial service Sunday.”

I said, “He seemed better Sunday. He really did. He talked and he ate most of his supper. He seemed kind of happy.”

By now, Mom was sitting on the bed. She said, “Sister Brooks and I discussed that. The thing is, sometimes … well, do you remember a dog my parents had when you were little? Her name was Tizzy. She was half fox terrier and half something else. You liked her when you knew her.”

I shook my head.

“Well, she got to be about fifteen years old, which is something like a hundred in a person, and all of a sudden, she
seemed tired and sick. The thing is, she was a great guard dog—nothing moved on my parents’ land without Tizzy barking about it. Well, she stopped barking—she was just too tired. Then, one day, she went outside and lay down on a hill overlooking the road to their place, and she started barking and barking. She barked for two hours, and then she went into the house and died in her bed. Your grandmother said it was like she just wanted to live the best part of her life over again, and then she was ready to go.”

“He wanted one last Christmas?”

“One last good meal, one last evening with his friends, one last singing of the carols, one last celebration of our Lord. It’s sadder for us, maybe, than it was for him. Your dad says that if there is anyone who is rejoicing in the presence of the Lord right now, it is Brother Abner.”

“So I should be glad?”

“Well, it’s hard for us to be glad when our friends go on ahead of us, because we miss them, but maybe you should be thankful that he lived a long and varied life, and that he was content with it.”

We sighed.

I saw the next day that funerals are like Christmas—there are things you have to do, and in a certain order. Time moves very slowly, and there’s plenty of music. Brother Abner was my only funeral. My uncle John died before I was born, and the rest of our relatives were all alive; although the brothers and the sisters seemed old to me, Brother Abner was the oldest, I found out, by ten years.

The funeral home was a big building downtown, not very
fancy from the street, but bright and clean inside. We wore nice clothes, but nothing “flashy,” as Mom said. Brother Abner’s casket was in the front of a paneled room with a blue carpet and no windows, much fancier than our church. There were baskets of flowers here and there. The chairs in the room were carved, and had blue tasseled cushions. There was a decorated stand in front, but when Brother Brooks and Mr. Hollingsworth and Dad stood up next to the casket to talk about Brother Abner, they didn’t go behind the stand, or even look at it—they held their Bibles in their hands and spoke in regular voices. Mr. Hollingsworth even rested his hand on the casket, as if he were shaking Brother Abner’s hand one last time.

I knew that sometimes Brother Abner disagreed with the others about what was right and what was wrong, but Dad chose a verse that Brother Abner would have liked: “But if any one has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or in speech but in deed and in truth.”

And Mr. Hollingsworth did, too: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And every one who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.”

Brother Abner had once said to me, “I don’t like folks
talking about who’s right and who’s wrong. There’s too much of that. It’s better to talk about the love of the Lord.” Afterward, we sang two hymns, “Amazing Grace,” of course, and “O God Our Help in Ages Past.” Then everyone said nice things about how Brother Abner always spoke his mind, but he always had a twinkle in his eye. Most of the sisters were crying. I cried, too.

After the service, six of the brothers, including Brother Ezra Brooks, lifted up the casket and carried it out a back door I hadn’t seen that led to the parking lot behind the building. They slid it into a big black hearse and closed the doors. Then we all went to our cars. Little pennants saying
FUNERAL
were clipped to the front windows of each car. We got into ours, and Dad waited for the others. When the hearse pulled out of the parking lot, we all went along in a line behind it. There were ten cars.

The cemetery was almost in the country—it was flat and green, surrounded by a fence, and looked out at hills to the west and fields to the east. We stood beside the grave, which had already been dug, and after we sang two more hymns, they lowered the casket, and we walked past in a line and threw flowers onto it. Then Dad and the other brothers each tossed a shovelful of dirt into the grave. There were plenty of headstones around, and it made me think of that book we’d read before the end of the semester,
Spoon River Anthology
. If Brother Abner were to wake up and speak, the way the dead people did in that book, I knew he would have some funny things to say, and I also suspected that he would not say things that he had forgotten to say, or been afraid to say, when he
was alive. But I was sorry that I’d never heard more of his adventures.

Danny was at the graveside service. Maybe Mom had called him. He was wearing work clothes, and standing at the back. I saw him bow his head and move his lips in some kind of prayer. But he waved and drove off before we could talk to him. Everyone else pretended not to notice him, but I was glad he came.