Gee Whiz (19 page)

I
T WAS MIDAFTERNOON BY THE TIME WE GOT HOME
. I
CHANGED
into my work clothes. I can only explain what happened after that by saying that all three of us must have been a little dazed or tired, or something, but the fact is, someone forgot to close the big gate. I don’t know if it was me, when I got out and opened it when we returned from the funeral. I don’t know if it was Dad, when he left in the truck to pick up something at the Jordan Ranch. It could even have been Mom, who had seen some wild rosemary blooming by the side of the road, and wanted to dig it up and plant it in our garden. The thing about us was that we never left gates open.

I was thinking about what Jane said about racehorses, so I decided to get Gee Whiz out and clean him up. He was dusty
from nose to tail. I wasn’t planning to wash him, just to curry him thoroughly, brush him, and rub him down with the chamois. He came right to the gate when I called him. I put his halter on, led him out of the pasture, and took him over to the barn, where I looped his lead rope around the bar. I could have taken him into the barn and cross-tied him, but it was sunny and pleasant outside. I started with the currycomb. I can’t say that he liked it—he was bobbing and turning his head, and then when I got to his flanks, he started lifting his back leg, not as though he was going to kick me, but as though I was tickling him. He seemed to enjoy the brushing, however, and I got to be sort of lost in it, thinking idle thoughts and humming to myself. Grooming Gee Whiz was taking a long time. But by the end of the brushing, his head was down, his right hind ankle was cocked, and he seemed to be enjoying himself. I saw that I hadn’t put the chamois back in the grooming bucket, and went into the barn to find it.

There was a noise.

I turned around to see that Gee Whiz was pulling back, his head up, his ears up, and his eyes wide. The lead rope pulled off the bar, and he turned toward the house. I went after him, at first thinking only of what I thought I’d done, or should have done—he was tied, I should have put him on cross-ties, or groomed him in a stall. Then I saw him swing out around the house and head down the driveway. At first, he was trotting his big trot, and then he was galloping, and he went right out the gate. I knew Dad was gone, but as I ran past the house, I yelled for Mom. She came out onto the front
porch when I was halfway to the gate, then she went back inside again.

Our driveway sloped gently to the road, which dipped as it passed us, then rose. To the left, the road continued up the hill to the Jordan Ranch. To the right, it dipped, went up slowly, then, pretty far away, made a curve. Gee Whiz went right, at first sticking to the shoulder and staying off the pavement. I guess that was a good sign. He slowed to a trot, and I could see his head turning to the left and the right. The lead rope dangled and flopped. When I got to the gate, I went out into the middle of the road and stared after him. A moment later, Mom was coming through the gate in the car. She pulled up near me and I ran around to the passenger’s side and got in.

One good thing about Mom was she didn’t always start out asking what had gone wrong, so you didn’t feel like her first idea was to discipline you—that might come later, or she might forget about it. She said, “There he is.”

Gee Whiz had paused and put his head down—probably he’d found an appetizing patch of green there that he needed to explore. Mom eased the car toward him. I rolled down my window. She said, “You have any treats?”

“I forgot them. There’s a carrot in my pocket, though.”

I was such an idiot.

Now Gee Whiz’s head popped up and he tossed it, seeing the car just fine, and knowing exactly what it meant. He trotted forward, stepping for a moment on his rope, stopping, shaking his body to free himself, then trotting on. Mom said, “He’s a smart one.”

“Dad would say that’s always a problem.”

Mom laughed.

We eased along.

At least, he didn’t race off. You never know what a horse will do in unfamiliar territory. Some horses would just panic and run, not really caring where they’re going. That would be dangerous, especially if Gee Whiz ran down the slippery road and fell. But the big horse didn’t seem as though he was panicking. He seemed as though he was exploring. He stayed mostly on the shoulder, only stepping into the road when the shoulder fell away or got gravelly. Sometimes he stopped and looked around, his nostrils flaring and his ears pricked. Sometimes he nosed plants, but when we got close, he trotted off. He knew we were in the car, or so it seemed. Pretty soon, we were around the curve. At that point, the road straightened and we could see about a mile ahead. Nothing coming. But after that rise, there was an intersection, and I knew that the road would get busier in both directions, and that the fenced hills of the Jordan Ranch would give way to flat fields. I did not want him running through some farmer’s field. Mom got serious, too. Finally, we got sort of close to him, and she said, “You get out and I’ll zoom around him and at least try to stop him from getting too far.”

This was the only idea we could come up with, so I nodded. She stopped maybe ten yards from where he was looking at plants growing out of a steep hillside. I closed the door quietly, and she zipped into the left lane and went past him. Then she pulled over onto the right side of the road.

I pulled the carrot out of my pocket and held it out to Gee
Whiz. His ear flicked, but he didn’t turn his head. I knew he saw it, though—a horse can see everywhere except right in front of his nose and right behind his tail. As I stepped toward him, he stepped away. He didn’t run. Or trot. I stopped. He stopped. I stepped. He stepped. I took a very loud bite of the carrot and said, “Mmm. Delicious.”

It was not delicious. It was kind of gunky.

But his ear flicked. By this time, I was close enough to see his lips wrinkle. Maybe he was imagining eating the carrot.

The thing was, he was a beautiful horse, strong and majestic—way more self-confident-looking than Pie in the Sky, or even Onyx. It was like he always knew that crowds had looked at him, crowds had cheered him. Something about his face said that having done many things and been many places, he could do anything he put his mind to. I murmured, “Gee Whiz. Gee Whiz. It’s much nicer at home than it is out here. We have such nice hay and some very good oats, and apples and more carrots.”

His ears flicked again.

I stepped toward him, and he trotted off.

Now I spun right around, just like a dancer, and I trotted off myself, up the road away from him. But the sun was in the west, and if I looked down and a little to the left, I could see his shadow. He was behind me, coming with me, not going away. I pretended not to know and not to care. I slowed down and paused. I heard his steel shoes on the pavement,
clop clop, clop clop
. I put the carrot back in my pocket, and pretended to be strolling along, looking at plants—rosemary, yes; French broom, yes; Indian paintbrush, yes; ceanothus, yes. How
interesting. And the sky! Very blue! And the side of the hill! Brown and dusty! And the wire fencing! Were those cows up there?

He nudged my hip with his nose, but I walked away. When he came up and nudged me again, I pulled out the carrot and let him have it without looking at him, but then when he was eating it, I turned and said, “Oh, what a nice horse. Such a beauty to find walking down the road.” I reached for his lead rope and then started petting him. He snorted, but not out of nervousness, just as if to say, “Okay, you got me.” I started walking down the road.

Mom pulled up beside us. She said, “My heaven. That was scary.”

I petted Gee Whiz on the cheek. “Only to us, I think.”

While we were stopped there, Dad came up behind Mom’s car in the truck, slowed, stared, and then waved and went around us. Mom said, “Oh dear.”

It was then that I knew that she had planned to keep this little adventure a secret.

I said, “Okay, well, since we’re out here, Gee Whiz and I are going to go for a little walk.”

“You sure he’ll be okay?”

“I don’t think he wants to run away. I think he wants to investigate.”

“If you say so.”

We came to our gate. Dad had left it open. Mom drove through, and I closed it after her. Then Gee Whiz and I headed up the road toward the entrance to the Jordan Ranch, just to see what we could see.

Sometimes they say that a horse has “presence.” I never quite knew what they meant by this. Every horse is more or less large. Even a pony like Gallant Man weighs about six hundred pounds. A full-sized horse weighs a thousand pounds or more. My yearling, Jack (soon a two-year-old, according to the Jockey Club), never let you forget that he was around—either he was looking at you or nuzzling you or asking to play or showing off. Blue was beautiful and quiet. His presence made me feel good. But Gee Whiz had something more, some electricity, some intensity that the others didn’t have. He walked along nicely—not pushing ahead or giving me trouble in any way. I didn’t even have to hurry to keep up with him. I remembered an expression we had talked about in history class—it was noblesse oblige. It meant that a nobleman was being kind and courteous because it was part of his job to do that. Could a horse feel that? It felt like it as we walked along, Gee Whiz not following me or pulling me, but accompanying me, looking here and there, pausing from time to time. We went about half a mile down the road, to where we could see the gate to the Jordan Ranch, and turned back. By the time we got home, the sun was pretty low in the sky. I undid the gate and pushed it open. Gee Whiz stood quietly while I closed it and bolted it. I said, “Look the other way. This one doesn’t work that well, either.”

Dad was in the barn, piling hay in the wheelbarrow. I said hi and walked past, to the gate of the gelding pasture. I opened it. I have to say, Gee Whiz paused before he walked in, but he did walk in. Oh My gave him a brilliant whinny. I could tell Mom had told Dad all about the escape, because he didn’t say
anything to me. That would be for later. All he said was, “Did you like the service?”

I nodded.

“I think Brother Abner would have liked it.”

“I’m glad we had a nice day.”

“We need rain, but yes, I am, too.”

Danny called that night. Mom answered and asked him to come for supper the next night. Then she said the words “prime rib.” We didn’t often have prime rib, but I guess Dad had gotten a present from Mr. Jordan. When she got off the phone, she said, “Jerry’s coming, too. He wants to see Beebop.”

I said, “If you’d asked me a few weeks ago which horse was going to be the troublemaker, I would have said Beebop.”

Dad laughed. “Beebop is just a working man with a special talent.”

The next day, Danny came early and took Marcus for a ride, to see how he was coming along. I was tacking up Oh My, so we went over to the arena together. Marcus was like the kid at school who does everything right and is always wearing nice clothes, and no one pays attention to him, even so. You sort of had to remember to say, “He is nice, isn’t he?” and even while you were saying that, you were thinking about someone more glamorous, like Gee Whiz, whom we could see staring at us from the pasture while we rode.

Maybe that’s why I talked all the time we were walking out, and didn’t notice Danny’s face getting stiffer and stiffer, like Dad’s, of course, when he is thinking that a child’s being
seen and not heard is a good thing. First, I talked about Jack, and how beautiful he was. I had been thinking about him all week and, I mean, Gee Whiz made him look like a baby still, but he was getting bigger and more graceful, and seemed older. I wondered how long horses trained before they went to the track, and then in their first race.

“No idea,” said Danny.

Still, that was exciting. Of course, that raised another issue, about whether we would ever get to see him run.

“Don’t count on it,” said Danny.

That shut me up about racing, so I started in about Jerry. What time was he coming? Maybe he would bring something good from San Francisco. Barbie had thought he was lots of fun. We should do something with Beebop, at least let him run around in the arena. He seemed not to have much personality, way less than Gee Whiz.

Which, of course, got me back thinking about racing. Gee Whiz, I said, made you think that the whole world was very interesting and exciting, and even though he’d only gotten half a mile down the road, he
wanted
to go. He had been more places than I had, maybe more places than Dad or Mom had—France, for heaven’s sake! Kentucky! Arkansas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Saratoga.

Danny said, “I wouldn’t take a free ticket to Arkansas.”

And soon it would be a new year! What was Danny doing New Year’s Eve? Going out with Leah, I guessed. Well, that was more fun than sitting around reading
A Night to Remember
and listening to Simon and Garfunkel for the millionth time. I couldn’t wait until something would finally happen—

“Yes, you can,” said Danny. “You can wait. And just so you know, Leah and I broke up, for good.”

“Before New Year’s Eve?”

“Best time,” said Danny.

Now we rode in silence. The horses walked along,
clop clop
, and yes, Marcus was quite calm and good for such an inexperienced horse. Finally, I said, “Why is that?”

“Because I am not going to bring in the new year making promises that I can’t keep.”

“It was your idea?”

Another silence, then, “Yes.”

Now we were quiet. We finished our ride and went back to the barn, where Danny turned on the dusty old radio, very low. The song was one I liked, but it was creepy—“Paint It, Black,” by the Rolling Stones. I had heard it lots of times before, but now it made me think of Brother Abner’s funeral—“I see a line of cars, and they’re all painted black.” Danny turned it up, and I had to walk out of the barn because I had gone from being excited to being really sad. I stood there, waiting until I was really sure that I wasn’t going to cry.

When Jerry showed up a little later, Danny was still quiet, but Jerry didn’t seem to notice. He talked and chatted, and not only to Beebop. Beebop was clearly glad to see Jerry. He trotted over to the fence, and when Lincoln came with him, he lifted his hind foot—“This guy is mine!” Jerry had a cut-up apple, which he gave to Beebop piece by piece. I told him about the big escape, when all the geldings got out and a few of the mares, and how we found Beebop in the front yard,
minding his own business and grazing. Jerry laughed, and said, “He’s a food horse, all right.”