Gee Whiz (2 page)

Mom said, “Doesn’t Jake Morrisson shoe horses over at that place? Maybe Danny’s actually been there.”

Dad said, “You’re thinking of Laguna Seca. Vista del Canada is the private place—don’t know a thing about it, except that it is supposed to be very grand.”

I said, “Jane might know some of those people. She talked about them once.” Jane was the manager of a big stable on the coast where I rode in shows.

Dad said, “Those aren’t the same ones, I’m sure.” What he meant was, those aren’t the people who tried to cheat us out of five thousand dollars right around the time that Mr. Matthews showed up and saved the day. But he looked worried, because what was the difference between one horse-racing gambler and another, really? I mean, he liked Mr. Matthews because he was a rancher, and they could talk cattle and cow horses. Or I thought that was why he looked worried, until he said, “I wonder what it costs.”

Mom said, “I guess we’ll find out.”

Dad said, “We need to find out before we take the horse over there, is what I think.”

I thought about my bank account—a hundred and six dollars. I wondered how long that would last, even if Mr. Matthews was splitting it with us. Dad said, “I’ll write him back, and we’ll pray on it.” I saw that he was pretty reluctant to open the Bible and see what Scripture advised, and I didn’t blame him.

Even though I had to get up early to get to the school bus, I couldn’t help lying awake, wondering about sending Jack to a place that was “down the road,” much less to Texas. I had
pretty much forgotten about the fact that Mr. Matthews might want to do something with Jack—we hadn’t heard from him all summer, and what with riding, and training Blue, and trying to figure out high school, I hadn’t thought about the Jockey Club in months. Well, wasn’t this a good thing? Yes, Jack
was
the son of Jaipur and the grandson of Nasrullah and Determine. But I sort of hoped that Dad would decide that it was too much money. (And how much would that be? The stables where the horse shows were, where Sophia Rosebury kept her horses, and where Blue had come from, charged a hundred dollars every month just for board, and that didn’t include any training—board and breaking and training could be twice that.) Maybe Jack could stay home.

I rolled over, and of course what happens when you roll over is that you get another bad thought. Mr. Matthews was nice enough now, but if we decided that we didn’t want Jack to go to Vista del Canada, maybe he could just say, “Okay, Texas it is,” and Jack would have to go there. It was about at this point that I decided that I would write Mr. Matthews myself, and suggest that we keep Jack at home and Jem Jarrow could start him. Yes, that was a good idea, and I would think about the name later. I fell asleep. Jem Jarrow wore cowboy boots and worked at his brother’s ranch, but he could train any horse to do anything.

That was Wednesday. Friday, we had a surprise. It was a pleasant surprise, but it was definitely a surprise. Dad and I were riding Mr. Tacker’s five-year-old quarter horse gelding, Marcus, and our beautiful paint mare, Oh My, in the arena when a truck and trailer pulled up to the gate, and Danny got
out of the passenger’s side, opened the gate, let the rig through, and closed the gate. It was a nice two-horse trailer and a new truck—newer than ours. When it pulled up to the parking area beside the barn, a guy got out. He looked about Danny’s age. He was wearing the usual stuff—jeans, cowboy hat, jean jacket. He and Danny came over to the fence, and he took off his hat. His hair popped up like it was made of springs. He dipped his head to us, and Danny said, “Dad, this is Jerry Gardino. Jerry, this is my dad, Mark Lovitt, and my sister, Abby. Jerry’s looking for a place to keep his horse for a couple of months, and I knew you had room. There’s nothing at Marble Ranch at the moment.” Marble Ranch was the ranch where Danny worked and lived. Then, as if reading Dad’s mind, Danny said, “Jerry knows that you charge seventy-five dollars per month with him supplying oats or corn.”

Dad relaxed at once, and said, “The more the merrier.”

Jerry Gardino gave us a smile, and it was a very big smile. It made you smile right back.

He said, “Thanks, Mr. Lovitt. I really appreciate this. The season’s over, and Beebop needs a little time off. Danny says he’ll get great care, and this place looks perfect. There’s a spot up where I go to school, but no grass, and not much turnout. Hate to do that to a horse.”

I dismounted, and Jerry cemented his good impression by saying, “That one’s a beauty.”

Dad leaned over and gave Oh My a pat and said, “Well, the black-and-white overo paint is fairly unusual, for sure, but look at this.” I turned Oh My around so Jerry could see the
question mark on her left side. He said, “Oh my.” They always did.

Dad said, “What kind of horse do you have?”

“Oh, Beebop is a little bit of everything—Thoroughbred mixed with quarter horse mixed with sixteen other varieties maybe. Some mustang in there for sure. He’s a bucking horse. I take him around to rodeos, and mostly he gets out from under ’em.”

Danny said, “You should see the pictures.”

The horse, when we unloaded him, was nice enough—a liver chestnut with a friendly eye, no white on him, and of medium height and build—just the sort of horse that a judge wouldn’t look at twice. We put him in a stall with a nice pile of hay for the night, and Danny said he would come over with Jerry the next day and introduce him to the geldings. Then Mom came out and invited the two of them for supper, and by the fact that we were having fried chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy, it was clear that she had known about this all along.

Over supper, Danny and Jerry talked about our local rodeo in the summer. Danny had taken his horse, Happy, in a few roping classes, and Jerry, who had been standing by the railing, had admired her. He said, “She almost had you off that one time, remember that? She just spun and you were lucky to hang on.”

Danny laughed. “Well, she’s quick and she never saw a calf she didn’t want to boss around.” Jerry took Beebop to the rest of his appointments on the rodeo circuit, and Danny went back to work shoeing, and it was only when Jerry came over
to Marble Ranch looking for a place for the winter that they had recognized each other. Mom asked Jerry where he was from, what his folks did, all that stuff that moms do, and Jerry said he was from San Francisco, his dad and his uncles were all butchers, he had grown up in Little Italy up there.…

Dad said, “You didn’t grow up on a ranch?”

“Right downtown,” said Jerry. “Four houses from the corner of Mason and Union.”

I don’t think I’d ever seen such a surprised look on my dad’s face. Both Mom and Danny laughed.

He said, “And you’ve ridden bulls?”

“Not well,” said Jerry. “But it was something I wanted to do all my life, from the first time I saw rodeos on the TV.”

He had been on the rodeo circuit since May, but now he was going back to college, San Jose State. He was a sophomore—sort of. He said, “Since I skipped the first quarter, I’m kind of a slow sophomore. But I wanted to try it. I thought by the end of the season I would have made up my mind, but I haven’t.”

Dad said, “About what?”

“About school. Sophomores are supposed to choose their majors, but I haven’t made up my mind about that, either.”

I saw Mom glance at Danny, but Danny was focused on his chicken leg. Mom was always hoping that one of Danny’s friends who went to college, like Leah Marx, for example, who had been maybe in some way and by some stretch of the imagination his girlfriend and who had gone up to Berkeley in August, would serve as a good example and lead Danny out of horseshoeing and cattle roping and into a nice safe career as an accountant.

Dad knew we were now on shaky ground and didn’t say anything.

The pictures were very impressive. In fact, the pictures were a little scary. There were six of them, each one from a different rodeo, five in California and one in Nevada. Beebop was in the arena with a rider sort of on his back. He had no saddle, just the rigging that they strap where the front of a saddle would be, with a handle for the rider to hold on to, and behind that, just in front of his back legs, the other strap, which was called the flank strap. He wore a snug halter made of wide strips of leather, and he was curled in the air. Or he was stretched so that his hind hooves were pointed at the sky and his nose was nearly on the ground. His mouth was open, his ears were back, and he looked very serious and very wild.

After he laid the six photos on the kitchen table, Jerry pointed to the last one. In that one, Beebop’s body was twisted and his head was down. The cowboy was flying forward, his shoulders hunched and his arms in the air. He said, “Beebop loves that move. He makes believe he’s going to go forward and toss the guy, but then in the wink of an eye, he slides back and to one side and puts him over the front.”

Mom glanced at the pictures and went back to washing the dishes, but Dad said, “My brother Luke liked that sort of thing. He did it for a few years when we were young. Tried bulls, too.”

“I wouldn’t do bulls again,” said Jerry, “though I tried it for a while. And I’m not much good at bareback bronc riding—I like saddle broncs myself, but Beebop is more quick and limber than he is strong, so he’s good at this. I think it’s easier on him, too.”

He pointed to the third picture, the one where Beebop was arched upward practically like he was going to break in two. He said, “He got the high score that time. He’s good.”

I said, “Do you ever ride him?”

Jerry laughed. “No way on earth. Never been on him once.”

I wondered how you could have a horse and not want to ride him.

Another interesting thing about Jerry was that he talked to parents just like they were regular people. After supper, we went into the living room the way we always did, and Danny didn’t leave to go home, the way he always did. The two of them sat down easy as you please. Mom picked up her knitting and everyone kept talking about this rodeo season and others gone by. It got so boring that I went to my room and read the book we were assigned in English class, which was
Spoon River Anthology
. It wasn’t very long, but it was all poems, and the poems were all spoken by dead people in the cemetery. Dad would not have liked this book at all, but I thought it was spooky and interesting because it seemed like it was about people who finally got to say what they had always wanted to say after years of saying only what they were supposed to.

It was my job that night to check on the horses before bed. Rusty, our dog, was sitting on the back porch, and walked along at my side. First, I went to the geldings. It was cold enough for me to wear my jacket, so they were standing in a group under the trees, their tails facing northwest, because that was the direction the breeze was coming from. I opened
the gate and went over to them. Their manes were ruffling and their coats were fluffed up. Marcus and Lincoln stayed where they were, but Blue and Jack came over, and I snaked my fingers into Blue’s coat, which had a soft, warm feel. I gave everyone a couple of pieces of carrot and a scratch around the ears. Jack sniffed my pockets but wasn’t pushy. I didn’t mind if he was curious, just if he showed bad manners. The mares were farther away—not even visible, down in the hollow above the creek, taking shelter from the wind there. I didn’t call them. I just went through the gate and looked down the hillside. Dark, quiet shapes, maybe a tail swishing back and forth in the night. Rusty stayed beside me. I knew if there was anything suspicious down there, she would take off and check it out, but she only sniffed the breeze. Then I went into the barn and looked at Beebop. He was standing quietly in his stall, having finished all of his hay. While I was looking at him, he blew air out of his nostrils, sighed, and shifted his weight. Then he flicked his ears toward me in a friendly way and made a low nicker. It was hard to believe that this was the wild horse in the pictures. I did think he needed a carrot, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to hold my hand out to him, so I tossed it into his feed bin.

Even though they had gone to Danny’s place the night before, and Danny’s place was a twenty-minute drive, Danny and Jerry were sitting at the table when I got up for breakfast. It was barely light outside, and they were already wolfing down scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast. Danny pushed a plate toward me. I said, “Where’s Mom?”

Danny said, “She’s still sleeping. Jerry cooked.”

I tried to pretend this was no big deal.

Jerry said, “Dan made the toast.”

“That’s why it’s burned, then.”

Danny said, “I like it that way.”

Well, maybe.

The point of their coming early was that in order to introduce Beebop to Blue, Jack, Lincoln, and Marcus, we were going to set out eight piles of hay—very nice, delicious piles—and Blue, Jack, Marcus, and Lincoln would consider themselves so rich in hay that they would not mind another gelding joining them for breakfast. I couldn’t help thinking of those pictures of Beebop—if he could kick that high when he was bucking a rider off, how high would he kick to show the other geldings that he was the boss? But Danny and Jerry seemed utterly relaxed. They talked about a movie that was out—
Fahrenheit 451
. Jerry had read the book. I kept eating. Danny had read the book, too. I nearly choked. I said, “What’s it about?”

Jerry ate half a piece of bacon. “Well, you know, four hundred fifty-one degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature at which paper burns. It’s about a future time when books are against the law, and if they find you with a book, the firemen burn it.”

I turned to Danny. “You read it?”

“I liked it.”

I must have looked like I didn’t believe him, because he said to Jerry, “Abby doesn’t think I know how to read.”

I said, “What’s another book you’ve read?”

I thought he would say something like
The Black Stallion
, but he said, “I read
A Farewell to Arms
.”

Jerry said, “That’s a good one.”

I didn’t believe him, though. “Why did you read that?”

“I found it on a shelf where I’m living, and there wasn’t anything else to do, so I read it.” He stared at me, then sniffed. “I liked it.” Then he said, “You should read it.”