Horse Talk (5 page)

“Yep.” Stevie added the ones from underneath the bed to a waist-high pile beside the bed. “Except for fiction, of course.”

Lisa emptied her backpack. “I didn’t bring the ones that I knew you already had.”

Carole patted a bulging duffel bag. “I brought as many of mine as I could. They wouldn’t all fit.” Lisa and Stevie laughed. No wonder Carole knew so much about horses! She must have had ten books on jumping alone.

The Saddle Club had faced up to the fact that they might not get real callers for
Horse Talk
. The best way to be prepared, they had decided, was to make a list of good questions that Stevie could ask. That way they would always have something interesting, or at least relevant, to say. They were going to read through all their horse books for ideas.

“I was talking to my mom about the gardening show she listens to,” Lisa said as she sharpened her pencil and took a fresh pad of paper out of her bag. “She says that the master gardener usually doesn’t answer more than about fifteen questions per show.”

“Fifteen!” Stevie exclaimed. “I asked at least fifty!”

“Right,” Lisa said. “See, Mom says that the gardener talks to each caller for a while. He asks for details about their problem, and he discusses his solution, and they chitchat. Sometimes they make little jokes. And the gardener always talks to his callers by name. ‘Well,
Jeremy, it sounds to me like your philodendron has an advanced case of root rot.’ Like that.”

“By name!” Stevie rolled her eyes in mock horror. “That’ll work great for my
first
phone call. After that it’ll be”—she dropped her voice in a bad imitation of Max—“ ‘Oh, here’s Stevie again! Doesn’t Stevie know anything about horses? Why does Stevie keep calling?’ ”

Carole tapped her cheek with her fingers. “We could make up names to go with the questions. It’s a pretty good idea, really,” she said. “If we take longer to answer each question, then we won’t need to ask as many. It’ll be easier.”

“Plus, it’ll sound more professional,” Lisa said. “If we chat with our callers, and they all have different names, then no one will guess that they’re really all Stevie.”

“I guess I could try to disguise my voice,” Stevie said.

“Sure,” Lisa said. “It’ll be easy. All it takes is a little practice.”

Someone banged on Stevie’s bedroom door. “Knock it off, Chad!” Stevie yelled without getting up. Stevie had three brothers, one older, one younger, and one twin. Chad, the oldest, was the only one who constantly bugged her.

Chad stuck his head in the door. “Mom says to tell you it’s time for dinner.”

Stevie and her friends got up. “Why didn’t you say so right away, instead of knocking holes through my door?” Stevie groused. Chad sneered at her and ran down the stairs.

“Think of names,” Lisa said. “We’ll make a list after dinner.”

“Oh, I’m thinking of names, all right,” Stevie muttered, glaring at her brother’s disappearing back. “They just aren’t names I can use on the air.”

“
M
ARILLA
,” L
ISA SAID
, writing it down. “I like that one.”

“From
Anne of Green Gables
?” Stevie asked. “She was kind of a crabby old housewife, wasn’t she? Let’s see, Marilla can say, ‘I don’t understand why horses have to wear shoes on their feet. Can you explain it to me?’ ” Stevie’s Marilla voice was high and a little strained.

“Great,” said Carole. “That’s a good question, too, because it’ll take a long time to answer. You want to avoid yes-no questions, and try to ask ones that we can discuss on the air for a while.”

“Do you think you could imitate a boy’s voice?” Lisa asked. Stevie had gone through several characters, but so far they had all been female.

Stevie wrinkled up her face, thinking. “Maybe. A young boy’s, anyway. And I could probably make my voice squeak, like Chad’s.” They laughed. Chad’s voice
was starting to change. At dinner he’d asked Lisa to please pass the rolls. The
please
had started out very low and ended in a squeak that hurt their ears. Chad had looked awfully embarrassed.

“Why do people ride horses, anyway?” Stevie asked in a rude and hysterically funny imitation of Chad.

“That’s easy,” Carole said in a deep radio announcer’s voice. She grabbed a hairbrush to use as a microphone. “Cats are too small, sloths are too slow, and giraffes are too big.”

“And what about the smell?” Stevie continued, still pretending to be Chad.

“I admit it bothers us a little,” Carole said into the hairbrush, “but don’t worry, Chad, I don’t think the horses will mind.” Carole and Lisa shrieked with laughter.

Stevie grinned. “Here’s another—see if you can guess who this is.
Actshually, I dain’t laike Paine Haullow
.”

Lisa shook her head. “I understand the words, but sorry, I haven’t got a clue who you’re trying to be.”

“Oh, come on!” Stevie said. “It’s Janey! Who else?”

“I guess,” Lisa said. “I haven’t really talked to her much, but I don’t have a hard time understanding her. I don’t think her accent’s that strong.”

“I probably just didn’t imitate it very well,” Stevie said. “That would be par for the course, as far as Janey and I are concerned.”

“Is she still being difficult?” Carole asked, putting down the hairbrush.

Stevie looked discouraged. “I’m supposed to be her big sister, and she doesn’t want anything to do with me,” she said. “She’s really not very friendly. Yesterday after school I saw her at the stable, so I took her over to our good-luck horseshoe and told her all about the Pine Hollow tradition.”

The others nodded. Every rider at Pine Hollow touched the good-luck horseshoe before beginning a ride. No rider at Pine Hollow had ever been seriously injured.

Stevie shook her head. “All she did was look at me and say, ‘That’s barmy,’ and walk away! I don’t even know what
barmy
means!”

“Nuts,” Lisa translated. “It means she thinks it’s a silly tradition.”

“She’s like that all the time,” said Stevie. “Every time I tell her anything, she just gets this sullen look on her face and shrugs. The only thing she ever says is how Pine Hollow and Nickel aren’t fancy enough for her. She wants everything to be fancy. I call that rude. Pine Hollow’s not like one of those million-dollar show stables, but it’s a great place, and if she wanted a million-dollar show stable, she should have gone to one.”

Lisa scooted over by the bed. Stevie seemed really
upset. “She sure seemed bratty last Saturday,” she said. “It can’t be much fun to have to deal with her. I’m sorry.”

Stevie sat next to her. “I’m sorry, too. I’m really trying. Every time I see her, I make myself go tell her something. I want to be a good big sister. Max will be disappointed if I’m not. But I can’t be one if Janey won’t let me. I don’t think she wants to be a little sister. Or maybe she just doesn’t like me. I don’t know what to do.”

“I guess since you’re her big sister, you’ve got to keep trying,” Carole said. “Maybe a few months at Pine Hollow will be good for her—cure her attitude. Anyway, Lisa and I will try to help you think of something.”

“We’ll do our best,” Lisa promised. “The Saddle Club never fails. Unless she really is like Veronica, in which case, of course, curing her would be hopeless. But even then we’ll try to help you endure her.”

“Thanks,” Stevie said. “I’d really appreciate it. Right now I haven’t got a clue what to do.”

“But I don’t think we should have a Janey voice for
Horse Talk
,” Carole said. “In the first place, I don’t think making fun of her would help your relationship with her, Stevie—”

“Of course not!” Stevie said. “That was just for in here—”

“—and in the second place, you don’t sound that much like her,” Carole said. “But I bet you could do a good little boy. Try for one about Michael’s age.”

Stevie screwed up her face, thinking about her younger brother’s voice.

Lisa lay back and looked at the ceiling. “I bet we sound just as strange to her as she does to us,” she commented.

“Who?” said Stevie. “Janey? I doubt it.”

“Sure,” said Lisa. “If we went down to New Zealand, we’d be the strange ones.”

“But we’re not there, we’re here,” said Stevie.

“And we’ve got to finish these
Horse Talk
questions,” Carole reminded them.

“Okay,” Stevie asked in a Michael voice, “when can you first start training a horse?”

“Well,” Carole said reflectively, “you can’t start until it’s
born
 …”

L
ISA REACHED FOR
a fresh sheet of paper. The floor of Stevie’s bedroom was littered with lists of questions in Lisa’s neat handwriting. Carole was making notes for the answers. She didn’t write out exactly what she and Lisa would say, but she put down all the points they would need to make in their discussion.

“We’ve got twenty-five questions,” Lisa said. “That should be enough, don’t you think?”

Stevie and Carole thought about it. “Let’s do a few
more,” Carole said. “We’re better off having too many than too few. I mean, what if we talk too fast? And we can save the extras for the week after.”

Stevie thumbed through one of her dressage manuals. “Maybe a question about double bridles?” she suggested.

Carole shook her head. “You don’t use a double bridle,” she said. “None of us does. If it’s too advanced for us, it’s definitely too advanced for
Horse Talk
.”

Stevie sighed and smiled. “I guess so. How about piaffe and passage?” Stevie had a passion for dressage, an elegant kind of riding that was similar to ballet. Double bridles were special bridles used in very high-level dressage, and piaffe and passage were two of the highest-level dressage moves.

“How about, ‘What does the word
dressage
mean?’ ” Carole said. “That’s a little closer to our audience’s level.”

“That’s supposing we have an audience,” Stevie countered. “So far, it’s Mrs. Klemme, Max, and two people Lisa knows.”

“Of those, only Max knows anything about dressage,” Lisa said. “Carole’s right.” She wrote the question down while Stevie grumbled.

“Let me see the question list again,” Stevie said. Lisa handed it to her.

The bedroom door flew open and Chad sauntered in.

“Get out of here!” Stevie said to him. She grabbed at his leg. Chad dodged her. “We’re busy!”

Chad snatched one of the lists out of Stevie’s hand. “What’s this?”

“Give that back!” Stevie screeched. She grabbed his leg.

“Chad!” Lisa shouted. “Give it back!”

Carole jumped up and tried to get the list away from Chad. He held it away from her, kicked free of Stevie, and danced around to the other side of Stevie’s desk. “Let’s see,” he said teasingly. “Maybe it’s a love letter? No … it’s just more horse stuff. Oh, wait! I get it. It’s the
Horse Talk
talk!”

“Put it down, Chad,” Carole pleaded. “It’s ours.”

“You miserable slime-bellied toad,” Stevie added. She lunged toward Chad, but he held the list high in both hands.

“Come any closer and I’ll tear it up,” he threatened. They froze. “ ‘Hello,
Horse Talk
. Why do I need to take lessons to learn how to ride? Doesn’t the horse do all the work?’ ” he read from the list. Chad’s eyes lit up. “You’re cheating!” he said.

“We are not,” Lisa said indignantly. “We’re just being prepared.”

“Awfully prepared,” Chad commented. “I’m sorry I missed the first show. I’ll have to tune in for the second. Question sixteen: ‘How much food do horses
eat?’ ” He laughed. “What a stupid question! Here’s another—”

“Give it
back
!” Stevie grabbed the list. Chad hung on to it, and the paper ripped in two. “Now you’ve done it!” Stevie shouted. Chad laughed again. He tossed his half of the list to Carole and ran out of the room.

“
Horse Talk
!” he said over his shoulder. “How many horses can dance on the head of a pin? Why don’t horses play soccer? How many horses does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”

Lisa taped the pieces of the list back together. “Just ignore him,” she suggested. “The more we react to him, the happier he is.”

Stevie shook her head. “I don’t like the look he just got in his eye,” she said. “I’ve seen it before. He’s not going to leave us alone.”

Carole shut Stevie’s bedroom door. “What could he possibly do?”

“H
ERE
’
S MY
S
AMANTHA
voice,” Stevie said to Lisa. “Tell me what you think. ‘I’m afraid my horse was not treated well by his previous owner. Whenever I try to bridle him, he acts like I’m going to hit him. What should I do?’ ”

“Sounds fine,” Lisa said briefly. She plugged in the last piece of radio equipment. It was Wednesday afternoon, ten minutes before
Horse Talk
was to begin, and she had butterflies in her stomach the size of pelicans. She could hardly think, much less listen to Stevie, who’d been doing voices for days. Where was that second set of headphones? For the third time, Lisa went through her mental checklist of radio and talk-show equipment.
Music tapes, equitation books, microphones
 …

“I think it sounds a little too close to the Augusta voice,” Stevie said. She looked through her list of questions worriedly. “Of course, Augusta and Janet are supposed to be close to the same age, but Janet’s from the South, so shouldn’t she speak—”