Horsekeeping (46 page)

So after my fourth dump and run I knew that I would forge ahead, and accepted that I was both a veteran and a pointless worrier.

I also knew that it would be a cold day in hell before I set foot in that jump field again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Summer Wanes

B
Y AUGUST THE FARM HAD LULLED INTO A LAZY RHYTHM, and with melancholy I counted down my idyllic days. Soon I'd be transplanting myself and the kids back to the hard surfaces and sharp angles of NYC. On one late-afternoon bike ride I felt, with the force of an epiphany, my good fortune of having landed on this particular spot of earth. My customary twelve-mile ride absorbed me like an old friend, its familiarity breeding ever-expanding comfort over the years. Yet it never tarnished: each ride was as sterling as the first. I passed our farm to cruise the length of Weatogue Road—waving to my neighbors, shushing their dogs, mourning the fresh road kill—and hugged the slow, mud-thick Housatonic River along an ox bowed meadow that showed off distant views of patch-worked New England.

Warmed up and breathing deep, I skirted charming colonial farmsteads along sleepy back roads of few cars and manageable hills. The cerulean sky pushed bleached clouds, and the fine air filtered my lungs and thoughts clear and clean. The secretive river mirrored the breezed branches that waved their greetings, cooling me without impeding my forward motion; a whiff of damp vegetation from the fen's deep and the scurry of a startled deer. As I exited a patch of woods, I squinted into a trenchant sun that immediately drew sweat from my arms and back. Undersized mountains spread reassuringly long and low behind open fields, bluish lavender in a gauzy haze: “purple majesty” indeed;
metaphor made real in rock, soil and foliage. Imagine the movement of earth that carved, so definitively, such horizontal and vertical dimension—the flat so even, the hills jutting in exclamation. I felt good. I had already ridden Bandi without incident, and my body, loosened up by his trot, moved younger than its years.

My kids were happily occupied. Jane was at a YMCA day camp paddling the lake, napping in tents and wild raspberry-hunting. Elliot was up in Lenox, Massachusetts, learning scenes from
Hamlet
in Shakespeare & Company's Riotous Youth program. I surged with serenity, a delicious rush. My eyes moistened at the severity of someday departing this town, its landscaped and wild beauty, this farm, these animals, these neighbors; a grief similar to that inspired by the imagined deathbed good-byes to my husband and children. Salisbury as home superseded sheer geography, instilling connections that rendered place a life partner, and I relished its every mood and mourned any transfiguring change. A love of place can feel like family, the parting almost as sorrowful. Soon my drenching in country pleasures would reduce to the weekends, but what a boon. I thanked any God that I shared this blissful pocket of nature's best, even as I railed at its, or more accurately, my evanescence.

 

 

BUT MY LIFE AND MY SUMMER ODYSSEY WERE NOT OVER YET.

“Good morning. Would you like to ride Angel today?” Bobbi casually asked as I hurried past the horse-filled grooming stalls to collect my tack.

My head and eyebrows shot up as I glanced around to see who she was addressing. Meghan and Cindi eagerly nodded their heads at me with wide-eyes and toothy grins like Bobbi was offering a magic mushroom I couldn't possibly refuse. Bobbi does not let just anyone test-drive her always impeccably shined, muscularly fit, deep brown mare with the white blaze between her intelligent, long-lashed eyes. Angel's model poise rendered Bandi a frump: sturdily inelegant. My mind spun as she
disappeared smiling to collect the proper tack and allow me to recover. My first thought was:
No way—that's expensive, precious real estate. I couldn't possibly....
My second thought was:
Would I stay on that lively, forward creature
?

“You have to do it, Roxanne, she's truly amazing,” Cindi struggled to say while man-handling her own mount “Wing” into submission in the cross ties. “Stop it, you brute,” she admonished, with affection.

“You'll learn so much by this ride—I did when I rode her,” Meghan added, shovel in hand, scooping the manure freshly dropped by Q. “Angel's such a good teacher.”

“But what if I mess up? Do something wrong?”

“Bobbi wouldn't offer if you weren't ready. You'll get a good taste of what you're riding for and find skills to use on Bandi,” Cindi concluded.

I looked doubtful and stood paralyzed.

“Just do it,” they said in unison.

I went for it, mainly not to insult Bobbi who was willing to take a chance on me.

Carefully tacking and leading her outside, I whispered apologies to Angel for my inadequacy with a quick nuzzle before I hoisted myself oh so gently up on her fine body. Because she is so prized, and perhaps because she is a mare, I thought of her as delicate somehow and feared my poor riding might break her.

Bobbi, Angel and I ambled into the ring.

“Have a nice walk around and then pick up a trot. She doesn't need much prompting to get going, unlike your Bandicoot, so the trot may seem a little fast. Don't worry, she won't take off on you,” Bobbi casually said as she wandered away to rake up some ring poop.

Angel stepped lively without rushing. Her steady pace relieved any pressure to use my heels or cluck her along. It was lovely, and I immediately sat tall and proud, a real dressage rider. Her trot was equally transporting, purposeful and rhythmic, musically light as air.

“She's so forward and eager to go,” I said, genuinely amazed at how push-button she operated.

“She's a good girl, and she likes her work. This is what you should expect from Bandi. He may never get there, but you can get closer to it,” Bobbi coached.

I lightly pressed my inside leg to guide her in the corners and along the rail, and she so tuned into the aids that hardly any pressure or rein was needed. Struggle free, I immediately sensed the difference between expecting correctness with Angel and anticipating problems with Bandi. My corners on Angel were a revelation: I was in close and neat, no dragging required. Her impulsion was vertical and bubbly, champagne in a fluted glass, as opposed to Bandi's, flatly heavy with gravity. I could concentrate all my energy on myself, free to maneuver my posture, arm elasticity, calm hands, long legs with heels down and accurate commands. I even began to imagine collecting this horse on the bit.

“She's a model of engineering,” I cried. “The Ferrari of horses.”

Bobbi instructed me through serpentines and circles—both twenty meter and fifteen, and into a tight conch shell spiral and back out again. The riding was practically effortless.

“I want her. How much is a horse like this? Can I get one?”

Bobbi laughed; no doubt she has heard that before. And I was joking—sort of. I pictured a riding life of ease upon such a gifted horse, and how good I could look with a lot less sweat. But then I remembered why Bobbi disallowed spurs for a long time, and why I had to fall off a few times, and why (besides the expense) I didn't have a super-trained horse: I had to learn to ride, not just sit and go. Only once my legs strengthened and I learned how to use them did she graduate me to spurs and a whip. Only when my arms elasticized to the feel of a horse's mouth, did she fit Bandi with a stronger bit affording me better control out in the fields and over jumps. From falling off, I learned balance, control, concentration without anxiety (still working on this one) and how to anticipate a horse's movements (yeah, well, this one too). Now that I'd gained just
enough skill she offered up Angel, who pointed me toward a loftier goal. I saw the prize now, distant and glowing, and Bandi would make me earn it. The girls were right; in forty-five minutes Angel had educated me far beyond what instruction on my graceless lug could accomplish. I resolved a new attitude with Bandi—no longer defeatist, I would expect and pull more out of him.

I walked Angel back to the barn, beaming, and the silent girls slid me a look of shared privilege: sparkling eyes being the best acknowledgement of Bobbi's Angel gifts that placed us in a sorority you appreciate only as a member. Beatific, I couldn't restrain myself from telling anyone it made any sense to. I had been admitted to an inner circle and earned the right to effuse.

“Guess what I did today, honey?” I said to Scott the minute I got home, grinning from ear to ear like a village idiot while skipping around the kitchen. “I rode Angel!”

“So?”

But Elliot and Jane understood. “Really, Mom? Wow, I want to ride her. You're sooo lucky.”

Brandy was impressed as was Chip, who dropped by the barn the next day for a quick hello to Bobbi, the wife that he hardly saw anymore.

“Yeah, I'm about tenth now after the horses and the dogs, but at least on I'm still on the list,” Chip said cheerily, giving Angel a deep, satisfying shoulder scratch that arched her neck and pursed her lips in pleasure.

“Oh honey, you know I love you, too,” Bobbi teased, giving him a squeeze.

They had known each other for ten years, married nearly six, a union plotted in animal heaven. On their first date of dinner and a movie, Chip picked up Bobbi in his mud-splattered truck loaded with drooling, hairy dogs. It smelled of a test—love me, love my beasts—and Bobbi didn't flinch. On their third date she took Chip, who had ridden as a child in France, on a three-hour trail ride. Agile and sporting, she knew he
was the one when he called her later that night thrilled that his sweater smelled like horses.

“Guess what, Chip?” I sang. “III rooode AAAngel!”

Chip got it. He and Angel have a close relationship. She whinnies at the sight or sound of him and agitates until he nuzzles her. He knows all her favorite itchy spots and regularly enjoys the patented Angel head massage, something the rest of us receive only on occasion and then never with the same dedication. She clearly loves him so intensely I was taken aback when Chip admitted he doesn't care to ride her.

“Whenever I rode Angel, she'd turn this way and that and make all these moves I didn't ask for.”

“But you did ask for them, Honey. She's so good it doesn't take much. You ride cowboy style, kicking away out into the sunset.” Conspiratorially Bobbi whispered, “He isn't a dressage rider.”

They giggled and argued good-naturedly about his riding skills.

 

 

THAT NIGHT I TREATED Bobbi, Meghan and Brandy to a delayed celebratory dinner at The White Hart as thanks for their hard work during our first show. I wanted to know Meghan and Brandy better, and I relished a few hours of horse talk cleanly dressed and comfortably seated with a drink and some good food as opposed to the quick conversations held amidst donuts shared with horses over cross ties in a barn.

I was richly rewarded, much more so than they despite their voluble appreciation of a night out. I knew I would enjoy Bobbi's company, sharing the same stage of life, but I suspected the younger Meghan and even younger Brandy might be bored. They have boyfriends and youth; would they just be appeasing the boss? If so, it didn't show. They are excellent young women, possessing a specialized knowledge but also smart, mature, boisterous and funny. They were chock full of interesting talk, and eager to share it with me, an empty vessel thirsty for horse lore. Four
hours later we parted, drunk not on wine but on stories of past horses, scary rides, other farms and the rewards of horsewomanship.

We compared horsekeepers to the young investment bankers at Scott's firm arriving the coming weekend as our guests at the Inn. For several years now as a popular annual event, the hardworking, fresh-from-college analysts enjoy a weekend of free food and drink and some coveted days off. Usually Scott schedules a long bike ride, but the increasing numbers and my fear that some of the less-experienced riders would get run over (old enough to be their mothers, I felt responsible), this year we planned a hike up a local mountain followed by lunch at the farm. We invited Meghan and Brandy to the dinner because they were roughly age equivalent if incongruous in profession and lifestyle—horse versus blackberry, breeches versus suits, rural versus urban.

“I'll take them on,” Brandy exclaimed after I described their long days at the office in a weak attempt to justify their hefty pay scales. “When they're bored to death in their offices I'll be lovin' my job and my horses.”

After my summer apprenticeship, the term “barn help” or “stable hand” seemed a paltry misnomer to the skill sets these women possessed. Like teachers and nannies, they are chronically underpaid. Bobbi and Meghan impressed me not because they lack fear; on the contrary, their healthy dose of it is evident after each and every “episode” with a horse. Fearlessness would render risk easy, working through fear on a continual basis is hard. I told them so.