by Jane Smiley
And they looked different Monday morning from how they looked Friday morning, because we worked all Saturday, and then Uncle Luke declined to accompany us to our church on Sunday. He said he would go to the regular Baptist church in town, but there was no way to tell whether he had or not. Even so, he didn’t mind working Sundays, and so he did pull manes and give baths all afternoon. Daddy might have said something about it being against the Lord’s day, but, as he pointed out, it wouldn’t have made a difference, anyway.
It was good to have Uncle Luke around, but when he drove away in his big rig early Monday morning, we were happy to see him go, because he did make it a point to do things his way and to be sure that Daddy knew he was doing things his way.
That afternoon, I got on Ornery George for the first time since his session with Uncle Luke. Daddy was grooming one of the new geldings—we called him “Black George”—so that I could get off Ornery George and right onto that one with only a switching of the saddle. He didn’t see that when I threw the saddle onto Ornery George’s back, he pinned his ears and reached around as if to bite me. He had never done that before, but anyway, he didn’t bite me. He was just showing me that he could. I led Ornery George to the mounting block. I put my foot in the stirrup, grabbed his mane, and began to hoist myself on when Ornery George leapt away from the block and deposited me in the dirt. I was okay except I sat on my left hand. I jumped up. I still had Ornery George’s rein in my right hand, and I gave him a jerk. He started backing up and pulling me with him. I gave him another jerk. Daddy tied Black George to the bar and came trotting over, and when Ornery George kept backing up, even though I was jerking the rein, he took the rein out of my hand. Ornery George stopped and stood still.
Daddy said, “What’s going on with you, buddy? Got a thorn in your cinch?” He leaned down and put his hand inside the cinch and felt around. George flinched away from him. Daddy said, “Come on, buddy, come on, buddy,” and started leading him forward. George walked along nicely enough. Only when Daddy turned toward him did the horse throw his head. Daddy walked him over to the arena, opened the gate, took off the bridle, and let George go. George bucked like mad all around the arena, stopping only a little bit in order to run a few strides and start bucking again. Daddy leaned on the fence. Finally, he said, “Well, you’ve got to wonder what’s got into him.”
As for me, I couldn’t help thinking that it was rather interesting that what Uncle Luke had done with George had never been mentioned in the five intervening days, certainly not by me. Daddy often said, “All secrets are guilty secrets.” I said, “Did Uncle Luke tell you he rode the horse?”
“No, he did not,” said Daddy. “I did not give him permission to ride the horse. Did you?”
“I didn’t know he needed permission.”
“Well—” He looked at me. “Did he sack him out? Lay him down?”
I said, “I guess so. He said he needed to learn his lesson.”
“And then he left before you could find out what lesson, exactly, it was that he learned.”
I said, “I guess so.”
“Well, Abby, it looks to me like the horse learned the wrong lesson. What do you think?”
“I don’t want to ride him.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“Are you mad?”
“Not at you.”
“At George?”
“Of course not.”
All of this time, George had been bucking and kicking out, but now he settled and stood across the arena with his head down. Daddy whistled with his fingers between his teeth, and George looked up. Then he turned toward us and walked, then trotted, to the gate. Daddy said, “Put a halter on him and walk him around the arena for ten minutes, because now we have to start all over with him.” He stopped, then said, “Abby. He’s not a bad horse. I’m going to tell you something about the horse business. You see how we are giving this horse another chance?”
I nodded.
“It’s because he’s good-looking. When you go to buy a horse someday, you make sure he or she is good-looking. They live longer because they get more chances to redeem themselves. You hear me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And another thing. Anything you saw your uncle, bless his soul, do with this horse, you just forget it. Put it out of your mind. Got that?”
I nodded at that, too.
While I was walking Ornery George, he behaved well enough. But he was jittery and I had to go so carefully to get the saddle off that it took me ten minutes. The Ornery George I knew had been grumpy. This Ornery George was nutty.
I rode Roan Jewel and Blue Jewel. They were nice enough. Then I went to the pen and gave Jack his milk. After he drank it, he stood with his head down and his ears flopped while I ran a chamois over him, head to tail, on both sides. We often used the chamois on the horses just to shine them up, but on him I used the rough side, which seemed to give him a nice scratching. While I was doing this, standing back by his shoulder, his head came around my body. I thought he was looking for something, a bit of hay, maybe, but he didn’t seem to be. I finished rubbing him with the chamois and picked up the bowl. He followed me to the gate, and I patted him on the nose after I had let myself out. Later, when we were giving all the horses their alfalfa for the night, Daddy said, “That foal gave you a hug.”
“He did?”
“That was a horse hug.”
I thought about that later, in bed. Horses normally show their appreciation by nickering at you, or pricking their ears when you come, or, to be frank, getting inside your space and crowding you, and then you have to shoo them away, because they have to respect you even though you weigh about a tenth of what they do. I had never felt a horse do that thing before that Daddy said was a hug, just that steady pressure for a moment or two that said something like, “Be next to me.”
That kid, Brian Connelly, was now calling Stella every night and talking to her for at least forty-five minutes. Every day at lunch, she bragged about how she hardly had the time to do her homework because he was bothering her so much. And then, first thing in the morning, he would stand with her by her locker while she sorted her books for the day and talk to her some more. Gloria and I sometimes found ourselves waiting for her, and for the life of me, I couldn’t understand why he talked about all the things he did. For example, he would have watched a show on TV the night before, something everyone watched, like Dick Van Dyke. I was the only person in my class who didn’t watch Dick Van Dyke, because we didn’t have a TV. But Brian wasn’t talking to me, he was talking to Stella, and he would tell her everything that happened in a show that she herself had seen, including all the jokes, which he would laugh at with his mouth open. Or he would tell her what he had for breakfast (usually Wheaties but sometimes a crispy fried egg “because I don’t like it all runny”).
Gloria and I would stand there watching Stella while Brian talked to her. She kept this happy expression on her face all the time and nodded. Gloria once said to me, “Look at her, she’s nodding to the rhythm, like he’s singing a song. I don’t think she’s hearing what he’s saying.” After that, I couldn’t see the nodding in any other way—though when you asked Stella what Brian had said, she knew.
I can’t say that he wasn’t interested in her, because sometimes he asked her questions—what shows had she seen the night before? What had she had for breakfast? What was that thing she was wearing called (in this case, a “dickey,” which was a knitted turtleneck that you could wear under your shirt to keep your neck warm, and you didn’t have to have the whole sweater, but in that case, what was the point, I thought), or what was the plaid of her skirt called? When Brian was in a question-asking mood, he asked questions until you wanted to pop him one. And, in fact, when we were in elementary school, he had been popped more than once, which at the time had made me feel sorry for him.
Now that he was so interested in Stella, though, I could kind of see Brian the way those mean kids had seen him back then. Fact was, Bria
n was big now, and those kids weren’t, yet, so Brian did pretty much what he pleased. He also got good grades, always sat in the front row in class, and always “contributed,” so the teachers liked him. Stella said, “He’s kind of important, isn’t he?” and Gloria and I didn’t tell her any different. In fact, I would say that Stella saw herself and Brian as the most popular couple in our grade, which didn’t sit well with the Big Four. From my point of view, Stella’s concentration on Brian meant that she expected me as much as Gloria to listen to the “Tales of Brian” and learn something. What we learned about, mostly, was getting dressed, since she was very careful to dress nicely every day, and she never wore the same thing more than once in two weeks. One of Gloria’s jobs, which I didn’t have to share, was to go shopping with Stella and her mother, looking for more and more clothes. These were clothes that she could offer to share but didn’t have to, since she was two sizes bigger than both Gloria and me. At our school, nobody wore very nice clothes, especially in the winter, when it was cold, rainy, and muddy. I could see the Big Four looking at Stella and rolling their eyes, but I didn’t feel I could say anything to Stella. Gloria shrugged and said that they should mind their own business.
One day, Stella wore stockings.
It was only March and way too chilly and damp for stockings, and anyway, girls in the seventh grade didn’t wear stockings to school. We wore loafers and kneesocks in the winter and sneakers and kneesocks or ankle socks in the warmer months. At that point, I had never even worn stockings, and Gloria had worn them only once, to her cousin’s wedding, with a pair of dyed satin flats. Stella wore them with flats, too—navy blue with little bows on them—and a knee-length navy skirt, a round collared blouse, and a navy cardigan with little red cats all over it.
Brian, of course, noticed the stockings right away, and he kept looking at them. First thing in the morning, I heard him say, “Those look nice,” and Stella just smiled and rubbed her hand down her calf, as if smoothing the nylon. She said, “They’re warmer than they look, really.” She pranced around in them for the rest of the morning.
But then, as Stella was walking into the lunchroom, with Brian right behind her, Mary A. ripped her stocking with a pencil point, and then said, “Oh! Look what happened! I am so sorry!” But Stella’s stocking had a big gaping hole in it, and now it sagged down. Mary A. was grinning.
Stella jumped back and said, “You are not sorry! You did that on purpose!”
“How dare you say that!” exclaimed Mary A., and then the other three started exclaiming, too—how dare she, what a thing to say, who did she think she was, all that sort of thing meant to make Stella out as the bad one and Mary out as the good one. Brian wasn’t saying anything for once, just standing there gawking, and I stepped forward, but Gloria poked me and shook her head. She was right. It wasn’t a good idea to attract the attention of the Big Four, especially when they were in full cry already. Stella dropped her tray on one of the tables and ran out of the lunchroom. After a moment or two, Gloria and I went after her. I saw Barbara and Alexis Goldman watch us leave the lunchroom and then turn to each other and shake their heads. Stella was in the girls’ bathroom, and she was bawling.
There wasn’t any blood, and at first I didn’t understand why she was crying like that. The Big Four had been mean, and maybe that was enough, but what Stella was saying was, “Look at it! It’s ripped! It’s terrible! I have to go home, I can’t wear this. They’re ruined!”
I said, “The other one’s okay.”
“It isn’t!” exclaimed Stella, and then she pulled up her skirt. That was the first pair of panty hose that I ever saw, and yes, if one leg was ruined, the whole thing was ruined. Then Stella said. “My mom is going to kill me, because she bought these for going to my aunt’s wedding, and they were exPENsive!”
“Well, you better take them off,” said Gloria. “You can’t wear them that way.”
The bell rang for class. Nobody else came into the girls’ bathroom. Stella made us wait until all the noise in the hall was gone, and then we came out of the bathroom together. Stella and Gloria went to their math class, and I went to English. We were reading Adam Bede. It was so boring that the teacher was having us read it aloud in class just to make sure that we read at least part of it. The Big Four ignored me when I came in, and I ignored them, too. But I knew that whatever was going on with them wasn’t over and that it was going to include Gloria, me, and Brian, because we were on Stella’s side and they were the other side. That was the way things worked in seventh grade.
Gloria called me that night. I was allowed to talk to my friends for ten minutes, and I had to do it in the living room or the kitchen, because that’s where the phones were, so I couldn’t really ask questions. What I learned was that Stella got in trouble with her mom and was grounded for a week for “sneaky behavior,” that she couldn’t talk to Brian for more than ten minutes anymore, and that she had had to go to the principal’s office for calling Mary A. a bad name right out in the hall by the front door. What made her mom extra mad was that while she was in the principal’s office, the bus left without her, and her mother had to come pick her up. And she had left her book bag in her locker, so she couldn’t even do her homework. Gloria said she felt sorry for Stella since, “Nothing was her fault to start out with,” and I said that I felt sorry for Stella, too. After I hung up, Daddy said, “What’s that all about?”
“Nothing, really.”
“Must be something.”
I shrugged.
He stared at me. I idled around the living room for a minute, then went up to my room. Once upon a time, I would have told him all about it, just because it wasn’t me who was in trouble, and it was all pretty interesting. But I knew what he would say: “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” I didn’t think it was as easy as that.
Chapter 9
WITH ALL THE NEW HORSES, IT WASN’T HARD TO LEAVE ORNERY George alone. And March was a busy month. First, Daddy sold Jewel Number 1 as a ranch horse, which was a nice enough life for her. She was good with the cows and never afraid of them. She could get by on hay and no grain, so they liked her for that. And later we learned that one day, she was out on the ranch with the owner, an old man, looking for a stray calf. He asked the Jewel (they kept her name, Jewel) to cross a dry riverbed, and she refused. Even though he hit her with the quirt and spurred her, she balked. Well, by that time, the owner was pretty mad, but he got off and went around to lead her to show her there was no problem with the river, except that there was—it was quicksand, and he sank up to his knees before she pulled him out by backing away while he held on to the reins. After that, of course, she had a home for life and a friend for life. We heard this story because the man called Daddy up and told him, and thanked him for selling him “a brainy one,” and all things considered, well, she had been cheap at the price. When he was telling us about this over dinner, Daddy said, “I never would have known she had that in her, but who can tell? Thank you, Lord.”
“Amen,” said Mom.
The chestnut George got sold as a trail horse to a big hotel, and Daddy said that he might live a long time. When all a horse did all day was walk along at an easy pace, he could live to be thirty or more. And, of course, since he was at a big hotel, in a fancy barn right beside the golf course, they would keep him clean and shiny. In the summer, they were going to put him in a camp for little kids. So, all in all, Daddy was happy in spite of Ornery George and the death of the mare. Other years had been worse, and I knew not to ask about them.
The new horses were in full work now. Daddy and I rode horses until sundown every night and fed after dark. Jack was eating hay now, but he still had to be fed his milk, with bran mixed into it, in a bucket, several times a day, which was time-consuming. Mom was good with the horses because she was good with all animals, including baby birds and lost dogs, but she didn’t ride unless she was going on the trail and the horse was old and quiet. I made myself extra work, rubbin
g Jack with the chamois so that he would always be happy to see me. In other words, we were busy, but when Miss Slater called and said the horse show was coming up and could I come and ride in a few classes, it seemed as easy as you please to get out my English riding clothes and brush them off, then shine up my jodphur boots and drive over there. I had never shown in them before, but Daddy had gotten them secondhand somewhere and had always told me they would come in handy. Daddy picked me up after school. The truck was clean, too, and Daddy was wearing his good hat.
I was to ride that afternoon, just to get the feel of the pony again, and then the next morning, Saturday, I was to take him in three classes—pony hunter over fences, two feet; pony hunter over fences, two feet, six inches; and pony hunter hack (no jumps). This time, Miss Slater said, Melinda would watch and learn. Maybe next time she would try it herself.
When I got there, Melinda was nowhere to be seen, and when Miss Slater saw me looking around for her, she said, “Poor Melinda. She’s home with a tummy ache. I’m sure it’s not serious.”
I said, “Does she ride the pony much?” “You mean Gallant Man, here?” “Is that what you named him, Gallant Man?” Miss Slater smiled. She said, “The original Gallant Man was a racehorse some years ago. He was quite small. When my dad took me to the Belmont Stakes that year, he put a bet on him for me, even though he himself preferred another horse. Gallant Man won, and in record time. So when I saw what a nice pony we had here and how he is ready to do anything we ask of him, I thought it would be a cute name for him. What did you call him?”
“We called him George. But that’s what we call all of them.”