by Jane Smiley
“I heard you.”
I felt grumpy as we walked around the barn, but then Danny said, “I don’t know what the mare looked like, but he’s a Thoroughbred for sure. Abby, he’s a beautiful colt. And he’s going to be a beautiful horse.” He glanced at me. “But don’t get your hopes up.”
I don’t know what Jake Morrisson and Mom were talking about all this time, but I’m sure it was plenty, since not only did Danny work for Jake, he also lived above his barn, where his ranch hands had once lived when he still had the whole ranch. But they sorted everything out, and Jake called us over. Danny got in the truck, everybody waved, and they drove off. Afterward, Mom seemed happy enough. All she said to me, though, was, “No evidence that he’s doing anything stupid.”
I said, “That’s good.”
“He bought his own car.”
“Well, I’m sure he did. What kind?”
“Fifty-six Chevy convertible.”
This made us both laugh, but then Mom said, “I think a convertible would be fun, even if it is almost ten years old. We can get him to take us for a drive.”
Chapter 11
THERE WAS NO RIDING, THANK YOU, LORD, ON SUNDAY, AND MY favorite cook, Miss Larrabee, brought supper to church. We had chicken with dumplings, homemade bread, and because she and her brother were avid gardeners plenty of homegrown asparagus with a sauce made from their homegrown lemons. The Larrabees swore by rotted horse manure as a fertilizer, so they came by our place several times a year and carted off part of the manure pile. Over supper, they said that their straw berries looked better this year than they ever had, and everybody at the table kind of sighed at the thought of the strawberry shortcake to come.
There were two different theories about shortcake in our church—Mom and Daddy and some of the others preferred something like a sweetened biscuit, crumbly and crisp on the bottom, split and filled with strawberries and whipped cream. Miss Larrabee and her brother and some of their side preferred a dense, sweet pound cake shaped like a crown, with the center of the crown filled with berries and topped with ice cream. All of the kids liked both kinds equally, and we looked forward to the first strawberries of the year, which made a sort of celebration of our church. I won’t say that Daddy and all of the others agreed about everything they thought and talked about, but I will say they never argued about the strawberries.
Eating the chicken and dumplings and thinking about the strawberry shortcakes to come reminded me that things at church had been very peaceful lately—even the Greeley children were willing to sit quietly three out of every ten minutes, or however long it took to read one picture book. The one they liked best was The Little Engine That Could, which had nothing enlightening in it about the Lord, but it was the one that kept them quiet, so that was the one Carlie and I read to them, over and over, six times apiece on that Sunday alone.
And then Monday and Tuesday, it poured rain, so I kept Daddy happy by cleaning and oiling all the tack. On Wednesday, the arena was soaking wet, and Thursday, Daddy had to go into town for the entire day, not my fault. When we finally got to ride on Friday, we had to do all the easy horses first, and by that time, it was dark.
On Saturday, it was sunny as you please. The footing in the arena was perfect, and I was sitting over my French toast, dreading the morning. In my mind, Ornery George had gobbled up all the others, and I dreaded riding him so much that I didn’t look forward even to Black George, who was turning out to be quite nice. It was seven a.m.; we were getting a bright and early start, and just as Daddy pushed his chair back to stand up, there was a knock at the back door.
“Who could that be, I wonder,” said Mom. But she said it in a funny way, as if she didn’t wonder at all.
The man at the door took off his hat as soon as she opened it. They spoke for a moment or two, and then she brought him in, with a smile. He wasn’t a very big man, what Daddy would call wiry rather than rangy, and he had on faded brown pants and very old boots, with a blue denim shirt and leather vest. He said that he was pleased to meet us. Daddy shook his hand, because you never knew if someone came to your door whether it was Jesus or not, and in fact there was a Greek myth about this very same thing. The man said his name was James Jarrow, called Jem, and he had heard from Jake Morrisson that we had some nice horses for sale.
“We do, indeed,” said Daddy, and he got his business face on, which was simultaneously friendly and efficient. He said, “Let’s go look, shall we?”
Mom said, “Abby has finished her breakfast. She can go along,” which was the first clue that she had something up her sleeve. However, I put on my jacket and my boots and followed the two men out to the corrals. The horses were eating their hay. Jack was eating hay, too, even though we were still giving him some milk, usually mixed with bran. I had already fed him that, and he had licked the bucket clean.
Jem Jarrow was not a talkative person. He went with Daddy to each corral, stood by the gate, and stared at the horses. He didn’t fidget in any way. Next to him, Daddy looked like a jack-in-the-box, jumping up and down and making noise, but Daddy was just normal. It was Jem Jarrow who was different.
It must have taken him twenty minutes to stare at all the horses, including Jack. Finally, he went back to the gate of the gelding corral and pointed to Ornery George and said, “That’s a nice one. Well built. Good eye.”
I later found out that he didn’t prefer Ornery George at all.
“He’s not for a beginner,” said Daddy. “Which is not to say—”
“Does your girl here ride him?”
“She has,” said Daddy. At this point I fully expected to be told to mount up.
Jem Jarrow said, “Mind if I feel him over?”
“Not all all,” said Daddy.
“Mind if I catch him up?”
“You seem like an experienced horseman.”
“Done ranch work all my life.”
“I guess it’s okay, then. If Jake Morrisson recommends—”
“Lemme get my headstall.”
He came back from his truck with a rope halter attached to an especially long lead rope. He opened the gate and let himself into the gelding corral. Black George, Socks George, and Ornery George noticed him right away, but after a moment, they went back to eating their hay. He stood there. Pretty soon, one by one, they looked up from their hay. Black George came over to him, and he stroked his head by the eye and ear and down the cheek. Black George let out a snuffle. Now Socks George had to see what was going on, and since he was a little bossy, he came over and pushed Black George out of the way with a quick pinning of the ears. Black George stepped back. Jem gave Socks George a few strokes, too, but when Socks George pushed at him with his nose, he used the headstall he had in his hand to wave him off.
In the meantime, Ornery George was standing off at a distance. After watching for a minute, he moved around so that his rump faced us and went back to eating. Jem lifted his hand. The other two horses, who had been nosing him, moved off, and then, with Socks George in the lead, they trotted off and swept around in a big arc. It was as if they didn’t want to get too far away from Jem. When they came close, he waved them off, but when they got to a certain distance from him, they turned. Pretty soon, he had moved away from the gate toward the middle of the corral and they were going around him in a ragged circle. After they made one circuit, they swept up Ornery George, who just couldn’t seem to resist. Now all three trotted around in a leisurely way, not afraid or excited, just, it appeared, willing to move. Every so often, one of them kicked out at another, but not as if he really meant it. They actually seemed to be enjoying themselves.
After they had gone around maybe four times, Jem started stepping backward and to his right. Almost immediately, Black George turned toward him, his ears pricked. The other two were clumsier, but they followed his lead. Then Jem stepped to the left, switched his rope hand, swung his rope, and they were off again, trotting around him, this time going the other direction, Black George in the lead. Two tim
es around, and he stepped back and let them relax. As soon as he did, they came right up to him, and he put his hand on Ornery George. The other two tried to push in, but he lifted his hand and they backed off.
All this time, Daddy was trying hard not to say anything. I could see all of the thoughts running through his mind—these are my horses, what’s he doing, I don’t know if I like this, it seems okay, should I stop him, should I ask a question, hmm. Then Jem Jarrow slipped the headstall over Ornery George’s head, turned, and walked briskly toward the gate, with Ornery George right on his heels. He stopped once, lifted his hand, and Ornery George stopped, too, and lifted his head. After that, the horse kept his distance a little better. When Jem got to the gate, he said to Daddy, “Would you mind, just for a few minutes, if I used that pen where the colt is? Just to feel this fellow out a bit. I never like to get on a horse until I get to know him a little.”
“That makes sense,” said Daddy, then, “Abby, put the colt in the first stall.”
That’s what I did. I was proud of the fact that Jack met me at the gate and walked quietly enough to the stall. I took him all the way in and turned him around, then gave him a few strokes before taking off the halter. As soon as I went out of the stall, he put his head over the door and stared at Jem and Ornery George. It was as if none of the horses could get enough of Jem Jarrow.
Ornery George and Jem were standing in the middle of Jack’s pen. George was facing me, and Jem had his back to me. He had his left hand on the lead rope, a few inches below George’s chin. The other hand was holding the other end of the lead rope, and maybe a foot and a half of it hung down. What Jem did now was to lift George’s chin up and back, toward his (George’s) shoulder, while swinging the other end of the rope. George stood there, twisted awkwardly for a moment, and then his hind end moved to the right, away, so that he was more comfortable. Jem released the halter hand, petted George once on the neck, and then did it again. This time I was looking at them from the side. I saw that after the moment of hesitation, what happened was that George’s hind foot, the one closest to Jem, stepped under his belly and crossed in front of his other hind foot. Then the other hind foot stepped over, too. It was like a dance step, where you step over your left foot in front of your right and then bring your right foot around.
Jem asked Ornery George to do this three more times. On the third time, as soon as he lifted the hand near the halter, George stepped over behind. Jem said, “There’s a fellow,” and gave him a good pat down the neck. Then he went around to the other side of the horse, switched hands, and did the same thing but in the opposite direction. George was better at it in this direction and moved over twice, with hardly any pressure, almost immediately.
I had never seen any of this stuff before, and I watched as carefully as I could, because I knew without being told that this was what Mom and Danny had worked out between them.
Now Jem waved the end of the rope, and George went around him in a tight circle, a few times one way, then a few times the other. He was clumsy at it and stiff. Jem had to insist, but eventually, he got it, and he got less awkward.
Jem led the horse to the gate.
I looked at Daddy. He looked like he didn’t quite know what to say. Jem said, “Athletic horse, Mr. Lovitt. Nice-made horse. Don’t know much about using his body at this point. How old did you say he was?”
“He’s six.”
“Young, then.”
Now he stood George up and ran his hands down his front legs, feeling his knees and fetlocks and hooves. Then he ran his hand down George’s spine, pressing here and there. At one point George flinched and tried to step away, right when Jem had his hand where Uncle Luke’s rope had been. I thought Jem might ask a question or say something, but he just ran his hand farther down and pressed again. Then he put one hand over George’s nose and the other hand on his neck and shifted his head back and forth. He didn’t once look at his teeth. All the horses were staring at him. Jack called out from his stall, as if to say, “Look at me! I’m here! I’m the important one, don’t you know that?”
Finally, Jem Jarrow walked over to the gate. He said, “Mr. Lovitt, what are you planning to do with this horse, if I might ask?”
“Well, we’re getting him ready to be sold, so—”
But really, of course, he didn’t have an answer for this question.
Jem said, “I’d like to ride the horse, but I’m wondering if I might come back another day, say, Wednesday? And, if you don’t mind, you might just leave the horse alone until then.”
I said, “We don’t mind.”
Daddy said, “Wednesday, Mrs. Lovitt and I will be at the church, setting up—”
I piped up. “I’ll be here. I can watch for you, Mr. Jarrow, and help you with whatever you need.”
“That’s fine. That would be fine,” said Jem Jarrow, and even though Daddy didn’t look one hundred percent happy about it, he was stuck. And so he smiled and made the best of it.
It was fine with me not to ride Ornery George for another four days.
In the meantime, school was no better than home. In fact, school was so bad that the only thing I enjoyed about it was things we were doing in class—in history we were studying the missions, and I was making a clay model of the mission at San Juan Bautista with one of the boys in my class, Kyle Gonzalez, the sort of kid who is very quiet and always does a good job. In English, we finished with Adam Bede, to everyone’s relief, and we were reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond, which was pretty good. In math, we were making graphs. This is how bad things were with Gloria, Stella, and the Big Four—anything that was a break from them was good. I even tried being friends with Alexis and Barbara and Debbie, but Debbie and I had been bored with each other for four years. Alexis and Barbara were nice enough to me, but they were much more interested in a play they were trying out for at the community theater. It was called Twelfth Night, and they were hoping to play a set of twins—Alexis would play the boy and Barbara would play the girl. They couldn’t stop talking about this play, which I had never heard of, and they were both afraid of horses, so we didn’t have much to say to one another.
As for Stella and the Big Four, you could only call it a war. Brian Connelly was the prize. I couldn’t figure out why it should be Brian—there were several boys in our class and in the eighth grade who were cooler and better-looking, but he was the one they were fighting over, and he made it worse by trying to be nice to everyone—he must have talked to some grown-up about it, and that’s what they told him to do. Every morning before class, he would stop at each locker—each of the Big Four, Stella, Gloria, and me, for sure, but sometimes also Debbie and Maria and Alexis and Barbara—and say something or other, even if it was only that today, his mom had fixed him tuna fish salad, with celery but not pickles, because he didn’t like pickles at all. Our lockers were alphabetical, so his progress ran Mary A., Joan, Stella, Maria, Linda, the twins, Gloria, me, Mary N., Debbie, Fatima, Lucia. Stella and the Big Four kept track of how long he spent with each girl. Of our group, he spent the shortest time with me, and that was good. Usually, he said, “Hey, Abby, how ya doin’?” and I said, “Fine, thanks.” It was this, and only this, that prevented the Big Four from focusing on me. If Brian wanted to talk to Stella about The Munsters, which was one of his favorite shows, then he might only say a word or two to Mary A. and Joan about what he’d had for breakfast and not even get to Mary N. For the rest of the day, the Big Four would monopolize Brian, and also criticize Stella, by saying things like, “Do those socks match, Stella? In this light, they look different,” or, “Did you know you have a little zit, Stella, right there beside your nose? I’m just telling you in case you didn’t know.” This would be said in a loud voice.
If Brian spent more time with Mary A., looking into her lunch box and admiring what her mother had sent, and didn’t get to Stella, then Stella (and sometimes Gloria) played their own games, and one of these was to ask Mary N. if she was losing weight. “You look thinner i
n the face,” was what Stella said, knowing perfectly well that the very thing Mary N. wanted above all things was to look thinner in the face—she had dimples in both cheeks. When they were really mad, they said, “You should wear your skirts shorter.” We all knew that Mary N. had fat knees. They said these things in a sweet way, as if they wanted to be friends with Mary N. Since she was the least big of the Big Four, she was the easiest to pick on. Once, when Gloria went to Stella’s house for a sleepover, she and Stella called Mary N. twice and asked, “Is your nose running? Better catch it!” They disguised their voices, then laughed and hung up. Gloria told me about this when she called the next night, Saturday. I knew I was supposed to laugh, but I didn’t. I didn’t like the Big Four, but I wasn’t sure who was being meaner. Even so, I didn’t think there was anyone to be friends with besides Gloria, and if she liked Stella, then I was stuck with her, too, wasn’t I?
On that Monday after Jem Jarrow, everything was quiet for almost the whole day. Even at lunch, they sat at their table and we sat at ours, and the two tables might not have even been in the same universe. Brian had begun his day by chatting with Mary A. and Joan about watching Mister Ed the night before. I had never seen Mister Ed—even if we’d had TV, the show was on Sunday—but I knew Mister Ed was a talking horse. I had heard Brian say that they got the horse to move his lips by rubbing peanut butter on his gums, and I thought that was interesting. Worth a try, too. But apparently, this conversation was so involving that Brian never did get to Stella, even to say hi, and so she was mad about it for the rest of the day. Then, when Brian came a little late into the lunchroom, Joan and Mary A. waved at him and moved over to make a spot. Brian hesitated, but he didn’t actually look at us. He just sat down.
The problem came in study hall, last period, which normally our class did not have. But our science teacher was sick, so we were sent to study hall with the other seventh graders—no doubt they didn’t trust the boys to leave the gas jets alone in the absence of the teacher. Anyway, about five minutes after the bell, our group filed into the study hall and took whatever seats were available, and by the time Mary A. and Joan got into the room (they had been brushing their hair in the girls’ bathroom), there was one chair by the window and another by the door, and that one was right next to Stella. I had snagged a chair just behind Stella, and we had already passed our first note—something from her to me, which I hadn’t had time to open yet. Joan sat in the chair near us and gave me a look, then gave Stella a look. Then she sighed and opened her science book and began writing a note, which she passed to Debbie, who passed it to Jesús Valdez, who passed it to Fatima, who passed it to Mary N., who passed it to Mary A. So far, so good.