by Jane Smiley
“Kyle Gonzalez. We made it out of clay, but we didn’t fire it. We just let it dry and then painted it.”
“Did this boy who has a Mexican name and therefore is probably Roman Catholic witness to you while you were working together?”
“He told me who the missions were named for. Saints. Things like that.”
“Which was your mission?”
“San Juan Bautista.”
“John the Baptist.”
“Yeah.”
“At least he’s in the Bible,” said Mom. “He himself wasn’t Roman Catholic like Francis of Assisi or Agnes. You could have ended up with someone else, a real Roman Catholic. Abby, you—”
I said, “Danny did San Miguel. That’s the archangel Michael.”
They looked at me a moment, letting this remark pass, then Daddy continued, “You need to ask us how to walk this narrow path.”
They had been talking for sure. They were a united front. I said, “What should I ask you?” hoping this didn’t sound sassy.
Daddy said, “I think I have to go to the school. I think I have to go personally to the school and look over the curriculum and discuss what Abby will be allowed to study and what she won’t be allowed to study.”
Mom nodded.
My heart sank. I loved my family. Both Daddy and Mom made the other parents I knew look stiff and sad. Everything they did, they did all out. There was never a moment when Daddy didn’t mean what he said and say what he meant—most of the time he said what he meant until you couldn’t stand to hear it anymore. Mom was prettier and more fun than any other mother—she was prettier and more fun than I was, in fact. But the idea of Daddy and Mom and Mr. Canning and my other teachers never seeing eye to eye was terrifying, because Daddy would keep after them and after them. He didn’t know how to stop because he didn’t think it was right to stop. He would certainly bring his Bible to school and lay it on Mr. Canning’s desk and quote from it every chance he got. I wondered if it might be better, after all, just to get expelled. I could do that if I confessed to stealing the necklace.
Daddy said, “Why don’t you bring your books down, Abby, and let me have a look at them. I’ve been remiss, I see.” He sighed.
I got up and went to my room. After putting the books on his desk, I went out to check the horses. Everyone was fine. Blue Jewel was lying down near the fence, sleeping. I looked at her in the moonlight for a while and thought of her licking me, then I went back in the house. Daddy and Mom were still up. Mom said, “It’s almost nine, Abby.”
I put my hand on the banister and my foot on the step, and then I just said it. I said, “I want to name the horses. I want to name Blue Jewel ‘Sapphire’ and Ornery George something nice, like ‘Rally.’ Black George can stay Black George because it’s sort of like a pirate and makes me laugh. I’ll think of the others by morning.”
I went up the stairs. They didn’t say anything, and so I had no idea whether this qualified as sassiness or not. But it did seem as though I had nothing to lose.
The next day was only Tuesday. Imagine that! And then I remembered that we were coming up on spring break, anyway, so I was going to be out of school for a long time. Long enough, I thought, for the school to forget about me completely. Tuesday wasn’t bad. Over breakfast, I wrote out the names I had come up with—Jack, Rally, Sapphire, Black George, “Sprinkles” for Roan Jewel, “Sunshine” for Star Jewel, “Webster” for Socks George (I had been stuck for a name, and then my school dictionary was the first thing I laid eyes on when I got up in the morning). I read the names aloud to Mom, and she didn’t say that now I was going to get attached to them, she said, “Maybe when we name them, we’re really seeing something in them that will help us train them the best way we can.”
Maybe. I did like the names. I could see each one in my mind’s eye very clearly now. I said, “I think I’m going to get a notebook and write each name on one of the pages, and then I can keep track of things I need to remember about them.”
Mom treated me not like she was mad at me, but like she had been mad at me, which was a different thing completely, because Mom always hated getting mad at anyone and felt remorse afterward, so she would make it up in little ways, like giving me a cut-up banana with my Cheerios or opening the apricot jam even though we weren’t finished with the strawberry jam. After breakfast, since Daddy was gone into town, she helped me get the horses ready and she let me do Jack first, even though our usual motto was work before pleasure. She stood and watched us, and when he paid attention to me the whole time, keeping his eyes on me and his ears in “learning position”—that is, sort of flopped to either side—she said, “He’s learning. You’re doing a good job with him.” After fifteen minutes of training and some rubbing with the chamois, I put him out with Black George, Rally, and Webster. I watched them for a bit and then went around to each one and patted him and said his name, then gave each of them a piece of carrot. I did the same for the mares, Sapphire, Sprinkles, and Sunshine.
No mention that Daddy had returned from town. In the afternoon, I started with Ornery George—Rally. I went through everything that Jem told me to do—stepping over, stepping back, being sure he was soft through the shoulder, making sure he would turn his head to either side and soften. When he didn’t seem quite ready, I got him to run around the pen on his own a bit. Then I walked him to the arena, where I mounted from the fence. I looked at his eye before I got on. He was looking at me, and his eye said, “Who, me?”
Daddy drove in while we were working and came over to the fence. I rode Rally for half an hour, and we did everything Daddy asked us to do, no problem. It was time-consuming, all the steps to getting Rally to do his work without a fuss, but he did it. And I had all the time in the world, didn’t I? Afterword, Daddy said, “Abby, you did a very good job on that horse. I’m impressed.”
I said, “Rally likes some playtime before his work time.”
“Some do,” said Daddy.
“But,” I said, “you’d better ride him yourself, because if you’re going to tell Mr. Tacker that a grown man can ride him, you’d better be sure.”
Daddy frowned as if I were sassing him but then smiled in spite of himself, and I have to say that I laughed as I went into the barn to put away the bridle.
We had a baked chicken for supper, and then I read some of Julius Caesar, a play we were reading for English. It wasn’t bad. I even stopped looking at the page numbers. Just before I went to bed, Mom came into my room and gave me my new notebook. It was smaller than a school notebook and nicer, too, with heavy green covers. She also gave me a Paper Mate pen—green and silver. She kissed me on the forehead. After she went out, I set them on my desk, and then I put myself to sleep thinking about what I would write in the notebook about each of the horses. The notebook had eighty-eight pages. That was eighty-eight horses. It was fun to think of what I would be writing on the last page.
On Thursday, the only horse we worked in the morning was Rally. I hadn’t seen Daddy ride much for several weeks, just because either I was at school or he was making me ride the horses. Now that I had spent so much time with Jem and thinking about Jem, I saw that Daddy was more like Uncle Luke than I had realized, and almost as soon as he began working with Rally, they began arguing. I kept my mouth shut while he was tacking Rally up, even though I thought his brush strokes were too quick and his movements around the horse too brusque. It wasn’t that he was doing anything mean, but compared to Jem, he seemed not to think that the horse had any feelings. At first, Rally was his new self, the self I had come to know in the last week or so, paying attention and acting interested. But by the time Daddy was leading Rally to the arena, I saw that Rally’s eye was ornery again, and I realized that he was insulted. And maybe that had been the problem all along.
When we got to the arena, Daddy tightened the girth with a jerk, and Rally’s ears went back. I said, “I wouldn’t get on him just yet if I were you.”
“Why not?”
“I would c
heck to see if he’s loosened up any or if his back is tight.”
“I don’t have time. …”
“Well, look at his face. He looks a little mad.”
“He always looks a little mad.”
I went up to Daddy and put my hand on his arm. I looked him in the eye and I said, “No, he doesn’t. After Jem started working with him, he stopped looking mad.”
“If Jem’s training did the trick, then the horse …”
“Then it won’t be worth the thirty-six dollars we spent if we wreck what he did.”
“Are you sassing me, young lady?”
I took a deep breath and then said, “No. I’m being honest and saying what’s in my heart.”
We looked at each other for a long moment, then he took a deep breath, too, and said, “Well, missy, what do you want me to do?” Now he grinned down at me.
I have to say that I felt a little bossy as I took the rein out of his hand and showed him how to soften Rally by turning his head and his neck, asking him to step back and step over and then go around us in both directions. Then I patted Rally on the face and the neck. I said, “He doesn’t like to be treated like a car or something. The others don’t mind so much, but he does.”
Then Daddy said, “I’m sorry. I guess I wasn’t thinking.” It sounded like he meant it. He took the rein and did some of the things I had done and then put his foot in the stirrup and got on the horse. It was just about then that Mom came out and checked on us the first time. She was smiling to beat the band but didn’t say anything. She passed us and went over to the mares’ pasture, where she pretended to do something, then she waved as she went back to the house.
Daddy walked Rally around a little bit and then stopped in front of me. He said, “What now?”
“Well, I would walk him and trot him, changing direction a bunch of times.”
I showed him how to lift the inside rein and get the horse to shift his weight and step under. Then I said, “When you’re lifting the rein, be sure he steps under right away. Then he won’t get lazy and stiff.”
Daddy tried this for a few minutes. He was good at it because he could feel the difference in the horse’s willingness to do what he was being told between before Rally stepped under and after. Pretty soon he was trying a little of everything—loping, trotting some figure eights, a couple of sliding halts, a long looping gallop around the outside of the arena. Daddy was a good rider the way people are when they learn to ride at an early age and know all the moves without thinking too much about it. Probably most of the horses he had ridden over the years had decided the best thing to do was just go along with him and his ideas, because he was strong and quick and why not let him be the boss? But that didn’t work with every horse, as Rally would be the first to tell you.
Mom came out again, just when Daddy was doing some figure eights at the lope, with a change of lead in the middle. She smiled and went back into the house.
I sat on the railing of the arena, looking around our place—at Jack and Black George and the mares, then up at the hawk curving through the blue sky, then over at the house, where purple and white irises were crowding against the porch, then at the dark edges of the mountains across the floor of the valley. Maybe there were a lot of things to wish for, but right then, I couldn’t be bothered to wish for anything else than what I saw around me.
Daddy trotted over to me. He said, “I bet we can get at least a thousand for him.”
I said, “Mr. Tacker did like him a lot. You could call him and ask how Ruby is doing.”
Daddy nodded.
I jumped down off the fence and stroked Rally’s nose. Daddy said, “He’s a good horse.”
I said, “I think he is.”
We stood there for a minute, looking at Rally, and then Daddy gave me a squeeze around the shoulders.
Mom came out to check a third time, and I saw that she saw that everything was fine.
After Rally, we did the other horses, but we didn’t give them much work—they had done well all week and we expected two good long days Friday and Saturday. By the time we were sitting down to a late lunch of chicken rice soup and ham sandwiches, it seemed like all of us had forgotten about school completely. Certainly, I had. So, for a moment, I didn’t even recognize Gloria’s mom’s car when it pulled up behind the truck. Then Gloria threw open the door and jumped out shouting, “Abby! Abby! Wait till you hear!”
Mom opened the door, and Gloria ran in and hugged me. I said, “Hear what?” I remembered the way her face went blank when she saw the necklace in my locker on Monday, and I decided I wasn’t going to fall for just any old story. But it was hard to resist how she was now—jumping up and down and grinning. She exclaimed, “Kyle came back!”
“Kyle came back from where? Kyle Gonzalez?” I sounded a little doubtful, I know. But Kyle?
“Yes! He saved you!”
“Where was he?”
“He was home sick! He had pinkeye or something gross like that, so he was out Friday, Monday, and Tuesday. And you know no one talks to him much, so when he got back yesterday, he didn’t know what happened to you until the end of the day, and then he told!”
Mom asked Gloria’s mom to sit down and have a cup of coffee or tea, and she did, but Gloria was just jumping around the table, she was so excited. Daddy said, “Gloria, what did he tell?”
Gloria’s mom said, “Settle down, Glow. One thing at a time!”
But she didn’t settle down. She exclaimed, “He was fixing the bells! He was fixing the bells on your mission so they would ring better or something, and when he stood up, he saw her pick up the necklace off the floor!”
“Who?”
“Stella. It was Stella who found the necklace on the floor of the lunchroom, and then, she said, she was coming out of the lunchroom to turn it in, and she saw that it belonged to Joan, and so she was afraid to do anything with it because of the anonymous note.”
Gloria’s mom said, “What anonymous note?”
“Well, it’s not anonymous anymore. Debbie admitted that she sent it.”
I said, “Debbie!”
“Yes! Debbie saw Stella put the ink cartridge on Joan’s chair and she thought Joan should know, but she was afraid of Stella.”
“You should never do anything anonymously—” began Mrs. Harris.
“Stella didn’t see Debbie—she’s so quiet. But she knew you had been sitting behind her, so she thought you—”
“Abby would never send an anonymous note!” exclaimed Mom. “Would you?”
“I did see it,” I said.
“You should have come forward,” said Mom.
But Gloria rushed on, so I didn’t have to answer her. “She kept the necklace all day Thursday and all day Friday, and she was scared to death the whole time, because Mr. Canning was so mad and talking about the police, so—”
“So—”
She sat down and leaned toward me as if she was telling the punch line. “So, she said, she waited until the end of school, after the bus left Friday, and she pushed it through the air vents of your locker.”
“Why my locker?”
“Well, she said, she was trying to get it into that empty locker near yours, but she miscounted and pushed it through your vents instead.”
Mom said, “Is there an empty locker near yours, Abby?”
“Mine is six from the end of that row, and the fourth one is the empty one.”
“Is it locked?” said Daddy.
“They’re all locked,” said Gloria. “But she was mad about the anonymous note. I think she knew perfectly well that it was your locker.”
Mom and Mrs. Harris shook their heads.
Daddy said, “Why didn’t Kyle come forward last week?”
“Why does Kyle do anything?” said Gloria. “He said that he didn’t think the necklace was any big deal on Thursday, but then when he found out that you got blamed, he had to tell.”
“That sounds like Kyle,” I said. “He did a good job on our mission
.” I glanced at Daddy. “He doesn’t do anything if he can’t do it right.”
“Well,” said Daddy. “That’s a virtue in anyone.”
Now Gloria sat down in a chair beside me and put her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, staring at me. She said, “So, you’re going to come to school tomorrow, right?” She looked like she always had, just Gloria, my friend. I decided I was wrong about that other look I thought I’d seen. She grinned. I grinned back at her.
Mom said, “We haven’t heard anything from Mr. Canning, Gloria.”
“I’m still suspended.”
And then the phone rang. It was Mr. Canning, unsuspending me.
* * *
In the end, I didn’t go back to school the next day, since vacation was almost here and nothing much was going on anyway, but over the weekend, Gloria brought me my assignments, and we worked on them together. When you are suspended, you can’t do that work, and so you get Fs on it, so for once I was relieved to have homework.
On Monday, Mr. Tacker came by, and on Wednesday, he brought his trailer to take Rally away to his ranch. He said he would get Jem Jarrow to help prepare Rally for the big summer parade. He paid Daddy a thousand dollars, and Daddy gave me fifty for myself. Mom took me to town and we opened a savings account. Mr. Tacker said he would keep his name, Rally. I said I would come to the parade and watch him.
On Tuesday, Stella called and said that she was really sorry and that she hoped I would forgive her and still be her friend. She had learned her lesson. I said, “What lesson?” I’m sure I sounded grumpy.
Stella sounded, as Mom would have said, “truly repentant.” She said, “Well, lots of them. Way too many. I guess—” There was a long pause. “I guess the main one is, well, I don’t want to be mean, really. I get mean sort of not really intending to, but I know I shouldn’t be mean. I have a mean thought, and then I get carried away. I guess the main lesson is not to get carried away. Don’t you know what I’m talking about? Something you shouldn’t say comes into your head and you just say it, even though you know you shouldn’t?”