by Jane Smiley
Well, I was worse than either Melinda or Ellen. I didn’t know why. I could walk around, trot around, canter, and jump, and I could see the things I was doing wrong – leaning forward with my shoulders, letting my hands drop and my heels come up, not being in the centre of my horse – but it was like my brain was hardly working. Twice over the crossbar, and two bad jumps, one with me too far forward and one with me left behind. I felt like Blue was saying, ‘Who is this riding me?’ I brought him to a halt, sat up, and took some deep breaths. Then I pushed my heels down, settled my shoulders, and cantered down to the regular jump, not the crossbar. He went over it nicely.
And they were calling my number from the show ring. As we left the warm-up, Jane put her hand on my boot. She said, ‘A green horse is a challenge, but you’ve done all of these things before, and he can do it. He needs some hand-holding. Every green horse does. But you’re good at hand-holding, and he trusts you. Just stay with him and make him go forward.’ I didn’t have time to ask him to step under, even once, before we were in the ring, making our circle. And even though the course was the same as Melinda’s course had been, and even though I had walked it and thought about it and walked my fingers over it, I did not know where I was going, or maybe even who I was.
We finished the circle, and I asked Blue for the canter. He took the proper lead, but then when I steered him down towards the first fence, which was a small coop, you would have thought I was asking him to jump off a building. His ears went forward and I could feel his weight shift backward as he got ready to stop. However, I kicked him and he jumped awkwardly. But we had jumped coops dozens of times. Then came the next fence, just some plain white poles. He didn’t try to stop, but he took off in the next county somewhere, and our jump was broad and flat. Now we had a turn. I remembered not to lean into the turn, so I was sitting up straight for the next jump, which was a good thing, because it felt like he jumped the way a deer jumps, all four legs stiff and bounding off the ground. After jump four, I sort of gave up on the course and turned him in a circle. I sat up and took a deep breath, shook my shoulders, and kicked him. I even said out loud, ‘You gotta do it, Blue. And you can.’ I sat deep in the saddle. The last four jumps were okay, though I had no idea what leads we were on. We survived, but we did not jump like we knew what we were doing. When we came down to the trot, I thought of how that boy Robert felt, crying in front of the judge and having to be led out.
Dad had sort of a dumbstruck look on his face, and Jane was shaking her head, if only just a little. She patted Blue on the shoulder and said, ‘Well, the next class will be an improvement, I’m sure.’
That kid Andy, who was riding an Appaloosa, won the class. He waved to me as he was coming out of the ring with his ribbon, which I at first thought was sort of mean, but then when I looked back at him, he had such a friendly smile on his face that I decided he didn’t know how bad I had been – maybe he had been doing something else when I was having my round. I walked Blue slowly back to the barn. The clock, when I passed it, was at 11:35. Surely, I thought, that would be p.m., given how exhausted I was.
Dad had gone to get the truck and trailer, since we were taking Blue home for the night. Our classes on Thursday weren’t until the afternoon. After I untacked Blue, brushed him off a little and put him in the stall, I took off my jacket and stock, and then my boots. They were a little muddy and would have to be cleaned again that night. I yawned. Then I yawned again. I really, really hoped that there was nothing weird going on at home – last fall we’d gotten back from a horse show, and Mr Jordan’s blue Brahma cows and calves had broken through the fence up the hill and come all the way down to our place, looking for hay, most likely.
But everything was quiet, though hot – ninety at least, and now I was thinking like Mom and Dad.
Chapter 3
Because I had gone to bed before eight, I was up before six. Dad had already left for Modesto, where he was going to look at a horse. Mom had made a coffee cake and was in her room getting dressed. While I was eating my second piece, Danny showed up and said that he would ride everyone that day because he had a day off from his job shoeing horses for Jake Morrison, and after he got everyone ridden, he would drive Blue and me out to the stables, and then go to a beach party with Leah, who wasn’t really his girlfriend, but they did do things. He said, ‘I guess you’re going to miss Barbie and Alexis.’ Leah was Barbie and Alexis’s cousin. She was nice, but much quieter than they were.
‘Barbie said they have to play music on the streets of Santa Monica to earn money for the school.’
Danny said, ‘Do you believe everything you hear?’
‘I don’t believe that Leah is not your girlfriend.’
‘Well, she’s going to Berkeley in a week, so girlfriend or not, it doesn’t matter.’
I stared at him. But he was being Danny. You couldn’t tell what he thought, really.
After breakfast, I cleaned my boots and polished them again. They did feel comfortable now – I couldn’t blame my bad round on them. I didn’t know what to blame it on, except hurry. Today, I was not going to hurry. Danny would be at the beach party until four, and my job, after my classes, was to eat a hot dog, drink a Coke, and relax until he got back. Blue and I were going to take our time, including around the courses.
Danny wasn’t much of a talker, so as we drove along, I had to think my own thoughts, and about every other thought had to do with the feeling I’d had the day before of knowing what was wrong with my riding but not being able to do anything about it. As we got closer to the stables, those thoughts got to be two out of three and then three out of four. When we pulled into the car park, the sun was just out and the day was half bright and half foggy. I felt like I was paying a visit to yesterday. I sighed. Danny turned off the truck engine and put his hand on my arm. He said, ‘Look ahead. Look ahead. You just go around the course and with every stride, you say, “Look ahead. Look ahead”.’ I nodded.
Blue backed out of the trailer, lifted his head, pricked his ears, and whinnied long and loud, and of course I thought he was saying, ‘Are we here again? Oh no!’ Another horse whinnied in response. I wished I could think he was saying Hi, but I thought he was saying, ‘Go away.’ Danny gave me a little punch on the arm, and as I turned to lead Blue towards the row of stalls, I said, ‘Say hi to Leah for me.’
I put Blue in the stall with a large flake of oat hay and a bucket of water, and went to look for Jane. I found her at the main arena, the one with the big tent and the big jumps and the big announcer’s stand. She was leaning on the fence, talking to that boy Andy. He saw me before she did, and smiled.
Jane turned around. She said, ‘Oh, Abby, you’re here! Today is another day, right?’
I said, ‘Right.’
Andy said, ‘You have that grey horse, don’t you?’
‘Blue.’
‘He’s a beauty. Daphne and I were admiring him.’
I said, ‘I can’t imagine when.’
He laughed in a way that let me know he had seen my course. That was depressing.
Gloria and Stella would not have said that Andy was a cute boy, but that was because he didn’t look like the boys in our class. I now saw that even though he was only an inch taller than me, he was Danny’s age for sure. He had bowlegs, like Danny, and big hands, and he was missing one tooth. But another way that he wasn’t like the boys in our class was that he didn’t seem to care about these things – he smiled and looked happy anyway. Jane seemed to like him – she gave him one of those grown-up looks that said, ‘Such a nice young man!’ Then she told him, ‘Well, you did an excellent job in that class this morning. That was a twisty course.’
‘Rascal is pretty handy. But Dad’s made him handier. You know how Dad is.’
Jane laughed. ‘Yes, I do. If anyone is going to teach a horse to do backflips, it’s going to be your dad.’
‘It’s not like he hasn’t tried.’
They both laughed. Then Jane said, ‘Well, let’s hav
e a look at Blue today. Since he was turned out last night, maybe he won’t be so wound up. I am at your service, because all the little girls are home for the day.’
Once we had left the arena, I asked Jane, ‘Who is that kid?’
‘Oh, Andy? Andy Carmichael. His dad has a place up near Santa Rosa, but he started out in gold country – over by Placerville somewhere. Ralph Carmichael. He is famous.’
‘For what?’
‘Oh, goodness. Well, I guess he’s most famous for that horse Auburn. Auburn was headed for the slaughter, and Ralph was driving by the yard, the way he often did, and saw Auburn. He went in and bought him for ten dollars, took him home and fed him up, and taught him to jump. But Auburn couldn’t really be ridden. He would buck even Ralph off, so he got him to jump as part of an act that he used to take to fairs up there. He would park six cars in the arena, and send Auburn around and Auburn would jump over all the cars, first one direction and then the other. There were some other horses in the show, too. Ralph jumped a course on one of them standing up on its back. Ralph will do anything.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Colonel Hawkins does not approve.’ Colonel Hawkins was Jane’s boss. He ran the stables and had been in the cavalry. He was very upright and serious.
I said, ‘They are good riders. His sister was in Melinda’s class.’
‘Oh, yes. They’re good. I guess they have a couple of horses they want to show around for sale as jumpers. Andy says he’s taking the Appy in a few bigger classes. Yesterday and today are just practice for Saturday. Ralph is arriving then.’
We walked along.
‘They do this on their own?’
‘Not completely. Ralph is somewhere not too far away. But Andy is a very responsible kid.’
We came to the ring where my class would be, and looked at the map of the course. It was suspiciously simple – basically a figure of eight, with the addition of a line of three jumps at the end, and then a turn to the last one, a brush. We went in and walked it, then I walked my fingers around it. Fortunately, the jumps we would be jumping were the only ones in the arena, so I didn’t have to worry about the thing I always worried about, which was seeing something and jumping it when it wasn’t even part of the course (I had never actually done this). All the jumps in a course have a number in front of them, but I ask you, can you tell as you are galloping down to a fence whether the red number on a white background is the one for your class, or whether it’s the blue number on a yellow background? Every course at a horse show was a test. I learned it as well as I could, and we headed back to the show barns.
Blue had finished his hay and was looking through the bars of the temporary stall. He whinnied to us when we approached. Jane helped me clean him up. We brushed his legs and ran a cloth all over him. When we had him out of the stall, we wiped his mouth, combed his forelock, and got all the grit off. I put the saddle and bridle on, and then Jane held him while I put on my coat and hard hat. Once I had mounted, using the mounting block, she polished my boots with a rag.
She said, ‘Did you lunge him at home?’
‘I put him in the round pen and made him work for a pretty long time.’
‘He seems a little more relaxed today.’
But as we got closer to the arena, I got more nervous, and then I felt him get more nervous. I felt like Melinda when I said, ‘I don’t think I can do this.’
‘Abby Lovitt!’ She spun around and looked up at me. ‘What am I hearing?’
‘Well, it was sort of hard when I was riding Black George, because I wasn’t always sure I knew my way around the course. But if I got there, he would always jump it. Now I have two things – where to go and how to help Blue. I don’t know if I can do two things.’
Jane nodded. ‘Yes. You’re right. You have exactly those two things. But everyone in the ring has something or other.’ Just then, Sophia Rosebury walked by, sitting on her chestnut, whose name was Pie in the Sky, which I thought was a silly name. She went by without even looking in our direction. After a moment, I said, ‘What does Sophia Rosebury have?’ I may have sounded a little snotty.
Jane looked up at me. ‘Sophia Rosebury is a perfectionist. Do you know what that is?’
I nodded.
‘Well, being a perfectionist seems okay from the outside, but a perfectionist never enjoys anything, no matter how well it goes, because nothing is ever perfect. And a horse, believe me, is one of those things that is never ever going to be perfect.’
‘Black George is perfect.’
She stopped and put her hand on Blue’s shoulder. She said, ‘To us, Onyx is perfect. But if you are a perfectionist, the better things are, the more dissatisfied you get with tiny things that no one else will notice.’
‘That’s like my friend Stella and her outfits.’
‘She has nice clothes?’
‘Beautiful ones.’
‘Would you trade being yourself with your clothes for being her with her clothes?’
I shook my head.
‘Well, there you go. Okay, trot him with the others in here. He finds other horses reassuring. It should loosen him up a bit if you weave around without getting in anyone else’s way.’
I saw that she had done to me what I did to Melinda – talk about something so that you don’t notice what you are doing until you are doing it. I smiled.
I weaved carefully among the ten or twelve horses and riders in the warm-up. I lifted the rein in the direction I was turning Blue towards, and I could feel his shoulder and his back curve and his inside hind leg step further underneath himself, and almost without being able to help it, he got looser and smoother. After a couple of minutes, he blew air out of his nostrils, also a good sign. Horses can’t hold their breath, but they do breathe more shallowly or more deeply. When they are breathing more deeply, they are happier.
I began to notice other riders looking at him. Was Blue the most beautiful horse I had ever seen? What I liked about Blue was that everything about him seemed to flow, even when he was just standing there. He could not do a single thing, including taking a drink of water, that wasn’t beautiful – if he was taking a drink of water, his neck arched, and you had to admire the way his throat came into his cheek. And, to tell the truth, there is nothing like a grey, especially a dappled grey with a black mane and tail, which was what Blue was. Yes, someday, when he was fifteen or twenty, he would be white, but now his bluish dappling looked like a painting all over his body, the sort of painting that made all his curves stand out. Other riders looking at him reminded me of my fantasy – that we would be admired. I sat up a little straighter.
Once we had woven our way around the warm-up at the walk, trot, and canter, Jane set the crossbar fairly low, and I brought Blue around in a big circle to jump it. I looked at the jump. I looked past the jump. I felt him shift his weight backward again, and my heart popped, but I closed my legs and he went over it. We cantered on, came around, and did it again. Jane raised the ends, making a steeper X, and he jumped a little higher and more carefully. I began to relax. We jumped the regular jump and then the oxer. We wandered around the warm-up and went over to look at the other horses in the ring. I took a lot of deep breaths. I patted my horse. I shook out my shoulders. I went back into the warm-up for one last, easy canter.
What is the opposite of a perfectionist? For a perfectionist, everything goes as well as possible, and still there’s something to worry about or complain about. The opposite of a perfectionist is someone who refuses the first jump, then jumps it, but awkwardly, trots to the second jump instead of cantering, jumps that one awkwardly, then knocks a top pole from the third jump and two poles from the fourth jump, an oxer. Finally, she misses the fifth jump entirely, and when the buzzer sounds to tell her she is off course, she makes a circle and jumps up onto the bank, but only by mistake – the bank isn’t on the course. It is right beside the judge’s stand.
I looked the judge right in the eye (this time it was Peter Finneran), and I knew he thought we were going to run right
over him. We stood there, Blue and I. Then, after three deep breaths, we got down from the bank and left the arena. That’s the opposite of a perfectionist, and it makes being a perfectionist look pretty good. Jane only said, ‘Well, your position was excellent. That’s a positive thing.’
We walked back to the warm-up, and I could tell Jane was thinking about the best thing to do with me. On the one hand, you don’t want your last experience of the day to be a disaster, but on the other hand, it could get worse. I thought about Jem Jarrow – what would he say? And I decided that he would say, ‘Never be too lazy to get off your horse and do some ground work.’ I said to Jane, ‘How long till the next class?’
‘Well, it starts in twenty minutes, but it’s a big class. It could go half an hour or more.’
I halted Blue, took my feet out of the stirrups, and jumped off. I said, ‘I think I would like to take him somewhere quiet and do some ground work.’
‘Do you mind if I go have some lunch while you’re doing that?’
In fact, I preferred it.
She pointed me to the lunging area, and we parted. I looked at Blue as we were walking through the riders and horses and trainers and dogs on leads and said, ‘Are you making me nervous, or am I making you nervous? I wish I knew.’
We walked along. Blue looked here and there, his ears pricking but not arrowing forward. He blew out some air. He lifted his head and put it down again. We came to the lunging ring, and it was empty. I unfastened one rein from his bit, so that I had a longish line, and I stood beside his head, facing backward, one hand on the rein down by the bit and the other on his shoulder. Then I lifted the rein so that his head turned and came up, and I pressed a little bit on his shoulder. He curved away from me. I didn’t push him or cluck to him or anything; I just waited. Finally, he stepped the hind foot on that side underneath his body and across the other hind foot, and his body curled away from me. I did it again and again, and after a few times, we had made a little tiny circle, and were facing the same direction again. Then I let the rein slide through my hand and also lifted my crop. He moved forward, then away from me, curving his body and stepping around me. He did this twice, and then I had him walk and then trot in a tiny circle, making sure that he was stepping under and under and under. His mouth was soft. Then I did all of these things on the other side. Then I had him back up. I said, ‘Back!’ and he started backing. He could have backed all the way to the railing, no problem. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to do what I wanted him to do.