Champion Horse

by Jane Smiley

  I walked Pie in the Sky away from him, cooling the horse out, and said, ‘Thank you, Mr Rosebury. He’s a really good horse.’ But he stayed alongside me, still talking. ‘Well, you know, he came from Calvin Murphy down in LA – you know him? He’s a character. Sometimes he takes forty horses to a show, eight girls riding them. They sweep the ribbons. He doesn’t ride any more himself, I guess – he had an accident, not even a horse accident but a motorcycle accident – but he’s got these girls like a team or a platoon of soldiers. They ride eight, nine horses a day, and he’s got a system, and the horses learn. Pie in the Sky, he told me himself, was one of his best, and I bought him without Sophy even trying him, I just liked him so much. Well, I learned my lesson there, let me tell you. But there’s something in that horse, some real star power, so I don’t let her give up on him. I say, “You know, he’s just going to hang around, Soph, until you make up your mind to do the deed.”’

  When we got back to the barn and Rodney had taken Onyx, the colonel came over and said, ‘Thanks, Abby,’ and led both Pie in the Sky and Mr Rosebury away. When Sophia and Jane arrived, Jane was saying, ‘There’s no rush, but, Sophia, you don’t want to let your skills fade. Are you listening to me? I don’t have the sense that you are. A month or two, well, but . . .’ She waved to me as I trotted to the car park.

  *

  When we got home, there was another letter from Barbie, and another drawing, this one of Alexis telling the other kids at the Jackson School what to do – Barbie drew Alexis with her arm in the air and her mouth open, and six girls and guys making beds, washing dishes, scrubbing the floor, and weeding the flower beds; a teacher was looking on, scratching his head. Barbie drew herself off in the background, sitting on her horse and smiling. There wasn’t much to the written part of the letter, but in this case the picture really was worth a thousand words. I tacked it up next to the earlier envelopes.

  On Monday our ancient history teacher was sick and they hadn’t been able to find a substitute, so they had Mr Reynolds give us a study hall, and he was strict – no talking. I read our English book. We had finished The Red Badge of Courage and were on to Animal Farm, in which the pigs were the bosses and the horses just did as they were told. It was not like any farm I had ever seen, but the book was fun to read. I could tell by looking at Sophia that she really wanted to talk to me, but with Mr Reynolds there was no chance even of passing a note.

  Finally, at lunchtime, I was carrying my tray past where Sophia and Alana were sitting to my usual table, and when I stopped next to Sophia and began, ‘That was gr—’ she reached up, grabbed my arm, and said, ‘Abby! Sit down.’

  I could see Gloria and Leslie watching us. ‘I’ve got to—’

  ‘No, really. Sit down. I have an idea.’ She kept holding my arm, and my tray began to tilt. I looked at Alana, who was staring off towards the windows. My tray tilted a little more, and the plate slid towards the edge.

  ‘Okay,’ said Sophia. ‘This is what we’re going to do. When the show season starts, you are going to ride Pie in the Sky in all the shows. Around here, but also down in LA. My dad wants to go to all of them and then sell Pie in the Sky for a lot of money. Jane thinks it’s a good idea.’ Her eyes were incredibly wide open and her face was even paler than usual.

  I said, ‘That would be fun, Sophia, but I have—’

  Her voice got louder. ‘We would pay you. My dad would call up your dad and talk him into it. He can talk anyone into anything. I mean, he talks. Money talks. They both talk.’

  I laughed, and then I sat down next to Sophia and looked her in the eye. ‘Look, Sophia,’ I started, whispering because of Alana. ‘You should be riding your horse, at least Black G— I mean Onyx. I like Pie in the Sky, but he’s too . . .’ I sighed. ‘I have horses of my own. I have to ride them.’

  All of a sudden, Sophia put her head down on the table. Alana looked surprised. She said, ‘Soph! What are you doing?’

  Then Sophia groaned and fell out of her chair onto the floor. Her chair fell over, too. The lunchroom went quiet, and everyone started looking at us. Gloria stood up, but the first person to come over was one of the tennis coaches. She knelt beside Sophia and put her hand across her forehead, like maybe she had a fever, and said, ‘What happened? My goodness!’

  Within about a minute of that, teachers and the deputy head were pushing us out of the way, and then the nurse was there, and she said, ‘Oh, I think she just fainted. She’ll come around.’ She pushed some chairs back and let her lie stretched out. The tennis coach stood the chair up again. I took my tray over to our usual table, and Stella said in a loud voice, ‘What in the world was that all about?’ The others wanted to know, too, but I just shrugged.

  As soon as they carried Sophia off to the nurse’s office, Miss Helmich, the deputy head, motioned Alana and me over to where she was standing and said, ‘You girls come with me. I’ll give you notes for your teachers.’

  It felt like we were in the police station or something. Miss Helmich wrote everything we said on a pad, and kept nodding and asking more questions. I let Alana do most of the talking. Yes, she and Sophia had come to school together that morning. Alana’s mother had driven them. Sophia had seemed fine; she hadn’t complained of any kind of dizziness, headache, or stomach ache. She hadn’t said how much sleep she had got the night before. She’d carried her books into school. She’d been the same as she always was.

  ‘How about you, Abby? Did you notice anything different about her? Was she pale, for example?’

  I said, ‘Sophia is always pale.’

  ‘Nothing struck you?’

  I said, ‘Well, when I was walking by, I noticed that she hadn’t eaten anything on her plate.’

  ‘Alana?’

  ‘She said she didn’t like the meatloaf.’

  ‘Carrots? Bread? Anything?’

  Alana shook her head.

  ‘What does she eat for breakfast?’

  ‘Some toast, I guess. I mean, I don’t go over there for breakfast. But she’s not a big eater anyway. If she doesn’t like it, she doesn’t eat it. Once when we were in like third grade, her mom made her sit at the table until she tasted something, I can’t remember what it was. She sat at the table until three in the morning.’

  ‘Is that possible?’ said Miss Helmich.

  I said, ‘Yes.’

  Miss Helmich said, ‘Has she been getting thinner?’

  Alana said, ‘I don’t know. She’s really modest. She doesn’t even go in her family’s swimming pool. I wouldn’t be able to tell.’

  Miss Helmich looked at me. I said, ‘I only see her in riding clothes, with long sleeves and usually a jacket. Where we ride it’s mostly chilly, so I wear a jacket, too.’

  ‘This isn’t good,’ said Miss Helmich.

  Then Alana said, ‘Miss Helmich, you should talk to my mom. She thinks Sophia is a real oddball, but she never says that to Sophia’s mom or anything like that. But every time I ask her if she wants to do something, even just go to a movie or to the mall to go shopping, she says no. And she hasn’t made any friends. The only people she talks to are me and Abby.’

  Miss Helmich lowered her voice. ‘Does she attempt to prevent you from making friends, Alana?’ Alana scooted around in her chair, then said, ‘Well, she made me promise to always sit with her at lunch, but I have other friends that I sit with in classes and gym. I’ve made friends.’

  Miss Helmich drummed her fingers on the desk and took a deep breath. A moment later the nurse came to the door. We could see her through the little glass windowpane. She waved her hand; Miss Helmich excused herself and went out into the hall for a minute.

  I said, ‘Alana, do you know that Sophia hasn’t been riding her horses?’

  Alana shook her head. She looked pretty miserable. After a moment, she said, ‘Sophia and I were real friends in fourth grade, and I guess third grade. I mean, we live next door to each other, and so my mom keeps thinking that it’s just like it used to be, but I am allergic to dog
s and I hate horses, so what do we have to talk about?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Then I said, ‘TV?’

  Alana smiled, but I hadn’t realised that I was being funny. The things Stella, Gloria, and I talked about were mostly TV and magazines, which I saw when I went to Gloria’s. Or music. At lunch we talked about the other kids or the teachers. Or homework, but only to say how boring it was; I supposed Kyle Gonzalez could have talked about how interesting homework was, but he didn’t have anyone to talk to. Everyone at school had plenty of things he or she would not dare to talk about with anyone or, maybe, only with one other person. I had them, too.

  Miss Helmich came back in, and I saw the nurse go away. Miss Helmich said, ‘Well, she seems okay. She told Mrs Beach that she had missed breakfast. I called her mother.’

  She wrote on a little pad, then handed us each a note. That was the last we saw of Sophia for that week.

  *

  On Saturday, we got to the stables in time for me to go with Melinda from the car park to the barn. I asked her if she was feeling better.

  She said, ‘Oh, I am. There is something going around. Every time there is something going around, I get it. Last year, when I was living in LA, I got ringworm. Did you ever have that? I had to wear this cloth helmet over my head for such along time. Mom would not let them shave my head, though. You cannot scratch even though it itches like crazy. This boy in my class had to shave his head.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, you would know if you got it. Maybe I got it at the hairdresser. That’s what Nanny thought.’

  Rodney hoisted her on Gallant Man while she was still talking. We had a much more serious lesson than we had had the previous week – lots of cantering and jumping, though not very high, and Melinda did a good job. She almost never said anything about being scared any more, and she always patted her pony after every exercise. Afterwards, she dismounted by herself and led Gallant Man around while we waited for Ellen. Then, once I had given Ellen a leg-up while Melinda held the pony, Melinda took a sugar cube out of her pocket. When she was sure Ellen was watching, she gave it to him. She got the reaction she was after – Ellen’s eyebrows dipped down and she sniffed. But Melinda just smiled, waved, and said, ‘See you next week!’

  Jane came into the ring while I was teaching Ellen, and she stood there for a few minutes, watching and nodding. Ellen immediately stuck her chin out a bit too much, because she loved an audience, no matter how small. Finally, Jane came over to me and said, ‘So what’s your version of what happened to Sophia at school?’

  ‘She fainted and fell out of her chair, and they took her to the nurse’s office, and that’s the last I saw her. I guess she wasn’t eating anything. At least, I never saw her eat anything at school.’

  ‘Her mother says it was a mistake to send her to a public school. Too big and impersonal.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘You know, with such large classes, some kids get lost in the crowd.’

  ‘Isn’t that a good thing?’

  Jane laughed, and I shouted to Ellen to trot a nice figure of eight, making sure that her circles were round. She did it as if she had been using a compass. I shouted, ‘Pat your pony, then do it again at the canter, changing leads through the trot. Rouunndd.’ She needed two tries for that.

  Jane said, ‘Do you think the Peter Finneran clinic had anything to do with this?’

  I said, ‘He was very mean.’

  ‘Well, he was strict.’

  I called to Ellen, ‘Now you are going to do your serpentine. Start at that end, and make three loops around the jumps and end at that end.’ I pointed. Ellen was careful to make her loops even. Probably when she did her homework, she never ever forgot to put her name on it, along with her address, and the mark she expected to receive – even though she was only in third grade.

  Then I said to Jane, ‘I thought he was a bully. Especially to Sophia. When she got mad and walked out, I heard him say, “One down, four to go.”’

  ‘Oh, he talks like that. Very . . . I don’t know, extravagant. Don’t you know anyone who talks sort of like he’s singing a song? Showing off, in a way.’

  ‘Was he being funny?’

  Jane said, ‘Maybe he thought so.’

  ‘Well, we didn’t. He made me want to cry, too, but I was so mad I decided he would never make me cry.’

  ‘Who was crying?’

  ‘Sophia.’

  ‘She was? I’ve never seen Sophia cry. Even when she fell off about two years ago and really quite smashed her shoulder, she didn’t shed a tear.’

  ‘Well, she cried.’

  I went over to the four cavalletti and turned them so that they were middle height, then I counted steps between them so that they would be the right distance for the pony. Ellen went around with a happy look on her face and trotted over them. The pony was as neat as you please, and Ellen said, ‘That was good!’

  Jane came over and said to me, ‘What did he say to you?’

  ‘He called Blue a worthless beast.’

  ‘That’s just an expression.’

  I said, ‘I didn’t realise that.’ Even the thought was making me a little mad. I waved Ellen over the cavalletti again, but I hardly had to – she was already coming. As she passed me, she said, ‘Put them up!’

  I flipped them up and spread them, so the pony would have to canter. It was a nice exercise, and one that I enjoyed, that bouncing through the cavalletti at a nice springy pace. Behind me, Jane was walking around in a little circle. When she came over, I said, ‘Well, we paid him plenty of money, and he acted like he was doing us a favour even talking to us or watching us. I did think he was mean. If that’s just the way he talks, then maybe you should have told us ahead of time.’

  Ellen went through the cavalletti twice, grinning each time, her hands firmly on the pony’s neck, the way I had taught her, and her heels down. Then she came back the other way.

  Jane said, ‘Come to my office when you’re finished, and we can chat about this.’

  I nodded.

  After she left, I set up four jumps in a row, not very high, sort of like big cavalletti, only further apart, and I had her canter down over them on a pretty loose rein. She was excited. I put them up one hole. She did fine. I decided not to push my – her – luck. When we got back to the barn, she told Rodney that she was getting ‘really good’.

  Rodney said, ‘I’m sure y’are, lass. I’ve got great hopes for ya.’

  Ellen kissed him on the cheek.

  Jane was eating a muffin at her desk and drinking a cup of coffee. She wiped her mouth when I came in, and said, ‘Well, Abby. Hmm. Say one more thing about Peter Finneran.’

  I said, ‘He doesn’t make it fun.’

  Jane looked out the window. I think she was talking to herself without saying anything. Finally, she turned, took another bite of her muffin, and said, ‘What he wants to do is toughen you girls up. He wants you to get angry and decide to do better.’

  ‘What if we get angry and are mean to our horses?’

  ‘I think he would stop you.’

  I said, and I knew this was sassy, ‘And if Blue were his horse, he would just keep whipping him until Blue did what he wanted?’

  ‘Well, no. Of course he would recognise that Blue is a sensitive animal—’

  ‘Maybe Sophia is sensitive, too.’

  Jane said, ‘Maybe she is. But, Abby, Peter Finneran’s job isn’t the same as my job or, say, your friend Jem’s job. Our job is to find a way to bring every horse and every child along, if that’s possible. His job is to cull the herd.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘That means, part of what he does when he goes around giving clinics is look for horses and riders that might go really far, like get on the team. That is only a handful of riders. They have to be talented and experienced, but they also have to have a certain temperament. Do you know what that is?’

  I nodded. ‘You mean, just the way t
hat they are, starting when they’re born.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Like my colt Jack is bold and full of energy.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what is Sophia’s temperament?’

  Jane stared at me. I hoped that she wasn’t going to do what the teachers at school liked to do, which was to say, ‘What do you think?’ But she was nicer than that. She said, ‘I thought Sophia was tough as nails. So did Colonel Hawkins. That time she hurt her shoulder, she almost had him convinced to let her keep riding.’

  I said, ‘Has he asked her why she doesn’t want to ride her horses?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know that the colonel ever asks why.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, you know. “Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die”.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Oh, it’s a poem, “The Charge of the Light Brigade”. It’s about being in the cavalry, which Colonel Hawkins was in for years before it disbanded.’

  ‘Well, someone should ask her.’

  ‘Someone should,’ said Jane.

  When I was walking out to the car park to wait for Mom, I went by Pie in the Sky’s stall and spoke to him. He looked at me, but he didn’t come over for a pat. Onyx, though, came right to his stall door, put his head over, and nickered at me. He was still my friend.

  Chapter 10

  That afternoon, when I was working with Blue, I thought about what Jane had said. I hadn’t told her everything that was on my mind, but partly that was because the things that were on my mind weren’t very clear even to me. While I brushed Blue and he did his usual thing of knowing exactly where I was and staying out of my way, and also co-operating and being a good boy, I wondered about Sophia and Pie in the Sky. Pie in the Sky had a temperament just like Blue or Jack or Onyx did, and I had experienced it enough for it to be pretty vivid in my mind. In some ways, he was most like Jack – he had what I would have to call pride. He wanted to do things his way and he felt his way was right, but his way wasn’t always right. It was like he was saying all the time, ‘I know what I’m doing,’ even if he didn’t really. Onyx did know what he was doing, so he just did it, and it was easy to go along with him. Onyx had not pride but self-confidence. It was not easy to offend Onyx, but it was easy to offend Pie in the Sky, and if you offended him, he got back at you by refusing or bucking. People talk a lot about pride. If I’d asked Dad, he could have reeled off ten quotes from the Bible about pride. The one we always talked about in church was ‘Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.’ I knew that one by heart.