Champion Horse

by Jane Smiley

  Dad stared at me.

  ‘What we’re doing isn’t working,’ I went on. After a pause, I added, ‘It’s my money.’

  Danny waited for a long silent moment, then said, ‘You should come and watch. It’s about as much fun as you’ve ever seen a horse having.’

  And Dad said, ‘Okay.’

  That was the first step.

  Chapter 12

  After Danny left, I did what I had to do – that meant that I went up to my room and turned on Simon and Garfunkel. That also meant that I left Mom and Dad to talk about my lessons with Ralph Carmichael on their own, no nagging from me. So, I employed some magic charms: I worked out all twenty geometry problems and both of the extra-credit ones. I wrote my one-page paper on the myth of Sisyphus, which was about a guy who pushes a rock up a hill every day, only to have it roll back down every night. I read the first two chapters of David Copperfield, which I had not been looking forward to ever since we read another book by Charles Dickens, Great Expectations. David Copperfield looked like more of the same, only longer, and we would be reading it for four weeks. I also studied for my test on the differences between magma, pumice, basalt, lava, and tephra. I memorised where the volcanoes were: the Pinnacles, thirty miles away, which hadn’t erupted in twenty-five million years, and Mount Shasta, which erupted in 1786.The teacher said that we would get to earthquakes next week, which I was not looking forward to. In French, we had finished the book about the red balloon and were now memorising irregular verbs: je dors, tu dors, il dort, nous dormons, vous dormez, ils dorment. Je couvre, tu couvres, il couvre, and so forth. I yawned. Hello darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again. This line made no sense to me, but what with the dormir and the couvrir and a long day, I went to sleep with the lights on and the music playing.

  *

  Dad was up and sitting at the table when I came in from giving the horses their morning hay. He was so excited that he and his chair were practically hopping around the floor as he poured sugar into his coffee cup, and as soon as I sat down he said, ‘Guess what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ralph Carmichael has agreed to give you a lesson – really two lessons, or maybe three, but two anyway—’

  I threw my arms around his neck. I could not believe that all the charms had worked so quickly and so well.

  ‘And you don’t have to pay, because we’ll do the lessons on Pie in the Sky and Mr Ro—’

  I sat down again and closed my mouth, which had dropped open. ‘What?’

  ‘I told him last night about what you said about that little horse jumping five feet, and I could hardly—’

  ‘I wasn’t talking about Pie in the Sky.’

  ‘Jane will certainly want to come watch, and may bring some other horses and riders, depending on how it goes. I can’t help thinking that the Lord is at work here, giving us this opportunity. Ralph is happy to do—’

  Well, I didn’t scream. But I did growl. Dad looked startled for a moment, then said, ‘I know your first idea was to take Blue.’

  I said, ‘That was my only idea.’

  ‘Blue doesn’t have the poten—’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘Of course you care. It’s essential to invest where it will make the most—’

  I got up and walked out of the kitchen and up to my room, where I changed my clothes. This time I was ten minutes early for the school bus.

  Sophia didn’t say a thing about this in ancient history, even though she sat next to me and told me how the night before, at supper, her dad’s Gordon setter went into the kitchen while they were eating in the dining room, put his paws on the counter, and stole what was left of the chicken, but then he tried to get it through the dining room to his bed in her dad’s study by turning his head as he passed the table so they wouldn’t see that he had it. When she told me this, we laughed out loud in spite of the death of Socrates, and Miss Cumberland gave us a very dirty look. I decided to remember this to tell to Barbie in the letter I intended to write. But Sophia didn’t seem to know then, or at lunch, about the Carmichaels.

  It is very annoying the way that grown-ups are always so sure that they know best, and whatever you say you really want to do or have to do, they take as a suggestion. And then, if you are not grateful at how your plan sort of got lost in theirs, they get mad. All day long at school, I knew perfectly well that Dad, Mr Rosebury, Jane, Colonel Hawkins, and Mr Carmichael were concocting some clinic that would suit them but that would not be at all like Barry Boy and Blue and Curly cantering and playing in the paddock at the Marble Ranch towards twilight, with the hills cool and peaceful all around us, and the grass and the trees dark and mysterious. Not at all like that.

  When I got home, I went straight upstairs, put on my riding clothes, and headed to the barn. I heard Mom call my name from the kitchen, but I pretended that I didn’t. Blue was standing over the water trough with Lincoln, and they were staring at something. When I looked, I saw a dead squirrel lying on the bottom. Sometimes the squirrels perch on the edge to try to get a drink but fall in and drown. If they do, even though it’s gross, you have to dump out the water trough and scrub it, and of course you have to do something with the squirrel. This one wasn’t too swollen, so it hadn’t been in there very long. I picked it up with the shovel and carried it over to the manure pile and pushed it way under, then covered it with manure and straw. It’s disgusting, but it’s the healthiest way to get rid of them and the best way to make sure that Rusty wouldn’t decide that the squirrel was her business. Even so, that meant another hour before I could get Blue out of the pasture and start with him, and it made me impatient somehow – I kept looking at Nobby and thinking I had to ride her, too, and maybe Morning Glory. My time was being wasted. It was getting late, and then I couldn’t find Blue’s bridle, and had to look for it.

  How mad I was felt like waves, hot boiling waves, just rolling out of me over everything, even the things I wasn’t mad at, like the sunshine spreading through the mare pasture, and the mares themselves, and Mom, of course, and Rusty, who was now sitting quietly on the back porch while Mom lifted each of her feet, wiped them off, and then clipped her toenails. I could have named you twenty-five things I was mad about, like Peter Finneran sneering at Blue and saying, ‘One down, four to go’ when he’d chased Sophia out of the arena, so mean. I was mad about how the adults didn’t seem to care how he talked to us, and how Peter Finneran himself probably thought he was a wonderful person. I was mad about Barbie and Alexis going away to school, and our school not being good enough for them. I was mad about Sophia never acting like a regular person. I was mad about Danny being sad about Leah going to college, and I was mad about Danny getting drafted and probably, possibly, maybe going off to war. I was mad about having to read David Copperfield when no one, no one, had said that they liked Great Expectations. And I was mad that I was mad about so many stupid things. But of course, I was mostly mad that Dad and Mr Rosebury were doing my idea their way, and Blue was being lost in the shuffle. And I was mad that they thought my idea wasn’t really my business, now that they’d taken it over.

  I sat down on the tack trunk, and because I knew I couldn’t scream, I made a whole bunch of faces in a row, some of them silent screaming, some of them scowling, some of them sticking out my tongue, and some of them baring my teeth. If I had had horse ears, I would have pinned them. By the time Mom came into the barn, I was just sitting there.

  She was humming a little tune, not anything I knew, maybe not even a real song, just some notes. Rusty was tagging along behind her and sniffing this and that. Rusty’s interest in every detail of our place was never-ending. After Mom nested the bucket she was carrying into two others, she got the rake and started raking up bits of hay. When she was done she came over and kissed me on the forehead, then turned and walked out. I was really glad she didn’t say anything.

  You are never supposed to ride your horse in a temper, even if you think you have controlled your temper, so I t
ook the halter and got Blue, but after I put him in the cross-ties, all I did was brush him in long strokes, especially with the soft brush, top to toe and front to back. I took time with his belly, making sure I got it clean, but also making sure not to bother him. Horses’ bellies are sensitive. I felt exhausted. I closed my eyes.

  When I opened them again the first thing I saw was Dad’s truck coming over the hill that was about half a mile from our gate. It was the one spot on the road that you could see from the barn. I was no longer tired. I got my saddle and Blue’s bridle. I did not want to see Dad. I was too mad at him. I put on Blue’s saddle, girthed him up, put on the bridle, and got on. I was past the paddocks before Dad was through the gate. I got around the bend in the trail, and then I slowed down. The question was where to go. I wanted a long ride.

  So I went through a little gate between our place and the Jordan Ranch. We almost never used this gate – I had to dismount and open it, because the latch and the hinges were rusted – but once in a while we did ride through that part of the ranch. Mr Jordan had said that we could, but Dad didn’t like us to do it too often. The most neighbourly thing to do was go there a few times a year, to show that we accepted his hospitality, but no more than that, so as not to take advantage.

  Was I still mad? Yes, but not generally, not at Blue or Mom. I was just mad at Dad and Mr Rosebury. But I was really mad at them. I got back on Blue and we turned right, along one of the ranch roads. Blue flicked his ears and turned his head. I looked back. There was Rusty, sliding under the fence and trotting after us, her tail waving in the air. Rusty loved a chance to explore.

  This was a nice open trail that went diagonally up a big hill. It levelled out, and then there was an undulating stretch that was good for a bit of a canter. There were a few oaks here and there, but mostly the hillside was dry, golden grass. The cattle that had been here in the spring had been moved to give the pasture a rest, so it was very quiet. Blue picked up a lively trot and then a perfect rocking canter. I had him on a light rein. He was calm but alert, his ears moving and his head turning this way and that. I understood that he really was a Thoroughbred – knowing what you are doing at the gallop (and now we were galloping) was what a Thoroughbred was born to do. I felt it in my body that his body was completely relaxed. We galloped and galloped, and we lost sight of Rusty, but if anyone could take care of herself, it was Rusty.

  There were two forks in the road, and both times I galloped down the wider, flatter fork, not so much paying attention to where I was going, only to which road had the smoother surface. The air was fresh and blew in my face. My hair sort of fluttered around under my hard hat, and Blue’s mane fluttered, too. I could see his forelock between his ears, wafting up and down. We were going fast, maybe, but it just felt smooth and endless. We went around a couple more hills, and over another one, too, and then Blue finally slowed down, not as if he was tired, but more as if he was no longer bubbly. When we came down to the walk, he walked along quite happily, still looking, still moving his ears. I sighed and realised that I had been smiling. I was panting a little and laughing, too. I wasn’t angry any more, not at Dad, not even at Mr Rosebury, who was way more annoying than Dad. Then I realised that I didn’t know where I was. And that it was getting dark.

  At first, neither of these last two things bothered me, because I was so relieved at the first one. The thing is, sometimes when you are feeling really good, it takes you a while to put two and two together and come up with something as simple as four. In this case, four was that I was in trouble. How big was the Jordan Ranch? Was it five thousand acres or ten thousand acres? Whatever it was, it was so big that whenever anyone said the number, I sort of blanked out, since I couldn’t imagine that many acres.

  I looked around in the deepening twilight. There was lighter sky off over one set of hills. That would be west. And the entrance to the Jordan Ranch was east of our place, but the ranch itself curved around our place, and was sometimes to the north of it and sometimes, if you got far enough, to the west of it. So where I had to go depended on where I was, and I had no idea where I was. I decided that the only solution was to retrace my steps, so I turned around and went back along the road I was on. Obviously, since I’d only taken two forks, when I came to those forks, I would keep going more or less straight, and end up back on the road that went through the gate.

  Except what if there were forks in the road that I hadn’t noticed because we were galloping? There were all sorts of what-ifs, in fact. What if no moon? I couldn’t remember if there had been a moon lately, or when it had risen if there was one. Also, what if a bear, a mountain lion, a bobcat, a rattlesnake, or coyotes? Well, there weren’t any bears that I had heard of. I focused on that and did not let myself think of the worst thing, which was the rattlesnake. I had seen a rattlesnake once, and Danny had seen a rattlesnake once. There was a story Danny told us about Jake Morrison, who had been riding up a trail along a cliff at his place, and a rattlesnake slithered off the cliff, over his horse’s neck in front of the horn of the saddle, and down to the ground. Jake was so surprised he didn’t even get scared until after the snake was gone. I said, ‘Blue, watch out for snakes.’

  Just then, there was a sudden hoooooo, and an owl flew over me. It was that dark.

  But the path was light. The sky was darker than the ground, and Blue seemed to be walking along without any problem. Horses see fine in the dark, actually. He came to what I thought was the second fork we had taken and I looked around. We had gone to the right, so now we were heading a little more to the west. I looked behind us. I could just see the curve of the trail. If I had gone northwest and now I was going east and south, that made sense. We walked along. The crickets started. Then there were some coyote howls, first fairly far away, and then fairly close, off to my right, between me and our place. I shivered, whether from fear or from cold I didn’t know. Blue didn’t seem to care about the coyote howls – he flicked his ears but didn’t even look. Probably he heard coyotes howling every night. We kept going. I sort of remembered that the first fork I had taken had been to the left. But the road gave me no clues. The coyotes howled again, and this time I saw them, two of them, maybe a hundred yards away, silhouetted against the pale field, their noses pointed upward, and then another howl pierced the darkness. Blue threw his head back, pricked his ears, and snorted. All of a sudden, I was afraid.

  But then there was a bark, and here came Rusty, arrowing along in the grass, bark bark bark, chasing those coyotes away. Blue bounced once in surprise, but he surely recognised Rusty and her activities, because once she had chased off the coyotes, she came and walked along beside us, her head down and her tail down as if she was tired, and he relaxed, too. I guess she had had a busy time. After she joined us, I was no longer afraid, though I don’t know why. Maybe I had read Lassie Come Home enough times to trust her, and anyway, Rusty came home every night from all sorts of adventures. I let Blue follow her, and soon we got to the first place that the road forked, then the flat area where we had started galloping, then the hillside where we went down to the left, and then, in the distance, I saw the gate.

  We were all tired by this time. I got off to open and close the gate, and I didn’t get back on. I knew it would take longer to get home, but it was a relief to walk and stretch those muscles. It also kept me warmer. Blue and Rusty walked along with me. I guess it was pretty late when we got to the barn, and I knew one thing – that I was in trouble.

  But, to be honest, I was too tired to care about much of anything. I untacked Blue and put him in the stall so that he could eat some hay by himself – I would put him out with Lincoln before I went to bed. There was no clock in the barn, so I didn’t know what time it was. I could have been gone for two hours or three; I had no idea. I supposed they would tell me.

  On the porch, I took off my boots. Then I opened the door. The kitchen light was on, the dishes were done, my plate was on the table. The clock above the sink said a quarter to eight. That was pretty late, but
it wasn’t midnight. I slammed the door. I figured they would want to know I was back.

  It was Dad who appeared in the doorway. He said, ‘Go up to your room after you eat. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.’

  Well, it was back to doing everything right – cleaning up, homework, reading, staring out the window at Lincoln, the only horse I could see, contemplating my sins. But really, whatever they were going to say, getting lost with Blue on the Jordan Ranch didn’t feel like a sin. It felt like an adventure. And I didn’t see how Dad was going to convince me otherwise.

  I was already in bed, listening to the Mamas and the Papas and half asleep, when Mom knocked and came in. She sat on the bed. She said, ‘Did you run away?’

  ‘No. I just didn’t realise how late it was. I went for a ride on the Jordan Ranch and got a little lost. Is Dad really mad?’

  ‘He was sure something had happened to you.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I thought you were fine. I mean, Blue was gone, Rusty was gone. I knew you were all together.’

  ‘How come you don’t worry all that much and Dad does?’

  Mom leaned forward and whispered, ‘I believe a little more in grace and he believes a little more in sin.’ She hugged me. Then she looked me right in the face and said, ‘You should know, Abby, that your dad started crying when he thought you were, I don’t know, gone somehow. I can’t remember the last time I saw him cry. Maybe when we were kids. But he doesn’t want to lose you. He really doesn’t.’

  Like he lost Danny, I thought.

  I said, ‘Can you put Blue back out?’

  ‘Sure.’

  *

  It’s really not good to talk about these kinds of things before you go to bed, because you spend the whole night, both dreaming and waking, arguing with yourself. I mean, I even had a dream where I was writing a chart, which was yellow and looked like a crossword puzzle, where the words running down were why I was mad at Dad and the words running across were why he was mad at me. When I woke up after this dream, I was absolutely sure that the words running down outnumbered the words running across, but I couldn’t remember what any of them were, so I lay there half asleep and thought of Blue, the Carmichaels, Sophia. But of course Dad had nothing to do with Sophia. Yes, Sophia had my old horse, Black George, but now that I had Blue and had ridden Pie in the Sky, Black George – Onyx – seemed a little uninteresting to me. Blue was much more my friend, and Pie in the Sky was more of a challenge. I mean, you ride a horse and you have to think hard in order to solve the problem of him, and when you do, it is so exciting that other horses who never present problems don’t make you as happy.