Champion Horse

by Jane Smiley

  But that was a lesson, too – when we sold Black George, I was really upset and thought that maybe I would never get over it, and here I was, over it. On the other hand, that’s what grown-ups always wanted you to think, that you would get over whatever you were upset about. Plus there was a part of me that knew I was right about my idea of taking Blue to Ralph Carmichael, and because I was right, I didn’t want to get over it. I had been doing as I was told for years and years – my whole life. All around me, there were kids not doing as they were told. Did I really want to be one of those kids?

  I closed my eyes and started counting backward from a thousand in order to go to sleep without answering this question. I did go to sleep. The last number I remember thinking was thirty-two.

  When I woke up in the morning, the first thing I thought about was being out in the nighttime with Blue. Things I hadn’t realised that I’d noticed came into my mind – the first stars brightening to the east, only a few scattered across the sky above the blackness of the mountains; the pale grass, which in some places looked flat white and in other places looked shadowed and deep; Blue’s neck, almost luminous, splattered with dark spots, his ears glinting somehow as they flicked back and forth; his breathing, which I could feel between my calves and hear, too; the sound of the crickets, which at first seemed like silence and then became a chorus of tiny noises; Rusty aiming for the coyotes, and their dark figures skittering away. When I got up to put on my clothes, yawning and thinking of these things, I was in a pretty good mood. But then I saw that my books and papers were still spread over my desk, and I knew I would have to hurry up in order to get ready for school.

  I stumbled down the stairs, pushing my hair out of my face, and went out the back door. Sometime soon Daylight Saving Time would end, and it would be light in the morning again. I would be happy about that.

  Well, there was Dad, in the dark barn, throwing flakes of hay into the wheelbarrow. He turned when I stepped through the door, and right then and there I said, ‘Dad, I am sorry that I went off and got kind of lost last night. I was mad about something, but I really wasn’t intending to keep Blue out after dark. I know that was dumb. I’m sorry.’

  Why did I say this when I had just been thinking how strange and enjoyable the whole experience had been? Well, he looked at me. He looked right at me, and I felt bad that he had worried about me and that he had cried. I just did. He said, ‘Apology accepted.’ And then he didn’t say anything more. If he had been Mr Rosebury, he would have gone on and on about it, but he was Dad, and whatever was true about me and Blue getting lost in the night, it was over now.

  He pushed the wheelbarrow and I threw the hay to the horses, first the mares and then the two geldings, and when we went in the house, Mom had made toast and oatmeal. As we ate, Dad said, ‘Joe Tacker bought a five-year-old at a sale in Modesto and wants to send him over here to be retrained. Purebred Quarter-horse out of Quo Vadis.’

  ‘You’re kidding!’ said Mom. ‘She was—’

  ‘I’m sure he spent a pile on this one,’ said Dad. ‘I guess we’ll be staring at him all the time, just to see what he’s got.’

  ‘How much are you going to charge him?’

  ‘Seventy-five dollars board, seventy-five training.’

  I said, ‘Does that mean we don’t have to sell Oh My yet?’

  Mom smiled. Dad nodded.

  The only other thing that happened was that when I came down the stairs after changing my clothes and getting my books, he stopped me and kissed me on the top of the head as I went out the door. I gave him a hug around the waist.

  *

  The clinic, such as it was, had to be done in a hurry, because the Carmichaels were leaving for Southern California in two weeks. I spent the next four days not looking forward to it. It was going to take place out at the stables on Saturday and Sunday. Mr Rosebury persuaded Dad to let me take Pie in the Sky both days. Even at short notice, Jane had rounded up five more participants, including someone from Santa Rosa. Andy was going to bring Barry Boy, and Daphne was going to ride Curly. So that would be eight, and how they were going to divide us up I had no idea. That was the mystery of Ralph Carmichael: he did things his own way. Sophia said nothing about it at school, and I didn’t ask her. Once or twice I thought I might, but when I looked at her and opened my mouth, instead I asked her about the Iliad and the Odyssey, since on Friday we were having our test on the Greeks.

  Friday night, I cleaned my boots. Mom had already washed my breeches. I had a nice sweater and a jacket in case it was cold. That was all I had to do. Rodney would do the rest, which was fine with me. Mr Rosebury was even paying for the clinic, so my bank account would remain untouched. As for Melinda and Ellen, Jane thought it would do them a world of good to watch, and so she called their moms and invited them. Melinda said she didn’t know, and Ellen said she would bring her riding clothes. I had to laugh at that.

  The Carmichaels weren’t like Peter Finneran, expecting us to be there on the dot and saluting at 9.00 a.m. Ten o’clock was fine, and whoever was there would get started; the others could take their time. We were given not the big arena right out front but a smaller one back near the trees. When I led Pie in the Sky around the barns and back there, at first I didn’t see anyone; then I saw Ralph, a cup of coffee in his hand, leaning against the fence and looking into the woods. When we came through the gate, he pointed out a woodpecker, then sipped his coffee, then strolled around Pie in the Sky taking a look at him. He smoothed his moustache, turned, and strolled back the other way. About then, Andy brought Barry Boy in. Ralph said to me, ‘Why don’tcha take the tack off that horse. Give him a chance to run around a bit.’

  I said, ‘He may not have done that since he was a colt.’

  ‘’Bout time, then,’ said Ralph.

  The first thing that Pie in the Sky did was lie down in the sand and roll. He rolled, stood up, lay down, rolled on the other side, stood up, trotted across the arena to an especially wet spot, and lay down and rolled over and back, grunting as he did it. When he stood up, Ralph said, ‘Back’s a little suppler now.’ Pie in the Sky then trotted along the far fence line, staring at horses in one of the other arenas, and then he leapt in the air, kicked up, and took off snorting. I said, ‘What if he hurts himself?’

  ‘Ah, he’s not that type. Look at him. He’s agile and he knows what he’s doing. Now, you can have two horses run down a hill, and one of them judges wrong and runs into the fence, and the other one, even if the ground is slippery, he shifts his weight and slides, and he stops about a foot before the fence. Never touches it. This horse is like that.’

  I said, ‘He’s a good jumper.’

  ‘That’s what they say.’

  Now Barry Boy came trotting over. He snuffled noses with Pie in the Sky, and then Pie in the Sky arched his neck, lifted his tail, and trotted away from him, which meant that Pie in the Sky was saying, ‘I’m the boss,’ and when Barry Boy lifted his tail, Ralph lifted the flag he had next to him (which was really just a whip with a scarf attached to the tip) and moved them out – better to make them go than let them argue.

  They started galloping and romping, and even when Pie in the Sky kicked out, he just stretched his leg towards Barry Boy, and Barry Boy moved aside. After that, they cantered about, then Pie in the Sky trotted away to look at the other horses who were coming towards the arena, and Barry Boy got down and rolled in the sand. Ralph said, ‘Well, they like this sand, and I don’t blame them. Got to scratch where it itches.’

  Now everyone was here – Daphne and Curly, Nancy with Parisienne, and three other girls that I had seen around the barn. Everyone’s horses were neatly brushed and tacked up. When Andy came along and said, ‘Okay, let’s get the tack off these animals and let them play for ten minutes,’ all the girls except Daphne looked at each other, but one by one they turned their horses loose. Ralph went into the centre of the arena with his flag, and Andy went over by the gate. Daphne and I took the other girls out of the arena and over to
where Jane, Dad, Mr Rosebury, Rodney, and a couple of other people I didn’t know were leaning on the fence. One of the girls said, ‘I don’t know about having mares and geldings together,’ but Ralph didn’t let the horses pause – they had to start moving around. At first they did so sort of chaotically, not really bumping into one another but coming close, throwing their heads, stopping suddenly, rearing a bit. But then, after not even five minutes, they coordinated themselves into a little herd. They started going around the arena, avoiding the jumps and easing through the corners but staying fairly close together, almost like a school of fish. Ralph and Andy kept them moving, and the more they moved, the more they seemed to sense what the others were doing. Along the fence, we were all staring at them.

  Finally, one of the horses jumped a jump – it was Barry Boy, I saw by his blaze. Once he had done that, then the herd seemed to loosen up. The next horse to jump rather than go around was Curly, and then Curly jumped up onto the bank in the middle of the arena and jumped down. The bank now became rather popular – several of them jumped up and down. At one point two jumped on and then went down together, like a hunt pair abreast. I saw Andy move to guard the jump that was built into the fence at the end of the arena, an inviting coop. He didn’t want adventurous horses to jump out.

  What surprised me was how simultaneously relaxed and graceful all the horses were. One reason we were staring was that we thought they might hurt each other, but they organised themselves. Since Ralph and Andy didn’t drive them, only directed them, the horses, I suppose, did not feel pushed and nervous. They were turned tactfully in big looping turns so that they would gallop in both directions. There was a kind of sinuousness to the way the herd moved, especially after certain horses began seeing jumping as easier than going around. And every time a horse jumped a fence on his own, all of us watching went ‘Oooh!’ A voice beside me said, ‘They look so free.’

  It was Sophia.

  She wasn’t wearing riding clothes, just those pants tucked into her rubber boots, and a sweater and a raincoat. She put her hand in her pocket, and then she pulled out a Ritz cracker and put it in her mouth.

  I said, ‘I love this.’

  In a minute or two, Ralph stepped into the path of the little herd and raised his flag. The lead horses – Pie in the Sky and one of the horses I didn’t know – broke to the trot, and then the others followed. This part was interesting, too – at the trot, the herd fragmented, and the horses went off on their own. Then they were walking, and then Andy and Ralph headed towards them until they had bunched a little bit. But the Carmichaels didn’t get too close, because they didn’t want the horses to feel crowded. I thought it was amazing that two humans could make eight horses feel crowded.

  Now Ralph waved his arm to us, and Jane said, ‘Okay, everyone get your horse and halter him, then tack him up.’ I glanced over at Dad, who was standing there smiling with his eyebrows raised. Then he saw me and sort of threw his hands in the air, as if to say, ‘What in the world, you learn something new every minute.’

  Pie in the Sky was blowing a little bit and his eyes were wide, but he walked right over to me and lowered his head for me to put on the halter. Then he walked along at my side as I took him over to the fence where the saddle and bridle were. Since Rodney had always cleaned him and tacked him up, I realised that I didn’t have that sense of Pie in the Sky the way I did of my other horses: of looking at his head and standing beside him, and just getting to know him. I brushed off the last of the sand with my hand and patted him down the neck.

  Sophia was standing beside my tack. She said, ‘Want me to hold him?’

  I handed her the lead rope. She took it and tickled his nose with the end of it.

  When we were tacked up, we still didn’t mount. We walked around Ralph in a circle, cooling our horses while he stared at each of them in turn. After that he went over to Daphne and took Curly from her, and then he went over to Andy, who gave him a lasso. He mounted Curly and tossed the lasso around Barry Boy’s neck. Barry Boy had a saddle on but not a bridle.

  Now the six of us and our horses went and stood by the gate, while Ralph and Curly escorted Barry Boy over all the jumps in the arena and the bank. Ralph guided Curly with his left hand and his legs, holding the lasso with his right hand. I would say there was about twenty feet of rope between Ralph and Barry Boy – stiff rope, since they do something to a lasso to make it so stiff that you can push on it and loosen it if there’s a cow or a calf at the other end. The loop is also stiff, so that it never really tightens around the lassoed animal. Anyway, Ralph and Curly cantered past the jumps and Barry Boy cantered over the jumps, and when they had done all of them, Andy raised them.

  Since I had seen Ralph, Daphne, and Andy work before, I was pleased but not stunned. Everyone around me, though, seemed a little stunned. Sophia, now sitting on the railing near us, ate her crackers faster and faster. Dad was grinning, and Mr Rosebury kept saying, ‘Well, I’ll be a . . . Well, I’ll be a . . . That is something. That is something.’ I guess Mr Rosebury could not do anything without talking.

  And in case anyone thought that Barry Boy was a special case, Ralph came over to where we were all standing and asked the girl from Santa Rosa if he could borrow her horse. She nodded.

  He said, ‘How old is this one?’

  ‘He’s four.’

  ‘Breeding?’

  She shook her head. ‘Don’t know. We rescued him.’

  ‘Ever jumped before?’

  She shook her head again.

  ‘Well, let’s get him started. What’s his name?’

  ‘Pinkie.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Elizabeth.’

  Pinkie, you could see, was just a horse.

  Ralph got off Curly and handed his reins to the girl, then tossed the lasso over Pinkie’s head. Then he took off Pinkie’s saddle and bridle and led him to the centre of the arena, where he asked him to go around in a circle. Pinkie did this – he must have been lunged before. After a few minutes in each direction, when Ralph was sure that Pinkie was comfortable, he let Pinkie trot around him as he walked towards one long side of the arena where Andy had been setting up a crossbar. Now he started to run, having Pinkie trot over the crossbar. As he did so, Ralph popped up the rope so that it wouldn’t catch on the jump standard. Pinkie did not recognise that he was supposed to jump, though – he just trotted through, knocking the poles aside. Ralph didn’t respond. Andy reset the poles, and Ralph brought Pinkie around again. This time, Pinkie bent both knees and both hocks much more sharply in order to get his feet over the crossbar – you could see his mind working on this problem. He hit the poles and they flew away. Andy set the crossbar again.

  This time, without Ralph doing a thing, Pinkie looked at the jump and then, three strides out from it, he picked up the canter and jumped it, bending his knees, lifting his shoulders, arcing the tiniest bit. If I had ever seen a horse solve a problem, this was it. Pinkie jumped the fence three times more, once as a crossbar and twice as a vertical, and each time he did it the right way. All the humans gathered around were laughing. It was that much fun to watch.

  Ralph brought Pinkie down to the walk and led him over to his owner. She put the bridle on him and Ralph coiled up his lasso.

  Now we all mounted up, including Daphne on Curly and Andy on Barry Boy, and Ralph did a funny thing – he sent us around the arena in a herd, getting the horses to do exactly what they had already done without riders, but with riders. I have to say that Pie in the Sky seemed to be enjoying this. He was as loose but also as organised as I had ever felt him to be. We went both directions, and even jumped a small jump because there was a horse on either side of us, and one went around the jump to the left and one went to the right, so we had to go over it. I can’t say that this took Pie in the Sky by surprise – he was watching where he was going, and he prepared himself for the jump, jumped it, and went on. It was a small one, nothing like the big jumps we had jumped so many times. The best p
art about it was that Pie in the Sky was doing the thinking – understanding what the horses near us were about to do, and making up his mind accordingly.

  The next thing Ralph did was divide us into two groups, sending our group to the far end of the arena. Now, at the walk, we had to weave in and out in a big circle, half of us going one direction and half of us going the other direction, and when we had done that for a while and the horses were cool and calm, Ralph said, ‘All right, folks. That’s it for now. I want Curly, Norseman, Holiday, and Pie in the Sky right after lunch, and Pinkie, Riley, Parisienne, and Dalliance at three.’

  Ralph left. One by one, as our horses were cool, we went back to the barn. For the eight horses, I think there were now thirty or thirty-five spectators standing around, and I could hear them saying, ‘That looked like fun!’ ‘The horses seemed to be having fun.’

  Dad met me after I had jumped off Pie in the Sky and was leading him. We were about halfway between the arena and the barn. Dad handed me a hot dog and said, ‘I think I learned something.’

  I said, ‘What?’

  He said, ‘I don’t know yet.’