Pony Jumpers 3- Triple Bar

by Kate Lattey

  They had no idea who I really was. Then again, neither did I.

  * * *

  The worst part was telling Pete, but I knew I had to do it. Nobody else was going to. I waited until he was online, because I didn’t want to leave news like that for him to find. I wanted to be able to answer his questions right away, as soon as he asked them. And I was sure he’d have questions.

  Hey bro.

  I could almost see his smile as he replied.

  Heyyy whats up?

  I took a breath. Poised my fingers over the keyboard, and slowly typed out the message.

  Nothing good. Teddy died two days ago.

  I stared at the words onscreen for a long moment before I could bring myself to hit Enter. Then the agonising wait. He didn’t read it right away. I took deep breaths, trying to steady my heartbeat. And waited.

  Then the pop-up screen told me that he’d read the message. I clenched and unclenched my fingers as he started typing, and then his words appeared onscreen.

  How the hell did that happen?

  I ground my teeth. If only we knew. Dad got his autopsy done in the end – or necropsy, which is what they call it in horses (that goes straight to the top of the list of things I wish I didn’t know) – although he’d had to call in a vet from another practice. Ours were apparently busy working on saving horses that were still alive. Dad had been annoyed about that, but it had made sense to me. I didn’t need any more blood on my hands.

  We don’t know. Just dropped dead on me while I was riding. The vet did a necropsy but nothing obvious. She thinks it was his heart, so Dad had it sent off for further dissection.

  I still wasn’t sure how I felt about that. The rest of Teddy was buried in our hill paddock, because it was the easiest spot to get the digger to. Not because it was his favourite paddock, or because he spent a lot of time there. Just because it was convenient.

  Are you okay?

  My fingers were shaking as I wrote my reply.

  Not really. I feel like it was my fault.

  His reply was almost instant.

  Course it wasnt. You didn’t know. Nobody did.

  I felt better. Then he sent another message, and I felt much, much worse.

  I bet Dad’s happy tho, since he wanted to get rid of him anyway.

  I had told Pete that there was no way Dad had anything to do with it. That it was a freak accident, not caused by anything in particular. But we still didn’t know exactly what had caused it. The vet who’d done the necropsy on Teddy hadn’t been able to find anything obvious that had caused his heart to stop working. She was fairly certain that there was something that had gone wrong internally, and since she was a part-time lecturer at Massey University, New Zealand’s top vet and equine research facility, she’d asked Dad’s permission to take his heart away for a full dissection. Apparently she thought it would be a good learning opportunity for her students.

  Dad had argued with her, pressuring her just to sign the forms required by the insurance company and confirm that heart failure had caused the pony’s sudden death. She’d resisted, but he’d worn her down in the end. After all, Teddy was almost sixteen years old – he wasn’t a young pony. He could’ve had any number of things wrong with him.

  I’d sat silently while they’d discussed it, ignoring the sympathetic glances that the vet kept sending my way, until Dad had asked if letting her take the heart would lead to a reduction in the necropsy fee.

  I’d left the room then. Dad filed the claim, and the vet took Teddy’s heart.

  He hadn’t had to do that.

  He wouldn’t have done it if he thought she’d find anything incriminating.

  Because the insurance is already paid out, said the traitorous voice in my head. Maybe he covered his tracks.

  Stop it. He had nothing to do with it. He loved Teddy.

  Nobody’s going to buy him right now anyway.

  We all loved Teddy.

  He’s clearly not going to do the Grand Prix again.

  I rolled over and buried my face in Ouma’s blanket. I couldn’t entertain those thoughts. They weren’t going to lead anywhere good.

  * * *

  “I’m not going.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Dad said, but I held firm.

  “I don’t want to go to a show this weekend.”

  “I know, darling.” Mum laid a hand on my arm, and I stared at her perfect French manicure, fresh from the salon that morning. “But it’s a two-star show. You need the points.”

  “I don’t care.”

  Dad huffed out an irritated breath. “Of course you do.”

  I clenched my jaw, then shook off my mother’s hand and stood up. “No, I don’t! So stop telling me what I do and don’t feel, because you don’t know! You don’t know how I feel or what I’m thinking, so stop trying to decide for me! It just makes it worse.” I felt my throat thicken and I willed myself not to cry. Not in front of them. “I’m not going. End of discussion.”

  And I walked out of the room and slammed the door behind me.

  CHAPTER THREE

  We went to the show, of course. I never really had a choice in the matter. My father had told me later that if I’d asked reasonably, laid out my case and explained how I felt in a calm manner, he would have taken my feelings into careful consideration. But because I’d behaved like a spoilt child, yelling and slamming doors and being generally horrid, I had to be punished. And what better way than to make me do something I really didn’t want to do?

  The only battle that I won was getting to sit in the accommodation of the truck instead of sitting in the cab with them. For safety reasons, they always made me sit up front with a seat belt on when we travelled. But it was a six hour drive to Woodhill Sands, and I wasn’t going to spend it wedged between my parents as they bickered at me and told me that I had to put the past behind me and move forward if I was to have any chance of winning the Grand Prix series this season.

  As if I cared anymore.

  I went through the motions when we arrived, unloading the ponies and setting them up in their yards. Filling water buckets and lugging them to the ponies, stuffing their haynets, putting down shavings, changing their rugs, mixing their feeds, wrapping their legs, mucking out their yards. I was happy to have something to do, and my parents left me to it. It was only the two ponies, after all. The only ones I had left.

  I was crouched down next to Buck’s hind legs, wrapping them so they wouldn’t stock up overnight, when I heard voices. They were counting off yards, struggling to see the numbers in the fading light as they looked for their spot.

  “It should be down here somewhere, on the right. Oh, it’s this one!”

  I glanced up, but couldn’t see who it was. I watched two sets of human legs and one set of pony legs walk into the yard next to Skip. My chestnut pony went to say hello to his new neighbour, and I heard the girls greeting him.

  “Hello cutie! What’s your name?”

  “Don’t you recognise him? That’s Skybeau.” The other voice sounded disparaging. She knew who Skip belonged to, and so did her friend.

  “Aw, so it is. Poor pony. How’re you holding up?”

  I tried to block my ears from the rest of their conversation as they continued to feel sorry for my pony for belonging to me. Focused hard on Buck’s wraps, making sure they weren’t bumpy or uneven. I wound the fleece bandage carefully around his leg, keeping the pressure even the whole way around.

  I was almost done when Buck shifted his weight and then lifted his leg, knocking my hand and making me drop the bandage. It fell into the shavings and the tension was lost. The bandage unwound itself, puddling around his fetlock, and I forgot. I forgot where I was, and I forgot who was standing right there, and I just reacted. I reached up and slapped him on the forearm angrily, muttering at him.

  “Stand still, would you?”

  Buck flinched slightly, but stood solid as I picked up the dangling bandage and started picking bits of shavings off it. Then I re
alised that the voices had stopped, and my heart sank.

  “Sorry bud,” I apologised to my pony, digging into my pocket for a peace offering. But I came up short – Skip had already begged all of the carrots out of my jacket. Buck recognised my movements and turned his head, dropping his nose down to meet me. I reached up and rubbed his forehead and he stayed like that for a moment, eyes half-closed as he enjoyed the rub. He’d forgiven me already for losing my temper with him. He was a very forgiving pony. I didn’t deserve him.

  I wound the bandage back up, rescuing the foam wrap that had also tumbled into the shavings, and resetting the whole thing. The girls were still there, their voices hushed now. I tried not to care. I rewrapped Buck’s leg, and he stood very still for me this time. I closed the Velcro tab and stood up, stretching, then put an arm around his neck and gave him a hug.

  “Thanks for putting up with me,” I whispered. “I’m sorry if I got mad.”

  I was born with a short temper, and haven’t always been able to keep it under control. I got it from my father – an inheritance that Pete and I shared – and for years it was the bane of my existence. As hard as I tried to keep it reined in, it took over more often than I would like, making me react before I had time to stop and think rationally. When I got angry or defensive, I would lash out, physically or verbally. I’d managed to keep a much firmer check on my tongue lately, especially after all of the things people had been saying about – and to – me. Because that saying about sticks and stones is a pack of lies. Unkind words hurt more than anything else. You end up carrying them around in your head, wondering if they’re true. Bruises fade, but self-doubt follows you forever.

  As hard as I tried to control my temper, my tendency to hit first, think later was not something I could just stop doing overnight. I’d tried. Maybe it was like what Bruce kept saying – muscle memory. I’d grown up being told to show the ponies who was boss, grown up with a big brother who I idolised who was never slow to correct his ponies with a spur or a smack, grown up with parents who had been wholehearted in their disapproval when the law changed to prevent parents using physical punishment against their children. Not that I was a beaten child – not by any stretch of the imagination. But I’d been smacked and slapped and dragged off to sit in the corner and think about what I’d done more times than I could recall. I don’t think it scarred me for life, but it also didn’t discourage me from smacking the ponies when they didn’t do as they were told. It was just what I knew.

  Those girls were still there, and Skip was standing at the railing next to them, waiting to see if they had any treats they wanted to share with him. I wanted to say goodnight to him. I didn’t want to deal with them.

  I walked up to the front of Skip’s yard and chirruped to him. He turned his head and looked at me, but didn’t move. The girls looked at me as well. I didn’t recognise them, or their pony, but they clearly knew who I was. I took a breath, watched Skip for one more hopeful second, then turned away.

  ‘Night, Skipper.

  As I walked away, I heard the girls start to giggle. I tried not to let it get to me. They could be laughing about anything. Not necessarily at me.

  But I had my suspicions.

  It was a long, torturous weekend. We were a long way from home, and the riders I knew here were the ones that I’d been competing against for years. The ones who knew everything – or thought they did – about my past. The ones who hated me the most.

  Strangely enough, the one person who didn’t seem to completely hate me was the one who really should have. But Marley had found some kind of superhuman forgiveness, and although she was never overtly friendly, she wasn’t mean to me either, and had even gone out of her way to help me last season. I kept waiting for the catch, but it didn’t come. She seemed to just genuinely have put it behind her, and moved on. If only everyone else would follow her example, but I’d given up waiting for that to happen.

  When Marley rode into the ring for the Pony Grand Prix on Sunday morning, back on board her famed pinto pony that had been the catalyst for all of this, I tried to stop and watch her go. I wanted to see them together again, wanted to see if they’d recaptured that magic that they’d had before, the sense of joy and unity that they’d shared. It was what had made them so impressive to watch, and so difficult to beat. I’d been so deeply jealous of Marley back then, so frustrated that she could achieve such a connection with her pony with apparently so little effort. A pony she’d barely ridden, let alone jumped, had burst onto the show scene and thrown down the gauntlet, winning everything before him and shocking the rest of us into submission.

  My parents had been even angrier about it than I had. They were livid that I was being beaten by a “half-broke bush pony” when they’d just spent thousands on buying Buck for me. I’d been failing to live up to their expectations, and I’d been quick to deflect the blame onto my ponies, claiming that if I only had a really good, consistent pony, I’d be able to win every weekend without fail.

  So Dad had gone out and bought me the most consistent pony in the country. Buckingham had started his Grand Prix career as a seven-year-old, and nine years later was still a jumping machine with masses of titles to his name. Pony of the Year, Nationals – you name it, he’d won it. And now that he was mine, I was expected to continue the cycle.

  What my parents didn’t expect was to see me consistently beaten by a pony that had turned up out of nowhere and was inexplicably winning the country’s biggest classes with next to no training. And while everyone else was amazed and impressed, my parents’ resentment grew. It leached out onto me, smothering everything that I did, tainting my achievements. I couldn’t win a ribbon without Dad comparing my placing to Marley’s, couldn’t turn fast enough or jump off tight enough angles without him telling me I should’ve ridden the lines that she rode, and maybe then I would’ve won. I’d tried that once, and it had ended in disaster. Poor Buck had been terrified and I’d worn the bruises for weeks.

  Dad was watching me now, scowling at me as I walked Skip on a loose rein around the warm-up, lost in thought. I picked my reins up and pressed Skip into a canter, circling away before I reached my father. Focused my attention on my pony, putting everything I had into him and only him. Pushing everything else out of my mind, and shutting down my awareness of everything other than the gathering of his muscles, the flexion of his jaw, the feel of the reins between my fingers. The sharp morning air that made my eyes water when I turned into the breeze, the arch of Skip’s neck, the way his body moved so fluidly beneath me.

  I didn’t look at my father as I rode into the ring. I didn’t think about whether or not I was going to win, and what that might mean, and how many points I would get if I did. I just thought about the course of jumps ahead of me, focused on getting a good rhythmic canter and giving Skip a good ride to the first fence on the course.

  He came home clear, because he was another super consistent pony with a list of achievements as long as my arm. I don’t know whether Dad bought him because he wanted me to have him, or because he didn’t want anyone else to, in case they started beating me.

  Buck went clear too, but I was cautious of his advanced years and took him steadily around a couple of the turns. As a result, we picked up a single time fault, knocking us out of the jump-off. Dad didn’t say anything, not in public, but I knew he was annoyed. Mum took Buck back to the yards and untacked him while I got back on Skip.

  I was riding right after Marley this time, which meant I was waiting at the in-gate when she rode, so I got to see her round. They were as good as ever, but Cruise touched a rail when she sliced the second-to-last fence, and it fell. I tried to give her a friendly smile as we passed each other in the ring, but she was looking at someone else, and didn’t notice.

  Skip jumped a conservative clear round. It was early in the season yet and I didn’t feel the need to gallop him around the course. My approach paid off, especially after several others knocked rails, and we finished in second place. But
I took no pleasure in the rosette as it was pinned to Skip’s bridle, although I did my best to pretend. The riders around me grinned and chatted to each other as the ribbons were handed out, congratulating each other, their eyes skating past me. Marley was fourth.

  I wished she’d won.

  I was glad I hadn’t.

  So howd it go?

  I lay on my stomach on the bed above the truck cab and tapped out a reply to Pete as we made our way home. The truck swayed as we pulled out onto the road, and I heard the ponies shuffling their feet in the back.

  Okay I guess. Skip 2nd in PGP. Got the points Dad wanted. So he’s happy.

  Pete’s reply came swiftly.

  What bout u?

  I frowned. The truck braked sharply, the ponies skittered, and I clutched at the blanket under me to avoid being thrown to the floor. Mum snapped something at Dad, barely audible from where I was.

  Huh?

  Are u happy?

  I thought about that for a moment.

  Not really. I didn’t want to show this wkd but they made me come. it sucked.

  Dad on your case again? :( tell him to get lost

  Funny. Like that would ever work. And it wasn’t entirely Dad’s fault that showing was so horrible for me. It had been once, but it wasn’t anymore. So I told Pete the truth.

  Not Dad. Everyone else. they all hate me because of what u did.

  I shouldn’t have said that, but I couldn’t keep it bottled up anymore. He had to know what he’d left me to deal with.