The Snow Pony

by Alison Lester

  Jack stood up and walked outside, slamming the door behind him. Dusty kept on with her homework, but it felt as though Jack’s temper hung above her like a vapour trail.

  ‘Why is he like that, Mum?’

  Rita looked up from the accounts. ‘What do you mean? Like what?’

  Dusty pulled a face. ‘You know, prickly, uptight, proud. Everything always has to be done his way.’

  ‘Oh, sweetie,’ Rita stretched her head back and shook her halo of curls, as though she was trying to jiggle her thoughts into line. ‘He is all those things, but he’s also strong and honest and true and intelligent. And he can be pretty funny, too.’

  Dusty narrowed her eyes and tried to remember the last time Jack had made her laugh. ‘Don’t fob me off, Mum. You know what I mean. It’s like he’s separate from everyone else. He’s not part of the community. He won’t join the CFA because he reckons they’re all idiots, and he’s not in Rotary or any of those things. We’ve got heaps of second cousins but we hardly know them …’

  ‘All right, all right. I do know what you mean.’ Rita pushed her chair back. ‘I guess part of it is that his dad was like that. Proud, aloof, had to be the best. A lovely man if you were on his side, but no time for anyone he didn’t respect. He played the violin like an angel. And his mother died when he was just a little boy, so there was no one to soften that pride. And then there’s the way she died.’

  ‘It was a car accident, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, and somehow it was Jack’s uncle’s fault. That put a rift in the family that’s never healed.’ Rita reached over the bills and ruffled Dusty’s glossy black hair. ‘They say you look just like her, and she was a gun rider too … but your father, no, he is the way he is and that’s that. He’s got good friends all over the place, from boarding school, and ag. college, cattlemen, bushies. He’s not a snob, he’s just choosy. But …’ Rita looked straight into Dusty’s eyes with her own level green ones, ‘he loves us dearly. He’d do anything for you kids. Don’t forget that.’

  Dusty began to school the Snow Pony that summer. Under Rita’s instruction, she walked and trotted and cantered in circles, bending and flexing until she was soft and round. She was so light on her feet that Dusty felt as though she was sitting on the shoulders of a ballet dancer.

  ‘She feels beautiful, Mum, you should have a ride,’ she said as she rode up to Rita at the end of a session, and Rita accepted the offer because the mare looked like a dream. But when she rode her it was more like a nightmare. The Snow Pony rushed around the arena as though the devil was on her back, and Rita was glad to get off.

  She shook her head as she handed the reins to Dusty. ‘I always thought it was nonsense that some horses could only be ridden by one person. I thought a good rider could get any horse to behave. But this mare’s weird. She really does go only for you.’

  Dusty’s heart swelled a little bit, but Rita frowned. ‘I don’t like it. Not for the same reason as Dad; not because I can’t stand being beaten. I don’t care about that. No, it’s more that her refusal to go nicely for anyone but you indicates how wilful she is, and that frightens me. There’s a wildness in her that makes her unsafe. I’m afraid that one day you’ll get hurt.’ She laughed at Dusty’s gloomy face. ‘It’s all right, mate. I’m not going to stop you riding her or anything like that. I just worry about you, that’s all. Come on, let’s school her over some trot poles.’

  The Snow Pony turned out to be a jumping machine. She never refused a jump or ran out, and she hated touching the poles with her hooves. Dusty’s biggest problem was slowing her down enough to take the tight bends in a showjumping course. They started competing towards the end of summer, and sometimes the Snow Pony’s speed was so terrifying that Rita had to cover her eyes. Dusty won every junior jumping event she entered, and blitzed the field in her first maiden D grade, for horses that hadn’t won at that level before. As they quickly accumulated D grade points, winning at every show, people started to come up to Dusty, asking her about her horse. Everybody loved the story of the Snow Pony.

  ‘Winning’s fun, isn’t it?’ Dusty propped her feet on the dashboard of the old truck as Rita drove home after their final D grade competition. The Snow Pony had notched up too many points to stay in that class, and the luscious blue ribbons she had won hung from the rear vision mirror. The prize money was in an envelope in the glove box and Dusty felt on top of the world.

  ‘Yep,’ Rita replied. ‘Winning’s great, but you have to learn how to lose, too.’

  ‘Mum! That’s not fair. I’ve been riding those learners of yours for years. I know how to lose.’

  Rita laughed. ‘I suppose you do. But it will feel different, losing on the Snow Pony. It means so much more to you. And now you’re in C grade it won’t be so easy. The jumps will be bigger and the course will be tighter. You won’t be able to motorbike the way you have been. You’ll have to slow down, get more control.’

  Sally rang up to ask her over for the weekend. ‘I never see you any more, Dusty.’ She pretended to sob. ‘The Snow Pony’s stolen you away from me. Ha ha ha. But seriously, I’m going away to boarding school in two weeks and we’ll never see each other then. Can’t you come over? Can’t you miss showjumping? Just one weekend?’

  Dusty twisted the phone cord with her free hand. She had been neglecting Sally lately, and she felt guilty that she’d hardly missed her at all because she’d been so involved with the Snow Pony. ‘I can’t, Sal. It’s the Bankstown Show next weekend, my first C grade.’

  Sally was silent at the other end of the phone.

  ‘But, hey, why don’t you come? You could watch us jump, and then we could muck around at the sideshows, like we used to when we were little. Go on the flying horses, play the clowns. Remember that time we crawled under the back of the boxing tent and saw that guy get knocked out?’

  ‘Yeah, and we got the giggles because you said he’d wet his pants, and then they threw us out.’ Sally laughed at the memory. ‘Okay, I’ll come on the bus tomorrow night. It should be fun. See ya.’ Sally hung up and hoped it would be fun, not Dusty glaring at her every time she moved the wrong way near that stupid horse.

  6

  The Accident

  Sally and Stew sat together outside the arena, watching Dusty and the Snow Pony jump. On the other side of the showgrounds the sideshows and rides blared out noise and action, but here, under the giant cypress trees, it was quiet and shady. Everybody here was watching the showjumping. Dusty had already been in one event, the C grade Table A, and had her first taste of failure on the Snow Pony. It was just as Rita said: you simply couldn’t get around a C grade course as fast as the Snow Pony had been going. The course was too tight and the jumps too big. Dusty’s approach to the jumps became more and more angled until finally the Snow Pony missed a jump altogether. When Sally and Stew got back to the truck, Dusty had calmed down, though her eyes were red, and Sally guessed she had been crying, tears of frustration. Dusty always cried when she got mad.

  ‘You have to sing,’ Rita was saying. ‘Sing to give yourself a rhythm, and she’ll pick it up. Come on, try. “If you go out in the woods today, bom bom, you’d better not go alone. Bom bom …” See, it works, try that when you go out next time.’

  Now they were watching her second event, and the singing seemed to be working. The Snow Pony moved around the jumping course at a steady pace. She was still very fast, but she wasn’t racing and plunging, just gliding along, flying over the jumps as though they were hardly there.

  ‘She’s wicked, isn’t she?’ Stewie whispered.

  Sally nodded. She could see why Dusty was so obsessed with her beautiful horse. They looked great.

  ‘It looks like they’re dancing, with all those curves.’

  ‘Yeah, Mum says that showjumping’s just half circles with jumps in them. She says if you can get the circles right, you’re nearly there.’ Stewie pulled his cap lower over his eyes. ‘It doesn’t seem to work for me, though. I always get lost. Dad rec
kons I need a horse that can read the numbers on the jumps.’

  They stopped talking as Dusty finished her round, and after a little while Sally became aware of something poking her in the ribs. It was Stewie, staring at her, wriggling his eyebrows and turning his head to one side like a lunatic. Sally leant forward and realised that the elderly couple sitting there were talking about Dusty.

  ‘No, young Jack … from out at Banjo … yes … his daughter. And her mother was Rita Poole before she was married. She took showjumpers all over the place when she was younger. She doesn’t compete any more, but I hear she gets young horses going. She’d have done all the work on that mare …’ The loudspeaker drowned the conversation for a few seconds. ‘… at least twenty grand. You’d sell her to Europe for easily that much.’

  When Dusty got back to the truck with her blue sash they were waiting for her.

  ‘Dusty! Dusty!’ Stewie was jumping up and down like a flea. ‘We heard some people saying that you could sell the Snow Pony for twenty thousand dollars!’

  Dusty jumped off and started to take off the saddle. ‘What’s he talking about, Sally?’

  ‘This old couple next to us were talking …’

  ‘Yeah,’ Stewie butted in. ‘We were earsdropping!’

  Dusty gave him a little shove as she passed with her saddle. ‘It’s eavesdropping, idiot. And I could never sell the Snow Pony, not for any money. She only goes for me. Isn’t that right, Mum?’

  Rita nodded and just then Jack appeared. He had told Dusty he’d try to call in and watch her.

  ‘That was a beautiful round, Dusty.’ He patted the Snow Pony’s neck. ‘You and Mum have got her going like a dream.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad.’ Dusty hugged him.

  This was the first time he’d come to watch her jump. With the drought stretching on for another summer, he was always too busy to come to the shows with Rita and Dusty. Or that’s what he said. Dusty thought he was embarrassed to come, as if he felt he were hanging around like a bad smell, sweating on her winning. There was no doubt the money the Snow Pony had won made life easier, but Jack seemed to be ashamed of it at the same time. Rita kept an account book with all the sums recorded, so Dusty would get her money back, with interest, when the drought was over, but for now it all went to the farm.

  ‘Dad!’ Stewie starting shaking Jack’s arm. ‘Guess what Sal and I heard some people …’

  Dusty stepped between her father and Stewie and glared at him. ‘Shut up!’ she mouthed. She didn’t want Jack to know how valuable people thought her horse was. She wasn’t sure she could trust him if it came to a choice between the Snow Pony and money.

  The sideshows and stalls were fun, even with just a few dollars to spend, and Sally always made things interesting. They wandered through the dog section, peeling off sticky wisps of pink fairy floss and eating it as they went.

  ‘I’m telling you, Dusty, all the dog owners look like their dogs. Look at that one!’ She squealed with laughter and Dusty turned to see a stumpy man, with five double chins, sitting with his bulldog. They giggled together as they matched the dogs with their owners: a tiny woman with fluffy hair grooming her poodle, a lanky girl with sad eyes and her red setter. As they passed the old grandstand several people stopped Dusty to congratulate her.

  ‘I hope you’re going in the Grand Parade,’ old Mr Wilson said to her. He was from Banjo and had been on the Bankstown Show committee for years.

  ‘Yeah, Dusty, you have to,’ Sal was excited. ‘I’ll take a photo as you go past and I can have it on my wall at school.’

  It really hit Dusty then that Sally was going away, and how much she was going to miss her. If Sally were coming to Bankstown Secondary College with her this year it would be a breeze, but without her – Dusty couldn’t imagine school without Sally. There’d be no one to talk to on the hour-long bus trip, she wouldn’t know anyone, and the worst thing was, Sally wouldn’t be there to make her laugh. Sally changed her somehow, made her a smarter, funnier person. By herself, Dusty sometimes felt like a clod, a hillbilly.

  The Grand Parade moved slowly around the arena, all the prize winners showing off their ribbons. The cattle came first, led by their owners in white coats; then the led horses, the ridden horses, and the harness horses. Dusty rode on the outside, nearest the rail, so Sally could get a good shot of her. The Snow Pony felt like a coiled spring under her as the crowds cheered and clapped and the loudspeakers blared out a description of the passing parade. Dusty was peering across at the other side of the oval, where an enormous Friesian bull was bellowing like a foghorn, so she didn’t see Sally duck under the fence and race towards her for a better shot. When the flash went off, the Snow Pony spun and ran so fast that at first nobody knew what had happened. She bolted through the steward’s area in the middle of the arena, and Dusty felt a sting on her cheek as they flew past the loudspeaker van. The Snow Pony came back to her then and Dusty pulled her up and turned to rejoin their place in the parade.

  ‘Whoa, girl, it’s all right. Just Sal and her camera.’

  She didn’t realise anything was wrong until a steward walked towards her, staring in shock. Then she felt something wet on her shoulder, and when she looked down her riding jacket was covered with blood. She put her hand to her cheek. It felt like a flap. And when she pulled her hand away, it was bloody, too.

  Dusty peered into the tiny hand mirror and tried to catch the reflection of the side of her face in the bathroom mirror. The scar was red and angry-looking, even though the stitches had come out last week. It angled in from below her cheekbone, running towards the corner of her mouth in a straight line for about five centimetres. It looked ugly. Dusty put the hand mirror down and turned to face herself in the big mirror. Straight on it didn’t look bad at all, almost hidden in the hollow of her cheek. It was two weeks since the accident, since the wire poking out from the loudspeaker van had sliced her face open as the Snow Pony bolted past. What had happened afterwards was a blur: people crowded around her, the ambulance, the helicopter to Melbourne, doctors, the operation, nurses and hospital. Sally and Milo had come to see her with flowers and a cow painting, and Sally had wept and wept, seeing her friend’s bandaged face. Dusty tried to cheer her up, but Sally was inconsolable that she had caused the accident.

  ‘Sal, it’s not your fault. It’s just the way the Snow Pony is. She could have bolted like that at anything. It’s like what you told us about friends, Milo, you have to take the whole package. I love her for her brilliance, so I’ve just got to put up with her craziness.’ She looked out the window at the city shimmering in the summer heat. ‘Mum and Dad want me to give her up. They think she’s too dangerous. Mum’s promised not to let Dad do anything until I get home, but there’s no way he’s going to sell her, or turn her loose. She’s my horse and I’m going to keep riding her. We’re going to be champions, the Snow Pony and me.’

  In the end, when she’d come home from hospital, there’d been no flaming row. Two hours into the drive back from Melbourne the silence in the car became heavy with the topic of the Snow Pony and Dusty got in first. ‘I’m not going to give her up. I’m going to keep riding her and keep jumping her.’

  Another twenty minutes of silence followed that statement until Rita cleared her throat.

  ‘Okay. I’m not sure what you think about this, Jack.’ She looked at the side of his face, his eyes concentrating on the road. ‘You can keep riding her, and keep jumping her. I know how much she means to you. But realise the danger. If she’d been any closer to that van you would have been killed.’ She looked at Dusty over the back of her seat and her eyes were full of tears. ‘We could have lost you, Dusty. That mustn’t happen again. No, ride her, jump her, but stay away from pressure situations as much as you can. And she only has one more chance. Another crazy stunt like that and she goes.’

  The day Dusty got her stitches out she came home from the doctor’s and went straight outside to ride. The Snow Pony flew over the baked summer ground like a bird as t
hey galloped up the rise behind the house, and Dusty found herself grinning with joy. The scar pulled against her smile but it didn’t matter. She had a scar but she also had a wonderful horse.

  7

  New school

  When Dusty started at Bankstown Secondary, it was about as bad as she expected. She arrived a week late, because of the accident, and everyone seemed to have a friend except her. It was a huge change, going from the tiny one-teacher school at Banjo, where she’d known everyone since kindergarten, to the big central college with five hundred students.

  Sally had gone to boarding school at the end of January, and Dusty had already got two letters from her. She wrote about how much she missed home, but the letters were also full of her new life and the girls she shared a dormitory with. Dusty had always assumed that she and Sally would go away to boarding school together. They used to spend hours inventing glamorous adventures they could have in their new life in the city. But the drought, which had lasted for two years now, meant there was no money for private schooling. And secretly, Dusty was relieved. She couldn’t imagine being away from the Snow Pony for a whole term.

  She was miserable at Bankstown Secondary. Without Sally to plot and giggle with, without Sally to send up the teachers and put the cool kids in their place, Dusty felt as lonely as Rita’s post in the paddock. The kids in her form talked about TV shows and bands she’d never heard of. They read hip magazines, wore trendy clothes and knew all the latest songs. She couldn’t even watch Rage on TV, because every Saturday morning they were up at dawn and off to another show. Even though she loved competing on the Snow Pony, she wished there was room in her life for something else.