by Susan Juby
Alex swung easily back onto the old paint and began to move him around the arena at a walk, then a more ground-covering trot, which kept slowing to a Western jog. He had to remind himself to post rather than sit. The stirrups were too short and the little saddle felt odd. Alex barely touched Turnip’s sides, and the horse broke into the ultraslow lope that is the hallmark of a good Western pleasure horse.
“Okay, Alex, bring him back to a walk and come in here a second,” directed Fergus.
Alex slowed Turnip and turned him to the center of the ring so he faced the small man.
Fergus gently patted Turnip’s neck with a flat hand. “Well, he’s just a love, isn’t he?”
Alex nodded, relieved the man wasn’t making fun.
“He’s got quite good balance and a good mind. I can see that right off. Not a big mover, of course, and you aren’t that familiar with the English tack. But I’m sure we can do something for you and your root vegetable. First, however, we’re going to have to rustle you up a dressage saddle. This one has you tipping forward like a jockey.”
Alex tried to contain his huge smile. He nodded quickly again and looked down at his horse’s mane instead of giving away his ridiculous, outsized happiness.
SEPTEMBER 26
6
Alex
AS HE WAS struggling out of his track pants by the side of the road, Alex reflected that two weeks of dressage training had turned him into a master of disguise as well as a liar. Well, not a liar, exactly; he was really more of an omitter. He didn’t need to tell everyone his personal business, even though lately it seemed that everyone was interested.
To pay for his lessons, he’d worked out an arrangement with Fergus in which he cleaned stalls and helped out around the farm, fixing fences, driving the tractor to harrow the ring, and picking out paddocks. He was at the barn every day after school and most of Saturday and Sunday, but he still hadn’t quite gotten around to telling his father that he’d switched from Western to English.
“So, who you going to train with now that Merry’s gone? She was a damn fine little horsewoman, that one. It’ll be tough to replace her,” his father had commented last night.
Alex had mumbled some vague reply about taking lessons at a place down the road.
“They do reining there? Because I think that’s the natural progression for you. You’ve shown you can do that slower-type stuff. It’s time to work on your speed. I was talking to Rudy Chapman down at the Wheat Sheaf, and he said…”
Alex tuned out. Rudy Chapman was a man who specialized in rough-handling problem horses. If you wanted the spirit knocked out of your horse, Rudy Chapman was your guy. If you wanted somebody to drink with while talking trash about horses, he was also your guy. If Alex’s pants were on fire, he wouldn’t have taken Rudy Chapman’s advice on where to find a water hose.
Alex wasn’t one to confront issues head-on. That’s why he didn’t argue with his dad or tell him the truth. Instead he kept his English tack at Limestone, telling Fergus he felt safer riding over in his Western gear. He left his house wearing baggy track pants over his breeches, the same track pants he was now struggling to get off. Twice today he’d been caught by passing cars as he hopped around on one leg by the side of the road before the turn-off to the barn. The elderly female driver of the first car, obviously afraid to see what he was doing with his pants half down, sped up after giving him an alarmed glance. The young aboriginal guy driving the second vehicle had grinned widely, and given him the thumbs-up.
He had one leg free and was working on the other when he heard another car approach. Damn. He crouched closer to Turnip, who stood solidly in place. The car, which sounded mechanically suspect and familiar, slowed as it got closer. Alex stayed very still, his half-removed sweatpants lying in the dust as he hid behind his horse at the side of the road.
“Alex?” came his aunt Grace’s voice.
Alex swore silently under his breath and peered out past Turnip’s shoulder. The gelding gently lipped at his hair.
“Do you mind telling me what the hell you’re doing?” Grace’s hair was extralarge today, and boldly highlighted. She looked right at home in the car—an IROC with a damaged muffler and a fat white racing stripe running up the middle of the hood—that Alex’s dad had from before he was married. Grace drove it around the neighborhood to her home hairdressing visits. It was, Alex thought, the ultimate white-trash vehicle.
“Nothing. Getting changed.”
“Into what? Your Superman cape?”
Alex sighed and straightened.
“Those are quite the pants you’ve got on there,” Grace said, noticing his breeches as he pulled off the other leg of his track pants.
“They’re for riding,” he said.
“If you say so. Anyway, I’m off to do Nancy Ferguson’s hair. She broke her leg at the curling club dance, so she’s not getting around much.”
Grace revved the engine a couple of times. “Please don’t take off any more clothes by the side of the road. You never know who’s going to stop. Oh, and don’t worry. I won’t mention this to anyone.” Then she jammed the car into gear and roared off.
Alex breathed a deep sigh of relief. Grace understood the need to be discreet. Alex knew his father was eventually going to find out he’d switched to dressage, but there was no need to rush.
Mr. Ford had definite ideas about the merits of Western versus English riding. He referred to Western as “real riding.” Traditional Western mounts, such as quarter horses and paints and mustangs, were “real horses.” English was “fancy riding” done by “sissy riders” with “useless horses.”
Mr. Ford was also a big believer in the power of the cowboy hat. He often said that any man could succeed with the ladies if he had the right ten-gallon. Alex politely refrained from mentioning the right ten-gallon could probably get a guy quite a few other guys as well.
When Alex and his sisters found their father passed out in his lawn chair outside his RV, they all pitched in to get him to bed, but rarely spoke about it afterward, other than to make veiled references to it.
“Keep an eye on the lawn chair,” Grace would tell Alex before she went out if it looked like his father might not make it up the stairs.
Alex and the twins almost never brought friends home, in case the “lawn chair” was having a bad night. But loyalty mixed with shame kept them from confronting their father about his drinking or anything else. The atmosphere around his house was thick with secrets kept at bay with jokes.
Alex’s tendencies, as he had come to think of certain feelings, were another family secret. He wondered if his aunt and sisters knew or at least suspected about him. He still had a faint hope that his desires would cooperate, or at the very least that he could keep them under wraps until he was out of high school. Alex didn’t exactly deny who he was. He just tried to ignore it in the hopes that it might die of oxygen deprivation.
The few openly gay guys he’d met, mostly his aunt’s friends, seemed to him to belong more to the girl world, the world of hair and clothes and makeup. Alex’s heart was in the world of men—mighty steeds and fireman hats—the land of cowboys. That didn’t mean, however, that he wanted to be a cowboy. What Alex wanted, more than anything, was to be like everybody else.
He wasn’t certain what to make of his new coaches, two men who apparently lived together. His solution, as usual, was not to think about it.
Ever since he was little, his interest in things male had been, well, exclusive, but he still told himself that he might develop a desire for or interest in girls. When he was being honest with himself he knew that since “it” was as deep in him as his heart, he wouldn’t.
Everyone seemed to understand the situation, at least on some level. Everyone, that is, except Cleo O’Shea, who was still the only other student at Limestone Farm. Cleo made him nervous, so he was constantly flustered around her. For some reason, she interpreted this as some kind of pathetic attempt at flirtation on his part.
&n
bsp; At first Alex had been intrigued by Cleo. She was the first truly wealthy person he’d ever met. He’d always assumed that someone who’d grown up wealthy would be cultured and sophisticated. Instead Cleo was profoundly shallow and spoiled in a way he’d never seen outside of television. She not only looked thirteen, she acted it.
Cleo O’Shea was quickly becoming the one thing he didn’t like about dressage lessons. She was always talking to him—talking at him. Telling him private things about herself. She came early and watched his lessons and followed him around as he worked, talking the entire time. Talking, talking, talking. But never, ever working. She talked more than both his sisters and his aunt put together, and incredibly, she worked even less.
That voice of hers was like a squeaky windshield wiper.
“Are you hanging out with anyone special, Alex?”
He’d evaded her questions, but later the same day as his aunt caught him changing by the side of the road Cleo tried a new tactic.
As Alex switched Turnip’s tack back from English to Western for the ride home after his lesson, Cleo came and stood in the doorway of the barn.
“Oh, hi, Alex. You heading out now?”
He muttered something unintelligible as he tightened the girth. Cleo fidgeted, shifting her weight from foot to foot, and picked at her riding gloves.
“Mrs. Mudd isn’t here yet to drive me back to school. So I’m just waiting around. Anyway, I was thinking maybe we could hang out this weekend.”
Was this lunatic female asking him out?
“Maybe we could go to a movie or something,” she continued.
Excuses flapped through his mind. Sick…aunt visiting…terminally ill…don’t date…don’t date girls…
It was time to bring out the big guns. He should have done it sooner. Time to unleash his Secret Imaginary Girlfriend, also known as the Certain Special Someone.
“Well, I might be seeing my, uh, girlfriend. The one I’m, you know, dating.”
Alex used a white-haired girl he’d met at Pentecostal Bible camp as the model for his Secret Imaginary Girlfriend. All he remembered about her is that she’d smelled of wet bathing suit and of the LePage’s glue she consumed in large quantities, and he’d envied her terribly because at home she had an Appaloosa named Spot.
“You have a girlfriend?” asked Cleo.
He nodded quickly. “Yeah. She’s got an Appaloosa. Its name is Spot. You know, because it’s an Appaloosa.”
No need to mention that he hadn’t seen or spoken to his white-haired, glue-smelling girlfriend since he was eleven.
Cleo considered this for a moment, her face pensive. Then she said, “Well, that’s okay.”
Alex couldn’t believe it. Was she a sociopath? How dare she bulldoze her way past the Secret Imaginary Girlfriend! The nerve! He searched his mind for more excuses.
“I’ve got this family thing, too. So I’m pretty booked,” he added.
Cleo looked disappointed again, but not disappointed enough. Alex could tell from her expression that she wasn’t going to be deterred by a fictional family thing or by a Secret Imaginary Girlfriend. There had to be something he could do to get her to back off. The barn was his refuge and he planned to keep it that way.
SEPTEMBER 28
7
Alex
CHRIS AND SOFIA arrived just as the lesson was ending. Alex hoped that he’d be doing something impressive when they showed up, maybe an extended trot or at least cantering, but no. He was at the end of a lunge line, like a little kid just learning to ride.
When Alex saw Cleo being lunged, he’d approved of the idea. For her. He was certain he wouldn’t need any help with his seat and balance. Fergus informed him otherwise at his second lesson.
“You have a good seat, dear boy, but we need to challenge it. You don’t mind being lunged?”
Alex shook his head no. He figured it would take Fergus about three seconds to see he didn’t need remedial help and they could head right into the advanced stuff: piaffe, passage, pirouettes, and the other grand prix movements.
It was not to be. At each lesson Alex was lunged both on Princess and Turnip. He was lunged until his spine compressed and he developed a bobble head. He was lunged until the insides of his legs bled. Still, Alex couldn’t decide whether to be embarrassed or excited about the process. He’d read somewhere that riders at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna spent three years at the end of a lunge line before they were ever allowed to take up the reins. He felt thrilled to be part of such a demanding tradition. The other part of him felt that even though he was new to dressage anyone who loved it as much as he did should be a natural, especially if that person had been riding seriously since he was twelve.
“Yes, but you rode Western,” Fergus said when Alex mentioned his concerns. “Now you have to learn a dressage seat. I’m not saying you don’t have a good seat. You do. We’re just fine-tuning it.”
The other way Alex knew he wasn’t a dressage prodigy was because Ivan hadn’t come out to give him a lesson yet. Fergus had told them that Ivan would only teach him and Cleo when Ivan thought they were ready.
Part of the challenge for Alex was the difference in horses. He was used to riding horses that had been trained to be as comfortable as possible. Riding Turnip was a little bit like being aboard a nicely upholstered couch. Riding Princess, however, was like standing on the deck of a small boat in choppy water. Every stride threatened to send Alex flying. The more tired he got, the worse his balance became. By the end of his lessons he felt like he was bouncing around like a first-time rider at a dude ranch. That’s what was happening when Chris and Sofia showed up.
After Fergus told him he was welcome to invite people to watch his lessons, he’d invited his friends out. His hope was that Cleo would mistake Sofia for his girlfriend. He hadn’t told Sofia the plan, however, and he couldn’t invite her and not invite Chris. So now they were both here and he was left wondering how his nicely compartmentalized life had gotten so messy.
From the corner of his eye he saw Chris and Sofia walk over to the ring. Like many unhorsey people in an equine environment, they looked worried that someone would suddenly ask them to hold a rearing stallion or put on a rubber glove so they could help a mare give birth.
Alex wanted to play the gracious host but it was hard from the end of a lunge line. He satisfied himself with nodding at his friends, but suspected the gesture was impossible to make out amid the head wobbling.
Fergus ignored the new arrivals and kept talking to Alex.
“We have to work on your flexibility. You’ve got to let go in your hips. Even at the walk you need to feel that pelvis move!” he announced in a loud voice.
Alex stared off into the distance like a sick dog. He knew what was coming next.
“I want you to imagine you are making love to the saddle.”
Fergus, standing in the middle of the ring, began to move his hips like a geriatric Chippendales dancer.
Oh, please, oh, please, let him stop doing that, thought Alex. He snuck a glance at his friends. Sofia was definitely grinning.
“It’s about freedom and strength,” said Fergus, swinging his hips back and forth. “Freedom here!” Fergus put his hands on his hips like he was about to begin the “Time Warp” dance. “And strength here and here!” He vigorously slapped his belly and then his own rear end.
Alex saw Sofia duck her head behind Chris to hide her laughter. This wasn’t what he’d had in mind at all. He felt a little better when he saw Chris smile encouragingly at him.
“Okay. Once more to trot.”
Screw it. The damage was done. He might as well finish his ride properly.
Alex sat deep and tall, making sure there was a straight line from his hip to shoulder, and looked ahead through Princess’s ears as he urged her forward. He let his hips absorb the movement and Princess responded by rounding and softening her back. All at once Alex was floating.
“This is it!” cried Fergus. “You feel this? How
she’s swinging through her back? Now you are really sitting! Okay, now you ask for the walk just by slowing your seat and tightening your stomach muscles.”
Alex did as instructed and Princess slowed to a walk. It was the best moment he’d had so far in his dressage training. He smiled, his embarrassment forgotten.
“Riding this way is not easy,” said Fergus, still speaking loudly, as though he intended his words to be overheard.
“Your horse, he is trained in Western pleasure. He tries to make you comfortable by moving as slowly as possible. In truth, he barely moves! A horse like Princess is something else again. You have to meet her halfway, or sitting on her is misery. But look at you. Two weeks and already you’re having some very nice moments.”
Alex glanced over at his friends and saw that they, too, were smiling and he was no longer sorry that he invited them.
Twenty minutes later Alex had Princess in the cross ties. He’d finished hosing her down and scraping off the excess water.
“So this one’s yours?” Sofia hesitantly patted Turnip’s soft white nose, which poked out of his stall.
“Yeah,” Alex said. He felt tongue-tied around his friends in this unfamiliar environment.
“I can tell he totally loves you.”
Startled, Alex glanced at Sofia.
“He watches every move you make,” continued Sofia.
“He’s a really good horse,” said Alex. His throat felt too closed up for him to say more.
“This place is incredible,” said Chris, who’d taken off his headphones and was investigating every inch of the barn. Chris had an artist’s fascination with the physical world, and Alex surreptitiously watched as his friend trailed slender fingers over the wood and brick surfaces. Abruptly, Alex looked away. It was bad enough when straight people developed friend crushes. For a gay guy to get a crush on his straight friend was practically suicidal.
Sofia came over to give Princess one of the carrots she’d brought.