Barn Blind

by Jane Smiley

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t forget this.” He held out her hairnet.

  “Oh, yes. Thank you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Thank you.” And then she rode like an idiot and made Herbie refuse a simple brush fence. He hadn’t refused a brush fence in four years, said mother, what in the world was the matter with her?

  John met her at the barn door when she returned from her class. “You’ve got to help me,” he said. “That asshole’s rubbed out half his braids, and I can’t find the red ribbon anywhere.”

  “We used it all up.”

  “Oh, terrific. My class is in twenty-five minutes.”

  “Just comb him out. He’ll be O.K.” Her eyes adjusted slowly to the dimness of the barn. Far away at the end of the aisle, the dark figure of Harrison Randolph appeared, paused, waved, then disappeared.

  “Everybody’s braided at this show. He’s got an ugly mane, anyway. Oh shit!”

  “Look! Just calm down, all right? Take the ribbons off Herbie, and I’ll help you do the braiding, but I only have five minutes.”

  “We have to do his tail, too.”

  “I won’t do his tail. You’ll just have to comb it out and go without.”

  “You can’t do that. It says in the AHSA manual . . .”

  “It’s not the Garden, O.K.? Nobody’s going to care.”

  “I care!” But, teeth grinding, John was struggling to control his temper, and Margaret knew he would resign himself. “Who’s that guy?” Harrison was approaching with a smile. “He’s a friend of mine. We’re going to have a hotdog.” She glanced at John, but could tell, with relief, that he wasn’t as impressed by this arrangement as she was. “He’s awful old, isn’t he?”

  “No. Now hurry. Where’s the water?”

  “I haven’t gotten any yet.”

  “Margaret?” Harrison spoke in deeply colored Piedmont tones that made of her name one and a half melodious syllables.

  “Hey!” said John before she could speak. “Would you mind getting some water? There’s a bucket right next to you.”

  “I’m sorry, I . . .” interrupted Margaret, but before Harrison could respond, John said, “What are you sorry for? The spigot’s right there. We’re sort of in a hurry, O.K.?”

  “John!”

  “Well, we are, aren’t we? My class is in fifteen minutes!”

  In ten they had him mounted up, and he was lengthening his stirrups while Margaret tucked under the last of the now yellow braids. He rode away without thanks, something Margaret wondered if she was noticing only because Harrison was beside her. When she undid the buttons of her jacket, his hands were on the collar immediately, automatically, and when she glanced at his face, his look was entirely unself-conscious. Good manners were simply good manners. They made her uneasy. She folded the jacket over the top railing of Teddy’s stall, wondering how her own manners would betray her, and then, stepping back, she stumbled and fell fleetingly against his chest. His hand gripped her elbow. “O.K.?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She wanted to add “sir.” A hotdog could take as much as half an hour. What in the world would she say to this man?

  “Are you in school?” he asked as they negotiated the mucky paddock.

  “No.”

  After a moment he said, “Oh,” and she realized that he had expected her to elaborate. “I . . .”

  “Are you . . .” They spoke at the same time.

  “Sorry.”

  “Excuse me.”

  “You live at home, then.”

  “Of course, doesn’t everyone?” But then she understood what he had meant, and felt the thorough stupidity of what she was saying.

  “Well, I suppose they do!” He chuckled.

  Margaret blushed and grew aware of the fringe of damp ringlets around her hairline. How she hated to sweat the way she did, greasily, and with visibly running moisture. She knew that men hated this.

  He reached for her arm as she hopped over a puddle.

  “I live at our farm. I always have.” And I’m a boring person, don’t expect anything from me, don’t touch my shirt again, it’s damp, don’t look at my hair or my throat, where I can feel the runnels gather. She pulled her stock tie out of her breeches pocket and touched it to her upper lip.

  “My parents had a lovely farm back in the Blue Ridge Mountains when I was growing up. I was born there, in fact, but they sold it when my father died, before my brother and I were old enough to save it.”

  “Could you get it back?”

  “I don’t know.” It was clear from his tone that he didn’t want it back, and she felt that she had missed the point. By then, however, they had reached the concession booth, and what with standing in line, ordering, paying, and looking for a place to sit, or at least to have some shade, any number of minutes, and opportunities for foolishness, were used up. Then they were eating. Now, she thought, was the time to drop catsup on her shirt front, and sure enough, just as she was lifting the end of her hotdog to minimize the danger, a single ruby droplet plopped between her breasts. He looked at it. She saw him look at it, but she also saw him instantaneously flick his eyes away and pretend that he had seen nothing. He did not, thank God, offer her his handkerchief. “I went to Bennett for a semester.”

  “Didn’t you like it?”

  “What?”

  “Didn’t you like it at Bennett?”

  Now there was a question, and as he asked it Margaret realized that she had never looked at it that way. When she thought of Bennett, she thought of the farm, because at Bennett, which she could hardly remember, she’d been obsessed with the farm. “Not really. Where did you go to college?”

  “Princeton, then UVa. This trip is actually the first time I’ve been west of Pittsburgh.”

  “Do you like it?”

  He looked straight at her—at her eyes, her recalcitrant ringlets, her mouth, her throat, her spotted blouse, then at her eyes again, and said, “Yes.”

  Margaret pushed the last of her hotdog into her mouth, then blotted her upper lip again, this time with the napkin he had given her.

  “Hey!” It was Henry at her elbow. “What are you guys doing?” He gazed frankly at Harrison, taking in the old-fashioned riding clothes, the evident adulthood, and the apparent affluence.

  “Having something to eat,” said Margaret, then, to distract him, “Want anything?”

  Henry considered the offer seriously, but declined. “I’ve had everything already today. Nothing’s very good. That other show was better.”

  “Harrison, this is my brother Henry, the human garbage disposal. Henry, this is Harrison Randolph.” She felt uncomfortably new in Henry’s eyes, as she had the day she left for college and the boys all whistled at her new clothes.

  “Are you from Virginia?”

  “Washington, D.C., really, but yes.”

  “My mother was talking about you to Colonel Stanley.” Margaret blushed, as if Kate had read her romantic, and until now successfully hidden, imaginings.

  “Are you going to sell your horse to us?”

  “Henry!”

  “Well, mom said he had a big gray three-year-old just the right size and age for Peter.”

  “I was thinking, actually, of keeping him for myself.”

  “You got catsup on your shirt.” This Henry addressed to Margaret.

  “I know. Go away if you’re not hungry.”

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t hungry.”

  “Go away anyway.”

  “I’m bored.”

  “You should have ridden, then.” But she sounded horribly maternal, horribly like Kate, and she didn’t go on. Henry lingered, looking at her, then Harrison, then the selection of candy bars near them. At last, however, he drifted away. After a moment, Margaret said, “My mother always wished we could live in Virginia or Maryland. That’s where she was from, originally.”

  “The Midwest is much nicer, I think. Not so built up, fresher.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I
like our farm, though. It’s very pretty. People think it’s not very hilly around these parts, but our farm is quite rolling, with lots of trees.”

  “I’d like to see it.”

  “You can, if you stay around for a couple more weeks. We have a big show at the end of July every year. You should come.”

  “Would you like me to come?”

  “Well, yes.” He smiled, as if she had meant it in some special way, and she was so taken aback that she couldn’t think of how to show that she hadn’t meant it in any way at all. Admission would be two dollars at the gate. They wanted as many visitors as possible. Still, it made her sweat a little more and breathe a little deeply to think that he would come.

  Harrison Randolph looked at his watch. “Uh-oh,” he said. “Green hack class in twenty minutes. I’ve got to run. Say.” He leaned toward her slightly, and she felt the warmth of his body. “What are you doing this evening?”

  “I don’t know if my mother wants to go home or not.”

  “When will you find out?”

  “She could decide at the last moment. It depends on who’ll be staying around. She doesn’t see some people very often.”

  He rummaged in his breeches pocket. “Here.” It was a card with the name of his hotel on it. “I’m staying there, in room 17. I’d like to see you again.”

  “Oh.”

  “Really.”

  “O.K.”

  “Good.” He trotted briskly off, waving to her, and she didn’t know whether she was to call him or go to his room. She stood with the card in her hand, looking at the raised name of the hotel, then the hotel’s motto in script, the minuscule letters of the hotel’s phone number. “Hey!” she yelled. “You mean I should come?” He put his hand behind his ear, then nodded and made a circle of his thumb and forefinger. Perhaps he had heard, “Should I call?” She took out her cotton stock tie and wiped it over her entire face.

  8

  “YOU’RE never going to make it in Medal or Maclay classes,” said Kate. “You’re almost too old, and anyway we can’t afford it.” Peter nodded, but she wasn’t talking to him as much as she was talking to herself. MacDougal rattled his bits. “You’d better walk him around for a minute. You’re so blessedly tall!” His ankle and a third of his calf hung below the horse. “O.K., now look.” She did not raise her voice. Nevertheless, because of the intimacy of their relationship (ambitious teacher with best student) he understood her perfectly. “You’re past the eyes-forward-heels-down stage. You’re past most stages, for that matter. You’re almost good. I was good once, for a little while, and you’re almost good now. What does that horse feel like to you right now?”

  “I don’t know. Fine, I guess. He’s been pretty calm since the show.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “A free walk.”

  “Is he bending at the poll?”

  “No.”

  “At the croup? Don’t look.”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “Are his hind legs moving in long strides or short strides?”

  “Fairly long, I guess.”

  “How can he do that, not bend at the croup, and yet achieve long strides?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’ve lived in a home filled with books about equine anatomy for seventeen years, and you don’t know how things are attached?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Then how do you expect to know what you are doing?”

  “I never thought about it.”

  “Doin’ what comes natcherly?”

  “I guess.”

  “No more guessing.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “There are great natural riders. Every nerve and muscle in their bodies recognizes its perfect function astride a horse. They take liberties of form, and their horses don’t suffer for them. Sometimes they can’t make coherent sentences or put their pants on in the morning without holding on to the dresser. Sometimes they can do lots of things better than everyone else. The lucky ones get their growth early, get on the USET when they’re fresh out of Pony Club, and ride in every Olympic Games for the next twenty years. More often, I think, they surface and disappear. You know why?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “Because you can only be dumb for so long. Momentum only takes you so far. After that you need intelligence, or at least thought, so that you can recognize intelligence when it tells you what to do.”

  “I . . .”

  “You are not a great natural rider. For one thing, you’re too tall, and for another, you just haven’t got it.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t have to apologize. I don’t want you to be a great natural rider, I want you to be a great thinking rider. It’s boring and distressing to surface and disappear. I also think that you’ve got to have lots of disappointment at one end or the other. I’d rather you had yours at this end than at the other end.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Those are only thoughts, not instructions.”

  “O.K.”

  “Now pick up a nice collected trot and think about what you’re feeling from the horse. What’s flexed? What’s resisting? How are the little flexions related to the big ones? How about the resistances? They’re easier to detect.”

  “Well, I . . .”

  “I don’t want to hear about it. Just think. Now tell me. Where do you get the signals?”

  “Hands. Thighs, I guess. And the small of your back.”

  “Then why is it so stiff?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, don’t go limp.”

  “Sorry.”

  “That’s better. Did you feel his spine smooth out when yours did? You’re sitting on his back. When you hurt him, he’s going to defend himself against you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “O.K., post.” In a moment she went on. “Now listen. You are going to succeed. You’re going to be good, and when you are people are going to talk about what a natural you are, what a genius, how it must run in the genes. Are you listening? People don’t like smart riders, really. But I’m telling you not to pay attention to all of that stuff. Listen to me, only to me. I know everything about your seat, your hands, the small of your back, even about the way you think when you’re on a horse. If you listen to them, they’ll make you think that you are something you aren’t, that, for instance, you can’t make any mistakes because you’re such a natural. That’s exactly when you’ll make mistakes. If you listen to me, you’ll avoid all of that, if you listen to them you’ll topple into it. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I want you to read that big anatomy book in the living room. I left it out on the coffee table. I don’t care how long it takes you, but I want you to read it all the way through and not read anything else while you’re at it. O.K.?”

  “O.K.”

  “Now pick him up and take him over the brush, at exactly the speed you think he needs to clear it.”

  “Well, I can’t do it by myself,” said John. His tone of voice was rising with his temper.

  “Don’t yell at me! It’s not my fault they aren’t back yet.” Margaret had burned the cheese sauce and discovered only three slices of bread in the breadbox. “Goodness!” she exclaimed.

  “Shit!” said John.

  “It’s only been five minutes, or ten at the most. You’ll have plenty of time.”

  “Five two-year-olds, and she expects them to be backed and schooled and groomed and fed and God knows what else between feeding time and dinner!”

  “Well, go get them in and start working on them, and Peter’ll come out when he’s ready.”

  “I don’t feel like it.”

  “Hmmmp.”

  “I didn’t ask to do this extra work.”

  “You did too.”

  “Not by myself.”

  “Why are you so grouchy? It’s not even hot today. Mercy! Go away!”

  “I’m not grouchy.” But
he was, and he went away.

  If he climbed the fence of the warm-up ring, he could see them out on the practice field, doing much the same as they had done that morning: sitting trot, posting trot, serpentines, volts, large circles, halts. Instead of ensconcing herself in a chair on the Irish Bank, though, mother was following Peter around, calling to him (once or twice the breeze carried the sound of her voice) and gesticulating occasionally. “Shit!” said John. It was after five. His most efficient course of action was plain: he should find the colts, bring them in (they were quite tractable now that the anticipation of feed was fixed in their imaginations), groom one or two of them, and by that time Peter would be finished and ready to help. The both of them were really only necessary when it came to mounting, which they had been doing for the last three days, and leading. He continued, however, to sit on the fence, watching his mother and his brother, though their actions were too far away to discern.

  He was terribly, churningly curious, although not about the details of their lesson. Those he knew without thinking about them; mother’s act was one that replayed itself daily. What tantalized him was the nature of their new relationship, and more importantly its significance. He knew with perfect and painful clarity that it was significant, and that it had to do with every note on the bulletin board that ridiculed Peter’s form and judgment, with every exasperated sarcasm she had flung at him in front of the others, with every despairing remark she made about the size of his clothes, the expense of keeping him in boots, the ludicrous necessity of buying a new big horse when the place was teeming with horses already. He, John, was the right size (short) and had probably stopped growing. But he, John, was sitting on the fence, and Peter, gangly and stupid, was astride MacDougal, mother’s favorite horse, the idol of numerous boring anecdotes. Peter was out there in the field, having extra lessons.

  His vision strained after the three figures, and his hearing labored to learn that the sessions were remedial. They were not, though. He knew that. And, in a summer filled with more longing and more anger than he had ever known in his life, he had not yet felt the breathless and constricting anger and longing that he felt now. Peter drew Mac to a nice square halt. Mother put her hands on her hips, spoke, raised one hand to her eyebrows, continued speaking. Peter nodded. At last he turned toward the warm-up ring, walking loosely. Mother followed, still talking.