Gee Whiz: Book Five of the Horses of Oak Valley Ranch

by Jane Smiley

  I didn’t know what to make of this.

  “Well, he’s a good-lookin’ youngster. Not a speck of white on ’im.”

  I said, “He has three white hairs for a star.”

  Ike laughed. “Well, miss, maybe that’s good luck. We’ll see. He’s got long legs and he’s got muscle, though. That’s the best combination. I’ll say one thing, they live like sultans here. They want somethin’, they just ring the bell and we come runnin’!” He laughed.

  Danny laughed.

  I laughed.

  I handed him the list I’d written out, of what Jack was used to eating, and what vaccinations he had had and when. Danny was the person who trimmed his feet, so that wouldn’t be a problem. I said, “I guess I should have brought some carrots.”

  Ike laughed. He said, “You want carrots? We got carrots. Mr. Pelham is a great believer in carrots.”

  Somehow, that was what made me feel like maybe this was the best place for Jack after all.

  Ike waved and went to his bridles. Danny and I drove around the smaller barn and headed back past the racetrack. There was a nice breeze wafting up the river, and you could see it kind of sparkling on the other side of the trees. Then we passed Encantado again, who gave a lonesome whinny, and we went back up the hill. From this angle, you could also see the house, which was nestled in the trees to the left. It was very large, a creamy white with a bright red tile roof and a veranda that ran along the front. The way it was set, the people in the house could look out over the horses in the pastures. As we drove by the pastures, we could see that the horses were being led back to yet another big barn. The paddocks beside the curved front barn were empty, too. I guess they were buttoning things up for the day. I said, “What time is it?”

  “ ’Bout three-fifteen.”

  “They go to bed early here.”

  “Well, I guess they keep a racetrack schedule, to get the horses used to it.”

  “Horses don’t mind getting up early.”

  “We only ever had one that slept in. You remember Papa George?”

  I shook my head. Once upon a time, Dad had named all the geldings “George” and all the mares “Jewel.” So if the name was George, I didn’t remember many of them at all.

  “He slept until you threw out the hay. Palomino, he was. The other horses would be milling around, and he’d just be stretched out on his side. And then Dad would toss the hay over the fence, and he’d get up and yawn a couple of times, then go to the open flake and start eating. Makes me yawn just to think about it.”

  We went up the road between the trees and the gate opened and closed behind us. I said, “Looks expensive.”

  Danny nodded.

  Chapter 3

  THE NEXT MORNING WAS BRIGHT AGAIN, AND EVEN WHAT YOU might call warm. Melinda was still in Los Angeles, but Ellen was fully recovered and ready for her lesson. Even her pigtails were extra bouncy. As soon as Mom pulled into the parking lot, Ellen ran to the car and said, “You’re late!”

  Her mother, who was a few steps behind her, said, “Ellen! Say hello!”

  “Hello! You’re late!”

  I said, “I guess we should get started, then.” I got out of the car.

  Her mother breathed a deep sigh. I could see Mom sort of laughing. She waved, backed up, and drove off to buy groceries. Ellen ran ahead of me to the barn, and by the time I got there, the groom, Rodney, had set her on Gallant Man, the pony, and she was ready to go. I said, “Ellen, you’re getting pretty big.”

  “I’m not the shortest girl in my class anymore. Beverley Morton is half an inch shorter. And Petey King is shorter than I am, too, but that’s because he skipped a grade.”

  “Since you’re growing, it’s time you learned to mount from the ground. Even if you don’t do it as a rule, you should be able to, from the right and from the left, in case you are ever out on a trail or something and you have to get on.”

  “I can do that.”

  “Okay, do it.”

  Her chin pushed out. She said, “Right now?”

  “Right now.”

  By this time, her mother was nearby and watching. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her get a little nervous.

  There was a pause. Were we heading for a tantrum?

  I said, “First, you learn the traditional way, then maybe you can learn some tricks.”

  She relaxed, stood up in her stirrups, brought her right leg over his haunches, and scrambled to the ground. Gallant Man stood like a rock. I said, “We’ll work on that, too.”

  Then I said, “Pat your pony.”

  Ellen stroked Gallant Man’s neck several times, and by the fifth or sixth time, I saw that she was more relaxed. I also saw that her eyebrows came just about to the pony’s withers, so since he was over twelve hands, that meant she was about four foot four. It might be a little hard for her, but Ellen was always up for a challenge.

  First things first. I said, “Make sure your girth is tight.”

  She slipped her fingers between the girth and the pony. Easily. I said, “There was a girl at the show last summer who forgot to tighten her girth, and when she mounted, the saddle just slid all the way to the side. Her pony jumped away, and she could have gotten hurt.” Ellen gave me a serious look, then pulled the straps, with some effort, up one hole. I checked it to make sure it was tight enough, and then she checked it. I guess it was then that I realized that Ellen, for all of her enthusiasm, had never been asked to do any of the work. Rodney did it for her.

  I showed her how to stand facing the pony, how to take the reins in her left hand and lift her foot and set it firmly in the stirrup, how to make sure her pony was square on all four feet, how to give herself a little spring and catch the mane and the cantle of the saddle in her hands, launch herself, then throw her right leg over the pony’s haunches and lower herself into the seat of the saddle—never bounce or drop. She had good spring and she was only a little awkward, but she was not satisfied. She dismounted and tried two more times. Each time was better. After the third time, she said, “That was good.” And it was. Part of Ellen’s charm (and some people would be surprised to learn that she had any) was that she always knew when she had done something properly. As we walked to the ring, she said, “What are some tricks?”

  “Well, Indian-style is jumping on over his tail. Or you can get a running start from the front, grab his mane with your left hand, and vault on from the side. Or you can get a running start from the back and sort of throw yourself up. I think that’s the hardest, probably.” I had tried the second way, but neither of the other ways.

  As we entered the arena, Ellen said, “I want to do all of those.”

  Of course she did.

  Her mother didn’t follow us—she knew better. We had a good lesson: lots of circles and transitions, both between gaits and from slow to fast and fast to slow within gaits. She went through the cavalletti five or six times, then I set up her favorite jumping exercise, which was three jumps in a long row, end to end, that she could approach from either side. First, she trotted them a few times in a figure eight, with the middle jump the pivot. She had done this in lessons twice before. This time, I let her canter them. After the second jump each way, she had to ask Gallant Man to shift his balance, move over, and take the other lead. She was systematic and careful about it, and she got her changes in both directions. Once, when he went from his not-so-good lead to his good lead, he made a flying change. I said, “Did you feel that?”

  Ellen said, “Yes.”

  “That was a flying change.”

  She said, “It felt like ballet.”

  When her mom came to meet us after the lesson, I had Ellen dismount, mount again, and dismount. I said, “She’s getting good.”

  Her mother said, “Oh, wonderful!” but she didn’t look very happy. I decided that riding was more of a challenge for Ellen’s mom than it was for Ellen.

  * * *

  Ever since our Ralph Carmichael clinic, I’d tried once a week to give Blue a jumping
lesson that was pure fun. The arena was now dry after the rain, so I went out after lunch and started moving poles. Blue wandered around the arena while I was doing this—I wanted him to know what was coming, and to look forward to it, and maybe he did. He’d lost his fear of jumping, as far as I could tell. Had I lost mine? That, I couldn’t tell. Before our problems with jumping in the early fall, I wouldn’t have said that I was afraid, but I also thought that when Black George, now Onyx, was my jumper, I didn’t know enough to be afraid. Onyx jumped for the love of it. You didn’t even have to steer him all that well; you just had to point him in the general direction of a fence and he would go there on his own. A jump had to be pretty big not to seem small if Onyx was under you. When I was riding Sophia’s other horse, Pie in the Sky, I was not afraid, either, or at least, not afraid of the jumping. I was more afraid of the sense I had with him that having his own way was more important to him than being safe or doing it properly. He didn’t seem trustworthy—it seemed as though if he felt he had to pick a fight with you, he would pick one, no matter where you were on the course. I had seen fancy jumpers at horse shows do just that with their riders.

  As for Blue, well, it got to the point where it didn’t matter who was afraid, him or me. His fear made me feel like I had no idea what I was doing, and I suppose that my fear made him feel also like I didn’t know what I was doing, and so, who was in charge, really? But these little fun lessons helped us both. He could jump around here and there and learn how to use his body, and whether I knew what I was doing was unimportant. Today, I set up a three-stride along the fence, 2′6″, two simple jumps with sixteen of my big steps between them—four for every stride and one for the takeoff. Then I set a line of poles about three feet high along the inner edge of the two fences, opposite the rail. This was the chute. Blue now quite liked the chute, so at the beginning, I only had to set one pole to guide him in. I wanted him to go through the chute both directions, so I put one of these poles at each end.

  It took a while to set up the chute. The whole time, Blue was walking around and trotting around. Once, he whinnied to the other horses, and one of the mares answered him. When that happened, he cantered for a few strides—even Blue could be a show-off with the proper incentive. After I was finished building the chute, I followed him for a minute or two with the whip in my hand, just to get him to play a little more. When I put the whip down and turned away, he came trotting in my direction. I caught him, attached the lead rope to his halter, and did his Jem Jarrow exercises—stepping over at the walk, stepping over at the trot, backing up, repeating this on both sides—until I felt that he was soft and relaxed. He wasn’t as good as Jack at the hardest exercise, which was to be trotting in a tight circle, feel me tug on the lead rope and turn, still trotting, and go the other direction—but he was good enough. I unclipped the lead rope and led him to the end of the chute. I showed him a carrot, then ran to the other end of the chute. He didn’t follow me, since I had run around the jumps, but he stood there with his ears pricked, and when I called him, he trotted down over the jumps, came to me, and took his carrot.

  I ran to the other end. He trotted back the other way, and took his carrot.

  Now was the time that I wished I had a friend like Daphne or Andy Carmichael at the far end, so I wouldn’t have to run back and forth, but Blue was patient, and did it twice in each direction. Then I did what the Carmichaels also did, which was to tack up, get on, and do the exact same thing you had been doing, only mounted. Blue was good. I didn’t go on to the next step, like Daphne, which was to take off the bridle and go down over the jumps with my arms in the air. Danny and I agreed that we’d never met anyone like Daphne. Even Andy wasn’t like Daphne.

  Once I’d cooled Blue and put him away, then taken Oh My on a trail, ponying Nobby, it was getting late and I was tired, but all the horses were exercised—Dad had done Marcus, Lincoln, and Lady in the morning (he was talking about borrowing a couple of calves from Mr. Jordan to give Lady some practice at cutting), and it didn’t look like Beebop was expected to do anything but enjoy his vacation. I paused to watch him when I passed out the hay. He and Lincoln were now a pair, and Blue had taken up with Marcus, though this did not seem to be a close friendship—there was a little bit of ear pinning and an occasional raised hoof. No doubt Blue felt that he, as the older horse, should always be giving the orders, and no doubt Marcus felt that he, as a world-class beauty whose entire family was famous, should not be taking orders from a mere Thoroughbred. However, they did not look as though they were really going to argue. I was sure all of the geldings were glad that Jack the Pest was gone. And now it was dark.

  I took my boots off on the back porch and went in yawning. Something smelled good, and I hoped Mom was making meat loaf. The first person I saw as I opened the back door was Danny, and the second was Jerry Gardino. Jerry had an apron on and a spatula in his hand. Danny was holding a kitchen knife. I said, “What are you making?”

  Jerry said, “Cannelloni.”

  I could not imagine what this was. Danny started chopping an onion. I decided I had no idea what was going on, and walked on into the living room. Mom was sewing two pieces of her afghan together and Dad was looking at some papers. I kept going.

  It turned out that cannelloni was very large noodles—rather like the egg noodles that Mom sometimes made, but as wide as your hand—rolled around some sort of white cheese and then covered with a spaghetti sauce, topped with more cheese, and baked in the oven. It was exactly the sort of thing you would have at the Goldmans’ house, and you would taste it politely a few times until you decided that it was pretty good and there was nothing else and you might as well eat it. Danny and Jerry each had two helpings; Dad, after a slow start, had a helping and a half, and Mom was polite. I pushed the white part to one side; the rest was good, and I ate it. It was true that Danny would eat anything, had always been ready to eat anything, including asparagus, which Mom grew behind the house and only made us eat in the spring, when it was very young. If you put enough brown butter on it, it was fine. There was also salad. I ate that. I thought that this must be what Sophia felt like most of the time—it was on her plate, staring at her, she knew she ought to eat it, but in the end, why bother?

  In the meantime, Dad was quizzing Jerry about his family, as if they had come from Mars or something. When he asked what his grandfathers did, Danny and I just kept our eyes on our plates (Jerry’s grandfathers were both butchers), but when he asked where the family went to church, we glanced at each other. Danny’s left eyebrow, the one toward me, lifted slightly. I coughed. Jerry laughed and said, “They all go to Saints Peter and Paul. It’s a pretty famous church. It was bombed five times in the twenties, and then Joe DiMaggio got married there, though not to Marilyn Monroe. To his first wife. My mom saw the celebration when she was a kid.” He spoke cheerfully. It was clear that Danny had not said a word to Jerry about Dad or Mom or our church. Jerry thought he was just conversing.

  Dad said, “I never heard of that church. But I guess, even though I’ve been up around there, I’ve never actually been in the city of San Francisco.”

  Now it was Jerry’s turn to have his jaw drop to his plate. He said, “You’ve never crossed the Golden Gate Bridge? You’ve never been to Chinatown or the Embarcadero?”

  And Dad said, “Maybe we should go there sometime.”

  Danny said, “You should.”

  That was how we knew that Danny had been there without ever telling us. I was sure he’d been up to visit Leah Marx.

  Mom said, “I hear that people like to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge.”

  “It’s a beauty,” said Jerry. “I’ve done that twice. If there’s a high wind, it trembles. But they don’t allow you to walk across it in certain weather conditions.”

  Dad said, “Hmph. So your family are Roman Catholic.”

  Jerry said, “Most Italians are. I was an altar boy for six years.” He continued to eat, now his salad. I could see that Dad was toying with
whether he should witness to Jerry. A Catholic was unsaved, according to our church, and it was his job to witness to everyone who was unsaved. All we knew about Catholics was that they bowed down to statues of saints and they worshiped Jesus on the cross—not Jesus himself, but an image of him. Also, Catholics could only talk to Jesus through Mary or the Pope. I started holding my breath. Maybe Mom started holding her breath—she was poking at her salad with her fork. But Dad, I guess, decided not to risk it. Jerry was Danny’s friend. Danny and Dad had gone months and months without speaking, and things had only gotten more or less (sometimes less) back to normal in the summer. I could hear all of Danny’s arguments in my head, too—he is our guest, he didn’t ask you, his religion is not our business (your business). I could even see them as I had so many times in the past, looking alike as they sat across from one another at the kitchen table, slamming their coffee cups down just before jumping up and not speaking to one another for another month. There was a silence—not long enough for Jerry to notice—and then Mom said, “What’s for dessert?”

  “Oh!” said Jerry. “I got something at a bakery in San Jose. It’s in a box in the truck.” He pushed away from the table and went out the back door. I started clearing the plates. The long silence continued. I wasn’t quite sure whether or not the danger had passed. Then Jerry came in, and he was carrying a box of large round cookies with ridges in fancy shapes. He said, “These are pizzelle. The bakeries only have them around Christmas and Easter. I love them. They aren’t terribly sweet.” He set the box on the table, and we each took one. They were crisp and tasted like black licorice.

  Mom said, “You like to cook.”

  “I love to cook. That’s my hobby. But at my house, I can hardly get to the stove, because everyone else is there first, arguing about what to have for dinner. So this is fun for me. And there isn’t a real kitchen in my dorm at school, just a hot plate.” Then he said, “I had my apprentice meat cutter’s license when I was sixteen. Youngest in our family. But I don’t know. There are other things to do in life besides cooking and eating.”