by Roxanne Bok
“You have to do it, Roxanne, she’s truly amazing,” Cindi struggled to say while man-handling her own mount “Wing” into submission in the cross ties. “Stop it, you brute,” she admonished, with affection.
“You’ll learn so much by this ride—I did when I rode her,” Meghan added, shovel in hand, scooping the manure freshly dropped by Q. “Angel’s such a good teacher.”
“But what if I mess up? Do something wrong?”
“Bobbi wouldn’t offer if you weren’t ready. You’ll get a good taste of what you’re riding for and find skills to use on Bandi,” Cindi concluded.
I looked doubtful and stood paralyzed.
“Just do it,” they said in unison.
I went for it, mainly not to insult Bobbi who was willing to take a chance on me.
Carefully tacking and leading her outside, I whispered apologies to Angel for my inadequacy with a quick nuzzle before I hoisted myself oh so gently up on her fine body. Because she is so prized, and perhaps because she is a mare, I thought of her as delicate somehow and feared my poor riding might break her.
Bobbi, Angel and I ambled into the ring.
“Have a nice walk around and then pick up a trot. She doesn’t need much prompting to get going, unlike your Bandicoot, so the trot may seem a little fast. Don’t worry, she won’t take off on you,” Bobbi casually said as she wandered away to rake up some ring poop.
Angel stepped lively without rushing. Her steady pace relieved any pressure to use my heels or cluck her along. It was lovely, and I immediately sat tall and proud, a real dressage rider. Her trot was equally transporting, purposeful and rhythmic, musically light as air.
“She’s so forward and eager to go,” I said, genuinely amazed at how push-button she operated.
“She’s a good girl, and she likes her work. This is what you should expect from Bandi. He may never get there, but you can get closer to it,” Bobbi coached.
I lightly pressed my inside leg to guide her in the corners and along the rail, and she so tuned into the aids that hardly any pressure or rein was needed. Struggle free, I immediately sensed the difference between expecting correctness with Angel and anticipating problems with Bandi. My corners on Angel were a revelation: I was in close and neat, no dragging required. Her impulsion was vertical and bubbly, champagne in a fluted glass, as opposed to Bandi’s, flatly heavy with gravity. I could concentrate all my energy on myself, free to maneuver my posture, arm elasticity, calm hands, long legs with heels down and accurate commands. I even began to imagine collecting this horse on the bit.
“She’s a model of engineering,” I cried. “The Ferrari of horses.”
Bobbi instructed me through serpentines and circles—both twenty meter and fifteen, and into a tight conch shell spiral and back out again. The riding was practically effortless.
“I want her. How much is a horse like this? Can I get one?”
Bobbi laughed; no doubt she has heard that before. And I was joking—sort of. I pictured a riding life of ease upon such a gifted horse, and how good I could look with a lot less sweat. But then I remembered why Bobbi disallowed spurs for a long time, and why I had to fall off a few times, and why (besides the expense) I didn’t have a super-trained horse: I had to learn to ride, not just sit and go. Only once my legs strengthened and I learned how to use them did she graduate me to spurs and a whip. Only when my arms elasticized to the feel of a horse’s mouth, did she fit Bandi with a stronger bit affording me better control out in the fields and over jumps. From falling off, I learned balance, control, concentration without anxiety (still working on this one) and how to anticipate a horse’s movements (yeah, well, this one too). Now that I’d gained just enough skill she offered up Angel, who pointed me toward a loftier goal. I saw the prize now, distant and glowing, and Bandi would make me earn it. The girls were right; in forty-five minutes Angel had educated me far beyond what instruction on my graceless lug could accomplish. I resolved a new attitude with Bandi—no longer defeatist, I would expect and pull more out of him.
I walked Angel back to the barn, beaming, and the silent girls slid me a look of shared privilege: sparkling eyes being the best acknowledgement of Bobbi’s Angel gifts that placed us in a sorority you appreciate only as a member. Beatific, I couldn’t restrain myself from telling anyone it made any sense to. I had been admitted to an inner circle and earned the right to effuse.
“Guess what I did today, honey?” I said to Scott the minute I got home, grinning from ear to ear like a village idiot while skipping around the kitchen. “I rode Angel!”
“So?”
But Elliot and Jane understood. “Really, Mom? Wow, I want to ride her. You’re sooo lucky.”
Brandy was impressed as was Chip, who dropped by the barn the next day for a quick hello to Bobbi, the wife that he hardly saw anymore.
“Yeah, I’m about tenth now after the horses and the dogs, but at least on I’m still on the list,” Chip said cheerily, giving Angel a deep, satisfying shoulder scratch that arched her neck and pursed her lips in pleasure.
“Oh honey, you know I love you, too,” Bobbi teased, giving him a squeeze.
They had known each other for ten years, married nearly six, a union plotted in animal heaven. On their first date of dinner and a movie, Chip picked up Bobbi in his mud-splattered truck loaded with drooling, hairy dogs. It smelled of a test—love me, love my beasts—and Bobbi didn’t flinch. On their third date she took Chip, who had ridden as a child in France, on a three-hour trail ride. Agile and sporting, she knew he was the one when he called her later that night thrilled that his sweater smelled like horses.
“Guess what, Chip?” I sang. “III rooode AAAngel!”
Chip got it. He and Angel have a close relationship. She whinnies at the sight or sound of him and agitates until he nuzzles her. He knows all her favorite itchy spots and regularly enjoys the patented Angel head massage, something the rest of us receive only on occasion and then never with the same dedication. She clearly loves him so intensely I was taken aback when Chip admitted he doesn’t care to ride her.
“Whenever I rode Angel, she’d turn this way and that and make all these moves I didn’t ask for.”
“But you did ask for them, Honey. She’s so good it doesn’t take much. You ride cowboy style, kicking away out into the sunset.” Conspiratorially Bobbi whispered, “He isn’t a dressage rider.”
They giggled and argued good-naturedly about his riding skills.
THAT NIGHT I TREATED Bobbi, Meghan and Brandy to a delayed celebratory dinner at The White Hart as thanks for their hard work during our first show. I wanted to know Meghan and Brandy better, and I relished a few hours of horse talk cleanly dressed and comfortably seated with a drink and some good food as opposed to the quick conversations held amidst donuts shared with horses over cross ties in a barn.
I was richly rewarded, much more so than they despite their voluble appreciation of a night out. I knew I would enjoy Bobbi’s company, sharing the same stage of life, but I suspected the younger Meghan and even younger Brandy might be bored. They have boyfriends and youth; would they just be appeasing the boss? If so, it didn’t show. They are excellent young women, possessing a specialized knowledge but also smart, mature, boisterous and funny. They were chock full of interesting talk, and eager to share it with me, an empty vessel thirsty for horse lore. Four hours later we parted, drunk not on wine but on stories of past horses, scary rides, other farms and the rewards of horsewomanship.
We compared horsekeepers to the young investment bankers at Scott’s firm arriving the coming weekend as our guests at the Inn. For several years now as a popular annual event, the hardworking, fresh-from-college analysts enjoy a weekend of free food and drink and some coveted days off. Usually Scott schedules a long bike ride, but the increasing numbers and my fear that some of the less-experienced riders would get run over (old enough to be their mothers, I felt responsible), this year we planned a hike up a local mountain followed by lunch at the farm.
We invited Meghan and Brandy to the dinner because they were roughly age equivalent if incongruous in profession and lifestyle—horse versus blackberry, breeches versus suits, rural versus urban.
“I’ll take them on,” Brandy exclaimed after I described their long days at the office in a weak attempt to justify their hefty pay scales. “When they’re bored to death in their offices I’ll be lovin’ my job and my horses.”
After my summer apprenticeship, the term “barn help” or “stable hand” seemed a paltry misnomer to the skill sets these women possessed. Like teachers and nannies, they are chronically underpaid. Bobbi and Meghan impressed me not because they lack fear; on the contrary, their healthy dose of it is evident after each and every “episode” with a horse. Fearlessness would render risk easy, working through fear on a continual basis is hard. I told them so.
“Well, no one does this unless they love it,” Bobbi said, staring intently into her coffee mug.
“I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.” Meghan’s eyes envisioned offices and subways.
“There’s no way I could sit in an office all day or live in a city,” Brandy stated with conviction.
I snooped about their boyfriends, teased them about the eligible young bankers at Scott’s firm and suggested that they plan a casual jumping demonstration during the lunch under the gazebo. They were hesitant, out of shyness and humility, but I was eager to pit their skills against these machismo banker types. I also had this vague romantic notion of playing match-maker. They sensed my not so deft subterfuge.
“I’m never getting married,” Brandy protested.
“Me neither,” Meghan agreed.
“Good idea,” Bobbi and I advised, two wise old mares hitched for life.
THE NEXT WEEKEND, rain soaked our hikers but slowed in time for lunch. The bankers survived Scott’s fast-paced climb despite a late night of heavy drinking and gathered in the gazebo to enjoy the farm scenery. In the ring, Meghan and Brandy exercised and jumped Toby and Bandi to enthusiastic applause. Little did we know, one member of the group, Santiago, had been on the equestrian team at Yale and spent the better part of his Mexican youth around horses. Several years had slipped by since he last rode, and Bobbi immediately sensed his itch to get back in the saddle. We set him up. A little rusty, he nevertheless took a few jumps on Bandi much to the amusement of his colleagues who phone-photographed his prowess with plans to email them around the office. His colleagues truly impressed, Santiago’s ride served as a point of connection between the urban and the rural bipeds.
At dinner, the day’s events provoked much horse talk. Still charged from his unexpected ride, Santiago discussed everything equine with Meghan and Brandy through the cocktail hour and beyond. Scott and I left to put our tired old bodies in bed as the bankers invited the girls to visit their vertically stacked stables in the concrete and steel paddocks of NYC. Having to rise for the 7 a.m. barn work, Meghan and Brandy responsibly departed while the urban refugees drank The White Hart dry. Scott and I enjoyed merging these two worlds, horsekeeping and financial dealing. We hung out with talented, delightful young people, and it prompted us to imagine what our own children might achieve, be it in a high rise or a barn.
AT THE END OF JULY, Bobbi and I stood by the paddocks, in despair at our still raw fences. The painter never had shown up.
“We should give up on Mike and get someone else,” I said.
“I asked around but everyone’s booked this late in the season.” Bobbi pulled a thorny thistle from the base of a post.
Just then a cowboy-booted, jean-clad, thumbs-pocketed stranger sauntered down the path into Weatogue Stables.
“Howdy, ladies. Beautiful day,” he greeted, tipping his hat. “Know anyone with fences that need paintin’?”
Our eyebrows shot north, and we summoned that creepy Twilight Zone music: doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo. . . .
“Um, yeah,” we both stammered. “We do.”
Our Kentuckian smoothly “yes maam”ed us into paying his first price, not that we had any negotiating room. Facing another winter of exposed wood, we hired this unknown feller’s theoretical crew as the manna from heaven they might be, arranged a fast, weekend cash deposit half expecting a jilt, and crossed our fingers. Our southern gentleman was the real deal: his team delivered the oily black paint and sprayed like crazy, and it was good, except that the horses ignored the “Wet Paint” signs.
For several weeks we dealt with sticky, painted bodies, and good-natured boarders who agreed that happy, outdoor-paddocked zebras were better than cranky indoor-stalled horses. Pints of baby oil helped dissolve the abstract artwork from the horses’ faces, butts, necks and legs. No wonder these fences already showed wear, breaking and bending with unfathomable regularity; we now had visible evidence of every horse’s scratch, rub and push against them. Late in September itchy-butted Cleo was still managing to find damp recesses of posts and rails, but how wonderful to complete the last major job and finally declare the farm officially finished. And what a satisfying, if latent, transformation: the wood of thirteen large paddocks going almost black from sandy brown outlined, as ink enhances a pencil sketch, our farm’s etching. “It’s beautiful,” our watchful neighbors expressed, and we swelled with pride. The construction phase of Weatogue Stables drew to a close and so did my glorious summer.
On Labor Day, just hours before my family’s annual migration to NYC, Bobbi arranged a swan song summer ride. In preparation for the remaining events of the season, she, Brandy, Cindi and I took three horses to Riga Meadow’s show-ready jump field. Oh-oh, I thought, another jump field. But my summer’s work emboldened me. Brandy’s new beau Jason tagged along to explore exactly what his girlfriend did for a living. I found myself expounding about everything equine.
“I heard you should never walk around the back of a horse,” Jason said as I saddled Bandi, tied loosely to the horse trailer.
“Well most people do the exact wrong thing when they do,” I explained with some authority, trying to bolster my own confidence and take my mind off the jumps spread across the slippery, uneven grass.
“It’s important to let the horse know you’re there by laying a hand on his butt as you go around. Don’t try to sneak in the hopes of not surprising him.” I demonstrated, and Bandi, surprised, scooted forward two paces.
“And the distance is important. It’s tempting to allow just enough space to get walloped good and hard. You should either stick really close to limit the momentum of any kick or allow a wide distance that puts you out of reach.”
It felt good to recite technique that I understood from actual experience, one that bucks intuition and that I coached myself on many a time. I still fought my inclination to arc that dangerous one or two feet away from the back end, and because my knowledge was so hard-earned, I felt compelled to wax eloquent to Jason, who was as green as me a year before.
“There’s telepathy, a communication of touch that develops between you and the horse after a while. You learn how to move around each other—a two-way comfort level that makes it safer.”
As I spoke those very words I lost focus on my task at hand, forgetting that I was not in the confines of grooming stall walls with cross ties. Bandi shuffled sideways away from the trailer and high-stepped his back right hoof down hard on my left three littlest toes.
“OUCH,” I cried as I jumped back, pushing Bandi’s butt over and pulling forcefully to extricate my foot. Pain sweat instantaneously broke from my pores. I wrenched my toes back but my boot tip remained wedged. Luckily he didn’t fully settle, unpinning me as I shoved him away, but not before crunching my toes enough that I assumed they were broken. Nausea gathered in my stomach.
“Here I am explaining how not to get kicked and then I get stepped on.” Red-faced, I tested my toes slowly.
“Well, he moved pretty quickly,” Jason graciously conceded.
“Yeah, he’s quick alright,” I muttered, my smug expertise gone. “He’s a Quarter Horse, bred to be th
e fastest horse over the quarter mile.”
My toes were bruised, and my pride too, but the humble rest of me rallied. I proceeded to jump five small fences in a row, badly, but I did it—three times. Brandy took the course spectacularly on Toby, and Jason and I cheered (quietly, so as not to spook her horse) her command of the oafish, overly “happy” (Bobbi’s euphemism for “dangerously excited”) Tobster. But everyone recognized it more as a milestone for scaredy-cat, over-the-hill me, who had previously dredged up any excuse against Bobbi’s suggestions of equine road trips in general, and we slid it in just under the wire, the last official day of my summer vacation. Exiting the season on such a high note made it that much harder to ride only once a week and learn at the much slower pace of my kids’ school year. There was no substitute for daily hours in the saddle. And in those long winter months I really missed my horse; I mooned over his photo front and center on my bulletin board and day-dreamt of him running, in the early morning light, across the frosty paddocks.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Scene of the Crime
A YEAR HAD PASSED since I first showed Bandi at Riga Meadow, where my beginner’s luck had won me my only blue ribbon one day after my toss off Bandi, both events hair-raising personal firsts. Bobbi and I decided our barn should enter Riga’s September show again.
Bobbi bucked my automatic reluctance to join in the “fun” once again. “This will be old hat now. You’ve come so far.”
She was right. With a full summer of riding under my belt, I was an adequate, if not fully secure, equestrienne. My ride over the jumps on Labor Day boosted my confidence, and though the memory of that first show still weakened my knees, this year I slept soundly the night before and awoke eager rather than a quaking wimp. This time, three members of my family were participating. Jane was hoping to improve her lead line walk/trot fifth of five finish, and Elliot would debut. His four classes and my three brought cantering and jumping cross rails into the mix, so together we faced new territory.