True Blue

by Jane Smiley

  Daddy headed toward us. It was only then that I remembered that he hadn’t met Barbie before. He held out his hand and said, “Hi, I’m Mark Lovitt.”

  Barbie shook it just the way he liked, strong grip, looking him in the eye. She said, “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Lovitt. I am Barbara Goldman.”

  Daddy said, “Barbara Goldman.”

  “Yes,” said Barbie.

  Since Barbie was mounted on Foxy, they were about at eye level, and they stared at each other for just a second. Then Daddy said, “Well, your mom said fifteen minutes.” Then he turned and walked to the barn.

  I taught Barbie to dismount. The one I liked was the safest, once you master it—you take both your feet out of the stirrups, put your right hand on the pommel of the saddle and your left hand on the horse’s neck, and rock forward, throwing your right leg over the horse’s haunches and landing with your feet on the ground and your knees a little bent. Some people don’t take their left foot out of the stirrup until they have the right leg over—then they hold both ends of the saddle and drop to the ground—but that takes a patient horse, and I wanted Barbie to get used to doing it the safer way. She was good and did it the first time. She said, “Alexis couldn’t do this, you know.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’s always had the bottom bunk.”

  We led Foxy back to the barn and untacked her. Barbie forgot to swagger and spit this time. She had a piece of sugar for Foxy in her pocket, and out of the same pocket she pulled two dollars and two quarters for me. She said, “Do we have to wait until Saturday?”

  “We’ll talk about that Monday, after the stiffness sets in.”

  Her mom honked. She put her hands on my shoulders and kissed me on the cheek. That meant “thank you,” and I felt thanked.

  We didn’t head to the Jordan ranch until almost two, because the plan was to move the cows to fresher pastures when they were resting around the water troughs after having come down from the hills for a drink. Daddy was on Amazon, and he had his chaps on, with his initials tooled into the belt, and Mom was wearing her good boots. I had on my favorite red and green plaid shirt and my leather vest that Uncle Buck sent me for Christmas—it had a sunflower tooled into the back. Mom and Daddy were wearing their cowboy hats, but Mom had insisted I wear my hard hat, and I knew better than to argue. When we got to the ranch road, the gate was open, and all sorts of trucks and trailers were parked along it, with horses tied to them, getting tacked up. Everyone waved to us the way cowboys do, just a little cock of the head, a smile, and a lifting of the hand. You wouldn’t want to scare a horse.

  Daddy’s saddle had his rope tied to the horn, and some of the others did, too. We walked down the road, turning our heads back and forth, smiling and waving. Daddy’s plan was to leave Amazon in the ranch corral and switch his tack to Lester, and there Lester was, up by the barn, shining and beautiful. When he saw us (when he saw Lincoln and Happy, maybe), he let out a loud whinny. Lincoln responded.

  It was Mom who first saw Danny. He was mounting a black horse (two white feet and a narrow blaze), and as soon as he saw Mom, he waved like there had never been any problem in the world between him and Daddy. He settled into the saddle and trotted over. Daddy acted a little stiff, but for Mom, her day was made. I was happy to see him, too, and really interested in that black horse—I didn’t know that he’d bought a horse.

  Daddy said, “Lot of people here. Is it us gathering the cattle or the cattle gathering the people?”

  Then he looked at Danny and said, “Hey, there. How ya doin’?”

  Danny said, “Hey, Dad!”

  Daddy could not help staring at Danny’s horse, noticing his throatlatch and the size of his nostrils and the set of his neck and the depth of his shoulder and the angle of his hocks and the straightness of his front legs. I saw him do it. It took about ten seconds, and his nose twitched. I said, “Nice horse. What’s his name?”

  “He’s lovely,” said Mom.

  “He’s one of Jake’s,” said Danny. “I’ve been working with him. His name is Crockett.” Jake was the horseshoer Danny worked for.

  I said, “Davy?”

  “Just Crockett. Crockett the Rocket. He’s a great cutting horse.”

  “How old?” said Daddy. He sounded so stiff that Mom glanced at him—and then she rolled her eyes. I was amazed. But Daddy was staring at Danny and didn’t see her.

  Danny said, “He’s eight.”

  Mom said, “Mark, you’d better get your horse, don’t you think? Everyone’s about tacked up.”

  Daddy nodded, and then trotted Amazon down the road toward the pen where Lester was staring over the fence. Lester whinnied again. Then Mom jumped off Jefferson, and Danny dismounted, and they hugged each other right there. I suppose that they hadn’t seen each other since the last time Jake and Danny had come to shoe our horses. That would have been about a month. When Danny first moved out, Mom went over to Jake’s ranch, where Danny was living in an old cabin up the mountain, maybe once every week, but then everyone got busy and all.

  Hoofpick

  Horseshoes

  Chapter 7

  THE VALLEY WHERE THE ANGUS CATTLE WERE LIVING WAS toward the back of the ranch, about as far from our place as you could get on Mr. Jordan’s ranch. It took us about an hour to ride there from where the trailers were parked. There must have been twenty-five of us, and we mostly walked and trotted a little, to save the horses. Happy was manageable, but I could feel that she knew something was up—she hadn’t been off our place enough to be used to so much stimulation, but she didn’t pull or jig; she just needed a reminder every so often that she was with me. Her ears were forward. As we rode along, I thought about how in Happy, I considered pricked ears to be a sign that she was paying attention and enjoying herself, while in Blue, I considered them to be a sign of anxiety. I could feel the difference in their bodies—Blue’s body was tense and ready to flee. Happy’s body was loose.

  These cattle were an Angus-Hereford mix. Pure Angus are black from nose to tail. All of these were black, but had white faces, and also some other white markings, which were from the Hereford side. When we came over the top of the ridge, the cows were mostly lying down and resting. Some of the calves were walking around, and others were playing. Some were nursing, which wasn’t easy, since they were pretty big. Others were grazing, but I could see why they were being moved—down by the water troughs, it was muddy; up on the hillsides, the grass was very short. I was so used to looking at the blue Brahmas, which were lanky, with long ears, big humps, and beautiful faces, that these looked a little fat and ugly to me, but I heard Daddy say to Mom, “Now, here’s some cattle.”

  As we came down the hill, the twenty-five of us spread out until we made a long curving line. I was between Mom and Daddy, and Danny was over at one end. I could see from where I was that his horse was practiced and quick—a real cow horse. The new pasture was not very far from this one—just down the valley and over one small ridge into the next valley. No cattle had been in that pasture since the summer. Ideally, the cattle would see us (which they did), and slowly get up and bunch together, then amble ahead of us down the valley, then over the ridge, and through the part of the fence that was being taken down just for this. Ideally, the cows would say to themselves, “Oh, I remember this. We just do as we’re told, and we get all new green grass.” Ideally, the calves would say, “Well, Mom is headed out. She must know where she’s going.” However, from my experience of driving the Brahma cows and their calves up the hill in the fall, I did not suppose that everything would be ideal, and as much as I looked around, I could not see Rusty on the horizon, ready to save the day. Rusty was miles away from here, probably lying on the porch and wondering why she had to miss out.

  We moved slowly. The hill was steep and I sat back to balance Happy as she picked her way. I glanced over at Mom—she was sitting back, too, and holding the horn of Jefferson’s saddle. Jefferson was not as sure-footed as Happy, and he knew it—I could see t
hat he didn’t care much about the cattle, and was working on placing his feet and shifting his weight. Lester did care about the cattle—they were his cattle. But he and Daddy knew better than to push ahead. We all just came down the hill. Danny at his end and a man at the other end on a palomino rode just ahead of the others, slowly contracting our curve around the cows and calves.

  One by one, the cows got up. They started mooing. The cows’ moos were low and comforting in a way, rather harmonious with one another. The calves’ moos were sharper and more worried. The calves who were already beside their mothers stayed there, and the other calves began moving around, looking for their mothers in the group. When the cows seemed to get a little worried, Danny and the guy at the other end slowed down, and the rest of the line slowed down, too. But we needed to keep moving, because we didn’t want the cows to forget that they had to go somewhere.

  After what seemed to me to be quite a long time, we were maybe two-thirds of the way down the hill, and the slope had flattened out. I no longer felt as though my horse would tip over if I made a mistake and leaned forward. Happy was containing herself, but was eager underneath me. The herd of cows was now fairly well bunched, and the ones in the lead seemed to figure out that they were headed somewhere good. The mooing increased, and the last lazy ones suddenly realized that they might get left behind if they didn’t start. Our curving line had closed up—Mom was maybe ten feet from me on one side and Daddy the same distance from me on the other side. What we were doing was not terribly exciting—Daddy was chatting with the man on his other side about growing up in Oklahoma compared to growing up in South Dakota. It sounded like it was either blizzards alternating with tornadoes or blizzards all the time. I wished Danny was with us, just for the moment, but I could see him—our curve was more like a C now, and Danny was at the tip of one of the legs, making sure that the front cows didn’t turn. Daddy and the man (who was on a pretty chestnut) were now talking about the barbecue. Best steaks in the valley, said the man.

  And then Happy was out from under me, and I was landing on my rear end, with my hand stuck out behind me to break my fall.

  Cowboy Hat

  Cowboy Canteen

  Chapter 8

  THE FIRST THING I HEARD WAS MOM SAYING, “ABBY?” THEN I heard Daddy say, “What—”

  I was sitting there on the hillside. Happy was running to the right, and she was after a calf who must have gotten separated from its mother. The stirrups were flapping and the reins were flapping, and Happy had her head down and her front legs splayed. She was staring at the calf. When he jumped to his right, she jumped to her left. I don’t think she had any idea that I wasn’t on her. That side of the line of drivers began to shift, but it was Danny who knew what to do. He turned Crockett and cantered toward Happy. When he reached her, he leaned over and grabbed her reins, but he didn’t pull her off the calf—he let her watch the calf and drive it a bit closer to the herd. Only when the calf had moved the way Happy wanted it to did Danny lead her away from it.

  “How did that happen?” said Daddy. “What’s going on?”

  I held up my arm. My hand flopped. But it didn’t hurt that much. Mom exclaimed, “Oh, no! Her wrist is broken!” and got off Jefferson in about one second. My hard hat seemed hot and tight. I reached up with my left hand to take it off, but it didn’t work. The right hand worked. I was kind of dumbfounded. I set the hard hat next to me on the ground.

  But the cattle had to keep moving. Danny trotted over with Happy and gave the reins to Daddy, then said, “Sorry, sis, gotta go. I’ll call you.” He cantered Crockett back to his spot, and the rest of the people on the line closed in front of us and everyone pushed the cattle farther down the valley. I said, “It’s my left wrist. I can ride.”

  “Of course you cannot,” said Mom.

  “It doesn’t hurt.” I looked at it again, then said, “Well, it doesn’t really hurt.”

  Daddy got off Lester, who was staring toward the retreating cattle. He said, “It will.” He handed his reins to Mom and started looking around. After a moment, he trotted back up the hill and returned with a branch from one of the oaks along the ridge, half rotted. It had been there a long time, and the cows had stepped on it. It still had about three old blackened leaves. Daddy stripped the twigs off and broke it in half, then he took off his shirt, and used his pocketknife to cut off most of the left sleeve. Then he made me a splint—he put one of the pieces along the front of my wrist and one along the back, so that my hand and my wrist were straight again, and then he wrapped the pieces of his shirt around the whole thing and tied the two ends. Mom held my hand steady. Lester and Lincoln ground-tied, which they were trained to do—if you dropped the reins in front of their noses, they stood there. I held Happy with my right hand. She watched what they were doing to my left hand as if it were her business, and maybe she knew it was.

  After Daddy was finished, I just sat there. The valley and the cows, who were now far enough away so that we could hardly hear their mooing, seemed to spin around a bit, and I also thought it might be a good idea to throw up. But still my wrist didn’t actually hurt that much.

  Mom said, “Honey, put your head between your knees and lean over.” So I did that. Then I stretched out and lay back on the hillside. It seemed as though I could not resist doing that. The sun was off to the west, but there was brightness everywhere, even when I had my eyes closed, so I put my right hand over my face, and maybe I fell asleep. At any rate, there was the black kitten, staring at me. I was so startled that I woke up, and I must have cried out, because Mom said, “Oh, that must really hurt. I don’t know what to do.”

  But it didn’t hurt. I sat up. I felt better. Mom was sitting beside me, and Daddy was down the slope with all three of the horses. I said, “Did I fall asleep?”

  “Honey, you passed out. You fainted.”

  “I did? For how long?”

  “About five minutes.”

  I said, “Oh.”

  I sat there. Mom was holding my right hand. My left elbow was bent, and my left wrist, wrapped in Daddy’s blue shirt, now throbbed. The hard hat was pressing against my right hip, so I moved it. But everything was okay. It was like I had taken a little nap, and now I was pretty relaxed. Daddy turned and looked toward us, then walked back up the hill, leading Happy and carrying his canteen, which he’d hooked to his saddle. When he got to me, he knelt down and gave me a drink. The water was warm, of course, but good, and it perked me up. Mom took a drink, then Daddy took a drink. Daddy wiped his mouth on his other sleeve, put the cap back on. He took a deep breath and said, “Thank you, Lord, for your mercy. Amen.”

  We said, “Amen.”

  “Now what?” said Mom.

  Daddy sniffed. “Well, she can walk or ride. I don’t see any alternative.”

  “They can’t bring a—”

  But no. We were far far back into the hills. A road ran to the other side of the ridge behind us, but no closer than that.

  I said, “I’ll ride.”

  “We’ll have to follow the cattle, then. They’re heading in that direction. Are you sure?”

  “I feel okay. But I don’t feel like walking.”

  “She can’t ride Happy,” said Mom.

  “I can ride Happy,” I said. “She didn’t throw me. She just got excited about the calf. She took responsibility when she didn’t really need to.”

  “She’s a born cow horse,” said Daddy.

  I said, “You should give her to Danny.”

  It was like I hadn’t said anything.

  * * *

  The question was how to mount. I knew I could ride, since it was my left wrist that was broken and when I rode western, I used my right hand to hold the reins. But when you mount from the ground, you have to grab the pommel of the saddle or the mane with your left hand and pull yourself up. Even with a leg up, you have to balance with your left hand. Mom thought they both should lift me onto the horse, but I didn’t see how that would work. Daddy said, “I’ll give you
a leg up from the right side, and your mom can help. That way, you don’t have to use your left hand. But, Abby.” He stared at me.

  I said, “What?”

  “Remember not to use it! Habits are hard to break.”

  I nodded.

  We positioned Happy sideways on the slope. It was weird to put my right foot in the stirrup, and weird to put my right hand on the mane, and weird to keep my left hand against my chest and have Mom put her hand on my rear and push me. It was weird to throw my left leg over the saddle. But Happy stood like a good girl, and I didn’t touch anything with my left hand. Once I was in the saddle, I rested my hand and splint across my lap. Daddy handed me my hard hat. He said, “We forgot this.” Happy stood there while I put it on, which was awkward with one hand. Daddy led her down the slope toward the other two horses, and we waited while Daddy gave Mom a leg up and then got on himself.

  Mom said, “At least one person could have waited with us.”

  “Cattle come first,” said Daddy.

  “They don’t even know if she’s okay.”

  “They know they’ll find out.”

  “That seems kind of hard-hearted to me,” said Mom.

  “We’ll see,” said Daddy.

  But I was glad they hadn’t waited. The last thing I wanted was for everyone to stand around staring while I fainted and had to be hoisted back on my horse. I knew that people didn’t die from embarrassment, but I wondered right then if you could die in preference to embarrassment.