True Blue

by Jane Smiley

  Mrs. Leinsdorf said, “Well, that’s all very well, but I told you that if you were going to have riding lessons, there would be no—”

  “I want to jump! I can jump! I’m good at jumping! It’s not fair that everyone else can jump and I can’t!” She was still sitting on Gallant Man, and the pony’s ears flicked as her voice rose. I put my hand on his rein. I looked at Mrs. Leinsdorf.

  She said, “I’ve told you time and time again—”

  Ellen turned to me and said, “Is the pony a safe jumper?”

  “Yes, but if your—”

  “See? See?” shouted Ellen to her mother.

  Mrs. Leinsdorf gave me a look. Embarrassment. I looked away, back toward the barn, to see if Jane was coming.

  That’s how I missed what next happened, which was that Ellen fell off the pony. The next thing I saw was Ellen lying on the ground, and the pony cocking his head to look down at her, then stepping away from her.

  Mrs. Leinsdorf exclaimed, “Ellen!”

  Ellen sat up, then stood up. She lifted her chin and said, “I fell off, and I’m fine!” She stomped away.

  Mrs. Leinsdorf took a deep breath, and then did the thing I didn’t want her to do, which was apologize to me. I shrugged, then began to say, “It’s okay. I think—”

  But by that time, she was running after Ellen.

  Crossbar Jump

  Hay Bale

  Chapter 11

  THE ONLY THING I TOLD MOM WHEN SHE PICKED ME UP WAS THAT it was harder than I thought it would be. She said that she was sure everything would be fine in the way that grown-ups do when they are thinking about other things, but that was okay with me. I would tell her that I was finished teaching Ellen after Jane called me and told me. At home, all the horses were standing in their pastures, Rusty was sitting on the porch, Mom’s flowers were blooming in their pots, and even the breeze and the mist were quiet. It was a relief.

  Mom went in to start supper. I headed straight for the barn to give the horses their hay. Now that I had had some practice, it was a little easier, and my wrist stayed quiet. Jack whinnied and trotted to the gate, and then Happy whinnied, and then Foxy. Truly, they were like kids in a classroom. Jack and Foxy and Happy were the ones in the front row who always raised their hands, Jefferson and Lincoln didn’t even realize that the teacher was talking, and Amazon and Sprinkles had their own ideas that they discussed when the others weren’t looking. Only Blue, in the barn, was left out. I went over and took him a flake of hay. When I looked into the stall, I saw that there was a lot of manure in there. That was the thing Daddy hated the most about keeping a horse in a stall—the time you spent cleaning up after him was time you were not riding.

  I gave him a pat as he dove into his hay and then headed toward the house. Just then, Daddy pulled up in the truck. He got out and slammed the door. As I followed him into the house, he said, “I don’t see how we are going to do this. I just don’t.” Mom was reaching a fork into the oven to test the potatoes. She closed the oven door, set the fork on the top of the stove, and picked up a wooden spoon. She took the lid off a pot. Broccoli.

  He went on. “I expected the truck to take at most two hours, and it took six, so there I was. Could not ride a single horse all day.”

  Mom said, “I rode Jefferson and Lincoln.”

  Daddy said, “That’s good. I don’t mean to—”

  Mom said, “Danny rode Happy and Foxy. That was all he had time for.” Her face was blank. She wasn’t smiling or frowning.

  Daddy said, “Happy and Foxy need—”

  Then he stopped and said, “What? Sarah?”

  “I said, ‘Danny rode Happy and Foxy. That was all he had time for.’ ” She lifted the lid of the frying pan and flipped the minute steaks. Then she said, easy as you please, “Do we want gravy?”

  I said, “I do. I would like gravy.”

  Mom said, “Good.” And then she said, “He said he would ride Blue tomorrow, after Abby gets home from school.”

  I said, “I think he’s ready to go out with the other geldings. He seems lonely to me.”

  Daddy left the kitchen. After a moment, we could hear him pounding up the stairs, and then we could hear him walking around in their bedroom. Mom looked at me and smiled.

  When we sat down for supper, Daddy had his Bible next to his plate. He wasn’t saying anything, though. Mom asked me about my day at school and the lessons, and I told her about Melinda and May and the chauffeur and about Ellen falling off her horse on purpose when her mother wouldn’t let her jump. I said, “I mean maybe it was my fault in a way, because she saw my cast and was bragging about never having fallen off, and I told her that thing about how you have to fall off three times—” I expected Daddy to say something, but he just kept eating.

  Mom said, “I hope you can handle those girls.”

  “I hope so, too. But they were nice to the pony. Melinda can ride and Ellen really wants to.”

  “And it was only the first lesson. That’s the second-hardest one.”

  I looked at her. “What’s the hardest one?”

  She said, “The second.” We laughed, but I wasn’t sure why. Daddy kept eating until he had cleaned his plate, then he pushed his chair back a little, lifted his eyes to the Lord, and opened the Bible. He stared at the page for a moment before saying, in a little bit of a weird voice, “ ‘Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.’ ”

  Now it was our turn to stare, because he had landed right on the Golden Rule. The first thing I thought was that the Lord had answered Mom’s prayer and not Daddy’s, but then I made myself not think that thought, because it seemed like a bad one. Daddy pulled his bandanna out of his back pocket and blew his nose. He read the Golden Rule again and said, “Well, we have our answer.”

  Mom said, “I guess we do.” When she got up to clear her plate, she patted him on the head. I said I would do the dishes, and they went into the living room. I heard her say hi to Spooky, and then I heard the sofa squeak as someone sat down on it.

  It was time-consuming and thought-consuming to do the dishes with one hand, making sure not to get my cast wet. By the time I was finished, I couldn’t believe how happy I was that when I got home from school tomorrow, Danny would be there, and he would ride Blue.

  The only other thing that happened was that Spooky jumped onto my bed in the middle of the night and snuggled down under the covers. He was gone by morning. I know he was—I saw him curled up in his box when I left the house for the school bus. He didn’t even wake up and meow. Nor did I stop and say anything about it to Mom—I was late for the bus, and could see it almost at our gate. I had to run.

  By Wednesday, I was used to walking from class to class, dropping my stuff every so often, and clumsily opening my books and notebook with one hand in class while everyone stared at me. I was used to the fact that my wrist was like a second brain—it didn’t think, but it did throb every time I worried about anything. During lunch, Alexis and Barbara brought out a bunch of markers and drew on it—Alexis drew six different types of flowers, and Barbara drew the face of a horse looking over them, a tiny horse, smaller than the tulips. After that, everyone wanted to see the drawing, including the painting teacher, Miss Rowan. The horse was on the palm of my hand, so I could close my fingers over it if I wanted to.

  When I got home, Danny was already there, dumping the wheelbarrow full of horse manure into the manure pile at the far end of the mare pasture. Rusty was sitting in the aisle of the barn, looking out the door, and Blue was in the pen, trotting around. He looked at me, but he didn’t stop—he stretched his nose down and kept trotting along with big strides, then he squealed and kicked up, and broke into a canter. Halfway around the pen, he slid to a halt, reared up, and turned back the other way. Danny came up to me. I saw that he had some new boots—black ones with fancy yellow stitching. He poked me in the ribs with his elbow. Then he noticed my cast and said, “Hey. Nice.
Who did that?”

  “Alexis and Barbara.” I showed him the horse.

  “Mmm. You friends with them?”

  “Yes. Do you know them?”

  “I know their cousin.”

  I said, “She’s way too smart for you.”

  “We’ll see.”

  It was my turn to poke him.

  Blue kicked up again, and ran for about three steps, then trotted forward. Then he stopped where we were standing and snorted.

  Danny said, “Where’s the flag?”

  When Danny had his back to me, it was so much like watching Daddy that it didn’t even seem strange for him to be here, though he’d been away for eighteen months now. His shoulders were Daddy’s shoulders, the back of his neck was the back of Daddy’s neck, his cowboy hat was tilted the way Daddy’s was, and his hips sat to one side, like Daddy’s did. He had been riding horses all his life, so maybe that’s why he had Daddy’s bowed legs (mine weren’t bowed at all, and I had been riding all my life, too). He was a tall drink of water, and it was only when he turned to follow Blue’s movement around the pen that he looked like Danny to me—he had Mom’s blue eyes and his own nose, long and straight with a little tiny cleft in the tip. When Blue slowed down, he lifted the flag, and Blue sped up. Danny nodded. He said, “Go on. Go on now, Blue horse.”

  The way he was not like Daddy was that he seemed to have all the time in the world. He told Blue to do a few things, and then he stood there and watched him before telling him to do something else. There was plenty that Blue didn’t know how to do, even though I had started getting him to step under, which was a very important exercise for getting him to relax and pay attention to you. Now Danny let Blue come to him, and then he did what I had done. He stood beside Blue’s head, facing his back end, with the lead rope in the hand closest to Blue. Then he lifted his hand upward and away from Blue, so that Blue turned his head and lifted his nose. This was meant to throw him off balance, and in order to regain his balance, Blue lifted the back foot on the side Danny was standing next to, and stepped it across in front of the other back foot. Then he stepped the other hind foot over. Eventually. Danny asked him again and then again. Blue turned a little circle around Danny. The idea was that as he made these steps, he was using his spine and back muscles, and when he was using them, they were soft rather than stiff. When he was stiff, he was using his strength against Danny, and when he was soft, he wasn’t.

  Horses stiffen for all sorts of reasons—one of them is laziness, another is stubbornness, another is fear, and another is simply not knowing what the rider wants. But you don’t want your horse to be stiff for any reason, so this stepping under is a good exercise for getting a horse ready for anything. Danny asked for lots of repetitions on the left, lots of repetitions on the right, then back to the left, first dismounted, then mounted. When a horse knows this exercise and understands what you want, all you have to do at any gait, even going down to a jump, is tweak the rein, usually on the inside, and he will lift his shoulder, soften his back, and relax. His front legs will get more rhythmic and his back legs will start making bigger strides. It is almost a miracle.

  They never did canter. But Blue had a little bit of a sweat when they were done—he had used muscles that maybe he had never used before. When Danny dismounted and began to uncinch the saddle, I said, “Aren’t you going to take him in the arena?”

  “I think he needs to get through kindergarten first.”

  “That’s where he was scared before.”

  “Well, turn him out in there for a while. But if you’re riding him, he needs some tools to work with.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s never been taught anything. If he’s been a pretty good horse, then he’s doing it out of the kindness of his heart. But you can’t rely on that in every situation. Especially new situations.”

  That made me glum. I said, “Daddy said that he’s untrained, too.”

  “I wish I could come every day.” He pushed his hat back on his head.

  “How often can you come?”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Now you sound like a grown-up.”

  “Uh-oh.” Then he said, “But I guess I will be a grown-up in a couple of months.”

  I said, “Yeah.” I knew he would be eighteen in May.

  He took the bridle off Blue and put the halter on. I am telling you, until you’ve tried to halter a horse with one hand, you don’t know what impossible is, so I was glad of that. Then he handed me the lead rope. He said, “Let him run around in the arena before Dad gets home, and then teach him something.”

  “Like what?” I held up my arm.

  “Like a trick.” He gave me a little kiss on the top of the head.

  I stood there thinking about this, watching Danny from the back walk toward his car just like Daddy. Just like someone, as Mom said, who couldn’t be told what to do, but could be asked, if you were the type of person who didn’t mind asking. The trouble was, Daddy always told, he never asked. But that’s where the Golden Rule came in. I shook my head. Danny drove away and I took Blue to the arena.

  He did run around, and seemed to enjoy it, though unlike Jack and some of the other horses, he didn’t investigate things. There are some horses, and Happy was the best example, who see something and want to know all about it. They might startle or even spook a little bit, but then they want to go right over and sniff it and get a good look at it. Those kinds of horses learn quickly and are always pretty trustworthy. Most other horses will tolerate something they don’t like the look of if you ask them to and if they trust you. Then they get used to it and don’t worry about it anymore. But some horses avoid things, and that’s what Blue did—he remembered the spots where he had been worried before, and he stayed away from them. I watched him, thinking about tricks, but not coming up with anything.

  After Danny left, Daddy and Mom and I did what we always did, just as if he had never been there, and it wasn’t until later, when I was half asleep, that I remembered that Spooky had jumped onto my bed and slipped down under the covers the night before. When I remembered that, I sat right up, wide awake.

  Really, it was hard to imagine that little kitten, who was now maybe six weeks old, doing anything of the kind. When Mom took him out of the box, he ran around, especially if we dragged a button or a ball of yarn across the floor. When Daddy laid an old towel on the rug and then snaked his hand under it until his finger poked out, Spooky was all over that monster. And though he stood with his paws on the edge of the box, looking and looking, he hadn’t jumped out yet. If I put him at the bottom of the stairs, he would put his paws on the first step and stare up to the second floor as if he knew his mice were up there, but he didn’t try to leap onto the step. I knew all this.

  But when I lay back and closed my eyes and thought, Got to get up early in the morning, I could hear him coming, a sort of almost-inaudible popping and skittering, as if those stairs were really fun, and then there was the race down the hall and the leap into my bed. Just thinking about it made me start and open my eyes again. I knew it wasn’t true, but try as I might, I couldn’t not believe it.

  Finally, I lay on my back with the covers tucked down around my shoulders and across my neck. No kitten had any way to slide in there. I took ten deep breaths, and maybe I went to sleep, but maybe I didn’t. What came to me was not a kitten jumping up the steps in a plump, kittenish way, but another kind of kitten, the kind who rose a little in the air and floated up the stairs and then along the floor of the hallway and through the door (I had, I am embarrassed to say, closed the door of my room). Then it rose like a shadow and hovered over me, staring down with those round black eyes, making no sounds, but twitching its whiskers. My eyelids popped open. It! Spooky was not an it! He was a he, a little black kitten who was downstairs, full of his last feeding of the night, and sound asleep.

  There was one window in my room—at the end of my bed. It was closed because of the winter weather. In the summer, I co
uld hear the sounds of the horses outside, moving around and snorting or whinnying or grunting. Sometimes, when I was listening to them, I could picture just what the horses were doing, and that put me to sleep, but now the room was very quiet. There wasn’t even the faint noise of Daddy snoring or the heater coming on. It was very very quiet. There was enough light from the window to see the shapes in my room, but not enough to make anything out—not my championship ribbon from the show in the fall or the books on my desk or the picture of my two sets of grandparents back in Oklahoma. So when a shape seemed to float across the ceiling, I could not tell what it was. That was my first thought.

  My second thought was that the shape was that of a slender woman with dark hair, carrying a black cat in her arms. She looked sad, and then they floated out the window. I sat up. My whole body was tingling, and then hot, and then cold. There was only one thing to do. I got up and went to the window in my pajamas and looked out. Nothing. The geldings were quiet. Jefferson was lying down, stretched out in profile against the paleness of the pasture. Lincoln looked like maybe he was dozing on his feet, and Jack, ever active, was investigating something, maybe some small animal, by the water trough. None of them were spooking or nervous-looking. If there was a ghost, they hadn’t noticed her. The trouble was that as soon as I decided that, a whinny came from the barn—Blue—long and sad. And it made the skin on the back of my neck crinkle and my wrist throb. I could not keep myself from thinking that it was a hello. Or a good-bye.

  I went to my closet and got my robe. Then I tiptoed down the stairs and looked at Spooky in his box. He was sleeping. There was nothing wrong or different about him. He was a black kitten curled up in an old sweater. I leaned my back against the corner of the hallway and watched him. That seemed the safer thing to do.

  The good thing was that I woke up before Mom, so I didn’t have to tell her anything about why I was hunched against the wall by the front door. I went upstairs very quietly, found my clothes, and looked out the window. The horses, of course, were wide awake, looking for their hay. Not a thing was happening in the entire world that was more important to them than that.