by Jane Smiley
I don’t know what I expected to see—ruby slippers? Glittery dust? Of course there was nothing. The pasture was a muddy mess, and my rubber boots were sticking everywhere. By the time I got back to the gate, I was as crabby as Danny, so I said, “I don’t know what’s going on about Happy, but you know he’s got a price in his head, and if you don’t have the money, well, good luck. This is a business!” That was something Daddy said a lot.
Danny said, “Great!” and tromped away, and good riddance, I thought. He walked around the house, and a few minutes later, I heard his car engine start, and then I could see him on the road for a moment.
I let the horses come back to me. Blue and Jefferson were clean, Jack and Lincoln were dirty, Happy, Sprinkles, and Foxy were clean, and Amazon was like one giant dusty ball—she had rolled several times and the dirt had dried and crusted, not only over her back and haunches and neck, as with most horses, but under her neck and under her belly and all the way around her head. She looked very proud of herself. When she shook, the dust flew. I petted her on the tip of her nose and backed away.
Inside, you could tell Daddy was grumpy and Mom was fed up, and whatever it was that they had been talking about (Danny, most likely), they had decided to drop the subject. Mom didn’t look great—she was sitting where Danny had been at the table, and Daddy was rearranging the dishes in the dish drainer, which he only did when he was upset, because otherwise, why would you care if they were arranged according to size or not? And I thought, Why are we always dropping subjects around here? Why do we keep our mouths shut and hope for the best and check the Bible and stay patient at all times? And then, as I was walking past the refrigerator, I stumbled and fell with my broken wrist right against the corner of the refrigerator, and of course it throbbed, of course it did! So I barked, “I am really tired of being patient! Really!”
Mom said, “Well, honey, I—”
And Daddy said, “Abby—”
So I stomped through the living room and stomped up the stairs and I made sure they knew I was stomping, and I didn’t care one bit that stomping was worse than shrugging and even worse than eye-rolling. I thought, Stomp stomp, so what? Stomp, stomp, who cares? And when I went into my room, I slammed the door.
Poles in Arena
Water Trough
Chapter 21
EVERYONE KNOWS THAT YOU CAN BE BORED AT SCHOOL. WHAT you sometimes don’t realize is that school can be relaxing. When I was in seventh grade, for example, I didn’t know this at all. Every day, I was nervous when I got on the bus in the morning and nervous when I got off at school. My instinct was to go around the outside of everything and sneak in when no one was looking, but of course, when you are in seventh grade, everyone is looking. So when I was in seventh grade, I was always glad to get home again after school. I used to think, Well, okay, maybe my family is weird and we don’t have television and we go to church in a mall and we spend a lot of time talking about the Bible, but if the kids at school are the alternative, then being weird is fine.
Eighth grade had been different. For one thing, the kids at school just seemed normal—they were doing what they were doing, and that was just what they did. It’s like the teachers—Madame dressed very well every day, and if you sat and watched her through class, you’d see that she spread her fingers a lot and flared her nostrils when she took a breath before she said something. You could think that she was being weird, or you could think that surely if she knew how strange the kids thought she was, she would stop flaring her nostrils, but, really, she just did stuff. If we didn’t have to look at her (“Attention, s’il vous plaît!”), we wouldn’t notice and wouldn’t care.
On Friday, I was so glad not to be at home that I enjoyed school all day. It made me laugh to watch Stella and Gloria discuss the pennies in their loafers—should they be dimes, in case something happened and you needed to use a pay telephone? Should the heads be up or the tails? And if it was the heads, should the top of the head be pointing toward the toe of the loafer or the heel? When I was in science, I enjoyed watching Mr. Ramirez drill us on some laws about motion, because he always raised his voice when he said “MMMAAASSSS” and “FFFFORRCCCCE,” as if we couldn’t hear him. And maybe some of us couldn’t. I always enjoyed Barbie and Alexis, and at lunch I sat with them. They were nice, but they discussed their recital piece the whole time, except when Barbie was offering me a deviled egg or a celery stick or a piece of apple, “I love Jonathans!” The day went on and on and I didn’t want it to end, because I was nervous about going home the way I used to be nervous about coming to school.
But the bus took me there. The good thing was that when I went through the gate, the car was gone, the truck was gone, and the trailer was gone. The bad news, which I discovered when I changed my clothes and went out to see Jack and Blue, was that some horses were gone, too—at first I didn’t see who, but then I did. It was Jefferson and Foxy. In the gelding pasture, there were only Jack, Blue, and Lincoln, and in the mare pasture, there were only Amazon, Happy, and Sprinkles. Six horses didn’t seem like very many, especially since Foxy was so little and bright and because of that filled up almost as much space as Amazon, who was big and dull.
Here I was, with another chance to be patient! I had to be patient and wait for Daddy or Mom to come home and tell me what happened to Jefferson and Foxy, and then I had to be patient about whatever that was, and then I would have to be patient about whatever was going on with Danny, and of course, I had to be patient about my broken wrist—four more weeks for that. And because I was thirteen, I had four and a half years to be patient until I was eighteen and could do things my way, which would be to keep the horses around maybe for the rest of my life, and even though they were expensive (I always had to listen to Daddy say, “Abby, horses are expensive, you know that”), I would get some kind of a job and support them, rather than having to sell them all the time.
Well, I went upstairs to my room, and I lay down on my bedspread and I made myself think about all of the things I had to be patient for until I started crying, but I don’t know if I was crying from being sad or being mad.
Then I went out and got Jack’s halter and took him to the pen. It was muddy, but not as much as it had been, and he slopped around, splashing a bit. I stood in the center and got him to do everything I knew he knew—he trotted big and he trotted slowly, he turned toward me and went the other direction. He backed up. He let me snake the end of the rope around his feet, and then pick his feet up, hold them, and drop them, including the back feet. I walked around him with the rope, wrapping him until he remembered to turn away from me and unwrap himself. I had him step his back feet over about six times on either side. I asked him to duck his head again and step back and he did, four steps, then five steps. I turned my back on him, and waited until he approached me, and he did, but he didn’t check my pockets, because he knew we were working. I asked him to turn his head in both directions, and hold it there for a moment. I asked him to stand quietly, with the lead rope dropped, while I stroked him along his back and sides. And he did everything properly, and I thought, Well, patience is good for something at least, but it was a Jem Jarrow sort of patience, where you were waiting for the horse to learn something, rather than a Mom and Daddy sort of patience, where you were waiting to learn something yourself. It seemed like the horse’s job was to learn good things and my job was to learn bad things. I took him and put him back in the pasture. Then I carried the hay out of the barn flake by flake, because it was too muddy for the wheelbarrow.
I was finished with the mares when Daddy came out to help me. I said, “What happened to Jefferson and Foxy?”
I must have sounded sassy, because Daddy gave me a look.
I changed my tone and said, again, “What happened to Jefferson? What happened to Foxy?”
“I sold them.”
“Why did you sell Foxy?”
“Someone wanted to buy her. A rancher down by Harley with a kid.”
Now I was very caref
ul. I said, “Who is Barbie supposed to ride? And Mom really liked Foxy.”
He said, “You’ll think of something.”
Well, that was one thing I was really tired of, but I knew not to say it. When we finished throwing the hay and putting a few things away, we went in for supper. It was macaroni and cheese. At least no one had to cut it for me.
I did have a lot of homework, so there was an actual reason for me to go to my room. And I didn’t mind my homework. I was maybe the only kid in my class who liked Ethan Frome. I read the whole book, which was short, that night, and though I didn’t understand it completely, I knew that it was about being trapped—first in the snow, and then in the town, and then in everything else. I thought the book showed what it felt like to be trapped, and how after years of being trapped, there wasn’t much to you anymore, and you couldn’t do anything about it, either. I sort of wondered why we were reading this in school. If there was anywhere in the world that people were trapped, it was in junior high, but I liked the book, and not even Alexis and Barbie liked it. I thought that I would spend a lot of time on my paper and would get an A, because if no one likes some book, then the teacher is always happy when one person does.
Downstairs, I could hear something going on, first in the living room, then in the kitchen, then back in the living room. I did not want to know what it was.
But of course, I found out. When the time came to go to bed, I put on my pajamas and opened my door to go to the bathroom. When I came back five minutes later, Mom was sitting on my bed. I said, “Oh, hi.”
“Hi, honey.”
She moved to the desk chair when I pulled back the bedspread. She let me get all the way into bed, and then she pulled up my covers and tucked me in. She still hadn’t said anything, which was not like her. Finally, I said, “How do you feel?”
“Feel? Oh, I’m fine. It was a very light case, if that’s what it was. Just some napping. Your grandmother always said that the more people that have something, the worse it is, but that didn’t happen with this, at least.”
“Well, that’s good.” I didn’t know what to say. Then I said, “I guess you were having a fight?”
“Did it sound like that?”
I kept my mouth shut.
I closed my eyes. I thought maybe if I pretended I had gone to sleep, then we wouldn’t have this conversation.
But she just went on. “You know, honey, when you are married to a person, sometimes you do have fights. Your dad and I don’t have many of those, really.”
I opened my eyes, accepting the inevitable. “Stella’s parents fight all the time. She says it’s ‘cleansing.’ ”
“But that’s not our business, either, is it?”
I shook my head.
“The thing is that sometimes when you are married to someone, they have a fight with themselves, and you end up being part of it because you have to say some of the things that the other person doesn’t really want to say to himself.”
“Is that the kind of fight you were having?”
She nodded.
“About Danny, right?”
She nodded, then sighed.
“Well.” I sat up because I was a little mad. “He should just give him the horse. Happy and Danny are perfect together, and he doesn’t have to make money on every single thing that sets foot on the ranch.”
Mom smiled.
I sniffed.
Mom crossed her legs and said, “Then you and Daddy agree.”
“We do?”
She nodded. “The thing is, Danny wants to pay for the horse, and your dad can’t stand that.”
I said, “Oh, good grief.” And I slid down under the covers and turned toward the wall. Really, grown-ups, and in this group I was including Danny, were way too weird.
After a moment, she leaned toward me and touched me on the shoulder and said, “Okay. But I think it’s important that you understand how each one of them is thinking.”
“Why?”
I thought she would say that it would be good for me, because maybe someday I would be married, and all that, and I was thinking, I don’t think so, but she said, “Because it’s interesting.”
I rolled over. I said, “Okay.”
She scratched her chin and pushed her hair back, then said, “Danny wants to pay for the horse because that’s what grownups do, and that’s what men do. And your dad doesn’t want him to pay for the horse, because that’s what strangers do, not family members.”
“And if Danny pays for the horse, he’ll never come back here and do what Daddy says he should do.”
Mom nodded.
I said, “He’s not going to do that anyway.”
“I know that.”
“But Daddy doesn’t know that?”
“Well, he knows it, but he hates it.”
“Is he mad at you?”
“Have you ever heard the expression ‘kill the messenger’?”
I said, “Mom!”
“Oh, I don’t mean that literally. But sometimes the person who gives the bad news has to hear the first reaction to the bad news. He went out for a walk. He promised not to get in the truck.”
“Oh, Mom!” I said this because she was half smiling. Then she said, “Do you know the difference between funny and absurd?”
I kind of shrugged.
She said, “Well, some things are bad, but they don’t make any sense. I mean, after you think about them for a while, you understand how they came to be, but when you first experience them, they don’t fit in with the way you understand the world, and so your initial reaction is to laugh.”
“That’s how I felt that time Ellen Leinsdorf threw herself off the pony so she could show her mom that falling off the pony wasn’t so bad. I guess that was absurd.”
“Well, maybe to you and me, the idea that Daddy thinks that Danny is going to move back into his room here and go back to being told what to do, and ask for permission to go places seems absurd, but it seems to Daddy like the right order of things, and so if Danny pays him for the horse, that’s like the final message that the right order of things can’t be. Do you understand that?”
Of course I did.
I said, “So I guess we aren’t going to see Danny again, riding Blue and Happy and stuff?”
Mom stood up, then leaned down and kissed me. She said, “Oh, I think we will.”
The weirdest, or maybe the “absurdest” thing about the ghost was that when I woke up in the middle of the night (twenty after two again), I wanted to get up and go outside and see if she was riding Blue. I wanted to do it so much that I wasn’t thinking about anything else, and I pushed back the covers and put my foot on the floor before I remembered that I was scared of the ghost and that maybe the ghost would do something to me. What happened was that the floor was so cold that it woke me up, and the first thing that came into my mind was Alexis’s story about Freddie and Larry—when their ghost was coming to them all the time, Freddie was scared, but when the ghost stayed away, they got more scared, so scared that they really wanted to see the ghost, if only to keep an eye on her.
It was really cold, in the forties or even in the thirties. Out the window, there was a little bit of moon—it wasn’t as dark as it had been a few nights before. By that very little light, I could see glittering here and there—on the top railing of the fence, along the curve of the geldings’ water trough. It was even beginning on my window, pale and hard to see. The frost seemed to change shape when I shifted my position. I could look through it, and then I could look at it, but I couldn’t do both at the same time. I touched the windowpane along the bottom where the frost was forming. It was gritty and cold. My finger wasn’t warm enough to melt the frost, but the window was cold enough to chill my finger. I scratched it a little bit. Even while I was doing this, I started to shiver. I tiptoed back to bed—not because I didn’t want to make a noise, but because I didn’t want to set my feet on the cold floor. I couldn’t see any frost on the floor, but it felt cold enough for it.<
br />
The horses and Rusty were out there, I knew, but Daddy always said that as far as being warm was concerned, a horse’s body was a big engine, many times bigger than a person’s body. Even in places like Oklahoma, where it gets really really cold, a horse can make himself warm by moving around—the soles of his hooves sort of bounce the blood back up his legs, and make the engine run faster, and if his coat is dry, it fluffs up like a blanket. Heat is much more dangerous for a horse than cold, but horses are made to deal with heat, too—they can sweat, unlike a dog, and roll their giant bodies in cool things, like mud.
In the meantime, I shivered under my covers for what seemed like hours, and I was glad I hadn’t gone outside.
Which didn’t mean that the ghost didn’t come inside—when I was finally warm, and almost asleep, the ghost walked around my room, sat down in the chair where Mom had been sitting, leaned toward me, and made me colder than ever. At first I wasn’t even scared, but then she opened her mouth, wider and wider, as if she were screaming, but there wasn’t a sound, not even a whisper. Then she raised her arms, and she lifted out of the chair and rose above me, and went out through the ceiling of my room, right through that water stain that Daddy wanted to fix but now opened like a door, and you could see the sky through it, the sliver of moon, the sprinkle of stars, and bits of frost floating in the air. Her hair was down, and it was longer than she was; it seemed to drag behind her like Spanish moss dangling off the oaks. If I had dared to reach up, I could have touched it, but with each thing she did, I got more scared and more paralyzed until I had my eyes shut and my hands under the covers, and I could not move.
Saturday morning there was frost everywhere, but the air was so bright that we knew it would burn off in an hour. That meant that we could enjoy the way the frost reflected the sunlight and made every surface whitish-gold. Even the horses had frost on their whiskers when Daddy and I went out to feed them—very delicate pale flecks of ice that sparkled through their foggy breath. They were actively keeping themselves warm—their ears were pricked and they were snorting. They trotted to the piles of hay and made a big deal of working out who was going to get which stack, but they really didn’t mean it—they were only charged up by the cold. Just watching them woke me up. Rusty was excited, too, maybe because all sorts of scents were rising on the air as the frost vaporized in the slanting sunlight.