by Tudor Robins
I laugh. “I’m sure I’ll have another chance to wear the dress, but it seems like a good thing I didn’t today. Jared’s cousin is waiting for me to work with her horse over at the barn.”
“Well, you have fun, and watch out for Lacey. She’s a piece of work.”
When we get to the ring beside the barn, Lacey’s riding a slightly pot-bellied bay pony around in circles. Jared leans on the fence. “Alright Lace, I’m giving you ten minutes; then I’m taking her back.”
“It won’t take ten minutes to see his problem.”
Lacey’s a bold rider; her aids are strong and decisive. The problem is, her pony – like most small ponies – is also bold, and very decisive about what he does, and doesn’t, want to do.
“Watch this!” From an already forward trot, Lacey asks for a canter. The result is an ever-increasing, teeth-rattling pace during which Cisco’s legs piston like a sewing machine, and Lacey’s head looks like it’ll shake right off. They circle three times that way without accomplishing a single canter stride, before I hand Jared my plate, step forward and say, “Whoa!”
Cisco doesn’t have to be told twice. He clearly likes whoaing. He stops dead in a beautiful square halt, with his rounded sides heaving from his high velocity trot circuits.
I hold out my hand. “Give me your helmet.” Forget the dress, now I’m no longer even going to be wearing clean, non-riding clothes.
Lacey grins at Jared. “I knew she’d help me! She’s so nice.”
Cisco’s problem isn’t complicated. Both he and Lacey need to focus a bit more, be a bit more disciplined, and all will be well.
As soon as I settle on his back, Cisco’s ears flick back, and he works his mouth; sizing me up through the bit and reins. If he’s worried I’m going to make him do something he doesn’t want to do, he’s right.
Jared’s laughing. “You could cross your legs underneath that thing.” And he’s right. Long-legged me, on a thirteen-hand pony, is anything but elegant.
“Well, I think she looks great.”
“Thank you Will,” I say, then kick Cisco up into a sitting trot. I force him right back onto his haunches, by making the trot as slow as I can without letting him break.
“This is a good exercise, Lacey. See how he’d rather walk?” Sure enough, he breaks for a second before I push him back into the trot. “Trotting this slowly is hard work for him. He has to use his hocks on every step. His muscles are probably burning. You need to sit up straight yourself, and feel out the right pace. Just before he’s about to break is perfect,” I pause, sense him about to break and give him a nudge before he does. “The key is to keep him trotting, but just barely.”
“Then, you can do this.” I let the reins out. Start rising in the trot. Release all the forward motion I’ve been containing. “Let him stretch. Let him ask for the rein. When he sticks his nose out, give him a couple of inches. We want him long, reaching, stretching here. Do you see the difference?”
She nods. Her eyes are fixed; she barely blinks. At this moment Lacey, Cisco and I form a tight little circle of focus and concentration. We’re channelling each other.
“I’m going to do it a few more times, and you watch the difference in his gait, his head carriage, whether he tracks up or not.”
After several more trips around the circle, both forward and restrained, I say, “I think he’s ready now.”
I collect him into his controlled trot. His haunches work; each of his hips pushes my corresponding hip up in a mutual rhythm. He’s engaged and prepared, so I give him a firm, clear ask, and he pops instantly into a forward, energized canter on the correct lead.
Nice.
“Nice!” yells Lacey.
“Great!” calls Will, and I remember Will and Jared. Hear nothing from Jared. Where’s Jared? I bring Cisco back to a trot, then a walk.
“Want to try now?” I ask Lacey, who’s jumping from foot to foot.
She scrambles up, while I straighten out my twisted capris. “Where’s Jared?”
Will thumbs in the direction of the barn. “Getting something over there.”
Lacey’s circling by us, adjusting her stirrups. “Just start like I did, Lacey. I’ll be right back.”
I bump into Jared, coming out of the barn, as I peer in. “Whatcha doin’?”
“Looking for something to measure with.”
“Measure what?”
“But I can’t find anything, so I’ll just have to pace it out.”
“Pace what out?”
“Hey, Will, come over here and count my strides with me, so I have a back-up count.”
I grab Jared’s arm, pull him around. “What do you want to measure? What are you counting? Tell me!”
Cisco, circling twenty metres away, jumps. “Don’t let him get away with that Lacey! He wasn’t scared for a second.”
I turn back to Jared. “Well?”
Will’s arrived, and he looks up at Jared with wide eyes. “What?”
“Good question; maybe he’ll tell you.”
“We’re going to make Meg a ring, like this, at my place. So first we need to figure out how big it should be. Is this a good size, Meg, or does it need to be bigger?”
“You’re what? You can’t make me a ring. That’s a huge job.”
Lacey veers off her circle and hauls Cisco to a stop right beside me. “You’re making Meg a sand ring? Cool! When?”
Jared squints at her from under the peak of his baseball cap. “Soon. I guess if I keep bugging her to show Salem, the least I can do is build her a ring first.”
“Showing? Seriously?” Lacey shakes her head. “I’m really surprised you’d want to do that Jared.”
“Why? What’s the big deal? There are shows up at the community centre every other weekend, aren’t there?”
Cisco’s using me as a scratching post; dripping warm slobber down my arm in the process. Lacey yanks his head away from me, then turns to Jared, “You’re joking, right? You must know that’s not the kind of showing Meg does. Those are Western shows, with games. She jumps. English. You’d have to go to Kingston, or Ottawa to go to Meg’s kind of show. You’d have to …”
“Lacey! That’s enough!” I didn’t know Jared’s voice could drop that deep.
Two bright spots flower on her cheeks. “But …”
I don’t know what’s going on here, but Jared’s furrowed brows tell me Lacey’s about to dig herself into a world of trouble, so I cut her off. “You’re not finished your ride, Lacey. Get back out there. I want to see five more good transitions.”
Jared watches her go, then turns to cross the ring, counting strides as he goes.
“What was that?” I ask Will.
“That was Lacey pushing, and Jared pushing back. At least that’s what my dad calls it. Lacey and Jared have a good fight a couple of times a year.”
It still doesn’t answer my deeper question of what the pushing was about, but Rod shows up with a beer for him, and one for Jared, and they strike up a detailed conversation about using the harrow and crowning the ring so the water will run off.
Then Lacey leads a very sweaty Cisco over, and she’s all smiles, asking if she can help paint the dressage letters. “You see the ones I have here? I painted them. Please say I can paint your letters for you. Please!”
I reach over to unbuckle the girth from Cisco’s still-heaving sides, and Jared puts Lacey in a loose headlock and says “You can’t help us with anything if you don’t look after your own pony. Take that saddle from Meg.”
So, I guess they’ve made up.
The desserts are even better than the dinner. “There are six kinds of pie here!” I tell Jared. “Oh, wait, no; there’s rhubarb too – there are seven kinds of pie!”
I chose cherry, and Jared chooses lemon meringue – of course – which works for me because he hands it to me to finish.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I have a tooth that’s bothering me. The filling’s too sweet.”
“P
oor baby! Oh well. More for me …” I worry for a second I’ve been too flip – too familiar – but he’s laughing, so I swallow my apology with a bite of lemon meringue pie.
Jared and I drift around. He introduces me to some friends he grew up with. “There aren’t many here, though. Most of them have gone away to university, and they got summer jobs near their schools.”
“Do you miss them?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I mean, yes and no. I miss some of the old times we had together, but everything’s changed now, anyway.”
“Do you ever visit them?”
He grins. “Yeah, in all my spare time.”
“I get it. I know how busy you are, but that makes me wonder if you miss it. You know, school. Having other responsibilities. Being someplace different.”
He looks away, and I wonder if he’s going to ignore my question. If I’ve said the wrong thing.
Looks back at me and opens his mouth. Shuts it again.
It’s hard to be quiet, but something tells me it’s important. The way he blinks, his deep sigh, say he’s deciding what to tell me. I want it to be everything, and if I interrupt, it won’t be.
“My dad died while I was away.”
It’s not what I expected. His words send a slap of shock through me.
“I’d been home for Thanksgiving, and just left again, to drive back to school. I figured it out – I’ve figured it out a million times – it probably happened when I was about halfway there. He was working in a far field – on his own – so they didn’t find him until later, after he didn’t show up for dinner, and my mom called for help.”
I was studying when the phone rang. I drove back in the dark – straight to the hospital – but it was too late.”
His voice sounds OK, but I don’t think I can talk. I bite my lip and put my hand on his arm. Try a whisper, which works. “I’m sorry.”
“So my last memory of school is a bad one. I wish I’d been here, with him, that day.”
“And, anyway, I love it here.” His sweeping arm points to the wooded area behind the barn, then the fields that slope down to the water. The ever-moving St. Lawrence, with Kingston in the background, and the century-old farmhouse with people flowing in and out of the sliding doors. All this under a flaring pink sunset. “I look at this, and wonder how I could leave.”
“Like nothing might ever be the same again?”
He looks straight at me. “Exactly.”
“Oh, I know. I get it.” My ribs swell as I inhale the scent of a newly-hayed field nearby, the clean smell of river water. “I wonder if anything will ever be the same as it is right now. If there will ever be another Sunday night this perfect.”
How did we get to be standing this close? He’s got a drink in one hand, and his other one is so, so close to mine. In fact, if I exhale, and lean a bit – just like this – I’m sure our hands will brush.
“Meg?” Our hands do touch, and instead of the jolt I expected, there’s a slow, warm fizz running through my veins, settling around my knees, weakening them. He encircles my small pinky finger with his callused hand, and the fizz intensifies. Oh, wow.
“Here they are, Betsy!”
I yank my hand away, step back into a dip in the grass, and have to take another step to steady myself.
“I thought it was you two over here.”
I cough. “Yes, it’s us Carl.”
“Well, I was saying to Betsy that we might as well drive you home, Meg. There’s no need for Jared to drive the extra distance.”
“Oh, I don’t mind, Carl.” Bless you, Jared.
Carl waves his hand at him. “That truck of yours drinks enough gas, Jared. Let us take her.”
Betsy’s caught up now. “Carl, if Jared says he doesn’t mind driving her, let him drive her. It’s silly to rearrange everything now.”
“Well it’s arranged now. We’ll take Meg. You know I like to help when I can. Let’s go!” Carl heads off in the direction of the parked cars, waving at us to follow.
Betsy throws up her hands. “I’m sorry. When he gets an idea, you can’t stop him.”
My heart rate’s slowed and my legs feel steady again. “Oh, it’s OK Betsy. He’s always thinking of other people.”
Betsy walks ahead of us, shaking her head, and Jared comes up beside me. “Is it really OK with you?”
I give him a sideways glance. “Of course not. Carl’s car doesn’t have real Corinthian leather.”
He punches me in the arm. “Next time …”
I nod. “Next time …” and I think it as we climb into our separate vehicles, and when Jared pulls off the highway onto Split Oak Road, and after I thank Betsy and Carl for the ride. Next time. Next time. Next time.
Chapter Seventeen
The radio, always on in the background while I do dishes, warned me.
The weather network – Betsy and Carl’s homepage on their computer – predicted it.
Even the weather stick attached to the side of the chicken coop said it was coming.
But I’m still not ready for the stifling air I step into after an afternoon spent inside, rubbing at my goose bumped arms, as I helped Betsy rearrange the basement freezer and pantry shelves.
The temperature must have jumped ten degrees since noon.
The super-fine hairs around my face are already curling as I buckle my bike helmet on, and on my way up to ride Salem I struggle to breathe. The afternoon’s so humid that inhaling feels like sucking in soup.
While I groom Salem, her dark coat radiates heat. A bead of sweat trickles down my temple. Rex lies on the grass beside us, panting with his whole body; tongue lolling, sides heaving.
“That’s it – it’s too hot – let’s go swimming!” I say. Still no saddle, in the full grip of a heat wave, what better to do?
It’s a short walk to the river. I ride Salem bareback, and Rex trots by our side, head down, feet shuffling. Not using an ounce of energy he doesn’t need to.
Just before the river, the gravel forks off into private driveways, and the road itself narrows and dwindles into a sort of ramp leading straight into the water. It would be a public boat launch if there was any public around here, wanting to launch boats.
Salem, who’s walked willingly forward all this time, slows and hesitates. She halts and lifts a hoof over the edge of the water. Oh come on. Please don’t tell me water’s her weak point.
Rex saves the day. His ears prick forward, and he powers by us – so close his tail brushes the bottom of my foot – and plunges into the water. He wades in up to his belly, circles around until he finds a place that suits him, then sighs and begins slurping.
Salem isn’t about to let a dog get the better of her. Her ears pitch forward, and she marches straight into the river, until I’m thigh deep and she, too, is gulping the cool river water, then playing with it, blowing it through her nostrils, and rainbowing sprays into the sunlight.
Once we’re still for a few seconds, the sunbeams slicing through the rippled surface of the water highlight lush fronds of green seaweed waving around Salem’s legs, with minnows darting around them. A particularly bold one investigates my toes, and I pull my knees up, placing them in front of me on Salem’s withers.
Salem wades forward with the water making no noise as it flows around her deep chest. Without my legs to anchor me, I giggle at the sensation of being lurched from side-to-side on her still-dry back. And then, with one step, nothing’s dry anymore.
Only Salem’s white star and flaring nostrils are still visible on top of the water – those and her pointed ears. Then the power of her underwater strokes kicks in and, with a surge, she rises under me and lifts me through the water. I’m half-swimming, half-riding. I knot my fingers through her floating mane and my t-shirt billows around me.
When she finds her footing again, and pulls us both from the water, we’re streaming wet. My clothes stick to me, and her mane’s plastered against her neck. Rex looks tiny, shrunken, until he braces his legs wide apar
t for an almighty shake.
Which, just in time, is my cue to use her withers to push myself up off Salem’s back. While she shakes nose to tail, I remember the other way horses like to dry themselves, and cluck her forward to keep her from rolling.
Salem’s stride is long and easy as we head back home and, when a swallow swoops too close, Rex frisks after it.
I still have to figure out how to get a saddle for Salem. Still have to hope my mom decides not to fight me on keeping her. Still have a million things to teach her. Still have to try to sleep in this heat tonight, and go to work tomorrow.
But for now, right this minute, I’m focusing on the sun and breeze drying my skin, and the mare I’m riding. I lean forward and pat Salem’s drying coat. “I have what I need, right?”
The flicking of her ears means Yes. Any good horse trainer could tell you that.
Chapter Eighteen
The heat wave continues the next morning. As I step through the kitchen door Betsy says, “Quick! Close it! The AC is hardly keeping up with this humidity!” She’s right. It’s cool in here – much better than outside, or in the cottage – but it doesn’t have that icy edge of true, deep, air conditioning.
“I’m afraid it’s going to konk out, too. The dishwasher died last night.”
“What do you mean?”
“Water all over the floor. They can’t send a repairman until Friday. Carl’s going to pull it out and take it over to Kingston himself this afternoon.”
Which means I have to do the breakfast dishes by hand. Unbelievable how many dishes normally slot neatly away in the dishwasher. Cluttering the counter, the sheer number is overwhelming.
I yank my hair into a ponytail, run sudsy water into the sink (why do dishes have to be washed in hot water?) and get to work.
It takes nearly an hour because, just as I’m lifting the last dish out of the sink, Betsy brings in a tray of dirty dishes from the second set of guests’ breakfasts.
“Sorry.”
I blow a couple of stray hairs off my forehead. “S’ OK. This is why you pay me the big bucks.”