She nodded tensely, opening her hands again, asking him to drop his head down in a relaxed frame. The wind picked up, a branch hit the roof, Magic’s head and tail went up — and Kennedy gave him a kick and a slap with the whip at the same time.
He shot ahead like a bolt of lightning, Kennedy clinging to the reins like a beginner on a runaway, and I bit back a shout of laughter. “Now make him settle down and canter nicely!” I shouted, and she wrestled him back under control, his strides shortening, his head lowering.
“Hold that for as long as you can. The second he starts to lose it, bring him down to a trot!”
They made it all the way down the long side of the arena before Magic’s balance began to wobble and he started to string out, his neck growing longer, his hind legs falling behind him. Kennedy sat down in the saddle and closed her fingers, and he broke into an ungainly, but not unacceptable, trot.
I waited for her to come down to a walk again and then gave them both a round of applause. “That was fantastic. Quit on that note.”
Kennedy cut through the center of the ring so she could talk to me without shouting over the wind. “That’s the nicest canter I’ve ever gotten from him,” she said, circling the pony around me. “And the best transitions, too.”
I nodded sagely. “Spare the rod and spoil the child. He just needed a little extra reminder that he actually needed to listen to you. These ponies were left to their own devices for way too long, right? Well, sometimes they want whispering, and sometimes they want shouting. Now that you’ve shouted, he’ll be listening more closely for the whispers.”
Magic tossed his head, as if to remind us he was still trouble. “We know you are, brat,” I told him. “But you’ll come around.” I smiled up at Kennedy, who was looking a very tired version of satisfied. “I think you have a riding lesson in a few minutes.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Kennedy was pretty worn out, judging by the face she made at me when I reminded her of her afternoon schedule — three riding lessons, one after another, all beginning riders from the posh school where Colleen was living up to her promise of talking up the farm at every PTA meeting. I couldn’t imagine what price Colleen would exact from me in the end, but as long as Kennedy kept making the kids smile while they were struggling to learn to post trot or keep their heels down, I wasn’t too worried about it. Lesson revenues were up, and the pony prospects didn’t eat all that much. It was good groundwork for a new chapter at Seabreeze Equestrian Center. Diversification was in. Kennedy was just going to have to be tired.
And hell, we were all tired. There were no breaks in the show season. The trailer was perpetually loaded — those students who did not have show-specific tack were having to lug their saddles and bridles between the tack room and the rig every few days, reconsidering their decision to only own one saddle every time, mentally rehearsing the arguments they’d use with husbands to buy that second-hand Butet, that new Pessoa they’d had their eye on. Beval catalogs were thumbed into wrinkled messes, and tack vendors at the show-grounds watched benevolently as rider after rider walked through their maze of saddles, all but genuflecting at the gate, so worshipful were their gazes, so gentle their touches. Women who showed horses loved saddles the way women in sitcoms loved shoes. They fantasized about a new saddle as the end of every want and care.
Even a new saddle couldn’t save us from the daily grind of driving, showing, returning, training, driving back again. After week two of HITS, we had enough horses in Ocala that I left the repeat offenders, including Ivor, at the show grounds when we drove home for the few dark days. Anna stayed behind to care for them, along with a couple of well-heeled clients who had gone in on a furnished apartment for the duration of the shows.
She watched mournfully as I drove away for the first time, wringing from me a promise that I would bring back Mason to do some low jumpers the next week. I felt so bad about making her stay there alone with seven horses, I gave in without really thinking about it. Then I had to call the office and request another stall — we hadn’t reserved anyplace to put Mason. It wouldn’t hurt anything but my pocketbook to bring him up for a week, I figured, and it damn sure did hurt that pocketbook, but Anna worked hard, and she hadn’t bargained on being left alone in Ocala. I winced and let them add the stall to my bill, which was already skyrocketing into a dollar figure most people reserved for purchasing luxury cars, or very fast boats.
Kennedy, Margaret, and Tom stayed behind at the farm. Margaret because she couldn’t be forced to a show by the barrel of a shotgun, Tom because he was more useful for heavy lifting than grooming show horses, and Kennedy because the kiddie riding lessons must go on.
She protested, weakly, when I announced she was not coming.
“I haven’t been to a big show in years! And never one like HITS!”
“You can come when you have students ready to show,” I said mercilessly, overseeing Tom and Anna as they loaded tack trunks into the rig’s tack room.
“I should go along first so that I know what I’m getting them into,” she said wheedlingly.
“I’ll fill you in on everything you need to know.”
Kennedy pouted. I ignored her. We had all been the junior trainer at some point in life. You worked with what you were given, and if you didn’t like it, you kept climbing until you had what you wanted.
You didn’t give up midway, as Kennedy had done, without the risk of starting over at the bottom. I didn’t mind teaching her a few life lessons, even if she was helping me out tremendously with the children. That would teach her to leave the fold and get a fancy office job, that would teach her to give up showing and goof around on the trails while the rest of us toiled in the arena.
These were my less charitable thoughts, the ones I couldn’t help but think when I was up to my eyeballs in show prep and riding lessons and anxious students asking ridiculous questions at every turn.
In other moods I was more generous. “If you have no lessons on Saturday afternoon, drive up and see the grand prix,” I offered one morning as I was throwing things into a bag, rummaging through my office for any last-minute paperwork I might need before a weekend at the show.
Kennedy looked up from the lesson planner she’d started leaving in my office, by the phone. She was busy enough now to have an office hour once a day, coming in before she rode Sailor and the ponies so she could return calls, check lesson plans, and sort out who was going to ride what. We were running dangerously low on school horses that were suitable for the children’s program. The youngest, at age five, was barely tall enough to get her legs around Douglas — they seemed to stick out comically, like a stick figure on a cartoon horse. The oldest, at thirteen, was tall enough but not quite advanced enough for Marigold, a Dutch Warmblood mare crossed with something bad-tempered and long-eared. She wasn’t quite a mule, but she wasn’t far off, her old owner had told me as I’d stood next to her paddock, gazing at her in quiet disbelief. I’d bought her for a school horse because she was cheap and talented, but I’d never be able to sell her a show horse — she was just too odd-looking.
Plenty of women in the barn had gotten their starts on Marigold, who had more than earned her keep, but Kennedy was sighing that Julia, one of the new kids, was constantly in danger of being run away with by the hard-hearted mare. So I’d promised that if Ivor could bring home big money, I’d buy a quiet, sensible large pony for the taller kids to learn on and show in short stirrup classes when the time came.
Those sorts of ponies didn’t come cheap, which meant I was putting off that purchase as long as possible. The lesson money was coming in, but the boarders were still trickling out. Tourists were beginning to outnumber residents in the grocery store down the highway. That was where the trail business was coming in to save the day, I kept reminding myself every time I looked at the dwindling barn roster. As soon as the show season was over, we’d work on Plan B.
“I have lessons all Saturday afternoon,” Kennedy said now, looking at her pl
anner. “Julia, Michael, Georgina.”
“Michael,” I observed. “A boy at last! Hang onto him. He’ll be valuable down the road. How old?” Why were so many top riders and trainers men? Proportionally it made no sense. I’d take the chance that Michael had a decent shot at catapulting into stardom, based solely upon his sex. Statistics were on his side.
“Ten,” Kennedy confirmed. “So I can put him on Douglas. I still have Julia, though…”
“She rides first, right? Put her on Douglas too. He needs to get a little condition on. Maybe he’ll even have a little energy.” This was patently impossible — Douglas hadn’t had any energy in five years, and he wasn’t impressed by his return from retirement.
“I can’t do that. Douglas is barely hanging on. He goes around with his head on the ground as it is.”
“Then lunge the crap out of Marigold. Go ride her now.”
“I have to ride the ponies. If Anna were here…”
Anna was in Ocala. “It’s just you.”
“Can you ride her?”
I shook my head. “No way. I have to get up there. I have classes this evening.”
“We should have bought a made pony,” Kennedy sighed. “At least one.”
I grabbed my keys and made for the door. “We had a budget. We went with the most ponies for the buck, so we can sell them to the students down the road. It’ll pay off in the end. In the meantime we work with what we got. Figure out some easy stuff for Julia and Douglas so he isn’t so worn out, figure out how to wear out Marigold, whatever works. I have to go. You’re in charge.” I paused, hand on the door. “And by in charge, I mean don’t do a thing without calling me and checking first.”
Kennedy’s sigh saw me out the door. Welcome to the club, kid, I thought, thumping down the creaking staircase to the barn aisle. We’re all mad here.
I drove like a maniac and arrived in Ocala after three o’clock. The show grounds were hopping, with horses of every shape and make and model cantering and trotting and walking and spooking and grazing and dozing and jumping. Women were everywhere, too, from toddler to senior citizen, and a decent scattering of boys and men as well, their breeches a bit more discreetly loose than the lady’s skin-tight versions. Knee-high black boots, garters and jodhpur boots for the little ones. High-collared shirts and sober dark riding jackets adorned every single man, woman, and child preparing to hop on a horse or pony. Everywhere you looked, people demonstrating the look of thousands of dollars dropped for space-age technology in centuries-old camouflage.
I shrugged on my own navy-blue jacket as I was walking towards the barn where our stalls were. The coat was old and beginning to pill on the collar, but it was comfortable and felt lucky after all these years. When I was in the saddle, no one could see the sleeves were fraying at the wrist or the seams were stretching into thin pale almost-nothingness. I’d wear it until it tore off of me going over some mad maxed-out oxer, and someone would take a picture and put it in a magazine: the Veteran Trainer, Still Showing in Her Original Habit. Then I’d mosey on over to one of the fancy vendors and throw down some cash on one of the new sports jackets.
Maybe on Saturday night, after the grand prix.
Anna was waiting with a tacked-up Ivor, walking him up and down the barn aisle to warm up his muscles. Her face was creased with worry when she looked up and saw me. “I thought you weren’t going to make it!”
“If I’m any later than this next time, get on him and warm him up,” I told her, taking the reins and flinging them over his head. “Girth tight?”
She jumped to tighten the girth while I held Ivor, who snatched at my arm with bared teeth and pinned ears. I responded by tightening his flash noseband so that he couldn’t get his mouth open. “Manners,” I told him when he ground his teeth in annoyance. “Try them sometime.”
“All set,” Anna breathed, jumping back, and when I lifted my knee she obediently fitted her palms beneath my shin and gave me a leg-up. No mounting block, no problem — that’s what working students are for. “You need me at the warm-up ring?”
“I’m good,” I said. “Rub a cloth over my boots, will ya?” I reined back Ivor, who was prancing forward, his blood up and the show-ring in his sights. Anna grabbed a washcloth and dusted off my boots, restoring their dull gleam. She’d covered their scars with boot-black at the end of the last session, before I drove back to the farm.
“Perfect,” I announced, loosening the reins, and she stepped back as Ivor bolted down the aisle, his head in the air, snorting through the flash noseband. I wrestled him down to a walk and he shied and spooked his way out to the warm-up ring, which was crowded with other keyed-up horses, athletes with their eyeballs popping out from a combination of good grain and not enough turn-out.
I negotiated our way over to the rail and let him trot on, not worrying too much about his high head or pricked ears. As long as he didn’t take off, buck, or crash into someone else, I would accept a certain degree of silliness in the warm-up ring. It was only the second week of competition, after all, and the third time we’d been out in the rings in the afternoon, when all humanity seemed to be either a-horse or a-foot and everyone one of them was shouting something.
A mini motorcycle went howling by, its engine halfway between a squeal and a roar and the worst half of both, and someone shouted those were illegal on the show-grounds and the kid on the motorcycle gave the shouting person the finger and then a whole lot of people started yelling, and Ivor’s breath came fast and hard and his heart was pounding between my legs, thudding against my perfectly polished boots. I dropped my hands to his withers and put my calves firmly against his sides, to tell him I was there and he was safe and that calm-forward-straight was his only option, and he ducked his head a little, tucking his nose politely, before trotting on like a gentleman, only his swiveling ears and his snorting breath giving away that he was watching the world very carefully.
Stallions missed very little, and Ivor was no exception, but we had been together long enough to understand we could take care of one another. I let him trot if that was what made him happy, just making sure he had a clear path, maneuvering through the other horses on their own private trajectories, and when his breath had eased up and his ears were starting to slide back towards me, I asked him for a big bouncing canter.
God, what a pleasure he was. It was a wonder I ever rode any other horse, when I had a beast like this to carry me around the world. “We ought to run away together,” I told his flicking ears. “Give up these show barn blues and just be two comrades on the road to ruin.”
A loudspeaker crackled, announcing our class was beginning in five minutes. I resolved to focus. We weren’t running away today. There was money on the line.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
At the end of April, the whirl of showing came to an abrupt end, and all of the plans we had been quietly incubating were suddenly ready to hatch. It was time to start thinking about booking our first trail ride, an idea which set my nerves on edge.
Weekday mornings were quiet, which gave us a change to get in some planning sessions and make sure our horses, tack, and trails were ready for action. I had Kennedy taking out all the trail horses, and this morning Kennedy had taken out Rainbow for a solo ride, armed with a two-way radio we’d bought especially for this venture. The radios had cost a fortune, but promised to keep us in touch even if cell phone service failed out in the scrub, something I was not willing to even consider.
“Imagine, there was a time when we just rode out in the woods and whatever happened was part of the adventure,” she teased when I had finished warning her about losing one of the priceless radios.
I shot her a quelling glare. I couldn’t share her sense of fun and casual lack of concern over the thousand very bad things that could happen to a horse and rider in the woods. Especially with greenies who might never have been on a horse before! What would happen if something spooked one of these so-called bomb-proof horses… no horse could be totally fearless… wh
at if the whole lot of them decided to turn tail and run for the barn, leaving their clueless riders piled on the sand behind them, reins dangling as they galloped headlong along the trail… I swallowed, trying to get my lunch back where it belonged, and sought a more rational state of mind. But really, this whole venture was taking its toll on my nerves. My nights were haunted by runaway ponies, ghostly white in the moonlight, their frantic whinnies hideously familiar. If I’d been seeking the spirit of lost Sailor, sending out these trail rides was the only seance I had ever needed. I couldn’t shake the feeling the phantasms left with me even in the hot yellow sunlight of spring.
I reflected that trying to save the farm by diving headfirst into the discipline which had broken my heart and cost me my pony and essentially scarred me forever might not have been the best idea I’d ever had.
Colleen wasn’t helping the matter. She was determined to set the barn against the trail riding venture. I’d heard her strident voice echoing through the arena and heard her furtive whispers around every corner of the barn. In tack rooms and wash-racks and box stalls, Colleen was trying to raise up the boarders against me. I heard all about the diabolical plans I was supposedly setting into motion. I was bringing in cheap horses and cowboy saddles, I was inviting in families of tourists and half-drunk conventioneers, I was destroying the beautiful equestrian haven I had set up here and had been charging them an arm and a leg for every month for the past ten years. I was going after the cheap buck, selling pony rides like a carney, instead of investing in the community’s children as I had promised her I would.
“What children?” I wanted to scream, if I hadn’t been pretending I couldn’t hear her nonsense. There were hardly any children around here, not compared to what she had built up to me. Kennedy was busy, but no new students were popping up these days. We had tapped out the scarce resources of the neighborhood. The fact was, around here, there was no community, and there were hardly any children. What we had were ever-more-distant subdivisions, and SUVs dropping off children and picking them up again at the prep school, whisking them away to their more collegiate pursuits of tennis and chess and computer programming. The resort villas which had sprung up around the farm were not a community; they were home only to a fancy series of transients, and their empty streets rarely showed signs of life besides a few sunburnt golfers driving their golf carts out to the custom-designed hillsides.
Show Barn Blues Page 24