by Juliet Bell
That morning she was dressed in jeans with colorful embroidered flowers, and dusty red cowboy boots that you could tell had been around real horses. With my squeaky new boots and baseball cap I realized I didn’t look like much of a rider.
“Ready, girls?” Miguel acted like Rosie and I had been palling around together, rather than standing quiet as a couple of sparrows. “Let’s get in the truck. ¡Vaminos!”
We all squeezed into the cab. Lou was inside the house barking, upset that he couldn’t come too, and Abercrombie Books was in his Haitian Room, but Grandmother stood at the screen door waving, looking for a minute like a regular grandmother.
Even sitting next to a kid who had no time for me, I was pretty excited. I had been so cooped up. I felt like Lou when he finally got a walk after I’d been away at school all day long. When I saw a sign saying we were crossing the Rio Grande, I couldn’t help saying something. I hadn’t even seen the river once since I’d been there.
“The Rio Grande!” I looked out the window expecting some huge glittering blue that looked like, you know, the Mississippi. Or the Amazon. Instead I just saw a wide stretch of red-brown slurry. “Geez. It’s not looking that grande right now, is it?”
“Not right now,” Miguel said. “But you should see her farther up. Out of the city. Beautiful river.” He paused. “Dangerous, too, you know. You don’t want to underestimate that river.”
“Dangerous?” I laughed, like he had made a joke. This water looked like something you could practically wade across if you had to. But Rosie gave her dad a dark daughterly stare for his comment, then went back to chewing her gum.
After we cleared the Rio and some neighborhoods on the other side, we started driving through more open country. The land was scrubby and dry, the earth a burnt orange. Eventually, after various swoops and curves, we headed uphill. When we came to two tall wooden posts under a sign that said Circle C Ranch, we turned.
“This is Carlos’s place,” Miguel said, and I could feel the air in the truck change. Happiness came into it: you could tell this was a place Miguel and Rosie loved.
Ranch might sound grassy and green, but the Circle C was all dust, wood and horses. And flies. There was a shaded indoor ring, there were trailers here and there, and kids and grown-ups walking about in their cowboy hats and boots, with places to go. By one low building was a big wood board with a list of painted rules, including, in capital letters, DON’T SCARE THE HORSES!
“My dad says you like to ride?” Rosie asked me. Since it was pretty much the first question she had ever directed my way, there was only one thing to do.
I had to lie.
“Oh, yeah.” I gazed off into the distance, as if I were imagining life back at home in Santa Rosa, and how much riding I did there.
“Do you have a horse?”
“Oh, yeah.” I nodded. “Yup. He’s called—he’s called Kepler.”
“And what is he—a Pinto? Palomino?”
She seemed interested, so I had to keep going. “Uh—yeah. That’s right. A Pinto Palomino.”
She gave me a weird look. (Later, when I knew more about horses, I realized it was like I had just told Rosie that my mom drove a Hummer Mini Cooper.)
Luckily I didn’t have to say any more about Kepler because Carlos showed up, a guy in a huge white cowboy hat with a thick black moustache. There were loud greetings all around—a big hug for Rosie, a slap on the back for Miguel, a surprised laugh for me.
“Look at you!” he said. “You’re Walt’s daughter—yes, you are.” He looked over at Miguel, who was nodding his agreement. “Let’s hope she rides better than Walt, though, huh, bro?” And the two of them shared some memory with their eyes that the rest of us could only guess at.
Carlos’s teenaged daughter Lola had saddled up some horses for us near one of the barns. There were going to be five of us on the ride: Rosie, Lola, Miguel and Carlos—and me.
When we ambled over there, I felt my knees go a little weak. Rosie seemed so comfortable and confident, and Carlos talked to each horse like they were members of his family. I was guessing that I might be looking exactly like what I was: a dumb girl from California trying to fake her way into a trail ride with people who knew better.
“Now, I know Miguel told me you’ve ridden some,” Carlos said to me, falling in step alongside. He smelled like cigarettes and horses—kind of a nice combo, believe it or not. And he had a warm voice like Miguel’s. “But I’ve put you on a real gentle mare anyways, so you can enjoy yourself. She’s called Paloma, and she is, too, she’s just like a dove. She’s a sweetheart; you won’t have any trouble with her.”
“Thanks.” I imagined some small, cute picture-book pony. But when I saw her, all saddled and ready, Paloma was a giant gray creature, more like a camel or a dinosaur than a horse. My palms started sweating.
Lola helped me up from the stool and got all my straps adjusted. She handed me a helmet, too, which was embarrassing since everyone else was in a cowboy hat, but whatever. I wasn’t going to fight it. I still felt pretty cool sitting up there. I was on top of the world! I decided to stop worrying. Paloma felt good under me. Huge, yes, but as Carlos had said, gentle. I patted her neck, like I saw Miguel doing to his horse, and put one hand on the saddle horn, like a regular old cowgirl.
I was ready. I mean, I thought I was. I felt like I was in some kind of movie, where I could forget my troubles and ride across the Wild West looking for bandits, or gold, with a big blue sky above me and my posse by my side.
The movie lasted about ten minutes.
So here’s a piece of advice I will give you free of charge. Don’t, if you can help it, lie to horse people about how much riding experience you have. It isn’t worth it.
Best case scenario: they can tell right away what a fake you are as you joggle along on the horse’s back and can’t keep the animal from stopping to eat dry weeds every five seconds, and no amount of clicking your teeth or kicking its fat sides seems to persuade it to keep going, like everyone else’s is doing, so you have to wait a lifetime, getting left farther and farther behind, until your horse decides on its own to move.
Worst case scenario: you finally get the horse into a trot to catch up, and from there it makes up its own mind to lope, for no reason, and you tear past everyone else on the trail, and then because your balance is so bad, when the horse spooks at some random bird or thistle, you slide right off, landing flat on your back in a huge cloud of humiliating dust.
That’s what happened to me.
For a minute I was too winded to cry, or breathe, or say anything at all. I couldn’t move. I heard some shouts, and the sound of horse hooves, and pretty soon they were all surrounding me, staring down. I felt like a piece of roadkill. Miguel jumped off his horse and kneeled next to me, trying to find out if I’d broken anything.
“I’m OK,” I managed to force out. “Sorry. I don’t know—” He gave a little wave and shook his head, like I shouldn’t try to finish the sentence.
The two girls, Lola and Rosie, stayed calm on their horses. “You all right?” Lola asked. She had sunglasses on, so I couldn’t tell her expression.
“Yeah.” Even if I couldn’t exactly breathe just yet.
“I fell like that a couple of times,” Rosie said. “When I was first starting to ride.”
She didn’t have to spell it out for me: she had figured out I was a beginner.
Carlos rode over too. He had managed to lasso Paloma, who was standing there, snorting through her hot nose—like she was the one who had a right to be annoyed. Carlos and Miguel exchanged some sentences in Spanish over my head, coming up with a plan. Then Miguel told me that Carlos was going to take me back to the ranch while the others continued their ride.
I was so ashamed now that I just wanted to curl up in the corner of someone’s stable and hide. I couldn’t look Miguel in the face. It was one thing to have lied to Rosie, who didn’t think much of me anyway, but I felt bad about telling Miguel I had ridden a lot when I obvi
ously hadn’t. He helped me to my feet and I kept saying I was OK, so at last he and the cousins rode off and it was just me and Carlos and Carlos’s big black horse Mountain. And our old pal, Paloma.
“You want some water, Ella?” Carlos offered me a flask, and I took a big gulp. He was a big, wide guy, but he kept on talking to the two horses in a soothing murmur, telling them that we were going back to the barn soon and not to be startled and where did you think you were taking this girl anyways, Paloma, to Arizona or what?
When I handed it back to him, I saw my charm bracelet had gotten all caked in dirt. “I’m sorry,” I said again to Carlos. I tried to wipe clean the heart, the star, the bunny—and before I knew it, I was crying.
And once I started, I couldn’t stop.
I really was sorry—for being such an idiot, and about a bunch of other things, too. Carlos patted my arm and my sweaty hair (we had taken the helmet off to make sure my head hadn’t split in two, which it hadn’t). He gave me his red bandana to wipe my face.
“Hey, it’s OK,” he said in a gentle voice. “It’ll be OK.” He looked out over the mesa, waited for a minute, then added, “Ella, I wanted to tell you—I’m real sorry about your mom, her cancer and everything. That has got to be tough.”
I nodded.
“I hope she pulls through.” He brushed his hand over his thick moustache. “I’ll pray for her. We all will.”
I nodded again. All over the place there were people praying for my mom. I just had to hope the praying would work.
“Now,” Carlos continued as my tears finally slowed down. “When you’ve caught your breath again, I’ll help you get back on. What do you say?”
“You mean—on the horse?” I sniffled in disbelief.
He laughed. “Well, I don’t mean on a ambulance.” He touched my arm. “Listen, I’ll have her on a lead rope and I’ll have the reins. She won’t go anywhere with you. She’ll just follow me and Mountain, nice and easy, I promise. We’ll get us back to the barn that way. All right? Be good for you—you don’t want to get all intimidated. Not of sweet Paloma.” He chucked his chin in her direction and the horse made a harrumph sound back to him. Kind of affectionate. “You and she ought to be friends.”
So I did it. Refastened the helmet, brushed myself off, and Carlos gave me a leg up to get back on. It was a shock to be up there again. I was scared and shaky at first, but with Carlos back on Mountain and leading Paloma slowly by the reins, it was a mellow ride, just as he promised. Kind of like those pony rides at the Sonoma County Fair, in fact.
Carlos didn’t say much until we were back around the barn area, when he mentioned casually, “You just need a few lessons, Ella, that’s all. Then you’ll be fine. I’ll get Miguel to talk to your grandma about it.”
“Lessons?” I squeaked. “You mean, you’d let me come back here?” I had been guessing I was going to be escorted off the property under armed guard or something. End up at the juvenile facility for lying about my horse-riding capabilities.
Carlos made a face. “Come back? What are you talking about, girl? By the end of the summer, we’ll have you loping past Miguel—and meaning it. Now, help me get the tack off these horses, will you? Let’s hose ’em down, even though they didn’t get too hot. Mountain loves his morning shower.”
So I helped Carlos clean up the horses and get them back in their stables, and at the end he gave me a few Life Saver mints, of all things, to give Paloma so we could “kiss and make up,” as he put it. I held them on my hand and felt her warm feathery nose on my palm as she vacuumed up the candy. For a second I could believe what he had said, that me and this horse—ahem! this horse and I—might one day be friends.
“All right, Paloma,” I whispered to her so no one could hear me. “I’m willing to pretend this never happened if you are.”
The others came back after a while, looking tired and happy, and some more Spanish flew around between Carlos and Miguel, and I guess it was decided that Miguel would take me back to the GM’s and Rosie would stay there and have lunch at the ranch. There were mouthwatering smells coming from the big house, where Lola’s mom was cooking. Mexican food, of course. I knew I didn’t have a chance of eating with them. I was doomed to go back to the House of Slaw.
Lola went off to do her own thing, but Rosie, before she went inside, gave me a little wave. She looked halfway friendly for a minute. Why shouldn’t she? She was about to have a delicious lunch, and she knew my butt was going to be sore for days. She had seen me flattened in the dust like a lonely beetle. It must have been kind of funny.
“Bye,” she called out. “See you around.”
Maybe there was some possibility between us after all.
SIX
June Was enDinG, FInaLLY. We Were COminG uP On THe Fourth of July.
In Santa Rosa we usually had music or games at the fairgrounds around Independence Day, and a few fireworks, but nothing too fancy. With luck you’d get cotton candy out of the experience, maybe some popcorn. It was always really hot, and Lou spent most of the night hiding under the bed because he hated the sounds of explosions.
This year, though, the day had a special significance: it was the date of the stem cell transplant, when my mom got her new blood. The story was, once they had radiated the heck out of her and she was totally nuked, they could give her the new, better blood that was supposed to cure her. Who knows how they think up these things, but from what Dr. Lanner had told us, the procedure could work miracles. (Which in Mom’s case was what we needed.) I called her that morning. She said she had seen the stuff they were going to give her hanging in clear plastic bags and it looked like tomato juice. I think she was trying to make a little joke about it, but I couldn’t get that picture out of my head, these mad doctors in Seattle injecting my poor mom with tomato juice. From that point on, the chance I’d ever drink a glass of the stuff was zero.
Usually after I talked to my mom, I had a huge urge to watch TV or some dumb YouTube video, but at my grandmother’s house all I could do was play Jewel Quest on my phone, so I did that for a while, in secret. The GM wasn’t supposed to know I had a Jewel Quest habit. I had no doubt that would be on her long list of unworthwhile activities.
I wasn’t trying to be sneaky as I soft-footed my way to the kitchen. First of all, you never knew when my grandmother’s hearing was going to be good—when, for instance, the noises I made chewing, or closing a car door (“Must you slam it so, Ella? Are you eager for the doors to fall off?”), would drive her crazy; and when she was going to be half deaf, like when I was trying to tell her something that happened to me that she suddenly couldn’t hear. “Do stop mumbling, Ella, it’s impossible to understand what you’re saying. The hmm-hmm ran away with you, and you fell on your hmm-hmm … ? Tell me again.”
Anyway, that morning, post–Mom talk, I thought I might as well find some banana peels or bread crusts to give to the peacocks. But I stopped when I saw that the kitchen door was shut. Behind it, I could hear my grandmother’s voice: loud, bossy and not especially friendly. Whom was she talking to?
I kept quiet and stayed still.
“Well, what you don’t understand is that while he’s here— Now, there is no need for that kind of language. The point I’m trying to make—”
It couldn’t be Abercrombie Books. She never spoke to Dear Christopher in this tone.
“The timing is inconvenient. It would be inconsiderate. You can’t just arrive somewhere without giving someone notice! Planning is not your strong suit, I know, but—”
I realized she must be on the phone. That would explain the louder voice, too.
“It is not as though you haven’t already imposed a great deal on me this summer, Walter, and—”
Walter. That was my dad!
“—while I sympathize with poor Ella’s circumstances, of course, it has hardly been easy—”
“Having a little listen-in, are we?” came a sly voice at my shoulder.
I nearly had a heart attack.
It was Abercrombie Books. He must have slithered in from the Haitian Room without my hearing him.
“I—I was just—” I stuttered. Oh, I hated him! And he was going to make me miss the best part now, on top of everything else.
“I wouldn’t, Walter. I am warning you. It is not a good idea. Wait until—”
“Some people might call this … spying,” Abercrombie whispered in the same snaky voice. He seemed incredibly pleased with himself for catching me.
“Well, don’t,” came the voice from the kitchen. “That is my last word on the subject. Don’t.”
There was the sound of a receiver being slammed down.
Suddenly the door opened, and there was the GM, looking highly irritated—the more so when she discovered Abercrombie Books and me right in the corridor.
“Good heavens!” she exclaimed. “What on earth—?”
“Violet,” Abercrombie said, flustered. “I was just trying to tell your granddaughter—”
“You weren’t eavesdropping, were you?” The GM’s voice was harsh, but directed at both of us. Her eyes were the blue of an iceberg. “It’s a loathsome practice.”
“I didn’t hear anything.” I held up my hands, as if to show that they were empty.
“Er—no, no.” Abercrombie glared at me. “Neither did I.”
“Good,” my grandmother said curtly. “That was not a conversation for others to hear. Now, Christopher, are we to meet with Tweedle—that is—”
“Jason and Jackson, yes.” At least someone around here knew what they were really called. “The boys are going to give us a progress report. And then a prognosis: how long they think it will take to correct and digitize the accounting of your inventory.”