Catch Rider (9780544034303)

by Lyne, Jennifer H.

  Yep, three fifty for the helmet, which wasn’t even a GPA, and nine hundred for the boots. I went to the used rack, but the prices were only half off. I left.

  Wayne saw my face and said, “Borrow something from the barn. It’s just one show. Don’t matter what color it is, don’t have to be too fancy.”

  “Have you been to a show?” I asked him. “They are all dressed exactly the same. They all have the same Ariat Monaco field boots that cost nine hundred dollars.”

  “Dumbest thing I ever heard! You need a pair of black or brown tall boots, period!” he shouted.

  “I’m not standing out like a sore thumb with brown dress boots!” I said.

  “Then borrow some from somebody at the barn.”

  “I don’t want to ask some rich girl if I can borrow her boots! They’re custom fit, anyway.”

  We dropped the subject. Wayne popped in his old Osborne Brothers cassette tape and we listened to it all the way home, not saying a word.

  The next day, not one of my days at the barn, I thought maybe thirty times about how I was going to get show clothes. When I got home from school, I called the barn and asked to speak to Edgar.

  “I need some boots. Please don’t tell me I can wear some old used dress boots that don’t fit—”

  “No, you need to wear what everyone else is wearing,” he said in his deep voice.

  “Thank you!” I nearly yelled into the phone.

  “Wayne doesn’t get it. You cannot stand out. People will know you are new, and they will be asking who you are. You must be dressed exactly like every other rider. I’ll find you a helmet and some boots. They might not be perfect, but they’ll be fine for one show.”

  “You understand.”

  He laughed. “This is what I do.”

  “I’m supposed to have another lesson with Dutch this week.”

  “You don’t have to. I’ll tell him the horse is tired. Just come out and hack him around the ring.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” he said confidently.

  It dawned on me that Edgar ran everything. Dutch, Dee Dee, and Martha thought they called the shots, but they didn’t. Edgar just let them think they did.

  When I got to the barn the next day, Edgar handed me a helmet. It was a little beat-up and too small, leaving a red mark on my forehead. But whatever. Now we had to find boots.

  “Kelly has an extra pair,” he said. “You could ask her.”

  “No way,” I answered.

  He found an old pair of boots that belonged to a boy who didn’t ride there anymore. The calves were very tight and the feet were too big, but when Edgar shined them up, they looked good. If only I didn’t feel like my legs were in a tourniquet. Edgar also found a riding coat, breeches, and a shirt, and he would have them sent out to the cleaners for me, but just this one time.

  The sleeves of the coat were too short, but he showed me how to tuck in my cuff so it wouldn’t be so noticeable. The breeches were too tight in the waist, so I safety-pinned them. The shirt was old and had someone else’s monogram on the collar, but the coat would hide it.

  “Go straight to the horse show grounds on Saturday,” Edgar said. He smiled big. “This weekend, you’re full service.”

  SEVENTEEN

  ON SATURDAY, WAYNE drove me to the show grounds in Keswick. I walked to the tented barn area where grooms were playing loud salsa music. Idle Dice was being braided by a woman I’d never seen before. A professional braider, I realized. With a braided mane, Idle Dice’s neck looked enormous, and his plaited forelock tucked up tight between his ears made his huge eyes look even bigger. As he chewed, muscles filled the hollow sockets above his eyes. His coat was so black and shiny that it looked purple.

  While I was standing there, a groom came along with Idle Dice’s tack, entered his stall, and put it all on without looking at me. He pulled the horse out into the aisle, wiped off the sides of his bit, pulled the hay out of his mouth. When I reached out for the reins, he looked at me strangely and walked the horse to the mounting block, motioning for me to follow. Then he took a walkie-talkie off his belt and said into it, “Idle Dice is ready and heading to the ring.”

  Now I really got it. This was how girls on the A-circuit stayed clean and relaxed, not exhausted or dirty. They had grooms. They had someone to clean the stalls and wrap the legs, braid, feed, water, polish, and scrub. They didn’t touch hoof polish when they were dressed and ready. They didn’t clean out the grime from between a mare’s udders or the snot from a horse’s nose. They didn’t pick the scabs out of a horse’s ears from fly bites or put salve over the wounds to heal them.

  How was this fair? How could you say you rode horses—and won horse shows—if you’d never had to do these things? Maybe there was a trial period, and once you graduated, you just got a groom and moved up. Maybe it was my turn to move up, and I would never have to dig to the bottom of a filthy stall again.

  But I knew this wasn’t true. These girls were just lucky. I thought about Wayne and what kind of rider he would have been with a setup like this. It wasn’t fair—at all.

  “Spit-shined and ready to go!” I turned around and saw Wes. I was so happy to see him that I didn’t know what to say.

  He reached under my chin strap and tucked my hair up.

  Edgar was watching. “You don’t have a hairnet? Wait here.” He jogged over to the next aisle, rummaged around, and came back with hair spray and a hairnet. He took my helmet off, fixed my hair, put a net over it, sprayed it, and put the helmet back on my head.

  “Ahh, much better,” said Wes.

  “Just like the other girls,” said Edgar. He winked.

  I took Idle Dice into the warm-up ring, where trainers and riders were crammed together, going in every direction. We weren’t all the way in when I almost collided with a girl. She said sharply, “Heads up, please,” like I was some kind of idiot.

  Dutch walked into the center of the ring sipping his coffee, but he was chatting with another trainer and didn’t look at me. I couldn’t figure out the traffic pattern, so I just got in behind some girl on a blood bay and picked up a trot. Girls were coming off jumps kind of fast and then merging with other horses at a trot, going both directions. No one was walking. But I just kept following the blood bay, trying to get into a pace. My legs were getting numb because my boots were so tight. My back was stiff and my helmet itched.

  I saw a trainer in the center of the ring staring at me, arms crossed. He was dressed in fancy dark jeans and an insulated vest, and he had a sour look on his face. He leaned over to another trainer, an older lady with short hair, and whispered something, still looking at me. I wished I knew what they were saying. As I came around the ring the first time, I heard a lady on the rail say, “Is that Idle Dice?”

  “Sure looks like him,” said the woman next to her.

  “What is he doing here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who is that on him?”

  “I have no idea.”

  It was quiet in the warm-up ring, even though there were at least twenty horses and about eight coaches all standing together in the center where the jumps were. The fancy flooring in the ring—it looked like mulch but wasn’t—absorbed all the sound. All I could hear was the jingle of the chain of a pelham bit and one roarer—a horse that had a wheeze.

  I saw Wayne walking toward the rail with his hands in his pockets. I waited to hear what he had to say.

  “Eyes up” was all he said.

  So, with people staring at me and whispering, with Wayne not saying much, with Dutch not paying attention, I decided to get out from behind that blood bay horse. It looked like the faster horses were closer to the center, and they were merging with the horses coming off the jumps. So I picked up a big canter and moved toward the center. Idle Dice had such a big stride that he ate up the ring faster than all the others, and they moved out of my way. What a nice canter he had, like a rocking horse. It was impossible to look bad on him.

>   Suddenly, Kelly came out to the ring, ducked under the rail, and made a beeline for Dutch. Dee Dee was right on her tail, jabbering. Kelly was ignoring her. She was gesturing and upset, pointing to her eye. They all stopped and looked over at me. I wondered what on earth they could want with me at this point.

  Dutch raised his hand and gestured for me to go over to them.

  “Sid, Kelly’s horse scratched his cornea. He can’t show.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad,” I said.

  Kelly threw up her hands as if to say, “Hello, why do you not get this?”

  Dutch went on. “She’s trying to qualify for Maclay, so she needs to ride Idle Dice today. Sorry about that.”

  I was stunned and didn’t say anything. I looked over to see Edgar holding Kelly’s saddle. He came into the ring. Kelly fastened her chin strap.

  “Sid, you can get off,” Dee Dee said.

  I was so upset, I was shaking.

  Kelly took the horse’s reins under his chin and I dismounted, not because I understood what was going on—I was still in shock—but because people were starting to look. Edgar took my saddle off and handed it to me. He seemed angry but wouldn’t look me in the eye. They put Kelly’s saddle on, and she mounted up and patted Idle Dice’s neck, talking baby talk to him. She gathered up the reins and walked into the crowd of horses schooling, and that was that.

  I carried my saddle out of the ring to Wayne.

  “What the devil is going on?”

  “What does it look like?” I said. “Kelly just found her new equitation horse.”

  We watched the show from the grandstands.

  When the Maclay equitation class came up, we looked for Kelly. She had Idle Dice too tight.

  “Why is she all up in his mouth?” I asked.

  Wayne just shook his head. He looked really sad, and it made me feel horrible. Seeing him so disappointed nearly tore my heart out. I hadn’t realized until that moment how much he wanted this for me.

  Dutch started actively coaching from the rail. I strained to hear what he was saying. “Soften. Soften. Open your hands.” He was trying to be calm but he was getting emphatic. Dee Dee was right there, looking as tight as bark on a tree.

  Even though Kelly was tense and hanging on his mouth, Idle Dice managed to put in a beautiful round, and Kelly got first place. Ten more points toward the regionals. One more good equitation class would do it.

  Wayne and I rode home in silence.

  Finally, as we were coming down the mountain, he spoke. “The right thing for me to do is to tell you that this ain’t for you, that you don’t have the money. If I had a conscience, I’d do that. But I don’t have a conscience. So I’m going to tell you that if you work hard enough, you can beat her.”

  “I don’t care,” I said.

  “That’s a lie and you know it. You’d like to grind her into the dirt. You’re a better rider than she is.”

  We pulled into my driveway and he turned the motor off.

  “Listen, kid. Once you ride a horse like that, there ain’t no going back.”

  I got out and went inside. I could hear his truck leave.

  No one was home. I went into my room and shut the door. I looked at the posters all over the wall, of the U.S. Equestrian Team, of George Morris, of the puissance classes in England where the horses jumped seven-foot walls. I lay down on my bed and closed my eyes to sleep, but I started to cry instead.

  The next morning I got up first thing and drove to Wayne’s. I felt awful and I wanted to talk to him. I knew he would have recovered from the disappointment and would have something tough and clear to say about all of it. He would make me laugh and help me get my head screwed on the way it should be.

  But when I walked inside his house, I found him sitting on his bed, drinking a beer. He looked up at me. “I don’t get a day off?”

  “You’re drunk,” I said.

  “Half-drunk.”

  He shifted his weight and there was a loud clunk that made me jump. He reached under the bed and pulled out his .44 magnum, a big silver pistol with a long barrel.

  “Good Lord,” I said. “Are you Yosemite Sam or what?”

  I reached out to touch it and he handed it to me carefully, barrel down.

  “It’s loaded?” I said.

  “Of course it’s loaded. Why the hell anyone would have a gun in the house that isn’t loaded is beyond me.”

  I pretended to tuck it into an invisible belt and then whipped it out, cowboy style, pointing it at the wall.

  He laughed. He knew I could handle a gun. Wayne, Jimmy, and I had spent many afternoons shooting bottles off a log with Wayne’s old single-shot Winchester rifle.

  “Can I take this home?” I asked.

  “What for?”

  “’Cause Donald has one in his truck, and Melinda doesn’t have one at all. Do you really think Donald should be the only one with a gun?”

  “Take it home but don’t say anything. And don’t shoot yourself by accident.”

  I put it on his bureau and stared at it. Just looking at it made me feel better.

  “Don’t you tell him you got it. Hear?”

  I nodded.

  Wayne went to the kitchen and opened another beer. It was only seven thirty in the morning.

  When I got home, I tucked the pistol under my bedsprings. I felt like someone had been in my room, looking through my things. Melinda would never do that.

  I heard Donald talking on the phone, and I realized he didn’t know I was there.

  “I know, Mr. Sheffield, I’m sorry. I thought . . .” Someone on the other end was yelling at him. “I know, sir, I’m sorry. I’ll be there tonight and I’ll work a double shift, and I’m sorry.” The man yelled again and hung up. Donald cursed and grumbled to himself. I hid in my room without making a sound, scared as hell he was going to find me, until he left.

  EIGHTEEN

  MONDAY MORNING I stopped by Ruthie’s house to pick her up for school. I drove up the dirt driveway and honked as her daddy was coming out in his work clothes, ready to go to the mill. He waved to me and walked over to say hi. I loved Earl. He had this big head and big smile, meaty cheeks, and a dimple in his chin.

  “Mornin’, girl. You up all night doing that history paper?”

  “Yeah,” I lied.

  “You girls are too smart to stay around here all your lives. You’ll wind up working in the mill, like me.” He grinned.

  Why did people always say this?

  “I don’t think I could work in the mill,” I said.

  “That’s what I used to say.” He chuckled and tapped on the roof of my car, then walked to his truck. “You girls mind your manners and do your homework.”

  Ruthie and her sister, Dorine, who was eleven and went to junior high, came out and got into the car.

  “Does your daddy know I don’t really have my learner’s permit?” I asked her.

  “No. But now he will ’cause of Dorine’s big mouth.”

  “I won’t say nothing,” Dorine said. “Damn, Sid, I thought you was fifteen.”

  “I’m almost fifteen. Who’s counting, anyway?”

  “Why are you so grumpy?”

  I guess I looked as worn out as I felt. “I’d like to tie a couple of sandbags to Donald’s ankles and shove him over the Gathright Dam, for one.”

  “Just shoot him and tell God he died,” Dorine said.

  “It’s tempting.”

  “I’ll be damned if I’d let some lady sleep over at our house and start bossing us around,” Dorine went on.

  Ruthie’s mouth fell open at the thought.

  “Can you imagine that?” I asked Ruthie.

  “No. You put it like that and I can’t,” she said.

  “I’d kill her myself,” Dorine said.

  Ruthie turned around and stared at her sister. “Dorine, I better not be fishing you out of juvenile hall in a couple of years.”

  “Did Ruthie tell you she’s applying to a private school?” Dorine asked m
e.

  Ruthie looked horrified. “See what I mean about a big mouth? Nobody has any privacy.”

  “A what?” I asked. “A private school? Where?” She’d been hiding something from me.

  Ruthie glared at Dorine. “I’m applying to the Madeira School up near Washington, because that old bitch guidance counselor is making me.”

  “What do you mean, she’s making you?” I asked. Ruthie was bullshitting me and we all knew it.

  “I couldn’t afford to go there anyway,” she said.

  “You can get financial aid! You got a single dad who don’t make no money,” said Dorine.

  “Dorine, shut up!”

  We rode along in silence, me considering what it would be like if Ruthie left. I wished I’d never gotten out of bed.

  NINETEEN

  THE NEXT COUPLE of days, I went to school and then to Wayne’s afterward. He was drunk the whole time. I felt like I should be there so the house didn’t burn down. I did my homework, or at least some of it, in his living room while he snored on the couch. I called the barn and told Edgar that Wayne was sick, so he had someone cover for us.

  I drove to the barn myself one day after school. If I’d gotten caught on the interstate, I would’ve been in trouble.

  I was cleaning stalls when Martha sneaked up on me. I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  “Would you like to show Idle Dice this weekend?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Kelly is showing a horse we’re trying to sell.”

  “Which classes?” I asked.

  “Something easy,” Martha said.

  I wasn’t sure why she said that—easy for me or easy for Idle Dice. “I thought you said Idle Dice likes a challenge.”

  “Well . . .” Martha hesitated.

  “You don’t think I’m ready for an equitation class?” I asked. I must have been losing my mind, talking to her like that. But I figured I might get to show Idle Dice only once, and I wanted to make the most of it.

  “It’s really hard,” Kelly said, walking over to us from the wash stall.

  “Jumping ten fences is really hard?” I asked.