Catch Rider (9780544034303)

by Lyne, Jennifer H.

“She’s helping me out over at Oak Hill,” Wayne offered.

  “Oh, really? How is old Dutch? He loosened up any? He’s so tight, he squeaks when he walks.”

  This meant that she’d tried to sell him a horse and he’d either gotten her down too low or hadn’t met her price. Being Beezie, she’d been trying to take Dutch to the cleaners, and he wasn’t having it.

  We were off the subject . . . again. If he didn’t bring it up soon, I was going to do it for him.

  “We need an equitation horse. Sid qualified for the Maclay Regionals,” Wayne said. “She won a Maclay class on that jumper Idle Dice, Martha Wakefield’s horse.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Beezie said quietly, sitting back in her chair and nearly boring holes through my head with her blue eyes.

  “I figure I should go to the regionals,” I said.

  She stared at me for what felt like a long, long time. “I went to the Medal Finals in 1975,” she said.

  “I didn’t know that!”

  She shot a look at Wayne.

  “I told her—she just forgot,” he lied.

  “They’re doing the Maclay Finals at the Garden this year. I saw it in the Chronicle,” she said. “So tell me about old Martha and that horse, Idle Dice.”

  “I got to ride him in a show, and I decided to take him in an eq class, and we won. But now Martha’s granddaughter is taking him to the regionals.”

  “What’s that horse like?”

  “Big stride. Totally broke.”

  “When you say ‘broke,’ how broke?”

  “Pushbutton.”

  “Well, I don’t have anything pushbutton,” she said sternly.

  “Sid can ride anything, Beezie,” Wayne jumped in. “She just needs the closest thing you got to an eq horse.”

  “I got a gray mare who is broke and sweet, loves to jump, supple, gets all her leads, rocking-horse canter. Snaps her knees right up under her chin and turns on a dime. But she’s got a stop in her.”

  A nightmare for an equitation rider.

  “There’s nothing you can do about it. She’ll just decide to stop. All the schooling in the world hasn’t broken her of this habit, so don’t stay up all night trying to fix it. You’d just wear yourself out.”

  I knew this wouldn’t work. I couldn’t get all the way to a horse show and have the horse refuse a fence.

  “But that’s all I got.”

  “She sound?” Wayne asked.

  “Of course she’s sound. She trailers fine, cribs a little.” Meaning she chewed on the fence while sucking air—cribbing is the horse version of biting your fingernails, except horses can practically chew a barn down, so they wear a cribbing strap around their necks to stop it. “She’s a good girl. But she’s got a stop. She might get around twenty courses without refusing, or she might slam on the brakes at your first fence. It’s a genuine stop, not a dirty stop.” She meant that the horse would stop because she was spooked, not because she was being dishonest and trying to throw the rider. “You could try to use her to qualify, but I wouldn’t take her to the Garden. Might waste a lot of money that way.”

  I took a deep breath and looked at Wayne. “How much for a three-week lease?” he asked.

  Beezie laughed. “I’ll let you borrow her for free. Maybe Sidney could come over and ride some sale horses for me this winter.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  We went outside and walked over the hill on the gravel road. Beezie opened the metal gate and banged on a feed bucket. Three horses came walking over the hill, and I saw the mare. She was dapple gray, dark mane and tail, a nice expression. Sure enough, she started cribbing on the fence.

  Her name was Ruby.

  We went back with a trailer and picked her up that night.

  I told Edgar what I was doing, and he found me a new helmet, boots, and a coat. I didn’t know whose they were. The coat was too big, but it was the best we could do. The boots were my first Ariat Monaco’s, and boy, were they nice. Soft black leather, hidden zipper up the back so I didn’t have to use boot pulls to get them on or a bootjack to pull them off. The person they belonged to must have had one leg larger than the other, because the right one gaped open a little at the top and I had to keep hiking it up. But I didn’t mind.

  I got on Ruby the first day after school. I trotted her over poles—no problem—and then we cantered a vertical —fine—and then I turned to do an outside line of two oxers. I thought about her stop, and sure enough, she stopped. She slammed on the brakes so hard, I fell onto her neck and did a flip over her head, landing on my knees in the dirt.

  “Well, there it is,” said Wayne. I got up, tightened the girth, and got back on.

  “Just over a plain old white oxer,” I said. “Wait until she gets in the ring and there are kids and dogs and all kinds of shadows.”

  “Beezie said there wasn’t no rhyme or reason,” he said. “Here’s what I think: I think you forget that horse has a stop and you just take your chances. If you get it in your hea that she might stop, she’ll sense it and she’ll stop. She can tell you’re worried.”

  “She can’t tell what I’m thinking.”

  “The hell she can’t. You tell me: were you thinking about the stop when she stopped?”

  “No.”

  “You’re lying. I’m not saying the damn horse can read your mind, I’m saying you tense up just a tiny bit and it’ll make her nervous. If she’s one whisker nervous, she might stop. You look at that fence, and you think jump!”

  I nodded.

  “I wish Beezie had kept her big mouth shut about the stop,” he said.

  TWENTY-TWO

  AT FOUR O’CLOCK on a Saturday morning, less than two weeks after we’d gotten her, we loaded up Ruby and trailered her three hours to Warrenton. When we got there, the grooms were unloading the Oak Hill horses.

  I started braiding Ruby’s mane and realized that it looked horrible. I’d braided a few times before, but I had never gotten good at it. Show braids were supposed to look perfectly uniform and tight. The braids I had done were too fat, the yarn was too pale, and little hairs were sticking out all over the place. Plus every braid was a different size. I had tried to do it just like it said in Practical Horseman; I had separated the mane into perfectly uniform sections and clipped each one with a hair clip. But the mane was slippery so I couldn’t get hold of it and so thick that each section was less than an inch wide. I knew I’d be doing it all day.

  Wayne thought braiding was ridiculous, and he was no help. Edgar looked at Ruby and told me two things: one, I shouldn’t have washed her mane—they’re easier to braid when they’re dirty—and two, I shouldn’t have put ShowSheen in it. I hated that silicone spray but thought I had to use it, since it repels dirt. He said you use it after the horse is braided, but not on the mane. So I rewashed Ruby and tried again. It still looked horrible.

  The lady who braided for hire was standing on a stool the next aisle over, wearing a tool belt with yarn, scissors, thread, and needles and working on a horse. I asked her how much braiding cost. She said it was a hundred and twenty dollars, which I didn’t have, for the mane and tail. Wayne looked at his watch, said I had two hours and hadn’t even schooled the horse, and told me I was second in the order of fifty riders. The lady said she’d do it for eighty this time. Wayne pursed his lips and reached for his wallet, peeling off four twenties. I was so relieved that I wanted to hug him, but he was too annoyed. I took the lady to Ruby, and she pulled up her stool and got to work, her fingers moving so fast that I couldn’t see what she was doing. She sewed up each braid with thread and a needle, like a surgeon.

  “Braiding a doggone horse’s mane and tail for eighty dollars. I’m in the wrong business,” Wayne said. “This is the last time I ever pay for someone to braid your horse.”

  I almost died when I saw the course. It was an indoor arena, and it was small, with terrible lights. If Ruby ever stopped, she’d stop there. The standards on one of the jumps were big fake Sauer’s vanilla ex
tract bottles left over from the Grand Prix class, sponsored by Sauer’s. Wayne sucked on his dentures, walked around the ring a bunch of times. “I’m going to stand by that jump,” he said, pointing at the bottles. “When you come around, I’ll cluck if she needs it.”

  “As if that’s going to make any difference. You heard Beezie—there’s no rhyme or reason.”

  “Just listen to me,” he said. “You go deep into that turn, and you collect her. You get her ass up under her, use a spur or leg or your stick—whatever. Get her collected and tight, ready to go.”

  Forty minutes later, I was on course, for real. The first six fences were great, and then I came off the coop and had to cut around hard to the crazy fence with the bottles by the end of the ring. Ruby wouldn’t have time to look at it. I thought jump like Wayne had said, and I sat up. Then I felt the horse suck back and look at the fence with her ears up. She was thinking about stopping. Wayne was standing by the rail, waiting to see what would happen.

  I growled under my breath, “Git up, you bitch!” and I dug my outside spur into her right side as hard as I could, since I knew that was the direction she’d run out. She swished her tail, angry, and she galloped to the jump so hard, she nearly tore one Sauer’s bottle down. But she jumped it, and she didn’t even rub a rail. When I came out of the ring, Wayne grinned.

  We watched all the other riders go. I couldn’t find too many faults. One horse ran out and refused, a few rails were pulled here and there, another half a dozen or so were rubbed.

  I had no idea how we’d done.

  Wayne said he thought the judge had liked how I’d “cowboyed” Ruby over the jump. Some judges appreciated that, once in a while. He said they got tired of watching kids who were passengers instead of riders, and they wanted to see someone ride the damn horse, not just sit there and pose. That had never been a problem for me. Wayne thought I would place.

  When it was over, they started reading our jog order, and they called me twentieth. Kelly placed fifth and was jumping up and down and shrieking. You had to get nineteeth or higher to qualify for the finals.

  I’d missed it by one place.

  TWENTY-THREE

  I LIKED OLD RUBY. I rode her a few more times, and then we returned her to Beezie and I said goodbye. Beezie invited me to come ride again, and I knew I would.

  It was the beginning of October, and it was really feeling like fall. I was already behind at school; I didn’t feel too good about that. I had been reading the books Ms. Cash told me to read, but my midterm paper was late. She told me she wanted it done in two weeks or I was going to fail. I stayed up and wrote it in one night and then turned it in the next day.

  I hadn’t been speaking to Donald or Melinda at all. I was hardly ever home. One night when I was there, they called me into the living room and sat me down. Donald said he was planning to take that job in Bakersfield once it was official. My mother looked excited, and she let him do all the talking.

  “Sidney, there are opportunities there for all of us,” he said.

  I laughed. “I ain’t going to California,” I said.

  “You will if your mother tells you to. You’re fourteen years old and you do as she says.”

  “I ain’t going.”

  My mother looked upset. “I ain’t leaving you here,” she said.

  Donald cut a look her way when she said this, and I realized that he wanted to leave me here but she wouldn’t. Well, Christ Almighty—maybe she did have a backbone. Maybe I could get her to stay.

  “You can’t make me move to California,” I told her.

  “Where are you gonna live? Wayne’s?”

  “You’re damn right,” I said.

  “I won’t allow it,” she said.

  Donald stood up. “I’m taking that job, Melinda, so if you don’t come with me, then you can just stay here by yourself.”

  “Would you let us sort this out?” she snapped.

  “Don’t you raise your voice at me.”

  “It would be nice if I could have a goddamn conversation with Sid without—”

  He grabbed her by the arm and forced her backwards into the kitchen. She cried out, and I could tell it hurt.

  “I sacrifice everything for you, and you sit here without a job doing nothing,” Donald roared. “Not even raising your kid. You just take my money and sit on your ass. Don’t you swear at me.”

  I thought about getting out that pistol and putting one between his eyes right then and there. I’d count to ten, and if he hadn’t let go of her, then that was that. When I got to seven, he let her go and walked out the front door.

  I could hear her crying. I went into the kitchen, and she was standing there like a scared dog.

  “Get that man out of our house,” I said. I prayed, actually prayed, that she would say, “Yes, I know.” I prayed to God in my head, Please, please, please . . .

  But she didn’t say anything. I stood there waiting for her to settle down so we could figure this out the way we used to figure things out.

  Then she said this to me: “You’re trying to ruin my life.”

  And I realized she was crazy.

  In my car, driving up Route 220, knowing I might never sleep under the same roof as her again, I started crying so hard that I could barely see. I felt like my mother was dead.

  I drove to the farm. Wayne was asleep, drunk, on the sofa with the TV on. I slept there and went to school in the morning, and at lunch I told Ruthie what had happened, all of it. She just sat there chewing her food, shaking her head. I figured she was probably on her way to a fancy boarding school anyway, so what did she care.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  AFTER SCHOOL, I went to the barn alone. I had stopped by Wayne’s place on my way, but he stank of liquor so I left him home. I wasn’t cleaning stalls half an hour before I heard Dutch chewing out Wes over some horse getting cut up in the field. Wes had been walking the perimeter of the field for more than an hour but couldn’t find what had done it—a nail, a piece of metal, whatever.

  To listen to this while I was thinking about my mother was too much. When Dutch finally left, I found Wes. “You don’t have to let them treat you like trash.”

  He tried to ignore me. “Maybe they hired a pig farmer from Massies Mill because they knew he’d never stand up for himself. You’ll be here until you’re a tired old drunk.”

  “Don’t be blowing your stack at me, Sid. I’m the only friend you got around here.”

  I climbed up to the hayloft and threw down a few bales, broke the bales into flakes, and hayed all the horses, working with one of the grooms. When I was done, Wes was standing in the aisle looking tired.

  “You hungry?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll drive.”

  I got in his truck and we drove over to White’s, the local horsemen’s hangout, home of the “Mammoth Burger.” I’d only been in there once, with Wayne. Charlottesville was different from Covington—the cars were a lot nicer and the people had more money. There were terriers bouncing up and down in trucks in the parking lot and the people inside had on nicer coats than they would near my house, but you’d be surprised how much we all had in common. Horse people just wanted to talk about horses, gossip, make deals—you know, the same everywhere.

  Wes acted like I hadn’t said what I did. I couldn’t be- lieve I was sitting there with him. I felt like my life was in the damn toilet, yet suddenly it didn’t seem to matter so much.

  “I heard you almost qualified for the finals,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s incredible.”

  “Thanks.”

  We ordered cheeseburgers and fries.

  “Even if someone gave me a horse for the show, I’d have to pay for all the other fees,” I said. “The board at the Garden, trailering, entry fees, the hotel room. That alone would be . . .”

  “Six grand. Maybe more,” he said.

  “Shit. That’s a lot worse than I thought. Even with a loaned horse?”
/>
  “You wouldn’t get a free horse, Sid. If you went, you’d have to take something really broke, a real eq horse. And even if you borrowed one, you’d have to insure it.”

  I sat back in my seat and sighed. “Oh, well—doesn’t matter because I didn’t qualify.” I kept looking into Wes’s eyes. I felt as though he really understood and he cared.

  He blinked and looked away. “Maybe next year,” he said. But we both knew it had been a fluke and wouldn’t happen again.

  “How’s Wayne?” he asked.

  “Wayne’s not doing too good right now.”

  Our food came pretty fast, and we ate for a few minutes. I changed the subject. “Who’s your favorite horse in the barn?” I asked.

  He smiled. “That fat old pony, Cherokee,” he said.

  “Out of all the expensive horses from Germany and Sweden and Saudi Arabia, he’s your favorite?”

  “You try him out sometime—you’ll see. He’ll jump anything. You’ll rub your hands raw trying to hold him back. He’s got to be eighteen years old, at least, and he bites kids. But, man, is he fun to ride. You point him at a fence and he just takes off.”

  “So, you don’t mind working for rich people?” I asked him.

  “That’s where the money is.”

  “How’d you get the job?”

  “I was at a show once, working as a groom, and Kelly’s horse colicked. They found him in the stall about to die. The vet was an hour away, so I ran a tube down his nose and pumped him full of mineral oil.”

  “All by yourself?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Damn. That’s one thing I can’t do on my own,” I said.

  “The horse wasn’t going to make it otherwise—I didn’t have any choice. So they hired me because they wanted to keep someone with vet skills close by. I got accepted to a summer vet program at Virginia Tech, but the money at Oak Hill was too good, so I stayed.”

  I was impressed. “Virginia Tech is one of the best vet schools in the country.”

  “I’ve got a good gig. I’m lucky.” He shrugged.