It started with an oxer, then a hard turn to a skinny vertical. Then a tight 270-degree turn to an in-and-out. Then a rollback to an airy fan jump, then a combination of three fences: oxer, vertical, oxer. Then a deep turn into the corner, and the killer: a combination of two fences so close to the corner of the ring that they would seem to pop up out of nowhere to the horse and rider on course. Finally, for the eleventh and twelfth jumps, a right-angle turn coming off the tenth to another airy vertical, and a complete 180-degree turn before a hard right into the final fence, a big wall.
I heard a girl suck in her breath as she studied the diagram. “It’s okay, honey—everyone has to do the same course,” her mom said.
The ring crew was putting up the jumps in front of us. The fences looked huge.
Dutch dismounted and talked intently to Kelly, pointing at the course. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I could see him gesturing for her to ride forward, ride strong. Then I heard him say the word bold.
“Riders, you may walk the course,” said the announcer.
The trainers got in there first, and their riders fell into line behind them. The trainers reminded me of generals storming a battlefield. They took long, confident strides in their black leather boots as they walked, fence by fence.
Wayne and I walked the course side by side. “One fence at a time, honey, one fence at a time,” he said.
We counted strides. I had never done this seriously before. I usually just used my eye to pick a takeoff spot. We started at the base of the fence and took two normal steps. That was for landing. Then we took long steps toward the next fence, three of our steps equaling one of Sonny’s. Then the last two normal steps were for takeoff. I could hear coaches and riders debating the length of each line. Boy, was this complicated.
Sonny had a big stride, but not enormous. He could play things long, like pull a five-stride distance into four, but I could also get five strides out of him. That meant I needed to use my eye and not count too much. As if reading my mind, Wayne said, “Use your eye. No counting in the ring.” I nodded. We counted only to figure out if we needed to collect our horses or lengthen their strides.
“Riders, please leave the ring,” the announcer said.
“You need to sleep,” Wayne said.
As if I could.
We checked the horses, and then Wayne walked me back to the hotel. When we got to our room, Wayne turned on the television, and I lay down and passed out until two o’clock in the morning.
THIRTY-EIGHT
RIDE HIM DOWN, just ride him down,” Wayne said. I’d need a ring the size of a racetrack to ride him down. Sonny had tried to bolt when I tacked him up and got on, a little before three o’clock. I stayed off his back and let him trot around as fast as he wanted. When he pulled on my arms, I let him have as much rein as I could so he wouldn’t start fighting me. Now he was looking at everything, everywhere. His back was so tight, I was afraid he’d pull something. I felt trapped in that underground cave with a crazy horse and no relief in sight. The biggest competition of my life.
We entered the ring with a bunch of other kids who were stuck schooling at three o’clock in the morning. Their horses looked fine. Sonny’s head was high and he was about to pull my arms off.
After a few minutes, Wayne saw that it wasn’t working. He grabbed Sonny tightly by the reins, under the chin. He walked us out of the ring toward the exit to the street, where the trailers had come in.
“Sir! No horses allowed over there!” said a security guard. Wayne ignored him.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Just do what I tell you,” Wayne said.
He walked us outside onto Eighth Avenue, holding Sonny’s cheek piece tightly in his big hand. Sonny was snorting and looking around.
“Someone explain to me how a horse who used to show on the A-circuit is acting like this,” I said to him.
“Because this horse ain’t really been showed. On any circuit.”
I felt like he’d punched me in the stomach. “What do you mean, he ain’t been showed?” I yelled.
“He was in the killing pen. At the Front Royal Auction.”
It had to be a joke. I looked at Wayne’s face, but he was dead serious. He was putting his cards on the table because he didn’t know what the hell else to do.
I’d never seen him before when he didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t like it one bit.
“You brought me up here, to New York City, to ride a horse from the killing pen?” I asked him, not really expecting an answer.
“You brought yourself up here.”
Now I was furious. “You’re a damn liar.”
“Chew-Gum lied to me.”
“What a surprise! Chew-Gum lied!”
We walked down the sidewalk, the horse’s shoes scraping on the concrete. I listened to the metal clinks of his shoes, making sure they were all the same pitch, a habit I couldn’t help, even now. If one of them had a high pitch, it most likely meant a loose shoe. Sonny’s shoes sounded okay.
Wayne led us over a metal grate in the sidewalk, and Sonny nearly jumped out of his skin.
“Whoa, now! Easy,” Wayne said, pulling him back onto the sidewalk. People were walking around us, afraid of the horse, as they damn well should have been. He was so worked up, he could’ve stomped anyone, Wayne and me included.
“When’d you find this out?” I asked Wayne. “That he was in the killing pen?”
“I called to get his show record. Nobody could find it, so I called Chew-Gum and he told me the truth.” Keeping his eyes on Sonny, Wayne mumbled under his breath, “He’s a shit liar. Once you lie, you stick to it.”
“I’m going to make a fool out of myself, if I don’t break my neck.”
Wayne was as scared as I was. He had as much at stake as I did. But he was in even deeper shit. On top of everything, he was responsible for me, and I was just a kid. I would have felt sorry for him if I hadn’t wanted to wring his neck for not telling me the truth.
We’d walked a block, and Sonny was jogging along like a racehorse heading to the gate. But he was starting to wind down, just a little. We passed a pair of carriage horses pulling an empty buckboard. The driver had on a tuxedo with a rose in the lapel and a black top hat. His dapple gray Percherons were matched to the teeth and trotting in perfect step.
“You let me down, you’ll be pulling a cart, too,” I grumbled at Sonny.
A couple of men were playing jazz music on the corner. Wayne pulled Sonny right up to them, and the trumpet player turned and bleated a note in his direction. I thought that damn horse would climb up a tree, but he just shivered, then took a long, deep breath and blew it out loudly with a snort.
“It’s about time,” said Wayne. “Crazy son of a bitch.”
“Good boy,” I said, patting Sonny’s neck with one hand, holding his reins tightly with the other.
Wayne let go of the bridle and fastened a long lead shank onto the bit. We walked back to the arena, both of us a little relieved.
Our scheduled warm-up time was over, but the lady let us into the ring for twenty minutes. We trotted a pole, about two feet six inches high. Wayne raised it higher, and we doubled back and trotted it again. The ring was so tight that I thought I might jump right out by accident, and we weren’t even cantering yet. Sonny was a little less hot but still not listening to me.
Wayne set up a higher pole, and we cantered it, pulling a rail that banged loudly. A couple of people turned and looked.
“He’s not paying attention,” I said to Wayne.
“Let’s make him pay attention,” Wayne said. He set up a high jump, about three feet nine inches—a big oxer. I shook my head.
“Girl.” Wayne tightened his mouth like he was mad. “That horse can get over this jump and you know it.”
“He can also crash right through it,” I said.
“Get over here,” he said, jerking his head at me in a way he hadn’t done in a while. When I went over to him, I re
alized he looked pale and worn out. “If you’re already talking like that, then forget it.”
I looked around at all the people watching.
“Since when do you care so much what other people think?” he asked.
“I wish I didn’t.”
“Then don’t! Who gives a damn if the horse runs through that fence?” He waited for a response, but I didn’t answer.
“Huh?” he demanded.
“Just me and you,” I said. “We’re the ones who care.”
“That’s right. And deep down, do we really give a damn?” He was looking right at me. I thought of his icy blue eyes staring down at me when I’d fallen off the red horse in the rain.
“No.” I was surprised, but I meant it. Deep, deep down, I really didn’t care.
I thought about the people I admired, like Eileen Cleek, like George Morris, like Beezie Winants. My father. And Wayne. They didn’t give a royal shit what anyone thought about them.
What had happened to me, that I suddenly cared so much how people looked at me? As a little kid, I’d walk into the supermarket with dirt in my hair, and I didn’t give a goddamn if someone thought I was living in a car. But being in ninth grade, and going to Oak Hill, and being around people like Dee Dee and Kelly, I’d started feeling their eyes on me and wondering if they were right about me, that they were better than me.
I had to take turns with another girl over that big fence Wayne had built. She looked fantastic. Then she dismounted and a different girl got on, trotting around in a figure eight. I realized the first one was her trainer.
“See,” said the trainer, “she’s bending better to the left.”
“Thanks,” said the girl.
I couldn’t imagine Wayne getting on and riding for me. He knew he couldn’t do a better job than I could.
“Do you want to catch a bigger oxer in here?” the trainer asked the girl. She nodded yes, they built my oxer into a bigger one, and her horse went over it like a Grand Prix jumper.
Wayne lowered the fence back to three feet three inches. I cantered the biggest circle I could, feeling a little wobbly. Then I pretended I was twelve and I was jumping some crazy pony, not caring what anyone thought. Not worrying, not thinking of all the things that could go wrong. Just imagining it working.
Sonny got in deep and jumped it, ears straight forward as though he were saying to himself, Damn, she’s serious. We were still in the air when I heard Wayne yell, “Good!” We landed, and Sonny dropped his head, got behind the bit, and thought about bucking but didn’t. He was happy. I wondered who was a bigger mental case, him or me.
Wayne checked his watch. “We gotta get him braided,” he said.
We walked out of the ring. I dismounted, and we led the horse through the dark aisles.
I untacked Sonny and put him into his stall. Wayne grabbed a stool, and I got the braiding kit, hopped onto the stool, and started dividing his mane into sections. Wayne wiped off the tack, then fed and hayed both horses.
It was five o’clock.
Wes appeared in the doorway.
“You start on the tail, I’ll do the mane,” he said.
“Aren’t you braiding for Kelly?”
“She’s going forty-fifth.”
He was concerned because I was going second. That made me feel flattered and insanely nervous at the same time.
“You scared?” Wes asked.
“Why?”
“You ain’t said a word.”
“I’m so nervous, I feel like I’m in a bad dream.”
“Use it,” he said.
I wasn’t sure I could. The biggest problem now wasn’t the horse or the ring, it was me.
We braided for an hour, listening to the Spanish music from the grooms’ radio. My mind raced. Wayne went to the snack bar and got some water and a muffin for me. I picked at it, but I couldn’t eat.
Wes had done a perfect job braiding the mane and rebraided the tail for me. It looked beautiful.
It was time to go.
Sonny had decided to lie down in the stall and was covered in shavings. I wiped him off and tacked him up.
Wayne gave me a leg up and walked with me to the warm-up ring. I let Sonny walk on a loose rein and look around.
And then I spotted Edgar. Wearing the biggest grin I’d ever seen, his face shining from sweat, he ran over to me. His eyes welled with tears.
“Very nice,” he said, looking Sonny and me up and down, straightening Sonny’s noseband.
“I’m okay?” I asked him, knowing he had the last word.
“You’re great,” he said.
“In about two minutes, we’ll begin the first round of the ASPCA Maclay Finals,” the announcer boomed through the warm-up area. “On deck is number one hundred seventy-one, then seventy-two . . .”
That was me.
Wayne grabbed the reins under Sonny’s chin. Edgar pulled the rub rag off his shoulder and chased after us, shining my boots and wiping off Sonny’s legs.
Kelly was bickering with her mother near the ring. She saw me looking, and she walked over to me. I thought she was going to wish me luck, but no.
“Sid, I have to tell you—I’m only telling you this to help you, because you’re not really used to the show circuit . . .” Her tone was snotty and knowing—the usual.
I braced myself, wanting to know what snide thing she had to say, ready to take the punishment, thinking I deserved it. But then I thought about Sonny and Wayne, and how hard we’d worked, and how letting her into my mind could ruin all of it. Whatever she said would stay with me. It would be the gift that kept on giving, forever.
I turned, looked her right in the eye, and said very calmly, “I don’t care. Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it.”
She recoiled. “Oh my God, I just—”
“Good luck. I hope you have a great round. I love that horse,” I said.
I gathered up Sonny’s reins and walked away from her. I wondered what on earth I’d done to some people to make them act like that. Maybe the real question I needed to answer was why I cared what she thought anyway.
Sonny was still looking around. A flash photo. A girl playing with a ribbon. A man taking off his jacket too quickly.
“Now I see why you did this drunk,” I said to Wayne.
“You know it,” he said.
“Sonny needs something to occupy his mind.”
“He’s about to get something,” Wayne answered. “Sid-ney . . .” Then his face got serious and he reached into his jacket. He pulled out a faded velvet jewelry box, opened it, and held up a simple gold stock pin. “Your grandma wore it. It was hers.”
“Thanks, Wayne.”
I took the box from him and picked up the pin. The cold metal felt good in my hand. My grandmother. I felt like she was there, on my team. I put the pin into my collar.
“First up is number one seventy-one, Justin Burke from Greenwich, Connecticut,” boomed the announcer.
We watched Justin do the course. He made a few errors, but because he was the first one to go, it would count a little less against him.
“On course is number seventy-two, Sidney Criser from Covington, Virginia.” It sounded as though he was talking about someone else until he said “Covington.” I bet the name Covington had never boomed across Madison Square Garden before.
I entered the ring and we picked up a trot. Sonny looked into the stands, seeing them for the first time. I pushed him on and circled, lining up the first fence.
Like Wayne had said, I could only jump one fence at a time and not the whole damn course, so that was what I was going to do. Every fence demanded a different approach—a forward ride, a collected ride, a light hand, a heavy hand. A couple of times I let Sonny land and gather himself up at his own pace; other times I never lost contact with his mouth and got him right into the next fence. Twelve fences. One at a time. Forward, bold, no counting.
I saw Wayne watching, still as a statue.
I got a little tense, and Sonny spe
d up. I remembered to keep my eyes soft and to take it all in—not to stare a hole through the jump. Sonny settled as soon as I made the adjustment.
We were supposed to gallop down to the final fence, and boy, did we. I heard Wayne say, “Whoa,” and I steadied Sonny just a bit before we took the last jump. We landed. First round over.
Pretty damn good.
I heard loud clapping and looked over at Wayne, but his hands were still gripping the rail. It was Wes, Edgar, and even Martha and Herbert Wakefield. And strangers. Strangers were clapping for me.
Coming out of the ring, I was giddy. I’d done it. It wasn’t a disaster.
Wayne walked toward me with a spring in his step. “Not bad. Not bad a-tall.”
“Thanks. You see him look at that fan jump? You see him race down that line?”
He laughed. “I sure did. But he did it.” He patted the horse’s neck, and we walked away from the arena.
Now there were one hundred and ninety-eight riders to go, and I had to wait three hours before I’d know what was next.
THIRTY-NINE
I PUT SONNY INTO his stall, pulled his saddle off, and unhooked the throat latch. His face was already in his hay before I got the bit out of his mouth. He was acting like a horse again and not some kind of crazy monkey. I filled his water bucket, took off my helmet, and tried to rest.
Wayne brought over a cardboard tray with sandwiches and handed it to me, scowling. “Fourteen goddamn dollars.”
We sat in the stands, watching the riders go. They were from all over the country. Santa Cruz, California. Princeton, New Jersey. Norman, Oklahoma. Johnson, Vermont. Marietta, Georgia. A bunch from places in Virginia I’d never been—Sandston and Ashland and Blackstone. Their horses were gorgeous, mostly bays and chestnuts, but also dapple grays and a couple of enormous white Warmbloods. Sonny was one of the only ones with bright white socks.
Wayne didn’t say much. I figured he was as blown away by the horses and riders as I was. There was nothing to talk about, really. Usually at a show, some kids are great, some are terrible, some are having a good day, and some bad. You see a horse try to kick another one, or a rider who can’t make a horse go at all. But here, everyone was great, and all these horses looked as if they cost a million dollars. When I glanced over at Wayne, he was just looking straight ahead, chewing.
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