A Good Horse

by Jane Smiley

  Whip

  Bit

  Chapter 10

  BUT IT’S FUNNY HOW A FEELING STICKS IN YOUR MIND. EVERYTHING is the same, but it looks a little different just because of that feeling. For me, for the next couple of days, things just looked a little sadder than usual. Here was Rusty, who got to lie on the porch now and be petted by Mom, and called by her new name, which she seemed to understand, and instead of thinking of her as a dog who had found a home, I thought of her as a dog who had looked for a home for a long time. Or here was Stella in a new outfit (a green and black plaid skirt with a round-collared pink blouse, which actually looked pretty nice with the plaid), and I didn’t think of her as a girl with a new outfit but as a girl who was never satisfied, no matter how many outfits her mom bought her. Here was Kyle Gonzalez, who always got As, which was how I usually thought of him, but now it seemed to me that As would never be good enough for him. Or there was Leslie. Leslie always sat near people but never right with them. She could have opened her mouth and said something, or she could have sat in a corner and read a book, but she did the one thing that was guaranteed to make her feel left out.

  Only Alexis and Barbara could not be made to be unhappy. You could see it in the way they walked down the hall—they were always talking to one another about their plans. Yakety-yak, yakety-yak—they would stride down the hall and just slide around whoever was in their way without even noticing. “Excuse me; oh, sorry; hi; thanks”—there was a way that they were perfectly polite, because they knew all the words and said them automatically, but they didn’t look around themselves. I realized that they were so full of projects that maybe it never crossed their minds to wonder what the other kids thought of them, or who liked them and who didn’t. They had each other.

  On Friday, efficient as always, they came up to each of us who was going to be at the play-reading on Saturday and handed us index cards with our name, the time, and the parts we would read. It was not like they were telling us what to do—it was like they were letting us in on their plans, their fun. They smiled and laughed and said, “Oh, Abby, this is going to be such a good time! Mom gave us a bunch of old sheets and some cord, and she said we could make them into togas if we don’t tear them or anything, so we set the time for fifteen minutes early, so we can put them on!”

  I was Antony, mostly, with a few centurions and other people who just had to say a word or two. That night, I did a lot of horse work that I would normally have done on Saturday morning, but really, Daddy didn’t care, because he had heard of both Shakespeare and Julius Caesar and he never minded me getting an A in school. Mom dropped me at the Goldmans’ at nine-fifteen Saturday morning and said she would be back at noon.

  The big living room was set up more like a theater. They had laid down some sheets of wood up against the window, so that the valley outside looked like the backdrop, and they had set up about ten or twelve chairs in front of the stage for an audience. Gloria and I must have looked a little nervous about this, because Mrs. Goldman walked past us, carrying a bowl of cut-up fruit, and said, “Oh, girls! Won’t this be fun? Even a little bitty audience just raises your energy, somehow. And the neighbors kept asking if they could come over and have a look.” She set the fruit down next to some drop doughnuts and biscuits.

  After we had had what we wanted of the treats, we went into the dining room, where Mrs. Goldman and one of the neighbors pinned our togas on us. They felt silly, but I have to say that when we all came out into the living room and stood in the stage, we looked pretty good. Alexis’s toga was yellow, because they had run out of white sheets, but she had also found a plastic sword, which she had in a loop at her waist.

  We started where we had left off Tuesday—Julius was dead, and everyone had to talk about him and say why they had killed him. First up was Alexis, as Brutus, who made a speech about how much he loved Julius, but how much he thought Julius was about to take over the country and become a dictator, and he felt he had to stop that. All the girls in their togas said they thought this was about right, and it was a good thing that Julius had been killed.

  Then it was my turn. I was nervous because I had so many speeches to read, but I knew if I got mixed up, Barbara would stop us and tell me what was going on. The first thing I had to say was “Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears, I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.” Then I went on about how Brutus and Cassius and the other ones who killed Julius had good reasons, and were good men, and then I went back to all the good things that Julius had done, and what a nice person he was, and then I said that I wasn’t going to say too many good things about Julius, just a few. This went on and on. It was a long scene, and at one point, I stepped on my toga, and it started to fall off, so I had to hold it to myself with my arm and pretend that I just couldn’t go on any longer. By the end, though, after I read Julius’s will, in which he gave every Roman some money and also a park, I had the Romans completely worked up and ready to go kill Brutus and Cassius and their friends.

  After that, there was a scene where the Romans mean to kill one of the assassins, but they kill another guy with the same name instead, and then there is a war. I had a lot of scenes in the war. My friend Octavius, who is Julius’s son, and I win the war, and the last thing that happens is that Alexis as Brutus falls on her sword and kills herself, and then I say what a great person Brutus was, that his intentions were always good and noble, even though those of, say, Cassius, or even me, myself, as Antony, were not.

  It took us until after noon to finish this, and by that time, Mom had come in and was sitting in a chair. When we were finished, everyone clapped and shouted “Bravo!” and “Hurray,” and we took three bows, with Alexis and Barbara taking four.

  When I was in the dining room taking off my toga, Barbara came up to me, and took my hands between hers, and said, “Oh, Abby! You were so good! I really liked watching you.” And she gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. I didn’t know what to say, so I just said, “Well, I understand this play better than I ever understood any book we’ve read for English before, and that’s because of you.” And it was true—when we took our test on Julius Caesar that week, I thought it was easy, and I got a hundred on it.

  But Mom didn’t like it as much as I did. Once we had gotten into the car and were maybe five minutes down the road, she said, “My, that was surprising, the way Barbara, was it? had to kill herself at the end there.”

  “That was Alexis. Barbara was our director.”

  “Alexis, then. I’m not sure that was really a suitable story for you kids.”

  “Well, it was Shakespeare.”

  “I know that.”

  “It was assigned. The whole eighth grade has to read it. In Great Expectations, the little boy gets beaten all the time by his sister, and then at the end, the bad guy is killed and the other guy dies just before they are going to hang him.” I looked at Mom, whose eyebrows were a little lifted. Then I said, “Of course, I didn’t understand what was going on while I was reading it. So it didn’t make much of an impact.”

  Mom chuckled, but then she got serious again. She said, “You girls actually acted out these crimes, though. That’s a little different.”

  We did act them out, I thought, and it was fun. And it wasn’t really fun until we got to those parts of the play. But I didn’t say this. I didn’t know what to say until I said, “Well, my character didn’t take part in the murders.”

  “I’m glad of that.”

  “But there was a scene before you got there where because of things he said, the citizens killed an innocent person.”

  “I think I need to talk to your teacher.”

  I said, “An innocent person like Jesus.”

  Mom looked at me.

  I said, “Didn’t you read Shakespeare at school?”

  “We read A Midsummer Night’s Dream in tenth grade, Hamlet in eleventh grade, and Macbeth in twelfth grade.”

  “Did you believe them?”

  “Well, we read them, we
didn’t act them out. And I don’t know that I actually read them all the way through.” She looked at me. “Though I can’t believe I’m admitting that.” We laughed a little, then we were quiet for a while, until I said, “Barbara thought I was good.”

  “You were good. I thought so, too. That’s probably why I’m worried all of a sudden. And Alexis was good. I believed that she was killing herself.” She looked at me. “Sort of.”

  “Everybody got really into it, even Leslie. And Maria. Maria had the spookiest lines, and it sort of gave you the willies to listen to her. What I liked about my part was, I don’t know, that I had to think of what happened in two ways at the same time—that there was a good side to the fact that they killed Julius and a bad side to it, and that there was a good side to me, because I loved Julius, but a bad side to me, too, because I wanted to get even with them for killing Julius, but then at the end, I realized that even though Brutus had killed Julius and I was really mad at him for that, he really did think he was doing the right thing.”

  Mom didn’t say anything to this—we were almost home. But it was true. When things really started to happen, how were you going to make up your mind what to do? If you have a good side and a bad side, then how do you choose if there are lions walking around downtown and people are lit on fire without burning up, the way they were in Julius Caesar? I sighed. We turned into our driveway. Mom said, “Well, honey, I can see you are growing up.” When she stopped the car at the gate, she said, “I don’t know that that’s a good thing. But there’s nothing we can do about it, is there?” She leaned over and gave me a kiss before I got out to open the gate. When Daddy asked me how the play went, I noticed that she didn’t say anything. I said it was fun.

  On Monday, it started raining and rained for three days, the first rains of the year, and a little early. Daddy and Mom were happy about this, and so, I suppose, were the horses, but for me, it was bad because when I brought out my sweaters and my raincoat, they were all too small. And Mom didn’t have time to take me to the store until the weekend, and so the choice was wearing one of Danny’s old sweaters or trying to fit into mine, which was uncomfortable across the shoulders and the chest. I did have to wear Danny’s old raincoat, which was incredibly wide and an ugly green color like pea soup. Gloria and Stella had both thought ahead and had new raincoats. Gloria’s was tan, with a belt, and Stella’s was yellow, with black polka dots. It had a black corduroy collar and a matching rain hat and was very cute. They were so proud of them that during lunch, they ate fast and then paraded around outside just to show them off. Me, I went into our homeroom and did some homework.

  Thursday and Friday were teacher training days, so on Thursday morning, Daddy and I loaded up Black George and headed out to Jane Slater for another lesson. I was really happy that it wasn’t raining, even though, at the coast, it was gloomy and cold. Miss Slater was glad to see us, and as soon as we unloaded Black George and were tacking him up, she brought Colonel Hawkins over. Colonel Hawkins walked right up to Daddy and shook his hand, and said, “Great to have you here, Mr. Lovitt. Jane tells me you have some nice horses.”

  “We think so,” said Daddy. “Most of them are ranch horses, though.”

  Colonel Hawkins was standing, staring at Black George, one hand on his hip and the other one stroking his chin. He had on black breeches and the most beautiful boots I had ever seen, deep reddish brown with three buckles down the sides and tied like shoes across the ankle. They were perfectly polished but so old and used that they just folded around his legs. He said, “This fellow is not a ranch horse.”

  “No,” said Daddy, “I figured that one out. But no telling what his breeding is. I got him the same place as all the others, out in Oklahoma.”

  “Well,” said Colonel Hawkins, “when I was at Fort Riley, in the U.S. Cavalry, we got good horses from Oklahoma all the time. There are good horses everywhere, if you’ve got time to go look for them.”

  “Fort Riley is in Kansas,” said Daddy, “so I suppose that’s true.”

  Kansas and Oklahoma were right next to each other, of course. Daddy and Colonel Hawkins smiled at each other.

  Now the colonel walked slowly around Black George, first clockwise, then counter-clockwise, looking at him very carefully, but he didn’t touch him. Black George stood up nicely, his ears either flopped in a relaxed way or pricked, if something seemed to be happening over by the barn. Finally, Colonel Hawkins said, “Thank you,” and stepped up to Black George, patted him on the nose, and palmed him a lump of sugar, saying, “Good boy.” Then he said, “Jane, we’ll talk later,” and “Abby, Mr. Lovitt, a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Oh,” said Jane once he left. “Such a clammy day. I’ve been cold since I woke up. I think we need to get moving.”

  She led us over to the big ring, the main one where they had the horse show, and Daddy gave me a leg up into the saddle. Black George seemed to be saying, “Ah, I’ve been here before,” as he ambled around, looking at this and that—more at the trees and what was happening in the distance than at the jumps. The jumps did not surprise him. I was enjoying myself, but I could see Daddy and Jane talking a mile a minute. At one point, as I was trotting by, I heard Daddy say “Wow,” and I thought, “Uh-oh,” though I didn’t know why. Then Rodney Lemon showed up, leaning on the railing around the corner of the ring near the barns. As I trotted by, he called out, “Hey, lass! Nice horse you got there!”

  I waved.

  Jane came into the ring, and I went over to her. She said, “Now, Abby, I want this to be a very relaxed sort of day for him. Just make some big trot circles and weave around the jumps. Get him to balance up, but don’t make a big deal of it.”

  We did this. The very best thing about riding a good horse who wants to do what you ask and can do what you ask is that it feels really good when he does it. It feels easy and buoyant and like both of you are happy, and if you weren’t happy before it started feeling good, then pretty soon you are happy, because it is feeling good.

  Jane went over to one of the jumps, set by itself along the far end of the ring, and made a crossbar, then put a pole out in front of it. I was to trot the pole to the crossbar. It was easy. Daddy came in the ring to help her, but then he just stood there—she was so quick at setting jumps that it was easier to do it herself than to tell him what to do. She bustled around, putting up a two-stride in-and-out, raising the original crossbar, dragging a gate and a couple of standards into place. Pretty soon she had a course made, of eight jumps, which used part of the course that was already in the ring and was partly new. In the meantime, I had warmed Black George up over about six small jumps, and I could tell he was ready for something more fun.

  She gave me the course and helped me walk it with my fingers—it wasn’t that complicated: two loops, then out to the two-stride, and around over the brush, finishing over the original crossbar, which was now a vertical. Everything looked small, and the first time around, that was the problem—Black George wasn’t impressed by the size of the jumps, and so he didn’t bother to set himself up or get organized.

  Jane and Daddy were in the middle of the arena. She said, “Now, he’s fine but careless. In that case, you need to shorten your reins a little, sit up, raising your hands up a little, and go straight to the middle of every fence, just to show him that even though he’s not impressed, there’s still a discipline to every course. The jumps are part of the galloping and the turning. You have to understand that, and he has to understand that. That’s the safe way.”

  So we did it again, and I straightened my shoulders and put my heels down and paid better attention. I actually asked him to go a little bigger in his stride, though not faster, just to wake him up. This time he was smoother, and he changed his leads on the turns more quickly.

  Rodney had now come into the ring, and Daddy and he shook hands. Rodney was about half the size of Daddy—well, not quite, but Daddy was clearly a cowboy and Rodney was clearly a jockey, and it was funny to watch them together.
Daddy looked a little stiff and Rodney looked a little sassy. They all ran around putting the jumps up a hole. I did the course again, then they put the jumps up two holes.

  Now Black George was interested. His ears were pricked, and he was taking hold of the bit, and he was tucking his hind end so that his back legs came under me. I could feel this, because it made him incredibly springy and comfortable. I made my circle and headed for the first jump, which was a green and white vertical with some painted boxes underneath the poles. Then there was a triple bar, which is three poles that rise from front to back, which looks scary but isn’t because it always seems to draw the horse upward and over; then there was a chicken coop; and then a big crossbar, which doesn’t look scary but is, because the horse sees and jumps over the high sides rather than the low middle. Then down over the in-and-out, vertical, and oxer; then back over the brush, this time with a pole across the top; and then the last vertical. They had set the gate in the middle of the last vertical, but Black George just flicked his ears and was over. We made our circle and came down to the trot. I looked over at the three of them. They were all smiling.

  Rodney was the first to speak when I got to them. He said, “Are we shippin’ this harse to Cheltn’m for a chaser, then? I’ve got a friend in Lambourn.…”

  Jane said, “Much too good a horse for that, Rodney.”

  Daddy said, “You all right, Abby?”

  I said, “Sure I am.” But they were standing by one of the jumps I had jumped, and I noticed something about it for the first time—the top of the top pole was up to Rodney’s chin and the middle of Daddy’s chest, and that wasn’t even the biggest jump. I said, “How high are these?”

  Jane sniffed and opened her mouth to speak, but Rodney said, “Ah, goodness, four feet and a bit. They’re hardly jumps, really. Yer lucky the harse notices ’em.”

  Jane said, “Rodney, don’t you have some tack to clean?”

  Rodney laughed and didn’t move a muscle.