Still awkwardly staring at the strange “cup” of tea in my hand, I assure Emily that I’m much tougher than I look. She snorts and tells me that I would barely knock out a butterfly with that crappy punch of mine. I see what’s going on here. A rough-and-tumble eventer chick thinks she has me pegged a lightweight, simply because I have impeccable taste in clothes, polite manners and I don’t drink tea served in repurposed marinara jars.
I reach into my polo shirt, exposing the pendant at the end of my 18 carat gold necklace. I dangle it in front of Emily Morris’s face and say, “Do you know what this is? This is my tooth. I lost it ten minutes before entering the ring at the biggest competition of my life. According to witnesses, someone’s mother snapped a photo just as I was about to jump my last warm-up fence. As “luck” would have it, the flash hit the buckle on her own daughter’s Hermes belt just right, temporarily blinding my mare and causing her to rear, just as I inclined my body forward in preparation for take-off. I lost my front tooth and blood splattered all over the jacket I had just imported from France.”
I can tell by the dismissive look on Emily’s face that she thinks this is a silly story about overpriced custom jackets. I suppose I can’t blame her. She is just getting to know me. It’s not always immediately apparent that there is more to Margaret Fletcher than meets the eye.
So I persist with my story. “Everyone expected me to scratch. But one look at that “innocent” competitor’s smug, self-satisfied face was all the encouragement I needed. I spit that tooth out into my trainer’s palm and laid down the trip of a lifetime. Technically, I didn’t win the class. Nobody is going to give a national championship to the rider covered in blood. But everyone who was there knows I gave the best performance.”
The dismissive look melts away. Clearly, Emily is impressed by my story, and a little grossed out by my necklace. I’m a little grossed out by her idea of proper tea-serving china, so I guess we’re even. She smiles, “OK, you are officially forgiven for wearing a hairnet to the track. You can keep the jeans. I’ll even give you my three most important Gallop Girl rules.”
Emily has my attention at “rules.” There is nothing Margaret Fletcher respects more than strict adherence to rules, especially when it concerns one’s conduct around horses. I listen closely as she continues, “Number one: don’t attempt to stop a runaway horse by skiing on his face. He’s bigger than you, stronger than you, and more determined than you. Your arms will turn to Jell-O long before he’s through. Number two: don’t be too proud to call for help when you’re in trouble. Nobody likes a hero and you’re a danger to others if you’re out of control. Number three: you can’t do this job safely if you’re scared. The second you feel fear creeping in, it’s time to quit.”
With that, I am officially hired as a Gallop Girl at Winning Edge farms. I have no idea what I’m in for, but judging by my surroundings, I am pretty sure that my life is about to radically change. I stiffen my upper lip. Change doesn’t always mean the dismantling of everything one holds dear. It’s not like I’m in danger of living in a horse trailer. Right?
CHAPTER 2
~ Emily meets her match ~
There was no way for me to know just how completely Margaret Fletcher would disrupt my life when she first set foot on Winning Edge Farms. All Uncle Sam told me was to look out for a nice girl dressed in a pastel polo shirt and an Hermes belt. One look at the hairnet tightly wrapped around Princess’s head and I knew that she did not belong here. To be honest, I strongly considered leaving her to wander around the barn aimlessly until the smell of hard work sent her packing.
But I had made a promise to Uncle Sam. So I did exactly as requested and threw her up on the kindest colt in the barn, fully expecting her to cry uncle before her foot hit the stirrup. Instead, Margaret Fletcher jogged that young horses like a pro. I had no choice but to welcome her to the Winning Edge family.
When I asked Uncle Sam where Margaret Fletcher came from, he said, “Where does anyone really come from? I found you a kindred spirit. Don’t question your good fortune. Just open your heart to all the possibilities.”
I know Uncle Sam has lost a lot of his marbles over the years. But the idea that someone like Margaret Fletcher could be a kindred spirit is just plain crazy. I get that she’s now poor and struggling to find a way to throw a leg over a horse like the rest of us plebs. Even so, qualities like guts, grit and determination don’t just appear because Daddy’s bank account disappeared. And nobody that wears a pair of fifteen hundred dollar custom field boots to her first day on the job has any idea what hard work looks, smells or feels like.
On the other hand, sacrifice and disappointment have pretty much been the defining characteristics of my formative years. For as long as I can remember, I have been obsessed with a sport that my single mother had no hope of helping me afford. I had to beg, borrow and steal my way onto the playing field. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t always fun. But it’s my passion and always has been. I haven’t cared what brand of breeches I was wearing or how perfect my hair looked under my helmet. For me, it has always been about the horse and that amazing feeling that fills up your heart when they allow you to borrow their strength. By the looks of Margaret Fletcher and her flair for pageantry, that is not something we share.
I don’t understand why she even wants this job in the first place. A quick search on the internet confirmed all my suspicions about her. Spoiled, pampered and over-privileged. It’s written all over every glossy photo of Margaret winning National Championship after National Championship. Does she actually think that galloping at Winning Edge Farms is going be anything like competing on the A-Circuit? Sure, she can jog a young horse in a field. But thoroughbreds don’t run on autopilot like those fancy horses she’s used to riding. Sooner or later, that’s going to catch up to her. I predict that Margaret Fletcher is in for a rude awaking. Because all those National Championships have her convinced that she is a really good rider. And I’m willing to bet my favorite Crock-Pot that she’s not. I don’t mean to sound like I am itching for her to fail. I just know what it’s like to have your entire world-view rearranged just when you’re the most vulnerable. I can’t help but feel that is exactly what is about to happen here.
I haven’t always been so cynical. I remember when I thought that the world was at my feet and an Olympic gold medal in my future. On my eighteenth birthday, Uncle Sam gave me an off-the-track thoroughbred he bought for a dollar. He said, “Horses can be a real pain in the ass. They’ll make you broke, they’ll make you cry and bust you up until you can hardly walk on your own. Congratulations, you’re a woman now.”
For the first time in my life, I felt like I finally had what I needed to succeed in the sport that has always been my destiny. I emailed every superstar trainer I had ever heard of, asking for an opportunity to work in exchange for the kind of riding education a girl like me could never afford.
When Kim Sullivan — three-time Olympian and owner of one of the most successful sales barns on the East Coast — agreed to take me in, it was a dream come true. I finally had everything worked out. A plum position at a top Three Day Eventing barn, a promising prospect of my own and four thousand dollars earned braiding horses for rich kids in my pocket. Never in my life was I more prepared to drink in every bit of wisdom that this situation was sure to offer me.
And then I met Kim Sullivan, the tiny blonde drill sergeant who was about to change everything. Little did I know, I would have been better off joining the Army.
MY DAY STARTS AT 6 AM SHARP. You are expected to muck all thirty five of my stalls before feeding my horses breakfast. You need to know which one of my horses gets grain and what meds, if any. Careful attention to my horses’ nutrition is the cornerstone of my program. I also need you to groom my horses, tack my horses, and cool my horses in the morning. I ride between six and eight a day, so this process needs to run smoothly. My working students are the key to making sure my day runs smoothly. Next, I’ll need you to feed my horses lunch
and prepare the nighttime grain. You must also go over every one of my horses that I worked in the morning with a fine-tooth comb. Wrap my horses’ legs, bandage my horses’ boo boos, and rub each of my horses until I can see my reflection in my horses’ coats. Can you handle it?
It’s three hours into my first day at Sullivan Farms and Kim has not stopped talking once. Not even a brief pause long enough to take a breath. How is she not turning blue? A forty-minute lecture on how to property clean tack is followed by a half-hour presentation about weather conditions and corresponding blanketing schedules. Forget the notebook and pen. Tacking up, un-tacking, warming up, cooling down, setting up fences, taking down fences, blanketing, un-blanketing, re-blanketing, it’s all covered in twelve volumes of how-to books titled My Working Students, My life by Kim Sullivan. Seriously, the Encyclopedia Britannica would be impressed.
Did I mention that this job of endless chores, half of which I’ve already forgotten, doesn’t actually pay? Because it doesn’t. Not a dime. In exchange for a bottomless pit of slave labor, I get one stall for my horse and a cot in the hayloft. I was told that I would also get lessons from Her Majesty, Queen of Over-Blanketing. But how could I possibly fit a lesson into the schedule? Or a part time job, for that matter. Careful attention to my nutrition is the cornerstone of my program. Last I checked, a girl can’t feed herself with a stall and a cot in the hayloft. Oh, God. Can this woman actually read my mind? Probably. Because seconds after I have that thought, she says, “A lot of my working students come here expecting to get a part time job to cover expenses. Those that actually manage to find one don’t end up staying very long.”
The pit in my stomach tells me to walk away. Kim Sullivan is scary and the job sounds impossible.
But I don’t walk away. I want to be a top international competitor like her. I want it so badly it hurts. So I move myself, my project horse and every penny of my savings into Sullivan Farm. The plan is to take that young thoroughbred from green bean to respectable amateur-friendly event horse. Re-sell said thoroughbred for a tidy profit at the end of the season, and use the money to buy myself a nice prospect to take up the levels all the way to the Olympics. I’ve got the skills to give a young horse a solid foundation, and working at Sullivan Farm will give me connections to wealthy amateurs willing to drop five figures for that reliable novice packer. I feel that even though this sounds crazy, it’s going to work.
Unfortunately, I am wrong.
I knew Kim was tough. I expected the hours to be long and the process of retraining an ex-racehorse to be a little bumpy. I did NOT expect to waste three months of MY life and every penny of MY savings slaving for a crazy woman while patiently waiting for an abscess to pop on the four year old hay burner who has yet to leave the farm for one competition!
In short, I ran out of money.
Of course, Kim did not want to see me go. At the mere suggestion she squealed, “My tack has never been so clean and my barn so organized. You can’t leave my operation now. I need you!” But no amount of whining was going to change the fact that I had forty dollars to my name, no source of income and an animal that insisted on getting new shoes every six weeks.
I should have known Kim Sullivan would see my misfortune as an opportunity to feather her own nest. When she “graciously” offered to take the horse I could no longer afford off my hands for a thousand bucks, I should have been suspicious. But I was broke, cold and hungry. An easy target. So I said yes, and then cried like a baby when she sold that horse five days later for fifteen grand.
Needless to say, the experience left me shattered. All of my illusions about the nobility of equestrian Olympians gone. For good.
Good old Uncle Sam said, “That woman sounds like a fruit loop. You need to spend some time with people fortified with actual nutritional value. Don’t worry, I know a guy.”
And that’s how I got my job at Winning Edge Farms.
Sam, the assistant trainer at the farm, convinced his boss to take a chance on a kid with more guts than sense. He also wasn’t about to let me give up on my dreams so easily. So he swung a deal to let me live out of my trailer on the property so I could save money for future Olympic prospects. Sounds great, right? Well, it’s three years later. I’ve bought and sold six young horses. None of them have taken me any closer to my dreams. I’m about to give up.
And then, out-of-the-blue, I get an email that throws a wrench into my whole situation.
***
From: Turtle Cumberbund ([email protected])
To: Emily Morris ([email protected])
Re: Working Student Position
Dear Mrs. Morris;
Thank you for your interest in obtaining a working student position at my yard. I realize your inquiry is three years old. But honestly, I didn’t think much of you as an applicant when you first inquired. I have recently found myself competing on your side of the pond and made the acquaintance of your former employer, Kim Sullivan. She seems like a wretched woman. But Mrs. Sullivan caught my attention one particularly drunken night at the pub. She was screeching to no one in particular, “Why is it that in my entire career I have only been able to find one idiot competent enough to know how to properly oil a bridle? Emily Morris! Emily! I’m sorry. Come back.”
Somewhere in the midst of my horror at her crude behavior, I felt a pang of recognition. Emily Morris? I believe that girl sent me an earnest little query letter some time back. Reminded me of myself, that poor girl: plucky, precocious and far too poor to have any shot of making it in the event world. Well, look at me now. So, if you’ve got it in you to scrape together enough money get yourself to England, I suppose I can offer you a cot in exchange for your servitude. I figure about twenty thousand U.S. dollars should cover your expenses for the year properly, maybe more if you would like to eat and whatnot. So start saving up!
I am prepared to offer you five lessons a week in exchange for a six-day workweek. Mondays will be your own to do what you wish, regardless of whatever havoc might be taking place around the barn. My well-rested working students are the secret to the success of my program. Your duties will be restricted to exercising horses and feeding them four square meals a day. If you prove yourself to be a competent-enough rider, I may provide you with opportunities to compete a few sale horses at my expense. Either way, it’s a smashing opportunity. I’ve been told I know my way around a horse. And I’m sure I can teach you a thing or two.
***
MY PUPILS ARE DILATED, my heart is racing. My dreams of Olympic glory are coming rushing back to me like a long lost lover. I know I said that I no longer believe in the nobility of the equestrian Olympian. But Turtle Cumberbund is a completely different breed than all those other wannabes.
As the story goes, one day, when Turtle was still just a young girl riding feral ponies up and down the English countryside, her father gave her a crazy off-the-track thoroughbred that he’d won in a bet. Before long, Turtle was making waves at all the top Three Day Events in England. The people who saw her ride that horse cross country described it as “brilliance on the edge of disaster” — terrifying and exciting all at the same time. Soon, well-funded owners flocked to Turtle, desperate to buy her horses so they too could become part of the magic.
Turtle’s story is the only reason a poor daughter of a single waitress (i.e. me) ever thought she had a real chance at the Olympics. Moving to England to ride with her would be nothing short of total fulfillment of my destiny. The only problem? I have no money, a five hundred dollar tab at the feed store and only one Pony Club prospect that could net me a cool three thousand dollars — if I could miraculously somehow sell him. That twenty thousand dollars might as well be twenty million dollars. There is no way I have any hope of cobbling together the funds I need to make this lifelong dream come true.
It’s a bitter pill to swallow. Fortunately, I’ve gotten used to the taste of bitter pills in this life of mine.
But that doesn’t mean I appreciate the timin
g of this latest heartbreak. Why does the universe wait until the exact awful moment when the grim consequences of my lack of available cash are at their most apparent to hand me a spoiled brat like Margaret Fletcher?
Please excuse me if I don’t agree that she’s some kind of kindred spirit. That’s impossible. I’ll help her at Winning Edge the best that I can. But I can’t be responsible for whatever downfall is waiting for her at the gates of her new employer. Right now, I’ve got enough problems of my own.
CHAPTER 3
~ Margret learns to gallop ~
DAY ONE
Speaking of rules, Margaret Fletcher has never ridden in jeans and she’s not going to start now. I’ll do my best to fit in at Winning Edge Farms. But I am not going to lose myself in the process. So you can forget the maxi-pads, too. “Monkey Butt” powder has always done a bang-up job of solving my chafing problems. No need to start strapping overstuffed feminine hygiene products to body parts they were never designed for in the first place.
That’s right. I’m riding in breeches and I’m putting my hair up in a hairnet. I don’t care what the cool kids think!
Emily gives me six horses to jog. I’m still sore from yesterday, but I get the job done.
DAY TWO
I’ve got the jogging thing down. Word around the farm is Princess Fancy Breeches can ride. Sometime around lap number sixty five, I catch my first glimpse of the Boss. I was expecting someone older, beer-bellied, with a lifetime of regret on his face. Not the Boss. He’s young, energetic and has nothing short of flawless conformation. I catch myself feeling a pleasant tingle in my saddle area as he gallops past me at breakneck speed.
Margaret Fletcher Gallop Girl: A Fall From Grace at Forty Miles an Hour Page 3