Taking the Reins (An Ellen & Ned Book)

by Jane Smiley

  I didn’t want Tater to watch any more of this, so I rode him very quietly over to the warm-up, and then warmed him up—a few circles, a few transitions, two practice jumps going one direction and three going the other direction. No one came to coach me, not Abby or Jane, or even Abby’s dad. I did one last canter to the left, and then Abby did come running over. She didn’t say anything, but she walked me to the medium-sized arena, where our class was, and patted my leg when I was called in. And here was the pleasure of my round—nothing unexpected, just plain old Tater, looking for the jumps and jumping them. We got a fourth, not good enough to qualify for a championship class, but between you and me, I was glad. When you go into the arena to get your ribbon, you are supposed to lead your horse, and so I did, and then I led him out of the arena. I was on my way back to the barn when Da appeared on Pretty Girl. He said, “Let’s go.”

  “Let’s go where?”

  “Let’s go for a little ride. I’m bored.”

  I guess he was reading my mind.

  I took Tater over to the mounting block and got back on. Tater was cool as a cucumber and didn’t mind a bit. There were a lot of people around, but I didn’t see Abby or Jane or my dad, and so off we went. Did I assume that Da had told someone we were going for a ride? That’s what I said later, but maybe, right at that minute, I didn’t think one thing or another. I just wanted to get out of the crowd.

  There’s a trail that doesn’t lead to the beach, just wanders into the forest a ways, then turns toward the road, crosses the road, and goes through the woods for a while. It goes behind a house or two. The trail itself is wide and smooth. At first, Pretty Girl wanted to be in the lead, but then there was a loud birdcall that sort of trembled in the air, and she pricked her ears, looked around, and dropped back so that we were walking along together. I said, “Do you think that was a buzzard?”

  “It didn’t buzz.”

  I said, “Do you know what a buzzard is?”

  Da said, “No.”

  “It’s a vulture.”

  Da made a face.

  I agreed that maybe we wouldn’t want to run into a vulture in the woods. I said, “I like the word. Buzzard.”

  “Colonel Dudgeon loves birds. He keeps a list of the ones he sees.”

  Maybe Colonel Dudgeon was interesting after all.

  We crossed the road. We looked both directions, and we couldn’t see a single car anywhere.

  I said, “Pretty Girl doesn’t mind Tater.” I was watching how Da sat—as if he were glued to the saddle, but graceful and relaxed.

  “She’s gotten better. Aunt Jane says she’s only been here a couple of weeks, so she’s settling in.”

  The forest got thicker and a little shadier, but if I looked up, I could see blue sky above the trees, which made me think of fog, and then Gee Whiz, and then Abby. I said, “I thought Gee Whiz really liked Abby.”

  Da said, “Why would you think that? Horses don’t like people. They only like other horses.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Everybody.”

  We walked along. I stared between Tater’s ears. I wished he would say something to me, the way Ned used to say things to me, but he never has. I wished he would turn his head and give Da the rolling eyeball that said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I wished he would show me in some way that he liked me, but he never has, except that one time when I fell off and he came over and checked on me.

  I said, “Then why does Gee Whiz whinny every time he sees her coming to the pasture?”

  “He thinks she’s got food.”

  And it was true that every time, she did have a carrot or a lump of sugar.

  Then I said, “When I fell off Tater last fall, he came over to see if I was okay.” But as I said it, and Da smiled a little without answering, I thought that I sounded ridiculous. I said, “The trail is pretty good here. Let’s trot.” And so we did, around the loop that came back to the road. One car was going by, so we stood there, and then walked across and back to the barn.

  You would have thought we’d been kidnapped. I looked at my watch; we were only gone for about forty-five minutes, but Jane had her hands on her hips. She glanced at me, but she stared at Da, and said, “You had better straighten up, young man!” He sat up. She said, “That’s not what I mean and you know it. You may not just wander around on your own. I’m responsible for you. If anything happens to you, your mother will kill me!”

  I said, “She will?” and Jane looked at me. All she said, though, was, “I thought you knew better than to disappear without a word.”

  And it was true that I did, so I said, “I thought Da told you.” But since Da is five months younger than I am, maybe he doesn’t know better. I said, “I’m sorry.” But Da didn’t say anything. His chin sort of stuck out, and then he dismounted Pretty Girl and walked her into the barn. To tell you the truth, I’ve never really seen Jane get mad, and it was a little scary. I dismounted and did my cleaning up, and then Dad took me home. The only thing he said was, “You do know better.” He didn’t sound angry, but he did sound disappointed.

  When they brought it up at dinner, I said, “But, Dad, you told me a lot of stories about how you and that orphan you knew used to go in the woods and do things by yourselves. Did you really tell someone every time you did that?”

  Dad moved his lips around, because I know that he didn’t want to tell a lie.

  I said, “You were eleven when you caught that beaver.”

  He glanced at Mom, then said, “Well, times have changed.”

  That’s what they always say.

  After dinner, we watched The Jackie Gleason Show. First Dad started laughing, then Mom started laughing, then Jackie pushed a pie in someone’s face (a meringue pie, it looked like), so I started laughing. Then Joan Ariel, who had been looking at a book, started laughing and jumping around, and then she fell down and started crying, and by the time I finished watching her drink her bottle of milk (she only gets it at bedtime now), I was as sleepy as she was (and Mom says that drinking milk before bed makes her sleepy, too). So I went up to my room and listened for a while to the audience clapping on the TV, and to Jackie Gleason yelling (he’s very loud), and then it was over.

  Mom came up the stairs and put Joan Ariel in her crib, then came in to say good night to me. She kissed me, and I said, “So tell me the truth, were they the good old days or the bad old days?”

  Mom started to laugh, but she saw that I was serious, so she put her hand under her chin and stared out of my window. Finally, she said, “I don’t think anyone really knows. It’s enjoyable to remember being young because it seems like you didn’t have any aches and pains and you were always having fun, but then you remember, well, some times were hard, like for me the space of about six months when, because of the Depression, my dad lost his job, and Aunt Johanna kept having to give us money. Mom would serve the leftovers until there was nothing at all left over, and one time we had only about four small potatoes, and as soon as I complained, Dad jumped on me and asked me if I’d ever heard of the Irish potato famine, and what he told me about that was that he had ancestors who didn’t even have a single potato, and so they came to the U.S. And then when I think of Aunt Johanna, I remember how sad I was when she died. So there are both good old days and bad old days.” Then she kissed me and said, “These are the good old days. That’s what I think when I look at you and Joan Ariel.”

  Did I have any good old days? Mom turned out the ceiling light. (I still had my bedside light if I wanted to read.) I tried to remember first grade, and then kindergarten, and then nursery school, and then anything I could come up with before that. First grade was easy. I remembered Mrs. Crocker showing me how to hold my pencil and make a K, first the big K, then the little k, though why I remembered K rather than A, I have no idea. I remembered Mrs. Crocker’s hand aroun
d mine, and me looking up at her, and her bun on the back of her head, part brown and part white. After I remembered that, I remembered that she smelled good, and I always liked that. I thought she smelled like a blueberry muffin, though I never told anyone that and I hadn’t remembered it in five years. From kindergarten, I remembered lying on the rug in front of Miss Larson, with her reading a book, trying to put us to sleep for our afternoon nap. It may be that I remembered a dream from one of those naps. There were tall windows in the kindergarten room of our school, and I dreamt that they got taller and taller and then turned into water and began to flow away. I must have said something when I woke up, because there was Miss Larson, squatting next to me, with her finger to her lips, and a smile, and she patted me on the head, and I think I remembered going back to sleep. From before kindergarten, I remembered the sandbox. I know it was before kindergarten, because it fell apart and some men came and took it away. The thing I remembered about the sandbox was what my hands looked like, making a pile of sand and then smoothing it down, and doing that over and over.

  Were those the good old days for me? They didn’t seem very interesting, so I thought maybe Mom was right—these are the good old days, the days of Tater and Ned and Abby, and now Da. Yup, I liked Da. He was different from all of the other kids my age, and not just because he was the only one who liked horses, and the only one who rode better than I did, and no, not because he lived a life that maybe I would like better than mine (depending on his mom and Colonel Dudgeon). Maybe it was that he seemed ready for anything.

  On Monday, I didn’t have much to do. Abby always gives the horses a few days off after a show to wander around the pasture and relax. The bad thing is that sometimes an injury turns up that you didn’t see, or the horse didn’t reveal at the show, because everything was busy and exciting. The good thing is that you can think about what you learned and start over.

  Anyway, Mom and I walked Joan Ariel over to the market on Monday, around lunchtime, in order to buy food for the week, and all the way over, I was planning how to pester her into making one of the things I really like, minute steaks with gravy and mashed potatoes followed by homemade peach ice cream, which, since I had plenty of time, I was willing to crank. When we moved, Grandma gave us her ice-cream maker because she said it was too much work for her now. You have to pour a lot of ice and some rock salt into the tub, and then you push the container of cream and sugar into the ice. There’s a paddle in the cream and sugar, and you have to turn the handle of the paddle and keep turning it until the cream and sugar freeze. If you didn’t, it would turn to ice instead of ice cream.

  We got to the corner. The light changed, and yes, I was talking, because I can talk and plan at the same time. I had Mom nodding at the mashed potatoes, but I hadn’t gotten to the peach ice cream, and then I saw Ruthie Creighton in the parking lot of the store, all by herself. She was wandering here and there, as if she didn’t know what she was doing, but that was the old Ruthie, not the new Ruthie, so even though I was happy to see her, I wasn’t quite sure of what I was seeing. I looked her over as we got closer. She had on sneakers and socks, and the socks were pulled up. Her hair was in pigtails, and they were both the same size and positioned correctly. As we got closer, she noticed us. She smiled. I said, “What are you doing?”

  “Waiting for you.”

  I looked around. Mom asked Ruthie how her mom and aunt were.

  Ruthie said, “Mom likes her job.”

  “What is she doing now?”

  “Bookkeeping.”

  I said, “I would keep a lot of books for a living,” but neither one of them laughed, though Joan Ariel waved her hands.

  I said, “Were you really waiting for me?”

  “Yes, because I know you like to shop here and I want to ask you a question. I waited for you yesterday, too.”

  I said, “Don’t you have anything better to do?”

  “That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

  Mom said, “I need to get Joan Ariel out of the sunshine. Ellen, I’ll meet you inside. You girls step under the awning, too.”

  I said, “Are you ready for riding lessons?”

  “No, but close. I want you to show me how to draw a horse.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes! Look!”

  She took a piece of chalk out of her pocket and squatted down. In about ten seconds, she drew a cat, and then a fish and then a bird that looked like a robin, not a crow. She stood up. I walked around the drawings, staring at them. I said, “How did you learn to draw those?”

  “Well, we have a cat, and in the spring, my aunt took me to the aquarium and let me look at the fish for most of the day, and the bird has a nest outside my bedroom window.”

  “Have you done any dogs?”

  “There’s a cocker spaniel in our neighborhood.”

  “I’ve seen that one. It’s blond.”

  “Have you seen the one that runs around? It’s a collie. It walks down the street pretty often. Sometimes I see the owner looking for it. It’s blue and white.”

  I said, “I wish I could see that one.”

  “I’ve made three pictures of it.”

  “Do you want to go to Abby’s ranch with me? It isn’t far away. I have a lesson Thursday.”

  She grinned. Then nodded. Then said, “What time?”

  “About one.”

  She said, “I’ll bring my sketch pad.”

  Then she walked away without a single good-bye, and it is true that that was about as much as I have ever heard Ruthie say at one time.

  I stared at the drawings for a couple of minutes. I couldn’t believe how fast she’d made them, and how bright they looked.

  In the market, Mom was in the vegetable aisle, and sure enough, she was picking out potatoes. She had plenty of things in the cart already—butter, olive oil, French bread, which is long and thin and not sliced, some wrapped pieces of meat, a bag of flour. After the potatoes, she went to the broccoli (okay), then the cauliflower (yuck), then the carrots (hurray), then the oranges and the lemons, and then, yes, the peaches. I hadn’t said a thing about ice cream, but sure enough, Mom said, “I think we should make some peach ice cream.” And I stood on my tiptoes and kissed her on the cheek. We made it after dinner, and I was so tired from cranking that I fell into bed and slept like a bump on a log.

  Ruthie was waiting for us on the curb outside of her house when we went to pick her up on Thursday. I had an egg salad sandwich to eat on the way, and I offered her half, but she shook her head. She didn’t say a word for the whole drive, which didn’t bother me—that’s Ruthie. Mom tried a few remarks, but finally she looked at me out of the corner of her eye, and I shrugged a little bit, and so it was quiet. Joan Ariel wasn’t with us. Mom has made friends with a woman down the street who has twins who are a little older than Joan Ariel, and sometimes Joan Ariel goes to their house and sometimes the twins, a boy and a girl, come to our house. I imagined the three of them jumping around until they triggered an earthquake, and smiled to myself.

  Things were a little crazy at Abby’s, and here was the reason—Jack So Far had injured himself in a race at the racetrack down south, and they had decided to send him home, and wasn’t he lucky that he had a home to go to? Abby told me that Gee Whiz hardly got to go anywhere when he was racing, and when he had his injury, he had to stand in a stall for six weeks. Jack was in the round corral, looking here and looking there. He was now big, very dark, with a full tail and a high head, a real grown-up horse. When he turned and walked a few strides, I could see the sun flicker across his smooth coat and his muscles, and he did look at all the other horses like he was saying, “I’m the boss now. I’m the boss.” But I doubt whether Gee Whiz, who was up the hill in the pasture, believed him. Just then, Gee Whiz let out a screaming whinny. Abby shook her head. Ruthie said nothing. She looked straight at Jack, then went ove
r with her sketchbook and sat down about ten feet from the round corral.

  Abby said, “Is that Ruthie? Didn’t you bring her to the stables once?”

  “I did. Don’t expect her to say anything. She wants to learn to draw a horse.”

  “Well, Jack is a good one to begin with.”

  I nodded.

  But Abby still looked exhausted, and harried, as my grandmother would say, and I said, “Are you upset about something?”

  “Well, I hate that Jack is injured, even though I’m glad to have him back.”

  “Did he break his leg?”

  “No, no. Nothing like that. He did the same thing Gee Whiz did—he strained a tendon. He might get back to the track and he might not. It’s not that. Dad decided to go buy some horses in Oklahoma, so I have to do all the work.”

  I looked around. There were five horses up the hill, in the gelding pasture, including Beebop (the bucking horse), three in the mare pasture, plus Jack in the round corral and Tater and Sissy in the two stalls at the end of the barn aisle. They lived outside, too, but Abby would bring them in before our lessons. I said, “You have enough horses.”

  “We do, but five of them are boarders, and as for the others, nobody’s buying them.”

  I didn’t say anything about Gee Whiz, but we both looked up the hill at him, and he looked down the hill at us. Abby sighed. She said, “I guess you’d better tack up.”