Saddles & Secrets (An Ellen & Ned Book)

by Jane Smiley

  After lunch, we went outside. It was a nice day. Ruthie and I followed Melanie to the hopscotch area and we started to play. Melanie is so good at this that if you play with her, your job is to stand around while she goes all the way, because your turns are few and far between. Melanie even has a piece of chalk that she uses to extend the hopscotch grid so that it will be more challenging. Really, there should be a hopscotch Olympics for girls like Melanie, but there isn’t. When she got to 7–8, I said, “Show us a modern dance move,” and so she hopped into 7, kicked up, and did a split, picking up her pebble from 8 before her leg touched the ground, then somehow launched herself so that she landed standing on both feet in the 8. Ruthie and I then closed our mouths and stopped nodding and gave her a round of applause. I said, “You should be in a circus. You could gallop everywhere standing up on the back of a horse and do somersaults and handstands.”

  Melanie said, “I’m afraid of horses.”

  I said, “You must be joking.”

  Melanie said, in her quiet, calm way, “I’m not.”

  And Ruthie said, “Do you really have a horse?”

  I said, “No, I wish I did. But I take a lesson every weekend.”

  She went on. I kept my mouth closed as if this weren’t a one-time event. She said, “I saw that book you have, about Man o’ War.”

  “I’ve got it for another ten days. You can borrow it from me, and then I’ll take it back.”

  She gave me a long long look and said, “Okay.”

  And I said, “Do you want to come with me to the barn? You don’t have to ride, but you can see the horses.”

  She started shaking her head no, and then she stopped, and then she said, “Yes.” And then she smiled. And then Melanie and I smiled, too. We just couldn’t help it.

  I told my dad—he didn’t care. It only takes fifteen minutes to get to the stables from our house, and Ruthie’s house is on the way. On Saturday, she was waiting at the bottom of the stairs with her aunt, who was smiling. I got out of the car and gave her the once-over, as my grandma would say, and then I said that she had to wear heavier shoes, and then there was a long silence, and I realized that she didn’t have any other shoes, and her aunt laughed and said, “Oh, when I was a child, we ordered our shoes from a catalog, and we wore them for a year whether they fit or not,” and Dad said, “Me too!” Everyone was smiling, and we got into the car. Ruthie was quiet all the way there, and I was quiet because Dad had the radio on and he was humming to the music.

  I took Ruthie into the barn, where Rodney was standing with the tack. He was talking to Abby about something. He shook my hand and bowed, and then he said, “And who might this young lady be?”

  I said, “This is Ruthie, she wants to watch,” and her hand went out on its own and got near Tater’s neck, and then she pulled it back, but I started petting Tater, and I said, “Tater likes to be petted,” and I showed her how. Because Rodney is such a good groom, petting Tater’s neck is like running your hand across the surface of a quiet lake.

  Abby said, “Tater is a good name. I don’t like it when a horse has ‘hot’ in his name. He might take the hint.”

  I said to Ruthie, “ ‘Hot’ means ‘hard to handle.’ ”

  Ruthie pulled her hand back, but I kept petting him, and after a moment, she petted him again.

  I led him out of the barn and over to the schooling arena. There was another kid in there. I went to the mounting block and got on. Abby showed Ruthie where to stand, under a tree by the fence, and then the breeze came up and I forgot about Ruthie, and, really, about every single thing except this lesson, which I’d been waiting for all week.

  Tater sauntered into the ring on a loose rein, looked toward the forest, then toward a couple of jumps. I went into one corner while the other kid, who was being taught by Colonel Hawkins, finished his course. The colonel has such a loud voice that it makes you wince every time he shouts a command, but his students win a lot of ribbons and they do something called combined training, which includes galloping around a jumping course that is not in a ring and also doing some jumping in the woods. I don’t know much about it, but probably it’s not as scary as the sound of the colonel’s voice.

  Now Abby came into the ring and the other kid and the colonel went out. I watched them go to a warm-up arena, where the kid got off and the colonel walked with him, talking the whole time. I guess the colonel doesn’t have any secrets, either. I asked Tater to trot. Which he did. “Yeah, okay, don’t hold me so tight, there’s a fly in my nose [snort], okay, I will speed up [sigh].” Abby was smiling. I was talking. I pressed my lips together, and Abby said, “See that A on the fence? Go there, then trot to the B and the C and the E.” We’d done this before—it was a diamond, and is for practicing turns. “At C, halt and ask Tater to turn by stepping under.” I made a little turn at the B, then trotted (nicely, I thought) to the C, where I sat deep and Tater halted, and why wouldn’t he, since otherwise he would run into the railing? Now I lifted my left rein, which lifted his nose and cocked his neck, and we stood there for what seemed like a long time, and then he did step under and we were pointed toward the E. I kicked him and he trotted toward the E, then back to the A. One good thing was that there weren’t any jumps in the way, and we could go in straight lines. Abby said, “Again! This time, push him into the turns so that he has some energy and wants to get out of them.” I did the exercise two more times to the left, then twice to the right. I would have expected it to be boring, but it wasn’t, and it warmed up Tater, so that he was actually pricking his ears and holding the bit in his mouth without pulling on it. After that, we cantered twice around the arena in each direction and then did two figure eights at the canter, and yes, Tater does an excellent flying change, which means that when he crosses the center of the figure eight, he seems to hop a little bit, and then he is on the other lead. A horse is supposed to lead with his left foot when he is circling to the left and the right foot when he is circling to the right. Abby said, “Maybe it’s easier for a pony to change leads. I never thought of that.” I pressed my lips closed again and came down to the walk. Now I remembered Ruthie and looked over to the tree where she was standing. She was still standing there, but her sweater was partly unbuttoned and her hair was in her face. I went over to her but didn’t say anything except, “You could pet him now. That would let him know he’s being good.” I stood Tater beside the fence and started petting him. Ruthie did come over. She tried to reach through the fence. That didn’t work, so she climbed the fence and leaned over. She put her hand under his mane. She smiled. I wanted her to say that she would like to ride him, but she didn’t. When I walked away, she stayed on the fence.

  Now the jumping. Abby set me two courses, eight jumps each, just like in a show. The first one was around the arena to the left, a crossbar into the far corner from the barn, then down over three jumps, one single and one an in-and-out, then to the right, a loop over a small chicken coop, stay to the right, then out of the corner over a small oxer, then turn slightly right, two more, one of them a panel, then turn left and make a small circle, come down to the trot, the walk, the halt. I took a deep breath, patted Tater on the neck, loosened the reins. I glanced over at Ruthie. She was still standing on the fence rail, staring now. Maybe she didn’t know about jumping. Abby waved. I went over to her and she set me another course, some of the same jumps, but going the other way. She talked, I nodded. She said, “You got it?” I nodded. I turned Tater to the right, trotted a little circle, pushed him up into the canter, rode the course. Was I doing it right? I had no idea, but it seemed right. After the last jump (the coop), I circled, came down to the trot, to the walk. Leaned forward, wrapped my right hand loosely around Tater’s thick white-and-red mane, pulled my hand gently toward myself, and said, “Good boy.”

  Abby put her hand on my leg and said, “Really good.”

  Which meant, I guess, that I had
done my course correctly, and how I managed that I will never know. I guess there is a way that directions just go into you, and you follow them.

  I walked Tater twice around the arena, and then it was time for someone else to take a lesson from the colonel, so I went out the gate and jumped off Tater. Rodney was standing there. He waited until I had undone all the buckles, as if I were the one untacking Tater, but then he grinned and thanked me, put Tater’s halter on, and took the tack. I led Tater over to where Ruthie still was, because she always does what she is told to do, and I said, “Let’s walk him. I’ll teach you how.” She looked a little scared, but Tater is just a pony. Sometimes I’m lazy about walking Tater the right way, but this time I did it—by his head, on his left, the lead rope in my right hand, my hand about a foot from the buckle, the rest of the lead rope crossing me in front so that I could hold it in my left hand, no loops, not dragging on the ground, step step step. Ruthie walked beside me. After seven minutes, I didn’t even ask her if she wanted to try it—I just stopped, handed her the lead rope in the right way, and went to her left side. After a moment, she started walking. Tater was good. Ruthie kept looking at him, and I told her that he was a red roan Welsh cob, and you never see one of those. She said, “I think he’s beautiful.”

  That was the first thing she’d said all morning.

  When Dad got there (we had to wait a little while), he had a bag, and in the bag were two blueberry muffins and two napkins. That made me pretty quiet on the way home, because I love blueberry muffins.

  You can always tell when you have left the town that the stables are in and come into our town, because the houses go instantly from being huge, on big lots, to being small, on tiny lots. I was just eating the last bite of my muffin when I noticed this, and Ruthie must have noticed it, too, because she said, “We’re moving.”

  My dad said, “Where to?”

  I said, “When?”

  But she didn’t answer either of these questions.

  The ickiest thing that happened on Monday was that after school, I happened to walk out the front entrance with Todd, who was telling me about going to the beach boardwalk in the summer, they were there for four days, they went on every ride twenty-seven times, but then he stopped talking and I looked at him, only to see him bend down and pick up a piece of bubble gum, mutter to himself, “Finders keepers, losers weepers,” and then pop it in his mouth. I didn’t say anything, but I walked faster, because I hoped that he would get distracted by something and not follow me home. Even though you don’t pass my house to get to his, sometimes he follows me to mine and then stands there waiting for an oatmeal cookie, which Mom gives him just to get rid of him. But—good luck—Paulie Miller came running up to us and started talking to Todd about the Cardinals and the World Series and Bob Gibson, who is a pitcher, and so I got away from them. The only time I like baseball is in the spring, when we play a little softball during recess and sometimes I hit the ball, which is a good feeling.

  At our house, everything was extra quiet, which meant, I am sorry to say, that I might as well do my arithmetic problems, because I had finished Man o’ War and given it to Ruthie that morning. I ate the cookie that Mom had left for me, saw that her door was closed, which meant that she was taking a nap along with Joan Ariel, and went up to my room and closed my door. If Mom had been there, I’m sure I would have told her that Todd had eaten raw liver and onions off the street, but she wasn’t, so I didn’t. First I drew two pictures of Ned, then two pictures of Tater, and I tried very hard to make them not look alike, because they don’t look alike. Even if their heads were the same color, they would not look alike. While I was dividing 492 by 24 (20, remainder 12), Joan Ariel woke up crying, and then Mom started talking, and then, step step step (creak creak creak, because our house is old), they went into the kitchen, and the crying stopped. Joan Ariel is six months old now. I like her. When she first wakes up in the morning or from a nap, she screams “to wake the dead,” as Grandma says, but she stops as soon as she gets picked up. She knows what she wants, which is a good thing. I am sure she will want a horse someday, because when I show her horse pictures, she points at them and smiles. She’s a really good smiler, which is probably why I like her so much. She also has plenty of hair now. It’s lighter brown than mine, and a little wavy, not like mine, which is long and straight, has always been straight, according to Mom. Melanie has wavy hair, and if she wants it to look nice, she just shakes it with her fingers and it sort of flops around her head in just the right way.

  I finished my division problems and went downstairs. Mom was walking across the living room with Joan Ariel on her shoulder, patting her back. When I stepped off the bottom step, there was a burp. Mom smiled and said, “Like magic!” Then she put Joan Ariel in the corner of the sofa, propped against the arm and the back, and I sat down and played some games with her—patty-cake, hide-and-seek, peekaboo, and a game I made up where I use my legs as drums and my hands as sticks, and I play her tunes like “When the Saints Go Marching In.” It was fun. She is fun. When I look at her, I think that before she came along, our house was way too quiet.

  At dinner, even though I’d been thinking about it all day, I said only one thing: “I wonder where Ruthie is moving.”

  Dad said, “Don’t you.”

  Mom said, “No idea.”

  Joan Ariel said, “Ah ah ah,” just like she was offering her opinion, and we all laughed.

  By Thursday, we knew. Here’s how it happened:

  Grandpa went to the market. The two men in front of him in line were complaining. One of them said, “Breaking the lease, too, I’ll be bound.” The other one said, “Shouldn’t have given them a lease in the first place. Even when the husband was around, they were late with the rent, is what I heard.”

  The woman behind the counter said, “Shame on you, talking like that. They used to go to my church. They had their troubles.”

  The two men walked out, and Grandpa put his groceries on the counter. He said, “Everyone has their troubles.”

  “Some more than others. Since my pa didn’t die of the TB when I was fourteen, leaving me to take care of my family, I try not to complain.”

  Grandpa told this to Grandma over dinner.

  Grandma said, “Oh, that was Isaac Creighton who died.” That was Ruthie’s grandfather.

  Grandpa said, “Don’t remember the son’s name.”

  The next day, Grandma was talking to a woman in her knitting group. She said, “You remember Isaac Creighton, Lorena.”

  “I do. He was the quietest boy you ever saw. But then he died. I remember every time he opened his mouth, he would cover it with his handkerchief and cough.” Grandma said, “What was his son’s name?” Lorena said, “Albert. He married Frances Cannon. Another quiet one. Who knows what in the world those two ever talked about. Then he took some money from the cannery. Disappeared.” And Grandma said, “Everyone knows. Less said about that, the better.” And Lorena said, “I hate gossip. I never gossip.” And so they had to stop talking about it.

  The next day, Grandma and Mom had Joan Ariel down at the department store, and they saw Ruthie’s mom and aunt, Frances and Nancy, walking past the window. The window is very long, so they watched them for a long time. The lady behind them said, “They do their best.” Then she shook her head.

  Mom said, “Do you know them?”

  “They live two doors down from me.”

  Now Mom and Grandma waited, which, I am here to tell you, is what you’ve got to do when you want to find out something.

  They waited until the lady looked at all of the towels, then smelled all of the soaps, then everyone watched Ruthie’s mom and aunt cross the street, and the lady said, “Well, they can’t afford it here anymore. They don’t say where they are going. I heard they found someplace for half the rent. I hope they can afford that, is all I can say.”

  Then everyone s
hook their heads, and, Mom told me at dinner, no one bought anything, which is what happens if you are in the department store and you start to feel bad. Mom worked there for a long time, so she knows.

  The way it came up was that when we were eating our dinner, she said, “I’m sorry there’s no dessert. I was going to buy some apple tarts, but I got so down when I was shopping that I just came home and forgot about it.”

  Dad was still away selling vacuum cleaners, so I said, “Why did you get down?” I imagined her climbing down a ladder. That was when she told me about the gossip trail that led to us knowing about Ruthie. I said, “When do you think she’s going to move?”

  Mom shrugged. “I guess you’ll know when she disappears from school.” She sat back in her chair and looked around the dining room, then out the window at her garden. She still seemed down. I didn’t know why. Right then, Joan Ariel started to cry. I cleared the table without being asked. And because I didn’t want to think about Ruthie, I imagined all the horses at Abby’s place gossiping about Ned. “He’s just young,” said Sissy. “We were all young once.” (Grandma says this.) “I knew horses like him at the racetrack,” said Gee Whiz. “Scared of their own shadows. Wouldn’t leave the pack and actually win a race.” He snorted. “His pa was like that,” said another horse that I imagined and named Ralph. “That kind of thing runs in the family.” “You got to have a decent job that you love,” said Beebop, who then ran leaping and kicking across the pasture, and all the horses got out of the way. I saw Ned so clearly in the distance looking at the others, taking a bite of hay, looking up the hill, pricking his ears. But he said nothing.