A Good Horse (5 page)

I
AM SURE
D
ADDY SAW THE DOG, TOO, SINCE FOR THE NEXT FEW
days, if I looked in the right direction, I would see it there, usually sitting and looking back at me. If you drew a circle around the barn and the house and Mom’s garden and Jack’s old pen, that would be the circle the dog did not enter, but at any time it could be just outside that circle, lying down, sitting, walking, making itself at home. I almost had the feeling that the more it walked around the circle looking at us, the more we started to belong to it, in its own mind, but it was being cautious and thinking if it entered the circle too soon, it would be kicked out, and it would have been. Mom and I didn’t mention the dog because we knew that the only chance of having it around was Daddy getting used to it, and having no
one to argue with about it. The dog would of course never come into the house. But maybe it could, someday, come into the barn.

On Monday after Jem Jarrow had given me my second lesson, I came home from school to discover that Daddy had set up as good a jumping course as he could in the arena, and that Black George was all tacked up and waiting for me. I went right in the house to change into my riding clothes, and as I did, Daddy called, “Bring out that list!”

He meant the list I had made of the things I was supposed to do when I was jumping a course. Sometimes, he made me go over that list line by line, just to make sure that we were getting the most out of our times with Miss Slater. I put on my boots and found the list in my horse notebook. The weather had broken; it was about fifteen degrees cooler than it had been, so I knew we had plenty of work to do.

Daddy was holding Black George, and I handed him the list, which he read while I recited:

“Ride the course, not the jumps.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, if I think of the jumps too much, I will look at each one and forget to go forward, but if I think of where I’m going, the jumps will get jumped automatically.”

“Okay. Number 2.”

“Keep the horse level, especially through the corners.”

“What does that mean?”

“I have to sit up and a little back, and make sure that his front legs are moving evenly and his shoulders are the same height.”

“Why?”

“Because he could slip otherwise, or come into a jump off-balance.”

“Okay. Three.”

“Look ahead ten strides, not two or five.”

“That’s about …”

“That’s about keeping going, like the first one, but also about being prepared and knowing where you are going.”

“Four.”

“Ride to the middle of every fence.”

“Why?”

“Because getting to the middle is hard, but if you try to get there, there’s a better chance you will at least get close.”

“Yes,” said Daddy. “And also, the horse can’t see the fence as you approach it, because his eyes are set to either side of his head. If you ride to the middle of the fence, he has a better sense of where he is and when and how to jump.”

“He can’t see the fence?”

“Not while he’s jumping it.”

I didn’t know what to think about this. It was a little scary. On the other hand, Black George didn’t seem to care whether he could see the fence or not—he was always right about where it was. I said, “Okay.”

“Five?”

“Wait.”

“How can you wait when you are galloping?”

“Well, I don’t want to get my body in front of the horse’s body. I am waiting for him rather than leaning out ahead of him. Also, his strides should be even, so I don’t want to get him to change his strides by making him go faster.”

“Good. You sound like you’ve passed this test before.”

“I have. Six is like five: maintain a rhythm.”

“Why is that?”

“Nobody gets nervous.”

“Right—”

“Or, if somebody is nervous, the other one doesn’t realize it.”

Daddy laughed.

I said, “Seven should be one. Look up, never down.”

“Why is that?”

“ ’Cause if you look down, you can fall down.”

“But also …”

“When you are looking down, you are looking at the jumps and riding the jumps, not the course. When you are looking up, you are riding the course, not the jumps.”

“Okay!” said Daddy. “A-plus!” And he threw me onto Black George.

He must have spent the whole afternoon setting up the course, because he had also taken the tractor and dragged the entire arena. The sand was grooved and even all around. There were eight jumps, and every one of them even weirder than usual.

They weren’t all that high, but Black George and I had never seen any of them quite like this before. Daddy had set out three hay bales end to end and on top of them arranged a row of books. A few strides past that was a pair of stools holding up a two-by-four or something like that, with four pairs of his jeans hanging over them. At the far curve of the arena was the picket fence he liked to use, but with branches woven between the pickets. He had dragged in a log from somewhere—it was
higher on the sides than in the middle, which would make us jump the middle. There were three sawhorses set end to end, their legs wrapped in Christmas ribbon. A row of Mom’s Mexican pots with flowers growing out of them. A row of kitchen chairs, but with one of my stuffed animals sitting in each seat—panda, giraffe, Raggedy Ann, floppy dog, rabbit. The last one was almost regular—he had taken a pair of jump standards that we had and set three poles across it, but he had dangled kitchen spoons from the top pole so that they clanked against the poles beneath.

I figured I should be nervous, but Black George trotted around and past all of these scary things without blinking, hardly flicking his ears. I guess he knew Daddy was capable of anything.

The point here was to train a jumper the way you would train a parade horse or a police horse. Daddy had trained a lot of parade horses, who then had to handle things like Fourth of July parades and the Shriners coming to town and the rodeo. You never knew what people were going to do at a parade, partly because you had to assume that, as Mom said, some people enjoyed the parade by going to bars ahead of time. So, there could be kids running around, firecrackers going off, yelling, flags waving, balloons, cars honking, banners flapping, not to mention brass bands and baton twirling. Daddy’s idea about a jumper was that a horse show might look a little quieter than a parade, but you never knew, best to take precautions. So I wound in and out of the jumps, trotting and then cantering, and for Black George, it was just a stroll through the park. A quiet park.

The jumps were set around the arena like this:

My first job was to jump back and forth over 1 and 2, the books and the flowerpots, a few times, making sure that Black George took a stride between the jumps. This was a “one-stride in-and-out.” Once we did that (and Daddy already had a big smile because Black George was jumping carefully but happily over these two), we went over the books and the flowers and
then down and around and over 3, the picket fence. Then I went over the first three again and then around number 7, the blue jeans, and back over number 6, the kitchen chairs with Freddie, Floppy, Peanut, Raggedy Ann, and Nubbin the bunny. Black George was enjoying himself and I was getting excited. The next step was to go down over number 4, the poles and spoons, then around 2 and 1, and back over 8, the sawhorses, and 7, the jeans, then around 6 to 5, the log. There were no tight turns, and Black George galloped in a relaxed way. Since the jumps weren’t high, I just stayed with him, feeling him rise up under me, then gallop away. It was very easy to ride the course. But the course was small, and only two turns.

The next thing was to jump everything in order—1 and 2, the in-and-out, around to 3, right-hand loop around the 7, then down over the 4. Left-hand turn around the 2, down over the 5, bend around the 3, and up over the 6, then a tight turn to the 7, and finish over the 8. That was three curves and two tight turns. I sat on Black George, who was breathing a little hard but had his ears pricked, and studied the course, first actually pointing with my finger and saying “1, 2, 3 …,” then turning my head and staring at each jump in order. Just then it seemed like a long time since I took Melinda’s pony in the horse show, and I felt a surge of tension right in the front of my chest. But Black George was ready to go.

I began to circle him at the trot, but almost immediately, he lifted on his own into a bouncy canter. I turned him toward number 1, the books. I said to myself only one thing: “Go to the corner. Go to the corner.” But I said it as if I were counting the syllables along with his strides—GO to the CORner. GO to
the CORner. First 1, 2, 3, back around to 4, out and around to 5, down over 6, then 7, then 8, then ease down to the trot.

Daddy was smiling, and he shouted, “Beautiful, Abby!” But I barely cared what he was shouting. I was thrilled in myself and happy with Black George, as if he had given me a present.

Then we did it again. It was less exciting this time, and that was a good thing. I felt that my attitude about jumping the course was more like Black George’s now—having fun, no big deal. There are ways in which you can feel dumber than your horse—he knows what you are doing better than you know it, so it is a little embarrassing to have made such a big deal over something he considers part of his job, and rather routine.

This was not a way I usually felt about the horses—usually, I assumed that I knew more than they did. Daddy
always
assumed that he knew more than they did. But it was also true that when Danny was a little kid, and Mom and Daddy lived back in Oklahoma, Daddy had a cutting horse mare who worked the cattle without a bridle. As a trick, once, he took her into a ring with several calves and reached forward and pulled off her bridle. She did all her work—separating a calf, moving him, cornering him—with Daddy just sitting there holding on to her mane to keep his balance. After that first time, he did it fairly often, he said, just showing off. I bet the mare liked it—when we asked him about it, he said that he could never teach any other cutting horses to do that—the mare learned that on her own and maybe knew more than Daddy could have taught her. At any rate, after our work with Black George, we felt like he would be ready to go to the show grounds and jump over everything.

*   *   *

In the next few days, Mom said nothing about the dog, and I didn’t, either. We could see it out there, trotting or walking around, taking care of its business, whatever that was. Twice, I saw it sitting alertly, staring at the horses, once at the mares and once at the geldings, but I didn’t think anything of it—I stared at the horses myself, because horses are interesting. But a few days after Black George and I had our great lesson, Mom and Daddy and I were sitting at supper talking about the show when we suddenly heard lots of high whinnies and then galloping feet. Normally, the horses would be quietly eating their evening hay, so Daddy jumped up from the table, and Mom and I were right after him. We ran out of the house.

The first thing we saw was the mares, all standing in a line, staring toward the geldings. You couldn’t see the geldings from the front of the house, but once we could see them, there was the dog, speckled white with a brown head, chasing Jack and Lester, or Jack or Lester, down the long side of the pasture, fast and silent, not barking, its head low and intent. Lester turned suddenly, and the dog kept on—Jack was the prey. Mom gasped, and Daddy said, “Lord have mercy!”

We ran toward the fence, and Daddy started shouting, “Hey! Hey, you mutt! Lay off!” He picked up a stone, and when we got to the fence, he threw it. It hit the dog on the rump and startled it. Mom said, “Oh dear.” The dog stopped running and turned to look at us. Jack stopped running, too, and though I had thought he was afraid, I now wondered, because he swept around the end of the pasture in a big trot and started back toward the dog, snorting but with his ears pricked.
Then he stopped. His nostrils were flaring, but he seemed more excited than worried.

Daddy said, “I saw this dog around.” He shook his head. Mom and I exchanged a glance, and I wondered if maybe she had made better friends with the dog than I knew about. She said, “I can’t believe he thinks Jack is prey.”

“He doesn’t think anything,” said Daddy. “He sees something move and chases it. You can tell by the way his hind end is built that there’s something fast in there, some coursing breed.”

But Jack flipped his tail and whinnied, as if to get the dog to play. I took a couple of steps toward the gate, thinking I would catch him and walk him around. The dog by this time was standing with his head turned toward Mom, and I think Daddy was having a few thoughts of his own about why the dog was looking at Mom—and if he wasn’t, he should have been—when a funny thing happened. Jefferson walked up to the dog and without even sniffing him or getting acquainted in any way, bent his knees against the dog’s side and rolled him over. Before he knew it, the dog was lying on his back, looking up at Jefferson, who was looking down at him. And the dog didn’t scramble to his feet. He waited for Jefferson to step back, which Jefferson did, eventually, and then the dog got to his feet, head down, tail low, and slunk away. Daddy laughed. Mom said, “I never saw that before. How did Jefferson know that? That’s what you do to show a dog you’re the boss.”