A Good Horse (7 page)

Black George and I had worked on these, and when I paid attention, he was good. Even so, he was comfortable with whatever lead he happened to be on, no matter what direction he was going in, so there was no reason to change. I explained this to Miss Slater.

“Well, Abby, he may not have a reason to change, but you do. The canter is an asymmetrical gait, and the legs launch and then catch the horse. If he’s on the proper lead—if his outside hind launches the step, then the inside hind and outside foreleg continue it, and finally the inside foreleg catches it. The inside foreleg steps farther forward so that the outside hind can come under and launch again. If he’s on the proper lead, his path to each jump will be straighter, safer, and also more in line with how the course designer has set it up. You want him to get to the jump and over it in the easiest way, and that means changing leads when he turns away from the direction he’s been going in.”

She had me sit up straight and canter to the left, in a large loop. When I came across my path again, I was to use my right leg to get him to move a little sideways to the right, and touch him behind the saddle with my right heel. We knew he could change leads, the question was whether he would. Left to right was easier, and he did do it. It felt like a four-footed hop that then smoothed into a right-lead canter. I stopped him, and we did it again. Then we tried exactly the same thing starting to the right and changing to the left. We were both more
awkward at this. I didn’t sit up very straight, and he only changed his front legs. Miss Slater was patient. We tried again, me thinking, “Sit up! Sit up! One—sit up; two—move him over; three—touch him with the left heel!” He changed, and more smoothly than the times to the right, as if it wasn’t such a big deal. We tried again, missed again, then tried again, and had a good one.

Miss Slater said, “It’s very much a question of being sensitive to the rhythm of the horse’s stride. Count the steps, sit up, ask for the change.” While I was thinking of this, Daddy returned without Ellen Leinsdorf. The look on his face said, “So long, it’s been good to know you,” which was an old song he sang around the barn sometimes. Miss Slater didn’t ask him anything about it.

Instead, she pointed to the jumps in the field and said, “Abby, we are rather proud of our outside course, and I think you might like going over a few of those. I’m sure Black George will enjoy the open space, and most of those are fairly modest.” We walked to the coop in the fence line and gazed out across the field, which maybe in the spring was green but now was a bright, clipped golden color. There were six different obstacles out there—three fences made of living green bushes, a big log, an actual stone wall, a long slope that ended abruptly in a vertical bank that looked pretty high to me (you could jump on or off this anywhere along the slope, so your jump could be any height from about one foot to bigger than I could imagine jumping up to or down from). From where we stood, they seemed randomly scattered in the field. Miss Slater climbed over the fence beside the coop, and Daddy climbed after her.
When they were out there, she shouted, “Make a circle and jump the coop. It’s a very inviting fence!”

And so it was.

We walked toward the center of the field. Now the jumps seemed to be more in a pattern. One that I hadn’t noticed before and certainly would avoid was a big ditch full of water. Since the sun had come out, the water looked deep and blue. The ground sloped up to it slightly; then there was a narrow small log; and then the rippling water, which looked very wide; and another very narrow log defining the other side.

The first thing I did was jump on and off the sides of the bank. They were very low—not more than one foot high or two feet high. Black George hesitated going down at first, but only to figure out how to balance with me on him—he and the other geldings went in and out of our crick all the time, on their own and with us on their backs. The brush fences were fun, too. Miss Slater was all smiles.

Finally, she gave me a course—do a canter circle to the right, jump back into the ring and over the red and white vertical poles, then come out again over the coop. Gallop down over the first brush going away, then the second brush coming back. Then take the bank crosswise—up one side about halfway along the slope, then two strides across and down the other side, then turn right and come back to where they were standing.

I gathered the reins. I did not close one eye, lift my hand, and walk my fingers around over the jumps. What could be hard? Over the coop, over the red and white poles, back out over the coop, out to the brush, back over the other brush,
then around and up the bank, down the bank, to the left, and back. Except that I didn’t realize just how happy Black George would be when he came back out over the coop. I did not expect him to take hold of the bit and go a little fast over the first brush and then a little faster over the second brush. I did not know that the tears in my eyes were from speed—I thought they were from the breeze. When we headed for the bank, his ears were pricked—what an easy thing to do! Up! Down! Just like that! And then he galloped on. I let him, because we didn’t get to gallop in such a beautiful, gently rolling field very often. And then I turned left.

The trouble with left and right is that you have a fifty-fifty chance of being wrong. So when I turned left at a brisk gallop, there we were, maybe five or six strides out from the giant ditch (it looked as big as our whole crick), and Black George was going fast. I saw his ears prick, and then, before I knew it, he had shifted his weight backward—not in order to stop (and maybe dump me in the water) but in order to gather himself and leap. When I realized that that was what he was doing, I grabbed his mane, pushed my heels down, and more or less curled up on his neck and went with him. He landed and galloped on. Fortunately, there weren’t any more jumps between me and Daddy and Miss Slater, who were now standing on the bank, staring toward me. I brought Black George around in a circle and stopped beside the bank. I was panting harder than the horse was.

Miss Slater said, “How old is that horse? Where did you get that horse?”

Daddy said, “He’s five, as far as we know. We thought he
was four, but his teeth seem to be those of a five-year-old. I got him in Oklahoma.”

There was a long pause while I walked Black George around in a circle. I didn’t know if I was in trouble or not.

Miss Slater said, “He didn’t put a toe in the water.”

“How wide is it?” said Daddy. I could tell he was trying to remain calm.

“Well …,” said Miss Slater.

There was another pause. Black George and I kept walking in our circle.

“Well.” She coughed. “There is a constant argument around here about that water jump. It’s too big, and I keep telling the colonel—”

“How wide is it?” said Daddy.

“The colonel insisted on, I must say, fifteen feet. Including the little logs.” Then she said, “I myself have never jumped it. The widest I’ve ever jumped is twelve feet.”

We were quiet for a long time after that, then Daddy said, “Abby, why didn’t you stop?”

I said, “Black George didn’t want to stop.”

Daddy said, “Sometimes, a horse isn’t the best judge of what to do.”

I said, “I know that. I’m sorry.” But I was only sorry about part of it—what might have happened. I wasn’t at all sorry about what did happen—being in the air over that big water and knowing that Black George was enjoying himself maybe more than he ever had was the thrill of my life. We all walked back to the main stable grounds without saying anything. I had Black George on a loose rein, and he was swinging his head
and neck, looking here and there. His nostrils were flaring, but he didn’t seem tired. Every so often, Miss Slater, who was walking beside us, would turn and look at him, then pat him on the neck. When we got back to the trailer, she pulled a sugar cube out of her pocket and gave it to him, saying, “Well, you are a fine fellow, Black George. I would love to know your breeding.”

Then she and Daddy talked about the show, which was to begin in five days, on Thursday, but because of school, we wouldn’t be coming over until Saturday. We were entered in two classes on Saturday, nice, easy hunter classes. These were like the ones I had ridden Gallant Man in the previous spring—the horse was to jump nicely and show good manners, but the jumps were not terribly big, and the courses didn’t have a lot of turns. We tied Black George to the trailer and un-tacked him, then brushed him down. I thought the weather was too cool to hose him off—we could do that at home, where it would be sunny and warm. When he was all clean and relaxed, Daddy loaded him in the trailer and we headed for home.

Daddy was saying nothing in a very suspicious way—in exactly the way he usually got when he was hatching a plan. It was always, always better when Daddy talked. I looked at him a couple of times, waiting for him to say something, but then, when he didn’t, I picked up
Great Expectations
again. It wasn’t until we were almost home that I realized that I had put the bookmark in the wrong spot, and I was reading a section I had already read without even knowing it. Right when I noticed that, Daddy suddenly said, “Did that jump really come as a surprise to you? You galloped right past it.”

“I don’t know why I didn’t see it, except that the sun wasn’t shining on it. I don’t know.”

“Let’s not tell your mother how big it was, okay?”

“It wasn’t as hard as it looked. I just curled up and sat there. He did all the work.”

“He surely did. He surely did. But thank the Lord you stuck on.”

I nodded.

Because of church, I wasn’t allowed to do homework on Sunday. The Sabbath was reserved for the Lord, and we went to church all day with our Brothers and Sisters. We could feed the horses, of course, and cook for the church supper, but we could not engage in “secular pursuits.” Therefore, I had to sit in my room that night and finish reading
Great Expectations
and then write my book report in ink, because I didn’t have time to copy it over for Monday. I had no idea what to say, so I did a funny thing—I imagined that I was Kyle Gonzalez and just started writing. I imagined Kyle going on and on about everything in
Great Expectations
that no one else in the world cared about, like what did the author mean by naming a character Magwitch, and why did he name the main boy Pip and the old woman Havisham? I came up with some Kyle-ish ideas, for two and a half pages, and put it away and that was that! It was pretty easy, in the end.

O
N
M
ONDAY, THERE WAS ANOTHER LETTER FROM
M
R
. B
RANDT
in Texas. Daddy showed it to me after dinner. It read: