A Good Horse (8 page)

I read the letter very calmly, I thought. He still wasn’t saying, Your horse is mine, give me back my horse. There was still the chance that this other brown mare that passed through the sale barn was exactly like Brown Jewel (or Pearl) in every possible way and that she produced a big, beautiful brown colt with a cowlick in the middle of his forelock who moved like a … panther? a deer? In fact, like a racehorse. There was still that chance. I said, “What do you think that he means by
substantial
?”

“You mean the stud fee,” said Daddy. “Do you know what a stud fee is?”

“I can imagine,” I said.

“Well, don’t imagine too hard,” said Mom.

I think this was meant to be a joke.

Daddy said, “Over a thousand dollars, anyway. I don’t know too much about it, but these are rich people, very rich people, people who are richer maybe than we can imagine, so we don’t know what they would pay for something they wanted.”

“Are you saying that if they can prove that Brown Jewel was Alabama Lady, and we want to keep Jack, they would make us pay that kind of money for him?”

“They might. Why wouldn’t they?” said Daddy. “How do you think they got rich? It wasn’t by doing favors. Jesus said that it is harder for a rich man to get into heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.”

Mom lowered her voice. “At this point, we don’t know anything about what they suspect or intend, but your daddy and I would like to be prepared.”

“You mean I should be prepared, because I’m the one who cares.”

“Are you sassing me?” said Daddy. He cleared his throat.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m saying what I think.” But I was not saying all of what I thought. I thought that he would be glad to get rid of my horse, whose birth had been a surprise, and who was too young to be saleable or useful, and that when I wasn’t around, he was breathing that old sigh of relief—the Lord had intervened, and it was all for the best, and thank you, Jesus.
All
of what I thought was pretty angry.

I went to my room and did my homework. I was finished with
Great Expectations
, but there were plenty of stupid equations, a pile of junk about three types of muscle fiber, some pointless reading about crops of the temperate zones, and
je ne sais quoi
about
tout le monde
. It took me the rest of the night, but it didn’t put me to sleep. What did put me to sleep was the idea of disappearing with Jack. There were ranches all around us with plenty of grass for him. I could take a blanket and sleep on the ground. And then I thought about snakes and mountain lions and coyotes, but I dropped off, anyway.

When I woke up, I was still mad, but I knew I needed a better plan than walking away with Jack across the crick and over the mountains. When I got to school, the first thing I said to Gloria was, “Your mom really likes Jack, doesn’t she?”

“Oh, she loves him,” said Gloria. We were in the bathroom, and she was putting on lipstick, but she wasn’t using the mirror. Gloria had practiced putting on lipstick so many times that she could do a perfect job just by feel. She pressed her lips together and then blotted them. She said, “I love him, too. You are so lucky.”

“I’m not lucky if those people from Texas come to get him.”

“Well, you bought the mare fair and square. I’m sure your dad can get the money back for her, and then he can give it to those people, and they will sell you Jack.”

“You think so?” Now she was combing her hair. She was good at doing that without a mirror, too, but I said, “Why don’t you ever look in the mirror?”

“Because you just see yourself backward. How you look in a mirror is not how you really look. I decided not to get used to thinking that is the way I look. My mom got this new Polaroid Swinger camera. Have you seen one of those? After I get ready in the morning, I take my picture, and it develops right there, and so I know what I really look like. I think it’s a great idea, even if I do say so myself.”

“Maybe your mom would buy a horse.”

“You mean Jack.”

“If we didn’t have enough to buy him.”

Gloria stopped fixing herself and looked at me. Then she smiled. She said, “I think that would be fun.”

“Well, don’t say anything yet. There’s still the chance that
another mare was the stolen mare.” But I didn’t really believe that.

When I got home from school that afternoon, I went to Jack first. With all the horses we had, I was only working with Jack about every three or four days, but Jem Jarrow thought that was fine, because Jack also had to have plenty of time just to be a horse and to grow up. The other geldings sometimes looked as though they wished he
would
grow up—for example, when he played by rearing up and putting his front legs on one of them.

And only Black George would let Jack share his hay. If he came up to one of the others when that one was eating, the horse would pin his ears and chase him off, sometimes with a nip or two. I also noticed that if they were all standing by the gate and I had an apple or a piece of bread, if I held it out to Jack, Jefferson or Lester would push in and insist that I give it to them. So I made sure to cut the apples and break the bread into enough pieces for everyone. That afternoon, I gave them all some bread, then I snapped the rope onto Jack’s halter and led him out. All I planned to do was give him a good brushing and work with his feet, since Jake Morrisson would be there that weekend to trim him. Danny would be coming, too, and I was sure that Danny would have some idea about the people in Texas.

Jack must have been reading my mind. Sometimes, a horse reads your mind and doesn’t like what he sees in there, I guess. Anyway, Jack started misbehaving almost immediately—he was pushy on the lead line and kept getting ahead of me, so that I had to do what Jem had told me and stand in front of him and insist that he step backward. The first time, he was so
resistant that I had to pop him with the rope under his chin, which I hadn’t had to do in months. Then, every two or three steps, I had to halt him and insist that he halt when I halted. Of course he moved his feet, so I had to make myself be strict and mean what I said, and not move on until he had actually stopped moving his feet and relaxed. After doing this three times (plus the popping), I was feeling bored and therefore impatient. I couldn’t believe that after all this time, he still wasn’t leading properly, when there were so many other things that were more fun that we might have been doing instead of me leading him from the gelding pasture to the pen.

Then I stopped again, and he stopped, and I turned my head to look at him. His head was cocked in my direction, and his ears were forward. His eye caught my eye, and his nostril flared, and I thought at that moment that he was utterly beautiful, the most beautiful horse I ever saw, and also he was a baby, hardly bigger, in his way, than I was. His hooves were small, his legs were thin and long, his body was wiry, and his mane was just a line of hairs standing up along his neck, about halfway between fuzz and real black hairs. He was unbelievably cute, and I reached out and stroked him on his neck, at which point he lifted up on his hind legs, easy as pie.

He was a baby. Well, maybe he was more of a toddler. I waited for Jack to come down (a long second), and then I remembered Jem saying that there are things we simply ignore, and I walked toward the gate again, stopping twice. Jack stopped with me both times. He even waited quietly while I opened the gate and then led him through it.

I undid the lead rope and let him trot away.

In the pen, he made me a little nervous, though, especially when he began squealing, pawing, and kicking as he trotted and galloped around me. The squeals were sharp and short, as if he were angry—he would pin his ears, let out a high squeal, and in the middle of it kick out, or twist into the air, or throw his shoulders to one side and paw the air, then he would run three strides and stand up on his hind legs. And he didn’t always stick to the periphery of the pen—sometimes, he would cross pretty close to me as if he didn’t know I was there, or didn’t care. He ran around. I wondered if I should leave the ring and let him play on his own, but I got a little nervous right then about getting to the gate. If he was coming toward me, would he stop? I didn’t know. I did decide to hold the two ends of the lead rope together and swing the loop toward him if he came too close, but when I did that, I felt like I was chasing him away.

He went around me to the left.

I stepped backward and to the right, and he turned inward, the way he was supposed to, and headed to the right, but he bucked and squealed and kicked up. I saw his back hoof. It was nowhere near me, but it looked like it was pointed at me.

When my father’s brother John was fifteen, back in Oklahoma (Daddy would have been twelve), he went to put one of the mules they had out in the corral with the other mule and the four horses. He opened the gate, led the mule through, and took off the halter. The mule leapt forward, twisted, and kicked out. He kicked Uncle John right in the side of the head, above his ear. Uncle John fell down, and Uncle Luke found him there sometime later, when Grandma sent him out to see
why John hadn’t come in for supper. He was already dead. They figured out what happened by the bruise above his ear.

When a horse kicks, you don’t ever say that he or she meant to get you. It’s your job to know that a horse (or a mule) can always kick and to stay out of the way. Some people would say that that is your number 1 job—you never approach a horse from behind, especially the first time; you always keep your hand on him when you go around his hind end, and you stay right up by him, because when you are right next to him, he can’t land one on you. You stand to one side when you pick up his back feet or brush him back there or comb his tail. When you are riding in a line of horses, you stay back and keep your eye on the horse in front of you for any sort of threatening gesture. I knew about kicking as well as I knew anything. I knew that maybe the mistake Uncle John made was that he didn’t walk his mule through the gate and turn him so that they were facing each other, and then take off the halter. I knew
all of this
, but I couldn’t help thinking that after what I had done for Jack, and what I had thought of him, he still wouldn’t mind kicking me if he was mad at me. I flicked the rope at him again, and he ran around the arena, squealing and bucking. I stood there.

I was not doing what Jem Jarrow would have done, which was to make Jack do stuff, at least change directions lots of times and stay back from me until he was a little worn out. I had done that with Jack over and over and never minded it because I enjoyed watching him. I realized I had better do that now, and so I did, flagging him on with the loop of rope, stepping back so he would turn, flagging him back the other way, and
then, after he had gone a few strides, doing something sudden (even shouting “Boo!”) so that he would jump and get the tension out of his back, the way I had done with Rally (though I kept thinking of Rally as Ornery George). And it was true that the more things I had Jack do, the more I enjoyed watching him, and the less I thought about whether he really loved me or not. Daddy hated it when anyone talked about horses loving someone. As far as he was concerned, horses were all about the carrot and the stick—they were good for carrots and stopped being bad if you hit them with a stick. And asking whether horses “loved” you was almost blasphemous—love comes from God, and horses, as far as we can tell, don’t know anything about God.

Jack was trotting to the left. He had calmed down some, and his steps were brisk but even. He arched his neck and turned his head a little toward me, and I stepped back so he would turn inward and go the other direction. His neck arched a little more, and his tail lifted, and then he did turn inward, but he did not go the other direction. He trotted toward me, and then, when he was right in front of me, he reared slowly upward, looking me in the face. He stood there. Then he came down and turned to the right and trotted away. I was surprised.

Then I realized that Daddy had come home while we were working and was standing outside the pen, looking. He said, “That colt is getting bossy.”

I said, “He does feel peppy today.”

“Has he ever done that before?”

“What?”

“You know what, missy.”

“No.”

“He was testing you.”

“By rearing?”

“Of course.”

By now, Jack was standing by the rail, quiet but looking at me.

Daddy added, “He could have hurt you.”

“He didn’t.”

“Sheer luck.”

“I don’t think so.”

Daddy took a deep breath. Now he was Being Patient. “Why don’t you think so?”

“Because when he reared up, he looked at me, and when he looked at me, he curled his front legs back. He did. I saw him.”

But I knew that Daddy was right, too, and that I had better get Jack to do things, plenty of things, because for the last half hour, I had been thinking about whether he loved me or not, not about whether he was behaving himself, and even though he curled his forelegs back and did not touch me with them, the way he touched the geldings, he really should not have reared up at me in the first place. I went to the side of the pen where we kept whips and found the flag, which was a whip with a piece of cloth tied to it.

I went back to the center of the pen.

Daddy was still standing there, but he didn’t say anything, the way the teachers don’t say anything when you are taking a test. I flicked the flag toward Jack, who was looking pretty hard at me, anyway, and he jumped and then trotted to the right. I flagged him on so that he would go a little faster, and then,
when he kicked out, I flagged him on again. He bucked. I flagged him on again. Only when he was trotting nicely, around the outside of the pen, and looked where he was going in a businesslike manner did I lower the flag and let him slow down. He slowed down. But before he stopped, I flagged him on again. The thing is, he has to get the feeling that when he does something that he wants to do, it is you who is letting him do that. If he does something he wants to do that you don’t want him to do, then you have to keep making him do that until he doesn’t want to do it anymore. Or, as Daddy might say, the wages of sin is that you have to keep sinning until they let you stop, at least if you are a colt. I stepped back. He turned toward me, looking at me. I stepped back again. He stepped toward me and lowered his head. So I went up and petted him a couple of times on the nose. Then I stepped back and waved the flag so he would trot to the right. This time, he trotted nicely.