Catch Rider (9780544034303) (11 page)

“Sid, pick up a canter. Red coop.” He pointed at the red-painted wooden box with front and back sides slanting toward a pole at the top, like the roof on a chicken coop. His voice was loud, monotonous, detached. It was scary.

Idle Dice, hearing the sound of Dutch's voice, started to jog in place. He chewed on the bit and walked sideways like he was performing in the dressage ring. He knew the sound of a coach preparing a rider for a course.

I simply opened my fingers a quarter of an inch and the horse launched into a big canter.

“Easy. You have a lot of stride,” said Dutch.

I had never heard these terms before. Wayne would just say, “Whoa.”

I brought Idle Dice deep into the corner and looked up at the coop, locked on to it like I'd seen the Olympic riders do, and let my body turn to catch up with my head. I focused on the jump like a laser.

“Soften,” said Dutch, meaning I looked a little tense. The horse would start to feel my resistance and harden up, go faster, and not respond as well.

“Don't lean into the turn. You're not riding a motorcycle. Now oxer, vertical, vertical, stone wall.”

I looked at the other fences. No time to size them up or let Idle Dice see them.

We cantered up to the first fence, and I could feel the horse adjust his stride and hold his breath when he left the ground. When he landed, he exhaled and continued. Same thing for the oxer, then the verticals. He knew to steady himself for the oxers, which were deeper, so he wouldn't pull a rail. He knew he could use more speed for the verticals, which were only about a foot deep. The horse seemed to know that I was making the decisions, and he responded with respect to everything I wanted. I loved this horse.

“Great,” said Dutch. I felt relieved to hear a nice word. “But your equitation needs work, kid. Shorten your stirrups a couple of holes and get your heels up under your hips. I want to see a proper crest release. Welcome to the twenty-first century.”

I had been using an automatic release all my life, like the old-time classic hunter riders—I let the horse's mouth pull my hands as he jumped, following the motion with my hands, keeping contact. I'd always thought it was better, but I knew it was harder.

“Sometimes harder isn't better,” said Dutch, reading my mind. “The advantage to a crest release is that you maintain better contact and you don't have to regain it as you're landing. An automatic release can encourage the horse to be too forward, and then you have to take a couple of seconds to collect him. In a big equitation class, you don't have a few seconds. You have to land preparing for the next fence.”

He put his hands on my foot and took it out of the stirrup, showing me where my toes needed to be. He grabbed my calf and I winced from the saddle sores. Seeing my reaction, he unzipped my chaps up to my knee, saw the raw spot on my leg, and made a face.

“Put some Desitin on that and wear tall boots next time. You're not riding in your backyard anymore.”

We did the course five more times. Dutch told me that I was on a horse with an enormous stride, so to fit five strides in between two of the fences might be too hard—maybe we should just do it in four. We tried both ways. One time, I thought too hard and stiffened up, and the horse chipped in—crammed half a stride in before the jump—and it was ugly. It looked like he'd shuffled or even stumbled. If a horse like this chipped in, it was entirely the rider's fault. Dutch explained that I was counting when I should have been using my eye, but I didn't understand. I'd always used my eye, but the more I thought about the strides, the worse it got. I remembered Kelly having this problem, too. Finally, Dutch told me to let the horse find his takeoff spot before the jump, and he did.

Afterward, I saw Kelly in the barn when we were both washing off our horses. I thought about walking around to the other door and avoiding her, but I walked past her instead. She looked me up and down, as usual, while she let her horse drink out of the hose.

A
NYBODY CAN BE
clean and neat and dress well regardless of his financial position,” George Morris wrote in
Hunter Seat Equitation.
I read this for the hundredth time in Wayne's truck on the way to the tack shop in Charlottesville. It might have been true, but I didn't see how I could look like other girls at the show. Those clothes were expensive. If you wore a hand-me-down, you looked like a fool. I took a deep breath and kept reading.

 

Jackets, both for summer and winter, should be attractive yet conventional and, most important of all, fit well; there is nothing more detrimental to a rider's posture than a loose, baggy coat. . . . Breeches should be of any tan, gray, or canary material.

 

Every pair of breeches cost at least a hundred dollars, and they had to fit. I'd have to buy an old pair and have them taken in, but wouldn't this be obvious? Would they be clean? It would be so easy if I just had the money.

 

As far as boots are concerned, make sure that they are tall enough to give the rider as much length of leg as possible and fit snugly in the calves. I prefer any black or darkish tan boot (a field boot is nice), preferably without tops.

 

There were gorgeous used field boots—tall black leather boots with laces on the front of the ankle—at tack shops everywhere. But they would stand out. All the riders wore new boots. Did I want the judges to notice me because of my riding or because I was wearing a pair of thirty-year-old Vogel boots? I could read between the lines—George Morris seemed to be telling me to find some boots that would get the job done, that I didn't need to wear exactly what everyone else was wearing. He even said “preferably without tops”—the tops were only for the hunt field—but he would allow it if you needed to do it. He would allow the girl who spent her Sunday mornings in the hunt field to wear the same pair of boots to the show.
What a sacrifice
. . .

 

All in all, a rider entering a show ring should appear elegant in an understated, conventional way. No part of his riding attire should draw attention to itself and under no circumstances should there be any flashiness. Imagination can enter in subtly tailoring clothing to the rider's build and in coordinating colors with the horse.

 

In other words,
don't stand out.
Back to the nine-hundred-dollar boots, so I wouldn't draw attention to myself.

 

Wayne waited in the truck while I went inside. I had the seventy-five dollars I'd earned grooming for Kelly and my first paycheck, which wasn't much. I'd decided Donald could pay the electric bill himself if he wanted the lights on.

I found the kind of helmet Kelly had been wearing and the boots the girls had at the show.

Yep, three fifty for the helmet, which wasn't even a GPA, and nine hundred for the boots. I went to the used rack, but the prices were only half off. I left.

Wayne saw my face and said, “Borrow something from the barn. It's just one show. Don't matter what color it is, don't have to be too fancy.”

“Have you been to a show?” I asked him. “They are all dressed exactly the same. They all have the same Ariat Monaco field boots that cost nine hundred dollars.”

“Dumbest thing I ever heard! You need a pair of black or brown tall boots, period!” he shouted.

“I'm not standing out like a sore thumb with brown dress boots!” I said.

“Then borrow some from somebody at the barn.”

“I don't want to ask some rich girl if I can borrow her boots! They're custom fit, anyway.”

We dropped the subject. Wayne popped in his old Osborne Brothers cassette tape and we listened to it all the way home, not saying a word.

 

The next day, not one of my days at the barn, I thought maybe thirty times about how I was going to get show clothes. When I got home from school, I called the barn and asked to speak to Edgar.

“I need some boots. Please don't tell me I can wear some old used dress boots that don't fit—”

“No, you need to wear what everyone else is wearing,” he said in his deep voice.

“Thank you!” I nearly yelled into the phone.

“Wayne doesn't get it. You cannot stand out. People will know you are new, and they will be asking who you are. You must be dressed exactly like every other rider. I'll find you a helmet and some boots. They might not be perfect, but they'll be fine for one show.”

“You understand.”

He laughed. “This is what I do.”

“I'm supposed to have another lesson with Dutch this week.”

“You don't have to. I'll tell him the horse is tired. Just come out and hack him around the ring.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” he said confidently.

It dawned on me that Edgar ran everything. Dutch, Dee Dee, and Martha thought they called the shots, but they didn't. Edgar just let them think they did.

When I got to the barn the next day, Edgar handed me a helmet. It was a little beat-up and too small, leaving a red mark on my forehead. But whatever. Now we had to find boots.

“Kelly has an extra pair,” he said. “You could ask her.”

“No way,” I answered.

He found an old pair of boots that belonged to a boy who didn't ride there anymore. The calves were very tight and the feet were too big, but when Edgar shined them up, they looked good. If only I didn't feel like my legs were in a tourniquet. Edgar also found a riding coat, breeches, and a shirt, and he would have them sent out to the cleaners for me, but just this one time.

The sleeves of the coat were too short, but he showed me how to tuck in my cuff so it wouldn't be so noticeable. The breeches were too tight in the waist, so I safety-pinned them. The shirt was old and had someone else's monogram on the collar, but the coat would hide it.

“Go straight to the horse show grounds on Saturday,” Edgar said. He smiled big. “This weekend, you're full service.”

O
N
S
ATURDAY
, W
AYNE
drove me to the show grounds in Keswick. I walked to the tented barn area where grooms were playing loud salsa music. Idle Dice was being braided by a woman I'd never seen before. A professional braider, I realized. With a braided mane, Idle Dice's neck looked enormous, and his plaited forelock tucked up tight between his ears made his huge eyes look even bigger. As he chewed, muscles filled the hollow sockets above his eyes. His coat was so black and shiny that it looked purple.

While I was standing there, a groom came along with Idle Dice's tack, entered his stall, and put it all on without looking at me. He pulled the horse out into the aisle, wiped off the sides of his bit, pulled the hay out of his mouth. When I reached out for the reins, he looked at me strangely and walked the horse to the mounting block, motioning for me to follow. Then he took a walkie-talkie off his belt and said into it, “Idle Dice is ready and heading to the ring.”

Now I really got it. This was how girls on the A-circuit stayed clean and relaxed, not exhausted or dirty. They had grooms. They had someone to clean the stalls and wrap the legs, braid, feed, water, polish, and scrub. They didn't touch hoof polish when they were dressed and ready. They didn't clean out the grime from between a mare's udders or the snot from a horse's nose. They didn't pick the scabs out of a horse's ears from fly bites or put salve over the wounds to heal them.

How was this fair? How could you say you rode horses—and won horse shows—if you'd never had to do these things? Maybe there was a trial period, and once you graduated, you just got a groom and moved up. Maybe it was my turn to move up, and I would never have to dig to the bottom of a filthy stall again.

But I knew this wasn't true. These girls were just lucky. I thought about Wayne and what kind of rider he would have been with a setup like this. It wasn't fair—at all.

“Spit-shined and ready to go!” I turned around and saw Wes. I was so happy to see him that I didn't know what to say.

He reached under my chin strap and tucked my hair up.

Edgar was watching. “You don't have a hairnet? Wait here.” He jogged over to the next aisle, rummaged around, and came back with hair spray and a hairnet. He took my helmet off, fixed my hair, put a net over it, sprayed it, and put the helmet back on my head.

“Ahh, much better,” said Wes.

“Just like the other girls,” said Edgar. He winked.

I took Idle Dice into the warm-up ring, where trainers and riders were crammed together, going in every direction. We weren't all the way in when I almost collided with a girl. She said sharply, “Heads up, please,” like I was some kind of idiot.

Dutch walked into the center of the ring sipping his coffee, but he was chatting with another trainer and didn't look at me. I couldn't figure out the traffic pattern, so I just got in behind some girl on a blood bay and picked up a trot. Girls were coming off jumps kind of fast and then merging with other horses at a trot, going both directions. No one was walking. But I just kept following the blood bay, trying to get into a pace. My legs were getting numb because my boots were so tight. My back was stiff and my helmet itched.

I saw a trainer in the center of the ring staring at me, arms crossed. He was dressed in fancy dark jeans and an insulated vest, and he had a sour look on his face. He leaned over to another trainer, an older lady with short hair, and whispered something, still looking at me. I wished I knew what they were saying. As I came around the ring the first time, I heard a lady on the rail say, “Is that Idle Dice?”

“Sure looks like him,” said the woman next to her.

“What is he doing here?”

“I don't know.”

“Who is that on him?”

“I have no idea.”

It was quiet in the warm-up ring, even though there were at least twenty horses and about eight coaches all standing together in the center where the jumps were. The fancy flooring in the ring—it looked like mulch but wasn't—absorbed all the sound. All I could hear was the jingle of the chain of a pelham bit and one roarer—a horse that had a wheeze.