Champion Horse

by Jane Smiley

  When you are in eighth grade, you think you are pretty grown-up and all you need to do, really, is get your parents to let you do whatever you want. When you get to ninth grade, it is so obvious that you are not grown-up and that if your parents were to let you do whatever you wanted, the school and the police would stop you anyway. The high school had guards in uniforms – only two of them, but they must have been there to make sure that the older kids did what they were told.

  The older kids were the show. There were all types of them, and they controlled the hallways and the pathways of the whole school. In one place, there would be a girl with perfectly set blonde hair, standing with her back against the wall and her books in her arms, giggling, with a guy leaning towards her, his hand on the wall behind her head and a pencil in his mouth like a cigarette. Or four guys with hair almost to their shoulders would be lounging under a tree talking about waves and tides. Or a couple would be holding hands in a corner and when you walked past them they would drop hands. Or three guys would be standing in the parking lot by an old car with the hood up, staring at the engine. There were guys with crew cuts and girls with pageboys and girls with hair to their waists and boys with big heads of fluffy curls and girls with big heads of fluffy curls and even boys with moustaches and chin whiskers. There were girls dressed like me, in plain skirts and blouses, and there were girls in dresses that looked like swirls of flower colours, girls in peasant blouses, and even two boys in old suits, but they were barefoot.

  When we got into our classes (I was taking English, geometry, ancient history, geology, French and tennis), all the kids in the ninth grade looked a little scared and not as colourful, and it was sort of a relief. I hoped that Dad would never come to the high school – it would be a big shock for him. Mom was the one who came to the evening meeting. She didn’t say much, but she laughed a few times. I thought she enjoyed herself. She said, ‘Well, goodness me. When did Danny start here? Was that four years ago or forty? It’s not the same place at all.’

  Sophia was in my ancient history class, Gloria was in my geology class and my geometry class, and Stella was in my English class. Of the other kids, Kyle was in history, geology, and geometry; Larry Schnuck was in English, where the male teacher wore big glasses and looked old, so I figured Larry would cause a lot of trouble; and Leslie was in French and tennis. Leslie had been at camp all summer – she hadn’t even been home by the time of Barbie and Alexis’s big party, so no one had laid eyes on her in months. She looked much happier and taller. She had also learned how to do something with her hair. She brushed it straight back, under a tortoiseshell head band. It hung below her shoulders and was very shiny. I saw Kyle Gonzalez bump into her and excuse himself as if he had never seen her before. Then she and I exchanged a glance, and she rolled her eyes. I laughed. My plan for high school was to stay out of the way and do my homework on the way home on the bus. The ride was about ten minutes longer than the old bus ride, so time at home would be short. Most of the high-school kids lived in town, which meant that we were the country bumpkins, and so we had to keep our eyes open and our mouths shut.

  Riding Oh My, Blue and Nobby was the best part of the day.

  *

  I didn’t get back to real work with Blue until the Friday after school started. I had let him take a break for four days after the clinic, and then we went on the trail a few times. He seemed fine, and as happy to forget Peter Finneran as I was. But Friday was an early day – we got home from school before three – so Dad had set up some jumps in the arena to see what Blue had learned. There were hay bales, two verticals, and a gate Dad had put together out of tree branches, actually a very handsome jump – about two-foot-six, with an X surrounded by a frame, like a regular gate, though the tree branches curved a little and were covered with bark. I thought the stables should have one.

  We did all the things I normally did – work him in the round corral, both directions at the trot and the canter, plenty of turns and plenty of stepping over. Then I got on him in the arena and trotted him in figure of eights and small circles and serpentines, backed him, walked him, cantered and did some lead changes. Dad was standing in the middle, and he didn’t tell me what to do – Blue was my horse and my business. But Dad was smiling. After our flat work, I felt good.

  Blue had jumped all the jumps in the arena more than once, and over the summer, Dad had even done what he liked especially to do – put strange things on the jumps, books and soft toy animals and dangling spoons, to get Blue used to surprises. Blue had never been as calm about the surprises as Black George had been, but he got so he didn’t mind them. Today, though, there were no surprises – Dad had been doing errands all day with no time to think up tricks.

  Nevertheless, Blue was a mess.

  As he trotted down to the first vertical, his ears seemed to go further forward than possible, and then he tossed his head and refused. Not only that, but after refusing, he backed up a couple of steps. Dad said, ‘What was that?’ He looked around, then said, ‘His eyes are popping out of his head.’ But there was nothing on the hillside, nothing outside the fence, not even really a breeze. I turned him and tried again. This time I was prepared and made him jump the fence, which he did, but he seemed more nervous about it than he had ever been. Dad put the jump down, and instead of jumping, we trotted over the three poles lying together between the standards. It took us four times of that for him to calm down. Then Dad raised the poles about a foot, and we trotted through those.

  The second vertical was only two feet high, and it looked exactly like the first one, but when we approached it, he did the same thing as he had done before – acted terrified. Well, we could not let him avoid the jump, so we did what we had done with the first one, and worked him over the poles until he was calmer. But after that, I went to Dad in the centre of the arena and said, ‘That’s enough for me. He’s scared to death. I don’t understand it.’ Inside, I was thinking about what Peter Finneran had said – maybe Blue was a worthless beast after all.

  Dad said, ‘Is he seeing ghosts?’ I said nothing – this reminded me of the spring, but I had never told Dad about my ghost fears. ‘Well, tomorrow is another day, and we’ll definitely pray over this. Don’t worry about it, okay?’

  I nodded. But how was I not going to worry about it?

  When we took Oh My and Lady on the trail, Dad kept pointing out birds (blue jay, hawk, early owl, kingfisher, crows, even a hummingbird), animals (two ground squirrels, a bobcat), and plants (tree moss, olive tree, many oaks with unusual branches, walnut, mustard), and then he had me tell him all about school (I told him about the books we were going to read for class – The Red Badge of Courage, Le Ballon Rouge, Introduction to Geometry, Mountains and Oceans, and The Egyptians). He was keeping me from worrying about Blue. And I did stop worrying about him and start worrying about geology. Just that very day, our geology teacher, Mr Mallon, had asked us how old we thought the world (‘the Earth’) was, and Kyle had given the correct answer, four and a half billion years old, and he knew all about some meteorite that had landed somewhere in Arizona and was tested for something that showed how old the universe was. This was way older than the Bible said, and I was glad I hadn’t raised my hand. But then, I planned to never raise my hand.

  *

  On Monday, in history, Sophia came in, sat down right next to me as if we were perfectly good friends, and said, ‘You should ride Pie in the Sky again.’

  ‘He was nice.’

  ‘He’s erratic.’

  ‘I liked him.’ Then I said, ‘Peter Finneran was kind of mean.’

  Then the teacher gave us a look, and we opened our textbooks. I watched Sophia for a moment, and I was sorry I had said anything. She stared at the book and began kicking her foot against the leg of her chair. Miss Cumberland said, ‘Abby Lovitt! Do you have something better to do than read your book?’

  I read my book. We had done pharaohs already in seventh grade, but this time we were going to go from Egypt to Ur to Greece
to Rome, all before Thanksgiving. I have to say that the textbook about the Egyptians did not say much about the Israelites, but even so, there were pretty interesting things in there – photographs of pyramids and drawings of tiny little men pushing huge stones up ramps on some logs. There were also a lot of Egyptian paintings of kings, where the kings were very large and the regular people only came up to about their knees. By the end of the period, Sophia was her normal self – she marched off to her next class without looking right or left.

  A couple of days later, Miss Cumberland gave us paper and coloured pencils – as a project, we were supposed to draw ourselves in the Egyptian way, with the feet and head looking north, say, and the chest looking west. Sophia and I drew each other, and the pictures made us laugh. I gave her a hard hat, big feet, and riding boots, and she gave me a whip in my hand. We gave each other horses that looked sort of Egyptian, too. Miss Cumberland tacked all the drawings to the bulletin board. After that, we talked pretty often, but Sophia never said ‘Hi,’ or ‘Bye,’ or ‘See you later.’ She just started talking or stopped talking, depending on whether she had something to say.

  It turned out that she had gone to the private school that ended in eighth grade. Then most of her friends went on to the private high school, but Sophia didn’t want such a long day, and Colonel Hawkins agreed with her – the private school started after nine and didn’t get out until almost five, whereas the public school started just before eight and got out by three. More time to ride. Sophia and her mom had discussed it all summer, and finally, when Sophia had promised to make all As (which she had not done at her previous school), her mom had given in. Her dad didn’t care – he had gone to our high school, the class of 1943 (one day, after class, she showed me his picture in the hall). Her mom was from Chicago. Her parents had met in the army during the Second World War. She was an only child. She had four dogs – a miniature poodle of her own, two King Charles spaniels that her mom took to dog shows, and a Gordon setter that her dad hunted with. The poodle’s best trick was that she could balance a piece of cheese on her nose, then toss it in the air and catch it.

  At lunch, I always sat with Gloria and Stella, while Sophia sat with another girl who was her next-door neighbour – they had known each other since they were babies. Gloria and Stella thought that Sophia could do with a makeover. Gloria said that her clothes were fine, ‘good-quality,’ so the best thing in the world would be for her to cut her plaits and wear her hair in a nice shoulder-length flip – fairly conservative, but with some bounce. That would offset the thinness of her face and emphasise her eyes, which were her best feature. Stella said that Sophia should get herself a padded bra, because her shoulders were so big that she looked like a boy. I did not tell Sophia any of these things. Gloria and Stella got two other girls to sit with us, Mary and Luisa, and Leslie sat with us most of the time, too. I have to say that we all, literally, looked up to Leslie now. She was four inches taller than Stella, who was the tallest, and she confided that the camp had been a weight-loss camp – she had lost twenty pounds and she knew exactly how to keep it off, which was swimming or playing basketball every day of the week. She had lots of opinions, which was not the Leslie I had ever known, but one of the things they had done at her camp was spend two whole days and nights alone, with only a knife, a box of matches, some water, and a blanket. They were supposed to fast and think about their goals and rename themselves a secret name that they would never reveal, but that was the name of their future self. I noticed that some of the older boys looked at her, too.

  *

  I always looked into the mailbox before reaching in, because Brian Connelly had reached into his mailbox in the spring and pulled out a black widow spider. Of course, he knew just what it was because he had seen a show about spiders on TV. It didn’t bite him, but he knew that it could, and he told us all about ten times that if he had to choose between being bitten by a black widow and being bitten by a tarantula, he would take the tarantula any day. Thanks to the fact that Brian repeated this story so much, I always remembered to check, and also to think about tarantulas, wolf spiders, jumping spiders, and all the other spiders Brian had seen on TV. There were no spiders in the mailbox that day, but there was a letter from Barbie Goldman, addressed to me, and the envelope was decorated with pictures of faces making all sorts of expressions, from surprised to happy to scared to sad. On the back of the envelope were three horse faces, and they were also looking surprised, glad, and sad. I tore open the envelope very carefully, and pulled out the letter. It read:

  Dear Abby –

  We have now been at the Jackson School for twelve hours. We have built three fires, carried seven buckets of water, fed ten horses, ground some corn into meal, dug a giant hole in the dirt for a latrine, identified seven plants (including poison oak), six species of birds, four species of trees, three types of clouds, and learned the difference between schist and granite. Alexis says that when the pioneers came to California, they skipped the Jackson School, and so it must be our job to set up the homestead and apply for statehood. All the teachers are tall and muscular, and you can’t tell the men from the women. Whenever you say, ‘Mr So-and-so, how do I do such and such?’ Mr So-and-so says, ‘Well, Barbara, let’s think about that. What do YOU think would be a good way to approach that problem?’ And then Mr So-and-so waits a very long time for you to think up something. It is strange. I do think that Alexis is going to try the patience of every single one of them to the limit, but I haven’t warned them. The thing is, if you ask Alexis a question, she asks you a question back, and keeps doing it until you make a statement. It is her METHOD. So we shall see.

  I wanted to tell you, though, that I have met my horse. Thanks to you, I have an INTERMEDIATE horse (Alexis’s horse is a BEGINNER horse). His name is Tooter, and he is a fifteen-hand roan gelding, ten years old. He is a little boring compared to Blue, whom I MISS TERRIBLY BECAUSE HE IS MY SOUL MATE, but I will make do. I also miss you. I have been separated from Alexis (Mom’s doing, I’m sure) and my roommate is an unsuspecting girl from Seattle, Washington, who is the oldest of five, and therefore very well behaved. Her name is Siobhan, which is pronounced ‘Shevawn’. Alexis’s roommate is named Ruth. She is from San Francisco. Little do they know.

  Our class is small – only sixteen kids, eight boys and eight girls, seventy-two kids in the whole school. I am wondering what it is like at the high school. Maybe you have made ten new friends. I wish I could be in two places at once. Write me back! We are starved for mail.

  Love,

  Barbara

  I stood on the porch reading this. Mom opened the door, looked at me, and asked me if I would like a ham sandwich. I said yes, and right then and there she brought her hand out from behind her back, and gave me a ham sandwich. I laughed. Rusty, who was out in the front yard, barked. I said, ‘Rusty wants a ham sandwich, too.’

  Mom smiled fondly. ‘Ah, she is spoiled rotten, that dog. I’ve done a wonderful job.’ She went back into the house. I hadn’t expected to get any letters from Barbie – I felt like she had vanished into thin air – so now there was something to look forward to.

  I went into the kitchen. I showed Mom the envelope of Barbie’s letter, and she said, ‘Speaking of self-confidence . . .’ We laughed. Then I went up to my room, carefully cut the envelope open so you could see both sides, and tacked it to my bulletin board, right beside the envelope for the invitation.

  *

  It was either the next afternoon or the one after that that Stella was called to the head teacher’s office. We were sitting outside at the end of the day, waiting for the buses, and the secretary came down the stairs and tapped her on the shoulder. Stella was still in there when the buses came, so Gloria promised to call me that night. I knew it would be something bad from the look on Miss Harris’s face, so that evening I did my homework in the living room, in the chair closest to the phone. If I answered and sounded casual, then I would be able to talk for ten minutes and would find out what was g
oing on. If Dad answered, then he would say that I was studying and I would have to talk to Gloria tomorrow. One of Dad’s principles was that anything that we girls might discuss could wait.

  It worked, because when the phone rang, Dad had gone into the kitchen for a glass of water, and Mom was counting stitches in her knitting pattern and said, ‘Abby, why don’t you get that?’

  I picked it up. Gloria whispered, ‘She was smoking a cigarette in the girls’ bathroom.’

  I said, ‘Oh, yes, I did write down that assignment.’

  Gloria knew perfectly well that my parents were in the room with me. She went on, ‘Somebody turned her in. She said that someone was in a stall, but she doesn’t know who, just that she was wearing white Keds. So we are supposed to look at everyone’s shoes.’

  I said, ‘Chapter three, and answer the questions at the end.’

  Gloria said, ‘She doesn’t really like cigarettes, they’re for weight control. One before every meal.’

  I said, ‘It’s not due until Monday.’

  Gloria said, ‘But it’s kind of my fault.’

  I thought it was safe to say, ‘In what way?’

  ‘Because I lit them for her for the first week she was trying them, back in July. She was afraid of matches, and she got me to light them, and now she’s hooked. She says she’s not, but she is.’

  I said, ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘She’s suspended for three days.’

  Dad said, ‘Ten minutes is up.’

  I said, ‘Got to go.’

  Gloria understood. I guess the main reason that Gloria stayed my best friend was that she understood everything about my family and didn’t care.

  That night when I went to bed, I remembered that I had seen Stella and Gloria the night of the Goldmans’ party, out on the big back deck. They were over in a corner, and I might have seen a flash. I hadn’t thought anything about it, because Gloria had come into the house a moment later and started dancing with Brian Connelly. Stella didn’t come in for a long time after that. It hadn’t even occurred to me to wonder where she was, but I bet Gloria knew.