Pony Jumpers- Special Edition 1- Jonty

by Kate Lattey

“I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t think you’d be that bothered.”

  I looked him in the eye, trying to see whether he knew he was lying.

  “Yeah, well. You leave me here with the old bastard, you can’t expect me to be stoked.”

  “I can’t believe you’re still here. Thought you’d have moved on to better things by now.”

  “Moved on where?” I asked him. “I’m still a kid. Who else is going to want me?”

  Frankie just laughed. “Trust me, I know some people. Good-looking boy like you, they’d snap you up in a heartbeat. Don’t look at me like that,” he added, catching my wary expression. “Get your mind out of the gutter, will you? Looks aside, you’re also a fairly decent rider, or at least you were before. Not sure if you’ve lost the knack by now, but I guess we’ll find out.”

  “I haven’t lost anything,” I assured him.

  “Except your sense of humour,” Frankie quipped back, and I couldn’t help it – I laughed. He grinned back at me. “See now, was that so hard?”

  Frankie took one look at my new horse and told me to demand a refund.

  “It’s just an abscess,” I told him confidently. “It’ll burst soon, and then he’ll be right as rain.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  I had the grey horse standing in the yard with his hoof in a bucket of warm Epsom salt solution, trying to draw out the infection. Frankie walked up to him and ran his hand down the gelding’s lame leg. He obediently picked it up, kicking the bucket of water over in the process and slopping it all over Frankie’s tall boots.

  “Jesus!”

  “What?”

  “I wasn’t talking to you.”

  Frankie lowered the grey’s hoof back to the concrete, then started checking his digital pulse. I left him to it while I went to get more warm water and Epsom salts. I hadn’t found a name for my horse yet. I named every other horse on the yard as soon as they came in these days, calling them whatever first sprang to mind, but I couldn’t think of anything special enough for a horse that I was allowed to keep.

  “You might be lucky,” Frankie told me when I got back. “Signs do all point towards an abscess in the hoof.”

  “What’d I tell you?” I grinned, trying to hide the fact that I was giddy with relief. The last thing I needed was a permanently lame horse.

  “I said might.”

  “Have a little faith, Frankie.” I coaxed the horse’s hoof back into the new bucket of water, holding his knee straight until he became used to it and relaxed. “You wait until I’m done training this horse. He’s going to be a rock star.”

  “Don’t get too far ahead of yourself,” he warned me. “Might have a broken leg for all you know.”

  “Aren’t you just a ray of sunshine?” I asked him. “Always looking on the bright side.”

  Frankie shrugged. “When I can find one. You want a ride home when you’re done?”

  It was like he’d never left. Everything in his car was just the same as I remembered, and I opened the glove box and flipped through his collection of CDs to see if he’d updated them at all. No such luck.

  “I thought gay guys were supposed to have good taste in music.”

  “And I thought straight guys were supposed to be butch, but I guess there’s an exception to every rule,” Frankie replied. He reached over and tapped a CD case. “That one.”

  I pulled it out and looked at it. “John Farnham? Really?”

  “You’re the voice, Jonty. Try and understand it.”

  I rolled my eyes but put the CD on. “I didn’t know they made cars with CD players anymore.”

  “I’m an old-fashioned kinda guy.”

  “So what’s it like?” I asked as the first track started playing, and Frankie began tapping out the beat on his steering wheel.

  “What’s what like?”

  “Being gay.”

  He shot me a look, his eyebrows raised so high that they disappeared under his thick red hair. “What’s it like being straight?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  He looked back at the road. “I really don’t.”

  I clicked the CD case open and shut. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  “Are you going to answer every question I ask you with another question?”

  “Are you going to stop asking me inappropriate questions?”

  I looked down at the CD cover, tracing the title with my finger. Whispering Jack. Now that wasn’t a bad name for a horse.

  “Well?” he demanded.

  “What?”

  “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  “No. Do you have a boyfriend?”

  “Hmm. Sort of.”

  “How do you have a sort of boyfriend?” I asked.

  “It’s complicated. So go on, what’s it like being straight?”

  I thought about that for a moment. “Confusing. Since I don’t really know how to talk to girls, or how they think, or anything.”

  Frankie laughed. “I know how guys think. That’s the problem.” He drummed his fingers on the wheel again as the next song started. “Any girls you like?”

  I shrugged. “One or two.”

  “Well then, what are you waiting for? Good-looking boy like you. Ask one of them out. Ask them both out, hedge your bets.”

  I snorted. “I thought you said I was scrawny.”

  “By my standards, but I’m not a twelve-year-old girl.”

  “I’m fourteen and a half,” I reminded him.

  “Jesus, are you? You better start working out then, or eating more.” Frankie looked over at me. “Hungry? There’s a burger place up here. Last chance before we get out of town.”

  I grinned at him. “Go on then, long as you promise to stop flirting with me.”

  Frankie grinned. “You know me, Jonty. I never make promises I can’t keep.”

  He hummed along with the music, then started to sing. I reached over and turned the volume up, drowning his tuneless out. He sang louder, just to spite me, and I leaned my head back against the car seat and listened to the singer’s plaintive voice.

  We’re not gonna sit in silence

  We’re not gonna live with fear…

  TRIAL & ERROR

  In the end, I named the grey horse Whisper. The abscess in his hoof burst several days later, just around the time that Frankie was starting to shake his head and make ominous predictions about what was “really” wrong with my horse. I had continued to be convinced that it was just an abscess, soaking and poulticing the hoof three times each day, determined that the infection would be drawn out. The gods must have been smiling on me for once though, because I went down to Ken’s one day after school one afternoon and found Whisper strolling across the paddock with barely a limp in his step, and a poultice full of stinky dark pus.

  Once the abscess had burst, he made a swift recovery to soundness, and now that he was no longer in pain, he started putting on weight. He’d arrived looking like a scarecrow, but ate like a horse possessed, leading Frankie to make regular comments about horses being just like their owners. I fed Whisper as much as Ken would let me, and then still more when his back was turned, and watched my horse’s ribs and hipbones start to disappear from view. More dapples appeared on his dark grey coat, and I washed the manure stains out of his tail, scrubbing it repeatedly with Sunlight soap until it finally stayed white – at least until he went to play in the mud. Whisper loved water, and like Taniwha before him, would find his way into any swamp, bog, creek or stream that he came across. He often came in from the paddock absolutely filthy, but I didn’t mind spending time on cleaning him up. I turned him out as often as possible so that he’d have a chance to stretch his legs, and he revelled in the freedom. I could never understand how anyone expected a horse to stand in a stall like a toy, just waiting to be brought out and played with before being returned to confinement. The thought of being shut in a box scared the hell out of me, and I assumed that Whisper would feel
the same way. On the rare occasions that he was boxed, he proved me right by pacing up and down repeatedly, pawing his bedding into piles and almost knocking me over in the morning when I went to let him out.

  I trimmed his hooves and Ken’s farrier, a grumpy old fella called Jenkins, slapped a set of shoes on him. And finally, finally I could ride my own horse.

  I gave him a quick brush, then tacked him up with Frankie’s old jumping saddle and a simple snaffle bridle. As soon as the saddle had gone on, Whisper seemed to grow several hands in height, and his body rippled with anticipation as I took the reins and led him towards the arena.

  Frankie was already in there, riding the bay mare that had flipped over on me last year. I’d recovered my nerve after the accident, mostly because I’d forgotten so much of what happened, but Delta hadn’t. She’d refused to jump anything higher than a crossrail since our fall, even after being turned out for a holiday over the winter, so Ken had handed her over to Frankie to school and show as a park hack. Frankie’s months in Australia had added a further level of finesse to his riding, and the little mare was showing promise for the show ring. I halted Whisper next to the mounting block, and pulled down my stirrups.

  “Hold on, let me get my camera out,” Frankie said, circling the mare at a showy trot before bringing her back down to a walk. “If you get bucked off, I want to be able to watch it over and over again.”

  “No way, man. If anyone’s falling off today, it’s going to be you.”

  Frankie grinned at me. “Famous last words. You heard ‘em here first.”

  I clipped up the chinstrap of my helmet and stepped up onto the block, ignoring his banter. Whisper eyed me nervously and I spoke to him reassuringly before slipping my foot into the stirrup, and swinging up onto his back.

  The moment I sank my seat into the saddle, Whisper shifted his weight. First to the right, then to the left, then he started forwards, then backed up, shuffling his feet as though the ground underneath him was suddenly hot. I shortened my reins and patted his neck, but he paid no attention. I closed my legs against his sides, suggesting that he go forward, and instead he went straight up. Not on his hind legs, but with all four legs off the ground at once, leaping into the air as if someone had given him an electric shock. I clamped my knees into the saddle and gritted my teeth as we touched down again in a bone-jarring landing, before Whisper sank down on his haunches and spun around to face the other way. I grabbed a fistful of his mane before he turned and kept hold of it as he surged forward at a fast canter. Where he was planning to go, and why, I had no idea, and I don’t think he did either. But all of his instincts told him that when there was a person on his back, it was time to run…so he did.

  I hadn’t shut the arena gate behind me, and Whisper ran straight through the gap and down the raceway between the paddocks, a long stretch of relatively flat ground that ran straight down Ken’s muddy acreage. I sank my weight into my heels and focused on staying on his back, which was easier said than done because I hadn’t tightened my girth before I mounted – a mistake I never made with him again – and I could feel the saddle slipping precariously as we crossed the chopped-up ground.

  There was nothing I could do except wait it out, and hope he stopped when he reached the fence at the far end. I’d been on horses before that had run me straight through fences or into gates because they were so panicked that they didn’t even see what was in front of them, but luckily it turned out that Whisper wasn’t a blind bolter. He came to a stop when he saw the dead end ahead and then paused, wondering what to do next. Moving quickly, I managed to straighten the saddle and pull the girth up a couple of notches before he moved off again. I could feel another surge of energy coming, so I shortened my reins, turned him around, and before he could decide for himself, I nudged him into a canter.

  Whisper seemed surprised by my command, but was more than happy to oblige. He was full of energy, far more of it than he knew what to do with, and I knew exactly how he felt. I’d felt that way most of my life. I let the reins loose, refusing to fight with him, and let the heavy mud naturally steady his pace. The horse was strong-willed but relatively weak in his body, and it didn’t take too much effort to pull him up at the other end of the track, where Frankie was sitting on the bay mare, waiting for me. He was holding up his cell phone and filming as I hauled Whisper back to a trot.

  “Nice horse.”

  I grinned at him, pretending that he’d meant it as a compliment. “Thanks.”

  Frankie put his phone back in his pocket, running his eyes over Whisper thoughtfully. “You remember when I told you how to bring a horse into work? How you should start slow, build up their fitness gradually?”

  “Nope, must’ve missed that one,” I told him, and he laughed. “It wasn’t my idea, you know,” I added as Whisper started to sidle restlessly again, and I told him to walk forward. “He just wanted to go.”

  “And you just let him.”

  I shrugged as Whisper strode back into the yard, looking around him with his eyes out on stalks. He was still wired, and I knew that the least thing could set him off again. But I wasn’t afraid of him. More than anything, I was relieved. My biggest fear hadn’t been that he’d turn out to be nervy and restless, or difficult under saddle. In contrast, I’d been worried that he’d be too quiet, too placid, and that I’d find him boring to ride. But he was exactly my type, and I couldn’t think of another horse I’d rather have owned.

  “He likes to be moving,” I explained to Frankie. “I know how he feels.”

  “Like I’ve been saying,” Frankie agreed as he let Delta follow me. “Two peas in a pod.”

  He wasn’t wrong about that. As the weeks rolled by, Whisper settled down and became more rideable, but he could never tolerate standing still for long. His mind and his body had to be kept busy, or he would get worried and start to panic. On our early rides, it was almost impossible for me to calm him down – despite being docile and easy to handle on the ground, he would switch into a completely different mode when I was on his back. His favourite trick was the stop and spin, and he could go from a forward canter to facing the opposite direction in less than a second. He was a quirky horse, who was quick to overreact if he didn’t understand a question, but once he knew what his job was, he’d throw his heart and soul into it. In the wrong hands, he could easily have been misunderstood, and labelled crazy, or dangerous. But I understood him, and that made all the difference.

  It wasn’t all smooth sailing, of course. I spent the first few weeks just hacking him around the local roads, usually with Frankie alongside, since I inevitably fell off when Whisper threw in one of his quick spins and someone had to be there to scrape me up off the road. But as my horse became more reliable, I spent more time riding alone. I always liked that better anyway, probably because I’d grown up riding alone, taking Taniwha on adventures of my own choosing. Whisper was just as keen to explore as Tani had been, and he became increasingly brave as he saw more and more of the world. We became a partnership, and eventually he stopped running away when I fell off, which was helpful since we were often several kilometres from home when he threw in one of his gravity-defying spins.

  As his behaviour mellowed, my ambitions for him grew. The crashing fall I’d taken off Delta hadn’t dampened my enthusiasm for jumping at all, and I was sure that if I could convince Whisper to jump, he’d give any horse in the country a run for its money. I don’t know why I was so confident in his ability, other than the fact he was naturally athletic and I was hopelessly naïve, but as it turned out, I wasn’t wrong. Whisper took to jumping like a duck to water, although that created its own share of problems. Since his default setting was always ‘if in doubt, add more speed’, our initial jumping efforts were a little hair-raising, to say the least. I’d spent more time hacking than schooling him, trusting my instinct that he would find circling in an arena as dull as I did, and I had a tendency to let him set his own pace, enjoying his constant desire to move forward. But if I was g
oing to jump him without killing myself (or him), I needed to teach him to slow down.

  Trouble was, that was one lesson that Whisper did not want to learn. Going slow just wasn’t part of his mind set, and he quickly started to resent me asking for it. The less he gave me, the more I asked him, and soon he went from being the horse I enjoyed riding the most to the one I least looked forward to sitting on. Even our roadwork became tainted by my obsession with teaching him to slow down and collect, and he started trying to spin me off again. When that failed, he taught himself to buck, and after a couple of weeks of that, I felt like I was ready to join the pro rodeo circuit.

  I was walking slowly back to the yard one afternoon after he’d thrown me and run home, when Frankie drove past, then slowed down. He had the roof up on his sports car, and he stopped a few metres up the road, waiting for me to catch up to him. I walked as quickly as I could, with one arm clutching my sore ribs while the rain trickled down the back of my neck.

  “You look like a drowned rat,” Frankie commented as I slid into the car next to him. “That bastard buck you off again?”

  “It was just a misunderstanding,” I muttered, watching the windscreen wipers swish the water off the glass. “I’ll be okay.”

  Frankie looked at the way I was still holding my side, and I let go, then winced.

  “Uh huh. You know, you could ask for help.” I shot him a sideways look, and he raised an eyebrow. “I’m just saying. You don’t have to struggle on your own.”

  I don’t know why I said no. I think I had some misguided idea that I had to train Whisper entirely on my own. In the back of my mind, I was sure that this horse was going to take me to the top of the sport, that he would jump in the Grand Prix one day, that maybe I’d take him overseas to ride. Ambitious dreams for a kid without two cents to rub together, but most of the time, dreams were all I had, and I clung to them fiercely. And part of that dream involved being able to say that I’d done it all myself.

  So I shook my head. “No, I’m good. Pull over.”