Gee Whiz

by Jane Smiley

  One of the sisters said, “Brother Abner, I don’t believe half the tales you tell about your family—you couldn’t have been as wild as you say.”

  “Oh, wilder than that!” said Brother Abner. “Four boys in five years is more than any mother can handle. My brother Jacob went to sea when he was thirteen. That was 1888. And we didn’t live anywhere near the ocean. But he had a passion to do it, and one day, he just walked away. My mother was frantic, but my father said he would turn up, and sure enough, he did. After a week, we got a letter from him saying that he’d got himself a position as a cabin boy on a merchant ship sailing to Brazil. I didn’t even know what Brazil was, and maybe he didn’t, either. I went there eventually. Not like any other place I’ve ever been.”

  I saw that the sisters were glancing at one another, and then Mom said, “Did you ever see the Amazon River?”

  “Oh, I did. Went up the river as far as Macapá, which isn’t all that far, maybe the same as from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, on the Mississippi, but you can only get there by boat. River’s huge around there. Mostly in Brazil I worked on a rubber plantation. You could do that in those days—did that in Malaya, too. In Hawaii, I worked on a sugar plantation. Just kicked around the world a little too long, I’ve got to say.”

  Carlie said, “What was your favorite place?”

  Brother Abner gave a big smile as he looked at her, then he said, “Well, in order to decide that, you got to choose between which place was the strangest, or which place was the most beautiful, or in which place were you the happiest? The three aren’t often the same.”

  Mom said, “I want to hear all three.”

  “Well …,” said Brother Abner. Then he coughed, wiped his mouth, and took a little drink of water.

  “Maybe everyone says that the most beautiful is Paris, and Paris is a wonderful town, but I thought the most beautiful spot was on an island in the Caribbean, down from Florida a good ways, called St. Thomas. A white sand bay like you’ve never seen anywhere else. Sir Francis Drake used to lie in wait for pirate ships there. It’s not a place to live in, but it is beautiful. I guess for strangest, that would be Istanbul, it is now. It used to be Constantinople.”

  “Constantinople, can you spell it?” muttered Erica. The answer to that question was “i-t.” That was all we knew about Constantinople.

  Brother Abner said, “Well, you see, Istanbul connects two continents, Asia and Europe, and you can see that right there, when you’re walking around, in everything that they do. Part of the city looks west and part of the city looks east and part of the city looks back and part of the city looks forward. I just couldn’t get enough when I was there. There are bits from Roman times, and there’s a huge museum there called Hagia Sophia that was a cathedral, then a mosque. Biggest church in the world, for a while. Looking at it makes you feel like the Romans and the sultans are just around the corner, if you could only manage to see them. Then there’s another mosque, too, they call the Blue Mosque, all blue tiles inside. Then there’s the Grand Bazaar, which is a huge market full of shops, and every shop is overflowing with things. Across the straits, it’s all different, somehow. I couldn’t get enough of walking around there.”

  Mom took Brother Abner’s hand and said, “Was that where you were happiest?”

  “Oh my, no,” said Brother Abner. “Never could fit in there. Too sunny and busy for a fellow from way upstate New York, USA!” He laughed. “I was happy in Seattle. I had some friends there. We had a little money, enough to feel safe and comfortable from day to day. Good friends. Good food. Thought it would last forever, like you do. But in some ways, the memory is good enough. Out on the flats in the eelgrass, laughing and looking for crabs. Or just walking around town in the evening, thinking it was going to rain forever.” He laughed again. “You got good friends, even the rain is fine with you.”

  I said, “I would like to see some of those places.”

  And Brother Abner said, “Miss Abby, nothing is stopping you.”

  After that, everyone got to talking about other things, and I looked for a while at Brother Abner. He looked better than he had the week before, and the sisters were not whispering about him. As Mom would have said, his color was pretty good and he seemed “spry.” I guess Mr. Hollingsworth had had his Studebaker towed to the repair shop, and they were going to fix it after Christmas, and until then, he had agreed that the sisters could look in on him every day. He had his plate in his lap. He’d eaten the pumpkin pie and part of the cupcake.

  Mom lifted her eyebrows at me, and I poked Carlie. We got up and went around, taking the plates and forks and putting them with the other dirty dishes in the back of the room.

  We were used to sitting in church maybe five hours every Sunday—service, then lunch, then Sunday school—but that started by ten in the morning. Now we’d only been there maybe two hours, but everyone was yawning, and Sister Brooks went around and snuffed the candles with a brass candlesnuffer. We all watched her quietly when she did this—that was the end of the candlelight service for another year. Cleaning up took quite a while—partly because the sisters divided up the leftovers for some of the ones who weren’t going to have another Christmas dinner, including Brother Abner. Mom also handed out her little boxes of cookies. Sister Larrabee gave me a secret present, which I opened when I got home—it turned out to be a knitted hat with matching mittens. They were cute—she had knitted a horse into the hat and into the back of each of the mittens. She was a very good knitter who didn’t have so many people to knit for.

  On the way home, Mom was yawning, and Dad was quiet, so I knew he might be pretty tired, too, especially since we still had to check the horses and give them some more hay. I was also tired, so I was really hoping that Gee Whiz did not know how to untie knots. To make myself stop thinking about this, I said, “How do you think Brother Abner joined our church?” He had been there as long as I could remember.

  “I don’t know about that,” said Mom. “He was here when we came.”

  “He told me once,” said Dad. “He was raised Methodist, but fell away when he left home. Then, down in Australia, I think, during the war, oh goodness, he would have been in his sixties by then, he was just walking down the street, and a man stepped up to him, and something about the man struck him, and when the man said he had something to tell Brother Abner, Brother Abner listened—‘For once, I listened,’ he said to me. ‘Can’t say I ever listened to a thing before that. I was a contrary fellow for most of my life.’ I guess when he got back around here after the war, he found Sister Brooks’s uncle, and helped him start up the church.”

  I said, “I’d like to ask him about Australia.”

  They didn’t say anything.

  The horses were quiet as little mice in their pastures when we got home, and Rusty was curled up, sleeping in her bed on the back porch.

  Danny was already there when we got up in the morning, and, merry Christmas, he had already fed the horses, so we didn’t have to get out of our pajamas. Mom went straight into the kitchen and made pancake batter, and I turned on the Christmas tree and lay down on the rug under it and stared up through the boughs. I could see all the ornaments we’d made or bought over the years, and the ones that our grandparents had sent us—the crocheted snowflakes from my mom’s grandmother were the most beautiful; there were four of them, a different one every year, white and lacy, and of course, no two alike. One year, Mom had baked fake gingerbread men, not for eating, and we’d decorated those and hung them with little green ribbons. One year, Danny and I had strung what seemed like an endless string of popcorn and cranberries—we still had that, too. There was also a string of lights that looked like candles—they bubbled. Mom did not like them because they got very hot, so she only let them be plugged in when someone was in the room. But they sat up on the branches and were very pretty.

  Dad had decided not to sell Oh My, or any other horse—not even Morning Glory—until the spring, when he thought they would be better trained and w
e could get a good price for them, so we knew there wouldn’t be many presents. Mom bought me a sweater set—a blue pullover and cardigan to go, she said, with my eyes. Dad gave me a shirt, red with yellow piping and a sunflower embroidered on the back. I’d bought Mom’s present months before, a pair of sheepskin slippers, and I gave Dad a new riata, which Danny helped me pick out, for roping those calves that might come, or at least for roping the sawcow. It was Danny who gave the big presents—to Mom, a cashmere jacket (Leah had helped him pick it out in San Francisco); to Dad, a new pair of chaps with his initials tooled into them; and to me, a hard hat, gloves, and a whip for showing, along with a book called Horsemanship, by a man named Waldemar Seunig. I opened it to the first page, and read, “Books do not make a rider good or bad, but they can make him better or worse.” Danny’s presents made me a little sad, because I knew they might be good-bye presents.

  There was also a gift under the tree, wrapped with a bow and a tag, for Gee Whiz. I opened it. It was from Santa, and was a chain with a clip on the end. I realized that Leah must have repeated to Danny what I’d said at the slumber party about Gee Whiz’s escape. We all laughed, but it was Christmas, and no one said anything more about it. Anyway, his board was paid for a month, and that wouldn’t end until January fifteenth.

  Since Christmas lasted all day, and there wasn’t much to do, I did read the book a little. It was not like any book I’d read, even the cavalry manual with the drawings that looked like Blue that I’d read in the early fall. Some sentences made me laugh, especially ones about buying a horse and discovering that “his horse will never again travel as well, despite correct training …, as it did on that bright autumn morning on the imperceptibly rising show track in the castle park,” and I realized this was true—when a horse trots slightly uphill, he always looks brighter and better. But I got lost in the words and the pictures—the Spanish Riding School, medium trot, levade, capriole, extended walk, equestrian poise, engaged, two tracks. Here I thought I knew what I was doing, at least in a way, and I didn’t know what in the world Waldemar Seunig was talking about. I couldn’t even pronounce his name. There was one picture I stared at for a long time—a man on a horse in the Pan American Games, sliding down a hill to a jump at the bottom. A man on a horse is pretty tall, say, eight feet tall. In this picture, the man and the horse were lost against what looked like the face of a cliff. There were plenty of pictures of men (and a woman, too) riding and jumping high jumps.

  When Danny and I went out to give the horses their evening hay (I was out of my pajamas by this time, but still yawning), I told him about Gee Whiz’s little session with Barbie and me, how he seemed to enjoy himself, and how, when he had to, he jumped over a 3′3″ jump at an angle, and easily. It was dark, and if the days were lengthening, I couldn’t tell. We’d already eaten our pie. Danny was supposed to leave after we finished with the hay, and I was sure he was going out with Leah. He didn’t say anything, just threw the hay. Gee Whiz was dimly visible at the far end of the pasture, looking up the hill. When he saw us, he did whinny and trot over to where we usually threw his pile. After we put out the hay, I hooked the chain around the gate and the gatepost, and clipped the two ends tightly together.

  Finally, Danny said, “Ike told me all about him, more than Ross did. For one thing, he was born in France, and imported to the US as a yearling. I don’t know why they would bring him over, except that he was a really good-looking yearling. His auction price at Saratoga was a hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Where is Saratoga?”

  “New York somewhere. It’s a big resort town with a racetrack from the old days. They have a huge yearling auction, and then the horses sometimes go into training, and sometimes wait for a while. Man o’ War raced there. He also lost his only race there because he was facing the wrong direction when they started, according to Ike. Anyway, Gee Whiz ran there as a two-year-old and won two races, then he won a big race in Florida as a three-year-old, and they really thought they had something. He was second in the Arkansas Derby, and that was where he bowed a tendon, so he was out. Ike said maybe he was too big—sometimes when they grow fast, racing as a three-year-old is extra hard on them. Anyway, he was always sound after he came back the summer he was four, and always game. I don’t see how, just because he had a little bad luck, he doesn’t still have that ability. Lots of ex-racehorses make great riding horses.”

  “He’s so big.”

  “But he carries it well. He’s perfectly constructed. Even the angle of his pasterns and the shape of his hooves are perfect. Even the shape of his ears is perfect.”

  I said, “You bought him, didn’t you?”

  Danny began pushing the wheelbarrow back to the barn. “Roscoe gave him to me.”

  I ran after him. “Danny! You might not even be here to train him!”

  He stopped and stared at me. “Something to come home to, then.”

  Okay, I was shocked. It was one thing for Danny to buy Happy from Dad; Happy was a horse with scads of cow in her who would always be useful, and anyway, one who Dad loved—I’d overheard Dad saying that “whatever happens,” Happy was fine at our place “for the duration.” It was quite another thing to take on this very large and mysterious animal who, as far as Dad was concerned, didn’t know a cow from a car. And who had already made one mess (only one, as far as Dad knew).

  “Why can’t someone else take him?”

  “Because he’s too good for that. You never know where he’ll end up.”

  Meaning, I knew, slaughter.

  I said, “You better start riding him, then.”

  And Danny said, “I will if you will.”

  I stared at him again. Then I said, “He’s way too big for me.” I thought, “And way too smart.”

  He said, “After my physical, I heard there would be three or four weeks. We can work on it.” Then he said, “He likes you.”

  As if to underline this remark, Gee Whiz looked up from his hay and nickered.

  Danny put the wheelbarrow away, washed his hands in the tack-room sink, and dried them on one of the towels there. Then he smoothed back his hair and said, “How do I look?”

  “Like an idiot.”

  “Perfect.” He poked me in the ribs, and then ran toward his car.

  Chapter 9

  THE NEXT MORNING, CHRISTMAS WAS OVER, AND I WASN’T sad. Christmas is like a spell where everything moves extra slow and you try to remember what there is to do with your time. It’s great to look forward to, but nicer to remember than to live through. We got up, got dressed in the almost dark, and went out and did our jobs. I made my riding plan, and Dad decided when to take Blue to the stables. As far as Jane knew, Melinda would be ready for her lesson the next day, and why not Ellen having a lesson, too? Jane would teach them, at least the first time. My lesson could be later in the week, whenever Mom had time to take me out there. I called Barbie and told her about Blue going to the stables, and suggested that she watch me take my lesson with Jane. She was happy to agree. She had finished her winter solstice painting, but Alexis had finished both of hers and Barbie was still stuck for a subject.

  “What are Alexis’s paintings?”

  “One is as if you were standing on a hill, looking west over the ocean, and seeing only the top of the fog with a few dark hilltops jutting through, and stars in the dark sky above. The other is a green hillside full of lupine.”

  “My mom would buy that. She loves lupine.”

  “I think I have to do something urban, but I don’t know what.”

  “You don’t look out on anything urban.”

  “We don’t look out on the ocean, either. But I think you just gave me an idea.”

  Yes, I had. I could hear it in her voice.

  All the way to the stables, Dad talked about rain. There had been rain, but not enough. Now he was worried. Three inches, or was it four inches? Maybe we did need rain, but everything was beautiful out to the stables, sunny and blue and green. I had a sweater on, but I took i
t off. Jane was in shirtsleeves. She met us in the parking lot, and stood with her hands on her hips while I unhooked the ramp and Dad let it down. We had let Blue travel loose in the trailer, which was something Dad liked to do, so he was facing us, standing as though he were waiting for his picture to be taken, already looking around. Jane said, “Blue!” He looked at her. He knew his name. I led him down the ramp, and we went over to Gallant Man’s stall. Jane said, “We swaddled him in cotton and shipped him off. They put such a head guard on him! They didn’t care for a moment that his head was a yard lower than the inside of the trailer. I don’t know how he would have bumped his head.”

  I said, “And he’s too smart to do that, anyway.”

  “Well,” said Dad, “I wish him luck.” Maybe he knew how much those people in Los Angeles had paid for our pony, but of course no one was telling a kid like me.

  Dad didn’t want to wait around for Ellen and Melinda to have their lessons, and I didn’t really want to, either. If they didn’t like Blue, I’d be disappointed, because maybe he wasn’t as good as I thought he was, and if they did like him, well, what next? I told myself that Blue was here mostly for my lesson on Wednesday, and that Saturday we would take him home. We talked about rain all the way home, too, only this time we talked about those clouds Dad had seen to the west, and maybe that was fog, but it looked more like clouds, awfully far off the coast, though—well, anything was welcome. At home, I rode Lincoln and Lady, and read some more of my strange book—“Realizing that the horse’s will is governed principally by feelings of pleasure or discomfort, he will influence that will by evoking pleasurable feelings, which he associates with certain actions of the horse as a chain of cause-and-effect ideas.” I thought Jem Jarrow would agree with that.