Horse Games

by Bonnie Bryant

  Stevie would get on the phone. First she’d call Miss Bellanger, the head administrator at the hospital, to get Marie’s address and to ask if horseback riding would be okay for her. Then, she’d figure out a way to entice Marie to try riding at Pine Hollow. That’s how Stevie would do it and that, Carole decided, was how she would do it, too.

  ONE OF THE best things about owning a horse was that it needed to be exercised almost every day. Carole had her riding lessons on Tuesdays and Horse Wise Pony Club on Saturdays. On the other days, whenever she could, she’d go straight to Pine Hollow after school and take Starlight out. It also gave her a chance to groom him and feed him. Time spent with Starlight was wonderful no matter what she was doing.

  She tightened the buckle of his girth one more notch and led him to the door of the stable that led out onto the paths through the fields. She mounted up, touched the good-luck horseshoe, and was off. Today was special. She wasn’t just going to go for a ride; she had a mission.

  Carole could still recall Miss Bellanger’s excitement over the phone. The hospital had been trying to get Marie to take up horseback riding because it would be good for her legs. Marie, however, had been resisting suggestions for anything that would be good for her. Carole wasn’t surprised. She just hoped she could help. “Good luck!” Miss Bellanger had said.

  The other good news was that Marie lived right near Pine Hollow. Her family’s house was just across the field behind the stable. Carole and her friends had ridden near there many times. Carole even knew which house it was. It seemed odd to her that somebody could live so close to Pine Hollow and not ride, but then, not everybody was born loving horses the way Carole had been.

  “Come on, boy!” she said to Starlight once they were through the first gate. He nodded his head eagerly, flicked his ears to be alert to anything going on around him, and then began trotting.

  Carole loved trotting. It was a pace a horse could keep up for a long time, but it was fast enough that it wasn’t boring. She would have loved to just trot straight across the field to Marie’s house, but she had some work to do first. Starlight was a young horse and he hadn’t really finished his training. Carole knew it was important to work with him and teach him something every single time they rode, no matter how much they each would have preferred to do something else.

  The problem right then was that Carole hadn’t told Starlight to trot. She’d told him to walk. She’d given him the signal with her legs, her seat, and her reins. Instead, he’d decided he wanted to trot. She couldn’t let him get away with that.

  “Whoa!” she said, reining him in. He halted. That was a good sign. She made him stand still for a few seconds before she tried again. Then she nudged him with her legs, shifted her weight in the saddle and relaxed her hold on the reins. He began walking. “Good boy,” she told him. Then she told him the same thing with her hands by relaxing the reins a little bit more. He continued walking. After a few more steps, she signaled him to trot. He trotted immediately. That was good, and she once again told him with her voice and her hands. Then she told him to slow to a walk. He stopped.

  It took Carole a while, but with a few more reminders to Starlight about which signal meant which gait, he seemed back in the groove. Once again, she took him through his paces: walk, trot, canter, trot, canter, walk, trot, stop.

  “Good boy,” she said, and then leaned forward to pat him on his neck. Once again, he nodded his head. She was sure he knew how pleased she was with him, just as she’d been sure he’d known that he was just being naughty before.

  “Okay, that’s enough schooling for you for today,” she told him. “Now we’ve got somebody else who has a few things to learn. Ready?”

  His ears flicked around again, alert to the change of tone in her voice, ready for another signal.

  She began at a walk and then reached behind the girth with her left foot, touching his belly gently. He knew that signal; it was one of his favorites. He began cantering across the field.

  Starlight had the most wonderful rocking canter Carole had ever known in a horse. It was fast and it was smooth. She felt the wind brush her hair and watched the countryside as she passed by. She kept a fairly tight rein on Starlight and directed him carefully, never letting him forget who was actually in charge.

  As they neared the far side of the field, Carole drew her horse to a walk. He needed to cool down a bit and it wasn’t a good idea to have a horse cantering on somebody’s lawn. Soon the two of them left the field and approached Marie’s house.

  Carole and Starlight circled the house. The name Dana on the mailbox confirmed that it was the right house. There was no car in the driveway, but it wasn’t the right time of day for Marie’s therapy. Carole felt sure she must be home.

  Carole looked at the house carefully. It was a nice, well-kept home. There was a picture window looking out from what she assumed was the living room. Then, in the room next to that, she could see a chandelier hanging from the ceiling. It looked like the dining room.

  Beyond that was the kitchen. That was the whole downstairs and Carole didn’t see any signs of life on the ground floor. Her eyes moved to the upper floor. There were several windows with sheer white curtains. They had to be bedrooms. Was Marie somewhere inside? Was she looking out? Did she see Carole? How could she miss Carole?

  There was no movement.

  Carole and Starlight continued around the house. Just as they reached the corner, Carole thought she noticed a slight movement in one of the curtains. Marie? Maybe, she told herself. Maybe it was a little bit of breeze, too.

  Then, just around the corner, another curtain moved aside, ever so slightly. Carole was certain now it was Marie. She was just as certain the girl wasn’t going to say anything to Carole. It didn’t matter. Carole had accomplished what she’d wanted. She had made Marie curious enough to look—twice.

  Carole believed firmly that horseback riding was an activity that had its own rewards and it should never be done to show off. She broke her own rule then.

  Suddenly, she swung Starlight around, startled him with a kick, yelled “Yahoooooo!” like a cowboy, got her horse to gallop, and then jumped him over the low wooden fence at the back of the Dana’s yard instead of going through the gate as they had done when they arrived. She didn’t even let him slow down until she was sure they were out of sight of Marie’s house.

  “Sorry, boy,” she said when Starlight was walking slowly. “I know you like more warning than that, but I had my reasons. I promise you I did. And just because you were such a good boy and did exactly what I wanted you to do, I’m going to let you pick the next gait. It’s your turn.”

  She loosened up on the reins. Starlight began trotting.

  JUST ABOUT FIVE minutes before the start of the next practice, Lisa had changed her mind about what fun it was going to be to learn polocrosse. The problem could be summed up in one word: Stevie.

  After class on Tuesday, Max had lined up the riders who stayed for practice, and had them all take turns picking up the ball, first on the right, then on the left. That was fine. It was something they needed to practice. Most of them weren’t very good at it at first. Stevie, the first person in the line, got to try it first. She wasn’t very good at it either. That didn’t stop her from giving hints and suggestions to the other riders as their turns came around.

  “No, no!” she yelled at Lisa. “You have to lean forward as well as sideways to reach the ball!”

  Lisa didn’t thank her for the advice.

  When they were trying to pick up the ball on the left-hand side of the horse, it was Carole’s turn to get some advice.

  “You can’t change hands!” Stevie yelled. “That’s not allowed. If you do that in a tournament, you’ll get us a foul!”

  It didn’t make any difference that Stevie happened to be right. The way she delivered the message was so unpleasant that nobody wanted to listen to what she said.

  Carole just slipped the racquet back into her right hand, reached over
across Starlight’s neck, stretched, and picked up the ball. She tossed it easily to Max, who caught it with his racquet and smiled. “Nice move,” he said.

  Lisa didn’t know how Carole managed to refrain from glaring at Stevie.

  “Next, we’re going to try passing back and forth to one another.”

  He had the riders split into two groups and line their horses up facing each other, ten feet apart. They counted off. Evens on one side, odds on the other. He announced he would toss the ball to the closest rider, number 1, and explained that he wanted the riders to “lace” it—toss it numerically, 1 to 2 to 3, back and forth across the space, and then back down again to him. Eventually, he said, this would be a timed exercise.

  That would have been fine except the number 1 rider, Adam Levine, didn’t catch the ball. He merely swiped up into the air with his racquet as the ball whizzed by and bounced down to the end of the field. Adam chased after the thing and tried four or five times to pick it up before he finally got it into his racquet. Then he threw it back, getting it only half the distance it needed to go. He had to pick it up again.

  By that time, Stevie was beside herself. A number of the players were yelling encouragement, but Stevie was just plain yelling.

  “Hurry up! We haven’t got all day! The rest of us want a chance to practice, too!”

  Finally, Adam picked up the ball and rode slowly back to his place in line. Some of the riders may have thought he was doing that to be careful so he wouldn’t drop the ball again. Lisa was convinced he was doing it to irritate Stevie.

  Then Adam tossed the ball to the number 2 rider, who also missed it. Most of the riders—including Stevie—missed it and had to chase it down. When they’d finished lacing the ball—all over the field—Max called them to attention.

  “Right now, this exercise seems more like a chasing-down-and-picking-up exercise than a throwing-and-catching one. Don’t worry. We all need practice with chasing down and picking up, too. The time has not gone to waste.”

  He said the last few words slowly, glaring directly at Stevie. Lisa thought he was being a little bit too subtle for Stevie in her present mood, but there wasn’t much even Max could do about it. The fact was, she told herself, hitting Stevie in the side of the head with a two-by-four might have been too subtle right then.

  “Now, I want to try something else,” Max said. “I want to try a practice chukka. We have accepted a challenge from Cross County Pony Club, and because of unforeseen scheduling problems, the match is going to take place on Saturday.”

  “This weekend?” Stevie screeched. “But we won’t be ready. We’ll never win!”

  “No, I’m sure we won’t,” Max said quite calmly. “I wouldn’t expect us to win our first match in any event. So, think of it as an intense practice rather than a real match.”

  Lisa suspected that that was more than Stevie could handle. It was clear, within a few seconds, that she was right. As soon as the practice chukka started, Stevie started too—on the players.

  Lisa and Carole waited on the sidelines to be called in to play. Stevie was playing number 2, Center, for her team.

  “It was bad enough when she thought the match against Phil’s club was going to be in two weeks. Now that it’s this week, there’s no stopping her,” Lisa complained.

  “When Stevie gets an idea in her head—”

  “I know, I know. Even an atom bomb can’t blast it out. But if she doesn’t stop being so awful to everybody, somebody’s going to go to a lot of trouble to find an atom bomb somewhere …”

  “If we don’t just strangle her with our bare hands first.” Carole finished the sentence for Lisa.

  “Now there’s an idea,” Lisa said.

  Although she was interested in learning polocrosse, and even interested in at least putting on a good show for Phil’s team on Saturday, Carole just couldn’t get herself to care as much as Stevie. Right then, something, or rather somebody, else seemed more important, and her name was Marie Dana. Under the circumstances, polocrosse just didn’t seem very urgent.

  “You seem to be involved with something,” Lisa said, interrupting her thoughts. “It’s as if you’ve already left practice.”

  Carole smiled. Lisa had a way, sometimes, of knowing what people were thinking, even before they did.

  “I think you’re right,” she agreed. “I have, at least in my mind. Now I think I’m going to do it for real. Tell Stevie I’m sorry, will you?”

  Before Lisa could protest, Carole had Starlight trotting across the field—toward Marie’s.

  “Carole?” Max said as she passed him. “Where are you going?”

  “I’ve got to see somebody, Max. Right now.”

  “Okay,” he said. Max wasn’t the kind of person to pry.

  Carole was glad of it. Right then, she wished she could have said the same for her friend Stevie.

  “Where are you going?” Stevie demanded. “Practice isn’t over, you know. There are five more minutes left and you can learn a lot from watching as well as doing. You can’t just …”

  But she did.

  THE QUIET OF the fields between Pine Hollow and Marie’s house was very welcome. Carole liked riding in any form, but being yelled at wasn’t high on her hit parade. As soon as she was out of range of Stevie’s voice, she wondered why she hadn’t left earlier.

  Things were still quiet at Marie’s house. Again, there was no car in the driveway and the house was closed up. Carole and Starlight circled the house. Carole paused at the rear, where she’d seen Marie at the window the day before. She allowed Starlight to nibble on the green lawn while she examined the house. The movement of a curtain again caught Carole’s eye. She squinted to focus with the afternoon sun blurring her vision. It took a second, but she saw Marie. The girl stood by the window and looked back at her. Carole waved. Marie just continued looking. Finally, she waved in return. Carole even thought she saw Marie smile.

  It was so little, but it was so much. Carole was tempted to dismount and ring Marie’s doorbell, but if she did that and Marie didn’t answer, what would that mean? That she didn’t want to open the door? That she couldn’t? Carole decided not to raise the question.

  She gave a final wave and, once again, she turned Starlight dramatically and galloped out of the Danas’ yard and over the fence. This time, Starlight elected to walk back to Pine Hollow.

  Carole was glad for that. She hoped that the polocrosse practice would be done, the horses groomed, and the riders departed by the time she got back. She was in luck. The place was almost deserted. She untacked Starlight, cleaned out his stall, and groomed him carefully. She also gave him his afternoon ration of grain and some fresh hay and water. He nodded his appreciation and nuzzled her neck when she gave him a carrot for a treat.

  When she was sure he was all taken care of, she hefted his saddle and bridle and took them back to the tack room.

  “That you, Carole?” Mrs. Reg asked from her office next door. Mrs. Reg was Max’s mother and the business manager of the stable. She was also a sort of unofficial mother to anyone she thought might need mothering from time to time.

  “Yes, it’s me,” Carole said.

  “Max said you’d disappeared from the practice. Everything okay?”

  “Yes ma’am,” Carole told her. “I just had to go visit a friend. She’s sick. And she lives in one of the houses on the other side of the fields.”

  “Hmmm,” Mrs. Reg responded.

  Carole lifted the saddle and put it on its rack. She straightened out the pad and made sure that the leathers were hanging straight. Then she untangled the bridle and hung it from its hook. As she was doing that, she saw that there was some mud on the bridle. It must have happened in polocrosse practice. She took it back down. It would only take her a second to clean it. She grabbed the saddle soap and a sponge and sat down to do the quick job.

  Mrs. Reg came in and sat down beside her. “It’s a good thing you’re cleaning that now,” she said. “If you wait until the ne
xt time you ride—”

  “I know, I know,” Carole said with a good-natured laugh. “If you clean your tack every day you’ll never have a problem.” She repeated what she had been told hundreds of times by Max and Mrs. Reg. She knew it was a good lesson.

  “Well, some things have to be taken care of right away. Some things just take time, you know.” Mrs. Reg picked up a sponge and began cleaning the other end of the bridle for Carole. She talked as she cleaned.

  “Reminds me of a horse we had here once,” Mrs. Reg began. She was famous for her stories. They always had to do with horses and riders from long ago, but they usually also had to do with a problem or a situation that was happening right then.

  “This horse belonged to the stable,” Mrs. Reg continued. “Max, my husband, just loved that guy. I sometimes thought it was because they were both stubborn. He was an Appaloosa, bred for the rigors of the plains. Anyway, he was one of the best trail horses we ever had. He’d take riders out for hours at a time and never get fussy or anything. At the end of a long trail ride, when all the other horses would start hurrying to get back to the barn, this old fellow would just walk at his own leisurely pace. Max sometimes even hurried him up, just to see if he would act like the other horses, but it never worked. Then Max would put him in his stall, groom him and everything, and put a bucket of water in there for him. All the other horses would guzzle their water. Not this fellow.”

  Mrs. Reg finished the strap she was working on. She put down her sponge and leaned forward, elbows on her knees.

  “Max got worried about how he wouldn’t drink after a long ride. Then one day, he asked the vet about it. The vet said, ‘When you get there in the morning, is the water gone?’ Max told him it was. ‘Then what are you worried about?’ ”

  Mrs. Reg put her hands on her knees then and stood up. The story was over—at least as much of it as Mrs. Reg was going to tell. One of the most challenging things about listening to Mrs. Reg’s stories was figuring out what they were really about. As Mrs. Reg returned to her office, Carole thought about the Appaloosa who wouldn’t drink when his bucket was filled.