by Jane Smiley
It was then that I knew that she had planned to keep this little adventure a secret.
I said, “Okay, well, since we’re out here, Gee Whiz and I are going to go for a little walk.”
“You sure he’ll be okay?”
“I don’t think he wants to run away. I think he wants to investigate.”
“If you say so.”
We came to our gate. Dad had left it open. Mom drove through, and I closed it after her. Then Gee Whiz and I headed up the road toward the entrance to the Jordan Ranch, just to see what we could see.
Sometimes they say that a horse has “presence.” I never quite knew what they meant by this. Every horse is more or less large. Even a pony like Gallant Man weighs about six hundred pounds. A full-sized horse weighs a thousand pounds or more. My yearling, Jack (soon a two-year-old, according to the Jockey Club), never let you forget that he was around—either he was looking at you or nuzzling you or asking to play or showing off. Blue was beautiful and quiet. His presence made me feel good. But Gee Whiz had something more, some electricity, some intensity that the others didn’t have. He walked along nicely—not pushing ahead or giving me trouble in any way. I didn’t even have to hurry to keep up with him. I remembered an expression we had talked about in history class—it was noblesse oblige. It meant that a nobleman was being kind and courteous because it was part of his job to do that. Could a horse feel that? It felt like it as we walked along, Gee Whiz not following me or pulling me, but accompanying me, looking here and there, pausing from time to time. We went about half a mile down the road, to where we could see the gate to the Jordan Ranch, and turned back. By the time we got home, the sun was pretty low in the sky. I undid the gate and pushed it open. Gee Whiz stood quietly while I closed it and bolted it. I said, “Look the other way. This one doesn’t work that well, either.”
Dad was in the barn, piling hay in the wheelbarrow. I said hi and walked past, to the gate of the gelding pasture. I opened it. I have to say, Gee Whiz paused before he walked in, but he did walk in. Oh My gave him a brilliant whinny. I could tell Mom had told Dad all about the escape, because he didn’t say anything to me. That would be for later. All he said was, “Did you like the service?”
I nodded.
“I think Brother Abner would have liked it.”
“I’m glad we had a nice day.”
“We need rain, but yes, I am, too.”
Danny called that night. Mom answered and asked him to come for supper the next night. Then she said the words “prime rib.” We didn’t often have prime rib, but I guess Dad had gotten a present from Mr. Jordan. When she got off the phone, she said, “Jerry’s coming, too. He wants to see Beebop.”
I said, “If you’d asked me a few weeks ago which horse was going to be the troublemaker, I would have said Beebop.”
Dad laughed. “Beebop is just a working man with a special talent.”
The next day, Danny came early and took Marcus for a ride, to see how he was coming along. I was tacking up Oh My, so we went over to the arena together. Marcus was like the kid at school who does everything right and is always wearing nice clothes, and no one pays attention to him, even so. You sort of had to remember to say, “He is nice, isn’t he?” and even while you were saying that, you were thinking about someone more glamorous, like Gee Whiz, whom we could see staring at us from the pasture while we rode.
Maybe that’s why I talked all the time we were walking out, and didn’t notice Danny’s face getting stiffer and stiffer, like Dad’s, of course, when he is thinking that a child’s being seen and not heard is a good thing. First, I talked about Jack, and how beautiful he was. I had been thinking about him all week and, I mean, Gee Whiz made him look like a baby still, but he was getting bigger and more graceful, and seemed older. I wondered how long horses trained before they went to the track, and then in their first race.
“No idea,” said Danny.
Still, that was exciting. Of course, that raised another issue, about whether we would ever get to see him run.
“Don’t count on it,” said Danny.
That shut me up about racing, so I started in about Jerry. What time was he coming? Maybe he would bring something good from San Francisco. Barbie had thought he was lots of fun. We should do something with Beebop, at least let him run around in the arena. He seemed not to have much personality, way less than Gee Whiz.
Which, of course, got me back thinking about racing. Gee Whiz, I said, made you think that the whole world was very interesting and exciting, and even though he’d only gotten half a mile down the road, he wanted to go. He had been more places than I had, maybe more places than Dad or Mom had—France, for heaven’s sake! Kentucky! Arkansas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Saratoga.
Danny said, “I wouldn’t take a free ticket to Arkansas.”
And soon it would be a new year! What was Danny doing New Year’s Eve? Going out with Leah, I guessed. Well, that was more fun than sitting around reading A Night to Remember and listening to Simon and Garfunkel for the millionth time. I couldn’t wait until something would finally happen—
“Yes, you can,” said Danny. “You can wait. And just so you know, Leah and I broke up, for good.”
“Before New Year’s Eve?”
“Best time,” said Danny.
Now we rode in silence. The horses walked along, clop clop, and yes, Marcus was quite calm and good for such an inexperienced horse. Finally, I said, “Why is that?”
“Because I am not going to bring in the new year making promises that I can’t keep.”
“It was your idea?”
Another silence, then, “Yes.”
Now we were quiet. We finished our ride and went back to the barn, where Danny turned on the dusty old radio, very low. The song was one I liked, but it was creepy—“Paint It, Black,” by the Rolling Stones. I had heard it lots of times before, but now it made me think of Brother Abner’s funeral—“I see a line of cars, and they’re all painted black.” Danny turned it up, and I had to walk out of the barn because I had gone from being excited to being really sad. I stood there, waiting until I was really sure that I wasn’t going to cry.
When Jerry showed up a little later, Danny was still quiet, but Jerry didn’t seem to notice. He talked and chatted, and not only to Beebop. Beebop was clearly glad to see Jerry. He trotted over to the fence, and when Lincoln came with him, he lifted his hind foot—“This guy is mine!” Jerry had a cut-up apple, which he gave to Beebop piece by piece. I told him about the big escape, when all the geldings got out and a few of the mares, and how we found Beebop in the front yard, minding his own business and grazing. Jerry laughed, and said, “He’s a food horse, all right.”
“What does that mean?”
“Oh, one of the hands who had horses where he used to be said there’s food horses and there’s play horses. With a play horse, the rider shows up at the same time as the hay, and the play horse takes a bite of his hay, then comes to the gate and wants to know what’s up. A food horse only has eyes for the hay, no matter what’s up.”
I decided that Jack was a play horse.
I helped him brush Beebop down. His coat was thick, and he had very long whiskers as well as feathery pasterns, so he took a lot of grooming, but Jerry wasn’t in a hurry. While he brushed him, he petted him, and tickled him around the eyes. When he did this, Beebop sort of seemed to doze. I watched Jerry. He really liked his horse and saw beauty in him that I certainly did not. At one point, he did something I’d never seen a guy do—he kissed him on the nose.
We led Beebop to the big arena. The horse walked along, lagging a little behind, blowing out air, one time stopping to rub his nose on his knee. He looked like a trail horse over at the stables, ready to walk the trail to the ocean and back for the thousandth time. And even when we took his halter off and put him in the arena, he at first didn’t do much—like the others, he walked around and checked out what was in there. He looked up the hill. He watched Rusty chasing something, withou
t reacting. He took a deep sigh. Then he started trotting. He didn’t have a big or a pretty trot. It was just a trot. He trotted here and there, slowed to the walk, picked up the trot again. Finally, he found the spot—a little damp, a little deep and sandy, just right. He dropped to his knees and flopped over, then he rolled and rolled, more like a dog than a horse, with his legs in the air. He did not have prominent withers, so maybe that’s why he was good at going all the way over—not many horses go back and forth, but Beebop did. Then he sort of lifted himself onto his right haunch and did something I had never seen a horse do, which was almost sitting like a dog and scratching his hip against the sand—he looked for a moment like he was having a hard time getting to his feet. Jerry said, “The first time I saw that, I thought something was wrong with him, but he just likes to get everything as gritty as possible.”
Beebop stood up, shook himself off, and was still for a moment. Then he leapt into the air and took off bucking and kicking down the long side of the arena, his head low, his ears pinned, and his body almost vertical to the ground. At buck number two, he started squealing. He bucked and squealed eight times, each more violent than the last, and then galloped for ten or twenty strides, but he wasn’t a Thoroughbred—there was no fun in galloping for him. He went back to the trot, this time with slightly bigger strides than before, and trotted here and there. Finally, he came over to Jerry and received another piece of apple. By now, he was quiet as you please. His ears were relaxed, and he was perfectly friendly.
I said, “He likes that.”
“He does.”
“Does he, say, go up to the cowboy he’s just bucked off and ask him for a lump of sugar?”
“That would be funny. But no. At the rodeo, he’s in a different mood. He knows it’s a competition and he’s got to be serious. The bronc rider is his rival. He wants to beat him.”
“He doesn’t want to kill him?”
“I never get that feeling. Anyway, it would be hard to run rodeos with rogue horses. They’ve got to cooperate when they’re not in the ring. It’s not like a bullfight, a fight to the death. It’s a game. You ask me, both the horse and the rider know it’s a game, but they’ve got to play it wholehearted, or they don’t get a good score. And the horse has to get a good score, because if it looks too easy, the rider’s score suffers.” Beebop walked away and came back again. Jerry smoothed some of the sand off his neck and said, “Beebop’s tough but fair—he gives it all he’s got, he bucks high, and he’s got a few moves that are a little unexpected, but … I don’t know. He’s got a rhythm, so they tell me he’s fun to ride.”
I couldn’t imagine this.
I said, “He doesn’t kick the other horses. I guess, looking at him, I’d think he’d use that against them.”
“Never has,” said Jerry. “But I keep him unshod behind if he’s turned out. You never know if they’re going to take a dislike to someone.” He put the halter on Beebop and took him through the gate. I headed back to the house while they walked along the outside of the fence, looking for tufts of grass.
Jerry had brought something to go with the prime rib, two artichokes that he’d picked up on the way down and a stem of something. When I went in the house, Mom was pulling the things off the stem, and I saw that they were Brussels sprouts. I made a face. But when Jerry came in the house, he cooked both the Brussels sprouts and the artichokes, and I had to admit that they were good—I would have thought that you could not do a thing with a Brussels sprout that would take away the bitter flavor, but he steamed them, cut them in half, poured some of the olive oil he brought over them, and stuck them in the oven until they were brown. The artichokes he served like Mrs. Goldman had, boiled and sitting up in bowls. His sauce looked like mayonnaise, except that it was actually lemony and good. Mom’s prime rib was, of course, delicious, so this supper ended up being maybe the best meal of the year.
While we were eating, Jerry asked about the other horses, and Dad said everyone was fine, but he and Danny both looked a little mad, so I suspected that while Jerry and I had been outside, Danny and Dad had been having it out about Gee Whiz. Of course, Dad would have said that enough is enough, the horse had to go once the payment had run out, and maybe Danny would have said that the horse belonged to him now, and then Dad would have said that that was a stupid thing to do, take on a horse when your life is about to change, and after that, I had no idea what they would have said. But if I’d been there, I would have spoken up, “I’ll take him.” No one asked me, though. We all knew that by this time next week, Danny would have had his physical, so maybe it was best to put off all disagreements until then.
But after all, it was me who was called into the living room and told to sit down because we had to have a serious conversation. It was New Year’s Eve. The pie that Mom had made for the service the next day was in the oven—I could smell it.
When I sat down on the sofa, Dad and Mom looked more concerned than angry, and why would they be angry? I mean, except for me not telling about how Gee Whiz got out that first time. And even if that was my fault, I didn’t think it was a sitting-on-the-couch-for-a-serious-discussion sort of thing.
Dad cleared his throat.
Then he said, “I have asked the Lord whether this is my business, Abby. And your mom and I have also talked about it.” He glanced at her. “However, it was purely by accident that we know this, so I haven’t said anything, hoping that you would come to me for my advice.”
Now I really didn’t know what they were talking about.
He coughed.
“Anyway, when Dan was here yesterday before supper, I asked him point-blank about what happens when a colt goes to the racetrack, and I got some information out of him that I find a little startling, but horse racing is always said to be a rich man’s sport, and I guess there’s a reason for that. Well, anyway, he told me that when a horse is at the racetrack, the trainer charges twenty”—now he started coughing, as if he couldn’t actually get the word out—“dollars per day, that’s six hundred dollars a month, which is eight times what we charge.” Then he said, “I don’t know what they pay for with all of that money. The hay must be dipped in gold, but even the cheapest trainer up north in the Bay Area gets fifteen.”
Mom’s head was moving back and forth—not as though she was shaking her head no, more as though she was stunned by the figures. I might have been stunned by the figures myself, but I really didn’t understand them. Six hundred dollars every month! Or anyway, four hundred and fifty. We were the kind of people who hesitated before buying a dress for forty dollars, or riding boots for sixty—and the riding boots were supposed to last you the next twenty years. I did have a hundred dollars in my bank account—well, ninety-four, because of Christmas, but that was not quite five days at the racetrack.
I said, “Even if Mr. Matthews splits it with us, that’s ten dollars a day.” Nine days.
Dad said, “When they get to the track as two-year-olds, according to Roscoe Pelham, it takes a while for them to settle in and get fit enough for a race. Sometimes four or five months, and according to him, the longer the better, because you want the fitness to come on slow and settle in. They’re more likely to break down if you push them too hard.”
“So,” said Mom, in a sort of strangled voice, “that could be, like, twenty-four hundred or even three thousand dollars before a horse races, and then, when he does, he probab—might not win.”
I said, “Jane offered me a thousand dollars for Blue.”
Mom and Dad exchanged a glance.
Dad said, “I know that. Your mom overheard that. But even so, supporting a racehorse might not be the best place to put that money. If you sell the horse. But he’s a good horse.…”
“You always say it’s never too soon to sell a horse.”
“I do say that, but that’s partly a joke and partly a good-luck charm. Every day that you have a horse, something could go wrong. We all know that, but we also know that there are better times in a horse’s life t
o sell him, and better times in the year to sell him, too. And what we always hope for is that the right owner will come along. We wait for that if we can afford to.”
“What if Mr. Matthews says he’ll pay for it, like he did this training?”
“I don’t see how we can accept that kind of an offer, Abby.”
They both sighed.
Then Dad said, “Having Jack at Vista del Canada is a piece of good luck—Mr. Matthews and the man who owns that place did a little bartering, and it worked out. Since we had already seen to Jack’s expenses for twenty-one months, we could look at it as a fair deal all around. But this is different. Jack would go to a trainer who would have to be paid every month. Mr. Matthews uses several different trainers, I guess, because he has horses at different tracks, and mostly in the East.” He was quiet for a long moment, then looked at me the way parents do when they really want you to pay attention. His voice sort of deepened. “When horses go into the world, the world always turns out to be a big, big place.”
Well, Gee Whiz was the perfect example of that, wasn’t he?
I said, “What do you want me to do?”
Mom said, “We don’t want you to do anything. We just want you to know how things work. We don’t want anything to come as a big surprise down the road.”
“You don’t want me to get my hopes up.”
“Well. No. We don’t,” said Dad.
“Did Danny tell you my hopes were up?”
Finally, Dad said, “Danny and I didn’t talk about you. He told me that the horse looks good, that they like him, and what he found out about how it works. That’s all.”
But were my hopes up? And what for? I had no idea. I went up to my room and stared out the window at the gelding pasture, wishing that Jack were back in there, back to being a playful, cute colt, Jack the Pest, always curious and funny, and that there were no choices to be made.
Chapter 11
MAYBE MOM AND DAD FELT BAD ABOUT THIS SERIOUS conversation, because when Barbie called a little later and asked me over for supper (she knew I couldn’t spend the night on a Saturday night), they said yes without even saying “Well, I don’t know” first. Mom agreed to drive me over, and Barbie said that her mom would drive me home.
