True Blue

by Jane Smiley

  I finished patting Jack and went into the barn. Blue was standing with his chest pressed against the door of his stall, the way he always did, and he gave me a throaty nicker when he saw me. I had had him a week, and today was going to have been when we got serious with him, and started working him every day and turning him out every night, as preparation for going in with the other geldings. But my stupid broken arm had gotten in the way of that.

  Since Daddy was going to ride him, I found a brush and went into the stall. Grooming horses can be a full-time job, which was why Rodney Lemon, out at the stable on the coast, was a “groom.” When Rodney groomed a horse, he started with the currycomb, which was for getting out the dirt and loose hair, but since it’s made of metal, you can’t use it on a horse’s face or legs. Rodney then brushed away everything that the currycomb loosened with a brush that had bristles like a broom, stiff and blond-colored. You could use this on his legs, if you brushed downward in brisk strokes, but not on his face. Then he went all over the horse, including his face, with a soft brush. After the soft brush, the horse was supposed to be clean and smooth from his nose to the base of his tail, but Rodney polished him again with a cloth. I liked to use a chamois for this, which is a piece of leather that is very soft.

  The next thing was to pick the horse’s feet with a hoofpick—he lifts his foot and you pry out the dirt with the point, always pushing away, toward the toe of the hoof as it’s resting in your hand. The important thing in picking hooves is to be sure that there’s no dirt in the grooves between the frog and the sole. The frog is a wedge-shaped, sort of springy area from the middle of the hoof to the back, and the sole is around it. The sole is hard, like a fingernail. If you don’t clean out the grooves, they can get something called “thrush,” which is caused by germs and really stinks. A horse should be taught from foalhood to stand still and pick up his feet, but some are not, so when I was working on a new horse, I was always careful to run my hand down the outside of his leg from the elbow to the pastern, and then squeeze the area just above the pastern with my fingers. This makes those tendons go a little limp, and then the horse relaxes his foot and you can pick it up.

  Some horses then promptly lean their weight on you, but you have to teach them not to do that by dropping the hoof as soon as you feel a shift. It can take a while to get a new horse to stand up properly while you pick his hooves, but you have to do it, because a horseshoer will not tolerate misbehavior, and Jake always charged us a dollar more per foot if the horse was bad. That was a lot of money. After I had tried for about five minutes to figure out a way to pick Blue’s hooves with a broken arm, I gave up—Daddy would have to do that.

  After the hooves, I picked the tangles out of Blue’s tail and gently combed his mane—I could do that one-handed. Daddy didn’t believe in combing tails, because he thought it made too much hair come out, and then the tails look too thin, but you also have to watch the tangles and not let them turn into knots, because then the tail also loses hair the next time you comb it. In a parade, everyone likes their horses’ tails to float just above the ground in a soft cloud. I was sure that Rodney had some English secret for tails, but we didn’t, so we were careful. The fact is, I did not groom every horse the way Rodney would, because I was not a groom, and grooming was not my full-time job. I curried off the mud, used the stiff brush where needed, and concentrated on the soft brush. Some days, I didn’t do the legs at all—I had discovered without being told that lots of times the mud falls off after a day or so, especially if a horse has plenty of opportunities to roll. And that’s how a horse keeps himself clean in the wild—he rolls. If a horse in the wild cares about being clean.

  Some horses hate to be groomed, but most don’t mind. They stand there eating their hay and acting otherwise like a brick wall being scrubbed while you work around them. Blue was not like that. He acted as if the currycomb was torture, the stiff brush was ticklish, but the soft brush was heaven. He especially liked me to stroke the soft brush gently over his face—he closed his eyes, set his ears out of the way, and lifted his nose. I always brushed with the growth pattern, and so who wouldn’t like it? The other thing about Blue was that he always knew where I was while I was grooming him. Some horses don’t care where you are, and some horses pretend not to know where you are—they step into you, or even on you. Other horses push against you as you brush them, and you have to tell them to move over—if you push back, they only push harder. But Blue knew where I was, and always moved out of my way. I didn’t know how he saw it, but to me it felt very polite, as if he were saying, “After you, miss.” Even for the parts of the grooming that he didn’t like, he never pinned his ears or gave me a look—he only twitched his skin. The result was that I paid more attention to what I was doing, too. I didn’t want to make him more uncomfortable than I had to. I liked grooming him; it was not like brushing the living room couch all over every day with three different tools. It was like doing something with a friend. Or, at least, a nice person who would someday be a friend.

  I could not say that he had completely relaxed in the week we’d had him. It was more like he had decided that certain places seemed safe enough—his stall, the aisle of the barn, the training pen, a patch of grass along the fence of the gelding pasture, and part of the arena (but only part). I could lead him in these places and he didn’t seem tense, but when we went outside of them, his head went up, his ears went up, and he started staring again. He also started whinnying again, as if he were calling to someone, then listening for an answer that never came. Sometimes a mare or gelding answered him, but evidently, that answer was not what he was looking for, because he didn’t answer back.

  Once I finished taking bits of straw out of his tail and smoothing out the only really big tangle, I snapped the lead rope onto his halter and led him toward the arena. He hadn’t been in there since our last ride, on Friday, and all the same things were in there that had worried him before, so I just led him around the arena and up to all of those things so that he could look at them and sniff them. He was willing to do that, but he still didn’t like the poles on the ground and the chairs on the other side of the railing. He recognized the straw bales and didn’t mind the cones. While we were doing this, Daddy drove up in the truck and parked beside the barn. He stood and looked at us for a moment, then went into the barn and came out with his saddle and the bridle I’d used before. He walked over and hung his saddle on the gate, then watched us until I went to him.

  “How you feeling, Abby?” He nodded at my hideous white sling.

  “Stupid.”

  He laughed.

  “But Brother Abner told me he fell off a roof once on a dare and broke his arm. So I wasn’t that stupid.”

  “Here’s what I think. One of the evidences of God’s grace is that people only sometimes suffer from the stupid things they do. He gives them another chance, and then another, and another.”

  I said, “I hope so.”

  “Well, I was there Saturday, honey, and you weren’t stupid. She just zipped out from under you and there you were.”

  I nodded.

  He said, “How is True Blue today?”

  “He still doesn’t like the chairs or the poles, but he’s willing to consider that they MIGHT be harmless. The cones are fine and he would eat the straw if we let him.”

  Daddy opened the gate, closed it, and then lifted the saddle off the gate and onto Blue’s back. Blue looked at him, then looked suddenly up the hill, as if something had appeared, but it hadn’t—even Rusty was no longer up there; I could see her sitting on the back porch. But Blue kept looking up the hill with his ears pricked until Daddy distracted him by cinching up the saddle and then turning him around in a little circle.

  I handed Daddy the bridle, and as he put the bit in Blue’s mouth and lifted the browband over his ears, I said, “If I were you, I would work him a little on the ground first.”

  “You didn’t take him in the pen?”

  “I forgot.” Then I added,
“I was thinking about other things. Sorry.”

  “That’s okay. But let’s see what he wants to do in here. We’ll just play it by ear.”

  Daddy’s coiled rope was still tied to his saddle, and Blue cocked his head to look at it. When he moved, it flapped, and he jumped. I said, “I doubt he’s ever had a western saddle on him before he came here.”

  “Maybe not.”

  We stood there. Then Daddy did the smart thing, and led Blue to the training pen, and had him trot around.

  There was more than the rope—Daddy’s saddle had strings hanging down and rear cinch billets flapping and the stirrups were surrounded by tapaderos, which were pieces of leather that surrounded each stirrup and hung down and also sort of flapped against them. As soon as Blue was in the pen, he skittered around, trying to get away from all of these things, but once he realized they were attached to him, he gave up and started trotting. His trot was nervous, though, fast, with short strides. Every time he kicked up, or trotted faster, the parts of the saddle flapped more.

  Daddy said, “Give it time.”

  We did.

  When Blue finally began to calm down, Daddy went into the pen with a flag and urged him to go faster. I knew this was the right thing to do—once a horse gets used to some flapping, you have to make him endure more flapping. Eventually, he won’t care about flapping, and you let the flapping stop. I would have done the exact same thing with Jack automatically. But part of me wanted Blue to not have to do it—he was so pretty and so kind, it seemed a shame to ignore the fact that he didn’t like the saddle. Why not just take the saddle off and try another one that he might like better?

  But of course I didn’t say anything. I glanced over at Jack, who was standing by the fence, watching. I thought, If it’s good enough for Jack, it’s good enough for Blue. But even though Jack was just a yearling, he already seemed to be made of tougher material than Blue. The thought crossed my mind of Blue coming in the house and curling up in a basket by the fireplace. Rusty would be very envious. I laughed.

  Blue went both ways, and then when he was blowing and a little calmer, Daddy got on him and walked him around the pen. He went with his head down and his tail relaxed. Daddy tried a few neck-reining things with him, and even though he had probably not been trained that way, he turned as Daddy was asking him. I opened the gate of the pen and walked behind them toward the arena. They went in, and I closed the gate.

  The amazing thing about the unexpected is that it’s unexpected. I certainly thought that Blue was completely ready to walk around the arena on a long rein, breathing a little hard, maybe, but tired enough. Judging by the way he was riding, Daddy thought the same thing. Judging by the way he was walking, Blue thought the same thing. They went across the arena, toward the cones—not the chairs or the poles. We’d been in that part of the arena half a dozen times, no problem. But even so, Blue went from relaxed, head down, walking, to terrified, head up, running back toward me in the time it took for me to take a breath and jump out of the way. He missed me by two feet, and I looked into his eye as he passed. He didn’t even realize I was standing there.

  Daddy didn’t fall off, but he came close—he was unseated and lost one stirrup. He had to grab the horn of the saddle, then the mane, and then shorten his reins to stop Blue. They ended up on the side of the arena next to the gate, with Blue snorting and shaking his head. It took the three of us about five minutes to get ourselves sorted out again. Daddy picked up the reins and kicked Blue to move on. Blue shook his head and trotted out. He was not resistant—he didn’t try to buck or kick up or rear or anything. He tried to do what Daddy was asking of him. My wrist throbbed, but I hadn’t hit it on anything. I put my right hand on the cast. It was as though the effort of jumping out of the way had made it hurt.

  Finally, Daddy said, “What was that? Was something over there?”

  I peered in that direction for a minute, but I couldn’t see a thing besides the back of the barn, the side of Daddy’s truck, and the pen. If he shied by the poles or the chairs, I would have understood it better—there were trees and shadows, and maybe something moved across the hill, but the place where he shied was well known to him. I said, “I don’t see anything.” Then I said, “He’s a strange horse.” I must have sounded glum, because Daddy said, “They’re all strange at first.” He walked Blue over to me, then looked down at me. He said, “I think you can look at this horse in one of two ways. He’s a horse I would not have picked myself, but he did come into our lives, and maybe that’s for a reason. The Lord will provide.”

  To myself, I thought, Maybe the Lord should provide a lesson with Jem Jarrow.

  The rest of Daddy’s ride on Blue was uneventful—mostly walking and trotting, with a bit of canter, some backing up, lots of turns. When he got off, he said, “How old did we say this horse is?”

  “He’s seven.”

  “Well, he’s willing enough, but plenty ignorant. I don’t see how someone can let a horse get this old without giving him a job to do.”

  We led Blue back to the barn and untacked him. After Daddy took the saddle into the tack room, and I put Blue in his stall, I brushed him off a little. I could hear Daddy whistling “The Yellow Rose of Texas” and moving things around—at the end of every day, he hung things up and straightened boxes. Blue’s two trunks and his blankets and the other stuff were still across the aisle from his stall, mostly because we hadn’t had time to put it away, but also because I still didn’t know what to do with it. Take the blankets, for example. I guess at big stables, especially in the East, they blanket a horse inside and out, but we let them grow their coats, because Daddy said that their coats are actually warmer, and anyway, who’s to say that Jack or one of the other geldings wouldn’t go up to Blue and rip his blanket—horses love to do that sort of thing. His halter, too, was a beautiful brown leather with a brass nameplate, but you wouldn’t want to hang it on the fence of the gelding pasture to get rained on. And then there was the other stuff. I put him in the pen with Jefferson for a couple of hours, along with their hay. I hated the idea of putting him right back in the stall after so much running around.

  Just after supper, the phone rang, and it was Jane Slater asking about Blue. I told her about my broken arm. She did NOT say that it could have been worse; she said, “Well, at least you broke it falling off a horse. I always think it’s such a waste when a horseman breaks something skiing or falling into a manhole, or something like that.”

  She was silent for a moment and then said, “Of course you can’t ride. So, come work for me.”

  “Do I have to be a groom?”

  “Not at all. You can give Melinda Anniston and Ellen Leinsdorf their riding lessons. Two a week, Tuesdays and Saturdays. I’ll pay you two dollars a lesson.”

  “That’s eight dollars a week.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  With Barbie, that was over ten dollars a week. That was a lot of money. Even Stella, who got a good allowance, only got three dollars a week.

  I said, “I’ll see if Mom will drive me out there.” But I knew she would, because what else was I going to do with my time? And I could pay her for gas. That was a very grown-up thing to do.

  She said, “Go ask your parents, then. Because you can start tomorrow.”

  I set down the phone and went into the living room, where Mom was knitting, Daddy was reading his Bible, and Spooky was standing on his hind legs, with his paws on the rim of his box, as if he were preparing to jump and looking for a landing spot. Mom was happy to drive me, and Daddy thought it was a great idea—ten percent tithe to the church, five dollars into my savings account, and the rest for me. I went back to the phone. I felt rich. I forgot to tell her how Blue was.

  Daddy and I didn’t talk about the way Blue spooked. For Daddy, a spook was just a spook. Some horses are more nervous than others. Some spook, some buck, some rear, and you’ve got to deal with it, whatever it is. But it still gave me a funny feeling.

  I went out and put th
e horses away—first Jefferson to the gelding pasture, then Blue to his stall. I carried what was left of the hay in the pen to him and threw it over the door, then I went in. In the dark, I shivered. Yes, I knew that the “ghost” I’d seen sitting on the trunk was just Daddy’s shirt hanging on a hook, but as the days passed, she’d gone from being a vague, light shape in the gloom to being a slender woman in dark breeches and black boots, sitting on the blue trunk with her legs crossed. Her shirt was pale and she had a long neck, and her dark hair was pulled back. She was looking at me, and she was about to say something.

  See? She was practically living with me. It was all I could do not to imagine her following me into the house. I thought, What if that was her, walking around the barn, between the barn and the arena, and Blue saw her?

  He was standing right next to me, head down, eating his hay. I stood with my hand on his withers, watching him bite off hunks of the flake, then root for more while he chewed. He blew out. He stepped forward and flipped the flake over with his nose. I wondered, Does Blue know she’s dead? What does Blue think happened to him? The woman he knew disappeared and new people appeared and took him to a new place. And no one ever thought to tell him what was going on. And then I thought, Does a horse know what “dead” is?