“Hi, Kent. Michelle.”
“Molly,” he said as if he were saying the word Maggot.
“Good morning, Molly,” Michelle said with considerably more warmth than Kent was displaying.
Opting to confront his attitude directly, I said, “You know, your skull truly doesn’t care how classy your helmet looks before smashing into a rock.”
“That might be. I’m just afraid you’ll spook the horses. You look like you’re wearing a big white bucket on your head.”
“And I would have, too, but there’d have been no place to store our mop in the meantime.”
Attempting to change the subject, Michelle blurted out, “Molly, we were just discussing how irresponsible the press has been to run such a one-sided story on your father. They should have gotten the whole story before they printed anything at all.”
“The whole story?” I repeated, wondering if my father had talked to his fellow board members already. Maybe he’d told them about his brother’s role.
“The reporters never even tried to contact either of us for our opinions, and they should have made every effort to get your father’s response.”
Of course, they did try to get my father’s response, but I wasn’t about to defend the press. “They’re probably saving all of that for future exposes,” I said. “They’ll put him on trial via the press and the court of public opinion over the next few days.”
“Exactly,” Michelle said, holding my gaze. “It’s terribly unfair.”
“Yeah,” Kent said irritably. “It stinks. All this yakking isn’t accomplishing anything, though. Can we get going?”
I turned my attention to the horses. Michelle quickly untied the reins of a gorgeous palomino. Kent’s horse was a “chestnut—black mane, red-brown body, with white hooves. At a short distance was the third horse, a whitish-colored mare, reins secured around a post.
“By all means. And thanks again for inviting me to join you.” I walked up to my horse. She seemed to be half asleep.
“Using my considerable mathematical skills, I’m figuring that this horse here is mine?”
“You got it,” Kent answered. “Her name is Nellie.”
“As in ‘Whoa, Nellie?’”
“You shouldn’t have much trouble trying to stop her,” Michelle said reassuringly. “She’s pretty calm.”
“Seemingly so. I think she’s nodded off right where she’s standing.”
“All this talking probably bored her to death,” Kent grumbled. “Can’t say as I blame her, either.”
For the sake of my father’s future relationship with this duo, I knew that I should try to make nice, but Kent’s crabbiness was getting on my nerves. “For such a man of action, it’s surprising to me that you would choose to serve on a school board. Don’t you find that you have to talk and, occasionally, listen to others?”
“Yeah. That’s why I like horses.” He patted his mount’s withers. “Blaze here ain’t no damned Mr. Ed.”
“Too bad. I bet I’d find his opinions—” I broke off and managed to stop myself from saying “more enlightened than yours” and instead said only, “interesting.”
My attention was soon fully captured by my horse. Only the tethering of Nellie’s reins was preventing her from lying down. “She’s not on her last legs, is she?”
“Heavens no,” Michelle replied. “She’s not dying. She’s just mellow.”
“She did seem to be a little gaseous earlier,” Kent added, climbing effortlessly into the saddle of his tall, elegant horse. “On the way over here, she did more farting than trotting.”
“Kent!” Michelle said.
“What? I’m just being honest. Molly will be above it, though, so she shouldn’t be affected.”
“Except that hot air rises,” I muttered as I got onto my saddle, “and from the looks of this particular horse, I doubt we’ll be moving fast enough to keep ahead of her posterior emissions.”
I looked into Nellie’s eyes and read pure boredom; not unlike the way my children’s eyes glaze over when I lecture them. I untied her reins, wondering now if I’d still have the coordination to get into a saddle without the use of a stepladder.
“Let me check your stirrups,” Michelle said. “I’ve guessed that you’re five-six or so… five inches shorter than me, so I set them accordingly.”
“Thanks.”
I gathered both reins in one hand and held them taut against the front of the saddle. Nellie stayed perfectly still until the moment I got my left foot in the stirrup. Then she started walking forward, leaving me to hop along with her on my right foot, silently cursing my inability to do the splits, until I managed to boost my leg up and over her rump. Already this horseback riding was ten times harder than when I was younger and my body was, well, younger.
Once I’d gotten both feet in the stirrups, Nellie stopped. I stood up in the stirrups and then sat back down so that Michelle could check the adjustment.
“That looks good,” Michelle said. “How does it feel?”
“As if my knees are way up in the air when I’m seated,” I answered honestly.
“That’s just the difference between the English style and the western, to which you’re accustomed.”
“I think too much time has passed to call myself ‘accustomed’ to any kind of horseback riding.” That was an understatement, in fact. When we were teenagers, my sister and I used to laugh at some of the actors in TV westerns that obviously were awkward-looking in the saddle. Back then, I’d felt like a centaur, as though my body were melded with my horse’s. Now Nellie seemed as big and wide as an elephant, and I instantly felt a hundred years old.
“Ah, don’t sweat it,” Kent said. “It’s just like riding a bike. It’ll all come back to you.”
The only thing I was currently expecting to perhaps come back to me was last night’s dinner. “Maybe so, Kent, but it feels as though I’m on one of those old-fashioned bikes with the enormous front wheel and with pedals that are way too short.”
“Ready?” Kent asked as Michelle gracefully mounted her horse.
“Let’s just make sure Molly is comfortable,” she replied. “Molly, take Nellie around in a quick circle.”
I had already established that my own aim would be set not on feeling “comfortable,” but on not injuring myself. I’d never been in an English saddle, and the riding techniques are quite different. There is much more knee action in the English technique. The rider stands up and sits down according to the horse’s gait. In contrast, my western instructor used to holler, “No daylight, Molly!” because he didn’t want to see any space between my body and the saddle. Also the reins are held more taut in English, one in each hand. There was no way I could easily adjust to that. I was too used to having both reins in my right hand, steering with leg pressure on the respective side and with both reins at once.
I urged Nellie forward, having to resort to a couple of light kicks when my “Giddyup” and knee pressure didn’t do the trick. She picked up speed and got into a slow trot as I circled the small open area surrounding the entrance to the path. Michelle’s horse, in the meantime, was acting up quite a bit, snorting and backing up, clearly much more spirited than Nellie. “Oh, boy. This is going to take some getting used to,” I said.
“You’ll manage,” Kent said. “Let’s get going before the sun sets on us.” Quite a smooth-talker, that man.
The dirt path was wide enough for two horses to ride abreast, but not all three. Within minutes, Kent was riding well ahead of us, setting the pace as, seemingly, all men do when they’re in the company of women. Michelle was keeping a tight rein on her horse to make her stay back with me. The horse was still shaking her head and straining to break into a faster gait. Nellie, on the other hand, obviously wished she were asleep right about now.
“I don’t know what’s gotten into Sugar,” Michelle said under her breath, almost as if she were talking to the horse instead of to me. “She’s skittish today, for some reason.”
&
nbsp; “Maybe she woke up on the wrong side of the stall.”
Michelle gave me a disapproving glance. “We rode up from the stables. We were thinking that we could take the horses back in another two hours. Nellie is on loan from someone whom I’ve let Sugar out to for companion rides many times, so there’s no great rush.”
“Good. I have a feeling lethargy is more on Nellie’s agenda than rushing is.”
“Seemingly so,” Michelle said, reining in Sugar as she looked wistfully toward Kent up ahead of us.
It occurred to me that if I hoped to share any conversation with Kent and Michelle, which was the major reason I’d decided to come riding, I’d better do so early, before Nellie got too far behind. “I’ve never ridden here, Michelle. If you don’t mind, I’m going to try to urge Nellie into catching up with Kent.” She raised an eyebrow and smiled. “Give it your best shot.”
I had to both kick Nellie and give her a smack with the end of one rein, but I eventually got her to pick up the pace enough to pull at least within a length of Kent’s horse. “So, Kent,” I called, “you both used to go riding with Sylvia?”
“Yep,” Kent said over his shoulder. “Couple times a month.”
That was surprising, since Michelle didn’t cast her vote with Kent and Sylvia. “It’s nice to see that the three of you could get along, despite not always being allies on the school board.”
“Yeah, well…”
He let his voice fade, so I prompted, “Didn’t you ever argue?”
“Naw. Not while we were riding.”
“That’s so hard to believe. I’ve been to most of the board meetings in the last couple of years, you know.”
He shrugged and gave a glance over his shoulder at Michelle. “We had a rule not to discuss school issues while riding. We’d argue quite a bit about whose horse was faster or the better jumper. That type of thing.”
He ducked beneath a branch, then gestured ahead of him, “Path really opens up here. Our horses are used to cantering. How ‘bout we wait for you when we’re back among the trees?” The trees that he indicated were way, way off in the distance.
Without awaiting my reply, he took off on his horse, and an instant later, Michelle on Sugar whisked past me. I tried to urge Nellie to keep up. “Where’s your competitive spirit, Nellie?” It was hopeless. I decided to let Nellie continue at her own pace—a reasonably quick trot—while I tried to get my bearings.
The Saratoga Battlefield has always been one of my favorite parks. It has a winding, circuitous route that visitors can drive along, with designated stops. A short walk at each stop leads you to displays with recorded information about what transpired in each place, and forest rangers in authentic revolutionary costume sometimes reenact scenes at these locations. It is also a richly beautiful hillside, especially in the fall, though any season is nice.
From my current vantage point, I looked down on the fields below and imagined them full of soldiers behind their barracks. It must have seemed utterly devoid of beauty then, to those soldiers fearing for their very lives. Sitting on horseback centuries later, I would have loved to race down the fields to where the cannons still stood.
Kent and Michelle were way ahead of me by now. I couldn’t get in sync with Nellie’s pace. It felt as though I were riding on a mini-roller coaster, my insides getting jostled. My struggle to match my own movements with Nellie’s gait gave me an idea for a cartoon. A character, badly bruised all over his body, is shown lying on the ground, obviously having tripped over the object behind him, and he’s talking into a cellular phone, saying, “I am ‘taking this in stride.’ It’s just that my stride happens to include falling flat on my face.” Several minutes later, we’d crossed the small field. As promised, Kent and Michelle were waiting at the next trailhead for me and my plodding horse.
“Not to be paranoid, but I’m beginning to wonder how you went about selecting this particular…steed of mine.”
“Nellie was the only horse available,” Kent replied.
“Ah. That would explain it.”
“She’s getting a bit up there in years.”
“Well, so am I, but I do a better job keeping up with those of my own species. If Sylvia were here instead of me, would this have been her horse?”
“Hell, no,” Kent said. “She used to ride Firestorm. The biggest, fastest horse in the stable. She’d insist. Always got the feeling that if she were to find herself on the slowest horse, she’d get off the saddle and outrun us on her own two feet, if that’s what it took.”
Michelle laughed. “No kidding. That Sylvia was one competitive lady.”
“Unlike Nellie,” I muttered.
Once again, Kent and steed led the way down the path and were soon ahead by quite a bit. Michelle slowed her horse until we were stride for stride. “You write greeting cards, don’t you, Molly?” Michelle asked.
“Yes. I have a business called Molly’s eCards,” I answered proudly.
“I see. Well. I don’t think I would like them very much.”
I gritted my teeth and said. “I guess that means I won’t count you as one of my future customers.”
“No.” She pursed her lips and looked thoughtful for a moment. “I suppose I should tell you about my new sentiments regarding this school-budget vote. Things won’t go the way you and your father are expecting them to.”
“They won’t?”
“You should warn your father that he’s no longer in the majority.”
This truly was surprising and unsettling news. Even though the school-financing vote was the least of my concerns at this point, it was the only thing that had been going well of late. Dad would be crushed. “You’ve changed your mind?”
She nodded.
Still hopeful that I was misunderstanding her, I asked, “You’re going to vote to fund sports and phys ed instead of arts, music, and drama?”
“That’s right.”
“You haven’t voted with Sylvia’s block in the past two-plus years! Now that she’s dead, you’re going to support her?”
“Don’t make it sound as if Sylvia’s death has been cause-and-effect. Our budget now is spread as thin as a Kleenex tissue. The school’s insurance rates have skyrocketed and eaten into the budget ever since they had that fire a couple of years ago. I’ve simply decided that, in the long run, we’d be doing greater damage to our school district by not funding sports.”
“But the public at large will pass whatever bond elections they need to pass to reinstate their precious team sports! They’re not going to notice the loss of the orchestra, dramatic productions, or art shows till it’s too late!”
“Nevertheless, that’s what I’ve decided.” She glared straight ahead and set her lips in a firm thin line.
I reined in Nellie to get away from Michelle. Michelle raised an eyebrow in surprise. Through my clenched jaw, I explained, “I think my horse just farted.”
“I’ll ride on up ahead with Kent. But don’t worry. We’ll wait for you.”
I tried to calm down. There was no point in my getting this angry. Surely if she’d changed her mind once, she could change it back again. Alienating her, though, was not going to further my cause.
My wits—such as they were—fully collected, I kicked Nellie back into action and we started off in the same direction as the other two had gone. They were completely out of sight, but I soon found the two sets of hoof prints and followed their path.
Our course led alongside the beginnings of a brook, more like a steady dribble where the water no doubt joined up with something more appreciable farther downhill. Nellie had gotten midstream when I realized with a start that either the earth was rising all around us or Nellie and I were sinking. Quickly.
“Kent? Michelle?”
How had they gotten this far ahead of me? It wasn’t especially sporting of them to bring me here and then desert me in the woods.
“We seem to be sinking. Is anyone there?”
Silence. Nellie was already either on her kn
ees or sunk down into something up to her knees, and I needed to take action.
If we’d just crossed over quicksand, I reasoned, it wasn’t going to be that long until I was sucked down, even if I was in a saddle. I leapt off the horse, who immediately lay on her side. I realized then that she was just intent on resting for a bit, and had chosen to get me off the saddle by rolling.
I pulled her reins in front of her, gave her a minute, then coaxed her back onto her feet. I wondered how far away my two “companions” were by now. If Michelle had truly invited me to serve as a chaperone of sorts, she probably did have a legitimate concern about the two of them not being seen alone together. There was a chemistry between them that was so strong, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if I came across them necking. Since they were both married to other people, that would not be good for either of their reputations.
It was also interesting, though, that I felt such a forceful attraction between them, yet they’d been diametrically opposed on every single issue facing the board since day one. Could they have been doing that deliberately to hide their relationship?
I got back on Nellie and we started off. There were still no signs of my riding companions. “Kent? Michelle?” I called.
“Molly,” Kent yelled to me from some location up ahead, “I’m racing Michelle down to Boot Hill and back. We’ll meet you at the crest of the field in a few minutes.”
“Okay,” I called back, blindly. There were too many branches here blocking my view. Come to think of it, I didn’t even know where this “field” was that they were speaking of, let alone its “crest.”
Boot Hill. I hoped Nellie would have the energy to take me to see it. I’d been there many times during field trips and visits with my parents and had brought Karen and Nathan to see it several times during past summers. The area had been named for the monument to Benedict Arnold. Or, more accurately, to the leg he lost in these battlefields when he was on the American side. His name was never even mentioned specifically on the monument itself. It consisted of a granite marker with a brass plaque inscribed to something like his “bravery and sacrifice.” Ironic, perhaps, that this should come up, when I was feeling rather betrayed myself, first by my father and now by Michelle.
Death on a School Board (Book 5 Molly Masters Mysteries) Page 9
