by Jane Smiley
The whole time, we were snaking the rope around under Jack’s feet, and he was standing there like it was nothing, just staring at Jem and then at me. Jem stopped and patted Jack in a long stroke down his neck. I couldn’t help myself, I kissed him on the nose.
Jem took a piece of chocolate cake away with him, and then, after he was gone, since it was still light and a nice day, I got on Black George and Daddy got on his favorite, one I had named Lester. We took them to the arena while Mom went in the house to cook something mysterious that was probably fried chicken, since that was my favorite.
Lester was a buckskin, really golden with a black mane and tail, about five years old, and a horse Daddy might have kept for himself if Daddy did that sort of thing, which I had never seen him do. Daddy had gotten Lester from a man up by Hollister, who was leaving town very suddenly and wasn’t saying why. Daddy guessed that he owed a lot of money to someone and he didn’t want Lester to have to be part of that payment. Daddy and Mom talked about this for a couple of nights—I could hear them from my room, since the windows were open—and Mom didn’t like it, but Daddy said that the man had just gotten in over his head and however we felt about him walking away from his debts, it was not right for a good horse like Lester to have to pay the price, since once the bank got ahold of him, there was no telling where he would end up. So we got Lester. He had been with us for about three months, and I knew Daddy would sell him, but only, as he said, “If the right party comes along.”
Black George, in the meantime, was as good as gold and had been all summer, and we had him entered in the October show over on the coast. I was to ride in two classes, and Miss Slater was to help us with Black George for three classes “gratis,” which meant “for free.” Daddy said that “gratis” was all very well, but when she saw Black George jump, she would be quick as a bunny finding him a new owner, and she would get her commission, which was worth gratis any day.
I hadn’t seen Miss Slater, who taught English-style riding out at a big, fancy barn on the coast, for months, though we talked once in a while on the phone about the pony we’d sold to her client, which she named Gallant Man after a famous racehorse. The girl we’d sold the pony to, Melinda, had spent the summer down south, wherever they lived, maybe it was Hollywood, or maybe it was Brentwood—one of the woods—and then stayed there to go to school “because of the divorce.” I can’t say that I missed Melinda, but I can’t say that I didn’t, either. I thought about her and wondered about her. Missing someone is more about wanting to be with them. I missed Danny.
Black George wasn’t terribly black anymore—he had been standing out in the sunshine all summer, so across his back he was a little faded and red. But other than that, he was fine-looking and in excellent condition—all summer long, two days a week, I had ridden him up and down hills for at least an hour. It had been a little scary at first, because he was young and didn’t know how to go down a hill with a rider on him. He had to learn to bend his hocks and stifles and relax his back while keeping his head and neck balanced. I had to remember to ask him to do these things by sitting up straight with my heels down and my shoulders and head relaxed but square and my seat deep in the saddle. It was a little like sledding down a big hill in one of those saucer sleds—you sat deep and felt the horse going down just a little in front of you.
It was good for his muscles to go up hills—for that, you leaned forward and let him put his head down and climb, except that after a few weeks, Black George got pretty strong and made it clear to me that he wanted to trot or canter up, and I let him. It was fun. At any rate, as a result of this plus our other work, and also because he lived outside and ran around with the other geldings, he was muscular and fit. Daddy expected to get a lot of money for him, maybe five or six thousand dollars.
The show we were taking him to was the key. Daddy had picked out a set of classes in the local hunter division. The fences would be three feet. Three feet was easy as pie for Black George, and only about three inches taller than the fences I had jumped with the pony, while Black George was eight inches taller than the pony and had much longer legs. We had jumped all sorts of things over the summer, and Black George had liked it—the stacked hay bales, the kitchen chairs set in a row, a length of picket fence, a length of picket fence with a tablecloth hanging over it, a row of Mom’s potted geraniums (which were pretty tall) sitting on a bench, the bench itself with another bench on top of it. About the only thing we hadn’t jumped was regular poles between two standards, the very thing that you were supposed to jump at a horse show. But Daddy and Miss Slater had made a plan, and we were to go over to the stable a week before the show and try some of those.
Now we walked, trotted, and cantered Lester and Black George around the arena, and I was reminded of lessons I had taken on Black George with Jem Jarrow. I made myself not be lazy and remember what it felt like to make him bend to the inside and balance himself around the turns, what it felt like to ask him to step under, what it felt like when he lifted his front end and relaxed his back. What it felt like was heaven. The really interesting part was that after he got used to it again (I had been lazy for what seemed like months), he was happier, too, and went along full of energy and quiet all at the same time.
Earlier in the day, Daddy had ridden Happy, a new one he thought he could sell as a cow horse, so all we were left with were Sprinkles and Sunshine. We rode them until almost dark. Daddy had someone coming to look at Sprinkles over the weekend. Her best thing was her trot—she could trot all day and it was comfortable and smooth. “She would have made a great mailman’s horse,” he said, “back in the old days when they delivered mail on horseback. But there’s always a use for a horse that can cover ground.” Sunshine hadn’t discovered her talents yet. I was beginning to think maybe she didn’t have anything special, but she was a kind, friendly horse and I liked her.
When we went in for dinner, I saw that it was fried chicken and twice-baked potatoes, and there was a card at my plate from Danny, and Daddy didn’t say a word about it, even about the ten-dollar bill that fell out of the envelope. That was a letter in the mail that I hadn’t noticed.
Western Saddle
English Stirrups
English Saddle
Chapter 2
IT WAS THE NEXT NIGHT, AFTER DINNER, THAT DADDY SHOWED me the letter from Lovers’ Lane Circle. It read:
Dear Mr. Lovitt,
My name is Howard W. Brandt. I am a private investigator with the Brandt and Carson Agency, in Dallas, Texas. We have been engaged to look into the circumstances surrounding the transfer of ownership of a horse, to you, from a Mr. Robert Hogarth, of By Golly Horse Sales of Lawton, Oklahoma. It is our understanding that you purchased four horses from Mr. Hogarth on November 12 of last year and that you transported these animals to your home in California. It is our belief that one of these animals may have been a dark bay mare, aged nine, named Alabama Lady, who was in foal to a stallion belonging to Mr. Warner Wilson Matthews III. Alabama Lady disappeared from Mr. Matthews’s property, Wheatsheaf Ranch, on or about October 1 of last year, along with three other mares. Please let us know by return mail if you purchased a mare who produced a foal early this year.
Unfortunately, the mare has no white markings. She is about sixteen hands tall, of medium build. She has a cowlick on either side of her neck, about four inches back from her ears, and she also has a cowlick in her forelock, which prevents her forelock from falling smoothly forward. She has no other distinguishing marks. She was tattooed on the underside of her upper lip at the racetrack as a two-year-old, but this tattoo may have faded or be unreadable. Mr. Matthews is most interested in tracing this mare, as she is well bred and has produced excellent foals. There is a reward for her return.
Thank you for your attention.
Yours truly,
Howard W. Brandt
All I could say after I read this letter was “I guess we figured he’s a Thoroughbred, huh?”
“And a good one,” said Dadd
y.
At first, that was all I thought about it—that now we knew that Jack was a real Thoroughbred, with a pedigree as long as your arm. I went out before bed and walked over to the gelding corral. Jack was standing beside Black George, and both had their heads down. Lester was stretched out on his side a little ways out in the pasture, and Lincoln and Jefferson were snuffling around for bits of hay or grass. I didn’t call or say anything—sometimes it’s more fun to watch the horses do what they want to, even when they don’t want to do much. Just then, Black George lay down, giving a long groan, as if he was too tired to stand on his feet anymore. Jack looked at him for a moment, then gave him a push with his nose. Black George didn’t respond, so Jack tossed his head and trotted over to Lincoln and Jefferson. They each pinned their ears a little bit, to remind him who the grown-ups were, but then Lincoln, who was a little younger than Jefferson, squealed and kicked up. Then he and Jack galloped for a few strides. Right then I could see that Jack was the Thoroughbred—he kept up perfectly with Lincoln and had more energy. When Lincoln dropped to a trot after half a dozen strides, Jack kept on going to the pasture fence and then trotted back. His ears were pricked and he was ready to play.
I whistled and he turned toward me, all alert now. When he saw me, he trotted straight over. I petted him on the head and around the eyes, and I smoothed his forelock. So that’s where he got it. I whispered, “Alabama Lady. That’s a nice name.” We, of course, had called her Jewel, like all of the other mares. Brown Jewel, which wasn’t much of a name at all. You couldn’t even think of a precious stone, like a sapphire or a ruby, that was a brown jewel. For a while after Jack was born, I called her Pearl in my own mind, but I didn’t say it out loud, and it made me sad that we hadn’t named her something prettier than Brown Jewel.
It was only in the middle of the night, after I woke up from a dream about Danny calling Mom and telling her he had driven his car all the way to France (“Paris est une grande ville en France. À Paris, les Parisiens fait beaucoup des choses agréables!” or something like that), that I realized that there was more to the discovery of Jack’s mom than I had been thinking about. I had spent so much time with him from the day he was born, and had thought about him so much, and loved him so much, that it hadn’t occurred to me he wasn’t my horse. But maybe, in actual fact, he wasn’t.
After that, I didn’t go to sleep for a long time, and when I did get up. I was so tired feeding the horses that I slept on the school bus in spite of the fact that two of the seventh-grade boys were throwing a Wiffle ball back and forth over my head from the front of the bus all the way to the rear, and the bus driver pulled over to take the ball away from them, at which point, one of the boys threw it out the open window. That I could have this kind of fuss going on all around me and still doze off showed just how tired I was.
All through English and biology, Gloria was staring at me, and she even had to poke me at one point and say, “Wake up, she’s looking at you!” At lunch, before Stella sat down (she was talking to Linda A.), Gloria said, “So what’s wrong with you? You look like they pulled you feetfirst through a privet hedge.” Gloria loved this saying. It must have been one her dad used. I had no idea what it meant, really, but I always gave her a smile when she said it. This time, I told her, “I might have to give up Jack.”
“You’re kidding! Doesn’t your dad realize yet that that would kill you?”
“It’s not—”
“Well, I don’t mean literally kill you.”
“I know. But what’s the difference? Anyway, Daddy has nothing to do with it. Remember the mare, Brown Jewel, his mom—I mean, his dam?”
“Yes. She died.”
“Well, this guy wrote and said that she belonged to someone and somehow got away, and maybe the guy who sold her to us shouldn’t have.”
“But the mom died.”
“Daddy’s going to tell this guy that. He’s a private investigator.”
It was at this point that I realized that the person behind me was listening to us. I bent down and whispered, “From Texas. He’s a private detective from Texas.”
“Well, your dad paid the money. It’s not his fault whatever happened to the mare. Didn’t you say that she was kind of a mess when you got her?”
“She was thin, and her feet were all cracked and broken.”
“Well, if you got a horse who was a mess, and you saved her, then it isn’t fair—”
Now the person behind me cleared his throat, and I turned around and saw that it was Brian Connelly. I hadn’t realized that he was sitting there. He sniffed and said, “That’s accepting stolen goods.”
“Excuse me?” said Gloria.
“If you buy something that’s been stolen, that’s accepting stolen goods. You can go to jail for that. I saw about that on The F.B.I.”
Gloria said, “Do you learn everything you know from television, Brian?” Then she turned her back to him and pushed me down the bench, saying, “Don’t listen to him. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
I glanced back at Brian. It was true, he didn’t always know, or often know, what he was talking about, but maybe this time he did. Now Stella came over, sat down, and opened her lunch bag. She pulled out an apple and an orange. She said, “This morning, I saw I lost four pounds. That’s since Sunday.”
Gloria looked into Stella’s bag. She said, “That’s all you’re having for lunch?”
“I’m not hungry. I don’t know if I will be able to eat this much.”
Well, it was a big orange. Gloria said, “Listen to this,” but then I caught her eye and shook my head. She pursed her lips and gave me a little nod. Stella said, “I have a small frame, so I should weigh no more than 108. I’ll be there in a week at this rate.”
Gloria said, “I could never eat just an apple and an orange for lunch. Never in a million years.” She took a bite out of her peanut butter sandwich.
That night after dinner, Daddy showed me the letter he had written to Mr. Brandt. It read:
Dear Mr. Brandt,
Thank you for your letter. Among the horses I purchased from By Golly Horse Sales in November, there was a brown mare. I paid $650 for her. She was in poor condition, and I was told by the manager of By Golly Horse Sales that she had been there less than ten days. I could see that she was a nice horse, though. She did foal out a colt in the middle of January, but I am sorry to say that she died about a month later, probably of colic. I was away from my ranch at the time.
Yours truly,
Mark Lovitt
Oak Valley Ranch
Mom was sitting across the kitchen table when he handed me this letter, and then they both sat there while I read it, and then they both looked at me when I was finished, so I knew that we were having a talk. I pushed the letter to the center of the table.
Daddy said, “You never know what the Lord will bring us, Abby.”
“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.” I said this so that he wouldn’t have to.
“He isn’t necessarily going to take anything away” was what Mom said, then I heard Daddy draw his breath in through his nose the way he did when he was trying to be careful.
He said, “To be honest with you, Abby, I don’t know any more about this than these two letters. Brown Jewel was a brown mare. She had no markings, and I don’t remember her cowlicks, if I ever looked at them. Sixteen-hand brown mares are about as unremarkable as a horse could be. Bobby Hogarth wasn’t even there for those weeks, because he was in the hospital with pneumonia, and it didn’t strike me that the fellow who was running the place had much sense, so I’m not jumping to conclusions about who Brown Jewel was or where she came from. I suggest that you put this letter out of your mind.”
I nodded.
Mom said, “Brown Jewel was Brown Jewel. Don’t make her into this mare until we know more, okay?”
I nodded again. I didn’t say a thing about Jack’s cowlick.
I went upstairs and did my homework, then I took a bath and
went to bed. As I was lying there, I could hear the front door slam through my open window, and I knew that Daddy was going out to check the horses one last time. I realized, of course, that I could pray. We prayed for all sorts of things. But there were rules about praying, and one of them was that you could not petition the Lord. You could not decide what you wanted and then pray for that. You always had to pray for the right thing to happen, and, as anyone could tell you, the right thing to happen wasn’t always the thing you wished for. Personally, I always wondered if breaking this rule about petitioning the Lord meant that you were less likely to get whatever it was you wanted than you would have been if you hadn’t petitioned the Lord. Rules were rules, as everyone knew, and breaking them was a risky business.
On the other hand, if I prayed for the right thing to happen, I thought, wasn’t that being dishonest? If someone was going to come and take Jack away from us, I wasn’t sure I would want that even if it were the right thing. So, I didn’t pray. And if the Lord was my personal savior, then he would know what was going on, anyway, without me telling him. I sat up and looked out the window toward the gelding pasture, even though I couldn’t see it from my corner of the house. I looked toward it and listened for the low sounds of the horses. But I thought no thoughts and said no prayers. That seemed to be the safest thing to do.
My birthday present was Jem Jarrow coming for two sessions, and the second session was Saturday morning. The weather was so warm those days that Mom was tending to the windows all day long—shades down, shades up, windows open, windows closed, fan on, fan off, all depending on whether it was warming up outside or cooling off, and whether the outside temperature was cooler or warmer than the inside temperature. As for the horses, we had one trail that ran down along the crick, in the shade of some trees, and there were a few places where the crick still had water in it, though only about six inches. We would ride the trail and stand in the water and call it a day. But when Jem Jarrow showed up, I forgot about the heat. Jack didn’t seem to care and neither did Jem Jarrow—he was dressed in his same clothes, and his sleeves weren’t even rolled up.
