A Good Horse

by Jane Smiley

  I figured I should be nervous, but Black George trotted around and past all of these scary things without blinking, hardly flicking his ears. I guess he knew Daddy was capable of anything.

  The point here was to train a jumper the way you would train a parade horse or a police horse. Daddy had trained a lot of parade horses, who then had to handle things like Fourth of July parades and the Shriners coming to town and the rodeo. You never knew what people were going to do at a parade, partly because you had to assume that, as Mom said, some people enjoyed the parade by going to bars ahead of time. So, there could be kids running around, firecrackers going off, yelling, flags waving, balloons, cars honking, banners flapping, not to mention brass bands and baton twirling. Daddy’s idea about a jumper was that a horse show might look a little quieter than a parade, but you never knew, best to take precautions. So I wound in and out of the jumps, trotting and then cantering, and for Black George, it was just a stroll through the park. A quiet park.

  The jumps were set around the arena like this:

  My first job was to jump back and forth over 1 and 2, the books and the flowerpots, a few times, making sure that Black George took a stride between the jumps. This was a “one-stride in-and-out.” Once we did that (and Daddy already had a big smile because Black George was jumping carefully but happily over these two), we went over the books and the flowers and then down and around and over 3, the picket fence. Then I went over the first three again and then around number 7, the blue jeans, and back over number 6, the kitchen chairs with Freddie, Floppy, Peanut, Raggedy Ann, and Nubbin the bunny. Black George was enjoying himself and I was getting excited. The next step was to go down over number 4, the poles and spoons, then around 2 and 1, and back over 8, the sawhorses, and 7, the jeans, then around 6 to 5, the log. There were no tight turns, and Black George galloped in a relaxed way. Since the jumps weren’t high, I just stayed with him, feeling him rise up under me, then gallop away. It was very easy to ride the course. But the course was small, and only two turns.

  The next thing was to jump everything in order—1 and 2, the in-and-out, around to 3, right-hand loop around the 7, then down over the 4. Left-hand turn around the 2, down over the 5, bend around the 3, and up over the 6, then a tight turn to the 7, and finish over the 8. That was three curves and two tight turns. I sat on Black George, who was breathing a little hard but had his ears pricked, and studied the course, first actually pointing with my finger and saying “1, 2, 3 …,” then turning my head and staring at each jump in order. Just then it seemed like a long time since I took Melinda’s pony in the horse show, and I felt a surge of tension right in the front of my chest. But Black George was ready to go.

  I began to circle him at the trot, but almost immediately, he lifted on his own into a bouncy canter. I turned him toward number 1, the books. I said to myself only one thing: “Go to the corner. Go to the corner.” But I said it as if I were counting the syllables along with his strides—GO to the CORner. GO to the CORner. First 1, 2, 3, back around to 4, out and around to 5, down over 6, then 7, then 8, then ease down to the trot.

  Daddy was smiling, and he shouted, “Beautiful, Abby!” But I barely cared what he was shouting. I was thrilled in myself and happy with Black George, as if he had given me a present.

  Then we did it again. It was less exciting this time, and that was a good thing. I felt that my attitude about jumping the course was more like Black George’s now—having fun, no big deal. There are ways in which you can feel dumber than your horse—he knows what you are doing better than you know it, so it is a little embarrassing to have made such a big deal over something he considers part of his job, and rather routine.

  This was not a way I usually felt about the horses—usually, I assumed that I knew more than they did. Daddy always assumed that he knew more than they did. But it was also true that when Danny was a little kid, and Mom and Daddy lived back in Oklahoma, Daddy had a cutting horse mare who worked the cattle without a bridle. As a trick, once, he took her into a ring with several calves and reached forward and pulled off her bridle. She did all her work—separating a calf, moving him, cornering him—with Daddy just sitting there holding on to her mane to keep his balance. After that first time, he did it fairly often, he said, just showing off. I bet the mare liked it—when we asked him about it, he said that he could never teach any other cutting horses to do that—the mare learned that on her own and maybe knew more than Daddy could have taught her. At any rate, after our work with Black George, we felt like he would be ready to go to the show grounds and jump over everything.

  * * *

  In the next few days, Mom said nothing about the dog, and I didn’t, either. We could see it out there, trotting or walking around, taking care of its business, whatever that was. Twice, I saw it sitting alertly, staring at the horses, once at the mares and once at the geldings, but I didn’t think anything of it—I stared at the horses myself, because horses are interesting. But a few days after Black George and I had our great lesson, Mom and Daddy and I were sitting at supper talking about the show when we suddenly heard lots of high whinnies and then galloping feet. Normally, the horses would be quietly eating their evening hay, so Daddy jumped up from the table, and Mom and I were right after him. We ran out of the house.

  The first thing we saw was the mares, all standing in a line, staring toward the geldings. You couldn’t see the geldings from the front of the house, but once we could see them, there was the dog, speckled white with a brown head, chasing Jack and Lester, or Jack or Lester, down the long side of the pasture, fast and silent, not barking, its head low and intent. Lester turned suddenly, and the dog kept on—Jack was the prey. Mom gasped, and Daddy said, “Lord have mercy!”

  We ran toward the fence, and Daddy started shouting, “Hey! Hey, you mutt! Lay off!” He picked up a stone, and when we got to the fence, he threw it. It hit the dog on the rump and startled it. Mom said, “Oh dear.” The dog stopped running and turned to look at us. Jack stopped running, too, and though I had thought he was afraid, I now wondered, because he swept around the end of the pasture in a big trot and started back toward the dog, snorting but with his ears pricked. Then he stopped. His nostrils were flaring, but he seemed more excited than worried.

  Daddy said, “I saw this dog around.” He shook his head. Mom and I exchanged a glance, and I wondered if maybe she had made better friends with the dog than I knew about. She said, “I can’t believe he thinks Jack is prey.”

  “He doesn’t think anything,” said Daddy. “He sees something move and chases it. You can tell by the way his hind end is built that there’s something fast in there, some coursing breed.”

  But Jack flipped his tail and whinnied, as if to get the dog to play. I took a couple of steps toward the gate, thinking I would catch him and walk him around. The dog by this time was standing with his head turned toward Mom, and I think Daddy was having a few thoughts of his own about why the dog was looking at Mom—and if he wasn’t, he should have been—when a funny thing happened. Jefferson walked up to the dog and without even sniffing him or getting acquainted in any way, bent his knees against the dog’s side and rolled him over. Before he knew it, the dog was lying on his back, looking up at Jefferson, who was looking down at him. And the dog didn’t scramble to his feet. He waited for Jefferson to step back, which Jefferson did, eventually, and then the dog got to his feet, head down, tail low, and slunk away. Daddy laughed. Mom said, “I never saw that before. How did Jefferson know that? That’s what you do to show a dog you’re the boss.”

  I said, “Do horses do that to each other?”

  “Never saw it,” said Daddy.

  Jefferson might as well have slapped his hands together, congratulating himself on a job well done—that was the look on his face as he walked away. He touched noses with Lester, touched noses with Jack, and touched noses with Lincoln, then he trotted to a nice pile of hay and gave himself a reward. The dog, still evidently embarrassed, made his way to the far end of t
he gelding pasture and slipped under the bottom railing of the fence. Then he disappeared over the brow of the hill.

  “Good riddance,” said Daddy.

  Mom didn’t say anything.

  Daddy said, “I guess we should put the food we leave out for the barn cats up high somewhere. That’s probably what the dog is looking for.”

  “Probably,” said Mom. “But I’m not giving them anything much, just some leftover vegetables and some bread.”

  “If he’s starving, that will be enough to attract him.”

  “If he’s starving …” But she didn’t finish her sentence. Daddy was strict about loose dogs. If they were going to live like foxes or bobcats, they had to live like them and kill their own food. We wouldn’t leave food out for a bobcat, would we? If a cougar couldn’t make it on his own, we wouldn’t encourage him to come by for a meal, would we? Wild was wild, and there was no use pretending it wasn’t. And a stray dog could have distemper or even rabies. Mom and I knew all of these things. But it was a nice dog. Running, you could even say it was a beautiful dog that could use a bath and a brushing. But we didn’t say anything. Daddy checked over Lester and I checked over Jack, and then we went in the house and finished our supper.

  Water Jump

  Coop in Fence Line

  Double Crossbar Jump

  Chapter 4

  ON SATURDAY, WE LOADED BLACK GEORGE INTO THE (NEWLY washed) trailer and drove him, with the (newly washed) truck, out to the stable where Miss Slater worked. It was sunny when we left home, a bright, warmish day, perfect for riding, but as soon as we turned toward the coast, we could see a bank of fog lying like a gray pillow over exactly the spot we were headed toward. It made me shiver just to look at it. But Mom had sent along an extra sweater, so I knew I would be fine. Miss Slater had never seen Black George before, so we gave him a bath, pulled his mane, and combed out his tail, which was long and luxurious. I had also cleaned the saddle and bridle. We had not clipped the insides of his ears or his whiskers. Daddy said that a horse living out needed the hair in his ears to keep flies away and the whiskers to find the grass. He kept a straight face as he said this, but I laughed, anyway.

  On the way over, I did some homework. We had lots more homework in eighth grade than seventh, and sometimes, it was hard to fit it in. I had a book report due Monday about Great Expectations. I had not been able to make head or tail of Great Expectations, partly because I kept dozing off when I was trying to read it. I thought if I read while we were driving, I might stay awake. Our next book after Great Expectations was going to be a play, Julius Caesar. Alexis and Barbara Goldman had decided that in order to get through it, some of us were going to come over to their house and read it out loud, but I had to make something of Great Expectations first. As we were driving through the damp pines, I could just get glimpses of the ocean from time to time, and I tried to imagine a big old boat sitting out there, with a family living in it like a cabin, which is something that happens in Great Expectations. I couldn’t.

  Miss Slater was finishing up with a lesson—a girl on a chestnut pony cantering around the ring with a determined look on her face. At one point, the pony slowed down, and the girl smacked him a good one with the whip. The pony sped up, with his ears pinned, but the girl stayed on, and the pony kept going. When they were finished, Miss Slater said, “That child is only seven, and I think this is her sixth lesson, but she keeps her heels down, and she is determined. So, let’s see the young man.”

  She was referring to Black George. Daddy backed him out of the trailer and took off his lightweight blanket (which we had also washed). Miss Slater went, “Hmmmm.” But it was a long hmm, which went from well-I-wonder-what-they’ve-come-up-with-now to my-goodness!

  Black George hadn’t been away from our place in months—not since Daddy brought him in from Oklahoma—so you would expect him to look bright, and maybe be a little nervous, but he stood quietly and evenly on all four legs, his neck arched and his ears pricked. When Miss Slater stepped up to him and began to run her hands over him, he sniffed her curiously but not impolitely (a curious horse is always better than a nervous horse) and then gave a sigh. She said, “How does he jump?”

  “I guess we’ll see,” said Daddy.

  We saddled him up and led him to one of the back rings, not one of the show rings, but nice, on the edge of the forest. I noticed that the little girl came along and climbed on the railings to watch. She still had that serious look on her face. Miss Slater called out to her, “Ellen! Don’t make your mom look for you again!”

  Ellen shouted, “It’s okay!” She didn’t move. I had to smile.

  There were only about five jumps in the arena, all standards and poles except for one white panel, but there was a chicken coop along the fence line, and out past that one I could see some jumps in a field. Miss Slater called, “Let’s see his trot!”

  I thought about Jem Jarrow for a moment, then tweaked the inside rein just enough for Black George to lift his inside shoulder and step his inside hind a little in front of his outside hind. His whole body got lighter and more supple, and his chin tucked. We trotted a circle to the right and then a circle to the left, then straight down the long side of the arena, stretching out a bit. At the end of the arena, I just squeezed my fingers and he came right back to me, shortening his step. Then I crossed the arena in front of Miss Slater and Daddy and asked Black George for a canter. He was happy to oblige. It went like this for maybe ten minutes, me trying to be Jem Jarrow, and Black George just being his perfect self. I was glad that, of all the geldings, he seemed to be Jack’s best friend; I hoped his good nature would rub off a little bit.

  While I rode Black George (and Ellen stood on the fence, staring at me as hard as she could), Daddy and Miss Slater moved the jump standards and paced out the distance between them. I could see that Daddy was watching Miss Slater and asking her a few questions. Pretty soon, they had everything set up.

  There were five jumps in a much simpler pattern than we’d had at home, just two along one long side, and then another two, farther apart, along the other long side. The fifth jump was set diagonally almost but not quite in the middle of the arena. There were two verticals—just poles, like a fence; an oxer, which is two verticals right together, the one in front lower and the one in back higher, really just a wide jump; and the panel hanging between two standards. The jump across the center was a double crossbar—that is, like an oxer but made of two sets of crossed poles.

  Miss Slater told me to circle at one end of the arena, then trot down over the double crossbar, which was very low, about a foot high and a foot wide, and then halt, turn, and canter back over the jump. Black George did this well, took each pair of jumps, vertical to oxer, then took the second pair backward (though Miss Slater adjusted the fence), oxer to vertical. No problem. Black George was ready for the whole course.

  It was easy—eight jumps: down over 1 to 2, through the middle, around 3 and back over it, then a wide turn at the end of the arena, and up over 4 and 5. Short turn back over 3, another short turn over 5, and around the end and down over 1, except that I got confused after 5 the first time, lost my way, and had to stop, because the course went from looking like five jumps set in a pattern to looking like a bowl of spaghetti. I came to a halt.

  Miss Slater said, “You had this problem last spring. Just take your time and look at the turns.” She lifted her hand and made two of her fingers walk. Then she turned toward the jumps and held her hand up and walked her fingers through the air around the course. Then she looked at me and waited. Finally, I did the same thing. As soon as I started to do it, I could see Daddy out of the corner of my eye, nodding his head. But I felt like an idiot.

  It worked, though. I got over the course, and I sat up in the corners, and when I was finished, Ellen shouted, “Hurray!” and Miss Slater said, “Very good.” Then she and Daddy put the jumps up. When Miss Slater was putting the jump up over by Ellen, she talked to her very strongly. Ellen looked at her and then
shook her head. I was walking Black George around, and I couldn’t help smiling. I went over the course again. This time the jumps were higher, but still not terribly high, maybe three feet. Black George couldn’t have been having a better time. When I brought him down to the walk and walked past Ellen, she yelled, “I want that horse! Is that horse for sale? I love him! Stop! I want to pat him!”

  I stopped by the fence. She stretched out her hand and stroked his neck. Miss Slater marched over and stood in front of Ellen with her hands on her hips. She said, “Ellen Leinsdorf! You are being very naughty! Please don’t make me take you back to the big ring! I’m sure your mother is looking all over for you!”

  The expression on Ellen’s face said, “Let her look.” Just then, Daddy walked over and stood in front of Ellen. Daddy was not smiling, and I knew he was going to come up with something about honoring thy father and mother and “Obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord,” but instead, he said, “Ellen, how about if I walk you over to the parking lot, and if your mother is there, we can ask her to come over here and watch the horse.” Ellen jumped down from the fence and slid through it, between the two bottom slats. She might have been the smallest seven-year-old I’d ever seen. She put her hand in Daddy’s, which surprised him, and they started walking. As they crossed the arena, I could hear her talking a mile a minute. Miss Slater said, “She’s not a naughty child, but she is stubborn as a tree stump. Now, Abby, while they’re gone, let’s try some flying changes.”

  Black George and I had worked on these, and when I paid attention, he was good. Even so, he was comfortable with whatever lead he happened to be on, no matter what direction he was going in, so there was no reason to change. I explained this to Miss Slater.