A Good Horse

by Jane Smiley

  “But,” said Mom, “we have prayed about this more than once, so Mr. Matthews’s visit didn’t take us completely by surprise.” She looked at Dad and then patted his hand, as if to say, You can do it.

  And he did. He said, “Thanks to Black George, and you, we can pay what Mr. Matthews asks and keep Jack on the ranch.”

  What was wrong with me? I didn’t even say thank you. I just sat down at the table, not able to say anything.

  There was one of those silences that is really full of noise—the birds outside the window, Rusty on the porch, a horse whinnying, the house itself creaking.

  Mom said, “Abby? You okay, honey?”

  I said, “Oh yeah. I’m fine.”

  But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let Daddy give that man our money. I didn’t know why. I wanted Jack more than anything in the world. I loved him, and if you’d asked me while I was standing at the gate of the gelding pasture what I wanted above all things, I would have said, “To keep Jack.” But now, as Mom dished out the potatoes, I wasn’t seeing Jack, I was seeing Raymond Matthews in the white Cadillac, and it seemed to me that giving him five thousand dollars was a wrong thing to do, as wrong as anything could be. And when I opened my mouth to thank them, that’s what I said.

  “Oh, Abby!” said Mom.

  “Are you sure?” said Daddy. “Are you one hundred percent and absolutely sure?” He held up his hand. “You need to pray for guidance about this. You don’t have to tell me until tomorrow morning.”

  But I said, “Yes, I am sure.”

  And I was. But I couldn’t say why to save my life.

  Tack Trunk

  Western-Style Spurs

  Tack Cleaning Hook

  Chapter 15

  I MADE IT THROUGH THE SCHOOL DAY. SOMETIMES, YOU HAVE TO make it through the school day even after your dad tells you that Raymond Matthews has said, over the phone, that a van will be at the ranch to pick up your horse the following Monday. Monday is five days away. Five days is much more than one day or two days. Five days is a pretty long time when you come to think about it. I got through the school day even though Alexis Goldman asked me if I was okay, and my algebra teacher came over and snapped his fingers right in front of me and said, “Are you with me, Abby?” and I had to say, “No,” which made the other kids laugh.

  Of course, if you have read Great Expectations and Julius Caesar and your class is just starting a book about three people who are lost at sea on a raft, you are supposed to understand that having a van pick up your horse the following Monday is not the worst thing that can happen to you. Assassination is worse. Being jilted at the altar and wearing your wedding dress for the next fifty years is worse. Sharks swimming around your raft is worse. But if losing your horse is the thing that is happening to you, those other things seem pretty far away.

  Raymond Matthews said that the van driver would call us Friday or Saturday, that he made a regular run from Golden Gate Fields, up by San Francisco, down to Santa Anita Park. Jack would go there and then get on another van to Texas. That afternoon, I took Happy up into the hills for almost two hours. She was good. It didn’t seem long enough, but it was dark when I got back. The weird thing was that I didn’t work Jack. You would think that I would spend every possible moment with him, but I could hardly look at him.

  The next morning, I felt different. I got up really early—before dawn—and put on my clothes and went outside. The horses were up (horses are early risers), and they nickered to me (“Hay! Hay! Don’t forget the hay!”). So I didn’t forget the hay. I also got out my chamois, and while Jack was eating from his flake and the sun was coming up, I rubbed him down until all the dust and dirt was smoothed away and his coat was shining again. He kept lifting his head from the hay and looking at me, checking my hands for carrots or bread, but he wasn’t spoiled. He wasn’t pushing at me or insisting, just checking as if maybe he’d missed something the last time he looked. Lincoln came over then and pinned his ears at Jack to chase him off his hay. It’s a thing that horses do—they always suspect that someone else’s hay is better than theirs, and they need to sample it. Jack was low on the totem pole and moved off to another pile. With three horses, you put out four piles. They might end up moving around a lot, but they all get their share. I followed Jack to his new pile and stood there with my hand on his withers.

  I still didn’t understand why I did what I did, but even though I was too upset to sleep in the night, I still could not stand the idea of giving Raymond Matthews five thousand dollars. I tried to think that it had to do with Jack’s future. If he went back to Wheatsheaf Ranch, maybe he would go on to be a great racehorse like Jaipur, and maybe that was the best thing for him. If you had a great racehorse, how could you keep him on the ranch, working cows or going in local horse shows? If you owned Man o’ War, didn’t you want him to get to be Man o’ War? But even though that was a nice argument, and I used it on the school bus to distract myself from Jack’s actual departure (now four days away), I had made up my mind before I thought of it.

  When Gloria asked me during recess (which had now turned into volleyball) what was going on, all I said was “Jack’s going back to that ranch in Texas,” and I walked away. Then the volleyball game began, and I didn’t have to say anything more. One thing I always liked about Gloria was that if you didn’t want to talk about something with her, you didn’t have to.

  We got through the afternoon, which included making tapioca pudding in home economics. I hated tapioca pudding.

  It was when I was going to get on the school bus that I saw Mom and our car and realized something more was happening. The thought occurred to me to just pretend I didn’t see her and get on the school bus, anyway, but she smiled when she caught my eye and ran over to me. In front of all the kids, she gave me a big hug, and just as she was saying, “Oh, Abby, you won’t believe—” Alexis and Barbie came over and exclaimed, “Mrs. Lovitt! How are you?”

  “I’m fine, girls. How are you?”

  “We’re fine, too!”

  Barbie said, “I hope to see you again. We had fun the last time,” and held out her hand so Mom could shake it, and I thought about what a bore good manners are, but I had to smile and all of that.

  In the car, Mom said, “You aren’t going to believe this.”

  “What?”

  “Guess who’s at our house?”

  I shrugged.

  “Raymond Matthews and his father and Howard Brandt.”

  “He’s back?”

  “No.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  Mom laughed. She said, “That person who was here Tuesday was not Raymond Matthews. He was some kind of impostor. This Raymond Matthews is completely different, kind of tall and thin.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Abby! You were right! You were right about not trusting that Raymond Matthews! Apparently, he had forged all those things, like his racing license. He was just trying to get money from us. Somehow he heard about Jack and the story of the mare, and he was trying to swindle us.”

  “How did he know we had any money?”

  “I don’t know that.”

  All of a sudden, I knew something. It was like I had a rat by the tail, and I had a good grip, and all I had to do was pull it out of the hole. I pulled. I said, “Rodney Lemon.”

  “Who is that?”

  “That’s the groom out at the barn. Colonel Hawkins’s groom.”

  “What would he have to do with it?”

  “Well, he knew we had some money, because he knew all about Black George.”

  “But why—”

  “I don’t know. All I know is …” I pulled a little more. I could barely remember for a moment, then I did remember. I remembered Rodney Lemon standing by the gate of the gelding pasture and saying, “So that’s the colt,” as if he were putting two and two together. As if the colt were his business.

  Mom said, “But how would Rodney Lemon know about the colt?”

  “Well, I told Jane a
bout him. That day when I went to the show and you and Daddy were at church. I was talking, and we turned into the barn aisle, and I kept talking, and he was right there, cleaning tack. I had a bad feeling, but I let it pass. I’m sure I said something about the letter, and Jane might have talked about it.”

  Mom shook her head. She said, “Amazing. But you were right!”

  Raymond Matthews, Howard Brandt, and Warner Matthews were not driving a white Cadillac; they were driving a blue Chevrolet. It was parked by the gelding pasture, with the passenger door open. The three men were looking at the horses, and I could tell from a distance that Daddy was chatting away with them—everyone was smiling and throwing their hands around, as if they were interrupting one another. Then they all laughed. Most important, in a way, they all had cowboy hats on—not new ones, old ones, just like Daddy’s. Just then, one of them saw me, then all of them turned to look. They were all smiling. But you never know what grown-ups mean when they are smiling. Lots of times they smile when they are about to tell you something for your own good.

  Daddy introduced me around. Mr. Brandt was short and looked like he had never ridden a horse in his life. Raymond Matthews was about Daddy’s size and shape, and Warner Matthews was old—white hair, kind of bent over, nice cowboy boots, too. He had sunglasses on, but he took them off as he said, “Well, Abby, nice to meet you,” and shook my hand. His hand was dry and hard. I was sure the reason that Daddy was having such a good time with these men was that they rode horses, roped cattle, and lived on a ranch, and for the time being, it didn’t matter in any way that our ranch was twenty-six acres and theirs was twenty-six thousand acres.

  Daddy said, “Abby, Mr. Matthews has some good news for you.”

  I felt myself waking up, or something like that. Something like my hair standing on end or my skin prickling. I said, “Really?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said the old Mr. Matthews. “We’ve been talking things over with your dad, all about the mare and this colt, Jack, and we don’t feel that we can rightfully take him away from you. It still isn’t absolutely certain that he’s Alabama Lady’s colt. Mr. Brandt here can’t trace her every movement to By Golly Horse Sales—too many missing pieces. By Golly didn’t happen to take any pictures of her, and neither did you, as we know.”

  Mr. Brandt said, “There’s that other brown mare. Never did find her new owner, so there’s just too many variables. Lord, I wish there was some sort of test for these animals, but there isn’t.”

  I said, “What about the cowlick in his forelock? You said the mare had that, too.”

  “Oh my,” said Raymond Matthews. “There’s no evidence that cowlicks are inherited. You can use them to identify a horse but not to identify the offspring of that horse. Same with white marks. However the parents’ white marks are arranged doesn’t mean a thing for the foals.”

  “Just random, in my experience,” said Warner Matthews.

  Daddy said, “Did she ever run in races? I saw that she had a tattoo, even though I couldn’t read it very well and didn’t think to try and write it down.”

  “No, she never did,” said Warner Matthews. “That trainer is very picky about running fillies. If their breeding is better than their speed, he sends them back to the ranch. Sometimes it just makes me mad, but he was right in her case. She might have done nothing as a runner, and she was a good producer from the get-go.”

  There was a long moment of silence while we stared at Jack, then Raymond Matthews said, “I think the lesson here is, if you got good stock, then you’ve got to hold on to it.”

  “Here’s the plan,” said the old man. “We are going to go to the Jockey Club and explain everything we’ve found to them. They are going to have to rule whether this colt is the son of Jaipur and Alabama Lady, and the likelihood is that they will decide that the doubts are too numerous for them to register him. In that case, the colt is yours, free and clear, to do with as you please.”

  Oh, the punch line. The Jockey Club, I thought, would be a club of jockeys. What jockey could look at him and not want to ride him? I stopped grinning. Out in the gelding pasture, Jack reared up, then galloped off, kicking all the way. All the men laughed. Raymond Matthews said, “Well, he is a lively one.”

  Warner Matthews said, “Yes, he is, and my private opinion is, how could he not be as well bred as we think he is? But you rescued the mare and you’ve done a wonderful job with the colt, so on the off chance that the Jockey Club rules that this is the son of Jaipur and Alabama Lady, we will own him jointly, and in another year, we can have another look at him and decide about his future. There are eighteen thousand Thoroughbreds born every year in the United States, and not many of them get to the races. I’m not going to take your horse away from you, Abby, with that kind of odds. He’s thriving here. He should stay here.”

  Mr. Warner Matthews looked down at me and patted me on the shoulder. But I reached up and threw my arms around him, and gave him the hug of a lifetime.

  The three men stayed for supper. We had fried chicken and peas and mashed potatoes, and Mom made a pumpkin pie. Raymond Matthews kept looking at Rusty, and in between supper and dessert, he got up from the table and went out on the porch. I could see them from my seat. Rusty sat square in front of him, the way she always did, with her ears up and that look on her face that made you think she was about to say something. He leaned over her and petted her once on the top of the head; then he said, “Rusty? Do you know how to roll over?” And Rusty got down and rolled over, as if she had only been waiting for someone to ask. Daddy was watching, too. He said, “That dog is beyond me.”

  Mom just smiled. Then she said, “It’s not like I can’t teach a dog a trick.”

  We all laughed.

  It was Jane Slater who solved the mystery of the first Raymond Matthews. He was not a friend of Rodney Lemon’s but a drinking buddy. Jane said, “Maybe you don’t know the difference, but there is one. Remember the story I told you about Rodney and the horse knocking themselves out together? Well, there was another fellow involved in that, a man who exercises horses up at Bay Meadows, which is a racetrack south of San Francisco. Bit of a shady character. He and someone he knew concocted the plot, and the other guy was the one in the—what did you say?—white Caddy. Rodney was going on about there being a Jaipur colt from Texas in the neighborhood, and they looked up what mares had been bred two years ago to Jaipur, and there was only one from Texas. They went from there. Would Rodney have gotten a cut of the profits? He swears not, and Colonel Hawkins believes him.”

  I didn’t know, either. I didn’t blame Rodney, though maybe I would have if those men had gotten away with our money. But knowing that Rodney knew this person who knew that person who knew another person was sort of like knowing (and I did know, no matter what the Jockey Club might say) that Jack was the son of Alabama Lady and Jaipur. Right here in our pasture on our little place in our valley was a colt. When I took out my horse notebook and wrote the name of his sire next to his name, I thought of Kentucky, where Jaipur lived, and New York, where he had won famous races, and I thought of that city in India he had been named for, which I looked up in the World Book Encyclopedia at school. When I thought of Alabama Lady (I wrote her name just below Jaipur’s), I imagined Texas and Alabama, of course, and how she must have felt wandering in the open spaces of Oklahoma. It was funny how you could imagine places you had never been. Thinking of them made you want to find out about them, look for pictures, go see them for yourself. When Raymond Matthews sent me the pedigree of the foal who was lost and maybe found, I wrote down all the names: Nasrullah, Mumtaz Begum, Rare Perfume, Eight Thirty, Sir Gallahad, Hyperion, Bull Dog, Asterus. When I closed my eyes and thought about them, they seemed to take me everywhere.

  About the Author

  Jane Smiley is the author of many books for adults, including Private Life, Horse Heaven, and the Pulitzer Prize–winning A Thousand Acres. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001.

  Jane Smi
ley lives in Northern California, where she rides horses every chance she gets. Her first novel for young readers, The Georges and the Jewels, also features Abby Lovitt and her family’s ranch.