Taking the Reins (An Ellen & Ned Book)

by Jane Smiley

  “Just tell me one thing, because I understand everything else.”

  “What?”

  “Why did he come over to you?”

  Da whistled four sharp notes, kind of high, a little like a bird. Ned glanced around at him and pricked his ears, then Da slid off, landed on his feet, threw the lead rope across Ned’s back, and trotted away toward the middle of the pasture. I stood next to Ned. Now Da whistled those birdie notes again, and Ned trotted over to him. Da handed him something from his pocket that was small like a lump of sugar.

  I ran over to them. I said, “He comes when you whistle? Like a dog?”

  Ned said, “I am not a dog.”

  Da said, “All of our horses do, so I taught Ned. They each have their own whistle.” Now he turned toward the other geldings, and made another whistle—one that went high, then low, then high, then low—and here came LB, trotting straight to Da. I thought when he got to him, he would sit like a dog and prick his ears, waiting for his next command. But he paused, then went to Da and sniffed his pockets. Da showed him his hands, open wide. No treats.

  I said, “That’s too bad!”

  “Well, you have to not give them something once in a while, or they get bored. They want it more if they only get it sometimes.”

  He led Ned to the fence again, this time putting the lead rope to the other side, and threw himself onto Ned’s back. Why was I impressed with this? Abby rode him all the time. But always fully tacked, never bareback, never just wandering around as if they didn’t have a thing in the world to do. I said, “How often do you ride him?”

  “This is the eighth day in a row.”

  “How do you keep it secret? Or did Abby say you could do it?”

  “She didn’t, but I also didn’t ask permission. I do it when Abby and her mom are busy. I bet if her dad was here, he would have caught me. We don’t do much. Some days it’s maybe twenty minutes, some days no more than ten. The other morning, I told Abby I would get up and do the morning feeding, and I got up a half an hour early and rode him when the sun was rising.”

  In my own mind, I said, “Why didn’t you tell me about this, Ned?”

  Ned said, “You never asked.”

  I knew what I had to do. I petted Ned on the nose, then went back into the house. I tiptoed through the kitchen into the living room. Abby was still sleeping. I wasn’t going to be the one to spill the beans, as my grandma would say. I took the Sherlock book and went out onto the back porch. Da came, and I started reading again.

  The next part is Sherlock and the visitor talking about what the visitor saw. I tried to do Sherlock’s voice a little low and the visitor’s voice a little high. It turned out that the yews were not trees, but hedges “twelve feet high and impenetrable.” Da said, “Oh, I’ve seen that in England. The gardeners trim them so they look like stone walls made of leaves.”

  So the yews made a long tunnel, and there was a gate at each end. The part I loved was where the visitor could tell how long Baskerville stood near the wicket-gate by how many ashes his cigar dropped. I liked that word, “wicket-gate,” but didn’t get as far as I’d wished to. Da was sitting up and paying attention—every so often he would nod his head. In a scary voice, I read the line “Several people had seen a creature upon the moor which corresponds with this Baskerville demon, and which could not possibly be any animal known to science. They all agreed that it was a huge creature, luminous, ghastly, and spectral.” Da and I were paying such close attention that we both jumped when Abby, who was suddenly standing behind us, yawned and said, “How much have you read?”

  Da’s mouth opened in a silent scream and he fell backward. Yes, he made me laugh.

  I said, “Not very,” and showed her the page.

  She said, “Oh, I read a couple of the stories, but I haven’t read that yet.”

  I said, “I’ll leave it for you and take Charlotte’s Web home.”

  Abby kissed me on the top of the head.

  Da sat up.

  Abby said, “Time to hand out the hay,” yawned again, and we went down the steps.

  I said, “Did your mom tell you about the hare?”

  “No. What hare?”

  So as we were walking to the hay barn, I described what Rusty did, no exaggeration, since it was interesting enough all by itself. Then I said, “Is Rusty a hound?”

  “As far as we can tell, Rusty must be half German shepherd and maybe half Australian shepherd. She would get the quickness from the Australian side.”

  Da said, “Can she sing ‘Waltzing Matilda’?”

  Abby said, “If any dog could, she would be the one. We never figured out where she came from. We don’t even know how old she is. Mom sort of took her in. Dad looked around for lost-dog posters and called the pound, but no reports. A few years ago, when she first came to live with us, she caught a young bobcat. Maybe that was a sign that she started out with a family, but then lived on her own for a while.”

  Rusty is a friendly dog, and I’ve petted her about a million times, at least when she’s around the house, which isn’t often, because she spends a lot of time up the hill and down by the river, investigating, but now she looked to me a little like a giant hound, and I wondered where she had come from after all, and if she had ever seen a yew alley.

  We put the hay into the wheelbarrow and Abby pushed it. On the way out, Da and I carried the hay flakes to the gelding fence. I would hold them while Da climbed over, and then I would give them to him through the fence and he would carry them here and there. I watched Ned. Ned watched Da. Once in a while he pawed, but he didn’t follow Da the way the other geldings did. Ned was the last to get his hay. It was a nice pile and he ate it all by himself. Da gave him a few pats before he returned to the fence. On the way back, we fed the mares the same way. After Abby put the wheelbarrow where it belonged, she checked the water troughs. Since we’d filled them earlier, we only had to carry a few buckets to top them up. We got back to the house. I was panting like a dog, since we’d been talking so much about dogs, so Abby filled a bowl with water and showed it to me, then set it on the floor. I got down on my hands and knees and was about to try lapping it up when Abby’s mom came in the door with some bags. I wanted to get Da to laugh.

  For dinner we had lasagna, something my mom likes to make, and boiled beets, which Da was willing to eat, and fresh string beans given to her by someone from their church who she’d run into in town (they were good). It was still light, so I went out for a walk while Abby did the dishes and Da did the drying and Abby’s mom picked up her knitting. I wanted to have a little talk with Ned.

  As I walked around, I could smell lots of things, the way you can in the evening, but I couldn’t tell what they were—maybe what I smelled was a mix of everything. The sky was clear and dark blue. Since the mountains are to the west of the ranch, the sun was about to go behind them, but not exactly down. It was sitting just above the ridge, and the shadows of the fences on the golden grass were dark and exact. The trees cast shadows, too, long ones that stretched away from the trunks. I knew that Abby would go out just before bedtime and check on the horses, to make sure that no one was, say, stuck under a fence or colicking. Between you and me, this is the bad side of having your own place—you have to watch out all the time for something that might have gone wrong. Even if you only have your own horse and not your own place, you have to make yourself not think about what might go wrong all the time or you would never get your homework done, much less go to sleep. As far as I could see, nothing had gone wrong since we fed, and I picked up my step to walk away from my bad thoughts.

  Ned was standing quietly, slightly up the hill, at the far end of the pasture. He heard me coming, looked at me, and nickered. I had no carrots, and I held out my hands, open and empty, but that was okay. I tried the whistle: four high notes. His ears flicked and he came to the fence, and I went
to him. I climbed onto the first rail and reached across to pet him on the side of his face and down the neck. I hoped that was enough of a reward for coming to the whistle. He was smooth, as if he’d had a bath, but I knew he hadn’t. Some horses, like Ned, seem to rub off the dirt, to go from gritty to silky in a couple of hours. Others, like Gee Whiz (I looked up the hill), look dirty all the time. Abby’s dad once told me that grays know they can be seen from far away, and get dirty in order to hide themselves, but I don’t know if that’s true. Gee Whiz does like a muddy spot better than anything, and in the winter, if there is one, he will find it and roll back and forth like he’s never been this happy before.

  Ned stood quietly. His eyelids lowered a bit, as if he was enjoying the petting. I said in my own mind, “Are you always good with Da?”

  Ned said, “Yup.”

  I said, “Why?”

  “Because he’s always good with me.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He doesn’t kick me or use the whip or snatch my mouth. He doesn’t use a saddle.”

  “Abby is good to you!” In my own mind, I sounded a little shrill.

  Ned didn’t answer. Instead, he backed away, turned, and went looking for some bits on the ground. I climbed over the fence. I went over to him and started petting him on the shoulder and then along his side and back. I walked around behind him, staying close and gently dragging my hand along, because you always have to be careful, but mostly they kick you if they’re surprised, and if you’re right next to them, they can’t really kick you. But Ned didn’t try. I started petting the left, first his face, then his neck, then his side. He lifted his head and took a few deep breaths. I said, in my own mind, “Tell me.”

  “I see something and jump, and that bit grabs me in the mouth and it hurts, and then she pulls me back even harder.”

  “She wants you to stop running off.”

  “It hurts. I can’t help myself.”

  “What’s she supposed to do?”

  In my own mind, Ned said, “I don’t know. But I feel it in my mouth all the time, and it makes me jumpy.”

  “Horses don’t understand cause and effect.”

  Ned said, “Who told you that?”

  “Everyone.”

  Ned said, “Everyone is wrong.”

  I thought to myself, “Of course they are,” then said, “Do you like Da better than Abby?”

  “I like the way he rides me.”

  It was now getting actually dark, so I finished petting Ned and walked through the pasture toward the house. I decided not to think about what he said, because the pasture was dry and bumpy, and I didn’t want to stumble and fall down. Then when I got to the house, Abby’s mom opened the door and said, “I was about to send Rusty to find you.”

  I said, “If I’m lost, chances are I’m where Ned is.”

  She smiled.

  Then, because they don’t have a TV, we sat around the coffee table in the living room and played a game called whist, which I had to learn, but I liked, and Da said it was the same as bridge, but more fun. I had to learn to shuffle the cards when it was my turn, and at first they would just fly away, but I figured out how to hold them after a few minutes. I went with Abby and Da to check the horses, and everything was fine—a relief—and when we were walking back, I told Da that Abby’s window would be open, so I would be sure to hear him if he went out onto the roof, and I would tattle, and by the way he smiled before he said he would be good, I knew he had at least thought about going out onto the roof, even if he hadn’t done it. And I had gotten my laugh, sort of.

  Abby and I went to her room, where she handed me an old nightgown and we pulled my bed out from under hers. The only place to put it was right below the window, which was fine with me, because her window looks toward the pastures, and all I would have to do to see the horses in the middle of the night would be to get up on my knees and peek out.

  Once we were in our beds and the lights were off, I let myself think about what Ned had said.

  And the first thing that came into my mind was Ruthie, the sad look on her face the last time I’d seen her. I’d tried to investigate and find out what was wrong, but no witness with a “stick” was there to tell me anything, and no gossip trail like the one back where we used to live led to any information, because Mom didn’t know anyone well enough to gossip with yet (though maybe she would get there with the neighbors who were the parents of Joan Ariel’s new friends). But maybe, I thought, the look on Ruthie’s face wasn’t sadness because something had happened; maybe it was fear that something was going to happen. A lot of bad things had happened to Ruthie and her mom—her dad had stolen some money from the place where he worked and run away. Then they lived on nothing, and Ruthie was so thin that not only was she not eating, she didn’t really want to eat, unless it was a peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich or a cookie that Melanie Trevor or I might give her. She was small then, smaller than I was, and she always looked at her feet (though, until I pointed it out, she never noticed that her socks needed pulling up). Now she is taller, though still thin. When we moved here, and there she was, a surprise to me, she looked as though everything was new and different. And then she turned out to be the one of all of us who could draw anything she wanted to. But lying in bed, I thought that maybe she was like Ned in the gelding pasture—there had been so many bad things that she couldn’t get them out of her mind for long. Something she might hear her mom say, or a postcard she might find lying around—anything could make her afraid that all the good things were going to go away again. Her house, her mom’s bookkeeping job—even all her pencils and paper, for heaven’s sake—might just disappear. Then I thought about buying her some extra pencils and paper and leaving them around somewhere where she could find them, though at the moment, I couldn’t think where.

  Abby was sound asleep. She was lying on her side with her back to me and the blanket pulled up to her ear. She wasn’t snoring. I got up on my knees and looked out the window. Da was not on the roof, though for the moment, I wished he were. I looked at my watch. It was 11:34. I also wished I could see the horses, but I couldn’t—the clouds had come in, so no moon. I could hear them moving around, and I could hear branches creaking, and I could hear the house creak, too, which houses do in the night. An owl flew out of one of the nearby trees—right out of it, I guess because that’s where its nest was, inside the tree. First it hooted, and then I saw the wings spread, and then I saw it fly over the top of the barn, quietly, and disappear into the darkness. Maybe I was the one who should go out onto the roof, just to see what I could see. I’ve heard of people who stay up most of the night and sleep most of the day, and while I was staring out the window, I could understand why. The night is very interesting. It occurred to me that maybe Ruthie loved to draw because it helped her stop thinking of what might happen and got her to think of what was happening right now.

  And then, sometime, I must have fallen asleep, because I woke up later on my back in the bed, no covers. I woke up long enough, that is, to notice that I was uncomfortable, and straighten out and pull up the blanket. Then I went back to sleep and slept all the way until it was bright daylight and Abby came into the room from giving the horses their morning hay. She said one word, “Pancakes,” and I sat right up. She said another two words, “Maple syrup,” and I was out of bed. She said, “You don’t have to get dressed. That nightgown is like a full-length coat on you.”

  Da was already at the table. Abby’s mom gave him a plate with a stack of pancakes—five of them, all crispy edges. I did yawn, but it seemed as though I had gone straight from my dream about walking around our old town, up and down hills, looking for the car because my dad had forgotten where he’d parked it, to sticking my fork into five perfect pancakes. I said to Da, “Did you have any dreams?”

  “I dreamt that Tater was in my room, sitting on a chair in the co
rner.”

  “Was he playing whist?”

  “No, he was reading a book.”

  I said, “He would if he could.”

  I wasn’t sure that Da had really dreamt this, but I liked the idea so much that I didn’t ask. It was a much better dream than mine. Was Da my best friend? It seemed like every day we got along perfectly, tossing words back and forth and catching them. But if he was my best friend, then it would be very sad to see him leave after knowing him just a month, and our friendship would have to end the day he walked out the door.

  It was going to get hot, so Abby said it was time to ride. We put on our riding clothes and went out the back door. The night before, things had been peaceful, but now the geldings were arguing over every pile of hay, and Gee Whiz was trotting here and there, snatching bits from all of them. I’ve always liked Gee Whiz, because he’s so beautiful and talented and gives Abby a great ride, but now I thought he was a bully, and didn’t like him at all. I jumped over the fence with the lead rope and ran to Tater, who was minding his own business. I took Tater out, over to the grooming area in the barn. Abby was there, straightening things up. I did not tattle on Gee Whiz. Anyone can see it. I curried and brushed Tater, got my saddle and bridle, just doing all the regular stuff, and then, right when I unsnapped Tater from the cross-ties to put on his bridle, there went Da, and he was riding Ned, bareback, halter and lead rope. Three steps past the doorway of the barn. I put Tater’s bridle on, without buckling the throatlatch, and led him through the door. Da and Ned were walking into the arena. Abby called out, “Ready?” Then she said, “Go on over. I have to put Jack in the round corral.” She sounded totally normal. I guessed that she hadn’t seen a thing.

  Mum’s the word, as my grandma would say.