Riding Lessons

by Jane Smiley

  It was a little windy—a nice enough day, but not a really nice day. There are trees all around the stables, and the fog seemed to be caught in the tops of the trees, as if it wanted to go out, but couldn’t. There was a horse in the big arena having some kind of lesson over big jumps, and right when we came into the turn going toward that arena, the horse bucked, kicked out, and dumped his rider—her legs made a scissors and her arms flew out, and she landed upside down. Blue turned his head, and I know that he said, “Why in the world would any horse do that? He must be a very bad horse. I would never do that.” Abby had me halt, and then she came over to the fence, and we watched for a minute until the rider got up and brushed her hands down over her breeches and walked to her horse, who was standing in the center of the arena, and got back on. I asked who the rider was, and Abby said that it was her friend Sophia, riding a fancy horse named Pie in the Sky, who Abby had been riding in the summer. Then I remembered seeing Sophia, Sophia Rosebury, a lot. We watched her and the horse go up into the canter, and then jump a bunch of high fences as if nothing bad had ever happened before in her life. Abby looked up at me and said, “Now you have seen why you always should wear a hard hat.”

  Of course I nodded.

  I could tell that Abby was more upset than I was, because she made Blue and me do lots and lots of circles all over the arena, in both directions, and yes, Blue was maybe a bit more edgy after the accident than he had been before, but I believed him. If you are sliding to the right or the left, Blue moves to get underneath you. He does not want you to fall off. Even so, as soon as you start saying these sorts of things about horses, things that you know, grown-ups don’t even wait until you’re finished to start shaking their heads. Horses don’t think like that, horses are afraid of the stick and want the carrot, and in The World Book Encyclopedia (we have a set of those, because Dad was selling them for a while) it says that horses are stupider than dogs, elephants, and pigs, but I know better. I am sorry, but I do.

  Finally, we got to canter, which is a wonderful thing on Blue. After a bunch of circles in both directions, Abby let me go around the whole arena, and Blue just rocked along. My hands were soft, my thumbs were up, my heels were down, and I was looking where I was going. And anyway, the bad horse was led out of the big arena. Blue watched him go, but also just kept cantering.

  Dad found himself a cup of coffee somewhere, and he leaned against the fence while I was jumping. The jumps are eighteen inches. Every time I ask Abby to raise them, she says that the most important thing to learn is not height, but steering, and it is true that sometimes I think we are going right to the center of the jump and somehow we do not get there. At least, she set up a real course, with eight fences.

  I circled to the right and came to a crossbar, then went down the long side over an in-and-out, then I turned right and crossed the diagonal, jumping a small gate. Then I turned left and went down the other long side over a log and, six strides later, an oxer. Then I circled to the left and turned down the middle, where there was another oxer, and finally, I circled again, jumping the crossbar from the other direction. It was a fun course, and I sort of did a good job. Abby called me to the center and told me to make sure that I could see the middle of the fence between Blue’s ears, and also that Blue’s ears were pointing toward the fence—he has to be looking at it, too. So we went back to the gate and tried again, and this time we both paid attention. I really did not know what else was happening—I just kept looking through his ears, and he kept his ears pointing toward the middle of the jumps. It took a really long time, but then seemed like it was over in a second. I wanted to do it once more, but Abby said no, that you always have to finish with your best ride so that you will look forward to the next one. Dad kept tapping his coffee cup on the top rail of the fence like he was clapping, and Blue told me that I had done a very good job, which is what I told Rodney when I got back to the barn, and Rodney said, “Ya’ve got a gret future in front of ya, madam,” and then we laughed. Because of the weather, Blue was not sweaty, but I did have to lead him around for a while. He walked along behind me. I watched Abby get Gee Whiz ready, but Dad had to get home, so I couldn’t stay for her lesson. When we left, she said, “Next week at our place! Because of the show here!” And so, in spite of how much fun I had had, I was mad about two things—that I didn’t get to see her lesson and that I wouldn’t be going in the show (too expensive). I’m sure that we are saving money for the baby. I wish they would just tell me the truth.

  Even so, when Dad and I are alone in the car (and he lets me sit in the front seat, which Mom never does), sometimes he tells me things, and today he told me about when he was eleven. He grew up in Pennsylvania. We have gone there three times, twice for Christmas and once in the summer, and Grandma Edith and Grandpa Gordon live in the same house that they always have, a small house on a long road under big maple and oak trees. Anyway, Dad started telling me about how when he was eleven, his favorite thing to do was to hitchhike up that road to the orphans’ home, where his friend was named Jimmy Murphy, just like our Jimmy Murphy, and what they would do was go out to the creek that ran along the back of the orphans’-home property, and they would take traps and set them for the beavers. Almost every time they did this, they would catch a beaver, sometimes two, and then they would shoot them in the head with Dad’s .22 and skin them. They tacked the skins to some trees to dry, and then they would come back and take the skins down, and there was a man who would buy them for a few dollars and make them into hats or something.

  This is exactly the sort of story that Mom would never let Dad tell me if she was around, and really, it is just like that book that Miss Cranfield reads to us at the end of the school day, My Side of the Mountain. I kept my mouth shut while Dad was telling this story, because he answered all my questions without me asking—it was okay to kill the beavers because there were too many of them and they were blocking up the creek; Jimmy Murphy was an orphan because his dad had been killed in the war, and then his mom got sick and died; Dad had his own .22 because everyone did. He never shot anything but beavers and squirrels. He was finished telling it around the time we pulled into the driveway, and I realized that now that I had listened to this story, I was not so mad about the horse show and missing Abby riding Gee Whiz. There was grilled ham-and-cheese for lunch, which I really like, and pretty soon I had talked so much about how great my two jumping rounds were that I was in a good mood.

  I went outside after lunch and stared down the hill at the ocean. I had Dad’s story in my mind all day. I have never even seen an orphanage, except in a movie. I decided to walk around the block and look for one, even though I knew I wouldn’t find one, but it gave me something to think about—what if the Jenkinses’ house were an orphanage? What if our school were an orphanage? “What” and “if” are my two favorite words, and the next ones after them don’t always have to be “I had a horse of my own.” You can “What if” anything, and then your mind is busy for the rest of the day, and it even gets into your dreams, because that night, I dreamt that a beaver was in my room, hiding in with my stuffed animals, and every time Dad walked by down the hall, the beaver squeaked. But in my dream, I didn’t understand what he was saying.

  Here are the things I’m allowed to do on my own: walk over to the market, which is four short blocks and two long ones; walk down the hill to the department store, which is two and a half short blocks; go past the department store to the library, which is four more blocks, but short. I can cross two busy streets, but only at the corners, and I could go to the history museum if I wanted to, but I never do. I can walk on the beach, but I can’t go into the water if a grown-up isn’t with me, and I can walk to Grandma Lydia’s house, which is a little past the library. The kids in our neighborhood play mostly at the school, because no one has a very big yard. There are also parks, but the real truth is that all the boys just run up and down the hills, or else ride their bikes everywhere, and there are plenty o
f places to go. I have a bike, and I can ride it, but there are so many hills in our town that I don’t bother. Once, when I was walking up our hill, here came Charlie Koenig on his three-speed. He worked a lot harder than I did, and didn’t go any faster. And I have seen him coast down the hill, and I have seen him shoot out across the big road and nearly get hit by a car more than once. That doesn’t make me want to ride my bike, either. I pass the Murphys’ house; Mrs. Murphy has a bell that she rings every night at dinnertime, and it is so loud that the rest of us can hear it, too, so we pretty much go home when we hear it.

  The next day, I was really glad it wasn’t Easter, which was two weeks ago. This year, my dress had a sewn-in petticoat, and there was a spot on my left side that kept pricking me and pricking me, so I got into a lot of trouble for fidgeting. We didn’t go to church because Mom was tired and Dad doesn’t like church anyway. So I got up and put on regular old pants and a loose shirt, and I was already in a good mood when I opened my bedroom window and heard Mrs. Murphy’s bell ringing. It was only eight, so it must have been that the kids had to come in and get dressed for Mass. Some of those Murphys are out by six a.m. Mom and Mrs. Murphy went to the high school at the same time, but Mrs. Murphy was three years older than Mom. Grandma Lydia grew up in the house we live in—Mom’s grandparents built it when they first moved here. Grandma Lydia’s grandfather’s name was Allbones, but when they moved to America from England, they changed it to Albin, which is much less creepy. These are the sorts of things that I really like to know. The house is very small, so Grandma Lydia moved out when she married Grandpa John. Mom grew up on Fountain. Aunt Johanna, who was Grandma Lydia’s older sister, lived here until she died, and she left the house to Mom, which is why we live here. Great-aunt Johanna’s favorite thing to do was gardening, and she had ninety-two different types of plants growing in the garden. Mom spends her Sundays working there. When I went downstairs, she gave me a waffle and a hard-boiled egg, and then took her cup of coffee out onto the back porch, where she stood, looking at something. Dad was still in bed, but he was awake. He was reading the Sunday paper, which he did until lunchtime. At lunchtime, every Sunday, he walks to the market and buys himself a pastrami sandwich with sauerkraut.

  The garden is really small—with all of the plants, there is only room for one garden bench and a little table. Mom sits there every evening and enjoys the fragrances. The window of my room looks down on the garden, and that’s the way I like it best—staring at the flowers and the patch of green grass from above. The smells are good, too. The ones I like best are the jasmine, the ceanothus, and the wild roses. In the fall, I help set out the bulbs, and in the late spring, I snip off the seedpods. A garden is a lot of work, but it cannot run away. One time, I imagined that I kept a horse in the garden (that was before I knew how much space a horse likes), but now I don’t imagine that. There is no place in our town to keep a horse, and that is that. We used to have a dog, a blond cocker spaniel named Celesta, but she bit me, Michael Murphy, and my cousin Gloria, who was visiting from Pennsylvania, and so Mom gave her away to an old lady who doesn’t have any children or grandchildren, and I had to say good riddance. The dog never came when she was called, and Mom said to me, “Well, now you know what it is like to be constantly telling someone what she should be doing, and to never be listened to.” However, she was wrong. I always listen, and I always make up my own mind. That’s one of Mom’s expressions: “I guess I will have to make up my own mind about that.”

  According to Grandma Lydia, my very greatest virtue is that I know my own mind. But so does Mom and so does Grandma Lydia. Sometimes when we are at Grandma’s house, and Mom tells me to do something, and I say what I think, I can see Grandma smiling and turning away because she doesn’t want to get into an argument with Mom, but then later, she will say to me, “It’s a good thing for a girl to know her own mind, Ellen, so you stick to your guns.” Most Sundays, we have dinner with Grandma Lydia and Grandpa John. Today, Grandma Lydia made a roast chicken with dressing and baked potatoes, and there was her hot milk cake for dessert, with homemade blood-orange sherbet, which she only makes once a year. She made a quart, and we ate it all. Everyone was in a good mood when we walked home after dinner, and I went to bed early, and that is just about the last thing I cared to remember for the next five days, because I couldn’t wait for my lesson at Abby’s ranch, and I didn’t want to think about anything else, and so I didn’t, including the time I walked into the kitchen when Mom and Grandma Lydia were doing the dishes, and they were mumbling mumbling mumbling, and as soon as they saw me, they went dead quiet. Maybe they are afraid of the baby. Mom was an only child, too. I wanted to say it is just a baby, everybody has one, but I kept that to myself.

  After looking forward to my lesson all week, I knew it was going to be bad as soon as I got to Oak Valley Ranch. In the first place, it took a long time to get there. We left three minutes late because Dad was slow finishing his coffee, and then there was traffic where there wasn’t supposed to be traffic and never had been traffic. You couldn’t even tell why there was traffic—it got slow with a lot of cars, and then everyone was gone. I don’t like it when things have no reason for happening, so I kept asking questions, and then Dad said please could he have a moment’s peace, and so I looked at my watch and counted a moment, but then when I asked the next question, he gave me a dirty look, pulled over to the side of the road, and told me to get into the backseat. Which I did. That took another two minutes. Abby was all dressed up in her good riding clothes when I got there, which meant that she was going to the show, and not only riding, but also coaching Melinda and maybe that boy Robert (who doesn’t ride Blue yet, as far as I know), which made me think about the show and the fact that I couldn’t go in it even though I won a couple of ribbons in the fall, and did a very good job.

  The horse that was tacked up for me was one of the mares, and as soon as I went over to her, she pinned her ears. Abby watched while I led her to the mounting block, and the whole time the mare was dragging her feet and making me work for every step and saying, “Why do we have to do this? Who are you? I have other things to attend to.” I didn’t even know her name, and she wasn’t telling me. Finally, Abby gave her a little smack on the rump with her crop, or rather, this short western-type whip she has with two long leather flaps that make a noise when she hits the horse, but don’t hurt. The mare stepped up to the mounting block then, but her ears were still pinned. I would have to say that by that time, I was in the sort of mood where I would have been pinning my ears, too. Abby said, “Since we don’t have Blue, and Sissy doesn’t jump, let’s go on a trail ride. You need to do that sometimes, because there are more ways of having fun on a horse than jumping and showing.”

  Maybe that’s true, but if you only ride once a week, then you have to do the most fun thing as often as you can. But I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t even talking. Abby rode Gee Whiz, which was nice, but I couldn’t see him, because she rode behind to keep an eye on me, and probably to give Sissy a smack every now and then. As soon as we left the barn, Sissy put her head down and started eating grass, and when I began pulling on her and kicking her to make her move, she said, “Excuse me, I do not understand what you are getting at.” Abby handed me the smacker, and I put the loop around my wrist and held the handle along with my right rein. After that, every time Sissy tried to put her head down, I took the reins in my left hand, then smacked her on the rump with my right—slap—and Sissy said, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, all right!” and walked along. Abby said I was doing a good job, and everyone had to learn to ride a difficult horse at some point. Not every horse is as agreeable as Blue, and now that I am getting older and taller…Abby went on. I stopped listening and looked around. It is very sunny at the ranch, and the hills run away in every direction, as green as they can be. We walked up one pretty steep hill, on a trail that went diagonally from the bottom to the top, and then along the fence line. We could see some black cattle in the distance, both cows and c
alves, but though we could hear them mooing, they stayed far away.

  I had to smack Sissy three times to get her to trot, and even then her trot started out uneven, and she was saying, “I prefer walking, thank you.” Finally, Abby and Gee Whiz passed us at a wide point in the trail and trotted on, and Sissy trotted after Gee Whiz, as who wouldn’t, the way his hooves sprang off the ground and his tail switched back and forth as though it were made of water. However, trotting Sissy was hard work, and when we finally started walking again, I was plenty tired. We looped down around the lower pasture and headed back home, and it was then that I saw Ned for the first time.

  Ned is a shiny dark bay with no white on him except for one little strip down his nose. He was standing in the gelding pasture, away from the others. Ned was eating his hay, and when we walked by, he lifted his head to look at us, and his ears pricked and he whinnied. He’s not a pony, and maybe he’s not that small—I didn’t get close enough to tell—but if there was ever a horse that looked like a puppy, Ned is the one. His rump is rounded and his neck is arched, and there is just something about his face and his way of standing that is the cutest thing I ever saw in a horse. And then he said, “What are you doing? Where are you going?” and walked over to the fence and whinnied again. We kept walking, but I couldn’t stop looking at him. Abby was behind me at this point, and she said, “What are you looking at?” and then, “Oh, that’s Ned. He was a racehorse. He came last week.” And then she walked along as if a horse is just a horse and you can stop looking at him whenever you want. Right then, Sissy put her head down and started eating, and I pretended that I was trying to get her to walk on, but I wasn’t. What I really wanted to do was to jump off and run over and give Ned a hug. Abby said, “She can’t do that! You are training her, so you have to give her a smack as soon as she starts, because if she gets even a few bites, then it’s worth it for her to try, and the next person who rides her will have a harder time.”