Riding Lessons

by Jane Smiley

  Mom said, “You know, when I was growing up, I had to say ‘ma’am’ and ‘sir.’ Every time my parents would ask me a question, I would have to say ‘Yes, ma’am’ or ‘No, sir.’ ”

  I waited to hear something about how this had made her into who she was today, but she just looked down at me and sighed, then said, “That poor girl.”

  “Does she have to say ‘ma’am’ and ‘sir’ all the time?”

  Mom stopped, put her hands on her hips, and looked at me, then laughed all of a sudden and said, “Oh, Ellen, you are one of a kind.”

  We walked on, but after a step or two, Mom looked back, then said, “No, no. Her dad, that’s Albert Creighton, embezzled some money, and when they discovered it, he ran off. That was two Christmases ago. I don’t know how her mom supports the two of them. And it wasn’t a lot of money. Maybe twenty-five hundred dollars.” She clucked again and shook her head, and we crossed the next street. I had never heard the word “embezzled” before, but I knew it was something like stealing, probably without a gun or a bandanna tied over your mouth. Outlaws on horseback were always holding people up on TV, especially stagecoaches. I didn’t notice much about them, even if there was some screaming. I was always looking at the horses.

  When we were almost home, I said, “Well, Ruthie needs a pair of shoes, because the sole of her left one is always flapping. She tripped and fell down the other day.” She didn’t, as far as I knew, but she always looked like she was going to, and anyway, she did have a scrape on her knee right after Easter.

  “Poor girl,” Mom said again.

  “Melanie Trevor gave her an orange Monday.”

  “You could take a little something extra in your lunch bag.”

  “You mean I don’t have to eat school lunch anymore?”

  She looked at me, then said, “I guess not.”

  And then, right at the same time, I said, “Can I have peanut butter and jelly every day?” and she said, “You cannot have peanut butter and jelly every day.”

  But the next day, Mom was still in bed when it came time to go to school, so I made my own lunch, and it was peanut butter and jelly (two sandwiches, one for me and one for Ruthie) and two of Grandma’s oatmeal cookies and an orange (for Ruthie) and a strip of red licorice (for me). It was a big peanut butter day, because Todd said at morning recess that he had crunchy peanut butter and bacon, and Ann said she had salami and a peanut butter cup. The real question was how to get the sandwich, the orange, and the cookie to Ruthie. On the way to the lunchroom, I realized that the answer was Melanie, especially since you didn’t have to make small talk with her, so I let Todd and Ann walk ahead and loitered around waiting for her. She was slow. I assumed that she was doing something good like straightening her desk or making sure her shoes were tied with double knots. But eventually she came along, and I walked beside her. We didn’t say anything until we were almost to the lunchroom, which is down some stairs and around a corner. I tried very very hard not to say a word, but it seemed like the words were popping in my mouth, so I finally let a few out. I said, “I made some lunch for Ruthie.”

  “She won’t take it. It took me a month to get her to take an orange sometimes.”

  “Why won’t she take it?”

  “It makes people look at her. What’s the lunch?”

  “Peanut butter and jelly. An oatmeal cookie. An orange.”

  We were now inside the lunchroom. Melanie stopped and looked around in her Melanie way. If she were a horse, her ears would have been pricked. She said, “Do you have a pencil?”

  I did. She held out her hand. I gave her the pencil. She kept holding out her hand, so I gave her the bag. She wrote FOR RUTHIE on the bag, then set it on the table where Ruthie always sat. I said, “Will she take it?”

  Melanie said, “Maybe, maybe not. It’s up to her.” She put her hand on my arm and moved me away from the table. It was like some food for a wild animal. You just had to hope that she would sniff it and not run away. Melanie sat with Todd and Ann and me for lunch. Ann talked about the lemon meringue pie, which she had been talking about all week (yes, she had whipped the egg whites), and Todd said that a boy in his friend’s class had gone to sleep during multiplication and fallen out of his seat. He didn’t even wake up then, so Mr. Casey had everyone stand up and call out, “One times one is one, two times two is four, three times three is nine….” The boy woke up at three and had to sit on the floor all the way up to the tens. Melanie didn’t say anything. We couldn’t see the bag, but we saw on the way out to the playground that it was gone.

  Abby always keeps her promises, so when I showed up for my lesson Saturday, the arena was full of jumps, all bright colors and perfect footing. Some of the jumps were low and some were high, and I pretended that I was going to get on Gee Whiz and jump the high ones, and then I pretended that I was not going to do that. Instead, I was going to get on Ned and jump the high ones—and then came the real surprise, because before my lesson on Blue, Abby said, “Let’s do something.” She gave me a lead rope and took one herself, and we walked to the pasture. We patted Blue and Gee Whiz, but we walked right past them, over to Ned and Ben. We snapped the lead ropes on to their halters. Abby led the way with Ben, and I followed with Ned. Ned was saying, “Oh boy. I’ve been waiting for this.” He walked nicely, for a young horse. Ben wasn’t as good, but Abby did what she always does—she acted like she wasn’t paying a bit of attention to him while in the meantime making him stop and turn and behave himself.

  In the arena, Abby had built a jumping chute—I hadn’t seen it at first because it was along the far side. There was a long line of green and blue poles set up on standards so that they were parallel to the railing of the arena. That was the “chute,” but instead of jumps set up across the chute, there were only a couple of poles on the ground. We unsnapped the lead ropes and let Ned and Ben snort and play in the arena. They trotted around together, pinning their ears at each other and kicking up, backing off from the jump standards and pretending to be frightened, then galloping away. The funny thing was that after about five minutes of this, Gee Whiz let out a whinny from the pasture that was so loud it was almost a scream. It was like he was saying, “Settle down, you idiots!” because they snorted and took some deep breaths and started walking around, just looking at things, and pretty soon they sighed and came over to us, first Ned, then Ben. Abby had handed me a piece of carrot, which I gave to Ned while she gave a piece to Ben. We snapped the lead ropes back on, then walked the horses down through the jumping chute and over the poles, but other places, too. Abby’s dog sat on the hillside watching us for a while, then trotted away toward the house and the road. The next funny thing was that a coyote came along, right where Abby’s dog had been, easy as you please. It sat down and scratched its neck. It looked at us, and the horses looked up at it. I pointed it out, and Abby said, “Good-looking. Nice coat. Must be a young one.”

  Now she handed me some lumps of sugar and told me to stand at one end of the jumping chute. She took Ned to the other end, put him inside the chute, then unsnapped the lead rope. She didn’t smack him or anything, but she didn’t let him go out of the chute. She kept telling him something, but the wind was blowing from me to her, so I couldn’t hear what she was saying. She also kept pointing him toward me. Finally, he looked at me and said, “Do you have a treat?” and I said, “Yes,” and he came trotting toward me, and he trotted right over the poles. I gave him his sugar and sent him out of the chute. Ben seemed dumber. He saw the poles and snorted at them. For a few minutes, it looked like he wasn’t going to go near them for all the tea in China, as my grandmother would say. Then he went close to them. This time, Abby did smack him with the end of the lead rope, and he jumped over the first one like it was on fire, then snorted at the second one and jumped high over that one, too. When he got to me and I gave him the treat, he acted like he was feeling lucky to be alive. But he didn’t say anything.


  Now Abby and I switched places. As soon as I got to the other end, Ned came trotting toward me over the poles. He didn’t touch them with even the tip of a single toe. Ben had learned something the first time through—this time he hesitated, but then he went. He didn’t act like the poles were on fire, but he acted like they could burst into flames at any moment. It took him four times to learn what Ned learned the first time. Abby set the two poles up as a crossbar, pretty low, but still high enough so that the horses would have to do something. What happened next was one of the most interesting things I ever saw in my life.

  In a jumping chute, the fence side and the pole side are as far apart as the jump is wide, so that the horse has no way of going around the jump. Some horses really want to go around the jump; others don’t care. When Abby had Sophia’s horse Onyx, he would see a jump and go for it, just for fun, but most horses don’t.

  Abby snapped the lead rope on to Ben, and told me to take him outside the jumping chute, but to stand not far from the crossbar, facing it. I did that. He had run around enough so that he was willing to stand still. I knew she wanted him to watch Ned, and why not? Horses learn from each other all the time—sometimes good things, sometimes bad things.

  She took Ned to the other end of the chute, said something to him, and tickled him with the whip she had picked up, and he trotted, then cantered, four strides, then popped over the crossbar. Abby clapped, shouted “Good boy!” then whistled, and Ned turned and trotted, then jumped back toward her. It was so easy for him that she came straight to the jump and set it up as a regular jump, one pole across at about a foot and a half, and one pole as the ground line. Then she walked back to the beginning of the chute. He sniffed the jump, then followed her. She took his halter, turned him toward the jump, and said whatever it was that she had been saying, and he trotted two strides, then cantered two strides and lifted himself gracefully over the little jump, bending his knees, putting his nose down just a bit, then cantered off. He got past the far end of the chute, but when she whistled, he turned around and jumped it going the other way exactly as he had done it the first time. She patted him, gave him his bit of carrot, and kissed him on the nose. I had never seen her kiss a horse before.

  Ben looked this way and that—at Ned, at Abby, at the jump, up the hillside, at the pasture. Miss Cranfield would have said, “Ben! Attention, please!” But I didn’t say anything and neither did he. Abby brought Ned over, and we traded horses. Ned watched her walk away with Ben. I said to Ned, “You were great!”

  He said, “That’s all? I want to do more.”

  I said, “You are only four.”

  “A racehorse can be a champion at three.”

  I knew this was true, because my dad had been talking about the Kentucky Derby. There was a horse entered, named Damascus, who he thought was going to win. I liked that name, Damascus. All the horses in the Kentucky Derby are three.

  I was pretty excited about what Ned had done, and between you and me, I thought being a jumper or a hunter was much better than being a racehorse any day, but I didn’t say that to Ned. Abby had set the jump back to a crossbar, and now she pointed Ben toward it. He started trotting with this look on his face that said, “Okay, if you say so. I am doing my best.” He trotted and kept trotting, and when he got to the poles, he kept trotting, and knocked them down. Then he went over to the corner of the arena and stood there breathing kind of hard. He didn’t try to run away when Abby went and caught him, then set the crossbar up again, took him back to where he had started the first time, and sent him again. This time, he trotted and trotted, but when he got to the jump, he tried to bend his knees more. He kept trotting, but with higher steps. Knocked the poles down again.

  Ned said, “You donkey.”

  Ben flicked his ears, trotted into the corner, and waited for Abby. She set the crossbar and went to him, took him back to the starting point. They stood there for a minute or two. As far as I could tell, Ned didn’t say anything, but he was watching. Finally, Abby let Ben go. He trotted two steps, and then he got this look on his face like he had figured it out, and he started cantering, and he lifted his front end and his back end, got nicely over the jump, then he cantered two strides, and then he leapt and bucked and squealed past the corner and about halfway around the arena. The exciting part for me was not only that he did it, but that I was standing right there and saw a horse learn something. Abby sent Ben over the crossbar and then the little jump several more times, and every time, Ben did it right. He learned it and he didn’t forget it, and he was happy. At the very end, she let Ned do it each way one more time, and then we walked the horses out for ten minutes, put them back in the pasture, and took down the jumping chute.

  After that, we tacked up Blue and Gee Whiz and went into the arena and did our usual things—circles, serpentines, figure eights, walk, trot, canter. Blue behaved himself perfectly, but I thought that even if he had been a little naughty (he is never really naughty), I wouldn’t have minded because I was still so happy from seeing Ned and Ben. While we were walking, before we started jumping, I said to Abby, “What was Blue like when he was learning to jump?”

  “A little spooky but willing. Once he knew what he was doing, he would sometimes look down at the jump like he thought a ghost could pop out of it, but then I realized that I was looking down at the jump just the same way, so I made myself look up and go. He got better after that. Now he’s completely reliable. But some horses don’t like new things, and some horses just don’t care. They are all different.”

  “What about Ned?”

  “He doesn’t mind new things, as long as you give him a moment to figure them out. What he hates is horses being wild. It’s like he was an only child, and so he doesn’t really know what to do with other kids, because he didn’t know any other kids until he got to kindergarten.” Then she looked at me, and I knew she was thinking, “Uh-oh, I’m talking to an only child.”

  I said, “Well, if there aren’t so many kids around, you learn other stuff.”

  She smiled and said, “I’m sure that’s true!” Then she trotted away, and Blue and I followed Gee Whiz around the arena to the far end, away from the gate. Abby dismounted and ran Gee Whiz’s stirrups up, and after that it was all business. She had set the jumps so that I could do three different courses. The first one was a figure eight of six jumps—we started going right, first jump, second jump, third at the far end. Then when we crossed through the center, we went between the two jumps of the three-stride that we took, then went around to the left and jumped the fourth jump, then came around over the fifth and sixth and down to the trot. The second course was three jumps in what had been the jumping chute, then around the end of the arena and over the three-stride again, then over a little wall, around in a loop, and back over the little wall. Blue did all of these perfectly, and I knew what it was like to be going along for the ride. The last course was kind of an optical illusion, and was the hardest. Abby had to explain it to me twice before I saw it—an inward spiral of four jumps, then a turn, and three more jumps along the rail. She said it was a course she had seen Sophia do with Colonel Hawkins at the stables. You would never do it in a horse show, but she and Sophia both thought you could really learn something from it. I didn’t say anything, but I felt nervous, especially since we went to the left, Blue’s not-so-good side. My heart was pounding a little when we started. But it was easy and fun. I just kept my left rein a little tighter and my left leg a little in his side so that he would bend, and then after he went over the fourth jump and it was time to turn right, I looked at the next jump, and it was like he uncurled, switched leads without even thinking about it, and cantered over the last three jumps. Then he dropped to an easy trot and went straight to Abby, who gave him a treat, and gave me a big smile. After that, Blue and I walked around while Abby and Gee Whiz jumped a few jumps, too. It was so clear that Gee Whiz could jump anything and wanted to
jump everything, but they were taking it easy. At the very end, she jumped the little wall and then went to the right over a big oxer, maybe four feet, and Gee Whiz just took a deep breath and leapt into the sky. Afterward, when they came down to the trot, he tossed his head and snorted. We walked around. I wanted to go on the trail, but I saw that my dad, who had gone into town to do some shopping at this really good grocery store they have there, was back and ready to go home. As we were walking Blue and Gee Whiz to the pasture, Abby said, “Do you remember when you threw yourself off the pony to show your mom that falling off wasn’t so terrible?”

  “I don’t do that anymore.”

  “No, because you won, didn’t you? But anyway, I only bring that up to say that you have gotten good, and you knew you would.”

  We led the horses into the pasture, turned them around, took their halters off, patted them on the neck, and walked out. Abby chained the gate. I went over to her, got up on my tiptoes, and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

  It is very boring doing what you’re told all the time. The days seem to go by slowly slowly slowly. In the week after my lesson, I helped with the dishes, rocked Joan Ariel in her cradle (and tickled the bottoms of her feet, which she seemed to like), did all my homework, sat quietly in my seat at school, ate my lunch, left a cookie or a piece of fruit on a napkin on Ruthie Creighton’s table every day, counted to a hundred between the times I raised my hand in class, smiled at Miss Cranfield, and kept my eyes down when I saw Jimmy Murphy throwing spitballs and some of the girls passing notes. I did watch Melanie, and I decided that the best way to think about her was that she came from a different planet, a very good planet, and that she was visiting Earth and writing a report that she would take back to her home planet. This was a fun way to think of her, because I could imagine the planet, and the ship, and what she really looked like when she wasn’t pretending to be human, and on and on, which passed the time.