Riding Lessons

by Jane Smiley

  I said, “What is that?”

  “Jane does it. It’s like a square dance, where the horse does different kinds of steps in patterns. They have it in the Olympics.”

  “When do they jump?”

  “They don’t.”

  I trotted away to the far end of the arena, turned to the left, and asked Blue to canter. For the first time ever, he sort of leapt forward and I had to grab mane to keep my seat, and then he galloped in a very Gee Whiz sort of way all around the arena and back to where we took off. I got used to it. I gave myself instructions—sit deep, thumbs up, heels down, look ahead. Best of all, Blue seemed to like it, and once we came back to the walk, I wondered if he is bored all the time, too, because he’s always very good and does what he is told.

  Gee Whiz said, “He is not bored, he is boring.” I turned as we passed Gee Whiz and stuck my tongue out at him. That made me laugh, and so now I was back in a good mood. I cantered Blue the other direction, and then Abby warmed up Gee Whiz while Blue and I walked here and there. I petted him down his neck, along his mane, and gave him a sugar cube. He flicked his ears and looked around. Now that his summer coat had grown in, he was almost white, only dappled just above his tail and down his legs. That’s what happens to a gray horse as it grows up. The other thing is that he used to have a little blaze, but since his face is white, you can’t see that, either.

  The jumps were still set up the way they’d been the week before, and we did the same courses, but this time we did them going the other direction. Now that I was in a good mood again, I noticed that the wind was still blowing, especially across the green grass of the hillside, but Blue didn’t seem to care anymore. The horses in the pasture, including Ned and Ben, were pretty excited—from time to time, they threw up their heads and ran from one spot to another, not as though they were escaping something, but as though they just wanted to do it. When Blue and I were walking around while Abby did some figure eights, Ned and Ben had a little race, maybe a hundred yards. Ben was winning by a neck, but Ned passed him. Then they bucked and played for a minute, walked around, and went back to the last of the hay. It reminded me of the paintings on the school for some reason—made me think that Ralphie and his friends were just having fun and almost (almost) didn’t realize that they were doing a bad thing. I sat deep, looked up, kept my thumbs up, thought about my courses, and did all my jumping as well as the week before, only a little bit faster. Blue seemed to enjoy it more, too. He didn’t touch a pole, or wander even a step, and his ears were pricked the whole time. After the third course, which was the spiral, Abby said, “Okay, I want you to do one little thing. Watch me again.”

  I had watched her do the spiral in a long, easygoing way, which seemed to suit Gee Whiz, because he has long legs and a long body, which is maybe the reason he was a good racehorse. But now she tightened the spiral so that even though they weren’t going any faster, they were taking fewer steps and making shorter corners. Abby was sitting up straighter and Gee Whiz was paying close attention. When they were done, she said, “I think you can do that. Do you?”

  Gee Whiz said, “No.”

  Blue once again didn’t say anything.

  I said, “I think so.”

  “Well, legs tight, elbows loose, watch where you are going.” I nodded and did the first little circle to the right, then we were off.

  Because the spiral was in the arena with other jumps, in order to complete the spiral, I had to decide how to get around the other jumps. The thing I saw Abby do was go inside rather than outside a few of them. That changed her course. After Blue and I went over the first jump, I did what Abby had done, which was to look to the right instead of to the left of the jump that was between us and our next one, and when I did that, Blue tightened his pace and turned a little bit—past that one and then in a curve to our second jump. Normally, you try to go straight to a jump, straight over it and straight away, but Blue could bend and jump at the same time. He did it with spring and I looked for the next obstacle. Here is a thing I know—the first jump sets you up for the next one and so on and so on, so if you know what you are doing, it gets easier, and if you are confused, it gets harder. There was nothing between the second and third jumps, but I shaved just a little bit off the curve—let’s say that it went from being part of a circle to being part of an oval—and Blue turned neatly a stride before the fence and jumped straight. I felt my body sort of swing out, but the only thing that happened was that my left heel went down a little more. We cantered on.

  Now there was a panel between the coop we had jumped and the hog’s back we were going to jump—it was right in the way, like a colorful wall. The previous time I had gone around it without even thinking about it, but this time we were heading straight for it. I sat up, looked to the right, and tightened my hands on the reins. Blue switched leads (a flying change!) and went neatly past the panel and toward the hog’s back. We jumped it and kept curving. I saw that even the rather open track for the last two was tighter than it had been. And I did see it—I saw it as if it were a road running through some grass—and I followed it, and we went over the jumps, cantered along the rail, and came down to the trot.

  Abby was laughing and clapping. Gee Whiz had his ears pricked and looked friendly for once in his life, and when I loosened the reins, Blue arched his neck downward and pranced a few steps. I think maybe that was the best thing I ever did in my whole life, better than every A I ever got on a test, better than my walk around town, and better than Christmas and Easter combined. It was like a feeling of “joy to the world” all through my body as we came down to the walk and I took a few deep breaths. Even when that feeling began to go away, I knew that I would never forget it.

  Our lesson was one of those things that seem to take a long time, but when you look at the clock, you realize that they didn’t. I think that’s a weird thing about time, and I do not understand it. It comes and goes in waves, and sometimes the waves that seem big are small and the waves that seem small you can remember for days or weeks or months.

  We walked the horses—no trail ride today, too windy still, though the sun was out more now—then we went back to the barn, untacked them, and put them into the pasture. Abby pointed toward Ned, and said there was plenty of time and that even though the jumping chute had been taken down, we ought to play with him a little in the round corral.

  The round corral is between the arena and Abby’s house. We were still alone. My dad hadn’t come back, and Abby’s dad’s truck and her mom’s car were still gone. Rusty was sitting on the front porch in the sunshine, with her tongue hanging out like she had been doing something exhausting, but we didn’t know what it was. There are plenty of dogs in our town, but except when they go to the beach, they are always on leashes, walking along nicely. I could not imagine Abby’s dog living like that.

  Ned seemed happy, but he didn’t have anything to say. I leaned on the fence while Abby stood in the center of the round corral and sent Ned around, to the left, to the right, walk, trot, canter. He did everything she said—she hardly had to use the long whip, just lift it when she wanted him to pick up speed and lower it when she wanted him to slow down. When she’d been doing this for a while, she dropped the whip completely, and Ned stopped and turned toward her. She said to me, “You want to try this?”

  Of course I did, and so I got another lesson for the day, just a short one. She showed me how to lift the whip toward Ned’s haunches to get him to go forward, then to take a little step toward his head to get him to slow down. To get him to come toward me, I was to step backward and turn away from him, and to get him to move away from me, I was to step straight toward him. My job was not to scare him, but to use my body to instruct him.

  “Just tell me what to do,” said Ned, but Abby was watching, and I didn’t dare do anything that she might think was crazy, like talk to Ned. I did what she did. He went both ways, then Abby leaned down and whi
spered, “I’m going in the house for a minute.”

  Well, of course I knew she was going to the bathroom. This is another thing I don’t understand, why you can’t just say you’re going to the bathroom. She walked out of the round corral with the whip, toward the house. I decided that I was tired, and went over and climbed on the fence, since there weren’t any chairs anywhere. Now it was pretty hot, and I felt like Rusty must have felt, and I wished I could pant and let my tongue hang out of my mouth. Ned walked around, nosing for bits of whatever it is that he’s always looking for.

  After a while, he came over to me. He shivered all over, maybe because there were some flies around, even in the wind, and then he yawned and shook his ears. He said, “After you leave, I am going to take a nap.”

  I said, “After I leave, I am going to take a nap, too.”

  He stood right next to me and I tickled him in all those places that horses like to be tickled—around the eyes, down the neck, under the mane. His coat was warm, shiny, and soft. My hand just ran over it by itself, it felt so good. Now I yawned. Ned blew some air out of his nose. I said, “Were you up late last night?”

  “That coyote came back. It was walking around the pasture.”

  “Is that scary?”

  “It makes you pay attention. But Gee Whiz ran it off.”

  “He did?”

  “He always does. He ran off a cougar when I first got here. He saw it and chased it and kicked it and it ran up the hill.”

  “Is he afraid of anything?”

  “He’s afraid of a couple of the mares.”

  I kept stroking his face. Abby didn’t show up. Ned sighed.

  I sighed.

  That was when the idea came to me.

  As soon as it did, I looked toward the house. Doors closed, no cars, everything quiet. And the wind had died. It seemed like the easiest thing in the world to do, and the very thing I wanted to do no matter what anyone else might think.

  I said, “I’m going to get on you.”

  “Like a jockey?”

  “Yup.”

  Ned stood there.

  I said, “You have to be nice.”

  I looked around. The mares were over the hill in the mare pasture—couldn’t see them. We were too far from the gelding pasture for Gee Whiz to say anything.

  I stood up on the third rail and held the top rail, then I inched along, and when I got next to Ned’s shoulder, I took my right hand and my right foot off the rail, then bent my left knee and slid onto Ned’s back. I realized that I hadn’t ridden bareback before—it was much different, both warmer and more slippery. Now I was sitting there, looking through Ned’s ears. I put my hands in his mane and he started walking forward. He didn’t seem excited but I could feel the energy in him, quite like the energy I had felt that morning in Blue, coming up from him into me. One step. Two three four five steps. He was very light on his feet. I looked toward the house again—still nothing. Six seven eight nine ten steps. No bridle, so no way to tell him what to do. We did what he wanted, which was to amble here and there. Twice he put his nose down, as if there might be some bit of grass in the dirt.

  I looked at the house again. The door began to open, and I thought, “Uh-oh,” but then the phone rang—I could just barely hear it—and the door didn’t open any farther. Four more steps, then I leaned forward, put my arms around Ned’s neck, and slid off of him. I landed in a sort of stumbly way, but I’d regained my balance and was leaning against the fence when Abby appeared on the porch, her mouth wide. Then she came running. She didn’t even close the door behind her.

  She said, “He was second! He was second and he won a thousand dollars! And he’s completely okay! I didn’t even realize how afraid I was that something might happen until the trainer said he was good and happy and seemed to like it. Oh my!” And she put her face in her hands.

  I said, “Are you crying?”

  She let out a big breath and said, “Not yet.”

  I said, “Can you change his name to So Far So Good?”

  Abby laughed out loud and gave me a hug, then we all were quiet for a long time, Abby, Ned, and me. The sun was out now—the clouds had skidded off to the east—and you could hear the birds cheeping and calling in the trees. All three of us, I knew, including Ned, were as happy as we could be. And then regular life started up again. Abby’s dad pulled in, and Abby ran to the truck, then her mom came around the house and said that my dad was here, too, and then Dad said that we had to get home, because there was lots of traffic, and only an hour and a half till post time. He really did want to watch the race, and he clapped Abby on the back when she told him about Jack So Far, and then Gee Whiz whinnied from the pasture that he had won seven races out of sixty starts, ten places, three shows, way over a hundred thousand dollars….Ned gave a snort, and if a horse can roll his eyes, he rolled his eyes.

  Dad did ask me if I’d had a good time, and he did help me find all my stuff and get into the car, and he did congratulate Abby again about Jack getting second in his race, and he was careful to look behind when we backed out and to stop at every stop sign and red light. But he was in a hurry. He didn’t care whether I talked or looked out the window, and so I looked out the window, and I remembered two things—sitting on Ned, step step step, mostly that moment when I realized that he wasn’t going to do a single bad thing, and that second turn on Blue, in front of the colorful panel and straight to the hog’s back. That’s when I learned my lesson, and my lesson was that you always remember what you do much better than you remember what people say about it, even if they are really really happy for you and think you did a wonderful job.

  Mom had the tuna fish sandwiches ready for a late lunch when we came in the house, and she was carrying Joan Ariel around just like it was the world’s easiest thing to do. I kissed Joan Ariel on the cheek and Dad kissed her on the top of the head before he turned on the TV. The show about the Kentucky Derby was just beginning.

  Dad watches sports—lots of baseball and some football—and even though I don’t watch, I do walk past the TV from time to time and look at it, but in my whole life, I had never seen more people in one place than there were at the place where that horse race was. Mom let us eat our sandwiches and some potato chips right in front of the TV, and I sat there staring, trying to imagine Ned and Ben and Gee Whiz in a place like that. The announcers kept talking, and here came the horses with their jockeys, walking out onto the track, and there were a lot of other people with them—the horses were sort of alert and two or three of them kept looking around. One of them toward the back of the line trotted forward, not like he intended to buck and run away, but only like he could buck and run away. They walked and walked until they got to a long white thing called the starting gate, and some men led them into their stalls a few at a time, and then there was total silence, and then—bam!—the doors opened, and here they came, all dark in the sunshine. They looked small against the flatness of the racetrack. They ran toward the camera and then away, and you could see them go around a big oval, and then there they were on the other side of a huge crowd, running and running. I couldn’t tell them apart, but some people could, because the announcer was saying who was in front and who was behind, and how many lengths and everything. Dad just sat there. I looked at him. He had a potato chip in his hand about three inches in front of his chin. Mom and Joan Ariel stood in the doorway.

  Now the camera switched again, and the horses were running toward it. They looked pretty tired to me, but they knew what they were doing. One horse crossed the finish line, then two more crossed it almost together, and then a few more. The horse that won was number seven. Dad put his potato chip in his mouth and crunched it. Then he had a big grin all over his face and Mom said, “Did you bet on that horse?”

  Dad said, “Only in my mind, but yeah, I thought he would win.”

  He jumped up and danced around
the room, and then he held out his hands to me, and I danced around the room with him, and then Mom, very gently, began swaying Joan Ariel back and forth in her arms, so we were all dancing, and it had been a wonderful day.

  Jane Smiley is the author of many books for adults, including Some Luck, Horse Heaven, and the Pulitzer Prize–winning A Thousand Acres. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001. She is the author of five Horses of Oak Valley Ranch books, The Georges and the Jewels, A Good Horse, True Blue, Pie in the Sky, and Gee Whiz. Riding Lessons is the first book in a brand-new horse trilogy.

  Jane Smiley lives in Northern California, where she rides horses every chance she gets.

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