A Good Horse: Book Two of the Horses of Oak Valley Ranch

by Jane Smiley

  Things got all quiet.

  I said, “Well, I have more free time now, because that horse I was riding so much might be sold.” I glanced at Gloria as if this were a job that I was about to be relieved of, and she smiled and said, “Well, that’s good.” I nodded. And maybe it was, in a way.

  But Mom was right—going to the Goldmans’ was a complete break from my entire life. Riding to their house on the bus was fun enough—Alexis and I sat in the front seat and Barbara sat right behind us, leaning forward with her hand on the back of our seat the whole time. They talked about the same things we all did—teachers, classes, homework, boys—but they talked about them in a different way, as if they were interesting rather than boring and offensive. Between them, they had a lot of teachers, because they took eighth-grade classes and ninth-grade classes, and because they were “separated” for most of their classes.

  “Mom did that,” said Alexis, “because until we were in second grade, we refused to say who we were, so the teachers were always calling us by each other’s names. We thought that was really funny. I would go for a whole day saying I was Barbara, and then the next day, a teacher would ask Barbara something and she would not know it!”

  “We used to dress alike,” said Barbara, “but that made it worse, so Mom put us in different outfits.”

  “So we just went into the girls’ bathroom and switched clothes if we felt like it.”

  “They had us in the principal’s office all the time.”

  Alexis shook her head. “Mom was going out of her mind.”

  “Well, that’s what she told us. But you couldn’t tell.”

  “She already is out of her mind!” They laughed.

  Barbara said, “So they figured out which teachers could deal with us and sort of divvied us up between them, and even though we don’t make any trouble anymore, they still do that.”

  “It’s school district policy with all twins now.”

  Barbara pursed her lips in a merry way. “We were such troublemakers!” They laughed again. I laughed, too.

  I said, “Do you ever dress alike now?” It was true that it was hard to tell them apart, but sitting with them, I could—Barbara’s eyes were bluer, and Alexis had slightly fuller cheeks.

  “Well,” said Alexis, “we are mirror twins. If those teachers had bothered to look, they would have seen that I’m right-handed and Barbie’s left-handed, and even though we’ve practiced, we can’t switch.”

  “Our cousin Leo says you can change your whole personality if you practice writing with your wrong hand, but even though we’ve tried, we can’t do it.”

  I said, “Kyle Gonzalez does that, too.”

  The twins looked at each other and said, “Boys are from another world.” They nodded together.

  Listening to them almost made you want to be a twin.

  They didn’t have horses to ride when they got home, but they did have music to play, just as Stella had predicted, so while they practiced for an hour, I sat in the kitchen with Mrs. Goldman and her sister, Mrs. Marx, and their cousin, Leah Marx. Leah was a senior in high school, and the question was whether she should apply for early admission to Stanford or to Berkeley. I didn’t know what they were talking about. Finally, Leah turned to me and said, “Your brother, Danny, what’s he doing now? I always thought he was cute.”

  “He’s working for a horseshoer.”

  “He’s not in school at all?” said Mrs. Marx.

  “He’s gainfully employed!” said Mrs. Goldman. “Abby here is a superb equestrienne. She rides every day.”

  “Do you!” said Mrs. Marx. “I always wanted to do that. I thought I would have talent.”

  “You couldn’t even skip rope,” said Mrs. Goldman.

  “I couldn’t do doubles.”

  “I could do doubles all day,” said Mrs. Goldman.

  “Once, she skipped rope for three hours straight, from after school until dark. It took ten girls in shifts to twirl the ropes, and then she came home and passed out.”

  “I’m sure it was a world’s record,” said Mrs. Goldman.

  “I thought you were dead.”

  “That’s what she told our mother,” said Mrs. Goldman.

  “She didn’t react as if she cared much.”

  “Only because she never believed a word you said, anyway!”

  Mrs. Goldman slapped Mrs. Marx on the shoulder, and the two of them began to laugh.

  I said, “Are you twins, too?”

  “Not by a long shot,” said Mrs. Goldman. “I’m two years older, but thank you for not noticing the difference.”

  “It’s much more visible in stronger light,” said Mrs. Marx.

  “Abby, have a Coke,” said Mrs. Goldman. “You must be thirsty.”

  She went to the refrigerator and took out a Coke, popped the cap, and gave it to me with a glass. Then she said, “You don’t want ice, do you? I like it full strength myself.”

  I had never heard grown-ups talk this way.

  For supper, there was a big crowd—the four Goldmans; three Marxes (Leah’s brother was already at college, at UCLA); a friend of Mr. Goldman’s who came home with him, named Mr. Wiggins; the next-door neighbor, who was an old lady named Mrs. Allen (“She eats with us almost every night,” said Barbara. “All of her family is in Arizona now”); and me. We had a pile of noodles with a spicy red sauce called “linguini with puttanesca sauce” and big leaves of lettuce with cubes of toasted bread and cheese. Mr. Goldman made the dressing at the table by mashing little fish with oil and some egg and some other things. Barbara said, “Do you like Caesar salad?”

  I said, “I have no idea.” I did what Mom always told me to do and ate a little of everything. The bread and butter was good. There was no grace and everyone at the table talked the whole time. The grown-ups drank wine. Mrs. Allen spilled her water, and Mrs. Goldman kept talking while she was cleaning it up, and then, after the food was all gone, everyone sat at the table and kept talking. Leah was the quiet one, but she was busy—she kept picking up the napkins (cloth) and folding them in the shapes of animals, then she would set them on the table in various positions and make them move as if they were talking to one another. She saw me watching her, and we kept laughing. She was not blond, like the Goldman twins, but about my size and with dark, curly hair. I wondered how well she had known Danny, but I didn’t ask her.

  After dinner, we broke into two teams and played a game called “Adverbs” in the big living room where we had done the play. Alexis and I were on one team, and Barbie and Leah were on the other. Even Mrs. Allen played. When one of your team members left the room, the rest of you decided on an adverb for that person to act out when he or she came back, and then it was the job of the other team to guess the adverb he or she was acting out. The first person to leave was Mr. Goldman, who was on the other team. When he came back, they whispered the word to him, and then he got down on his hands and knees and began dragging himself across the floor, putting his hand to his brow and looking around from time to time, or collapsing on the carpet. Our team kept calling out words, and finally Mrs. Marx shouted, “Desperately.” That was the word.

  Then it was our turn. Alexis left, and we consulted one another (or they did—I didn’t say anything). When she came back, Mr. Wiggins (but everyone called him “Bill”) whispered the word idly to her. She carried a chair to the middle of the room, between the two teams, and sat down half turned in the seat, with her right arm over the back of the chair. Then she yawned, then she sighed, then she began to stare out the window and twist a lock of hair between her fingers. After only three or four minutes, Barbie shouted, “Idly!” Then they made a rule that Barbie couldn’t guess when it was Alexis’s turn and vice versa. The next word was monstrously, which was played by Leah. First she tromped around with her shoulders up and her chin out while everyone came up with variations on tall-ly, then she went over to Mr. Goldman and pretended to strangle him, at which point Bill guessed, “Monstrously.”

  And so I
had to go to the bathroom, and I couldn’t avoid being the next person. Their guest bathroom was nice, and I stayed there for a while, but I had to come back, and when I sat down on the couch, Alexis whispered “tentatively” in my ear. I thought for a minute. Tentatively was a word I had read but had never heard anyone use. I knew what it meant, though. I decided not to go out into the middle of the room—that wouldn’t be tentative enough. I closed my eyes and put my hands in front of my face for a moment, then I opened my eyes and peeked between my hands. Mrs. Goldman said, “Oh, she’s doing it.”

  “Shyly?” said Barbie.

  I put my hands down, then waited a second, then put my foot out and brought it back. Then I peered around Alexis, but just for a bit. I put my hand in front of my mouth. I opened my mouth as if I were going to say something, then closed it. I could feel myself fill up with being tentative—thinking I might try something, and almost daring to do so, but not quite. Was “tentatively” about not wanting to or not daring to? Both, I decided. I half stood up, but sat down again, shook my head, but only a little.

  The other team was calling out words—hopefully, nervously, shyly again, anxiously—and my team was laughing. I almost laughed myself, because I couldn’t help it, then I realized that I could make my laugh “tentative,” so I giggled, then covered my mouth and lowered my eyes. Mrs. Goldman shouted, “Tentatively!” and everyone said, “Yes! Yes! That’s it!”

  We played a lot of rounds—when Barbie was acting, Alexis whispered words in my ear that I called out, but she wasn’t right any more often than anyone else was. I did woodenly (by acting like a tree, then a carpenter hammering), nosily (by going over to where the other team was sitting and sniffing them, which made everyone laugh), and juicily (by pretending to squeeze fruit and being surprised at how wet I got).

  The best word Barbie did was comically, and for Alexis it was automatically. But the best word of the night was when Mr. Goldman did apoplectically. First, he pretended to be so angry that all of us fell silent because he did such a good job that he made us a little afraid of him, and then, when we kept shouting variations on angrily, he made a face, grabbed his throat and fell down, and then jerked around on the ground. Because no one could guess, he went on for three or four minutes, getting wilder and wilder, which made it hard. At that point, Mrs. Marx shouted, “Apoplectically,” and Mr. Marx said, “Yes, apoplexy was originally a stroke!” We gave him a round of applause, and he said, “Well, finally! I was killing myself!” and started to laugh.

  We staggered up to bed about midnight. They had set up a cot in Barbie and Alexis’s room, but they told me to sleep in the lower bunk, because that was more comfortable, and so I got out my pajamas. The girls also had their own bathroom, which they had painted themselves with trees and animals, mostly cats and birds, and when we had finished brushing our teeth, I stayed in there a minute to look around. I thought the rooster and the bluebird were the best, and the black cat sitting on a white step, but I couldn’t tell if just one of the twins had painted those, because there were no initials or anything. But really, they were all good.

  By the time I got into the room, all the lights but the night-light were off, and Barbie and Alexis were in bed and seemed to be asleep. Only when I had gotten into my bunk did anyone say anything, and that was Alexis, in the cot, who sounded half asleep when she said, “Night night.”

  I fell asleep right away, too. My head was full of adverbs and faces, and laughing, and the flat darkness, across the living room, of that big window that looked out over the valley. The twins’ room had lots of windows, too, and I could hear an owl hoot as I fell asleep. My head was so full that I didn’t think of Mom or Daddy or Black George at all, and I forgot my nighttime prayer (though I remembered that and said it when I woke up for a moment in the night). I did not have any dreams.

  Blanket

  Halter

  Chamois

  Chapter 13

  A BAGEL TURNED OUT TO BE A ROUND ROLL, LIKE A DOUGHNUT, but hard and not sweet. Poppy seeds turned out to be tiny black, crunchy seeds that were sprinkled on top of the bagel. Mrs. Goldman had a special wooden block that she set the bagel in. She cut it in two, toasted it, and spread it with cream cheese, then laid flat orange slices of lox on it. Lox was fish, and sort of slimy, but also very salty, and along with some sliced pineapple and melon, that was breakfast. Alexis and Barbie drank coffee, just like their parents.

  Mom showed up while we were still eating, and they had her come in and sit down and have a cup of coffee. Mom said, “We really have to …,” but she sat down and received her cup, poured in the (real) cream, and took a spoonful of sugar. “Abby has been so much fun,” said Mrs. Goldman. “We played Adverbs last night for the first time in years, and Abby made us all laugh when she did nosily.”

  I said, “Mr. Goldman was the funniest.”

  “Oh my goodness,” said Mrs. Goldman. “I’d forgotten how deeply he gets into every adverb. I am truly glad no one asked him for mortally!”

  “How would you do that one?” said Alexis.

  “I don’t think it’s really an adverb,” said Barbie. “I think it’s an adjective, like decidedly.”

  The twins stuck their tongues out at each other.

  Mrs. Goldman passed the plate of bagels to Mom and said, “These are good bagels. I went out for them early this morning.” Mom hesitated, then took half of one of the split ones. Mrs. Goldman handed her a plate, and Alexis passed her the cream cheese. She spread some on and took a bite, then said, “Hmm. That is good.”

  “These are the real thing—just a little chewy. Hard to find in California, at least around here. But there’s one place.”

  Barbie said to her, “The melon is good, too,” and passed her the melon. Mom took two slices and set them on her plate. The lox was gone. It was interesting to see Mom with the Goldmans, because she was pretty shy about strangers. I knew that when she first sat down, she was feeling out of place and ready to get out of there as soon as possible, but everyone was so friendly that they seemed not to notice that she didn’t have much to say, just went on with what they were already doing.

  Mrs. Goldman said, “What lessons do you girls have today?”

  “Banjo,” said Barbie.

  “Banjo!” said Mrs. Goldman. “How did that happen?”

  “I signed up behind your back. I want to branch out.”

  “How much is it?” said Mrs. Goldman, but she didn’t seem angry, or even really surprised.

  “It’s free. I’m trading for violin with Horton Jenkins. He thinks if he can play the fiddle, his band will be more flexible.”

  “I thought they had a fiddle player,” said Alexis.

  “They do, but he wants to have two fiddles on some songs.”

  “Why doesn’t their fiddle player teach him?”

  “Because I’m the one who wants to play the banjo.”

  Mom said, “My brother plays the banjo, back in Oklahoma.”

  I knew this.

  “Oh!” exclaimed Barbie. “Is he good?”

  “He’s fast. I stopped trying to keep up with him when I was about Abby’s age.”

  “What did you play?” asked Alexis.

  “We had an old mandolin,” said Mom.

  I didn’t know this.

  “I sang a little, too.”

  It was true that when we were in church, Mom knew all the songs, and she was great on the high parts.

  “Do you play anything, Abby? We could have a band.”

  I shook my head.

  Mom said, “Abby has a good voice, though.”

  Alexis and Barbie turned toward me at the same time, and Mrs. Marx said, “You girls have plenty going on without starting a band.”

  “Just sing one thing,” said Alexis. “One verse of one song.”

  Silence all around the room. Mom was smiling at me. She knew we were well practiced, from church. I bit my lips for a moment, then sang, “Old Stewball was a racehorse, and I wish he were mine. He never dran
k water, he always drank wine. His bridle was silver, and his mane it was gold—”

  Mom came in on the high harmony, “And the worth of his saddle has never been told.”

  Now Alexis and Barbie came in, too. Barbie was the low one, and Alexis was in my range, but doing a sort of counterpoint: “Well, the fairgrounds were crowded, Old Stewball was there, but the betting was heavy, on the bay and the mare.”

  Now we fell silent, and Mom sang, “Well, I bet on the gray mare, and I bet on the bay.”

  Then we all chimed in, “If I’d a bet on Old Stewball, I’d be a free man today!”

  Then we laughed.

  Alexis said, “That’s a Peter, Paul, and Mary song. I love that song.”

  “Very good! Very good!” exclaimed Mrs. Goldman, “Don’t sing any more or I’ll be driving this band around day and night.” But she kept clapping.

  Mom was grinning. When we left, Mrs. Goldman gave her a little kiss on the cheek and said, “Drop by anytime!”

  After we were in the car, Mom said, “Well, you must have had fun.”

  Before I realized what I was saying, it popped out: “I never knew you could have that much fun.”

  There was a pause, and then she said, “They do seem nice.”

  At home, there was plenty to do, because the Roseburys had bought Black George and they were going to pick him up late that afternoon. They would have preferred Sunday, but that was out. It wasn’t that he needed cleaning, it was that the whole place needed cleaning, because Colonel Hawkins, Mr. Rosebury, and Sophia were all coming, and however the place looked to us, there was always the chance that it could look like a dump to them.

  “Not a dump,” said Daddy, “but a working ranch rather than a showplace.”

  “That’s bad enough,” said Mom. She had already mopped the kitchen floor and cleaned the stove in case they accepted her invitation for a cup of tea. Daddy had swept the barn and straightened all the racks: saddles and bridles and halters and lead ropes and blankets and pictures—you name it, it was wound up, folded, hanging straight, put away. Mom had even brushed Rusty. Dad had replaced two boards on the fence of the gelding pasture that the horses had chewed, and all in all we were acting way more impressed by Sophia than I wanted to, but it did come out—Daddy let it slip—that the Roseburys were paying “at least ten thousand dollars” for Black George.