Gee Whiz (16 page)

On the way home, Mom was yawning, and Dad was quiet, so I knew he might be pretty tired, too, especially since we still had to check the horses and give them some more hay. I was also tired, so I was really hoping that Gee Whiz did not
know how to untie knots. To make myself stop thinking about this, I said, “How do you think Brother Abner joined our church?” He had been there as long as I could remember.

“I don’t know about that,” said Mom. “He was here when we came.”

“He told me once,” said Dad. “He was raised Methodist, but fell away when he left home. Then, down in Australia, I think, during the war, oh goodness, he would have been in his sixties by then, he was just walking down the street, and a man stepped up to him, and something about the man struck him, and when the man said he had something to tell Brother Abner, Brother Abner listened—‘For once, I listened,’ he said to me. ‘Can’t say I ever listened to a thing before that. I was a contrary fellow for most of my life.’ I guess when he got back around here after the war, he found Sister Brooks’s uncle, and helped him start up the church.”

I said, “I’d like to ask him about Australia.”

They didn’t say anything.

The horses were quiet as little mice in their pastures when we got home, and Rusty was curled up, sleeping in her bed on the back porch.

Danny was already there when we got up in the morning, and, merry Christmas, he had already fed the horses, so we didn’t have to get out of our pajamas. Mom went straight into the kitchen and made pancake batter, and I turned on the Christmas tree and lay down on the rug under it and stared up through the boughs. I could see all the ornaments we’d made or bought over the years, and the ones that our grandparents had sent us—the crocheted snowflakes from my mom’s
grandmother were the most beautiful; there were four of them, a different one every year, white and lacy, and of course, no two alike. One year, Mom had baked fake gingerbread men, not for eating, and we’d decorated those and hung them with little green ribbons. One year, Danny and I had strung what seemed like an endless string of popcorn and cranberries—we still had that, too. There was also a string of lights that looked like candles—they bubbled. Mom did not like them because they got very hot, so she only let them be plugged in when someone was in the room. But they sat up on the branches and were very pretty.

Dad had decided not to sell Oh My, or any other horse—not even Morning Glory—until the spring, when he thought they would be better trained and we could get a good price for them, so we knew there wouldn’t be many presents. Mom bought me a sweater set—a blue pullover and cardigan to go, she said, with my eyes. Dad gave me a shirt, red with yellow piping and a sunflower embroidered on the back. I’d bought Mom’s present months before, a pair of sheepskin slippers, and I gave Dad a new riata, which Danny helped me pick out, for roping those calves that might come, or at least for roping the sawcow. It was Danny who gave the big presents—to Mom, a cashmere jacket (Leah had helped him pick it out in San Francisco); to Dad, a new pair of chaps with his initials tooled into them; and to me, a hard hat, gloves, and a whip for showing, along with a book called
Horsemanship
, by a man named Waldemar Seunig. I opened it to the first page, and read, “Books do not make a rider good or bad, but they can make him better or worse.” Danny’s presents made me a little sad, because I knew they might be good-bye presents.

There was also a gift under the tree, wrapped with a bow and a tag, for Gee Whiz. I opened it. It was from Santa, and was a chain with a clip on the end. I realized that Leah must have repeated to Danny what I’d said at the slumber party about Gee Whiz’s escape. We all laughed, but it was Christmas, and no one said anything more about it. Anyway, his board was paid for a month, and that wouldn’t end until January fifteenth.

Since Christmas lasted all day, and there wasn’t much to do, I did read the book a little. It was not like any book I’d read, even the cavalry manual with the drawings that looked like Blue that I’d read in the early fall. Some sentences made me laugh, especially ones about buying a horse and discovering that “his horse will never again travel as well, despite correct training …, as it did on that bright autumn morning on the imperceptibly rising show track in the castle park,” and I realized this was true—when a horse trots slightly uphill, he always looks brighter and better. But I got lost in the words and the pictures—the Spanish Riding School, medium trot, levade, capriole, extended walk, equestrian poise, engaged, two tracks. Here I thought I knew what I was doing, at least in a way, and I didn’t know what in the world Waldemar Seunig was talking about. I couldn’t even pronounce his name. There was one picture I stared at for a long time—a man on a horse in the Pan American Games, sliding down a hill to a jump at the bottom. A man on a horse is pretty tall, say, eight feet tall. In this picture, the man and the horse were lost against what looked like the face of a cliff. There were plenty of pictures of men (and a woman, too) riding and jumping high jumps.

When Danny and I went out to give the horses their
evening hay (I was out of my pajamas by this time, but still yawning), I told him about Gee Whiz’s little session with Barbie and me, how he seemed to enjoy himself, and how, when he had to, he jumped over a 3′3″ jump at an angle, and easily. It was dark, and if the days were lengthening, I couldn’t tell. We’d already eaten our pie. Danny was supposed to leave after we finished with the hay, and I was sure he was going out with Leah. He didn’t say anything, just threw the hay. Gee Whiz was dimly visible at the far end of the pasture, looking up the hill. When he saw us, he did whinny and trot over to where we usually threw his pile. After we put out the hay, I hooked the chain around the gate and the gatepost, and clipped the two ends tightly together.

Finally, Danny said, “Ike told me all about him, more than Ross did. For one thing, he was born in France, and imported to the US as a yearling. I don’t know why they would bring him over, except that he was a really good-looking yearling. His auction price at Saratoga was a hundred thousand dollars.”

“Where is Saratoga?”

“New York somewhere. It’s a big resort town with a racetrack from the old days. They have a huge yearling auction, and then the horses sometimes go into training, and sometimes wait for a while. Man o’ War raced there. He also lost his only race there because he was facing the wrong direction when they started, according to Ike. Anyway, Gee Whiz ran there as a two-year-old and won two races, then he won a big race in Florida as a three-year-old, and they really thought they had something. He was second in the Arkansas Derby, and that was where he bowed a tendon, so he was out. Ike said
maybe he was too big—sometimes when they grow fast, racing as a three-year-old is extra hard on them. Anyway, he was always sound after he came back the summer he was four, and always game. I don’t see how, just because he had a little bad luck, he doesn’t still have that ability. Lots of ex-racehorses make great riding horses.”

“He’s so big.”

“But he carries it well. He’s perfectly constructed. Even the angle of his pasterns and the shape of his hooves are perfect. Even the shape of his ears is perfect.”

I said, “You bought him, didn’t you?”

Danny began pushing the wheelbarrow back to the barn. “Roscoe gave him to me.”

I ran after him. “Danny! You might not even be here to train him!”

He stopped and stared at me. “Something to come home to, then.”

Okay, I was shocked. It was one thing for Danny to buy Happy from Dad; Happy was a horse with scads of cow in her who would always be useful, and anyway, one who Dad loved—I’d overheard Dad saying that “whatever happens,” Happy was fine at our place “for the duration.” It was quite another thing to take on this very large and mysterious animal who, as far as Dad was concerned, didn’t know a cow from a car. And who had already made one mess (only one, as far as Dad knew).

“Why can’t someone else take him?”

“Because he’s too good for that. You never know where he’ll end up.”

Meaning, I knew, slaughter.

I said, “You better start riding him, then.”

And Danny said, “I will if you will.”

I stared at him again. Then I said, “He’s way too big for me.” I thought, “And way too smart.”

He said, “After my physical, I heard there would be three or four weeks. We can work on it.” Then he said, “He likes you.”

As if to underline this remark, Gee Whiz looked up from his hay and nickered.

Danny put the wheelbarrow away, washed his hands in the tack-room sink, and dried them on one of the towels there. Then he smoothed back his hair and said, “How do I look?”

“Like an idiot.”

“Perfect.” He poked me in the ribs, and then ran toward his car.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, C
HRISTMAS WAS OVER
,
AND
I
WASN
’
T
sad. Christmas is like a spell where everything moves extra slow and you try to remember what there is to do with your time. It’s great to look forward to, but nicer to remember than to live through. We got up, got dressed in the almost dark, and went out and did our jobs. I made my riding plan, and Dad decided when to take Blue to the stables. As far as Jane knew, Melinda would be ready for her lesson the next day, and why not Ellen having a lesson, too? Jane would teach them, at least the first time. My lesson could be later in the week, whenever Mom had time to take me out there. I called Barbie and told her about Blue going to the stables, and suggested that she watch me take my lesson with Jane. She was happy to agree. She had finished her winter solstice painting,
but Alexis had finished both of hers and Barbie was still stuck for a subject.

“What are Alexis’s paintings?”

“One is as if you were standing on a hill, looking west over the ocean, and seeing only the top of the fog with a few dark hilltops jutting through, and stars in the dark sky above. The other is a green hillside full of lupine.”

“My mom would buy that. She loves lupine.”

“I think I have to do something urban, but I don’t know what.”

“You don’t look out on anything urban.”

“We don’t look out on the ocean, either. But I think you just gave me an idea.”

Yes, I had. I could hear it in her voice.

All the way to the stables, Dad talked about rain. There had been rain, but not enough. Now he was worried. Three inches, or was it four inches? Maybe we did need rain, but everything was beautiful out to the stables, sunny and blue and green. I had a sweater on, but I took it off. Jane was in shirtsleeves. She met us in the parking lot, and stood with her hands on her hips while I unhooked the ramp and Dad let it down. We had let Blue travel loose in the trailer, which was something Dad liked to do, so he was facing us, standing as though he were waiting for his picture to be taken, already looking around. Jane said, “Blue!” He looked at her. He knew his name. I led him down the ramp, and we went over to Gallant Man’s stall. Jane said, “We swaddled him in cotton and shipped him off. They put such a head guard on him! They didn’t care for a moment that his head was a yard lower than
the inside of the trailer. I don’t know how he would have bumped his head.”

I said, “And he’s too smart to do that, anyway.”

“Well,” said Dad, “I wish him luck.” Maybe he knew how much those people in Los Angeles had paid for our pony, but of course no one was telling a kid like me.

Dad didn’t want to wait around for Ellen and Melinda to have their lessons, and I didn’t really want to, either. If they didn’t like Blue, I’d be disappointed, because maybe he wasn’t as good as I thought he was, and if they did like him, well, what next? I told myself that Blue was here mostly for my lesson on Wednesday, and that Saturday we would take him home. We talked about rain all the way home, too, only this time we talked about those clouds Dad had seen to the west, and maybe that was fog, but it looked more like clouds, awfully far off the coast, though—well, anything was welcome. At home, I rode Lincoln and Lady, and read some more of my strange book—“Realizing that the horse’s will is governed principally by feelings of pleasure or discomfort, he will influence that will by evoking pleasurable feelings, which he associates with certain actions of the horse as a chain of cause-and-effect ideas.” I thought Jem Jarrow would agree with that.

For lunch, we had grilled cheese. Dad’s had bacon in it. I was yawning when Dad said, “I need to go over to the Marble Ranch this afternoon. Can you come with me?”

What else did I have to do but take a nap? Really, when there was no school, the days got rather long. I said, “Why are you going there?”

“They have a couple of calves that might work out for a few weeks. Or I could send Lady over there and Danny could work her. I haven’t decided. But she needs the work.”

He drove past the Marble Ranch, though, and stopped at the Vista del Canada gate. I said, “What’s going on?”

He was grinning. He said, “All I know is that your instructions are to go to the gate, push the buzzer, and say that you are meeting Danny.”