The Georges and the Jewels (13 page)

Jack was over two months old now and big and strong. Normally, he trotted right over to me as soon as he saw me, but now we could see him over in the far corner of the corral, with his nose down and his ears pricked. Though there was some fresh grass in the pen, he wasn’t eating it. I said, “What’s he doing?”

“He’s watching something.”

He seemed transfixed, so we crept around the outside of the corral, quietly but not sneakily, since we didn’t want to startle him, but nor did we want to distract him. Whatever he was watching moved, and Jack took a step to follow it, then he pushed his nose down farther and sniffed. By this time we were close to the corner, and Danny squatted down and peered through the wire mesh. Then he laughed. “He’s watching a gecko.”

The gecko must have run off at that point, because Jack snorted, threw up his head, and leapt into the air. Once he did that, he put his nose down again, right where the gecko had been, but finding nothing, he flicked his ears and walked over to the fence. When he got to me, he stuck out his nose. I said, “The other day, he followed a stray cat all over the corral, that orange cat with one ear.”

“That big tom,” said Danny.

“Jack would follow him, sniffing at him. The cat wasn’t scared at all. At one point, the cat was lying there and Jack reached his nose down and the cat suddenly sat up and batted him. Jack just jumped. It was so funny.”

We stroked the side of his face for a bit, where the foal hair had begun to be replaced by the silky dark coat the color of
black walnut that would be his adult color. He had no white on him, except for four white hairs in the middle of his forehead. I put my hand on his neck, and he stretched over the fence. I started stroking him firmly along the length of his neck, the way I did with the chamois. Air ruffled in his nostrils.

“He’s going to be a nice horse,” said Danny, fingering Jack’s sparse little black mane.

“I love him.”

“Mom told me what happened to the mare.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Ab, you know that orphan foals rarely come to much and can be very dangerous.”

“No, I didn’t know that.” I kept stroking.

“Who’s going to push this little guy around, the way his dam would?”

“I don’t know.”

He took his hat off and waved it in Jack’s face. Jack jumped back and trotted off a few steps, his tail high. Then he tipped forward, kicked out twice, and took off across the corral, giving two or three high-pitched whinnies. He bucked a couple of times. When he came to the fence on the far side, he executed a sharp left turn and galloped five strides before dropping back to the trot. Then he trotted toward us, his ears pricked and his nostrils wide. He was snorting, looking for the hat, which Danny had put back on his head. Now came the funny part—when he got back to where we were standing by the fence, he stuck his nose out and sniffed Danny’s hat. Danny obligingly cocked his head forward so that Jack could sniff to his heart’s content. When he was done, he gave a big sigh and his ears went floppy again. I started stroking his neck. Danny said, “Did
you see how quick and self-confident he is? He needs someone to be telling him what to do, and it isn’t going to be you.”

“You don’t know how he is. He’s really sweet.”

“I’m just saying, don’t count on anything.”

“Well, now you do sound like Daddy.”

A scowl, but only a little one. He fixed his expression almost immediately and said, “Maybe so, but I’m just saying.”

“I heard you.”

I felt grumpy as we walked around the barn, but then Danny said, “I don’t know what the mare looked like, but he’s a Thoroughbred for sure. Abby, he’s a beautiful colt. And he’s going to be a beautiful horse.” He glanced at me. “But don’t get your hopes up.”

I don’t know what Jake Morrisson and Mom were talking about all this time, but I’m sure it was plenty, since not only did Danny work for Jake, he also lived above his barn, where his ranch hands had once lived when he still had the whole ranch. But they sorted everything out, and Jake called us over. Danny got in the truck, everybody waved, and they drove off. Afterward, Mom seemed happy enough. All she said to me, though, was, “No evidence that he’s doing anything stupid.”

I said, “That’s good.”

“He bought his own car.”

“Well, I’m sure he did. What kind?”

“Fifty-six Chevy convertible.”

This made us both laugh, but then Mom said, “I think a convertible would be fun, even if it is almost ten years old. We can get him to take us for a drive.”

T
HERE WAS NO RIDING
,
THANK YOU
, L
ORD
,
ON
S
UNDAY, AND MY
favorite cook, Miss Larrabee, brought supper to church. We had chicken with dumplings, homemade bread, and because she and her brother were avid gardeners plenty of homegrown asparagus with a sauce made from their homegrown lemons. The Larrabees swore by rotted horse manure as a fertilizer, so they came by our place several times a year and carted off part of the manure pile. Over supper, they said that their straw berries looked better this year than they ever had, and everybody at the table kind of sighed at the thought of the strawberry shortcake to come.

There were two different theories about shortcake in our church—Mom and Daddy and some of the others preferred
something like a sweetened biscuit, crumbly and crisp on the bottom, split and filled with strawberries and whipped cream. Miss Larrabee and her brother and some of their side preferred a dense, sweet pound cake shaped like a crown, with the center of the crown filled with berries and topped with ice cream. All of the kids liked both kinds equally, and we looked forward to the first strawberries of the year, which made a sort of celebration of our church. I won’t say that Daddy and all of the others agreed about everything they thought and talked about, but I will say they never argued about the strawberries.

Eating the chicken and dumplings and thinking about the strawberry shortcakes to come reminded me that things at church had been very peaceful lately—even the Greeley children were willing to sit quietly three out of every ten minutes, or however long it took to read one picture book. The one they liked best was
The Little Engine That Could
, which had nothing enlightening in it about the Lord, but it was the one that kept them quiet, so that was the one Carlie and I read to them, over and over, six times apiece on that Sunday alone.

And then Monday and Tuesday, it poured rain, so I kept Daddy happy by cleaning and oiling all the tack. On Wednesday, the arena was soaking wet, and Thursday, Daddy had to go into town for the entire day, not my fault. When we finally got to ride on Friday, we had to do all the easy horses first, and by that time, it was dark.

On Saturday, it was sunny as you please. The footing in the arena was perfect, and I was sitting over my French toast, dreading the morning. In my mind, Ornery George had gobbled up all the others, and I dreaded riding him so much that I
didn’t look forward even to Black George, who was turning out to be quite nice. It was seven a.m.; we were getting a bright and early start, and just as Daddy pushed his chair back to stand up, there was a knock at the back door.

“Who could that be, I wonder,” said Mom. But she said it in a funny way, as if she didn’t wonder at all.

The man at the door took off his hat as soon as she opened it. They spoke for a moment or two, and then she brought him in, with a smile. He wasn’t a very big man, what Daddy would call wiry rather than rangy, and he had on faded brown pants and very old boots, with a blue denim shirt and leather vest. He said that he was pleased to meet us. Daddy shook his hand, because you never knew if someone came to your door whether it was Jesus or not, and in fact there was a Greek myth about this very same thing. The man said his name was James Jarrow, called Jem, and he had heard from Jake Morrisson that we had some nice horses for sale.

“We do, indeed,” said Daddy, and he got his business face on, which was simultaneously friendly and efficient. He said, “Let’s go look, shall we?”

Mom said, “Abby has finished her breakfast. She can go along,” which was the first clue that she had something up her sleeve. However, I put on my jacket and my boots and followed the two men out to the corrals. The horses were eating their hay. Jack was eating hay, too, even though we were still giving him some milk, usually mixed with bran. I had already fed him that, and he had licked the bucket clean.

Jem Jarrow was not a talkative person. He went with Daddy to each corral, stood by the gate, and stared at the horses. He
didn’t fidget in any way. Next to him, Daddy looked like a jack-in-the-box, jumping up and down and making noise, but Daddy was just normal. It was Jem Jarrow who was different.

It must have taken him twenty minutes to stare at all the horses, including Jack. Finally, he went back to the gate of the gelding corral and pointed to Ornery George and said, “That’s a nice one. Well built. Good eye.”

I later found out that he didn’t prefer Ornery George at all.

“He’s not for a beginner,” said Daddy. “Which is not to say—”

“Does your girl here ride him?”

“She has,” said Daddy. At this point I fully expected to be told to mount up.

Jem Jarrow said, “Mind if I feel him over?”

“Not all all,” said Daddy.

“Mind if I catch him up?”

“You seem like an experienced horseman.”

“Done ranch work all my life.”

“I guess it’s okay, then. If Jake Morrisson recommends—”

“Lemme get my headstall.”

He came back from his truck with a rope halter attached to an especially long lead rope. He opened the gate and let himself into the gelding corral. Black George, Socks George, and Ornery George noticed him right away, but after a moment, they went back to eating their hay. He stood there. Pretty soon, one by one, they looked up from their hay. Black George came over to him, and he stroked his head by the eye and ear and down the cheek. Black George let out a snuffle. Now Socks George had to see what was going on, and since he was a little bossy, he came over and pushed Black George out of the way with a quick pinning of the ears. Black George stepped
back. Jem gave Socks George a few strokes, too, but when Socks George pushed at him with his nose, he used the headstall he had in his hand to wave him off.

In the meantime, Ornery George was standing off at a distance. After watching for a minute, he moved around so that his rump faced us and went back to eating. Jem lifted his hand. The other two horses, who had been nosing him, moved off, and then, with Socks George in the lead, they trotted off and swept around in a big arc. It was as if they didn’t want to get too far away from Jem. When they came close, he waved them off, but when they got to a certain distance from him, they turned. Pretty soon, he had moved away from the gate toward the middle of the corral and they were going around him in a ragged circle. After they made one circuit, they swept up Ornery George, who just couldn’t seem to resist. Now all three trotted around in a leisurely way, not afraid or excited, just, it appeared, willing to move. Every so often, one of them kicked out at another, but not as if he really meant it. They actually seemed to be enjoying themselves.

After they had gone around maybe four times, Jem started stepping backward and to his right. Almost immediately, Black George turned toward him, his ears pricked. The other two were clumsier, but they followed his lead. Then Jem stepped to the left, switched his rope hand, swung his rope, and they were off again, trotting around him, this time going the other direction, Black George in the lead. Two times around, and he stepped back and let them relax. As soon as he did, they came right up to him, and he put his hand on Ornery George. The other two tried to push in, but he lifted his hand and they backed off.

All this time, Daddy was trying hard not to say anything. I
could see all of the thoughts running through his mind—these are my horses, what’s he doing, I don’t know if I like this, it seems okay, should I stop him, should I ask a question, hmm. Then Jem Jarrow slipped the headstall over Ornery George’s head, turned, and walked briskly toward the gate, with Ornery George right on his heels. He stopped once, lifted his hand, and Ornery George stopped, too, and lifted his head. After that, the horse kept his distance a little better. When Jem got to the gate, he said to Daddy, “Would you mind, just for a few minutes, if I used that pen where the colt is? Just to feel this fellow out a bit. I never like to get on a horse until I get to know him a little.”

“That makes sense,” said Daddy, then, “Abby, put the colt in the first stall.”

That’s what I did. I was proud of the fact that Jack met me at the gate and walked quietly enough to the stall. I took him all the way in and turned him around, then gave him a few strokes before taking off the halter. As soon as I went out of the stall, he put his head over the door and stared at Jem and Ornery George. It was as if none of the horses could get enough of Jem Jarrow.

Ornery George and Jem were standing in the middle of Jack’s pen. George was facing me, and Jem had his back to me. He had his left hand on the lead rope, a few inches below George’s chin. The other hand was holding the other end of the lead rope, and maybe a foot and a half of it hung down. What Jem did now was to lift George’s chin up and back, toward his (George’s) shoulder, while swinging the other end of the rope. George stood there, twisted awkwardly for a moment,
and then his hind end moved to the right, away, so that he was more comfortable. Jem released the halter hand, petted George once on the neck, and then did it again. This time I was looking at them from the side. I saw that after the moment of hesitation, what happened was that George’s hind foot, the one closest to Jem, stepped under his belly and crossed in front of his other hind foot. Then the other hind foot stepped over, too. It was like a dance step, where you step over your left foot in front of your right and then bring your right foot around.