Winter Circuit (The Show Circuit -- Book 2) (22 page)

Ryan wanted to see Zoe for himself so we went over to the Grand Hunter Ring to find her. She was still riding for Donnie. I’d been so busy lately I’d put what I’d read about her on the back-burner but now I looked at Donnie and her for clues of what might be going on between them. The first year classes were finishing up and we got to see Zoe ride one horse of Donnie’s. It was a spectacular mover and jumped very round, but a little drapey with its front legs. Still, Zoe gave it an amazingly accurate and nuanced ride. With any other rider, the horse wouldn’t have looked nearly as good. She made up for its drawbacks.

“I’m not sure I really believe she’s doing all these drugs if she’s still here showing and doing well,” I said quietly to Ryan.

“It’s amazing how some people can keep functioning,” he said. “Maybe not forever but for a long while.”

My mind turned to her skeletal chest, the bones nearly popping out of her skin. Of course now she was wearing her show clothes so you couldn’t tell as much how skinny she was.

We stayed around to watch the jog. Zoe jogged in first with another horse of Donnie’s that we hadn’t seen go. A groom jogged the drapey jumper in third. I wasn’t really paying attention enough to the jog—I had been looking more at Zoe than at the horse she was jogging but apparently the judge had seen something because he called for the riders to jog again. This time, he motioned to Zoe to leave the ring.

Zoe walked the horse out of the ring slowly and with her head down. Maybe I was projecting emotions onto her but it seemed like she was dreading coming out of the ring and facing Donnie.

He was standing at the in-gate, his jaw set. “I told you not to jog him that way. Did you hear a fucking word I said to you?” He grabbed the reins from her, pushing her out of the way, and snatching on the poor horse’s mouth at the same time. “You hold him up here.” He demonstrated holding the horse up by the bit. “He’s not lame. If you don’t hold up here he looks lame. I’ve told you that again and again. Are you just too fucking stupid to remember that?”

His swears—
fucking stupid
—hung in the air. I shivered and leaned closer to Ryan.

“What an asshole,” he said to me.

“Yeah,” I murmured.

“He can just do that? Say those things? He doesn’t get a red card or a technical foul?”

“I guess not,” I said.

The other trainers around the in-gate didn’t seem to take much notice of what was going on between Donnie and Zoe. I guess they were used to it, or didn’t know what they could do to intervene. The whole complicity of the scene struck me as incredibly sad.

The horses that had remained in the jog came out of the ring. The second jog was called and I braced myself for what would happen next. Zoe got the top call again and this time I studied the horse trotting in. She held the horse’s head tightly and Donnie clucked and shooed his arms from the in-gate. The horse looked a little funky behind to me but I was no expert in soundness.

The judge threw the horse out again. He pretty much had to, since he’d tossed him the first time. Donnie glowered at Zoe as she led the horse out of the ring but this time it was the judge that Donnie cursed from the in-gate. He tossed off a few expletives and finally stalked away.

“I don’t know what to do,” I told Ryan. “I don’t know if it’s even my place to do anything.”

I wished we’d never come to watch Zoe. It felt like it had ruined my happy mood. Then I felt selfish for even feeling that way. Who knew what Zoe would be facing back at the barn with Donnie?

“After what she did to you I’m not sure you owe her anything,” Ryan said.

“I know, but I can’t help feeling like someone needs to help her.”

Dad met us for a late lunch. We ate at the VIP tent and I could tell Dad was also pretty impressed looking down over the International Ring.

He spread his hands to encompass the whole show grounds. The riders waiting for their classes, the horses dutifully standing at the ready, the golf carts whizzing by, the trainers pointing and gesticulating, the vendors pushing for their next sale. “This is a huge operation the show management has got going on here.”

Being a daily part of it, I had dulled to it all. But with them, for a moment, I saw it the way I had when I’d first arrived, fresh off the plane. It was like nothing else in the world. The constant motion, the vibrant sounds, the whirl of hopes, ribbons, and reality.

Ryan asked about Chris’s routine before a big class. He seemed to understand that Chris really was a professional athlete. But unlike most professional athletes who made a living mainly from their own performance, Chris had to earn his money before he competed himself. I told Ryan that he would ride his horses at the farm in the morning and ride Arkos in the FEI schooling ring. He’d coach Lily, who was competing in the High A/O Classic. Then he’d go home in the afternoon, shower and have a meal packed with protein because he wouldn’t feel like eating right before the class, except for maybe an energy bar or a piece of fruit.

He’d be back over for the course walk. The order had been posted and he went late in the class, thirty-fourth.

Dad said he had to make a few more calls and so I left him looking very much at home in the tent. Ryan came with me while I went through the afternoon chores at the show tent and back at Morada. He watched everything I did with the kind of curiosity that made him who he was. He even helped me untangle the mess of polo wraps from the dryer. I taught him how to roll them. Fernando showed him some of Rudi’s tricks. He held up a broom horizontal to the ground about waist high and whistled and Rudi jumped it from a standstill. Fernando raised the broom a few times. Ryan thought it was hysterical that the hunters wore fake tails and that part of my job was to wash them.

“You look happy here,” Ryan said as I poured baby shampoo into a large tub to wash the tails.

“Mostly I am—when I’m doing barn stuff.”

“But you and Chris?”

I shrugged. “It’s not been what I imagined it would be.”

“It never is,” Ryan said.

I gently washed the tails, then rinsed them under clean water, careful not to get them wet close to the top where the glue held them together. “That sure sounds jaded. Are you seeing anyone?”

“Not right now.”

“Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever be able to get married and be happy after watching Mom and Dad. Do you think they didn’t stay together because they were like in two completely different worlds?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Do you ever wonder if Dad cheated on Mom?” I asked.

“I never really thought about it. I wouldn’t worry about getting married, though. You’re nineteen.”

I made a face. “You know how I am—always thinking too much.”

I sprayed the tails with a little leave-in conditioner and then hung them up in the shade to dry. Full sun wouldn’t be good for them. When they’d dried fully, I’d bring them into the tack room.

“Yes,” Ryan said. “Stop doing it. You’ll be better off. Just stick to detangling your wraps and washing your strange fake tails.”

Chapter 25

I loved the excitement before a big class. The tension and anticipation in the air. I pointed out the big-time movie producer to Ryan and Dad, and they both did their own double-take when they saw the software mogul whose daughter competed.

The course walk for any big class was always a scene. The pointing, the assessing, the striding, the standing around in clusters as a band covered recent Top 40 hits at the end of the arena. Whether they were trying to or not, the riders all looked very important and self-assured as they grabbed their show coats from the Riders’ Lounge and headed onto the expansive course. Some riders liked to wear their show coats; others wore their team windbreakers. Many riders wore baseball hats bearing the name of their farm or advertising a sponsor. A few of the young men, like McNair, wore thin wool or cashmere V-necks over their show shirts. Several young riders were accompanied by their trainers. And what a group of trainers they were. They hailed from several different countries and sported strong accents. One of the older trainers wore a straw hat; another carried a little dog under his arm. The chef d’equipe for the U.S. Team was strolling around, chatting with various riders. Between them there were multiple Olympic medal winners, World Cup winners, and World Equestrian Game winners. It was rare these days if you were über wealthy and still retained a U.S. born, bred, and based trainer. Most of the wealthiest riders selected European luminaries as their trainers and based themselves at their European stables for parts of the year. Lily Teller was one of the few children of one-percenters who had an American trainer and whose trainer was competing against her in the class, no less, with only a few years separating them in age. I explained to my dad and Ryan how Chris coached Lily and pointed out where they were walking the course together. Ryan asked if it was weird for him to compete against her. I had asked Chris the very same question and he’d said maybe a little weird, but not really.

“What’s weird is that she has much better horses than him,” I said to Ryan and Dad. “She’s not nearly the rider he is, but that’s the nature of the sport.”

We went ahead and got in line for the buffet early, so as to avoid the crowds. We were still finishing our meals when the class got underway. By that time the stadium seating was nearly filled with families from the area, thanks in part to the carnival-like atmosphere on the other side of the ring, which included a carousel, street-performers, and a petting zoo. Lily went tenth. The first six riders had faults. There was a big triple bar toward the end of the course and then right after it a vertical-vertical double combination. That seemed to be the trap of the course. Riders came in too forward to the double and ended up having one or both rails down. I explained my thinking on this to Dad and Ryan. When Lily came in, I could see Chris standing at the in-gate. He looked so professional and my heart leapt a little—could I really be dating him? I knew I was but it was moments like these that it hit me all over again.

Monty was a classic type. He was a beautiful bay with a white blaze and two white socks and he was a leaner warmblood, almost a little thoroughbred-like. He jerked his knees up in perfect form and wore his ears well the whole way around the course, sighting in on each jump. He was the kind of horse that made it seem like horses liked to jump, that they liked to compete.

Lily was clean coming into the triplebar. She caught a long distance to the triple bar and instinctually I leaned back in my chair as if I was trying to get Monty to rock back for the verticals. I knew from Chris he was a super adjustable horse but she didn’t quite get him back enough. She was tight into the first vertical and any other horse would have had it down but he somehow managed to scrape over it. He cleared the second vertical too and then had just two more jumps left. I felt mixed about how I wanted her to do and wondered if Chris did too. If she went clean it would be good for him as her trainer; but as a rider it was frustrating to see her horse get her out of a not-so-optimal distance. She rode the last two jumps fine and did, in fact, finish clean.

“Our first to conquer the course tonight, Lily Teller and Monteverdi II, go clean,” the announcer boomed.

By the time we went back to the buffet for dessert and coffee, three more had gone clean. Five riders before Chris was slated to go, Dad said, “I want to go down to the in-gate. Can we watch from there?”

“Wait, why?” I said, nearly knocking my fork off my plate I was so caught off guard.

“Just can we do it?” Dad said. “Are we allowed to? Or do we have to stay up here?”

“We can go down,” I said. “If that’s what you want.”

Dad tossed his napkin on the table. I shared a look with Ryan like,
what the heck is this all about
? But we also both seemed to wordlessly know not to bother asking Dad to explain further or try to figure it out ourselves.

A quiet hush hung over the schooling ring as Chris jumped an oxer. Dale hovered next to the oxer to adjust it. A steward watched from the end of the ring, ensuring there would be no illegally set jumps. A few people stood on the rail looking in on the ring. Two other riders were jumping; two were flatting in preparation to jump. Another rider, the Princess of Sweden, trotted her horse on a loose rein, his head down low, just having come out of the class. This wasn’t the schooling ring before a junior hunter or eq class where trainers shouted commands. It was almost eerily quiet since most riders at this point in their lives had done the preparation and the training and weren’t trying to fix issues here. This was just a simple prep over as few jumps as possible—saving most of your horse’s good jumps for the ring. This was perhaps about catching a slight convenient rub but nothing more.

The few words that we heard were, “Looks good. Ready to go? Let’s go with that,” and sometimes they were either said with an accent or in another language altogether.

Dad noticed Dale adjusting the jumps for Chris. “He doesn’t have a trainer?” Dad asked.

“Up one and wider,” Chris told Dale.

“Not really. Sometimes he has more experienced trainers or friends who’ll come help him with a horse he’s struggling with, or consult on a line in a course. That type of thing.”

Dad nodded like he was processing all this and doing some sort of assessment.

Chris signaled to Dale that he felt good and they headed up to the in-gate. We followed behind. I wondered if Chris had seen us watching. If he had, he didn’t let on. Perhaps he was too much in the zone to notice.

Nearby a foreign rider was talking to another fellow countryman. They talked in what seemed like incredibly fast bursts in their native language, every once in a while punctuating their sentences with an American turn of phrase. It sounded like: blah-blah-blah-blah-
seriously
? Blah, blah, blah, blah,
super careful
!