Free Life As I Know It by Michelle Payne Page A

angry.
    I was concentrating so hard and when we stopped, I said, ‘Dad, tell them to stop laughing at me.’ But nothing could make them stop. Dad was probably trying hard not to laugh himself.
    He continued to put me on the lead in the mornings, whether it would be at Home or in the centre of the training track at Ballarat in front of all the other trainers, while the other kids would be working the horses around the track. My practice was used as a warm-up for the more vigorous work the horses would do with the others to build up the horses’ fitness.
    I was riding more and more but I couldn’t get enough of it. Any chance I could get I’d take. But in the afternoons Dad used to take the horses for a stroll and a pick of grass down the road to get them out of the paddocks before feed time. We didn’t really like doing this job. I always wanted to ride down the road but he said we had to lead them, which was pretty tiring for a nine-year-old who’d been up since before dawn and had had a day at school. And we were also keen by this time to get home and play on the Nintendo I’d won at the school fete in Prep. We loved Super Mario Kart and Super Mario Bros. Dad was not impressed. He hated us playing electronic games and being inside. He couldn’t get us to work. He threatened to cut the cords and we’d keep saying, ‘One more game, Dad. I’ve just got to finish this level.’ But then we just did what we were told and tended to the horses.
    Our lives revolved around horses. It was a life in two parts: the joy of riding them, and the hard work of looking after them. Even when we lived at The Farm in Rochy, Dad always kept a few horses around. When I first started riding trackwork there, it was on old Rudimentale. He was Therese’s horse and he was the horse that in my quiet times I used to go and lie in the paddock in the sunshine with. I’d feel his warmth. Feel his breath. Smell him. And pat him. And then give him something special to eat. He was a lovely horse. He was always placid, so Dad and Andrew decided he would be a good horse for me to learn to canter, without a lead. Being around seven-and-a-half, I was a bit nervous, and despite Rudimentale being super lazy, he sensed this nervousnessand the second time I cantered on my own he took off flat out on me.
    My first job was to muck out the boxes. I would get up with everyone very early in the morning and go down to the stables to work with Stevie. The older kids would saddle the horses and take them out to work. Stevie and I had to clean out the boxes before they got back. We’d fork and sweep out the soiled straw. Stevie would put it in the wheelbarrow and push it to the heap. He’d take ages to come back for the next load. Time would be getting away and I’d be wondering what he was doing out there. If they got back and we hadn’t done the four or five empty boxes the older kids would get so angry with me.
    â€˜What have you kids been doing? How come these boxes aren’t finished?’ I would be trying to do my best but I wouldn’t say anything against Stevie.
    One day I got jack of it and went looking for Stevie. I found him sitting between the handles of the wheelbarrow on the way out to the manure heap having a spell, talking to himself, laughing away.
    â€˜So this is what you do,’ I yelled at him. ‘No wonder we’re always late. No wonder I’m always in trouble.’ I was angry. It was always my fault and that wasn’t fair.
    When he got back to the box we were still arguing. He was making me so frustrated, I punched him in the belly. I have never felt so bad as I did then, because I winded him and he was crying. Although we’d argue and fight, and Stevie had hit me before in a boxing match arranged by the older kids—mainly Patrick—Stevie could never bring himself to hit me in the run of everyday life. Our little touch-up seemed to work,