Free Champion Horse by Jane Smiley Page A

already bought all of her new clothes, and had shown them to me the last time I spent the night at her house. Gloria had grown, too, and now she was about a quarter-inch taller than I was, and ‘developed’, as her mom said. She had worn the same shoe size for a year, so she was ‘done’ and her mom decided to splurge on some ‘classics’ for Gloria. I thought they seemed a little fancy for high school, but I had no idea, really. She had also had her hair cut in what she called a ‘five-point’ style. It was short and thick, and it came down over the forehead and in front of her ears, and then in a point at the middle of her neck in back. She had to get up and style it every morning, but that was like her hobby, and she didn’t mind. Stella I hadn’t seen except at the Goldmans’ party. Gloria said that Stella was planning on wearing her French twist every day. I didn’t really have a hair plan for high school, which made me a little nervous. Anyway, because Mom was taking me to the department store, she decided to stay and watch the clinic.
    We lined our horses up at the end of the arena, because four jumps had been built in the middle in an X. Two arms of the X were verticals – the east arm and the north arm; the west arm was an oxer, and the south arm was a brush.
    There were poles in front of the verticals, but not in front of the oxer or the brush. Blue did very nice flat work – precise and energetic – so Peter Finneran actually said, ‘Abby, you or someone has done a good job with this horse.’ I didn’t answer, but I smiled the way you are supposed to when you get a compliment. The same could not be said for Monica. At one point in the flat work, her mare grabbed the bit, tossed her head, and started bucking. Peter Finneran began shouting, ‘Kick her on, Monica! Make her go forward! Doesn’t she know the most basic things? Don’t you?’ Penny and her five-year-old brown gelding always got the same response: ‘Okay. That will do.’ He continued to like Donegal – at least he would smile when Donegal was slow in his responses, and say, ‘Well, he’s a bit thick, but he’s doing his best.’ Lucy scowled, which indicated to me that ‘a bit thick’ wasn’t a compliment. However, when the jumping started, Donegal went first and he just galloped down over the fences, not looking right or left. I guess that was why Peter Finneran liked him.
    Our job over the fences started easy and got hard. First we were to trot and canter over the smaller vertical, then to canter that same vertical, turn right, make a loop, and canter the larger vertical. Then we were to do these two, canter out, come back over the brush, turn right again, and canter down over the oxer. I saw that by the end of the lesson, we would probably be approaching each of these fences from both sides, making a course of eight jumps with lots of turns and loops. Really, it was like the day before with the poles. The jumps themselves were not terribly hard, and the turns were not tight. The ‘courses’ Peter Finneran made of these four jumps were smoother and less complicated than show courses, and there was a part of me that really liked the idea. There was not a part of Blue that really liked the idea. All of the other horses were better than he was, even the four-year-old. After the first two-jump section, for which Blue was his nervous self, Peter Finneran handed me a whip. When I took it by the handle with the lash pointing down, he took it back and turned it so the lash pointed upward. Then he said, ‘This is a whip. If your horse doesn’t go willingly to the jump, then you must actually use this implement to remind him of his job. With this animal, I think once will be enough, but you have to mean it.’
    I said, ‘To mean what?’ But I knew what he wanted me to do. He wanted me to take my reins in my left hand and smack Blue a good one on the haunches as soon as he shifted his weight backwards or showed hesitation. Dad