Free Champion Horse by Jane Smiley Page B

would have certainly agreed, but he would have used a quirt, not a whip. That was what the expression ‘the carrot or the stick’ was all about. If a horse didn’t understand something, then you made him understand it, either by showing him some food or giving him some pain. The problem was that I had decided in the spring, when we first got Blue, that he liked the carrot and hated the stick. I had never whipped him because I thought it would just make him more nervous. I looked Peter Finneran in the eye, and I almost said, ‘He won’t like it,’ but thinking about what he had said to the other girls, and the fact that his mind was not going to be changed by a thirteen-year-old, I nodded. Holding the whip as he had shown me, I turned Blue away from him, picked up the trot, then the canter, and went down to the jump. When Blue pricked his ears and hesitated three strides out, I brought the whip down on his right haunch, and a moment later over he went, high and fast.
    Peter Finneran waved me over to him. He said, ‘Now, you do the exercises, and you make sure you carry that whip the way I showed you, so that he can see it. He’s felt it once. Maybe he’ll need to feel it again, but maybe not. But he does need to see it.’ He stared at me until I nodded.
    After that we did all our jumping exercises the way we were told to do – over, turn, back, over, out and around, over, turn the other way, back, out and around. Over. Every time fast and high. When ten-thirty rolled around, I was a little surprised. I was also breathing hard, and Blue was sweating and panting. Donegal, by contrast, was cool and dry.
    I saw Mom from time to time as I went around. She met me when we came out of the gate and walked with me back to the barns. She held Blue while I hosed him off, and she put his sheet on him. She gave him two carrots and fluffed up the straw in his stall. But she didn’t say a word. And when we went shopping, she let me pick my own clothes – two sweaters and two skirts, a jacket, a pair of brown loafers, and two shirts. I also tried on this A-line black-and-white geometric dress with short sleeves and a square neckline. We both really liked it, but it cost forty dollars and we could not imagine where in the world I would wear it.
    When we got back to the stables in the afternoon to check on Blue and give him his hay and water for the night, Jane came running up to us and said, ‘Peter Finneran has told me, Abby, that he would like you to ride a more experienced horse tomorrow. Sophia and her dad have agreed to let you ride Pie in the Sky.’
    ‘That’s the chestnut?’
    Jane nodded, then said, ‘You’ll do fine on him, Abby. He’s been waiting for someone like you, to tell the truth.’
    I didn’t know if that was a good thing.
    She must have read my expression, because she said, ‘Come out early and ride him for a bit. Sophia won’t be here until the afternoon, and if you’re going to ride him for Peter Finneran, you need to get used to him.’
    I said, ‘What time?’
    ‘Eight would be good.’
    I saw what she meant. Colonel Hawkins would not be around at eight. 

Chapter 5
    When I first saw her, Sophia had two horses, a grey mare and Pie in the Sky. The grey mare won a lot, but she was a hunter, and after getting Onyx, Sophia had decided that riding jumpers was more interesting. Also, as Jane had told me, ‘they got a nice piece of change’ for the grey mare, who ended up down in Los Angeles. Sophia didn’t seem to like Pie in the Sky, but he had won a few classes, including, Jane said, an important one at the recent show. I had seen Pie in the Sky jump several impressive courses, but I had also seen him refuse. Once he refused so sharply that Sophia slipped forward and had to grab his neck not to fall off. This did not make me want to ride him, so that night I called Danny.
    He sounded kind of sleepy when he answered, but I ignored that and said, ‘Can you come to the stables and help me with Pie