A Good Horse

Free A Good Horse by Jane Smiley

Book: A Good Horse by Jane Smiley Read Free Book Online
Authors: Jane Smiley
don’t think so.”
    Daddy took a deep breath. Now he was Being Patient. “Why don’t you think so?”
    “Because when he reared up, he looked at me, and when he looked at me, he curled his front legs back. He did. I saw him.”
    But I knew that Daddy was right, too, and that I had better get Jack to do things, plenty of things, because for the last half hour, I had been thinking about whether he loved me or not, not about whether he was behaving himself, and even though he curled his forelegs back and did not touch me with them, the way he touched the geldings, he really should not have reared up at me in the first place. I went to the side of the pen where we kept whips and found the flag, which was a whip with a piece of cloth tied to it.
    I went back to the center of the pen.
    Daddy was still standing there, but he didn’t say anything, the way the teachers don’t say anything when you are taking a test. I flicked the flag toward Jack, who was looking pretty hard at me, anyway, and he jumped and then trotted to the right. I flagged him on so that he would go a little faster, and then,when he kicked out, I flagged him on again. He bucked. I flagged him on again. Only when he was trotting nicely, around the outside of the pen, and looked where he was going in a businesslike manner did I lower the flag and let him slow down. He slowed down. But before he stopped, I flagged him on again. The thing is, he has to get the feeling that when he does something that he wants to do, it is you who is letting him do that. If he does something he wants to do that you don’t want him to do, then you have to keep making him do that until he doesn’t want to do it anymore. Or, as Daddy might say, the wages of sin is that you have to keep sinning until they let you stop, at least if you are a colt. I stepped back. He turned toward me, looking at me. I stepped back again. He stepped toward me and lowered his head. So I went up and petted him a couple of times on the nose. Then I stepped back and waved the flag so he would trot to the right. This time, he trotted nicely.
    Daddy said, “That’s better.”
    Jack turned in toward me again, lowered his head again. I stepped up to him, facing him, and lifted both my hands and waved my forefingers at him. He dropped his head just a little more and took a step backward. He was ready to consider further suggestions. I snapped the lead rope back onto his halter and then asked him to step over to the right and then to the left. He did what he was asked. Then I walked the lead rope around behind him and placed myself on his other side and pulled, just a little. He turned his head, turned it more, turned it more, until he was practically bent in two, and then he stepped under and turned his body all the way around until he was looking at me. I did this again, and then wrapped himthe other direction, so that he had to turn all the way around. Then I petted him. His head was down and his ears were flopped. He was a good boy at last. I scratched him lightly all along the roots of his feathery mane, and he leaned into the scratching just a little bit. He gave a groan.
    Daddy said, “You do a good job with him, but it’s a good thing we gelded him.”
    I nodded.
    “Well, I’ve got work to do. You want to ride Effie first or Happy?”
    I chose Happy. He got on Lincoln. Ten minutes later, we were climbing the big hill behind the gelding pasture, toward the Jordan ranch. What with the heat and then everything else we were doing, I hadn’t been up the hill in two weeks. Happy was a small mare, muscular and strong. She climbed the hill as if she had been waiting just to do that very thing for days. Lincoln had a harder time. But the weather was good, and about halfway up there was a breeze. It smelled sweet.
    The surprise was the calves, six of them with their moms, up under the oak trees. They had long, dangly ears and triangular heads. Their skin hung in wrinkled folds, and they were blue, the

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