Free Gee Whiz by Jane Smiley

ahead of us. Danny dropped me off, and I walked over to the main arena. The show season was over. The jumps now in the arena were not the freshly painted fancy ones but the day-to-day practice ones, which had scratches here, and missing branches there, and faded paint. For some reason, they weren’t as imposing as the fancy ones. They seemed to say, “It’s okay not to jump us perfectly. Lots of horses and riders have been over us hundreds of times, and they all got better eventually.” Maybe that was reassuring.
    Jane came up behind me, and said, “Oh, good. You’re here. I have something to ask you. I’ve got some hot chocolate in my office, if you’re chilled.” She took my hand and felt it, then said, “Yes, you are. I could tell.” I followed her into the office, and it was warm in there. She poured me a cup from a pot on her hot plate, and I closed my hands around it. She went behind her desk and sat down.
    I sat down.
    She said, “Melinda’s mother called me.”
    I began to worry.
    “She doesn’t want her to stop taking lessons, but someone told her they could get quite a pretty penny for Gallant Man, and she wants to take advantage of that opportunity.”
    “Not Ellen’s mom.” This wasn’t a question.
    She shook her head.
    “A pretty penny is not something the Leinsdorfs could afford. And I do believe that Melinda would be devastated if she couldn’t take lessons. Her mother knows that. Anyway, the prospective buyer is in Los Angeles.”
    I must have sighed.
    She said, “You should take that as a compliment. A reliable pony is a rare and valuable thing, and his fate is to move from child to child.”
    I nodded.
    She said, “Anyway, I’m just warning you. The prospective buyer is coming to have a look this week, but there’s many a slip between the cup and the lip.”
    I said, “People always say that, but I’ve never seen a single person pick up his cup and spill it before drinking it.”
    Jane laughed, then said, “Don’t tell Ellen for now. Buyers from LA are very picky, and their vets never overlook the slightest thing. It’s like they want it new out of the box but with years of experience and no mistakes. If they get to the vetting, I’ll tell Mrs. Leinsdorf.”
    As I went out, I thought how different that was from the way my dad did it—he never called the vet. He went over the horse himself, with his own hands and his own eyes, checking for bumps and swellings and heat, looking for lameness, awkwardness, bad conformation, bad temperament. The people he sold horses to sometimes had them vetted, but usually everyone agreed that no horse was perfect, and if there was some problem, the question was, could you live with it?Dad had a whole list of things he could live with, and a whole list of things he could not live with. But he never asked a vet, and we rarely called the vet, except for vaccinations and tooth-floating. Those were expensive enough. Some people would say it was luck, but Dad would say it was caution, plus letting horses live out the way they were meant to do, and added to that a diet of good hay and grass. And the grace of the Lord.
    Outside the barn, Ellen was standing with Gallant Man and Rodney. She said, “I didn’t let Rodney give me a leg up, because I practiced when I came out Wednesday.” She turned around, gathered the reins, reached for the mane and the cantle of the saddle, and stepped onto Gallant Man. Then she said, “I’m getting good.”
    I said, “Yes, you are,” and Rodney said, “You are, indeed, miss.”
    Ellen said, “Rodney, how old were you when you started to ride?”
    “I was two, miss. Fell off and broke my leg out in a field when I was five. Took ’em three hours to find me.”
    I said, “What did you do all that time?”
    “Oh, I stared at the clouds and sang some songs.”
    Ellen said, “When did you learn to mount from the ground?”
    “Well, miss, for a long time, I was too small to do that, so I got my pony to side up to