Champion Horse by Jane Smiley Page B

or something like that. I sat down.
    She went around, plopped into her desk chair, and said, ‘You know how to make sure you never ride?’
    I shook my head.
    ‘Run a stables!’ She laughed. Then she leaned forward and said, ‘Did you ride Pie in the Sky?’
    I nodded. ‘Danny helped me.’
    ‘He’s not a bad horse. He’s got air to spare.’
    ‘What does that mean?’
    ‘I saw him jump a five-foot course one day, easy as you please. He’s got amazing spring. But they – well, anyway. I’m sure your brother had a few ideas.’
    ‘Pie in the Sky came right over to us when he was finished loosening up, like he was saying he was ready.’
    ‘They do lunge him. But he’s so valuable that they never let him play or jump around. Might hurt himself. Not my business, but it could be said that if Sophia would pay more attention to him, she might like him better.’ Then she looked at me and said, ‘When you’re going down to the jump, sit up a little. That’s all. I’ll be finished with this in time to come watch you.’
    The first thing I did when we were mounted and doing our own flat work was lift the inside rein every so often, at the walk, trot, and canter, and in both directions – not enough for Peter Finneran to see, but enough for Pie in the Sky to feel and to respond to by lifting his inside shoulder and relaxing his back. When Jem Jarrow first taught me that trick, it had worked even with Rally – or Grumpy George, as he was called then – who was about as stiff in his back as a horse could be.
    We did half an hour of flat work, and I could see Sophia watching me, and Sophia could see me watching her. The best thing for getting used to another person riding your horse (and there was still a part of me that thought of Onyx as my horse) is to watch that person riding your horse – after a while, he stops looking like your horse, and she stops looking so odd on  him. Sophia was maybe the thinnest person I ever saw, but not skinny – more like made of steel cables. She had long plaits to the middle of her back, thick and blonde, and she had big braces in a thin face. As far as I could tell, Black George – Onyx – behaved perfectly for her. But Peter Finneran acted and talked like he thought she was a mess. If he wasn’t shouting, ‘Corner, Sophia!’ then he was shouting, ‘Sophia! Please ask that horse to wake up!’ or ‘Elbows, Sophia! Bend your elbows!’ And then once we were warmed up, instead of having us trot over a jump (there were six set up, plus a long row of crossbars), he had us line up and dismount. Then, one by one, he got on each of our horses and took him or her down over a vertical, maybe three-foot-three,and four strides after that, a triple bar, a pretty high jump, maybe three-foot-six. The first one he got on was Onyx. Once he was mounted, he said to us, ‘All right. I’m going to jump the first jump the way you girls jump, and then I’m going to jump the second jump the way it should be done.’
    He turned Onyx in a small circle and cantered towards the first jump. At the very last moment, Onyx made an extra tiny stride, then he jumped awkwardly, but he got over. Then he galloped to the second one, jumped perfectly out of stride, and made a small circle and came back to us. Peter Finneran said, ‘Scary, wasn’t it?’ He pointed to the triple bar. ‘Well, my heart is in my throat every time you girls head down to a fence. If your parents aren’t passing out with anxiety, they’re fools. But then, buying you these horses was pretty foolish, so maybe they are fools.’
    He got off Black George and onto Eileen’s bay, then did the same thing, right down the line. Standing there watching Pie in the Sky do this, ‘chip’, did not make me want to jump anything, but I had to admit his second jump was bold and graceful. After I was back on (and I had to mount from the ground – no leg-up from Peter Finneran), he sent us to the rail again, and we practised shortening and