The Horsewoman(47)

“Oops,” Tyler said sarcastically. And loudly, as if for the benefit of everybody else in the ring.

I ignored him. I was five out by now. This was a big day for me, being back on Sky. I wasn’t going to spoil any part of it by making a scene with Tyler Cullen.

So I was easing Sky away from him and his horse, and in the direction of the in-gate, when I heard my grandmother’s voice, as loud as if she were using a megaphone.

“Cut the shit, Shorty!” Grandmother yelled.





FIFTY-THREE



TYLER CULLEN MADE the mistake of engaging her. Not all the other riders had stopped to watch the show. But most of them did.

“You have a problem, Grandma?” Tyler said.

“I saw what you did,” Grandmother said. “Keep your horse away from hers.”

“I’m just getting ready to go into the ring, same as her.”

“No, you’re not,” Grandmother said.

I imagined the judges could hear her by now.

“Andrew in five,” the announcer said behind us. “Kyle four, then Becky, then Jennifer, then Tyler.”

“You better run along, Grandma,” Tyler said. “Or you might miss the Early Bird Special.”

Grandmother smiled wickedly.

“Oh, look,” she said. “Tiny Tim got off a good one.”

Now she walked me toward the ring. I leaned down and said, “I don’t need you to fight my fights for me.”

“I know that,” she said. “But sometimes I can’t help myself.”

“Sometimes?” I said.

She looked, I thought, like a kid who’d just egged her enemy’s house.

I expected Sky to be rusty. But once we were out there, she wasn’t. Not even close. It was as if I’d been riding her every weekend. She wasn’t going as fast as I knew she could. It was like she was feeling her way, same as I was feeling my way now that I was riding her again, for real.

We killed it on the first combination, early in the round. No hesitation. Perfect line. Hit the first and the second. And just like that, we were into it.

“Eyes up!” my grandmother yelled.

I asked Sky to turn it up in the middle of the course. Chipped one rail. It stayed up. Maybe it was our day. One more combination, late, then a rollback. My girl made it look easy. We finished clear. For now, we had the best time in the class.

Today you didn’t wait for the jump-off if you went clean, you went right into it.

“Stay ahead of your horse!” Grandmother shouted. “Not the other way around!”

We went clean in the jump-off, too, with a time of 33.8. There was a place near the end, a place where I could have gone inside. But Sky was leaning right and I didn’t account for that enough. We were too wide and chose not to take a chance. I’d already asked enough for one day. Went outside instead. Not Sky’s fault. Mine. It pissed me off, even though Grandmother had said the goal today was just to go double clean. I still felt as if I’d chickened out. But it was a solid time, and we still might have a chance to win.

But didn’t. Tyler, going last, finally blew away my time in the jump-off, winning by nearly two full seconds. Jennifer Gates finished second. Sky and I were third.

Even as competitive as my grandmother was, she was thrilled as we walked Sky back to the barn, talking and talking about how she couldn’t believe the horse had come that close to a first-place ribbon after not having shown in months.

“We found out one thing today,” she said. “Somebody’s still got it.”

“Sky was pretty great,” I said.

“I meant me,” she said, and laughed.

“I still hate losing to that guy,” I said.

Grandmother said, “You never will again when it matters.”

She put a hand on my shoulder. “He rode like a crazy man today. And you know why? Because even though he’s too mean and stubborn to admit it, he knows how good you are. You’re in his head, not the other way around. And one of these days, kiddo, you’re going to use that to your advantage.”

I turned to look at her, saw her smiling still, squinting into the last of the afternoon sun. She was still walking in her stiff-legged way, going a lot slower than when we’d come up from the barn earlier, on our way to walking the course. But somehow, in the softness of the light, she looked young.

It was in the next moment that I heard her say “Becky?” in a small voice, right before she began to sway from side to side as if a strong wind had suddenly blown across the grounds.

Then her eyes rolled back and she dropped to her knees before pitching headfirst into the dirt.





FIFTY-FOUR



A COUPLE OF EVENTS were still going on, so there was a lot of horse traffic between the barns and the rings. I carefully rolled Grandmother onto her back, saw she hadn’t bruised her face, took off my riding jacket, folded it and placed it as a pillow under her head.

I had no idea what had caused her to faint. Even though she was a diabetic, and I’d seen her get weak and shaky before, I’d never seen her faint until now. It was why I was so scared.

A rider I didn’t recognize stopped her horse near where we were between a side ring and the food court and said, “Should I call 911?”

Before I could answer, Grandmother opened her eyes and said, “Don’t even think about it.”