Читать книгу The Legend of the Albino Farm - Steve Yates - Страница 5

That Hettienne could post to the correct diagonal so naturally in her stirrups and ride better and longer than any of her rural cousins was a constant source of chafing to them, especially considering Hettienne was from the great big city of Chicago. And even today, despite all this strangeness at dinner, Simon announced Hettienne was to ride the testy black colt, Questa Volta, the only thoroughbred on the farm. Though the cousins observed an instructive moment between Simon and Hettienne at the mounting stone, it was conducted in a whisper. She leaned into him, holding back all that yellow hair, which ought to have been braided or rolled up in a bun under a pinned hat. Instead she wore it loose beneath a man’s Hooligan driving cap twisted backward. In her white and flawless skin, in the hint of muscle at her shoulders and forearms, in her sure movements, round Ormond cousins could project and already envy a stunning, tall woman soon to be. She wore such citified riding gear—a white blouse, a tweed blazer, brown leather boots to mid-calf with hardly a crack. That long face, those icy blue Sheehy eyes. Simon gripped Hettienne’s knee with a steady confidence.

Cousin Johanna, who rode sidesaddle and tortured her poor old Morgan with all her extra pounds, marshaled her young Ormond sisters around her. The vast stone stable smelled of biting limestone, cedarwood, and last autumn’s hay. “What if one of us throwed that fit? To be born a Sheehy!” Johanna griped. The Ormond girls then all clamored for a leisurely ride to the lake while Cousin Johanna offered to recite the tale of Princess Emily and the Moan of Palamon. But damned if rather than a trot around the lake and waterfall, Simon and Hettienne headed the riding party straight for the oval racetrack.

On the dirt track, Simon, riding an old chestnut gelding, ordered Cousin David, on a young black filly, out across from him with a rope stretched between them. Far off at the start of the home stretch, Hettienne warmed up Questa Volta. The Ormond ladies groused in a knot. In Simon’s hand, the silver of the stopwatch gleamed.

At Simon’s nod, Cousin Hal dismounted and cupped his hand around the bell’s breast-like orb, then pulled the lanyard to test its muted clapper, brrrrrrippp! Simon nodded. Hooking two fingers at his lips, he let tear a hunter’s whistle. Then he waved his hat to Hettienne and circled it around his head. Hettienne pranced to them on Questa Volta.

“David. Hal,” Simon said as Questa Volta approached the taut rope, which now became a starting line across the dirt track. The colt was so muscled that watching his hide move was like staring at the transformations in the raw charcoal of beams razed by fire.

When the black colt steadied behind the rope, Simon raised the silver stopwatch. With a click of his thumb, he brought the watch down in a silver flash. Hal pulled the bell. Simon and David dropped the rope. At the rip of the bell, Questa Volta lunged. In no time, the colt and Hettienne were full out, shooting toward the first turn, then shrinking to a distant dust boil along the back side of the dirt oval, hand riding, the horse taking all the ground it wanted.

Straightening in the homestretch, she coaxed, and Questa Volta switched leads without any hauling. David’s and Hal’s faces both went blank; the Ormond girls all sullenly tucked their chins to their collarbones. Simon straightened his shoulders and in that moment seemed to shed decades.

In her hand, the riding crop flashed. She showed it to the colt, popped it once hard to Questa Volta’s black rump. Then suddenly, as she brought the crop forward and back to snap the leather with all the volume but none of the sting, a slip. A scramble. And the crop tumbled to the ground. All gasped but Johanna. And she braced up her posture and smugly waited for the worst to unfold.

Yet Hettienne crouched and urged with the horse, rocking, elbows sometimes up around its ears, the reins flourished as if she might cast them like ribbons of lightning. The horse, crop or not, found its second gear, blowing: pluh, ppluh, pppluh, ears forward.

Simon raised the watch high. The colt’s stretched nose, neck, and then Hettienne crossed the finish line. Clasped to the colt’s back, she rowed her arms onward again. The colt seemed not to touch the dirt but floated. Though they all knew the vision impossible from the pounding of hooves, there it floated: A black streak, a white rider flashing by.

Simon consulted the watch while Hal and David eyed him in wonder. Simon scowled at them, then coldly scanned the Ormond girls fanning themselves at the rail. “Now, that,” Simon said to all, “is a Sheehy.” Standing to her full height in the stirrups, Hettienne rode Questa Volta to them, jouncing sideways as if the all-out run on the farm’s only thoroughbred had been no effort at all.

Though everyone scoured the dirt track for the bobbled riding crop, the heat forced their surrender and withdrawal, and its loss was but a minor disappointment.

Riding back to the stable alongside his Sheehy niece, Simon told her and the Ormonds “The Tale of the Sickbed of Chuchulain” and how Sheehy ancestors at combat tournaments sang ballads of all the foes they had slaughtered and claimed proof of each victory by cutting off the tip of a bested opponent’s tongue. From a leather pouch strung around the neck of a Sheehy warrior, these bits of gristle were brandished at high points during a triumphant song, the legends of the vanquished clearly the property of the victor.

As Simon went on, Hettienne slowed Questa Volta to ride beside glum Johanna. She leaned to Johanna with a wink. “How’s that for a tale of yore, Cuz?”

Never yet bested, Johanna stuck out her tongue. Then, from behind her back, she brought Hettienne’s dusty riding crop. She wobbled it. “Drop something? Cuz?”

After hot walking and washing the colt with Hettienne, Simon ordered his dearest niece to minister the white analgesic liniment, Roy Boy. This she did with the care and drama of an acolyte at an altar despite the nervous eyes of the Hungarian groom and the riveted focus of Simon. The two men monitored the girl’s long arms and graceful fingers dipping into the crock of Roy Boy and salving the thoroughbred’s legs white. The colt gave only a shiver and a stamp.

Johanna, smoldering, turned away to walk her horse to the stables alone.