Mid-way through, I must have looked a little goofy, because she stopped and said, “I’m boring you, aren’t I?”
“No, this is great, I don’t think I’ll remember it all, but I really like all the little steps you have to take. You must have done this forever, huh?”
“Pretty much. We always had horses when I was younger. I was a 4-H kid. Don’t make fun of me, but I was a rodeo queen.”
“What?”
“Well, it was just local, I did it for scholarship money. I took it pretty seriously back then, though.”
“Like the hair and makeup stuff?” I had never seen her wear any makeup, at least I didn’t think she wore any.
“No, rodeo and 4H stuff. I raised rabbits and broke a horse. In rodeo, I’ve done just about everything but ride bulls. I don’t really see the point in getting crushed by an animal the size of a car just to prove I can do it. Your dad helped me when I raised a goat one year.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. He called me over to watch a birth, and I got to raise that goat and show it in the summer. Tooney, we called her. ‘Cormallen Tooney.’ She looked like a Tiny Toon. You should have kids coming soon, you know.”
“Cormallen?” It sounded familiar.
“It’s an obscure Lord of the Rings reference. Your dad named the farm Cormallen Fields.”
“Doh. Now, I remember.” I remembered seeing it on some checks. I felt like an idiot.
She slipped the horse bridles inside her coat, and we led Rosemarie and Tucker along at a slow pace. Puffy clouds hung high in the sky, which was a rare blue, for a change. A slight breeze blew through every so often, sending a little chill over me, but Jodie and the horses did not seem to notice it at all. We walked in a large circle a couple of times, then she took out a bridle and slipped it over Rosemarie’s nose and arranged it on her head.
“I just want to walk them today. Do you want to give it a try?”
Looking at the stirrup hanging from Rosemarie’s saddle, I felt kind of like a hobbit. “I guess, I’m willing, if I can figure how to get up there. The stirrup is about half-way up my shoulder, and I don’t really bend that way.”
“You can cheat. There’s a mounting block over here.” I followed her over to a little staircase I hadn’t notice before, and she helped position and steady Rosemarie, who was starting to get a little antsy, while I shoved my foot into the stirrup and threw my other leg over.
“It’s like straddling a Buick.” Not ever being a cheerleader, I was not used to an activity that approximated splits.
“Yeah, you have to get used to it.”
She put Tucker’s bridle on and hopped on him as easily as getting in a car. Rosemarie started to move, following Tucker and Jodie, who were now a few feet away. Jodie gave me some tips on how to hold the reins, how to sit and move, and how to turn the horse. It was really cool at one point because we turned both horses to the right in unison, then stopped them and turned them the other way.
“This is the easiest thing I’ve done since I got to Milepost.”
“Well, that is about the best horse you could hope to have for your first ride.”
We ambled along the edge of the field, not going much faster than I could walk on pavement. When I asked Jodie what this was called, meaning how the horses were walking. She laughed and said, “Walking.” Then she told me about horse gaits, beating them out on the front of her saddle. Clip-clop, clip-clop. She pointed to different places around us and told me things, names of mountains, visible to us here and a little farther away, people my dad knew, and all sorts of other things. In between, we were quiet, listening to the hooves make contact with the pasture and the rhythm of the horses’ breathing as we went along. When we came up to a group of bushes, about 300 tiny birds began screeching and burst out and above us to the left. We stopped and focused, almost hypnotized, by the reflection of the sun on their wings, as they turned many times in mid-flight.
Jodie dismounted and felt the horses’ chests, then led them back towards the barn to get a drink of water. She helped me get down, checked their hooves, and we took off their tack, wiped them down with a cloth, and brushed out their manes. It was so Zen, I almost fell asleep. After a while, Jodie gave them each a couple of scoops of feed, and they almost seemed to purr.
We stood at her car, talking for a while. I asked her if she wanted to come over and have dinner with me, but she said she had to get home. I thanked her for showing me the horses. She said Sheila, who may be staying over an extra week or two, will be ecstatic to know I can help her with her horses sometimes. She said she would volunteer me. She looked at me really hard for a moment. I guessed she wanted to go.
I heard her car drive away, and a warmth came over me. I let Frodo outside, rescued a few eggs from the chicken coop, and stacked them in the cartons by the back door.
