• • •
At her annual dentist checkup Gen learns she has eight new cavities. Her dentist says her enamel has been stripped away. He asks questions. Turns out it was all that hot lemon juice. While she’s at it, Gen mentions the strychnine and gets the reaction she wants. “I’m surprised it didn’t kill you,” the dentist says.
• • •
Imogen Brown, five foot five and fifteen years old, hot and dusty, fit and freckled, canters on Margie down the bridle path along Rock Creek, under Beach Drive Bridge, up the slope into a clearing bordering 16th Street and down again into the woods. It’s June 1944. She pounds across Riley Spring Bridge, veers left to continue downstream and opens out into a gallop. Jesus, it’s just so gloriously fun. Paths fork off into denser woods and steeper slopes, and Imogen knows them well, but today’s assignment is to time a direct route through the park all the way to the Tidal Basin.
Because . . . Meadowbrook Has Gone to War!
That’s a joke she shares with Fran and Dot. Imogen started riding lessons at a public stable, but from the beginning her mother had her beady eyes on Meadowbrook. If she couldn’t get her daughter off the brutes, she could at least get her into the equine version of a finishing school. Meadowbrook was where the ambassadors’ daughters boarded their horses, and it taught the pure English style. It hosted foxhunts. But it was full up, and Imogen, anyway, was too much a beginner. Then an influential matron of Meadowbrook had the heaven-sent idea of founding an equestrian chapter of the American Women’s Voluntary Services, which was aiding the war effort. Meadowbrook constructed additional stables and put out the call, and Imogen signed up so fast it made her mother’s head swim.
She barrels under another bridge, then slows Margie to a trot. The route is eleven miles; about half of it has to be trotted or she’ll exhaust the mare. She passes Miller Cabin on the other bank, then the picnic area for civilians, whom she’s sworn to protect.
Here, by the way, is how fine she looks: creased and worn leather boots, white canvas gaiters, denim jodhpurs, buttondown shirt with a navy blue tie tucked between second and third button, rakish Motor Transport cap. On her left shoulder is a blue diamond patch with a brown horse’s head, above which reads the banner, “A.W.V.S.” Imogen cut and sewed the patch and banner herself, following the regulation patterns in the training manual.
Now she passes the police lodge—greetings, fellow guardians!—and parallels Ross Drive. She can make out through the trees the hoods of cars, which on this sunny Saturday are backed up in traffic. She skims past them, up a small rise—at the top she sees a complete car, a little girl at the back window who flashes a startled wave—then back down. There’s a fallen branch toward the bottom, and Margie shortens up and scampers over it like a happy cat.
Here’s the idea: if Washington, DC, gets Blitzed or invaded and all communications are cut (lines down! telegraph operators held hostage!), the brave teenage horsegirls of the A.W.V.S. Junior Auxiliary Rock Creek Patrol will carry messages from temporary command centers in Maryland down through the park to the Lincoln Memorial, where crisp-saluting operatives will wait to further the missives (extracted from dusty leather satchels) on to bunkered leaders in the basements of the White House and the Capitol. Imogen and her fellow express riders are like the Norwegian children in Snow Treasure who sledded their country’s gold reserves past the Nazis. Who would suspect these youngsters of such grit and valor?
In other words, what a crock of shit! What a wonderful boondoggle!
On past Peirce Mill and the National Zoo, the stolid backs of embassies, down to where the park gets narrow, Margie tiring, now entirely trotting, and finally out along the shore of the basin—fresh breeze off the water, bright clouds in blue sky—around Easby’s Point toward the Memorial. She reaches the designated handoff marker—a stick pounded into the grass with a red ribbon tied to it—no real operative in sight, of course, just stern Mrs. Brody in her wool suit and overseas cap, who nods to her while recording the time—68 minutes—then communes longer and more tenderly with Margie.
Imogen waters the mare, gives her hay from the trailer and a carrot from her pocket, brushes her down, feels her legs, throws on a blanket, talks in her velvet ear. Two following riders show up—one is Fran—and their times recorded (71 and 77 minutes, ha!). All three horses and their girls ride back to Meadowbrook in the trailer.
D-day happened two weeks ago.
“Meadowbrook stands alone!” Fran intones in her best radio voice.
All the girls laugh, even the driver, mannish Miss Evans.
Imogen is having a wonderful war.
• • •
Mount Holyoke College! Massachusetts! Many miles away!
Imogen is in the class of 1950, whose symbol is Pegasus, which is perfect, as she spends her four years on horses flying over jumps. Technically she’s a chemistry major, but who cares about that? She lives in the stables with the other horsewomen, her best friends Mac, Birch, Smitty, Delph. They call her Imp. She’s the most fearless jumper of the lot, surpassed only by Mr. Nichols, Master of Equitation, who loves flying so much he levitates above the saddle at the top of every magnificent arc. (Look at the photographs.)
The wonderful, valiant, liquid-eyed horses, so strong, so dear. Early mornings in the outdoor ring, afternoons on the hunt course, evenings with the warm electric light in the stables, the sweet hanging dust,
