31. Bonnie
BONNIE
On the second Sunday in April, my teaching session finishes with a rider asking if she can book another lesson when I get back to Colorado.
I tell her yes and give her the card with my own number on it. The horse beneath her stands quietly while we talk. We have spent an hour making small changes that she can take home, and I am pleased with the work before anyone applauds.
The applause still feels good.
I hand the microphone to the education coordinator and step out of the pen. Mercy is at Cleo’s place. I miss her, but using the riders’ horses has made the session useful in a different way.
Beryl waits by the gate with Cricket in her stroller. My daughter is eight months old and has spent most of the session trying to remove one shoe. Beryl has saved it twice.
“You were good,” she says.
I take the shoe from her. “So were you.”
Cricket and I drove down Friday, with stops that made the trip longer and her less miserable. I booked my own hotel room. Gage came separately with the bay and the crew. Beryl met us at the hotel this morning; she agreed to spend the afternoon with us so I could teach without dividing my attention.
I lift Cricket and kiss her warm cheek. She reaches for the lanyard around my neck, and I take it off before she can put it in her mouth.
“Your daddy rides soon,” I tell her.
Gage is near the warm-up entrance, already mounted. He has drawn late enough that we can watch from the rail. The bay looks fit and ready. Gage looks like the man I used to watch with a pleasure so fierce I could not sit still through a run.
I still want him to do well. That surprises me less now.
We are crossing the space behind the main arena when Dewey hurries toward us with a folded running order in his hand.
“Bonnie. They’ve put you in Gage’s entrance.”
I stop. “Put me in what?”
He has a headset on and is already talking too fast. “A family return, built into his entrance. When the announcer calls his name, Tawny introduces a campaign retrospective on the big screen. You and the baby walk out to him at the gate for one photograph while it plays, and then he runs. I got the card five minutes ago.”
“No.”
“That’s why I ran. I’m telling you before I tell anyone else.”
Beryl moves the stroller out of the path of a passing rider. I settle Cricket more securely against me and look at the sheet Dewey is holding. I do not need to read it. He has already said enough.
“Who told them we’d agreed?” I ask.
“Byers sent it straight to the producer and said you’d both approved it. It never came through our office.” He unfolds the running order. “I put Gage’s instruction on our bookings. They went around us.”
“Then take it off the card.”
“I’m trying.”
Tawny comes through the arena opening as he finishes. She wears her own show jacket and carries the white hat with its crown. I am glad the jacket is hers and angry that I am still having to count that as an improvement.
“It’s a photograph,” she says. “You can stand with your husband for thirty seconds.”
“Did you tell them we agreed?”
“I told them you were both coming. You’re his wife, Bonnie. I didn’t think standing beside him would need a negotiation.”
“Being here isn’t agreeing to your campaign.”
The woman who rode the dun in my session has stopped beside the passage, waiting for a gap in the traffic. She looks from me to Tawny.
“Mercy’s the only thing missing,” Tawny says. “We’ve used old footage for that part.”
The screen above the arena comes alive between runs. COMING UP: THE REDFERNS RETURN. Behind the words is a still of Tawny on my mare, silver fringe across her shoulders. It is from last May. My stomach hurts with the speed of the recognition, and I shift Cricket to keep from clutching her too hard.
“Turn it off,” I tell Dewey.
He speaks into his headset. The screen changes to the standings, but the announcer has already begun promising the crowd the Redfern family, together again, when Gage Redfern rides.
Gage hears it. He turns the bay toward us, then stops well clear of the stroller and the people in the passage. He asks his groom to hold the horse while he gets down.
“What’s happening?”
“A mistake in your entrance,” Dewey says. “We’re fixing it.”
“They want a family return photograph,” I tell Gage. “They were showing Tawny on Mercy.”
He looks at the screen, then at the running order in Dewey’s hand.
Tawny speaks before he can. “We can change the wording. The sponsor paid for the retrospective. Nobody’s asking her to sign away the horse.”
“I said no,” I tell her.
Gage takes the running order. He reads the part Dewey points to, then hands it back.
“Remove our family from it. The photograph and the footage of Mercy.”
“I’ve stopped the photograph,” Dewey says.
“The film’s tied to your entrance. The producer won’t pull it unless Byers releases it or the director rules on the consent complaint, and the director’s still reading what I sent him.
Byers sold this package to the broadcaster in February, the week her session went on the program, on the two of you.
His screen contract renews on delivering it. ”
“Then Byers can stop it now,” I say.
Gage turns to Tawny. “Call him.”
She does. When she holds out the phone, her father’s voice is loud enough for both of us to hear.
“It’s sold, Gage. It runs.”
Gage turns away before Tawny lowers the phone. He asks the steward to move him to the end of the order.
“Draw’s the draw,” the steward says. “Two more, then you, or you scratch.”
“And if I scratch?”
“Your entrance comes off the running order. The whole package goes with it. The producer has confirmed that.”
The gate steward calls for the next rider. The bay stands quietly with the groom. Gage can still mount. He has a valid entry, a sound horse, and the strongest chance he has had at this title. Mercy’s absence has taken none of that away.
Tawny looks toward the arena. “Ride your final. It’s two minutes of screen.”
I know how easy that would be. He could go through the gate, give the crowd a good run, stand under the sponsor banner when they called his time. I could leave with Cricket and hear later that the image had been removed. Everyone could say the important part of the day went well.
Gage turns to the steward.
“I’m scratching.”
The steward looks at him, then at the horse. “You’ve got a few minutes yet.”
“Withdraw my entry.”
Dewey takes a step toward him. “You don’t have to do that. The horse is ready.”
“I know he is.”
“Gage,” I say.
He comes close enough to hear me without making me raise my voice. I can smell the horse on his shirt and see the dust caught at his cuff.
“You can ride,” I tell him. “I’m not asking you to give up the run.”
“I know you’re not.” He looks up at the screen. “It plays when I go through that gate, and the gate is the only piece of it I own. I’m not riding in under her on your mare.”
“Then be sure.”
He looks at me for a moment before answering.
“I’m sure.”
He tells the groom to take the bay back to the trailer and care for him. Then he waits while the steward marks the withdrawal. I hear the confirmation. The place in the order is gone.
The groom leads the bay past us. The horse is shining, boots on, his neck still damp from the warm-up, fit for a run he will not make.
When the steward calls the next rider, both of the horse’s ears go to the gate.
Gage lays his hand flat on the bay’s neck once as he passes.
The groom keeps his eyes on the rope. My weight has gone forward onto my toes with the horse’s ears, and I set my heels back down.
Tawny stares at him. “You’re throwing away a championship over an introduction.”
“You keep using my wife’s work after she tells you to stop. I kept making it worth doing. Today I’m taking my name out of it.”
“Then cancel my introduction,” she tells Dewey. “I’m not walking out there to explain why he isn’t riding.”
Dewey is already speaking into the headset. “Redfern’s scratched. It’s on the steward’s sheet. There’s no entrance to cue.” He listens. “Yes. All of it. Move to the next rider.”
Tawny takes the running order from him and folds it sharply in half. She walks off toward the sponsor boxes without looking at the entrance.
The announcer corrects the family introduction.
He says the teaching session was Bonnie Redfern’s own appearance and that Gage Redfern has withdrawn from the final.
The stands go quiet, then loud. “Why’s he out?
” a man shouts from the rail. Nobody answers him.
The next rider enters while people are still asking.
I begin crying anyway. I hate how public it is, then stop caring because Beryl is beside me and Gage is standing where I can reach him. Cricket pats my wet cheek with a curious hand.
“I wanted to see your run,” I tell him.
“So did I.”
I cry harder. He keeps looking toward the gate.
Beryl offers to take Cricket, and I let her. Gage puts an arm around me when I step toward him. I lean against his shirt for a minute, crying while the crowd cheers for somebody else’s time.
He does not ask if I am coming home.
After a while, I straighten and wipe my face. We walk toward the trailer together. Beryl pushes the stroller ahead of us, giving us enough space to speak if we want to. We do not speak much.
At the trailer, Gage checks on the bay with the groom. He thanks him for the work he did getting the horse ready. I watch the man accept the thanks, disappointed but professional. Gage stays to answer the groom’s questions himself.
Beryl parks the stroller by the step and squeezes my arm. She wants daylight for the drive home, and she goes. I have not thanked her properly. I sit beside Cricket while Gage finishes. The education coordinator finds us there, out of breath.
“I’m sorry. That segment never came through my office,” she says.
“The director’s finished checking the submission Dewey sent him.
The consent claim was false. He’s pulled the film and every Byers segment from the rest of today’s broadcast. The exhibition and the rest of their contract go to the circuit board this week. ”
She nods across the lot. By the sponsor trailers, Tawny’s father has a circuit official backed up against a golf cart. His arm chops the air. The official holds a clipboard to his chest and shakes his head, and does not give an inch.
The rider from my session, the woman on the dun who stopped beside the passage, has followed the coordinator down the trailer row to put her name down for the next session before she loads.
She is asking about dates when Tawny comes down the row behind a groom leading her gray, and she stops talking to watch Tawny pass.
Tawny glances toward the grooms. “We were celebrating the Redferns. Gage chose not to ride. That was his decision.”
“It was,” I say. “I asked you to leave my work and my child out of your pictures. You could have done that before he ever reached the gate.”
“That was her mare and her name, and you knew it,” the rider says.
The coordinator turns back to me for the dates. I answer her. Tawny is still standing close enough to hear.
Tawny’s mouth opens. She has had a line ready in every room I have stood in with her. This time the people she is watching turn back toward the coordinator. Nothing comes out. She follows the gray.
I watch her go, to the last swing of the gray’s tail. The rider asks me whether I would teach the exercise she tried this morning at the next session. I tell her yes.
“The old footage is gone from everything we still have to run,” the coordinator says.
I tell her the teaching session went well.
When she leaves, Gage sits beside me. The announcer’s voice carries across the grounds with the winning time.
The winner drifted wide at the second barrel, he says, and held on anyway.
Gage’s knee goes rigid against mine. The second is the turn he learned to wait at, and I drove out to watch him do it. Neither of us says so.
He closes his eyes for a moment. I put my hand on his knee and leave it there.
“We can sit a while,” I say.
“Good.” He settles back on the step.
We stay through the last announcement. When Gage asks what I want for dinner, I tell him, and we take Cricket to my car. I had imagined this evening with a trophy between us. I still want the evening.