7. Cowboy Lessons
Chapter seven
Cowboy Lessons
Beckett
Ihave read the horseback riding chapter four times.
Not just skimmed it. Read it. With a highlighter. There are notes in the margin about posture, grip and communicating confidence to the horse through body language because apparently horses can sense hesitation.
I'm prepared.
I'm standing at the fence of the round pen at seven in the morning telling myself this while Laney checks on the saddle job I did on a horse named Copper who is large, red and looking at me with an expression that I can only describe as skeptical.
Copper is fifteen hands high. I know this because I measured, which in hindsight feels like information that did absolutely nothing to improve my situation. What it did do was confirm that sitting in the saddle puts me a whole lot farther off the ground than it sounds in a book.
It sounds fine in a book.
I look at Copper. Copper looks at me. We are not yet communicating confidence to each other and the ride hasn't even started.
Remy is on the fence rail to my left, hat pushed back, eating an apple with the leisurely energy of a man who has cleared his entire morning schedule for this.
Silas is nearby pretending to work on something with a fence post that has been perfectly fine.
Maisie is sitting on the top rail with her boots hooked on the second one and a look of excited anticipation that I find only slightly alarming.
"You read about it, right Dad?" she calls over.
"Four times," I confirm.
"Cool," she says, in the tone of someone who is not entirely sure that's going to be enough.
Laney finishes checking the girth strap and turns around and looks at me standing at the fence in my new boots and my work jeans and the expression of a man who is absolutely confident and not thinking about the ground sixty inches below the saddle at all.
"You sure about this?" she says.
"I've done my research."
She looks at Copper. Looks at me. Looks back at Copper like she's having a private conversation with the horse about managing expectations. "Copper's gentle," she says. "He's good with beginners."
"I'm not exactly a beginner. I've ridden before."
Everyone at the fence goes very still.
"When?" Laney asks carefully.
"Summer camp," I say. "I was twelve."
The silence that follows practically has texture.
Remy takes a long slow bite of his apple.
Silas sets down his fence tool and picks it back up again.
Maisie covers her mouth with both hands.
"Summer camp," Laney repeats.
"It was a well regarded program. Very comprehensive."
"Uh huh." She takes Copper's reins and walks him to the mounting block. She looks at me with the patient steady expression of someone who has accepted what the next hour is going to look like. She has made her peace with it. "Come on then. Let's see what summer camp taught you."
Copper swings his big head around and looks at me as I approach.
I look back at him with all the confidence I have, which is currently less than advertised.
"We're going to be fine," I tell him quietly.
He snorts directly into my face.
Getting into the saddle is fine.
The mounting process goes smoothly, correctly and I settle into the saddle with the proper posture, shoulders back, heels down, hands soft on the reins. Exactly as described in chapter seven of the horsemanship guide. Which I have read four times and can practically recite from memory.
Laney watches from the center of the round pen with her arms crossed, her hat pulled down and an expression of careful neutrality that I don't entirely trust.
"How's that feel?" she asks.
"Good," I say. "Natural."
Copper shifts his weight underneath me and I recalibrate slightly but smoothly. This is fine. I am sixty inches off the ground on a fifteen hundred pound animal, everything is completely under control.
"Okay," Laney says. "Go ahead and ask him to walk."
I know how to ask a horse to walk. I read about it extensively. Gentle pressure from both legs, even and steady, while keeping the reins soft. I apply exactly that. Copper walks. I sit correctly and maintain my posture and we complete half a circle of the round pen at a perfectly respectable walk.
I look at Laney.
She looks back at me.
"Good," she says, with the specific tone of someone complimenting a child on holding a fork correctly.
"I told you," I say.
"You're walking in a circle, Beckett."
"I'm walking in a circle correctly."
From the fence Remy says, "He's not wrong technically."
"Stay out of it Remy," Laney says without looking at him.
We do two more circles at the walk and I'm starting to genuinely relax into it. I'm finding the rhythm of Copper's movement and adjusting naturally, when Laney says, "Okay, ask him to trot."
I know about trot. I read the trot chapter twice specifically. Rising trot, also called posting trot, involves rising out of the saddle on one diagonal and sitting on the other in a rhythm that matches the horse's movement. It's a timing thing. The book made it sound very manageable.
At some point I'm going to need a serious word with whoever wrote that chapter.
Copper moves into the trot and the world becomes an immediate and vigorous disagreement between what I thought I knew and what is actually happening.
The rhythm is nothing like I imagined. I post when I should sit and sit when I should post and overcorrect, under correct and grip the saddle with my knees which I know is wrong but cannot seem to stop doing.
Copper, to his enormous credit, keeps trotting patiently around the pen regardless of what is happening in the saddle above him.
I glance at Laney.
She is looking at a point approximately six inches above my head with her lips pressed together very firmly and her shoulders doing something that she is working extremely hard to control.
She is not laughing.
She is also absolutely laughing.
"Your posting is a little off," she says, in a voice that is admirably steady given the circumstances.
"I can see that."
"Try to feel the rhythm instead of counting it."
"I was not counting it."
"You were definitely counting it."
From the fence I hear Maisie's giggle escape before she catches it, followed immediately by Remy making absolutely no effort to catch anything.
I post wrong twice more and then something clicks and I find the rhythm and it smooths out and I complete a full circle of the round pen at a respectable trot.
Small victory. I'll take it.
I realize there's active betting happening during my third lap at the trot.
It's Silas who gives it away, which is remarkable because Silas gives almost nothing away as a general rule.
He's still near the fence with his fence post tool but he's watching Maisie with the particular attention of someone tracking something specific.
When I complete the lap without incident he makes a small movement that looks a lot like a man marking something down in his head.
I pull Copper to a walk and look at Maisie.
Maisie looks at the sky with the exaggerated innocence of a child who has absolutely been caught doing something.
"What's going on over there?" I ask.
"Nothing," she says immediately.
"Maisie."
"We're just watching."
"Watching and what else."
She looks at Remy. Remy looks at the horizon. The horizon offers him no assistance.
"We may have a small friendly wager," Maisie says carefully. "About how the lesson goes."
I look at my eight year old daughter sitting on a fence rail in her turquoise boots having placed a bet on my survival of a horseback riding lesson.
"What are the terms?" I ask.
She brightens immediately because she has been waiting to explain this. "Remy says you fall off before the canter. Silas says you make it through the whole lesson but something goes wrong at the end. I said you do fine because you practiced."
"You bet on me."
"I bet on you," she confirms proudly.
"How much?"
"Dessert rights for a week. Whoever loses does the dishes and the winner picks what Jolene makes for Sunday."
I look at Remy. "You bet against me."
He has the decency to look slightly apologetic. "I bet against you falling before the canter, specifically. I think you make it to the canter. I just think the canter is where things get interesting."
"Interesting."
"Colorful," he amends. "I think the canter gets colorful."
Laney has walked over from the center of the pen and is standing at the rail listening to this with her arms crossed. Expression caught somewhere between exasperated and entertained. She looks at me on top of Copper, then at the betting committee on the fence rail and shakes her head slowly.
"Y'all are terrible," she says.
"You could've joined the pool," Remy tells her. "I offered."
"I'm his instructor. I'm not betting on my student."
"So you think he falls too," Remy says.
"I didn't say that."
"You didn't say he doesn't."
Laney points at him. "Fence repair. One month. Keep talking."
Remy zips it with a grin.
I look down at Laney from the saddle. She tilts her head up at me and there's something warm in her expression underneath the exasperation. Something she's not quite hiding as well as usual.
"You ready to keep going?" she asks.
"What comes after the trot?"
She holds my gaze for a half second longer than necessary. "Canter."
From the fence Remy makes a sound of pure anticipatory delight.
Maisie grips the fence rail with both hands and leans forward.
Silas picks up his fence tool and sets it down again.
I settle deeper into the saddle, find my posture, and think about the canter chapter.
I read it three times.
I should have read it more.
The canter is nothing like the book.
I want to state that clearly and for the record. The book described the canter as a three beat gait with a rocking motion that most riders find more comfortable than the trot once they relax into it. The book used words like flowing, rhythmic and natural.
The book has never met Copper at full canter on a Tuesday morning with an audience.