Chapter 3

The next morning, Kim picked the two of us up right at 7:30. Mom had on jeans and boots that looked like they would be a lot more at home on the dance floor than at a horse ranch. It didn’t matter. The drive out to Ravenel took thirty minutes. Mom spent the time asking Kim about horses.

She turned left on the cleverly named, State Road S-10-1310, then left again at the equally cleverly named, State Road S-10-275. Who came up with that and why didn’t they have real names? Also, what did the locals call them? I pondered that while Kim explained the nuances of groundwork with a green horse.

We found the sign for Hope with Horses Ranch and turned in. Most of the pastures were well-groomed but a couple of them were a bit long. The entire ranch was enclosed with three-rail white ranch fencing that looked fairly new. Kim drove down a center path toward a large stable, with a green metal roof. On one side of the stable there was a large overhang where you could groom and tack your horse and on the other side was a large, covered arena. Two other trucks were parked along the side and Kim pulled in next to them.

“Hey. You must be Kim,” a lady called out. She carried two colored rubber buckets that I was sure were filled with food. “I just have two more to feed and I’ll be right back.” She put the buckets in the back of a golf cart and took off for a side pasture.

She was back in five minutes and we introduced ourselves. “I’m the stable manager, Holly Golightly,” she said, holding her hand out. I’d heard that name before. We all had. I couldn’t place it. “Holly isn’t my real name. It’s Denise, but when your last name is Golightly, your friends dub you Holly and you just roll with it.”

“Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” Kim said. “I loved that movie. Here, cat. Loved it.”

“The downside is that I have to explain it to everyone.”

“And the upside,” I asked.

“No one ever forgets.”

“I have a friend with the last name of Diamond and everyone calls him Legs. I don’t even know if he has a real first name,” I said.

“Exactly. Next time you’re out, you won’t remember that my real name is Denise but you won’t forget Holly.” She was right. “Let me tell you what’s going on. We have eleven horses here today and two more should arrive this afternoon. My limit is twelve. Before the two get here from Aiken, we’re moving things around and that’s what I could use some help with. We’re moving all our mares to this building. They have run-ins with a door to their stall. The geldings all get along and they have a communal run-in on the back pasture. That makes it easy for me and the other volunteers to keep track of them and care for them and it will make it easier for our newbies.” She pointed out various parts of the ranch as she explained things to us.

“The first order of business is to muck the stalls on this building so we can start from scratch and rearrange them. Then we’ll position their tack in the tack room in the same order. Some of our guests, in fact most of our guests are city slickers who’ve never been on a horse before. Maybe a pony ride when they were little. Most school stables cater to girls. Here, the mix is probably closer to sixty-forty, men to women and girls.”

“We can do that. Are the carts and tools inside?” Kim asked.

“Not yet. Toolshed around back. You’ll find everything you’ll need. I’ll need the name placards moved, too,” Holly said.

“You’re losing a horse?” I asked.

“We have to. I just don’t know where he’s going. I thought he was going out to Walterboro but they called and said they were full. I’m not sure I believe them.”

“Which one?” I asked.

“He’s the chestnut tobiano you passed on the way in,” she said, pointing.

“He’s a paint, right? Why are you getting rid of him?”

“He’s a work in progress. Our horses need to be pretty gentle. He can be, but he’s also temperamental.”
She paused for a bit. “He’s high-spirited. We’ve begun calling him Pia, but with a little TLC he’s going to make someone a great horse. The stable we got him from had a trainer working with him and they said she made great progress but he doesn’t respond to everyone. He needs to be more like a school horse. You know, gentle, with more whoa than go. We just don’t have time to develop him and now, I’m not sure where he’s going.”

“Would you like me to bring him to that pasture?” Kim asked, pointing.

“If you think you can. He wears me out trying to chase him down to put a halter on him.”

Kim grabbed his halter and walked out to get him. Mom removed things from stalls, placing them on the far side of the aisle as I started mucking them out. I piled the old straw and who knows what else into a cart. I had dumped it twice and we were nearly done with that side of the stable when Kim came back empty-handed.

“He’s laughing at me. I know he is. He waits until I get close, throws his head, and trots away. Then he turns and looks at me. He’s taunting me.”

“And that, Honey, is why we started calling him Pia,” Holly said.

“Would it be okay...”

It was like she read my mind. “If you think you’re going to have better luck, you’re welcome to try. If you can’t do it, don’t let it bother you.”

“Pia,” I said and reached for his halter.

“No, no. We just started calling him that. Pain in the ass. Pia. His name is Maveric.”

Maveric. I liked that. I found a jar of treats, grabbed a couple, and walked out to his pasture. His halter and lead were mostly turquoise with a sort of Indian design. I walked out and as soon as I got within a hundred yards, he stopped eating and watched me come.

Some people don’t think of horses as being smart. Not only are they smart, but they’re clever, and have pretty good memories. I opened the gate, stepped inside, and fastened it closed. I looked over the pasture, coming back to Maveric. He was still looking at me, almost motionless. He was gorgeous. His base color was a deep chestnut brown, with just a hint of red. He had a large white marking on the side I could see that sort of looked like a map of Asia. His left front and right rear legs were white from the knee down and the other two were chestnut. Once you knew his colors and pattern, you’d never mistake him for another horse.

I didn’t look directly at his face. If he was temperamental, he might think of that as a threat. I took a couple of steps toward him and then stopped. I’d never seen anyone at the Denton’s ranch or anywhere else, whistle for their horse. That was only in the movies, I thought. I whistled. When I did, he looked right at me. It didn’t scare him but it sure got his curiosity up. I whistled again. He threw his head in the air and came straight to me. At first, I thought he was going to run me over, but he pulled up just in time.

“Hey, Maveric,” I said, softly, rubbing his cheek and neck. “What are you doing out here all by yourself, Buddy? You’ve got great grass but no friends.” He pushed his head into me, obviously enjoying the attention. “Temperamental, my ass. Want to go for a walk? Can I put your halter on?” Sometimes, a horse will see a halter and decide to raise their head, making them hard to halter. Maveric bent down to make it easier.

Horses have amazing hearing. They can hear your heartbeat from five feet away. They synchronize their hearts to the rest of a herd. If one of them raises their heart rate, they all notice it because it might be trouble. My resting pulse was really slow. Walking out to the pasture and standing there, raised it some but I was sure it was still below seventy. Maybe that was it. Nothing to be worried about.

I put the halter on him, making certain it wasn’t too tight. When we were ready to go, I offered him a treat, which he happily took from me. “Ready? Let’s go, Maveric,” I said, keeping my voice calm and reassuring. When I led Ghost, Scout, or just about any other horse, they followed along behind me. Maveric walked abreast of me, his head next to my shoulder. I talked to him the whole way back. We were buddies.

“Back pasture?” I asked, pointing, when we were close enough.

I caught Holly by surprise. I don’t think she expected me back so soon, if at all. “Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch. You didn’t have any problems with him?”

“No, ma’am. He’s a sweetheart.”

Kim came out of the stable and took a look. “That’s Pia? He doesn’t look like much of a pain to me. Jack?”

“Beats me.” I walked him back to his pasture and let him loose. I thought he would take off, but he stayed right there, next to me. I reached in my pocket and found another treat. He took it, snorted, and walked away, looking back at me a couple of times.

“That’s just the darndest thing,” Holly said.

Mom and Kim had just gotten started cleaning saddles, halters, and bridles. Holly loaded her truck with saddle pads and drove them to a laundromat. While they were busy cleaning the tack, I used a pressure washer on the stalls.

When Holly got back two hours later, I was working on changing the name placards. “Hungry?” she hollered, setting a couple of pizza boxes on a little table. It was nearly two. I was starved. We found some chairs and parked them around a folding table. “There’s a bathroom at the end if you want to wash your hands, Honey,” Holly said to Mom, who went to do just that. Kim and I didn’t care. If you work around horses much, you either get used to it, or you wash your dry, chapped hands all the time.

“What are you going to do with Maveric?” Kim asked.

“Well, I thought I knew but that plan went up in smoke. We’re not so crowded that we couldn’t keep him here for a few more days, but twelve is our comfortable max and we’ll have two more this afternoon.”

“Jack?” Kim asked.

“What?”

“The two of you seem to get along pretty well. I bet Mrs. Denton has room.”

“What are you talking about?” Mom asked, sitting down and grabbing a slice.

“Maveric,” I said.

“How old is he?” Kim asked. “Is he current on everything? I know Mrs. Denton wouldn’t let a horse come if they weren’t current on their Coggins.

“He’s almost five, and they all just had their Coggins test in June. He’s barefoot. Nothing wrong with him but his attitude.”

“Are you talking about buying him?” Mom asked, just realizing that’s what was on Kim’s mind.

“I hadn’t been. I like him,” I said. “I have no idea what he would be like to ride.”

“Has he been started?” Kim asked. She wanted to know if he’d been under saddle.

“Yes, that’s what we were told. We’ve only had him two months but no one has ridden him here.”

“Where did this mystery horse come from, anyway?” Mom asked.

“A stable in Awendaw. His paperwork says he came from a BLM auction. He was started but I don’t know if they followed up. To be honest, I don’t know much more than that. We were down a couple of horses and had the option to buy him for five hundred. It seemed like a good deal, but it isn’t if no one can ride him.”

“What’s BLM?” Mom asked.

Even I knew that. “Every year, the Bureau of Land Management rounds up a bunch of wild horses and auctions them off. You can get one for a great price but they’re green. You have to start them. It can be a lot of work.”

“But this horse has been started, you said.” Mom was trying to wrap her head around the whole thing.

“You should ride him, Jack. If you still like him after you do that, we should call Mrs. Denton and see if she has room.”

“You’re certainly welcome to try. You’ve already had more success with him than anyone else. Have you been teaching your girlfriend? How long?”

Kim and I both snorted. It was pretty funny. “Fiancée,” Kim said, pulling her ring out of her pocket. “I’ve been teaching him. I did not teach him how to go get Maveric, that’s for sure. He wouldn’t stand still for me.”

“Ah, the student becomes the master,” Holly said, squinting her eyes and trying out her Chinese accent.

“Let’s not get carried away,” I said. “He likes me, that’s all.”

“Uh-huh,” everyone said.

We finished lunch and Holly pointed out a saddle and bridle I could use with Maveric. She saw me looking at it funny. “It’s an endurance trail saddle. It has a mostly western design but without a horn. Lightweight, too. A western saddle weighs about twenty-five pounds. This is fourteen or fifteen at most. Very comfortable. It’s his saddle. It’s a seventeen, too, so it should fit you okay.”

“Seventeen,” Kim said. “This was meant to be, Aquaman,” Kim said.

“Where’s the thingy up front? The handle,” Mom said.

“No horn. You know what the horn is for, right Mom?” she shook her head. “After you rope a cow, you wrap the rope around the horn so your horse can back up and keep tension on it. If you’re not going to do that, a horn just gets in your way.”

“Who knew?” she said, sort of making fun of me since I always said that.

“Helmet,” Holly said. “Everyone wears a helmet when they ride, especially with a horse like Maveric. If Maveric decides to be Pia, I want you wearing one.”

“Do you have a super, extra-large for his big head?” Mom asked but no one was paying any attention to her since she called a horn a handle.

I grabbed his halter again and walked back out to the back pasture. He looked at me from a distance, waiting. I just watched him for a minute, then thought, what the hell, and whistled. He came running. Unbelievable. I gave him a treat and put the halter on. Maybe it was meant to be. This is not what I had planned for the day.

Twenty minutes later, I’d groomed him, and put on his saddle and bridle, while Holly pointed out the differences between his tack and what I was used to. “He came with this eggbutt snaffle bit. It’s the most comfortable bit for a horse but if he’s stubborn, he might not respond to your commands very well.” She handed me a helmet and I put it on. I was official.

Maveric and I walked to the outdoor arena. I steadied him, then lifted up, settling gently into the saddle. Some horses will start to move before you’re ready. Maveric waited. I leaned forward and whispered to him. “You ready, Maveric? Let’s go. Walk, walk, walk,” I said and gave him a gentle nudge.