True Blue Read online

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2011 by Jane Smiley

  Illustrations copyright © 2011 by Elaine Clayton

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Smiley, Jane.

  True blue / Jane Smiley ; with illustrations by Elaine Clayton. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: In 1960s California, eighth-grader Abby Lovitt has trouble with True Blue, the newest horse on her family’s ranch, a beautiful dappled gray who is so often spooked, Abby wonders if he is haunted by the ghost of his deceased former owner.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89416-9

  [1. Horses—Training—Fiction. 2. Ranch life—California—Fiction. 3. Family life—California—Fiction. 4. Christian life—Fiction. 5. California—History—1950—Fiction.]

  I. Clayton, Elaine, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.S6413Tru 2011

  [Fic]—dc22

  2010035975

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment

  and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  About the Author

  Farm Gate

  Row of Stalls

  Chapter 1

  I HAD GONE INTO THE HOUSE TO CHANGE MY JEANS, AND I WAS only about halfway out of my boots—which were very muddy—when the phone started ringing. And it kept ringing, all the time I was pulling off my boots and hanging up my hat and pushing my hair out of my face. I was really wet—I’d been riding Happy in the arena when the rain fell out of the sky like water out of a bucket, and we were drenched so fast we just started laughing. Daddy was in the barn, and Mom jumped off of Jefferson and ran in there with him—she was right by the gate, so she didn’t get as wet as I did. I could barely see my way across the ring, the water was coming down so hard. But Happy didn’t care. All of our horses lived outside anyway. Rain was just a bath to them.

  And then it all stopped. There we were, standing in the aisle of the barn, looking out at the clouds blowing off and the sun shining through the misty air. Mom said, “Oh, I love California. The weather just comes and goes. And there are no tornadoes. I love that the best.” Back in Oklahoma, where Mom and Daddy had grown up, there were tornadoes every day, or at least that’s how they made it sound when they talked about it.

  But I had to change my jeans at least—my jacket had kept my shirt a little dry.

  The phone rang and rang, and I knew because of that it would be Jane Slater, and it was. Jane was a trainer at the big stable on the coast; she had helped us sell a horse there in the fall. She said, “Oh, Abby! How are you? I do so miss talking to you. What’s it been?”

  I said, “We saw you at New Year’s. How—”

  But she was excited about something, so she interrupted me. She said, “Then I didn’t tell you that Melinda is back, did I?”

  “No, when …”

  “She hasn’t grown an inch, and Ellen Leinsdorf thinks she’s her worst enemy! Their lessons are back to back, and they’re both riding Gallant Man, because, you know, there’s been a big brouhaha about Melinda’s parents’ divorce, and they have to half lease him to the Leinsdorfs to afford the board, which is fine, but, goodness! What am I talking about?”

  Ellen and Melinda were two students she taught; I’d helped her with them from time to time. Melinda was older—about ten—but Ellen was tougher. I laughed to think about them and said, “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, Abby, I miss you. I feel surrounded by little little girls!”

  I said, “I miss you, too.”

  “Well, why don’t you come over here and look at this horse, and I can see you.”

  “What horse?”

  “Such a sad story. But he’s a nice horse. His name is True Blue. Very pretty dappled gray, black mane and tail, black points. Is your dad around?”

  Just then, Daddy came in. I handed him the phone and ran upstairs. That was the first I heard of Blue. While I was looking for a clean pair of jeans, the rain came again, and by the time it was over, the arena was too soaked to ride any more that day, because even if there was no more rain for the rest of the weekend, it would take twenty-four hours (“Only a day!” Daddy always said) for the arena to drain. This meant that our work in the winter could be a little intermittent, but at least there were no blizzards. Back in Oklahoma, whenever there weren’t tornadoes, there were blizzards, and Daddy and Mom had to walk through them for hours on end to get home from school, without mittens or buttons on their coats (at least, that was what my brother, Danny, always said when they started talking about how lucky we were to be living in California). “And uphill both ways!” When he said that, I always laughed. Of course, I went to Oklahoma myself from time to time, and the weather was fine.

  So instead of waiting around and maybe going over to the coast “at some point” (it was a half-hour trip each way, and more than that if we were pulling the horse trailer), we decided that we had nothing better to do than go look at True Blue and then shop for groceries. We left Rusty, our dog, sitting inside the gate with that look on her face that she always had—“Don’t bother to call. I’ve got everything under control here.”

  The rain might have skipped the coastal part of the peninsula, because even though there wasn’t a horse show, the stables were busy with lessons in all the rings, and grooms, riders, and horses were walking here and there. I looked around for my old horse Black George and that girl, Sophia Rosebury, who had bought him, but I didn’t see them in any of the rings. I made myself stop looking. I had had tremendous fun on Black George for a whole year. I thought about him often, but I hadn’t seen him since they’d driven away with him in the Roseburys’ trailer before Thanksgiving. In fact, I was a little afraid to see him, not because I thought there would be anything wrong with him, but because I thought that seeing him would make me miss him more.

  Jane ran over to meet us when she saw us parking the truck in the little lot. Daddy said, “You didn’t get all the rain?”

  Mom laughed. “We got buckets. It drove us out.”

  “No rain,” said Jane. “Just fog fog fog. Did I say fog?” She lowered her voice. “Our golfers don’t allow that sort of weather disturbance around here.”

  We all smiled. It was fun to see Jane.

  The horse, True Blue, was in the nicest part of the barn, and he was standing in his stall, looking out over the door toward the rings with h
is ears pricked. He saw Jane right away and tossed his head. She said, “He’s such a sweetheart. Listen to this.”

  We must have been about fifty feet from the stall still; she called out, “Blue! Blue! How are you?” and he let out a tremendous whinny. She said, “He always answers.”

  “He’s a poet and don’t know it,” said Mom.

  “Absolutely,” said Jane.

  By this time, we were at his stall, and I let him sniff my hand, which he did, then I started petting him down the neck. He liked it. But he wasn’t spoiled, because he didn’t all at once start looking for treats the way some horses do.

  “How old is he?” said Daddy.

  “We think he’s about seven. No tattoo, even though he looks like a Thoroughbred.”

  Since our adventure with our yearling, Jack, in the fall, I had learned more about Thoroughbreds, and one thing I’d learned was that they get tattoos when they are about to go in their first race, on the inside of the upper lip, so that you have to lift that up and read the letter and the numbers, which isn’t always easy. But the tattoo lasts the horse’s whole life, so every horse that races can be identified forever after. The letter comes first and tells what year the horse was born.

  Daddy continued, “Doesn’t the owner … didn’t the owner …”

  Jane shook her head.

  I could see that there were things Daddy and Jane had talked about while I was changing my clothes. I said, “Did something happen to the owner?”

  Mom and Daddy and Jane all glanced at one another the way grown-ups do when they think you are too young for something. Since Mom was now shorter than I was, if only by half an inch, I thought this was silly, but instead of rolling my eyes or scowling, the way Stella and Gloria did, I just kept petting True Blue, and right then, he looked me in the eye. Horses do that, and when they do, it makes you feel like they are seeing something that you didn’t realize was there. Finally, Jane said, “Well, yes, Abby. It was very sad. Not long after she got here with Blue, maybe five weeks? She got into a car crash and was killed. No one else was, thank goodness. It was a one-car accident.”

  “Very tricky road for newcomers,” said Mom. “Down the coast.”

  “They say she was swerving to avoid a deer. I don’t know.…” They shook their heads, and I could tell that was all I was going to hear about it. “Anyway,” said Jane. “Her name was Mary Carson, and she was from Cleveland, Ohio, and she had made no friends here that I can tell, at least none who’ve come forward to claim the horse and pay the board. The Colonel has called all his Cleveland horse friends and no one there knows her, or knows where she was stabling him. My guess is that she could have been recently divorced and changed her name. Anyway, she wasn’t terribly ambitious—she would get him out and take him on the trail every day or so. He seemed okay doing that, and he’s lovely. Here, let me get him out.”

  She took the halter off the hook and slipped it over his head. He came out like a prince, his ears pricked, his neck arched, his feet stepping lightly, and his tail lifted, but not excited or nervous, or even full of himself. Like a prince was how he was. Mom and Daddy and I stared at him, then Daddy stepped forward and ran his hands along True Blue’s spine and over his flanks, then down each of his legs. He was careful about this, feeling for swellings and warm spots. One of the things he always said was, “There’s no such thing as a gift horse.” And then he looked the gift horse in the mouth. Horses’ teeth grow their whole lives, and they keep wearing them down by eating. Daddy said that if they had the right pasture, and they ate it all year, they would go from eating lovely sweet moist grass in the spring through tougher grass in the summer, right into gnawing old dead shoots in the fall, and their teeth would wear down in just the right way all their lives. Hay isn’t as good for that.

  At any rate, True Blue had a full mouth, which meant that all of his baby teeth were gone and all of his adult teeth were grown in, so he was at least a five-year-old. He also had canine teeth, which are little sharp teeth that stick down about an inch behind the front teeth. They aren’t for anything, and usually only stallions and geldings have them. Canines meant that he was at least five. And if you looked at the biting surface of his lower teeth (which he allowed us to do without trying to get his head away), you could see that the indentations in the lower front teeth were worn away in the middle teeth but not in the two outer teeth. Daddy said, “I’d say seven. Not much older, if that.”

  Jane nodded. “He’s healthy and in good shape. Trot him out. He’s completely sound.”

  We took him out into the parking lot, and my job was to run and his job was to trot after me, going fairly fast. Lots of horses think this is an incredible waste of time, and so you have to cluck to them and pull them and get someone to move them out, but True Blue just came with me—away and back, away and back, with Daddy watching the way his feet hit the ground from the front, the side, and the rear.

  Jane said, “He’s a correct mover.” She meant that his feet didn’t go in any weird directions and his trot was even.

  Daddy said, “Not very big, though.” He meant that True Blue didn’t have much lift, and that his steps weren’t very large. Jack was our big mover—he sprang all over the pasture every chance he got, in a kind of show-offy way. Thinking about him made me smile, as always. He was thirteen months old now, and something of a handful.

  Jane said, “We are full of lesson horses, and I don’t have time to train him myself, but I hate to send such a beauty to the auctions. You never know where they’ll end up.”

  She and Daddy stared at each other, but I knew there wasn’t any disagreement, really. True Blue was a gorgeous horse with a perfect head and a big, kind eye. The only thing holding Daddy back was that superstition about gift horses. I put my hand in my pocket. There was a dollar there, along with some coins. I took my hand out of my pocket and held it toward Jane. She held out her hand, and I dropped the money into it. Turned out the dollar was a five-dollar bill, and the coins were two quarters and a dime. Jane looked at the money, then smiled. She said, “Well, Miss Abby, you beat out the other bidder and now you’ve got yourself a horse.”

  Mom stepped up to him and patted him and said, “He seems very sweet.” Daddy pretended to be scowling. Then he said, “I’ll give you ten,” and Jane laughed and said, “Sorry, sir, the bidding has closed.” I still had True Blue’s rope in my hand, so I led him over to a patch of grass and let him graze. I could see Daddy and Jane keep talking. I petted Blue again, this time along his shoulder and flanks. I knew we were playing a game, and that Daddy would have taken Blue—he was sound and nice and no reason not to—but even so, I felt like I had bought myself a horse, and it was a wonderfully scary feeling.

  Blue cropped the grass in a leisurely way, and then Daddy waved me over. Jane took the rope. She said, “Actually, the horse has six more days on his boarding contract, so you don’t have to pick him up right away.”

  Daddy said, “No reason to keep him here. I’ll come back Monday. Abby will owe me five cents a mile.”

  That’s why there are no gift horses.

  Jane put him in his stall, and we started to walk away. When we had gone about thirty feet, I turned around and called out, “Blue, Blue, how are you?” And my new horse lifted his head and whinnied loud and clear.

  It was late when we got home—time for Mom to make supper and for Daddy and me to feed the horses and put things away. The sky was clear, but everything was still pretty wet. Happy, Jefferson, and Jack were covered with mud—they had gone to a puddle and rolled around. But Lincoln, Sprinkles, and two horses we had gotten from Oklahoma over Christmas, Amazon, a big chestnut mare, and Foxy, a large bay pony mare, were completely clean, except for mud up to their ankles. And I had to oil my saddle because it had gotten caught in the rain, so that took me twenty minutes. While dinner was cooking, I had to clean my boots and oil them. Winter is a lot of work!

  After supper, I did my homework. We had just started reading a book in French called Le
Petit Prince. I was now on page two: Les grandes personnes m’ont conseillé de laisser de côté les dessins de serpents boas ouverts ou fermés, et de m’intéresser plutôt à la géographie, à l’histoire, au calcul, et à la grammaire. I translated this as “The grown-ups told me to leave the boa constrictors alone and pay more attention to Miss Geography, Miss History, Mr. Calculations, and Miss Grammar.” I always called nouns “Miss” or “Mr.” so that I would remember if they were masculine or feminine, because you couldn’t tell just by what they seemed like. I was getting a B in French. It was okay. In algebra, we were doing a lot of square roots, such as does the square root of 49 divided by the square root of 64 equal the square root of 49 divided by 64? I thought about this and decided, well, why not? So I put yes. I actually had a harder time with the problem about whether or not the square root of 7 squared equaled 7. I thought it surely did, but then I thought I was being tricked, so I sat there for a while before I wrote my answer. In science, we had just had a test, so no homework, and in English, we were reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. They were painting a fence. Things weren’t great for Tom, but he had a much nicer life than that boy Pip, in Great Expectations.

  I took a bath and thought about my new horse, True Blue, and Miss Geography and her friend Miss Grammar just seemed to float away into the mist.

  Truck and Horse Trailer

  Bedded Stall

  Chapter 2

  ON THE WAY TO CHURCH THE NEXT MORNING, DADDY ASKED ME what I was going to name the new horse.

  “He’s got a name.”

  Daddy shook his head. “We never keep their names.”

  “Why not?”

  “Clean break, fresh start.”

  It was true, though I’d never thought of it before. It had always seemed to me that the horses we got from Oklahoma had never even had names, but of course they had—Jack’s dam was named Alabama Lady, even though we’d called her Brown Jewel (and even though I’d called her Pearl in my own mind).