Girl and Five Brave Horses, A by Sonora Carver Read Free Book Online Page A

so long, seemed to have become permanently short-circuited. The result was a series of minor skirmishes in which I always seemed to be the loser.
    I asked him one day what I should do about the audience after I made my ride.
    “After you dismount, face the audience and make a nice bow.”
    “Bow!” I said. “I’d feel like a fool!”
    “Then do anything you damn please,” he snapped.
    Our relationship was indeed wearing thin, but I didn’t know how thin until I went out to the park the day we were to open and found Dr. Carver pacing. He had already accused me a number of times of being unduly nervous and had suggested that I calm down. Now he was kicking up more dust than I had ever kicked and it made me angry. All that week I had been bashing the jitters over the head and getting lectured about it, and here he was at the last minute coming down with his own case of the jitters. So far I had consoled myself with the thought that he wouldn’t let me do it if he didn’t think I could, but here he was, blasting my only prop right out from under me.
    Later I learned he was always nervous on the opening day of any engagement, but I didn’t know it then, so it was no help to me. All I could do was hold onto the few nerves I had left and count away the hours.
    Mr. Foster, the manager of the park, had advertised our act as the featured free act of the grandstand opening, and as a consequence, long before appearance time, thousands of people were standing around the rope that separated the tank from the crowd. From my dressing room I could hear their voices, and as they grew louder my own excitement increased. I had to fight to keep myself calm enough to get dressed, but at last I had the suit on and the socks and shoes. Finally, and with extreme reluctance, I put on the bathrobe.
    Had it been my bathrobe or almost anyone else’s it wouldn’t have been so bad, but the bathrobe was Dr. Carver’s and it wrapped around me twice. I had begged for a fringed shawl to wear as I walked to and from the tower, but he had barked an immediate and pre-emptive “No!” He was terribly conservative, severely disapproving of anything that smacked of “flappers,” and felt completely justified in handing me his bathrobe.
    To appreciate the situation fully, one need only recall that he stood six feet four and weighed more than two hundred pounds, whereas I stood five feet six and weighed 125. The bathrobe, moreover, a gray wool affair, when bunched and tied around me resembled nothing so much as the hide of an old bull elephant. I had to keep hitching it up to avoid stepping on it and I could not have felt more unglamorous if I’d had the ears and trunk too.
    As we walked toward the tower we had to force our way. People stood hundreds deep in places. When we finally got to the ramp I saw that George, our groom, had made it somehow and was standing there with Klatawah. I took off the robe and laid it over the railing and began to climb.
    I don’t remember what thoughts went through my mind or even whether I had any thoughts, because a kind of numbness took over and I moved like a robot. All I remember is that when I got to the top I discovered I was no longer nervous and unsure. I looked down at seven thousand faces turned up to me, and their expressions of excitement and anticipation made me feel humble as well as proud. I wanted to do my best for them and somehow knew I would.
    I waved to the crowd, boosted myself up on the railing, and put on my helmet. When I signaled George to send Klatawah up, he began to turn him to build up the horse’s momentum, then sent him into the runway. Klatawah’s hoofs hit the ramp with a crash.
    The whole tower vibrated and shook as he rushed up at me, and I knew that in a split second he would be going past. Then he was there and I grabbed for the harness and swung myself into place. As he drew up at the head of the platform I was aware I had mounted him right. But the real test was ahead of me. I