contest sponsored by the cigar company and win a racehorse. “Lightning Bolt,” “Black Dancer,” “Speed Demon,” “Nightmare”—any one of these names could be a winner, plus they also made excellent titles for the novels. “White Cloud.”
“In a dank cave in the mountains of the west a baby foal named White Cloud was born. It arose slowly on its dainty legs, its fetlocks wobbling with the superhuman effort, its mother, the dapple-gray mare who had just found sanctuary there from the wrath of the thunderstorm, was nickering softly to it.”
Horses aren’t born in caves, someone pointed out. Also, a foal is a baby.
It was like a club: Saturday afternoon they all met with their notebooks in the park at the foot of the street and took turns reading their novels aloud. The park had once been a vacant lot where people’s dogs defecated without anyone bothering to pick up after them, but over time the community association had brought about a great many improvements, including planting a flower garden more or less at the center of the triangle and moving the three benches so they faced in at the flowers rather than out at the traffic. An old-fashioned street lamp was added later and a koi pool with a plaque on it commemorating the famous baseball player who had lived on the street and had once been Mary’s true love. Superhuman doesn’t apply to horses, Janice said.
Something in her tone made the author of “White Cloud” bristle. This was a curly-haired girl everyone knew wanted to be a writer when she grew up. I know that, the girl said.
That also happens to be a run-on sentence, Janice added.
She wasn’t a member of the club but often wandered through on her way to or from meeting her boyfriend. This was where she said she was headed or had been—no one knew for sure, only that she dressed the part of girlfriend with her camel-hair coat and tartan tam and brown leather pocketbook with its clasp shaped like a horseshoe. As Janice had gotten older she hadn’t gotten prettier. Her face was round like risen dough someone had stuck fingers in to make eyes. Still, she wore coins in her loafers, which meant she was going steady.
If she wore them in her eyes it would mean she was dead, the curly-haired girl whispered, not loud enough for Janice to hear.
There were no longer any flowers blooming in the garden, and sometimes overnight a sheet of ice formed above the two gigantic vermilion fish in the koi pool. The fish seemed to hang suspended without moving a muscle—some of the little girls, the ones who weren’t really club members but whose older sisters were—found the fish frightening. The only way you could tell they were alive was how every now and then one or the other of them would release a long dark string of excrement into the pool. The string would drift for a while and then break apart, making a horrible brown cloud.
I used to take riding lessons, Janice said. I know a lot about horses. I had a natural seat, Miss Haines told me.
She would rise and fall at the triple bar, the water-jump, the gate, the imitation wall, her hands buried in the flying mane firm on the stout muscles of her horse’s neck. He was a natural jumper, Janice said. She did not need to dictate to him. They cleared the wall together, wildly, ludicrously high, with savage effort and glory, and twice the power and the force that was needed.
Those aren’t her words, whispered the curly-haired girl. That’s National Velvet.
Almost everyone knew that at Miss Haines’s riding stable Janice had been put on the oldest and slowest horse, a tall white gelding with a tail so thin you could see the bone through the hair. As Janice posted around and around the ring, holding the reins stiffly to either side like a dowser, Miss Haines stood at the rail, shouting directions. Janice was a terrible rider; she was afraid of horses, of all animals really.
You think you’re so smart, Janice said. She pointed at the sky and a few
“In a dank cave in the mountains of the west a baby foal named White Cloud was born. It arose slowly on its dainty legs, its fetlocks wobbling with the superhuman effort, its mother, the dapple-gray mare who had just found sanctuary there from the wrath of the thunderstorm, was nickering softly to it.”
Horses aren’t born in caves, someone pointed out. Also, a foal is a baby.
It was like a club: Saturday afternoon they all met with their notebooks in the park at the foot of the street and took turns reading their novels aloud. The park had once been a vacant lot where people’s dogs defecated without anyone bothering to pick up after them, but over time the community association had brought about a great many improvements, including planting a flower garden more or less at the center of the triangle and moving the three benches so they faced in at the flowers rather than out at the traffic. An old-fashioned street lamp was added later and a koi pool with a plaque on it commemorating the famous baseball player who had lived on the street and had once been Mary’s true love. Superhuman doesn’t apply to horses, Janice said.
Something in her tone made the author of “White Cloud” bristle. This was a curly-haired girl everyone knew wanted to be a writer when she grew up. I know that, the girl said.
That also happens to be a run-on sentence, Janice added.
She wasn’t a member of the club but often wandered through on her way to or from meeting her boyfriend. This was where she said she was headed or had been—no one knew for sure, only that she dressed the part of girlfriend with her camel-hair coat and tartan tam and brown leather pocketbook with its clasp shaped like a horseshoe. As Janice had gotten older she hadn’t gotten prettier. Her face was round like risen dough someone had stuck fingers in to make eyes. Still, she wore coins in her loafers, which meant she was going steady.
If she wore them in her eyes it would mean she was dead, the curly-haired girl whispered, not loud enough for Janice to hear.
There were no longer any flowers blooming in the garden, and sometimes overnight a sheet of ice formed above the two gigantic vermilion fish in the koi pool. The fish seemed to hang suspended without moving a muscle—some of the little girls, the ones who weren’t really club members but whose older sisters were—found the fish frightening. The only way you could tell they were alive was how every now and then one or the other of them would release a long dark string of excrement into the pool. The string would drift for a while and then break apart, making a horrible brown cloud.
I used to take riding lessons, Janice said. I know a lot about horses. I had a natural seat, Miss Haines told me.
She would rise and fall at the triple bar, the water-jump, the gate, the imitation wall, her hands buried in the flying mane firm on the stout muscles of her horse’s neck. He was a natural jumper, Janice said. She did not need to dictate to him. They cleared the wall together, wildly, ludicrously high, with savage effort and glory, and twice the power and the force that was needed.
Those aren’t her words, whispered the curly-haired girl. That’s National Velvet.
Almost everyone knew that at Miss Haines’s riding stable Janice had been put on the oldest and slowest horse, a tall white gelding with a tail so thin you could see the bone through the hair. As Janice posted around and around the ring, holding the reins stiffly to either side like a dowser, Miss Haines stood at the rail, shouting directions. Janice was a terrible rider; she was afraid of horses, of all animals really.
You think you’re so smart, Janice said. She pointed at the sky and a few
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