Riding Chance Read online

  “Miss T said it used to be just for rich people.” Miss T is Foster’s mom. She’s all right with me. She and Foster really helped me out when my mom passed. When I was upside down.

  “Well,” I said, “I don’t know about you, but, like it or not, I have to stick with it.” We both knew I might get expelled if I didn’t. Foster skipped school sometimes, but not as much as me.

  He put the cards down and looked at me with one eyebrow raised. “They beat people up over at Dunhill.” Dunhill High School, where I’d end up. I didn’t want Foster to keep talking about it.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. “Smells like Miss T’s getting busy downstairs,” I said. The smell of her chicken gumbo made its way up to Foster’s room. It was probably dinnertime at my house, too. “It’s time to eat, man.” I got up off the floor. “Check you out tomorrow.” I picked up my backpack and headed downstairs. I stuck my head in their kitchen and waved to Miss T before I left.

  The block was quiet. Most people were inside their houses. Everybody but Lay-Lay. He was leaning on a car across the street. We hadn’t spoken since the iPhones thing went down. Best to just keep walking.

  I KNEW POPS’S BROTHER, Uncle Ronnie, was over the house when I saw his motorcycle parked up on the sidewalk, right next to Mr. Glover’s TV. Guess he figured Mr. Glover couldn’t help but keep an eye on his bike while he watched his shows. Uncle Ronnie livened things up when he came over. He was on me soon as I walked in the living room.

  “Hey, little man, you keeping busy?” He leaned forward in the reclining chair. “How the ladies treating you?”

  “Not as good as you, Uncle Ronnie.”

  “I know that’s right,” he said, settling back. Uncle Ronnie had on his cowboy boots and leather hat. He was always worried about how he looked. Not like Pops. Pops could’ve looked better, but he didn’t care.

  “For God’s sake, Ron. Will you give it a break? You been asking folks that for years.” Pops been tired of Uncle Ronnie’s ladies’ man routine. Pops picked up the remote and turned off the TV.

  “You know I taught you better than that. Real men respect women,” a voice said.

  Ooh, Grandmom. Uncle Ronnie busted big-time. Didn’t nobody know she could hear everything from the other room. Grandmom came to live with us after my mom passed. Pops took that real hard. He still wasn’t right from it.

  “How much did you hear?” asked Uncle Ronnie.

  “Enough,” said Grandmom. She stepped from the kitchen doorway into the small dining room, where the table was set. “We can eat as soon as Ronnie takes his hat off.” The skin on her face and neck was shiny with sweat.

  Uncle Ronnie did what Grandmom said. “I ain’t trying to disrespect nobody.” He winked at me in the split second before his hat covered his face.

  “Ain’t?” said Grandmom, shaking her head. She put the fried fish on the table.

  We all sat down and Pops changed the subject before Uncle Ronnie set Grandmom off again.

  “So, how’s things in the park?”

  I made a quick calculation: Do I play it cool or tell it straight?

  “All right,” I said, going for cool.

  “All right? Is that all you have to say?” Pops pointed at the coleslaw, asking Uncle Ronnie to pass it to him. “I wish I’d had the chance to work with horses when I was your age.”

  Grandmom reached over and patted my hand. “This is a good thing, Troy. We don’t want you to end up like some of these other young men around here.”

  I wasn’t in the mood for a lecture. I needed time to think about stuff on my own. I could like the horses, but I was scared of them. Didn’t know what Winston was going to be like. Still wasn’t sure what polo even was. It wasn’t b-ball, wasn’t football, wasn’t boxing. Wasn’t nothing I knew. Dre wasn’t bad, but I didn’t really want to be all horsey like him.

  That girl was fly, though. Pops used to talk to me about girls. You know, how to act when you go over to a girl’s house and how they want to be treated, but he didn’t feel like talking much right now.

  And the other animals were another thing, goats and all that. They were totally new to me. We never had a cat or nothing. Pops said they would have been just another mouth to feed. The only animals I knew were some bad dogs around the way that I did my best to stay away from.

  Like I said, I was scared of the horses, but I wasn’t telling nobody. Man, their flow was tight. They were beautiful, all power. Prancing around the yard, showing all their muscles and stuff. They looked like they would never be scared.

  “I’m tired,” I said, keeping my eyes down on my plate. “Had a hard day.”

  “A young man like you shouldn’t get tired so easy,” said Grandmom. “Shoot, you’re tall for your age and getting broader every day. Seems like you could keep going.”

  “Reminds me of myself,” said Uncle Ronnie, sprinkling hot sauce on his fish. He never missed the chance to relive his younger days through me. “I was handsome, too, and shot up real fast. I spent a couple of years tripping over myself. Troy’s lucky, though—he’s already got a slide that it took me a few more years to pick up.”

  Everybody always has something to say about my slide. I’m not bragging on myself; it’s a fact. My mom used to say she couldn’t say no to me when I turned on the charm. It’s like a natural gift.

  “Troy may look like you at thirteen but let’s hope that’s where the resemblance ends,” said Pops. He never misses his cue to put Uncle Ronnie down. That’s one thing that hadn’t changed.

  MUCKING OUT. You need rubber boots to do it. That tells you all you need to know. At first, me and Foster hoped nobody on the block would see us in our boots. Mr. Glover was the one who called us out. He was always in front of his house, sweeping the sidewalk, watching TV, or directing traffic. He’d been around forever. It was hard to tell how old he was ’cause he was in real good shape. He stopped us one morning when we were getting on our bikes.

  “You two look rather enterprising.” Mr. Glover always talked like that.

  “They’re just rubber boots,” I said. “Nothing special.”

  “Oh, but it’s always special when a man changes his footwear.” He couldn’t just say shoes. It had to be footwear.

  “Whatever. We’re taking care of some horses.”

  “Figured something like that. The smell was a dead giveaway.” It wasn’t a put-down; he didn’t look mean when he said it. Mr. Glover was right about the smell, though. It got all in your clothes, your hair, everything. Everybody who came anywhere near us would know we were around animals.

  And Winston, who liked to dress, even he changed out of his leather boots when he showed us how to clean the stalls. He did that our second day at the stables.

  “Don’t try to muck out a stall when the horse is in it,” he said to the group of us new kids. We were standing under the lightbulbs in the barn. He opened the door to a stall—that’s what the little rooms are called—so we could see inside. The tops of the stalls were open to the barn’s high ceiling. The stall doors were half doors, really. So when the horses were inside, they could still see what was happening in the barn.

  “You’ll have to maneuver around the animal. I don’t recommend that. The first thing you have to do is assemble your tools so you won’t find yourself standing with a shovelful of manure and nowhere to put it. Bring your pitchfork and shovel in the stall with you. Put your wheelbarrow close to the stall door. Troy, why don’t you demonstrate while I walk you through it?”

  “I can’t really demonstrate since I don’t know how to do it,” I said, looking around at the other kids. That’s when I saw her. The girl. She was standing back from our group. I watched her smooth her dark brown locs back from her face and tie them behind her head. Everything about her was delicate.

  “We’re all here to learn. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” I knew he would do that. He set me up. I walked into the stall. Winston, Foster, and the other kids were at the door.

  “What you want to do is
pick out the manure and wet straw with the pitchfork and dump it in the wheelbarrow. Troy?”

  I did like he said but the wheelbarrow was behind everybody, so I had to carry the pitchfork outside the stall. Poop was dropping everywhere.

  “Now, as you can see, this is not the way to do it,” said Winston. “The wheelbarrow should be in the stall so you don’t have to keep picking up the same stuff.”

  “It wouldn’t be a problem if you weren’t in the way,” I said.

  “This is a demonstration, Troy. No one’s in the way. We’re observing.”

  Foster pushed the wheelbarrow through everybody. He set it down in the stall. I tried to get all the crap up with the pitchfork, but it kept falling through.

  “Sometimes it’s easier to pick up the wet straw with a shovel.”

  “Why didn’t you say that before?” I asked. I dropped the pitchfork and used the shovel to fill the wheelbarrow up.

  “We have one area behind the barn where we dump the wheelbarrows,” Winston said, pointing toward the back doors. “Troy, can you take your wheelbarrow outside without tipping it over?” He said that ’cause he knew what was going to happen. And it did. The wheelbarrow tipped over. I tried to straighten it up and my cell phone fell out of my pocket. Yeah, you got that right. It fell right on a turd.

  Everybody lost it. The chunky dude was down on his knees almost crying. The new girl’s shoulders were shaking so hard I thought she was getting happy. Foster didn’t want me to see him laughing, but he was cracking up. It looked like he was kissing that goat, Percy, over in another stall.

  “Two things could have been done to avoid this,” said Winston, flicking dirt off his sleeve. “First, you should have the wheelbarrow face the direction you’ll be going in. It’s easier that way. Second, a full wheelbarrow tips over very easily. Never fill it all the way up.”

  Winston was messing with me. Testing me like everybody always does. Part of me was ready to walk out, but that’s what he wanted me to do. I don’t go down that easy.

  “Guess I won’t be texting tonight,” I said, trying to shrug it off.

  “You sure won’t.” It was the guy we saw in the polo field the day before. The one with the number three jersey. He looked like he was a little older than me and Foster.

  “I think I heard your camera click,” he said. “You’ll have a photo to refer to later.”

  “We can do without the smart remarks, Jerome,” said Winston. Jerome walked over to our group. Tried to act like he didn’t care, but he was checking everybody out. He wasn’t taller than me, but he was bigger all the way around. I knew his face, though. Just couldn’t place it. “Jerome’s been with us for, what is it now, three years?” said Winston.

  Jerome corrected him. “Four.”

  “He’s a good rider and an even better polo player.” Winston was proud of him. You could see that. “You guys can learn a lot from him.”

  “Look me up anytime,” said Jerome. “Best to text me”—he nodded at me and added—“if you can.”

  GRANDMOM THINKS WANTING SOMETHING bad enough will help you get it. That ain’t true. After my mom passed, I wanted Pops to keep everything together, but he didn’t. I wanted him to keep talking to me about girls and things going on around the way, but he stopped. I didn’t have much faith left in wanting or in anything good happening after I lost both of them—my mom to dying and my pops to being sad. When Pops wasn’t looking beat down, he was just sorta snapping on everything like nothing was right anymore. And it was really bad at night when the house was quiet except for his pacing. I don’t think he knew I could hear him, but he probably couldn’t stop even if he did.

  My mom always said I had a natural charm. She said she could just wrap herself up in it. Felt like that was all I had left. I mean, everybody’s always saying you should use what you got. So that’s what I did. Monday morning I was, you know, brand-new. For the past eight months, I’d been finding something else to do during the day. Walking in the woods, going to the movies, even hanging out in an old video arcade. That was my usual thing. But that Monday, I played it straight up. School was a part of the horse thing, so I had to act like I was into it. Wasn’t hard ’cause nobody, not even the teachers, pretended our school was teaching anybody anything.

  First-period math teacher, Mrs. Witherspoon, out sick. Substitute sat there and read the paper. Dude acted like he was home on a Sunday afternoon. Second period, history. Mr. Bell still showing movies. That’s all he ever did. This one was about the Great Depression. Who needed a movie to see that? All we had to do was look out the window. Easy.

  I needed to get my cell back, so I went straight home after school, changed into my boots and rode my bike over to the stables. I didn’t expect that fly girl to be there, but she was. She was in the big, wide side doorway brushing one of the dark brown horses. Looked like she was talking to the horse, too.

  “Hey,” she said. I looked around to see if anybody else was there. Nobody. She was talking to me.

  “Hey.” I was glad I had on my rubber boots. At least I looked the part.

  “I’m Alisha.”

  “Troy.”

  “I know,” she said. I didn’t ask how she knew. She was in the barn when Winston and Jerome jammed me. I wasn’t trying to remind her of that.

  “I have something of yours,” she said, pulling my cell out of her pocket and tossing it to me. “Don’t worry, it’s clean.”

  “Thanks.”

  She’d finished brushing the horse and was picking up its legs, looking at its hooves. “You’re new to all this, huh?” She could tell I didn’t know what to do with myself. “Want to touch him?” She stood back up. “He’s nice and happy now.”

  The horse, Luke, couldn’t run away ’cause there were long ropes on either side of him to keep him under control. I moved next to Alisha and felt the horse’s side. The hair was soft like a rug, but I could feel how strong he was. Real solid. His hair was the same color as raisins, shiny like how the dining room table looks after it’s polished. Luke shifted his weight on his hind legs and I jerked my hand away.

  “He’s just getting comfortable,” she said, patting him on the shoulder. “Want to give him a carrot?” She pulled a big piece of carrot out of her pocket and handed it to me. “Just hold your hand out flat.”

  I put my hand up to the horse’s mouth. He had a real big tongue. Then I felt these soft lips just breeze across my palm and take the carrot.

  “See,” she said, “nothing to it.”

  She unhooked the ropes from the leather thing the horse had on his head, the halter, and started to lead him down the long hallway back to his stall. I walked along with her, making sure I wasn’t behind the horse. That big animal was so smooth; Luke wasn’t clumsy or nothing. And Alisha, as small as she was, wasn’t scared of him. Some of the other horses made sounds when we walked by their stalls. Like they were calling out to Luke. I was afraid he would step on a cat, but the cat moved out of the way at the last minute. All these animals just knew how to be with each other. We walked down to the stall with Luke’s name on it and Alisha put him inside.

  “Troy.” It was Winston calling from the front of the barn. “Breaking the rules already?” He was washing the mud off a horse’s legs in this big shower stall.

  “He’s with me, Uncle Winston,” Alisha said.

  “Wait a minute,” I whispered. “That dude is your uncle?” I was looking for the family resemblance. Winston looked all right, but Alisha was beautiful.

  “So I see,” Winston called out again, “but what’s rule number one?”

  “Check in with you,” I said, stepping out from behind Alisha. Didn’t want her to get into trouble because of me. I walked down to Winston. “I just came to get my cell.”

  “Doesn’t matter why you came.” He finished getting mud off the horse and straightened up. “The fact is, you’re here.” I couldn’t tell if he was mad because I was in the barn or mad because I was talking to his niece. “Horses can be dang
erous,” he said. “For instance, what would have happened if Luke had stepped on your foot?”

  Stepped on my foot? Was this dude for real? I shrugged.

  “My point exactly.” He scraped excess water off the horse with this rubber thing. “Don’t let it happen again.” The horse he was cleaning off was sorta nibbling on him. He patted the horse’s neck.

  “Well, since I’m here,” I said, “is there anything I can do?” He didn’t expect that.

  “So, you want to produce,” he said, looking me up and down. “You can make Dre happy by sweeping the aisle.” He pointed over to the far corner, where rakes, brooms, and brushes were hanging from the wall. At least it wasn’t mucking stalls. He put his horse away and went out to check on the others that were still outside.

  “Produce what?” I said when Alisha walked down to me.

  “That’s just his way of encouraging people. You know, some folks are lazy. He wants all the kids to work hard.”

  Pops used to encourage me, back when our family was still in one piece. I looked out at Winston again. He was rubbing a spotted horse’s face and smiling.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” I said, “but he’s not crazy, is he?”

  “No, but he’s going to work you.” Just what I needed, somebody else on my case. Alisha must have read my mind. “Uncle Winston’s tough but he would give the shirt off his back to help the kids around here.”

  How was this dude going to help me? I swallowed hard. Was he going to bring my mom back? Was he going to make Pops happy again?

  “His shirts are nice,” I said, “but it’s the boots I’m after.” We both laughed. “How long have you been around horses?”

  “Practically all my life. Uncle Winston raised me with them. He took me in after my parents died.”

  My mom died, too … I wanted to blurt it out but I couldn’t look lame like that.

  EIGHT O’CLOCK SATURDAY MORNING me and Foster were back at the stables. That’s when they start feeding the horses and cleaning the stalls. Winston wanted the barn to shine. That’s what he said. How he expected cobwebs and dried grass to shine, I didn’t really know. All I can say is it was hard work, real hard. Besides mucking out the stalls, there was lots of sweeping, carrying, dumping, nobody ever just sitting around.