The Education of Will Read online

  The next day, my friends and I figured Lassie and I could herd the sheep through unfenced fields and woods to a half mile from my farm. After that, we’d have to move the sheep down the county highway the rest of the way, with our cars in front of and behind the small flock. We picked a quiet time of day with little traffic, set our watches, and arranged a meeting time as if on a military maneuver. While I led the way, Lassie kept the sheep between her and me as we moved them out of the barn, up a hill toward a pasture, and down through a parcel of woods toward the road. By the time we got to the road, we’d walked less than a mile, yet I was already tired from the anxiety of losing the nervous sheep. As we descended a steep hill toward the highway, with my heart beating hard, I called to the drivers in the escort cars, who were waiting on either side of the trail as it joined the highway. Lassie eased the sheep onto the black asphalt between the escorts, and we proceeded like some midwestern cattle drive, car lights flashing.

  Though it took only fifteen or twenty minutes on the pavement to finish the trip, it felt like forever. I hadn’t anticipated what it would be like to see my dog on the road, walking as if naked in the jaws of the beast I had protected her from for so many years. By the time we made it back to the farm, I was a noodle. Next time a ewe goes AWOL, I’m building a loading ramp on-site. We may have dodged a bullet that day, but the road continues to lurk like a fat black snake.

  • • • • •

  Willie was already ahead of the game in his training, staying atypically close to me and coming when called, but when the rabbit dashed out of the brush, he took off after it at a dead run—toward the road, only fifty yards away.

  I reflexively shouted, “WILLIE!” In an instant he skidded to a stop, folded his body into a pretzel, and began to run back to me. I ran the other way to encourage him to chase me instead of the rabbit. When he caught up, I fell to the ground, singing out praise for a job well done: “Good boy! What a good boy!”

  Willie’s responsiveness was off the charts. I could whisper his name and he’d turn his head around to check in. If I said a quiet “Uh-uh,” he’d instantly stop chewing on the table leg or jumping onto the counter. Someone once said that “our faults are the excesses of our virtues.” How true that is, and how well Willie exemplified it. He’d flip around in an instant at a quiet word from me, but he’d startle two feet off the ground if I dropped something on the floor. He loved people passionately, but he reacted to unfamiliar dogs as if they were zombies approaching him with blood dripping from their mouths.

  Something had sent Willie out into the world set on HIGH, like a blender with its last button pushed. Raising him was both wonderful and horrible. Underneath his craziness—his extreme reactions to unfamiliar dogs, his phobias about noises, his disastrous digestive system—I was sure there lived the dog we all want, brimming with love and loyalty, with a face that sparkles when you come home. But Willie desperately needed to feel safe and secure.

  The thing was, so did I.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  When I was a young teenager, in 1964, I found a second home at a local stable, where my dreams of working with animals came true. Bonus: There were cowboys.

  Tourists came to the stable and resort in Scottsdale, Arizona, for the warmth and the allure of cowboy hats and horses. “Easterners,” we called them, envisioning Chicago as a western suburb of New York. Karl, the lead wrangler, tolerated me and the other girls who worked there, teasing us as we shoveled manure out of stalls and groomed the horses’ shiny flanks. The girls and I talked about Karl as much as we did the horses. He had been in a Marlboro Man commercial, or at least that’s what he told us. We never quite knew what role he played, but with his chiseled face and weathered tan, he could’ve been the Marlboro Man.

  Bud was the second wrangler. Thin and spare like the dry-grass country he came from, he never said much. One day Bud was training two young horses to pull a wagon when one panicked and made a wild-eyed dash back to the barn. The scene was straight out of an old-fashioned Western—horses thundering down the lane with manes flowing, the wagon teetering on two wheels around the corners, reins flailing as Bud tried to regain control. He couldn’t, and the wagon smashed into a cottonwood tree. It sounded like a bomb had gone off. When the dust settled, we could see that the horses weren’t injured, but Bud’s arm looked like hamburger. The other cowboys thought it was funny. Karl teased Bud about losing control of the horses; Bud grinned, shifted his hat, and bandaged his arm himself.

  After a few years of slinging hay bales and saddling horses for the tourists, I was allowed to go out on trail rides as a second guide. I rode at the end of the line, keeping my eye on the greenhorns between me and Bud or Karl. Ever mindful of the potential for guests falling off their mounts, I’d trot up beside the blonde from Detroit with the turquoise necklace, or the redhead from Chicago wearing brand-new deerskin chaps, and chirp enthusiastically about sitting up straight in the saddle.

  Karl and Bud were my heroes, the stars of my adolescent nighttime movies, in which I’d amaze and impress them with my horsemanship, my maturity, my own mane of tousled hair and smoldering beauty. No matter that my dark roots often showed beneath my Clairol-bleached hair, that I was skinny and flat-chested and couldn’t have smoldered if you’d set me on fire. But I was coming into my own sexuality, spending my weekends with my legs wrapped around muscled horses and my mind increasingly distracted by Karl’s tan forearms and Bud’s blue eyes.

  But the horses were what pulled me to the stable each weekend throughout high school. While other students attended football games or physics club meetings, I was at the stable every minute I could manage. I loved the horses’ huge emotional eyes and arched necks, their velvet noses and broad, flat cheekbones. I loved the sounds they made—the syncopated rhythm of their hooves clopping on the packed dirt, the breathy snorts, the squeals of protest between fractious mares. I loved their smell, rich and pungent, deeply alive.

  I loved riding them, too, and wanted to be brilliant at it. I wasn’t. I was good, occasionally even very good, but I was too cautious, too frightened of being hurt to be the exceptional rider that I wanted to be. My innate lack of courage made me avoid risks. A group of us would race in an open area devoid of cactus and creosote bushes, with no adults around to stop us. As we entered the flats, we’d exchange glances like teenage boys in hot rods at a stoplight. Simultaneously, as if an invisible traffic light had turned green, we’d nestle into our saddles, lean forward, and let the horses run.

  Each gait has a different feel. A horse with a smooth walk feels like a rocking chair. A trot is bouncy, though the trots of some horses are worse than others. You have to learn to loosen your hips and take some of the force there instead of in your backbone. A canter is smoother, and a gallop smoother still, although alarmingly fast for a novice. Still, there’s nothing like being on a horse who switches from a casual gallop to an all-out, fast-as-you-can run. You may think you’re already flying, shocked by the speed of the world streaming by and the power of the animal beneath you, but when your horse decides to run—really run—she extends her body forward and flattens out beneath you. The saddle, and your seat within it, lower as if a plane hit an air pocket and dropped fifty feet. It is one of the world’s greatest feelings. I loved the rush of adrenaline, the sense of out-of-control freedom that came with it, and the power the horse’s body gave mine. And yet I was always the first one to sit up and pull my horse back into a canter lest she step in a gopher hole or get carried away and refuse to stop.

  My desire to impress Karl and Bud overrode my fears one day, when they asked if I would ride the young stallion they had bought to run in some local quarter horse races. Money was in short supply, so they couldn’t hire a real jockey. Would I—stick-skinny and light enough to be a jockey—ride this young stallion muscled up like a weight lifter on steroids, at least during training? I said yes.

  I’d followed horse racing for years, cried bitter tears when Tim Tam broke his leg in the Belmont Sta
kes, and fantasized about being the first woman jockey to win the Kentucky Derby. This was my chance; my wildest dream had come true! We kept it quiet, an adolescent girl and two adult men, all knowing that what we were doing wouldn’t fly with the stable owner or my father, who was so afraid of horses that he refused to let me own one, even when one was offered to me with free board and vet care. This would be our little secret.

  A racing saddle is ridiculous. It is not designed to help you stay safely seated on a horse. Instead, it’s all about the physics of forward motion and putting your weight exactly where your horse needs it to run his fastest. The stirrups are so high that you are essentially standing on the horse, with your knees bent at sharp angles to connect your butt with the horse’s back. It feels like balancing on a tightrope while squatting as low as possible—and that’s just when the horse is standing still.

  For our first session, Karl hefted me up into the saddle, and the four of us walked out of the stable together: two cowboys with dreams of spare cash in their eyes, a young stallion the size of a tractor, and a skinny teenager too cowardly to say she was scared. We walked to an open area behind the stable. Karl led the horse by the halter while I tried to get used to the racing saddle.

  After a few practice sessions during which I learned to be even more frightened than before, I said, “I’m fine!” And yes, of course, we can go to the racetrack now and teach your big barely broke horse how to run out of a starting gate. On the way, Karl asked why I was so quiet.

  I shrugged, my shoulders hunched between him and Bud in the cab. “I’m just excited.”

  After we unloaded the horse, Bud ground his Camel cigarette into the dirt and led us toward the enclosure. As we approached the gate, Karl said, “Get a good grip on the reins and then wrap your fingers in his mane. When he takes off, you’ll have to hang on with your hands for the first few strides.” I did as instructed, and soon Huge Horse and I were inserted into the gate, a claustrophia-inducing box with metal sides just inches from my knees. The horse shifted sideways, and I threw out my arm to save my leg from being squashed. I wanted out.

  I forced myself to stay silent and concentrated on weaving my fingers, reins clasped in a death grip, into the horse’s mane. Karl and Bud were talking, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. It was hot, and the sweat was beginning to drip down my forehead. I leaned forward and pushed my feet against the tiny, insanely high stirrups. Before I could take another breath, a sound like the end of the world blared out. The gate opened, and Huge Horse charged forward in terror. I lost my grip on his mane, and I was left two feet back from where I started, bouncing on his massive hindquarters but still hanging on to the reins as he thundered down the track.

  What happened next is blurry—all I could see was a fuzz of fence posts and grandstands streaking by, as if I were looking out the window in a high-speed road race. I tried to pull myself back into the saddle, but that was akin to running on top of a moving train. Eventually, I realized that if I stayed still, I could ride it out, fists frozen on the reins, legs clasped around his hindquarters.

  Huge Horse finally began to slow, and I realized that I wasn’t going to die or be horrifically injured. But the horse wasn’t the only one frightened by the unexpected blare of the bell and the crash of the starting gate opening. He had done what horses do when they are panicked: run. I had done what people do when they are terrified: pee my pants.

  Karl and Bud met us at the far end of the track, and I slid off as the horse slowed to a walk, huffing with exertion. There was no way out of my humiliation: The dark stain on my jeans made clear what had happened.

  “You okay?” Karl asked.

  “Sure,” I said. We loaded the stallion into the trailer and drove back to the stable in silence.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  That same year, my mother and I went to visit my uncle’s family in Texas. My aunt, a refined Southerner from a well-to-do-family, took us to their private country club for a ladies’ lunch of club sandwiches under an umbrella overlooking the pool with iced tea in frosty pebbled glasses.

  When the waiter came by, I said, “Nothing for me; I’m fine with something to drink.” I explained to my aunt that I didn’t eat lunch. Or breakfast. That I was on a diet and ate sparingly only at dinner. A few bites of meat. Ten peas. No potatoes.

  “But you’re so skinny!” she blurted out. She was right; I was five-eight and weighed less than 110 pounds. My goal was 105. Maybe I could get down to 100.

  “You’d better be careful about not eating much,” Aunt Pat said. “I just read an article about how dieting can get out of hand. It’s called anorexia, and it can be dangerous.”

  My mother and I laughed. We knew nothing about anorexia, and in spite of the fact that my behavior and weight were classic signs of the disease, my aunt’s concerns seemed overly dramatic. Mom always encouraged me to eat more, but you can’t force food down an adolescent’s throat. Besides, she understood how important it was to be attractive, which I desperately wanted to be. She wanted me to be, too.

  My mom was gorgeous, a showstopping beauty who met my father while descending a staircase to see the son of her father’s business partner, surrounded by a gaggle of his friends. One fellow took a look at her floating down the steps and fell to the ground, clutching his heart. It was one of her favorite stories.

  I was the daughter whom she saw as best carrying on that tradition. My oldest sister, who wanted to be a writer, was designated the “sensitive one” (favorite color, assigned by my mother = blue). She was tall and blond, the kind of gangly teenager who grows into a beauty later in life but wears thick glasses and studiously hunches over a book during adolescence. The middle sister (green) was the “smart one.” Active and gregarious, beloved by the teachers, she got high grades, participated in numerous committees, and acted in school plays. My color was red, and I was to be the “pretty one” who was taken shopping and enrolled in modeling school.

  I was also the “easy one,” at least the one Mom told me was “never any trouble.” In reality, I probably caused as much trouble as any other kid, but my mother saw me as the “good girl” who could be counted on to stay quiet and not complain. Far less noble was my overwhelming need to keep the boat steady and avoid getting drenched when the family seas got stormy.

  My parents fought, usually over money. The yelling came erratically, like summer thundershowers over the desert, the arguments punctuated by slammed doors and tight-lipped silences. My father sat in his chair every evening, nursing a weak Scotch and soda, brow wrinkled. Daddy was a worrier, deeply afraid of conflict or change. Once I was helping him change a lightbulb in the hallway ceiling when the doorbell rang unexpectedly; he was on a stepladder, about to screw in the new bulb. “Oh, no!” he said. He descended from the ladder and began pacing in circles. “There is someone at the door!” he said, as if this were a crisis so serious that it was unclear how to handle it. With the condescension perfected by teenagers, I said, “Well, that IS terrible.” I don’t remember who it was; I just remember my father’s flustered face and his panic. I wondered but never knew why this man—who ran a large business with what his colleagues saw as effortless grace—was so frightened.

  Some of his worries were reasonable ones about money. The Depression had hit him hard as a child, and I suspect he had grown up believing that the world could fall out from underneath him at any time, as it had for many of his father’s friends and colleagues. It didn’t help that my mother loved to shop and spent money that he thought they could ill afford. On a bad night, my father would begin to yell, fueled by the Scotch and soda. After a fight my mother would retreat into herself, and the house would fill up for days or weeks with silence, the kind that makes the air so tight it feels hard to breathe.

  When I turned fifteen, I bleached my hair blond. I wore miniskirts. I was given a negligée for Christmas. By my parents. Some quiet voice inside said, “This is not right,” as I held it up out of the box, a sage green diaphanous thing wi
th fake feathers on the hem.

  In spite of our collective efforts, I saw myself as fat and unattractive, like many anorexics. I obsessively recorded what I ate each day and whether I had lost any weight. Every pound lost was a victory, every bite of uneaten food a triumph. I don’t remember being hungry, although I did yearn for sugar. One week I tried bulimia—shaking sugar and cinnamon onto dozens of slices of buttered bread, putting them under the broiler until they crisped into the sweet, crunchy taste of badness. I ate the better part of an entire loaf of bread in one sitting. After a few unsuccessful attempts to purge it all into the toilet, I gave up and went back to eating almost nothing.

  Mom would watch me eat dinner—ten peas, one ounce of meat, no potatoes—and shake her head. Sometimes we’d be joined at meals by my oldest sister, Wendy, now in her twenties, and her thirty-five-year-old boyfriend, Bruce. They were living in a guesthouse that had been built for my grandmother, who had long since passed away. Wendy had been ill; they had returned from out east so she could recover while living in the guesthouse for a few months. They arrived with Captain, a tongue-lolling black Labrador that Bruce and I began to take on walks together in the cactus-studded hills behind the house.