Early Warning

Prince kept coming. Fiona stood like someone in the circus, her knees slightly bent, holding the lead rope with both hands — maybe she had decided she was going too fast this time to jump off. But she didn’t look scared; she looked surprised and excited. They came on. Debbie had no idea what Rufus would do. The hoofbeats sounded loud to her, even though they were muffled by the grass and the dirt, and Prince looked enormous. They came on. Debbie tightened her legs around Rufus’s fat sides. She could see Fiona’s mouth open as she raised her right hand and straightened her shoulders, still standing on Prince’s back. Debbie’s heart was pounding. At the last moment, Rufus jumped to one side, and Prince skipped to the other. Debbie slid but hung on. Fiona flexed and kept her balance. Two strides later, she squatted down again, with Prince still galloping, put her hands in his mane, and dropped to his back. At the lower fence, Fiona brought him around in a big trot circle, then came back up the hill. Debbie fell forward onto Rufus’s neck, her face in his bushy pony mane. She did not want to be the one to faint and fall off. She closed her eyes.

Fiona’s face was flushed, but she was nonchalant about the whole thing by the time she and Prince got back to Debbie and Rufus. Rufus was nonchalant, too, but Prince was delighted with himself — he arched his neck and picked up his feet and took deep breaths. Fiona said, “Horses are really good at knowing where they are.” Then, “I’m sorry if I scared you.”

Debbie said, “You didn’t.”

But for the rest of their ride, all they did was wander around the field. Fiona made Debbie trot in a circle both ways for a few minutes, just to practice. And, of course, when the horses were cooled out and they went in the house for a snack, Mr. Cannon was home, and he said, “You girls having a good time?” Fiona shrugged. Debbie said, “Yes. I love Rufus.”

“He’s a good pony.”

After they looked at Fiona’s latest issue of The Chronicle of the Horse, Mr. Cannon drove Debbie home while Fiona took the horses their hay. All Mom said when she walked in the house was “Hi, honey. The fresh air is doing you good.”

—

JIM UPJOHN HAD his way, of course, and Frank was brought in by the board of Fremont Oil to “reorganize and redirect operations.” Frank’s “objectivity” was secured by means of a very large salary and no stock in the company. Uncle Jens had some proportion of his assets in oil, but none in Fremont. Fortunately for Frank, Hal and Friskie had already moved the corporate offices from Tulsa to Manhattan, so, when Andy and Janny went looking for a new house the better to accommodate Frank’s new position, they didn’t have to look far. Andy liked Englewood Cliffs, because she could get to the Upper West Side quite easily, and the schools, the private schools, were said to be excellent.

Frank was quite friendly with Hal and Friskie. Hal was thirty-one and Friskie was twenty-eight. Frank alternated between treating them like kid brothers and like experts. Every time Hal told him what to do, Frank smiled cheerfully and said, “I think that’s a great idea.” Friskie wasn’t much of a suggester, more of a complainer, so when Friskie came charging into his office, upset about something, Frank was sympathetic, offered him a drink (Friskie liked a straight shot of The Glenlivet). He also listened to their views about their father — that he was over the hill, that he didn’t understand the modern world, that he always acted on impulse. When push came to shove, that’s what he did — shoved them around with those big hands of his. Frank nodded and shook his head with all kinds of sympathy and said that his father had been just the same way, a farmer who had his belt off at least once a day, “The only question was, buckle end or not buckle end?” This made them laugh. They thought Frank was on their side.