Continued from Part 1: Asa Bird—A Lesson In Responsibility
I walked into the kitchen that evening prepared to apologize, but I never got the chance. It wasn’t until a few days later that Asa and I got a chance to talk. It was not a good feeling that I was carrying in my stomach.
Almost every barn I've visited claims they don't have a hierarchy amongst the workers. “We all do stalls together in the morning,” so many managers have told me, magnanimously.
That manager, I’ve found, is always wrong.
There are days when, like a butler, I just follow Anne around.
I fade into the background. I am quiet, but ready to leap forward and hold a horse or raise a jump in a second. I learn to know how Anne wants her saddle set, how tight the noseband should be, how she expects to be given a leg up. (Not on 1, 2, 3, but now!)
The man was still as he sat in his golf cart. His body looked sinewy, but also old, like an elastic band that is drying up. His voice however, as it came over the loudspeakers, was strong. “Where did they go?” he asked.
The crowd looked around. The kids the man was enquiring about had been absorbed into the grandstands, but now they were being summoned back. They were teenagers acting as jump crew, and they had obviously, mistakenly, believed the session over.
“Where are they?” His voice was louder now, not angry, but accusatory and demanding. “I told them not to leave.”
I rip a square of paper towel off the roll beside the sink—dishes overflow onto the counter—and fold it in half to form a pincer between my thumb and forefinger. The satiated tick is still as I pick it up from where it fell off the dog. Its body is smooth and spherical as I roll it between my fingers, and smaller than a pea. I palpate it a couple times. Its texture reminds me of a paintball, or a fresh egg after someone has peeled away the shell, leaving only the thin membrane that seals the yolk and white inside.
“Are you going to squish it?” Rhiannon asks while petting the dog.
My dad is cantering along next to me. He’s riding a big grumpy gelding, Salvador, and I'm riding Amadeus, a Lipizzaner pony, who is struggling to keep up. The track is easily wide enough for both of us, and the footing is excellent; the rainy days are still ahead. My dad looks at me, and I know he’s going to say something inane. It's his eyes—bright and curious—that give away his enthusiasm. And he is always is asking the most obvious questions when he is enthused. It drives me crazy.
In the summer of 2008 Tik Maynard came up with a grand plan. He decided to spend a year working for some of the greatest horsemen he could find in different disciplines and writing about his experiences. So far, he has worked for Johann Hinnemann, Ingrid Klimke and David and Karen O'Connor. Although he spent the summer of 2009 at home in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, he's still working on expanding his equestrian education.
A platinum sponsorship package for the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event costs $20,000. The cheapest sponsorship package, bronze, is $6,000. Both packages include grilled vegetables, sautéed snap peas, chicken paninis, tomato and herb soup, organic spinach salad and an open bar with a bird’s eye view of the main arena. Access to the sponsors’ tent also includes an outside viewing area, which was crowded with young ladies and gentleman, all sporting Ray Bans or Maui Jims.
I was working in the driveway outside the barn when I met him, this giant of a man. The Live Oak leaves make a thick crinkly carpet on the dry grass, and I was toiling like a convict to turn them into orderly piles. Sweat was trickling off my knuckles and varnishing the handle of the rake, but it was hot satisfying work.
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