The Pony That Walked Back to the Ring

The Ring

It was one of those October afternoons you get in the hills when it seems like God turned all the lights on at once.

The ridges were red and gold and orange, and the sky was so blue it almost hurt to look at.

Junie wore her pink plaid shirt, her good jeans, and the cowboy boots she got last Christmas. Her blond hair was in two braids, and this time I did them for her, neat and tight.

I stood at the white rail fence in my denim jacket and leaned on it, because my legs weren’t sure they wanted to hold me up.

There were six ponies in the Shetland halter class. Some of them were show ponies from bigger barns, clipped and polished, with kids in matching vests who’d been doing this since they could walk.

Junie led Penny into the ring with her chin up and her shoulders back, the lead rope held just the way the 4-H mother had shown her, a little slack, right hand near the halter.

Penny walked in behind her round and glossy, ears forward, the ribbon bright in the front of her mane.

She walked like she knew exactly where she was going. She’d been walking a mile a morning for two months.

I looked over to the folding chairs. Odell was there, in a lawn chair somebody had brought for him, his cane across his knees. He didn’t wave. He just nodded at me once.

Behind him, along the rail and on the hay bales, I started recognizing faces. The woman who’d given me the hoof recipe.

Two of the 4-H mothers. A man from church I was pretty sure had left at least one load of hay at our mailbox.

The judge walked down the line of ponies slowly. She stopped at each one and looked them over from the front, from the side, and from behind. She picked up a front foot on two of them.

When she got to Penny she stood there a long time. She ran her hand down Penny’s neck and over her ribs, which you could not see anymore, and over her hip, which was round again.

Then she picked up Penny’s right front foot and turned it to look at the bottom of it, and at the old crack growing out, and the new wall above it.

She set the foot down and said something to Junie I couldn’t hear. Junie answered her. The judge nodded and said one more thing, and Junie’s face went pink.

“Walk her down and trot her back, please,” the judge said, loud enough this time for everybody.

Junie walked Penny down to the end of the ring. Then she clucked and jogged back, and Penny trotted right beside her, sound and even and light on all four feet, the ribbon bouncing in her mane.

That was when I heard a cough beside me on the rail.

I knew that cough. I’d heard it in church every Sunday for twenty years, and on our front porch, and once in my mama’s garden.

Burl Tackett was standing about four feet down the rail from me with both hands gripping the top board.

He was watching Penny. He was not looking at Junie’s face, or at the judge. He was looking at Penny’s feet.

He didn’t look at me. I didn’t look at him. We both just stood there and watched that little girl stand her pony up square for the judge one more time.

The judge walked back up to the announcer’s table and handed him a card. He tapped the microphone twice, the way they always do, like they don’t trust it.

“First place in the Shetland halter class,” he said, “goes to Penny, shown by Junie Brumfield.”