That eighth grade summer, Tricia Forrester and I traveled together. Our parents released us for a co-ed summer camp experience, all the way in Blythewood, South Carolina, at a working quarter horse ranch. The bus ride was my first adventure without an attending adult; probably it was Tricia's too, though she was advanced in putting on the aires of a grown person, and could fool me, to the extent, that left alone with her, I was usually content to follow, avoiding decisions if not complications, for Tricia had a frontal assault personality, which naturally found obstacles. Her head was as hard as a football player’s, and she was a girl, so that people opened doors for Tricia and carried packages, leaving her both hands free to navigate the guidance of her mouth, and she would talk, and talk you into things, not with a silver tongue, but a pink muscle between her teeth, above which she was equipped with a brain as sharp as a underarm razor. She was fifteen years old that summer, with facial features that might have been judged older, yet her face would not age as other faces would. She had a jawline as steadfast as the Costa Brava in Spain. Her skin would forever be immune to blemish. Her brain power lured you to lights you would never forget the glow of, and she was irresistible, brash, sometimes verbally brutal, always clever in action; she almost never got caught. Her mother and mine were best friends. They looked like cousins, Josephine Forrester and Margaret Bryan. They were North End ladies of the clubs. I don’t know which one decided first to let the eldest of their children travel all the way to Blythewood unattended, but both of us had to be on the same bus, or neither of us could go. But how we came to Blythewood started when Mrs. Louise Miles, who owned the Pine Lakes horse stables, brought back from Wyoming, or Montana or somewhere, a registered quarter horse gelding, called
Cheyenne. He was a huge, bronze-colored horse, trained for “turning calves” and for roping. He was fifteen, maybe seventeen hands high, the color of reddish walnut shells, coppery brown or dark chocolate in certain lights. And he was regal; Cheyenne moved everywhere deliberately, with steadfast balance; he walked like he owned the world. Whomever was riding him, which was almost never anyone but Louise Miles, a woman with extraordinary green eyes, who looked regal whatever horse she rode, like an Indian chief’s number one wife, but only part native, the rest Spanish nobility. She had coppery skin too, the color of which was enhanced by a suntan, but not subject to it for depth and tone. She was beautiful, like Tricia, and a real cowgirl, destined to ride off to Wyoming in late middle age, and run cattle for life with real live cowboys. But it was the horse, Cheyenne, and no doubt, Mrs. Miles in a pair of tight bluejeans, that attracted Jim Jennings, “Uncle Jimmy,” a former rodeo cowboy, trainer of champion quarter horses, owner of the JJ Ranch in Blythewood. Uncle Jimmy came to Myrtle Beach out of the clear blue western sky, with all his Texas glamor and rodeo authenticity. Watching him ride Cheyenne was like watching a man dance with a big bronze horse. And with the man grown into the saddle, for there was no separation, no membrane between Cheyenne and Uncle Jimmy. He mesmerized me with horsemanship. I comprehended what manhood could be, if I were willing to throw off everything that was expected of me; if I would become something entirely different, because that’s what Uncle Jimmy was. He was a small man. Standing aground, I doubt he was 5-8. Not heavy but thick set, there was nothing Hollywood about him. He was bald headed without his hat, bowlegged and squat.
He smoked Lucky Strikes and had a mild, whispering, raspy voice. Horses heard him at a distance. Their ears followed him whether he was talking or not. He stood in the soft dirt of the new riding ring Mrs. Miles had had built next to the stables. Where the dirt had been plowed and groomed and all the roots taken out there were jumping stations, stanchions and poles for amateur horses to hop
over. There were no serious jumpers at Pine Lakes, no serious riders but Louise Miles, and no serious horses but the one she had brought back from Wyoming. Cheyenne stood next to Jennings with no saddle or bridle, just the halter and the rope that Jennings held, until he dropped the rope and mildly told the horse to “stand,” which the horse did, motionless, absolutely still, like a bird dog waiting to get out of the box. You could see him quivering under his skin. Jennings showed us how to bridle and saddle, how to mount up and stay on, and most important, how to fall off, because you were going to fall, else you were hardly riding, or weren’t riding much of a horse. And then he mounted Cheyenne, wheeled the big horse and made the sound of a loud smooch. Then he rode away slow, in a easy lope, and got the horse where he wanted on the far end of the ring, and smooched again. And the horse turned, all the way around, his head swung low, nearly touching the ground, but easy and slow dancing. Gradually increasing speed, suddenly turning, the man in the saddle driving the horse. And then he came toward us, as if sprung from a roping chute, chasing a white faced calf, Cheyenne and Jennings one piece, flat out. And then as if Jennings had thrown the rope, Cheyenne sat down, skidding on his haunches, forelegs stiff to a dead stop, and Jennings was in the air, detached from the animal, he landed on the run, coming toward us until his momentum eased. He turned and said, “Hacks, Hacks, Hacks,” to the horse. And backwards went Cheyenne, back, back, back, until . . . “Halt,” Jennings said. And the horse did. That was Cheyenne. And that was Uncle Jimmy. He stuck around all afternoon, meeting our mothers, charming the North End ladies of the clubs. He had them laughing at things that were normally kept in medicine cabinets. He had a thrilling way of making every day seem like it might get dangerous at any moment. And around him it could. He loved his life as much as a kid does, who wakes up each day knowing life is a dream. Not only that, but that the dreamer creates the day. He had a ranch in Blythewood, South Carolina, where kids could go and be close to him. And so Tricia Forrester and I climbed aboard a Greyhound bus at the old terminal, where North End ladies of the clubs wouldn’t dare leave a child unattended for six minutes, fearing winos and cab drivers, and what evil lurked around the corners of sooty concrete south of the First Presbyterian Church. And sent us to Blythewood, where real live cowboys trained to ride rodeo, and real live horses might kick you into the future.
Tricia smuggled aboard the Greayhound a package of Tareyton cigarettes, with charcoal filters, the ones for which you would “rather fight than switch”, and all the people in the magazine advertisements for Tareytons had black eyes. I smoked Parliaments, the brand with the “recessed filters” for a smooth draw, which were popular because you could stick your tongue into the recess and pretend you were French kissing. I wondered if Tricia and I would make out, or anything, with no adults on the bus responsible for us except the driver, who had taken bribes from our mothers to babysit us no doubt. Tricia handled him. The first time he opened his mouth and told us we weren’t allowed to smoke, she asked him where the sign was that said “No Smoking?” Because half the people on the bus were lit up. I thought he would stop the bus and throw us off, or turn the bus around, as we were not to the bridge of the Inland Waterway yet. “Aren’t you supposed to keep your eyes on the road,” Tricia said, something like that. He probably looked back at the road, where his attention was supposed to be, and then at Tricia, because she was beautiful, striking, and suddenly seemed to be in the driver’s seat, where she always wound up. Doubtless the driver smiled, at least he didn’t stop the bus. Tricia was a graceful cigarette handler too. She could French inhale, let the smoke leak out of her lips, and breath it up her nose all at once. It was impressive. I was still at that stage of addiction that dizziness and nausea assaulted me. There were little ashtrays in the arms of the seats, but I tried to put one out on the perforated metal under the window, where what looked like a long ashtray ran the length of the bus. Hot sparks flew everywhere, as the perforated metal was the air-conditioner. Tricia never made mistakes like that. She was self-possessed. She had this way about her that was impervious to anyone’s opinion but her own. She was like Uncle Jimmy in that way.
For Uncle Jimmy there was only the work that was done in the horse barns, in the pastures, and in the rodeo arena, where he trained horses and bred mares to his champion stud, a beautiful red, quarter horse stallion, as mean as a snake, named “Stinker.” So called because, as Jennings said, that’s how the stallion was: his attitude, his personality, his temperament stank. The stallion had to be kept in his stall unless an entire pasture was cleared for him. He was a barbarian, a would-be equine serial killer, the stallion would attack gelded horses on sight, sometimes mares. And another thing about Stinker, he was inclined and determined to masturbate when left alone in his stall. How he did it, I don’t know. The physical mechanics are still a mystery to me. But it was a thing Jennings had a solution for called a “stud belt,” which was a leather contrivance that strapped around the animal’s belly, showing a surface of sharp copper tacks, which Stinker’s equipment, considerable as it was, ran into like a barbwire fence when he had an erection. So I don’t blame him, I might have had a murderous attitude too. To Be Continued
Uncle Jimmy On Stinker
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