Saddles & Secrets (An Ellen & Ned Book)

After my lesson at Abby’s ranch on Sissy, who is not as bad as she was in the spring, and can now even jump a little bit, Abby said that I had to learn something new, and I was sort of excited, but then the thing I was to learn was how to clean my saddle. I had to carry my own saddle into the tack room and put it on the saddle rack (I groaned a little so that Abby would know that the saddle was heavy, but she just laughed and handed me a sponge and a piece of soap that was blond and didn’t smell anything like flowers). I watched her and did what she did--rubbed the sponge on the soap and then on the saddle and then on the soap and then on the saddle. She was fast. I was slow. And okay, I did close my eyes and let my mouth hang open a little so that she would think I was falling asleep, because one of the best ways to get through something boring is to make jokes.
 
While my eyes were closed, I thought maybe I really had fallen asleep, because I heard something I had never heard before, a deep, melodious voice singing, “From this valley they say you are going. We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile.” My eyes popped open, and I looked right at Abby, who didn’t seem to hear a thing. The song went on, “For they say you are taking the sunshine that has brightened our pathway awhile.”
 
Abby kept soaping.
 
I did, too. I listened to the end, and afterward there was silence, except for the soap soap soap. I finally said, “Did you hear something?”
 
“What?”
 
“A sad song.”
 
“Oh, sure. ‘Red River Valley.’ That’s one of his favorites.”
 
“Who?”
 
“My dad. If he’s in a good mood, he sings a sad song.”
 
I said, “I never heard him sing before.”
 
“Really?” She did not seem impressed. To me, it sounded like having a radio in your own barn. After a minute or so, she said, “He likes singing in the barn because the acoustics are good.”
 
“What does that mean?”
 
“The walls and the ceiling make his songs sound richer.”
 
“Don’t you like it?”
 
“I do, but I hear it all the time.”
 
I bent down and went under the rack, which is really just a two-by-four on some legs, and started soaping the other side of my saddle. Abby’s dad is scary. He always wears a big cowboy hat pulled over his eyebrows, and when he isn’t wearing it, like at lunch (I have stayed for lunch twice), his eyebrows go down over his eyes like they don’t know any better, which makes him look angry. He also has a loud voice, but now that I’ve heard him sing, I think that might not be so bad. We soaped and soaped, then Abby went over to the hooks and got the bridles. I sighed. She smiled, but didn’t say anything. I heard her dad start another song, but he went outside and was walking away, so I couldn’t hear it anymore. “Red River Valley.” Well, I have heard that song before. Grandma sings it under her breath sometimes, or hums it. I said, “Your dad singing that song was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
 
Abby said, “Ellen, you are so funny. He’ll be very glad to hear that.”
 
We unbuckled all the buckles and took the bridles apart and cleaned them one strap at a time. We even used an old toothbrush to clean the bits. Afterward, I ran out of the tack room to the pasture, where Ned was standing by the fence. I gave Ned a bit of carrot that I had been saving for him, and then a little kiss on the nose. He wasn’t mine yet, but we were taking baby steps in that direction, such small baby steps that no one had noticed them except me.
 
I am in fifth grade now. School started a month ago, and then, two weeks ago, it was Abby’s birthday, and my mom and I went to the big department store where she used to work, and we pushed Joan Ariel down all the aisles and looked at all the stuff for sale. Mom worked for a long time in women’s clothing, and for a short time in children’s shoes and clothing, and also in kitchenwares. She knows the whole store. Every time I ask her, she says that she never worked in the toy department, but Grandma says that she did, she just doesn’t want me to know, because then I will nag her. Nagging is my absolute best talent, even though I call it “making my case.” My dad likes this show on TV, Perry Mason. Perry Mason argues about everything and he always wins.
 
What we found for Abby was not a sweater, like Mom wanted, or a dinner plate with a longhorn cow on it, which Joan Ariel (I said) kept pointing at (Joan Ariel loves to point at things and go, “Ba ba ba!”), but an Instamatic camera. I saw it when we first walked into the store, because it was near the door, and I kept talking about it, and then in the end, Mom put her hands on her hips and said, “Well, okay then!” This is what Dad calls “the slow drip.” You suggest something enough times, and they give in. The camera cost eighteen dollars, but Mom still gets her 20 percent discount, so, hello, Mr. Nathan, my fifth-grade teacher, that comes out to fourteen dollars and forty cents. I figured that out in my head. I spent my own money on two film cartridges, and maybe that will last her until Christmas. My plan is that she will take a lot of pictures of Ned.
 
I need a lot of pictures of Ned because I don’t see him very often. Before this week, I hadn’t seen him since August, and before that, I had only seen him twice since I rode him--well, got on him--in the spring on the day of the Kentucky Derby (that’s my secret, and Ned’s, too). Blue has been at the stables for five and a half months--all through the showing season. I keep telling Jane, who runs the stables, that he needs a break, but she just laughs at me and says that he is fine. And it is true that he is glossy and handsome and completely well behaved, like a saint, as my grandma would say. Ned hardly talks to me anymore, which makes me sad, and also makes me wonder if he ever talked to me at all.
 
I have an excellent imagination.