Learning to Fall by Anne Clermont

Author:Anne Clermont
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SparkPress
Published: 2016-10-11T16:00:00+00:00

On a cold, rainy December morning, I sat on the phone pacifying the hay farmer up in Oregon when Jason dashed into my office. He held his notepad, a conversation already on his lips. I pointed to the receiver. He nodded, but instead of turning around, he came to sit at the edge of my desk, his foot tapping as he wrote something on the pad. The room instantly seemed smaller.

The farmer asked if I was there.

I squirmed in my chair. “Right here, Wes,” I said, nodding.

“Now listen here. We all go down on hard times, and I’m not gonna tell you that you ain’t got a right to grieve and whatnot. Your dad was a good man and I liked him well.” He drew in a breath. “But I need a payment for the hay Joe dropped off in September. Otherwise, I can’t deliver no more. We got our own bills and we need to see you can pay before we ship.”

I thanked God I didn’t have the farmer on speakerphone. I didn’t want Jason to be aware of our money problems. We needed the hay delivered this week.

“I’m sorry. I’ll get that out as soon as I can,” I said, trying to sound nondescript. “Yes. Uh-huh. That’s right. That’ll go out today.” I tried to sound as professional as I could, attempting to get the farmer off the phone.

After another minute of listening to Wes’s spiel, I laid the receiver down, took a steadying breath, and swiveled my chair to look at Jason. Jason still sat on my desk, his eyes narrowed in concentration as he flipped through the pages of his pad.

“Time to go over our options—our schedule.” He tapped the pad with the end of his pen. “We need to decide the best shows for you to gain the most points in the fewest number of shows, while still qualifying you for the Cup. They require twenty points, and even though that’s a hefty amount, all you have to do is get in the top four at the three shows to get that.” He paused, and briefly eyed me before continuing, “I assume finances are to be considered, as we don’t have an unlimited budget to send you to all the shows.”

Did he guess I’d been speaking to the farmer about our outstanding bill? And that I’d lied? That the check wouldn’t go out until after the first when I had more money in from the handful of boarders we still had. “Yes, that’s right.”

But Jason continued talking about our options. I glanced at the point system for the Gold Cup: each first place at a qualifier earned twenty, a second earned fifteen, a third place earned five, and each fourth earned four points.

“We can do it. That should be easy. All we need is one first place and we’re in.”

Jason looked skeptical, but the corner of his mouth lifted in a smile. “Good. Let’s make it happen.” He stood, but instead of walking away, he leaned in toward me, his hair falling into his face.

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