Twenty Chickens for a Saddle by Robyn Scott

Author:Robyn Scott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Botswana
ISBN: 9789085241522
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 2007-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Seventeen

Prizes For the Gifted

The purple rosette pinned to Feste’s bridle was not quite the unambiguous triumph it should have been. On the one hand, a rosette was a rosette. And after more than ayear since I’d begun competing, this was just the second gold-embossed, superpleated Phikwe Riding Club ribbon Feste had to her name.

I had, moreover, an admiring crowd – the only aspect of equestrian success I coveted even more than rosettes. Behind the arena fence, sitting on foldout chairs or perched on cooler boxes, watched at least forty people, sipping Cokes and beers.

My eye-catching performance had even attracted a few white-clad observers who’d strolled over from the cricket field adjacent to the riding club.

Everyone was smiling.

Above the chatter, a hollow bark echoed between the tall koppies behind the arena. Baboons, somewhere high up amongst the balancing rocks and paper bark trees. I wondered if they were watching too, laughing at the weird humans below. With a special cackle for me: the weirdest of them all.

Mum stood up and leaned against the fence. “Well done, Robbie.”

I grimaced back.

Mum and Dad beamed proudly. To them, I mused irritably, the purple ribbon probably warranted more vicarious pleasure than a normal prize. Given a choice between straightforward success and failure reinvented as triumph over adversity, Mum and Dad would choose the latter every time.

Jill Davies, the competition’s judge, pinned a red rosette on the winning grey pony at the front of the line. Brian Fox patted his pony’s perfectly clean neck and grinned broadly as Jill shook his hand. Brian always won.

I glanced wistfully at the three ponies beside me, smug with their red, blue, and yellow rosettes. Even yellow, a modest third place, would have at this moment filled me with unqualified joy. Even green, for that matter, had there been enough riders to award a fourth place, which there generally weren’t at the tiny Phikwe Riding Club shows.

Anything but purple, the special prize: the stark public reminder that the two trajectories of my plan to transform Feste into a prizewinning show jumper and the plan’s execution would never meet; the big signpost ‘warning me that dream and reality were destined to be forever and irredeemably parallel.

Jill returned to the dusty ‘white judges’ box and picked up the microphone. “A round of applause for all our riders,” she bellowed, “and a special cheer for Robyn Scott – inaugural winner of the Super Glue prize.”

The Super Glue prize had been Jill’s idea, instigated specially for me after I had, in a feat of what seemed Herculean proportions, managed to cling onto Feste for an entire round of jumps, weathering a vicious and varied cocktail of bucking and rearing between each fence.

Dad let out an ear-splitting whistle.

A few adults raised their beer cans.

I realised, as the triumphant William Tell Overture crackled though the speakers and we set off one by one on the victory lap, that Feste and I had got the biggest cheer – bigger even than the winning horse and rider.

That was something at least, I thought, as we charged off in a cloud of dust.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.