Lessons

Here they come, the stuck up girls from the wealthy neighborhood down the road. They took riding lessons from Roy, but they cared more about showing off for him than they did about horses, or learning to ride, or actually winning any of the classes they entered at the county fair horse show. They were so annoying. They'd laugh, loudly, and tease Billie May, even though she was older than they were. Billie was a better rider, too, but they didn’t care how good she was on horseback. They thought she was some kind of freak because she didn’t spend any time on her appearance or talking to boys.

"Well, what do they know?" Billie muttered under her breath. "I talk to boys all the time."

Granted, it was mostly trash talk at the horse shows trying to psych out her competition. Billie May competed in the boys division at the local horse shows. She was the only girl allowed to compete with the boys, and maybe that was another reason she was picked on.

Billie had already won everything there was to win in the girl's division. She had reached the point in her competitive career where normally she'd hit the road, like her cousin, and follow the rodeo, but being tied to the family farm prevented that. So, she stayed and competed against the locals until they started to complain. She was too good, she was preventing their daughters from naturally advancing in the standings. So, they switched her over to the boys division, at least until she became old enough to complete in the open category with the adults. This year, she'd be competing against anyone over 18 and she'd finally be free from these horrid little high school girls. At least, she would be during the rodeos and shows.

Her grandparents owned the largest horse farm in the county and most of the wealthier families sent their children there for riding lessons. Billie's father was a famous rodeo rider in his day, just like his father before him. Her aunt, Roy's mother, was also famous for riding. She was an unbeatable barrel racer who modeled for and endorsed horse equipment and feed companies until her untimely death in a horrible car accident that killed both her and her champion Appaloosa gelding.

With a bloodline like that, the whole county assumed that Billie would also grow up to be a champion, but fate had other plans. A recession hit Georgia just before Billie graduated from high school and her grandparents had to let a lot of the farm workers go due to the drastic decline in the number of riding students. But since the work doesn’t end when the money does, Billie had to take up the slack along with her cousin, Roy, who left the rodeo circuit to teach lessons and train horses at the family farm. Billie and Roy pretty much took over the running of the farm. Grandpa still did the books, Grandma took care of all the household duties and her father helped in whatever manner his level of drunkenness would allow.

The girls strutted into the barn, chattering like squirrels, flashing expensive snake skin boots, white jeans and billowy blouses.

"Who, in their right mind, would wear white to a barn?" thought Billie, "And snake skin boots? They're hard to keep nice even when you save them for special occasions only! The scales are so thin and flimsy they will flake right off if you're not constantly conditioning them. Their daddies probably hired someone just to clean and condition their boots!"

Just then, the girls all stopped and, in unison, looked Billie up and down with scowls on their faces. The leader of the pack was the only one to speak.

"I certainly hope you keep the horses cleaner than you keep yourself." Melissa sneered.

Billie barely glanced at her before turning away and nonchalantly called back over her shoulder, "The only reason you are clean, Melissa, is because you haven't been eating my dust this season."

Billie thought about tacking up her own horse and practicing in the rodeo arena that was situated within view of the riding ring where Roy taught lessons. She and Cowboy, her beloved buckskin, would no doubt distract the students when they burst from the chute and tore around the barrels or poles. Billie's heart beat a little faster just thinking about the excitement, the slap of the leather, the thundering of the hooves, the dust and dirt flying through the air as though it were trying to escape the mayhem.

There was no way she could practice now. Roy would be so mad that she not only disrupted his lesson, but that she did it before all her morning work was done. She didn't want Roy mad at her, she needed him to help her prepare for the upcoming show. She was entering an equitation class and needed him to correct her riding posture. Plus, she knew how important it was to have paying students. The farm wouldn't survive without them.

Just then she heard the crunch of gravel beneath car tires and turned to see a delivery truck coming up the long drive toward the barn.

"I hope my new saddle blanket is in that feed delivery!" she thought excitedly. Roy bought her a saddle blanket for her birthday last week and she went online to pick out the style and color she wanted. She picked a serape style in purples and blues to match her lucky outfit and stay in keeping with the southwestern style she thought looked so good with Cowboy's build and coloring.

She was so caught up in thoughts of the new blanket that she barely noticed the young man exiting the delivery truck. He stood about six feet tall and wore a John Deere ball cap high on his forehead. It was just low enough to shade his eyes, but high enough that one could see his whole smiling face beneath the curved brim. He wore the staff issue t-shirt with the feed store logo on it that all the employees of Lawes Feed Emporium wore and his Wranglers sat low on his hips, weighed down by a heavy silver belt buckle claiming that he was the champion of a rodeo somewhere out in West Virginia.

"Hey, Buddy, are you Roy? I got a feed delivery here." he said with a friendly drawl.

Billie looked up and smiled at the suddenly shocked expression on his face when he realized she was a girl. "Nah, Roy's out there," she nodded her head toward the riding ring, "but I can help you. I’m Billie Mae, my signature on the invoice is just as good as his."

"It's nice to meet you, ma'am. I'm sorry about the confusion, thinkin' you were… ah… My name's Luke. I'm new around here."

"I figured you were, I know everybody that works for Lawes and most of the folks who live in the county, the horsey folks anyway. Feed goes in here," she nodded in the direction of the feed shed, "I'll help you unload."

"Oh, that's quite alright, ma'am, I ken handle it m'self." Luke said. Billie thought they must not have many girls working farms in West Virginia. Well, she was never one to shy away from manual labor and this guy needed to know that girls were not weaklings.

"Well, Luke," she began, "I don’t know what kind of delicate flowers you have were you come from, but Greenfield girls have always been able to get the job done." And with that, she threw a fifty pound bag of feed onto her left shoulder, shimmied another one up onto her right and strode off to the shed leaving Luke to stare after her, mouth agape.