Picturesque

Chapter 17: Manor Farm

It was a short conversation that bright Saturday morning. I had already packed a bag with my reading and writing utensils to go sit on the bench under the trees deep in the backyard when Holly came bursting into my room.

"Jo's taking us to Manor Farm!" she screamed, and I jumped up from my bed in fright, having heard her before I saw her. My bag came tumbling out of my hands and everything in it with it as Jo appeared behind Holly, wearing a pair of beige jodhpurs, which I had seen people wear in movies when they rode horses.

"Huh?" I asked, still groggy from having woken up not long before.

"Put some pants on," Jo brusquely said to me. I realized it had been a little over two weeks since the last time I saw her in the house, which was when she had stopped at my door but didn't go in. "We're going horseback riding."

"And you need to wear pants," Holly added, fit in her own tiny pair of riding pants.

Horseback riding? What kind of a country girl would they think I was if I had told them I had never ridden a horse? I was a lower-class suburbia girl, is what I was. Nonetheless, they were both staring at me with a mirrored expression, their mouths open in excited breaths and their eyes wide. It looked like I was staring at the same person but in two different sizes.

"Well, close the door, and I will," I said with a growing smile, and I watched their faces light up in pure joy. Jo scampered away, and Holly, reaching up to the doorknob that was higher than her, clumsily closed the door while shrieking in excitement.

As a new dad, Marty had bought an old farm that had been abandoned by its aristocratic owner sometime before the Civil War. With his new and old money, he purchased the wide expanse of rolling hills, for quite a great cost given that it was some of the flattest and most lush land I had seen in California yet. It took us about an hour for Jo to drive us in her hot red Fury, but it felt even longer with Holly and Judd arguing in the back seat.

Marty had cultivated the land, built barns and stables, and hired workers until it became fully realized as Manor Farm, a horse ranch that breeds, raises, and sells horses. On the drive, Jo explained to me, in a half-audible way from all the wind in her convertible, that Marty often took the children to the ranch to teach them to ride horses, and that Jo has her very own special horse that has lived on the ranch for Jo's entire life.

My mouth gaped as we pulled down a dirt road and through a sign that read Manor Farm, and in the distance, I saw dozens of horses of all different colors and sizes grazing in the field. The midmorning sun shone on their backs and glistened on their stiff fur, and some of them turned their heads as they heard us coming up the driveway.

A tanned man came out from a little house as we parked in front of it. "Richard," Jo told me as she turned the engine off. "He keeps up the place." She jumped out of the car without opening the door, reaching into the backseat to easily pull Holly out as Judd jumped out in the same manner Jo did. I wasn't keen to embarrass or hurt myself, so I opened the door and carefully stepped out.

"Jo!" the old man greeted, the brim of his wide hat flopping over his eyes. "Willow was starting to miss you."

"Hey, Richard. Where is she?"

"Oh, she's out by the trees, as per usual. She's been a little tired lately, the old woman."

By the way he was talking, I thought perhaps Willow was another ranch worker whom Jo had a friendship with.

"Oh, the youngins are here, too!" Richard said as Holly ran to him and hugged him around his middle. "Well, let's go get your helmets and your horses." Holly and Judd went with Richard into the farmhouse as Jo turned to me with a lightness in her eyes.