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how he handled my first fistfight, age six. When I got a speeding ticket at the age of sixteen there was a story about a kid my age in a wheelchair because he liked to run his cars a little fast.
    Then, the night I lost my virginity, as if he knew exactly where I had been and with whom, I got the story of a soldier who wasn’t careful where he put it and turned up with what could only be described as a welter of cauliflower-like boils on the tip of his manhood.
    I liked Molly’s parenting far better. It gave a kid a chance. But we are products of others. I could not help myself. I told Lucy stories, and never a better time or place than on one of our rides.
    When Lucy met her paternal grandparents for the first time she was six years old. She had known me for about a year, but I wasn’t real important, only her mother’s new husband. Her father, whom she had never even seen in a photograph, was the centre of her world.
    So when her grandparents began showing her all kinds of pictures of their son riding all kinds of horses, everything from the childhood pony to the summer of his rodeo, it made a powerful impression. They had sold off their horses after Luke’s death, but the next time Molly and I took Lucy out to their place Grandpa Luke had bought a little pony for Lucy to ride whenever she visited. After that, there was no end to it.
    Lucy turned horse-crazy. We fought it as long as we could but ended up getting her lessons at a local stable.
    When Lucy turned ten, Molly and I bought her a ten-year-old paint gelding named Ahab. She had been riding seriously for over three years by then and showed no sign of losing interest.
    We had shopped for a small animal, but all three of us fell in love with Ahab the moment we saw him.
    He was enormous, standing over sixteen hands, black mostly but with white lightning streaks on each flank and a few broad splotches of white running up from his belly. He had a white blaze down his long, handsome Roman nose and three high white socks. And Ahab could run. He had an impressive list of first place victories in barrel racing to prove it, so, despite everything, he became Lucy’s first horse. Four years later, we bought Jezebel, a gorgeous bay quarter horse with good lineage and pure fire for a personality. Jezebel came off a racetrack, where she had finished first whenever she had managed to get out of the gate. For a couple of seasons, Lucy struggled with her new mare.
    One weekend everything would be fine. The next she might not even take a saddle. I expect a lot of kids would have given up. Hell, I was ready to give up.
    But not Lucy. Lucy had what she wanted. Now it was time to learn how to handle it. Molly and I ended up driving her and Jezebel to one riding clinic after another.
    When that failed to turn things around completely we drove up to a professional and boarded Jezebel and Lucy for two months. From dawn until dusk Lucy rode every kind of animal that came through that barn.
    By the time Lucy returned home, she was a different girl and all the nonsense with Jezebel was history.
    The days were long past when I could give advice to my stepdaughter about anything relating to a horse, but horses still remained our hobby, with Ahab having long ago become my horse.
    We took the horses through the pasture at a gallop and waded through the creek five minutes later. From there we raced over a couple wooded hills before coming to the back gate at what used to be an orchard.
    Our property extended well beyond this gate, another eighty acres in all, but these fields we rented to a farmer who paid us a share of the crop.
    At the gate Lucy moved Jezebel around and opened it while she was still in the saddle. This involved moving Jezebel sideways, having her turn from one side of the gate to the other, and then dance sideways again. Ahab was also trained to do this, but the one time I had tried it I embarrassed him so much that afterwards I either let Lucy open the gates or I