Half Broke

by Ginger Gaffney

  The voice in my head is loud: She’s still not ready. Not coming through. Not generous. Not making the change. The other trainers leave the rail and head toward their trucks. The back pockets of their Wranglers reveal round packages of tobacco chew. Each man wears a fancy silk cowboy neck scarf, tied neatly into a decorative bow, beneath their Carhart jackets. They are onto their third beer and it’s not even lunchtime.

  “You’re only as good as your toolbox,” an older trainer once said to me. I was thirty-one, and my toolbox felt small. I came here to get a bigger box but now felt crammed into something smaller than my own.

  The famous trainer keeps nodding his head, motioning me to swing up. I do. In one fluid stroke, I’m on top. Terry twirls round and round. I don’t even think to let her straighten out of my bent grip. She’s spinning faster and faster. Tighter and tighter. My left hand holds her head to my knee, my right hand reaches back and grabs the back of the saddle. The men run back from their trucks, beers in hand. Hooting and whooping like cowboys at the rodeo.

  Terry is spinning herself into a hole. I’m trying to get my right foot into the outside stirrup. She trips and goes down on one knee, knocks my whole body forward and I lose my grip on the lead rope. She’s off. Straight-necked and barreling around the round pen. Ride out the trouble. Ride out the trouble, I keep repeating to myself as she gets faster and faster, peeling circles around the seventy-foot pen. The men, the famous trainer, they’re all a blur. I can’t see them, can’t hear them. It’s just me and Terry. Terry, who is absolutely traumatized by this thing on her back that is me.

  She’s running to the left, and my right foot, still out of the stirrup, gets hung up on one of the round-pen rails. My knee twists hard as my leg gets dragged backward. Terry bolts even faster from the sound and feel of me getting caught on the rail. She trips again, at a full gallop, and goes down on both knees. I’m whiplashed forward. I lose hold of the cantle. She jumps up. I’m still on top, but now sitting on a giant ball that is bucking and twirling. Bucking and twirling. I spin off. Straight into the round-pen wall. I throw my arms at the wall to protect my head from smashing into the pipe corral rails. Then I’m down flat, in four inches of dirt. Terry’s across the pen facing me at a standstill.

  The other trainers rush over the top rail and help sit me up. My right knee is quickly filling with fluid and there’s a deep gash across my left palm. The blood is studded with bits of manure and dirt. I sit up, spit the sand out of my mouth, and say, “Well, it could have been worse.” But then I see Terry walk off. And realize it is worse. She’s lame. Not able to bear much weight on her right front leg. I stand and hobble over to her, pulling the lead line out of the sand. Puke wads my esophagus and I swallow hard to keep it down. I walk Terry out to the center of the pen and check her over. There’s no swelling, yet. It’s probably a tendon sprain, maybe a tear. If it were a break, she wouldn’t be able to bear weight on it at all. I’m pissed. Mad at myself. Mad at the wind. Mad at every man in a cowboy hat.

  “It’d be good if you could at least sit back on her, you know, for a moment.” The famous trainer is in the pen standing right next to me.

  “Just for a moment,” I say.

  I know why this is important. I know leaving her with this last memory of terror isn’t how I want her to remember me. I bend Terry around. The famous trainer leaves the pen. I put my left foot in the stirrup and hop up and down off my right leg, which is throbbing and swollen. Terry doesn’t take a step. I bend her tight, swing my leg over the saddle, sit down hard, then swing back off in one solid movement. “That’s it. That’s all for today,” I tell the trainer. I take Terry’s lead line and labor toward the gate.

  November / 2013

  Eliza swings up on Billy and tries to take her around the course. We’ve set up tires, barrels, logs, cones, and small jumps all over the twelve-acre pasture. Billy’s busy watching all the other horses run through the course, not thinking for one second about the person on her back. Billy’s never been able to pay attention to any one thing too long, and today she’s in good company. Because of trauma and the aftereffects of drug addiction, Eliza and many of the other residents on this ranch struggle with attention deficit disorder.

  Billy trots twenty feet then stops, swings her head and neck off to the right to look at Tony and Hawk go through the tires. Hawk drops his head low to the ground as he puts one hoof at a time inside the tire wells. He looks like a bulky defensive lineman doing an agility test. Eliza kicks at Billy’s side and takes the extra length of her reins to slap Billy on the rump. Billy hops her lithe brown body into the air then takes off again at a trot. They head toward the barrels with the colored flags blowing out from their center. Billy takes one look at the flags, stops, spins, and heads back toward the barn. Eliza bends Billy’s neck around and points her again at the flags. Billy’s ears pin straight at the blustery menace. She halts again, crow hops, then rears up on her hind legs. When she comes down, Eliza bends her around and turns her in tight circles.

  “Take her to the cones first,” I yell to Eliza.

  Eliza turns to listen to me, then trots over. “She’s got a mind like a sieve. Everything just falls out. She knows better, too. Damn, she’s stubborn.”

  Eliza has found her voice and her body. Working the horses has changed her. She no longer pulls out her eyebrows, no longer twirls her hair into knots. Her skin, her eyes, her mouth—everything has a different texture. It looks like she’s had cosmetic surgery. She has come back to life. The horses woke her up. Besides Luna, Billy is our most challenging horse. I decided a few months ago to give Billy to the ranch. She is athletic. She can be contrary. She gives away nothing for free.

  “She’s getting to you,” I tell Eliza. “You can’t be the leader if you’re thinking like her.” I laugh a little, then send them toward the cones. If they ride a few series of figure eights, circles, and spirals around the cones, they’ll both have calmed down enough to face the flags.

  Tony and Hawk have finished the course now. We’ve had it set up for a month, spread out wide in the pasture, to test the residents’ skills and give the horses something to focus on. Tony swings off Hawk and gives Randy the reins. Randy just finished riding Moo around the course a few times and has tied him back at my trailer. He recently graduated to riding Hawk. Randy’s still on his diet; he’s lost another twenty pounds. He is now able to push off his handmade box and swing over Hawk’s back, landing lightly in the saddle. Hawk, he tells me, is his new favorite horse.

  Rex and Paul are working with Estrella, touching her all over her body with a blue tarp. Estrella spooks hard when she hears the sound of plastic. Last week Rex opened a candy wrapper while he was on top of her and she took off at a gallop, straight back to her pen. The saddle slid off to the side of her rib cage, but Rex hung on. Today Rex and Paul have decided to desensitize her to things that blow and rattle. They’re helping her build confidence. She looks curious. Her ears take their turn flicking on and off the crinkled, flapping fabric. Building confidence in a young horse is a slow process. They are teaching her how to trust them, even when she becomes frightened. They have the saddle thrown over the top rail of the round pen behind them. Once she’s quiet and accepts the tarp, they’ll saddle her and ride her all over the ranch.

  Behind them, I see Sarah and Scout in the round pen. Scout’s saddled and bridled, and it looks like Sarah’s thinking about mounting. I walk over toward the pen. Sarah doesn’t look up. This is her first day back to the horses in almost three months, and she’s not speaking with anyone. I’ve been trying to give her space, but what I really want is to give her a hug and let her know how much I’ve missed her.

  She was close to being kicked off the ranch for screwing one of the male residents in the hay barn. Someone caught them and turned them in. She spent four days on the bench and another six weeks on a solitary contract. Here, at the ranch, a solitary contract is not confinement. It is sixteen-hour workdays cleaning the bathrooms, scrubbing the floors, and
washing the dishes after breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Those residents put on long contracts like Sarah’s always have a peer with them every minute of the day. They cannot speak with anyone except this peer, and then only to ask questions. Long contracts are meant to have a strict effect. Everyone knows getting kicked off the ranch means breaking parole. And breaking parole means they are heading back to prison.

  Sarah reaches down and checks each one of Scout’s hooves for rocks. I see her moving her lips and whispering to him. His ears twist around and face backward. He’s trying to catch the sounds coming from Sarah’s mouth. She’s humming or singing some tune. It’s faint and high. She sounds like a little girl singing to her stuffed animals, alone in her room. Scout rolls his tongue and yawns.

  “Sarah, how are you doing? Are you getting ready to ride?” I ask her. Yes, she nods, but doesn’t look at me. “You’ll stay in the round pen and work on your turns, your halt, a little bit of canter. Okay?” Yes, another nod. Before Sarah went on contract, Scout was her favorite horse to ride. She is a natural rider, with a good seat. Scout was the first horse she had ridden since she left her family’s ranch when she was fourteen years old. She rides Scout like she’s been riding horses her whole adult life.

  I walk back into the pasture and head over toward the jumps. Eliza has Billy at a nice lope, jumping the two cross bars without any trouble.

  “You want me to raise them?” I ask her.

  “Where’s she going?” Eliza looks past me and on up the road.

  Sarah’s out of the round pen and galloping up the road toward the main office. Her reins are long and dangle down Scout’s neck. She races past Rex and Paul who just mounted Izzy and Estrella. Estrella spooks from behind as Sarah flies by. Paul stays quiet in the saddle as he pulls Estrella into tight circles, trying to keep her calm.

  “What the hell are you doing? Bend him around. Sarah. Fuck, Sarah, bend him around,” Rex screams at her as she races by.

  “Aw shit, Sarah,” I say under my breath, and take off running across the pasture over to where Moo is standing tied at my trailer. I grab my lariat from inside the tack-room door and throw it over the horn as I swing up. I see Sarah and Scout pass the cottonwoods on the far west side of the pasture. I take off at an angle through the field on Moo, trying to judge how the hell I can cut her off. From a nearby neighbor’s pasture, I hear sandhill cranes calling, their muffled songs sounding like French horns sending out a warning.

  I see Tony from the corner of my eye, running up the road, straight at Sarah, screaming at the top of his lungs. “Bend him. Bend him. What the hell are you doing, Sarah? Bend him around.”

  Sarah barely touches the reins. She’s heading toward the shop area. Stacks of lumber are piled up in the middle of the road and she’s not even attempting to steer away from them. Even from far away I can see her cheeks are rose-colored and flushed. They look like tiny, round, flashing red lights glowing in the distance. The rest of her face looks pale and pasty. I lean farther up Moo’s neck, and we race toward the wood pile. If I can get there before Sarah, I can use the pile of rough-cut pine boards from the local sawmill as a wall to slow them down. Scout has his neck stretched out flat and smooth, pulling taut from his withers. He’s loping at a good clip, not as fast as he can go, but a steady three-beat thumping knocks loud against packed earth. When I get close to him, I can tell by his half-closed eyes that he’s not in a panic. I send Moo right for the stacked lumber jutting out onto the road. We arrive at such an angle that the wall of wood and Moo’s body create a tight corner. Scout heads right at us. His head and neck rise from his withers. His eyes tighten into slits. His hindquarters coil and lift his forehand as he rolls into our corner, like a boat coming into harbor. Sarah falls forward onto his neck from the unexpected deceleration. Scout comes to a halt, nickers, then walks forward a few steps and lays his head across Moo’s neck. Sarah looks up with a snarl.

  “They hate me. They all hate me. Everything I do, they’re out to get me.” As she talks, I open the loop of my lariat and slip it over Scout’s head. “I don’t trust any of them. This horse is the only one I trust.”

  She looks terrible. Her hair is all stringy, greasy. Her teeth look tan next to her skin and one is missing. There’s a gap between her upper right incisor and her first molar that I’ve never noticed before.

  I neck rein Moo around and walk back up the road. My rawhide tether is loose around Scout’s neck as he follows by my side. Sarah drops the reins and slumps forward like a monkey on his back. Her arms dangle from her sides, with a fist at each end.

  “I’ve been worried about you, Sarah,” I tell her as we walk side by side, swaying in rhythm like clothes on a line. She looks up ahead of us. Her eyes are fixed in place with eyebrows pinching around them. I see her chest rise and fall in quick succession. She looks like she’s going to scream. We pass the cottonwoods and turn the corner of the ranch loop. Scout curves his body into the turn, and Sarah’s head falls off center. Her body goes limp, rocking like a drunken sailor on the wave of Scout’s lumbering spine. She looks like she could roll right off.

  “Why did you do it, Sarah?” She shifts her eyes to me but never turns her head. She knows I’m asking about what happened in the hay barn.

  “Taking my clothes off for men is all I’ve ever done,” she mumbles, never looking up.

  Sarah started working at her relative’s strip club at the age of thirteen. She learned to dye her hair, plaster on makeup, and dance the pole, her skinny girlish legs wrapping around its circumference.

  Everyone meets us back at the barn.

  “What do you think you’re doing, Sarah? You know the rules.” Still on top of Izzy, with Paul riding next to him, Rex is at her height and screaming into her face. She stares ahead without a blink. When we first started riding the horses, Scout, Hawk, and Willie all had the bad habit of bolting off, with their rider hanging on for dear life. If a horse takes off with you, the rule is, you must bend their neck around until they stop. Rex turns Izzy away from her, cussing under his breath.

  “Sarah, what’s wrong?” Paul asks. “You can ride Scout better than that.” Randy takes a good look at her, then looks away. Tony does the same thing. They turn and walk away from us, scuffing the ground with their boots, heads tilted to the ground. I turn Moo to the right and head across the pasture toward the jumps, with Sarah and Scout still walking by our side. Eliza and Billy come toward us.

  “You want to go for a ride together, Sarah?” Eliza asks.

  “Not just yet,” I tell Eliza. “Give us some time.”

  Colt Starting / 1998

  “Jorge’s on his way over to get her, Ginger,” the famous trainer tells me as Terry and I limp out the gate.

  “I’ve got her. I’ll take her to the barn,” I tell him.

  I open the gate, and Terry follows me out. We walk across the wind-whipped clay, slipping on the frozen spots, trying to hold our balance. We hitch ourselves along like an old married couple. Both of us too young to be hurting this badly. I’m thinking about ice, where I can get some and how to wrap my knee and Terry’s tendon. I’ve got a long pair of socks back at my trailer that will work. I’ll cut the toes out and pull it up her leg. Fold it half-down and make a tube that I can fill with ice. Fifteen minutes of ice, on and off, for the next few hours. In my first-aid kit, I have painkillers for both of us and enough vet wrap and bandages to wrap both our legs for the night.

  When I walk into the barn, Jorge gives me a gentle smile and reaches for the lead rope. I hand Terry over to him. “I’ll be right back,” I say and head out to get what I need. At my trailer, I down three ibuprofen and wrap an ace bandage over my jeans and around my knee. I grab the sock and first-aid kit, then head to the bunkhouse to get some ice. I’m walking back to the barn when I meet up with a few of the other trainers.

  “You want us to make you a sandwich or something?” they ask. It’s lunchtime on the final day of our time here. Everyone will be loading up horse trailers and tack this aft
ernoon in preparation for leaving early tomorrow morning.

  “No, thanks. I’m not hungry,” I tell them. Their hats are pulled low over their foreheads and I can’t see their eyes. They walk on with hunched-over shoulders, shuffling their Red Wings or Ariats with their toes pointing out to the side.

  Terry’s tied just inside the barn, and Jorge is shoveling wood shavings into a stall, making a soft bed so Terry can rest for the night. I walk through the double barn door. She turns her head at me and nickers. She’s placing some weight on her right front leg. I get the anti-inflammatory paste out of my kit and squeeze a few grams between her lips and onto her tongue. She licks, chews, and swallows a few times.

  She stands with one hind leg cocked, then shifts her weight onto all four and lets me pick up her hoof and pull the sock up her leg. I fold the sock down from the knee to make the tube and fill it with ice. Then I secure the vet wrap around the length of her tendon to hold the ice pack in place. I sit back on one of the hay bales nearby and put the leftover bag of ice on my knee. My left hand is throbbing and needs a good cleaning, but it’s not too bad. Just a cut. No stitches, I think to myself.