Horse

by Talley English

  “Dad said dog food, or bread soaked in milk.”

  “That might work,” Susanna said.

  The bathroom door creaked, and they heard chirping.

  “Goodness, that is a baby goose,” Susanna said, squeezing past her daughter into the bathroom. The gosling was standing on the towel, chirping and flapping its tiny points of wings. Then it waddled off on black webbed feet.

  “Should we feed her?” Teagan asked.

  “You have the bread?” Susanna said.

  Teagan went to get some. When she walked in her mother was sitting on the pastel yellow toilet and the gosling was exploring behind it.

  “I forgot milk.”

  “Soak it in some water. She might not even eat it,” Susanna said.

  Teagan dripped water from the tap on the bread, ripped it, and held a piece in front of the bird’s small beak. It ignored her and waddled away. She sat down and captured the bird in her lap, and wiggled the bread against the beak. The gosling ate a piece, and then another.

  “Well,” Susanna said, sounding satisfied.

  “Barker will want to eat her,” Teagan said.

  “Keep her in here for now, and put down some newspaper,” Susanna said.

  * * *

  —

  Robert was freshly showered, wearing a green short-sleeved polo shirt. “Are we having goose for supper?” he asked.

  “No,” said Teagan. Across from her, her brother, Charlie, was drinking a Fresca. Robert had picked him up from playing paintball with friends. He was wearing camouflage pants and a green T-shirt.

  “It wouldn’t be enough for one bite,” Charlie said.

  “She’s not for eating,” Teagan said.

  “How do you know it’s a she?” Charlie asked.

  “Goose is supposed to be delicious,” Robert said.

  Susanna smiled and spooned boiled potatoes. “Somebody see if the chicken is burning?”

  Robert cracked open the door of the oven. “Roast gosling!” he said.

  “No it isn’t,” Teagan said.

  “Have you seen the goose lately?” Charlie said.

  “It’s in my bathroom.”

  “It was in your bathroom,” Charlie said.

  “Can we keep her?” Teagan directed the question at her mother.

  “Oh…” Susanna began, spooning peas into bowl.

  “You want to keep it?” Robert stood behind his daughter and put his hand on her head.

  Teagan tilted her head against his chest. “Yes,” she said.

  “Fatten it for Thanksgiving?” he said.

  “No.” Teagan dropped her chin.

  Charlie laughed.

  “You know, it could be a Newfoundland goose,” Robert said.

  “What’s that?” Teagan said.

  “A goose from Newfoundland.”

  Charlie caught Teagan’s eye.

  “You found it, right? That makes it a Newfound goose,” Robert said.

  Susanna held up the big spoon and laughed.

  End

  An end marks a beginning; memory needs sorting, but my heart keeps love, beat after beat, like a tail wagging, like a mat to wipe your boots on. What it would say, I think I know.

  Saddle

  The garage is so full no car can park in it. In front is the holly tree, grown to the top of the shingled roof since I last saw it. I sift my keys, looking for the one that fits the dead bolt. The smell of the house is familiar. The dog comes, hair raised, but when she knows it’s me she whines and waits for me to stroke her head. She looks into my face with round yellow-brown eyes. I say, “Good Kitten.” Mom went to the ASPCA to adopt a cat and came home with a puppy named Kitten.

  My mother’s house seems to me like rereading a book. I seem to visit myself here. I have changed; I don’t eat breakfast in this kitchen anymore, or sleep in the bed upstairs, or walk down the wooden steps on my way to the barn, and today I am here to remove something, to take it with me.

  After my dad left, my mother filled empty spaces with new furniture; now there are lots of places to sit down, and more thriving green things and flowering plants that make the place feel like it’s living.

  She changed the color on the living room walls, the pattern on the couch, and added my and Charlie’s faces in frames everywhere. Some things are the same. The kitchen closet spills out bags of birdseed, dog food, and worn pairs of boots. A wasp buzzes on the window glass, making an angry sound against the solid sky. The wasps come through gaps in the stones that make the outer kitchen wall.

  I see my mother’s ubiquitous coffee mug next to a notebook, and several pens scattered nearby that will never again have caps. The sun comes in the same way, though a different dog lies down in its light. Outside, a pileated woodpecker, with his currant cap, taps up and down a dogwood tree.

  From the house I remove the boxes my mother set aside for me, and when that’s done, Kitten and I go to the barn. On the way, I don’t look carefully through the fields. They are empty of horses now.

  The big wood doors slide; dust swirls in the sunlight. The stalls are dry. Cobwebs trace the ropes. There is a white coat of bird droppings on the cement floor. Pigeons. The barn cats did their job while they lived. I open the heavy door of the tack room and kick a block of wood in place to hold it. Each saddle is on its rack, and each is shrouded in a towel. Each bridle hangs on a half-moon of wood.

  I expose my saddle and use the dusty towel to wipe the leather. There’s no horse for this saddle now, but I still want to take it. Lifting it by the pommel, I fit the smooth underside against my thigh, and call the dog, and slide the heavy doors shut behind me.

  Trail Ride

  More than once Teagan had returned to the barn while the sky faded. More than once she’d sponged sweat from her horse, smoothed his sleek hair with a stiff brush, before leading him to the field, slipping off halter and rope, and watching him disappear into a darkness he knew well. More than once she’d lingered at the fence to watch a mottled moon rise and stretch weird shadows from the trees.

  * * *

  —

  She walked through the kitchen wearing riding britches, a pair of thin kneesocks pulled over them. From the jumble of things in the closet, hammers and pruning clippers, clay pots and winter coats, dog food and birdseed, she pulled her short leather paddock boots. She laced them, then clapped her hand against her thigh, a signal for Barker to get up from where he lay directly on the air-conditioning vent. He heaved himself from the floor and stood with his nose at the door, his thick tail waving lazily. She plucked a few long carrots from a plastic bag. Susanna had once kept a vegetable garden but grew tired of competing with the groundhogs and deer that came to eat. She allowed Charlie and his friends to roll cherry bombs down the groundhog holes, but despite the bombs and the presence of Barker, the groundhogs dug new holes. One day, when Susanna discovered that her fat, sun-ripened tomatoes had exactly one bite taken out of each, she resigned from vegetables. Teagan missed her mother’s zucchini bread, sweet and flecked with green. Next, Susanna planted sunflowers, but the deer nibbled the shoots, and when the giants bloomed they were barely two feet tall, their heavy yellow heads bent to the ground. Now Susanna grew what the deer and groundhogs would leave mostly alone: tall lavender, quick-lived irises, hydrangea, and peony.

  Outside, the humidity covered Teagan like a blanket. Her armpits went swampy. In the yard her toe caught in a divot and she stumbled. Barker had been digging for moles. He smelled them under the dirt, and dug trenches to unearth them. Susanna put the order to her family to stop him from digging big pits in the yard. He never caught a mole, but he left bare patches of dirt where he had tried. With Teagan near him, the dog trotted through the yard as if a mole had never concerned him. At the edge of the yard was a more interesting animal anyway. A groundhog, the summer resident, made a quiet escape to
the field, shuffling its low body. The dog flattened himself under the bottom board of the fence and gave chase. More than once the dog had made a killing bite to rodent flesh. Teagan didn’t mind whistle-pigs, but the deep holes they dug in the fields were a danger to a horse’s slender leg.

  She slid the barn doors open and clicked on the fan to move the warm, stale air. In the tack room, bridles hung in a row on the wall. Two-by-fours made saddle racks. The last saddle in the row was a child’s western saddle. It had a stitched, cushioned seat and a small horn. She had seen black and white photographs of Charlie sitting in this saddle. When she looked at the saddle she could imagine her parents as a young couple, lifting their firstborn onto a horse, telling him to hold tight to the horn.

  Teagan was thirsty. She stuck her head under the tap of the large sink. Maybe it was because she was hot, but she thought the water at the barn was colder than at the house. She hung a bridle on her shoulder and carried her saddle against her leg. Dropping them off where she would tie her horse, she picked up ropes and halters and walked to the field. She stepped up on the fence and cupped her hands at her mouth, calling out “Horses,” in the voice her mother used, stretching the o. They were in sight, but she wanted them to come to her. Zephyr raised his head, then flipped his tail and cantered toward her. The gray mare wasn’t going to be left behind. They galloped. They didn’t always run, but she loved it when they did. They halted suddenly, swinging their heavy heads and stirring up dust from the beaten-down dirt beside the gate. And then the wild moment was over, and they were tame animals looking for a handout. Zephyr nosed her hip. She snapped the carrot in two and handed over the pieces.

  She cross-tied the horses, clipping ropes to either side of the halter. From a bucket she grabbed two brushes and a hoof pick. She ran her hand down the tendon of the leg and said, “Foot please, sir.” Zephyr had been taught, so the horse lifted his hoof. She held the hoof in her palm and scraped the flat underside with the pick, and dug into the V-shaped groove called the frog. (A horse has a frog under each foot; four frogs squashed silent in the press of hooves.) With the stiff brush she followed the grain of his hair, pulling clouds of dust onto herself. She knocked the brush against the wall to clean it. With a soft-bristled brush she went over his face. He liked this and tried to rub his head against her. She spent a little more time around his ears and eyes, getting the places he couldn’t scratch himself.

  Susanna walked in followed by Barker. The dog went to the water bucket under the pump and lapped through a skin of drowned bugs.

  “Thanks for getting my horse,” Susanna said.

  “Sure.”

  “She’s a good girl,” Susanna cooed to the mare and picked up brushes.

  Teagan took down her helmet and half chaps. She slipped the elastic band under her boot and zipped the side. The chaps gave her a little more sticking power and protected her leg from the saddle’s stirrup straps. When she unclipped her horse he took a step forward. With a hand against his nose she said, “Stand.” Pinching the cheek pieces of the bridle she slid the bit down his nose and pressed it against his lips, and he accepted the bit, which settled over his tongue in the back of his mouth, where he had no teeth. She slipped the crown piece over his ears and pulled them through. She buckled the throat latch and noseband and checked that all of it fit right and nothing pinched.

  “Stand,” she said, pressing her hand against his nose briefly, and she left him there to pick up her riding crop.

  “Your horse is leaving,” Susanna said.

  Teagan turned to see Zephyr walking into the barnyard.

  “You can’t leave him untied,” Susanna said.

  “He usually stands,” Teagan said, quickly retrieving the reins, which had slid down his neck, so he wouldn’t step on them. She stood on his left side, lifted the saddle flap, and cinched the girth. She stood in front of the horse, her hands around one of his front legs, at the knee. She tugged the leg toward her and said, “Give.” The horse allowed her to raise his leg and stretch it forward. He leaned back into the stretch until she let go of the leg. She figured, if people stretched before exercise, then a horse who would carry a person should, too. They repeated with the other leg. Then she moved to his belly, reached under to the far hind leg, and when he gave it, she moved it toward her, stretching the large muscles of his flank. It was not something she would have attempted with a horse who might kick. She was confident with Zephyr, and he was familiar with the routine. Then she patted his neck, gathered the reins, stuck her toe in the stirrup, planted her hands on the pommel, and swung up, settling softly on the saddle out of respect for his back. Her arms and the reins, from her elbows to his mouth, made a line. When her horse moved, she received his motion in her hands. In a few minutes Susanna was ready to go on Duchess.

  * * *

  —

  They called Blue View a farm, but the biggest parcel was tree-covered. Robert was a high school principal, and Susanna taught preschool. They were not farmers. The barns were always going to be for horses, and the two best fields were for horses. Robert had tried maintaining a cow-calf operation himself, enlisting Susanna’s help, even though she didn’t like cows. He kept Angus, because he liked Angus beef. The cows developed a knack for trampling the fence or escaping underneath it. Charlie drove his four-wheeler illegally on the highway to herd them toward home. Robert eventually gave in to his lack of ability to work cattle and sold and slaughtered the herd. For a while after that the freezer was packed with beef wrapped in white butcher paper, and Robert was happier with a freezer full of beef than he had ever been with a field full of cattle. He rented the lower field to a neighbor who built up a small herd of mixed cattle, and calves were born from them each year.

  * * *

  —

  Teagan walked her horse beside her mother’s on the wide track in the woods. She reached a hand to her mother, who squeezed it. Zephyr dropped back and followed Duchess, his nose in line with her lightly swishing black tail, as if a herd of two. The clop of hooves was like a metronome.

  * * *

  —

  Teagan knew the story. When Susanna was pregnant with Charlie, she asked her doctor how long she could continue to ride. He told her, Absolutely no riding. She went for a second opinion and was told, No riding while pregnant. She went to a third doctor, who said, You can ride until you can’t get up on the horse by yourself. That was the advice Susanna followed.

  * * *

  —

  There was no breeze. The horses walked. Teagan took up a handful of Zephyr’s brown-white mane. She let the side-to-side motion of the stepping horse, left hind, right front, right hind, left front, exaggerate her shoulders, swaying left, right, left, right. She imagined a baby in its mother’s womb, rocking.

  * * *

  —

  “Teagan, what are you doing?” Susanna called, looking back at her daughter.

  Teagan straightened up. “Napping?” she said with a guilty smile.

  “I don’t think so. If your horse shied, you’d be on the ground in a minute.”

  “Sorry,” Teagan said, but knew that Zephyr wouldn’t surprise her. He never had.

  They turned onto a trail that snaked up the hill. Teagan stood in her stirrups to take weight off her horse’s back and felt a spiderweb break across her face. She wiped it off and inspected her arms for the spider. The grass on the trail was tall.

  “I have to ask Jason to bush-hog this,” Susanna said.

  “We have a bush hog.”

  “Your dad sold it,” Susanna said.

  “To who?”

  “Jason.”

  “So Jason clears the trails with our bush hog Dad sold him?”

  “Right,” Susanna said.

  “I guess that makes sense,” Teagan said.

  “Should we trot?” Susanna suggested.

  They trotted their horses u
ntil Susanna lifted her hand in the air and Teagan slowed her horse. The signal was borrowed from foxhunting. They left the woods and walked the cleared hilltop. Teagan reached down to pat her horse’s neck, and he bucked, kicking out with both back legs. She sat, confused, and he did it again.

  “Mom, hold up,” Teagan called.

  Susanna glanced over her shoulder and saw the horse kicking out. “He’s got a fly.”

  Teagan twisted in her saddle and peered down his flanks. A thick horsefly, its plated abdomen visible, buzzed past Teagan’s head. She ducked.

  “Swat it,” Susanna said.

  “It’s huge,” Teagan said.

  The big fly landed on the horse’s neck. She slapped with a stiff hand and the thing dropped to the ground. A little blood spotted the horse’s white hair. “Got it,” she said, wiping the blood from his neck and cleaning her hand on her shirt.

  * * *

  —

  By the time they made a loop and were back on the wide track, the air was cooler. Teagan felt more awake, her muscles warmed from riding. “Let’s race,” she said.

  Susanna halted her horse near the blue gate. “We just did a big loop.”

  “It’s not so hot and we mostly walked. Just up the straightaway. We stop at the bend.”

  “Duchess, what do you have to say about this?” Susanna said, but she turned her horse. “I don’t want to go flat-out.”

  “If you want to lose,” Teagan said, scrubbing Zephyr’s neck with her knuckles. “That’s the start line.” She pointed to an oak tree with a curving branch. “Ready?”

  The Appaloosa was the faster horse. She held fistfuls of his mane and her arms jerked forward each time he stretched his neck.

  Beyond the bend, she couldn’t see three does emerge to cross to the woods on the other side. When her horse saw them, he halted. One moment he was at a full gallop, and the next he stood still. Teagan did not transition so well. The sudden stop unseated her, and she flew into the air, turning over. She had not even let go of the reins and gripped them in her hand. And then she landed, hard, on the soles of both boots, and stepped forward to catch her balance. For a moment the deer stood, their long ears upright, and she stood, the reins in her hand, and the horse stood. Then the deer leapt away, the white undersides of their tails flipped up like signal flags. She turned to her horse and the horse swung his head around at the sound of hooves coming closer. When the mare rounded the bend Susanna slowed her, and she saw Teagan standing beside her horse. Teagan looked up at her mother’s shocked face.