Horse

by Talley English

  Boston is in Massachusetts, Teagan thought, glad to pin something down.

  The floppy-haired boy shrugged. “There’s a trip every year,” he said. “I’m Doug.” He held out his hand. Sarah and Teagan both shook it. Teagan had never shaken hands with someone her own age. She congratulated herself for not laughing at him. Doug put his hands on his friend’s shoulders and introduced him as Clay. Sarah and Teagan shook hands with Clay, too. Sarah wasn’t smirking anymore.

  “So, you like the play?” she asked the boys.

  People started filing back in the glass doors. The lights inside blinked.

  “Time to go back in,” Teagan said.

  “I was wondering if you wanted to sit with me,” Clay said to Teagan.

  “I can’t. I don’t think,” Teagan said, surprised.

  “Here, we can switch tickets. Sarah, you sit with me,” Doug said.

  Teagan realized that this had probably been the boys’ plan all along. Why did Clay-from-Roxbury want to sit with her? He couldn’t possibly like her after two minutes. She didn’t even have an opinion about him. “Um,” she said. Her ticket stub was stuck like a bookmark inside her program because she didn’t have any pockets in her dress. Sarah snatched Teagan’s ticket from the program and handed it to Doug, and Doug handed his ticket to Clay.

  “Meet us by mud-man after,” Sarah called.

  Clay offered his arm. Teagan looked at him. Clay looked awkward and put his arm down, but then Teagan slipped her arm through his, and they quickly walked back inside. Clay’s shirtsleeve was rough against Teagan’s arm, and she wondered if people would laugh at them, walking arm and arm like in an old movie, but no one at all noticed. This boy had wanted to sit with her. She thought it was dumb; they didn’t know each other and would never see each other again, she was sure, and she didn’t like that he and his buddy had planned on Teagan and Sarah switching tickets. But maybe it was nice that he wanted to sit with her. He had noticed her. He had complimented her dress, and Teagan had the sense to keep from saying it was a stupid dress that she’d had forever. In the dark the orchestra swelled into sound and a thrill of electricity went through her. Maybe he would hold her hand.

  The second half of the play was good, too, but she thought the Phantom was too sorry for himself, and she didn’t see why he had to wear a mask. Mostly, Teagan concentrated on telepathically communicating to the boy to reach over and hold her hand. A couple of times she put her hand lightly on her own knee, where it would be easy to reach. Finally she gave up. She was deciding that the Phantom’s actual name was something like Augustus Clementine when Clay shyly curled his fingers over hers, but all she felt was disappointment. The play was about to end.

  Accident

  On a cool Saturday morning, Teagan woke in her small dormitory room and pulled the covers over her cheek. The heat was on in the building, but there was no separate thermostat for her room, and the air outside her bed felt cold. She stuck out a hand and saw that her alarm would ring in five minutes. She turned it off. Julie’s head was turned to the wall, her covers pulled up, too. Teagan spent a few moments enjoying the warmth of her bed, then threw off the blanket and got out. The wood floor was cold on her bare feet. She shivered a little and rummaged through a pile of clothes in the closet, pulling out some jeans and thick socks. Her coat was the only organized thing of hers in the room. Her gloves and scarf were stuffed in one pocket, and a winter hat in the other. It hung on a brass hook that a previous occupant of the room had fixed to the wall of the closet. By midmorning she wouldn’t need a coat, but she shrugged it on for her early-morning walk.

  Outside, her breath clouded. She was too early for breakfast, so she took the loop road down to the barn. The warehouse-size doors were open. She walked in. The long rows of stalls were quiet, though most of them contained a horse. Halfway down the concrete hallway, a dusty black radio sat on a wooden bench. Country music was playing, one of those songs that sounds like a love story but is about a father and a daughter. She’d been here before. In her lessons, she sometimes rode a dapple gray horse who was kept on this aisle. The barn was enormous. A building more than a barn. She thought of barns as wooden, snug, smaller. This building had two wings; stalls built back-to-back faced into four hallways. If the halls had been built in the form of a cross, it would be a cement cathedral, she thought, full of horses and hay, the Eucharist stored in the tack room next to saddles. There was also an indoor arena, and Teagan had only ever seen one at large showgrounds. This one was big enough to have a group of horses at either end, each involved in a separate lesson, and there were dusty mirrors along one wall, to check one’s form, like dancers do, she thought. She felt little in the huge facility, which was more the word for it; it seemed to be for riders in a class in which she wasn’t. She didn’t like seeing herself in the long mirrors and compared herself to the numerous riders she passed every day along the cement halls. She was more used to fields. The building alone seemed to make her experiences useless.

  The hall was empty of people. She walked past the metal stall doors, peering through the thick bars at the warm dark figures at the backs of their boxes. One delicate head of a small Arabian horse looked at her closely. She wanted to pull open the door and stroke the face but felt she wasn’t allowed. The stalls were fairly big, but the cement-block walls and barred fronts made them seem imprisoning. (She’d only seen prison cells in movies. She wondered if there were people in prisons who had only seen horses in movies.) Toward the end of the hall was a door big enough to drive a car through. The cold hung around this entrance. She realized that the hallway was warmer than outside. The heat of horse bodies raised the temperature. She heard the low grumble of a truck and someone shout. She stood on tiptoe and looked out of a dusty inset window. A multihorse trailer was backing up to the barn. They must be unloading, she thought. She could hear the impatient or nervous stamp of hooves from inside the trailer. She looked down the hall and saw that several stalls were empty. The new occupants must have just arrived. She noticed that the stalls had names on them, written in blue on pieces of masking tape. She read the names, taking her time walking back. She would have liked to see the horses come in, but she knew she wasn’t supposed to be in the barn except during her allotted hour for lessons. Her stomach grumbled and she thought of breakfast. There was usually a bucket of apples in the tack room. She would take one and eat it while she walked back up the hill.

  The fourth stall with masking tape on it said TEAGAN. She stopped. A coincidence, she decided. There must be another Teagan at school. Or, maybe, she was going to be assigned the horse for her lesson. She went and picked a fresh-looking apple from the tack room. As she came out she had the apple to her lips. She froze. A woman in blue coveralls was leading a dark bay Thoroughbred horse down the hallway. Teagan bit the sweet flesh. She walked down the hallway.

  The woman in the coveralls slid the stall door shut. She was short and sturdy looking. Her cheeks were smooth, but the crow’s-feet by her eyes gave her a crinkled look.

  “The barn isn’t open to students right now,” she said, but she didn’t sound angry.

  “Okay. I’ll leave. This is—” She almost said “an accident.” “This is Obsidian,” she said.

  The woman read the masking tape on the door. “You’re Teagan. I’m Shirley.”

  She hadn’t proffered a hand, but Teagan held out hers. Shirley shook it.

  Teagan peered in at the large horse. Obsidian. Ian. Her father. Her father’s horse.

  “You want to give him the apple?”

  Shirley slid open the stall door. Ian tried to walk out, but she casually blocked his way with her body and clipped a rubber rope across the opening. It pressed against his chest when he moved forward and he stopped. “There you go,” she said.

  Teagan held out the apple, looking at the horse, the white blaze down his face, his flop of black wire mane, the soft brown on the side
of his nose. He ignored the apple. His ears were forward and his head erect. He was looking at something she couldn’t see.

  “Takes ’em a few days,” Shirley said. “Did you keep him turned out?”

  “What?” Teagan said, her arm stretched out with the apple in her hand.

  “Is he used to a stall?” Shirley said.

  “Yes. I mean. No. I mean, he lived in a field.”

  “It’ll take him a few days,” Shirley said. “I’ll keep an eye on him.”

  “Thank you,” Teagan said.

  Shirley smiled and coiled a canvas lead rope and disappeared down the hall to the other wing.

  Ian turned in a circle. Teagan took a step back. Then he resumed his stance with his head up, ears forward. She reached up and put a hand on top of his nose. He didn’t react. She tried to pull his head down, but his neck was rigid. Then he whinnied. The sound echoed off the cement walls and she covered her ears and dropped the apple. It rolled into the stall. Ian looked at what had fallen. He swooped his head down and picked up the apple and crunched the whole thing in his mouth. Foamy slobber spilled from his lips. Teagan took a deep breath. She crossed her arms and looked at him. She pushed his shoulder and began pulling the metal sliding door shut, forcing the horse to pull his head in. She looked at him through the bars. He made another quick circle and stood with his long face almost pressed against the bars, his pointed ears forward. Teagan walked out of the barn and up the hill.

  Definition

  Accident: a thing that happens; an event that is without apparent cause; chance; fortune; an unfavorable symptom; a casual appearance or effect; an irregularity in the landscape.

  * * *

  —

  Obsidian, Ian, came to me by accident. I was living at a boarding school; the girls’ school had a horse facility. I had said that I wanted to go. It wasn’t an accident. The wrong horse was sent, I thought. My father’s horse. My father was gone, and that might have been an accident. I used to ride a horse without a saddle or bridle (I could have had an accident) and only a cotton rope clipped to the halter.

  * * *

  —

  Halter: a headstall for leading a horse. A head harness, made from nylon or leather; a thing for leading horses by the head. Possibly the etymology of the word is traced to an English woman saying to her German husband about a horse, “Darling, mightn’t you need something to halt her?”

  * * *

  —

  At first a thing seems to have no apparent cause. There are irregularities in the landscape. The horse steps through them. The human rides over them. The landscape was shaped by fortune. The hills and gullies seem to roll over the humped backs of whales; an ocean turned to stone.

  Call

  Teagan wasn’t sure how to call home. Finally she picked up the dirty white phone in the hallway and dialed the area code and her mother’s number. Susanna answered and accepted the collect call.

  “Hi, Mom,” Teagan said, not able to keep her voice steady.

  “Teagan! Sweetie, I’ve been thinking that I need to send you a calling card,” Susanna said.

  Teagan could almost hear the kitchen. The hiss of the coffeepot, and Barker sighing and plopping his head down on the linoleum.

  “Ian is here,” Teagan said.

  “Oh good. You’ve seen him already?” Susanna said.

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Didn’t know? That he was coming? I guess I should have given you the date, but I wasn’t sure myself. Shipping him was more complicated than it needed to be. They couldn’t give me an exact date.”

  Teagan didn’t know what to say. She was surprised to realize she was about to cry.

  “Baby? Are you okay? Are you unhappy?”

  “No,” Teagan said. She didn’t want her mother talking to her like she was a child. Neither Susanna nor Teagan said anything for a minute. Teagan concentrated on her breathing to suppress the urge that was pushing on her chest.

  “I said you could take a horse. Ian is the horse I had to give you.”

  “I know,” Teagan said. “Thank you,” and she covered the mouthpiece and gasped.

  “Do you want me to bring him back?” Susanna’s voice was strained.

  “I don’t know,” Teagan said.

  “He’s yours now. It’s your call,” Susanna said.

  She Knows Everything (About Riding Horses)

  Weeks passed without another visit to the barn. Teagan was busy. She had more reading to do than she’d ever had, and more writing. Every teacher gave writing assignments. Her English professor assigned the recitation of a poem in front of the class. They drew names out of a box to see who would go when. Teagan had four weeks until it was her turn. She’d chosen “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost and then wished she hadn’t picked such a long poem to memorize. She’d liked the line “ ‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned’!” She and Julie began study hall in their room in the usual way, trying to sabotage each other’s homework. Julie had hidden Teagan’s algebra book behind the toilet. Teagan had made annotations on the poem Julie had to memorize, “My Heart Leaps Up” by William Wordsworth. They finally settled down, but when Julie looked at her poem, she started laughing and Teagan did, too. They heard footsteps in the hallway. Quickly they opened their books. Ms. Ganski opened the door and asked them if they were studying quietly. They said of course they were.

  * * *

  —

  On a Friday afternoon, Teagan looked at her watch and quietly slipped out of her history class. She had told her teacher she would, because of riding tryouts. A new block of lessons was beginning, and she was expected to try out on Ian so that her instructors could decide where to place her. It was amazing to her that riding could take priority over classes, but it was treated like other team sports, soccer or field hockey, and students were expected to fulfill obligations to their team practices as well as keep up with their studies. She had changed into her britches at lunchtime and wore them to class. She carried her tall boots in a duffel slung over her shoulder and would change into them at the barn.

  On the loop road she caught up to Ellen, another new girl and a rider. They didn’t discuss tryouts but talked about riding. Teagan realized that she hadn’t ridden Ian since he’d arrived, and then she realized that she could remember riding him only once, ever, the day she rode with her mother and Hope. She was about to try out on a horse she didn’t know. Briefly, she wondered about sending him back home and asking to ride the school horses, which would probably be docile and dulled from years of work with different riders, but she knew she wouldn’t do it. Susanna hadn’t done the work of sending him just to have him sent back.

  Teagan was quiet a moment, and Ellen asked her what kind of riding she did. Teagan had to think about this. She might have said English, but the whole barn seemed to do English-style riding, so there was no point in distinguishing that. She didn’t have a name for her riding. It was just something she did.

  “The horse I have is a foxhunter, so I’m really hoping to go foxhunting,” Teagan said. She wasn’t sure this was true, but after she said it, it seemed to make sense.

  “I’ve never been foxhunting. Do you like it?” Ellen said.

  Teagan said, “I haven’t done a lot, but the times I’ve been, I liked it,” not adding that this was twice.

  “I do hunter seat,” said Ellen.

  Teagan thought that Ellen probably showed. “Do you show a lot?”

  “I’ve done the circuit up to three-three and I’m hoping to get to four.”

  “Three. Three?” Teagan said.

  “Three feet, three inches. The different divisions have different jump heights,” Ellen said.

  “Oh. That’s cool,” Teagan said and decided not to reveal her further ignorance and ask what a circuit was. She had never thought about competition based on the height of a ju
mp. To her, a jump was more something to get over when it was in front of her. Ellen stopped at the message board to find out which horse she’d been assigned. Teagan went into the large tack room. It was lined with riders’ trunks on the ground, saddles and bridles on the walls. A table sat in the middle, with hooks hanging above it, like upside-down Triton’s staffs, for hanging bridles for cleaning. Below them hunks of yellow glycerin soap sat in grimy wooden dishes. She located her saddle and gathered the rest of the tack and her box of brushes. She looked in the apple bucket, but it was empty.

  She led Ian out of his stall and tied him to the metal loop bolted into the cement wall. He could just see out of the small, high window, and he held his head up, looking. She wondered if he’d been out of his stall in the past days. She realized that maybe he hadn’t. Not all of the horses got turnout. It took her longer than usual to tack up. She adjusted the bridle and then noticed an extra piece of tack. It was a large leather loop with two straps coming from it. A martingale. She held it, wondering if it was necessary. A martingale limited how high a horse could raise his head. She remembered Ian throwing his head back and almost hitting her in the face when he had wanted to jump and she had tried to hold him. She put the martingale on him, unhooking the girth and tucking it through one strap and unhooking the noseband of the bridle and tucking it through the other.

  She was late. Riders had stopped walking horses past her and the aisle seemed quiet. She needed to get into the indoor arena. She walked Ian down the aisle, his hooves clopping on the cement seeming to echo, and turned to the arena. The wooden gate was shut.

  When she looked in over the gate, there were about forty horses inside. A group was in the center of the sand arena, listening to something the instructor, Miss Jessie, had to say. The other horses were walking in lines moving in opposite directions. Horses going to the left (the rider’s left shoulder was nearer the center of the arena) circled the arena on the outside, and horses going to the right (the rider’s right shoulder toward the center of the arena) passed on the inside.