Horse

by Talley English

  “He was also giving you a hard time,” Teagan said. “The thing is, once you really start to feel that, you’ll be able to do it all the time, and you won’t have to do as much to get him to go forward.” Teagan was turning slowly, following Lilly and Ian as they covered the ring. Lilly held the reins loosely.

  Teagan said, “Come back to the middle and we’ll talk a little bit about the reins. And then we’ll do something other than walk. I promise. Actually, keep him on the rail and I’ll come to you.”

  Lilly halted Ian along the rail, and Teagan walked over.

  “So, you know you can use your leg without the reins. Now, add the reins back in, because you want to control his head. The way I want you to think about the reins is that you are simply allowing him, or not allowing him, to move forward.”

  Lilly nodded, although Teagan didn’t know if she really understood.

  “So, if you are at the walk, and you want a faster walk, you allow him to go forward by giving him more room to move forward. If you want a slower walk, you take away some of that room.”

  Lilly patted Ian’s neck as if she already considered him hers. It hurt Teagan a little to see that, but it also made her proud that Lilly wanted to take him on and learn how to ride him.

  “The other thing,” Teagan continued, “is how to use the reins to assist in turning him, instead of using the reins to turn him.”

  “How?” Lilly smiled.

  “Like this,” Teagan said. She showed Lilly how to shorten one rein and loosen the other. “The idea is to prevent him from going in one direction, while giving him the ability go in the other. So, let’s say you want him to move to the right. Hold the left rein against his neck. Open the right rein, and for now let’s make it really obvious.” Teagan moved Lilly’s right hand almost a foot away from Ian’s neck. “Now, use your legs as before, but think about using your left leg to push him over to the right, as if pushing him into the space you’ve created with your right hand.”

  Again, it took Lilly some minutes to coordinate her movements and to push strongly enough to get Ian to respond, but finally he shifted to the right. Lilly gave Ian a pat.

  “You’re patting him, but you did the work,” Teagan said.

  “You remind me of Hope,” Lilly said.

  “Yeah, well, she taught me, so really everything I’m telling you is from Hope,” Teagan said.

  Teagan sent Lilly back out to the rail, and Lilly put into practice the things she was learning. Teagan saw that Ian was responding better to Lilly, now that she was riding him more closely to the way he was used to being ridden. She moved on to the trot and then the canter. They worked in both directions, and then Ian halted beautifully when Lilly asked him.

  “Nice work,” Teagan said. She looked at the dark horse and the bright girl.

  Last Ride (Though She Did Not Know It Yet)

  They decided to take a long route on a nearby farm. They came down from the mountain and the sun was low. The black fences were duplicated by their shadows. They walked their horses beside the large barn, past a row of stalls with the top doors open, from which the heads of curious horses stuck out, looking at them as they passed. Teagan wiggled her left rein and pushed Ian a little with her right leg to keep him straight and to tell him to ignore them. They were both tired from the hack, and Ian dipped his head down and walked on. He knew the direction of his own field.

  Susanna turned Duchess down the run, a grass lane closed in on both sides by four fenced fields. In two big fields, one on either side of the lane, two pairs of yearlings picked up their heads and looked. Their big heads on their skinny bodies made them look even more delicate and young. They were green, green like the supple wood of new tree growth, and spindly, as if they would never fill out to become like the calm, muscled horses Teagan and her mother now sat. Even from a distance Teagan could sense the complete attention the yearlings focused on the lane. The lines of the yearlings’ backs against the deepening sky looked as if they were a brushstroke each in Japanese ink.

  Ian suddenly noticed them and stopped. His head turned left to look at one pair, and then right to look at the other pair. As if Ian’s stop was a signal, each pair tossed their heads, and wasting a lot of energy kicking up their hooves and hopping, they fell into a gallop, a mirror image of young horses approaching from across a field, and Teagan and Ian were the midpoint.

  Susanna and Duchess were far enough ahead to have almost reached the end of the lane. Teagan shortened her reins, making more contact with the bit in Ian’s mouth. She locked her heels down in her stirrups and used all her weight to push Ian forward, but the horse did not respond. His body tense, his ears forward, she could feel his energy building as the young horses barreled toward him from both sides. The instant she felt Ian move, she let go of the reins and with one hand grabbed the pommel of her saddle; with the other she grabbed a fistful of his wiry mane; she gripped with her legs and she held on.

  Ian spun like eddying water whirling, and she felt a moment of weightlessness as she was carried, and then her gravity returned and she stuck to the saddle as he galloped up the lane, back the way they’d come. She had no control of his head, but he slowed when the barn blocked the view of the fields. She relaxed, relieved that she hadn’t fallen. Her horse was walking, and she gathered the reins, stroked his neck to say he was all right. She was all right, and she turned him again to go down the shoot. It was the way home. She saw Susanna on Duchess, halted at the other end. She let Ian stand and look. The yearlings were messing around at the fences, biting and lunging at one another.

  The biggest excitement was over, and soon they were bucking and leaping and squealing, and running the other way. As if Ian understood, as he looked, that the young horses were not worth his attention, he walked forward at Teagan’s leg, but she also kept her reins short and wiggled the bit in Ian’s mouth a little by squeezing her fingers on the reins, just to remind him that she was there and that he should stay focused. Her heart was still beating fast. At times a horse was an animal under control, and at times a horse was his own creature, even wearing a saddle and a rider in that saddle.

  She tried not to wonder too much why the horse ever let her tell him what to do, since in an instant he could let loose power that she couldn’t overcome. In another moment he was attentive and obedient to the directions she gave him. Pretending that she was fully in control, and not at all concerned about the fact that seconds before she’d been run away with, she looked straight ahead at the figure of her mother at the end of the lane, and her horse continued to walk calmly.

  When they were on the gravel road that was the last leg home, Teagan slackened her grip on the reins and sat more easily. She looked at her mother and laughed. She slapped Ian’s broad neck, patting him. “That was unexpected,” she said.

  Susanna let out a breath of relief. “You were a whirlwind. I didn’t want Duchess to copy you, so I kept going. I could not have stayed on through that.” Susanna smiled.

  Teagan nodded and unconsciously played with Ian’s mane. “I got lucky. There wasn’t anything I could do. He spun on a dime. But he stopped at the barn.”

  “At least he stopped,” Susanna said, with a laugh.

  “Yep.” Teagan laughed.

  “All right. Should we go home?” Susanna said.

  “Let’s just walk,” Teagan said and moved Ian beside Duchess.

  The horses knew the way toward home and walked on.

  Lilly and Ian

  “Be a good boy. Be a good boy,” she caught herself whispering to Ian, and she stopped. Teagan pulled the stiff brush down Ian’s neck, over his back, down each leg, both sides of the horse. She sprayed slippery stuff on his long black tail and worked out tangles with her fingers until the tail swished and slapped her on the leg. She combed his mane. She brushed his face with a soft brush. She picked out his feet and painted polish onto his hooves to
make them shine. He would get dusty the moment he walked into the new field, but when she brought him off the trailer she wanted the horse to look impressive. She oiled the leather halter with the brass nameplate on it and ran the sponge over the leather lead with the brass chain. She would leave the leather halter with him; it had his name on it.

  She hadn’t ridden him in weeks, not since the ride with Susanna. She hadn’t meant for that to be the last time she got on him, but it turned out that way, the way things turn out without planning them. He seemed to know something was up. She wasn’t saddling him. It wasn’t early morning, she wasn’t taking him foxhunting. She was quieter. Susanna didn’t even come in the barn. There was a solemn feeling to the event, and it made Teagan irritable. This wasn’t an end. It was a shift, a slight step to the side, a little bit of a new look at things. The horse was still a horse. He would be ridden. He would live in a field and be fed in a barn and a little girl would groom him and care for him and ride him on long trails in the woods. Ian’s life would not be so different. Teagan’s would be different.

  She walked Ian onto the trailer, and Susanna lifted the heavy ramp and locked it. Teagan unclipped the lead rope and stepped out. Ian ignored the hanging net of hay and looked out of the opened side door. Teagan pushed his nose back inside and closed and locked the door. Susanna started up the truck, and they drove the quick miles to the Garretts’.

  “This will be good for Lilly,” Teagan said.

  “It’s a generous thing you’re doing,” Susanna said.

  Teagan didn’t like the sound of that and looked out the window. Won’t you miss him? It seemed the question no one was willing to ask out loud, but it was in Susanna’s voice, in all their voices, and in Teagan’s own head. You will grieve the loss of him. She tried to silence her own voice in her head. I will not. The rolling hills and oak trees out the window did not slow her thoughts, and instead she saw herself rolling along the line of each hill on horseback, the down and up. Her eyes rode them.

  Feed

  I imagine Ian looked at everything. I can see that he looked for a long time until he knew something. I believe he listened, flicking his long feathery ears forward and back, judging what the sounds were, and how far away. I remember he used his mouth to pull on the cloth of my sleeve, to grab the skin of my arm. To be understood he needed to communicate. For the most part he had been able to communicate his needs, his desires, and his decisions, even those a horse decides. He did not want to stand still. He wanted to move. He was a horse, a creature who needed to move in order to live. To create motion is to live, to walk and run over the ground, every day, day after day. He did this.

  He was a horse who was born surrounded by people, instead of other horses. He lived day after day with people. He lived surrounded by a fence, he slept in a barn, he was called for, he was cared for; he knew this. I was a girl who had her particular scent, a smell he knew well. I also sometimes smelled like apples, and he liked apples. He would stand still for me, accept the things I did, like brushing him, putting a heavy saddle on his back, sitting in the saddle, asking him to accept a cold metal bit in his mouth. He did what he was told. (Why did he?) When he accepted these things, he was then asked to move, to walk and run over ground, which was something he liked, I know. When he was inside his fenced field, I did not pull or push him, I did not speak in tones that went up and down, and he could rest, and eat, or roll in the dust if he wanted, and he was comfortable, I think, and maybe content.

  But he was taken to a new place and it smelled different, I imagine (of course it did), and there was no mare to share the field with him. He walked the fence line, perhaps, smelling what was there, different trees, grass, new mineral dirt. It was not unfamiliar, but his old scents were missing. Everything he had memorized had been rearranged.

  Of course he would have to work to get his bearings, to learn the sights from the new field, the way the ground felt different under hooves, the rises and dips in a different order. He had to pay attention. He had to learn all of it to know it. There was a pony in his field also. A gelding, not a mare, and he didn’t care for the pony. He bared his teeth and flattened his ears and told the pony to get away if he came near. When the pony was grazing far away, it was better.

  He had to learn quickly. What other choice did I give him? His old field had been familiar, but it was gone. I imagine his confusion when he couldn’t smell any of the regular smells, the ones he had become used to, and also I wasn’t there, and I was the person whose scent he knew, who probably sometimes smelled like apples. He stood waiting to hear me, to see me, but I wasn’t there. Maybe he had not been able to rest since the moment I was there and then I was not there. I was the person he knew. I was the person he expected to arrive. I was there for him and then I was not.

  Instead, there was a new person who spoke to him, who smelled different, and she sounded different, and he was curious about her, but he couldn’t love her, yet. And now he was in the new field, and it was dark, and he was hungry. The one who usually brought him grain in a bucket had not brought him grain in a bucket, and he was hungry. Somewhere he could smell grain, and maybe he could get to it.

  The pony was in the field, but he didn’t care. He did not tell the pony to follow him. He walked to the barn that he could reach from the field. The barn was in the field. There was no fence separating him from the barn. It was not his usual barn, the one he knew, but inside the new barn he could smell hay, and he could smell grain, and he could smell that this barn was a place where he would be brushed and saddled, and also where he could be fed. I know that Ian is an intelligent horse, as far as such judgments are made, and to him two of the doors smelled empty, but the third smelled full. Of course he knew that there was food behind the third door. He could easily smell, as I could have, a warm scent of hay and a sweet vegetable smell of grain that he liked to eat. He would get to it.

  I picture that he knocked against the door with his hoof, something I have seen him do before. It was a sturdy door, and he must have knocked against it, and I imagine hearing it rattle the way a closed door sometimes will, but it did not open. The smells of food were stronger when it rattled, when there was a gap of air that carried a scent of hay, a scent of grain, to his wide nostrils. He breathed into the crack in the closed door. He smelled up and down, and while he did this his soft, sensitive nose bumped a cold thing. He’d tasted these things before. They tasted like the metal he wore in his mouth when I put the bridle over his head. He licked the metal and then he pulled on it with his lips, because he was determined. I bet that he tried chewing it and that he pushed at it with his nose. If he licked it and chewed it and grabbed the part of it that stuck out, and was able to shift the part of it that moved a little, and felt it wiggle when he pulled and pushed, and if he kept doing this, pushing or pulling and licking and biting and working on this problem, a puzzle that slowly began to be solved, if he did not give up, because there was food on the other side of the obstacle, then eventually, he opened the lock.

  And then, I imagine, if he knocked his hoof against the door again, and then again, the door began to bounce in its frame. Each time it bounced a small gap was made, so he could smell the scent that was fresh and strong, hay and grain. He kept working, because why not, and then the gap was wider, bigger, and then, I can see that he stopped and he waited. The darkness was soft. The smell was there, but I did not arrive. I, the apple-scented person, was not there, and I would not come to give my hungry horse some food, so he put his nose into the gap that was big, and then he pushed and the space widened, and the darkness was there but he could tell that he could walk through it, and he could go inside the place. Of course he went inside the place, and from there it was not difficult to find the tall metal can that held fifty pounds of grain. At last, he had found the food, and all he would do then was eat. He could smell the grain and how easy to knock his sturdy hoof against it. I can hear, in my imagining, the can fall and m
ake a clatter, and the shush of grain sliding out onto the barn floor, and Ian, my sweet horse, backed away, but the clatter would stop and the grain was accessible on the floor, and finally he had food, and so he stood still and he took big mouthfuls and he ate, and there was no end to what he would eat.

  Notify

  Later, when the details could be discussed, I was told that Ian ate so many pounds of grain that his body became disfigured from swelling. When Lilly discovered him in the feed room and tried to move him, Ian fell over, knocking her over and pinning her feet under him. She pulled herself free, but her feet swelled and she had to lie in bed with bags of ice on them for days. It was Lilly’s mother, Joan, who made the phone call to my mother, Susanna, to say that Ian was dead and needed burying.

  Build Your Own Horse

  The Build Your Own Horse™ kit that I ordered online came today; it was carefully padded with air-filled recycled plastic bags. I sweep the concrete floor in the barn and lay out the pieces. I don’t need the booklet of instructions; I know how this goes. I hold a long, pointed ear, covered in soft hairs and lined with softer, feathery hairs. In their pair, the ears attach on either side of the poll. The neck, broad and supple, is in two parts, which fit together over some vertebrae, including the atlas and the axis. The hair on the neck grows down, toward where the shoulders will be. The mane was braided for shipping, but I undo the plaits with my fingers and let it lie loose, on the right side, preferably. The skull is in its skin, and I lift it with one hand on the mandible, which makes the cheek curve, and one under the divot behind the chin. Whiskers grow around the nose, which is (it is cliché) velvet soft, and the comma-shaped nostril will breathe hot exhales when this kit is finished, assembled into a horse. The head attaches to the neck, and I fluff the forelock into place on the face, between the ears. I brush a little dust from the eye. It is wide, but it tapers at the ends like an almond. Like pairs of shoes I pair the hooves. Two front, two back, two to a side, four in all. The back are labeled with cannon bone (named for its tubular shape. Tube bone would sound less categorical) and the front with splint bone. I scrape off the stickers with a fingernail. I’m distracted and pick at my hangnail. One of the hooves topples and reveals its frog. Lifting the horse foot, I trace the V ravine with a finger. The bottom of the V points forward, the opening points toward the heel. The grooves are not too deep or shallow, the raised flesh of the frog sufficiently springy. The leg I line up to the knee, which is located about halfway along the leg’s length. Long hairs fall at the back of the leg, and the rest lie close and smooth. The back legs line up to the hocks, the joint about parallel in height to the front leg’s knee. To a back leg I join its muscular upper part; it includes the stifle joint, and the big haunch of the horse encases his femur. Upper and lower legs affixed, I lift a front leg to the chest of the almost-horse. If I would point to my own chest and say pectoral, on him (I ordered a gelding) I would have to name deltoid. As if my human arm was the front leg of a horse, the horse has biceps and triceps there. Legs and head are made, and now I need some tools. Two pine sawhorses prop up the large pieces of my would-be horse. The torso is enormous. The long back, containing the muscle with the many s’s, the latissimus dorsi, I align at the top. The eighteen pairs of ribs are preassembled, and I’m careful not to damage one. This horse will be a Thoroughbred. The additional information booklet said an Arabian horse has seventeen pairs, and the American mustang is short one vertebra from the usual thirty-six. Legs attached to body, neck to chest, the head on, and now I fit the tail, unbraid it, and it hangs long and wiry. This horse is complete, but something’s not quite right. He lacks a sort of glint to his eye, and he doesn’t seem to love me. More of an it than a horse, somehow.