The Mare

Velvet

When I went back up there it was night and there were white Christmas lights in all the little trees on the main street of the town. But the next day it was rainy and cold with mud. I went to the barn. Horses stood outside, wet and streaked with mud, bony like dinosaurs, their heads like dinosaur birds with wings. Inside, they felt angry and bored. Fiery Girl felt worse. Fiery Girl would not even talk to me. She stood away from me like she didn’t know me. I said, Hey, don’t you remember when I brought you out? And she didn’t look.

I walked through the barn to the office and I saw two more horses were gone: Rocki’s stall didn’t have his name on it anymore, or Officer Murphy’s. Their toys and ribbons were gone too. I looked for Pat, but I didn’t find her; this girl I didn’t know told me she wasn’t there but that Beverly was schooling a horse in the indoor ring. I went there and saw she had the horse on long lines, and a whip in her hand, and she was talking in her hard voice. “When I say whoa, I mean whoa! I don’t mean let’s talk it over, I mean you stop and no backing up, no nothin’! No! Don’t move, don’t think it!” But the horse did back up and Beverly whipped it and it ran and she dropped the lines and laughed. It ran around her and then it ran at her, but she raised up the whip and it ran in a circle on the outside of the ring while she followed it from the inside, shaking the whip at it. “You think running is a good option? Now it’s my option. This is my option!” She struck at the air, again and again.

The horse’s coat was dark with sweat and its eyes were scared.

“Whoa!” said Beverly. The horse stopped, trembling and panting. “That’s right, whoa! Good girl!” She went to the horse and touched it. “Look at this poor thing, she’s scared to death. It’s okay, sweet pea. That’s nice, that’s nice, that’s a pretty girl. Thank you. I’m gonna thank you.” She looked at me. “Always remember to say thank you. Always remember your manners.”

I left, but I did not go back to the house. I walked around the block, breathing hard. It felt like I was in an ocean looking at lights on a shore a long way away.

The next day Gare told me that before I came, Heather’s horse, Totally, kicked this girl Jessie and broke her ribs. I said, “Why?”

Gare went, “I don’t know, maybe because Jessie’s a bitch? I didn’t see it. I heard Jessie came up behind Totally too fast while Heather was giving the horse a hard time about something. I was like, way to go, Totally.”

I thought, If I was a horse, I’d kick too. I’d kick whenever I could and even trample.