The Mare

Velvet

I went back to the barn at twilight. I didn’t have any apples. I just went to the mare to see what she would do. Which was nothing. She stood in the middle of her stall and stared at me with her ears up. I said, “I’m mad at you.” I thought she looked like maybe she felt bad, but then she just put her head down to look for pieces of hay in her bedding. I said, “All I did was bring food to you and you ran at me and then you threw me against the wall.” She put her head up and looked at me, then went back to eating. I said, “Okay. Good-bye.”

But when I was walking away, it was like I heard her in my ear, like she was saying, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to knock you down. I just forgot you were there.

Still, I did not go see her the next day. I went to the barn and I worked, I helped turn the horses out. Me and Beth and Gare led Little Tina and Blue Boy and Graylie out to the paddock. Beth brought Rocki back in and I groomed him and cleaned his feet. Then me and Beth cleaned buckets together. She told me about another barn she used to go to but that she couldn’t go to anymore because her parents couldn’t pay. It was named Spindletop, and the horses there were super clean. They got groomed every day, and their halters and bits were cleaned every day — they even got the hair on their ears trimmed. She said the girls there rode in a big show where people came from all over the country, and that she was going to show one day at the rodeo at the county fair. She also asked questions about Brooklyn and how I knew people up here. I told her the Fresh Air Fund and she said, “Oh, right.”

And I really wished Strawberry was there. Because if Strawberry was there I don’t think Beth would’ve said, “Oh, right” like she did. Strawberry was too bad for that. It wasn’t like it was wrong for Beth to say; it wasn’t a insult. But still…she wouldn’t say it to Strawberry, I don’t think. I started picturing Strawberry walking up in the barn, just looking around and how that would be. I pictured what she would’ve done to Gare when she said “deported” to me.

I got so into thinking it that I forgot to say good-bye to the mare.