Published in Columbia College’s Literary Magazine, Hair Trigger 30

I was raised in a horse barn. On land that stretched out far—the neighbors were just a speck on the horizon. Corn. That’s all you could see forever beyond our little parcel of grass fence and barn. Our house was huge—like a giant plantation home transplanted up North. My room was gigantic—four times the size of most of my friends, but it didn’t matter, not in the summer, because that’s only the place where I slept. And not even always—nights were warm, and if you waited past the 9:00 mosquitoes, you could sleep on the roof. The shingles would keep you in place.

But during the day, I spent my time in the barn. Cleaning stalls, feeding, stacking hay, cleaning tack. The education I got came from my mares. It came from having to be a teacher. Teaching my friends how to act around horses so they didn’t yank on Glenbrooke’s tail and get kicked in the arm or so they wouldn’t jump suddenly in front of Sunny and make her flip her head and rip a crosstie out of the wall. Had to teach them how to ride and how if you pull on the bit all the time her mouth’ll go numb. Taught my mare that it’s not acceptable to step forward unless I go first, to pause before she walks through the doorway—not to run, to stand and wait for me to swing the gate open all the way before she goes out to the grass in the pasture.

My education was the summers with too much sun and bright blue skies, warm wind and corn stalks crinkling in the breeze. It was waking up every morning at five to feed—one scoop oats for Glenbrooke and Sunny, Equine Senior plus a half-scoop water for old Brooks, her decaying teeth mushing on her meal, and two flakes grass hay for each of them. The damp smell, cold in the mornings inside the barn, sweet with wet hay and dust. Clean stalls while they munch, the hum of flies and the crunching of grain, one cart full even before the sun rose. Wheel the manure cart out back to the open field that took my Dad and Mom a full day to mow, each of them on their separate riders—“dueling mowers” they’d call ‘em, Mom on the green one, Dad on the red, criss-crossing the fields making tracks of shaved grass. Mom’s bony body hunched forward, her hair all matted into a white baseball cap and Dad’s thick belly getting in the way of turning the wheel. I’d fling the shavings and manure out from the bucket, a new place each time, sprinkling them even so Dad wouldn’t yell at me because “How the hell do you think I’m supposed to ride over a pile of horse shit?” Wheel the cart back into the barn, three-story lofts and sagging crackled wood leaning in above me as I pushed my whole body against the heavy wood slider, careful to avoid splinters on my hands. The sun would be up fresh and the barn still damp and cool from the night, rays of light shining through the slits where the walls had shrunk, paint chipping off.

I’d let Brooks out first so Sunny didn’t snap her teeth at her sides when she walked through the doorway, then Sunny, halting every few steps making sure she doesn’t bolt through the door, then Glenbrooke. Didn’t even have to lead her; she knew what to do and I’d clip the chain behind. If I felt like it, sometimes I’d walk up to her, and tap my foot behind her ankles, and she’d park out so her back was low, then one-two-three with a fistful of her back mane and a jump I’d hoist my slender body, leg swinging first, onto her back. A press with my heels and she’d walk around the turnout.

When I had the pasture gate open, I’d squeeze her through the opening into a trot, my fingers lightly tangled in her mane just in case, building speed but keeping my legs relaxed to stay balanced. Then ask for her to pick up her canter, one heel dug into her side and she’d transition so graceful—she had been an equitation horse back in her day—and we’d go slow around the pasture, her guiding her own way and me smiling the sun through my hair, wind on my cheeks. This, I knew, was freedom.

On other days I’d groom her up right after I let the other two out, hook her up in cross ties and spend my time scratching through her coat, making her shiny in the dark orangeish light from the old oversize bulbs, spitting out hairs and tapping out the currycomb on the wall of Sunny’s stall—A round dimpled wad of grayish hair fell out, sprinkled with white specks, floating to the ground. I’d brush her shiny—twice over, so when we got out from the dim light inside the barn, she’d look like a penny glinting in the sun. Sometimes I’d put her saddle on—raise it up slow, with an extra lollipop pad for her sensitive back, but most often I’d ride her bareback—no saddle, just my seat bones pressing into her muscle, so I could feel each of her long tendons when it tensed and relaxed with every step, my shoulders moving in rhythm.

I liked to ride bareback out between the cornfields where there was a narrow patch of tall grass so when I was on her, it would tickle the sides of my thighs through my jods. It was good for her leg muscles, I’d decided, for her to be trekking through these dense weeds. Her boots would be full of seed pods and a bur or two when we’d get back to the barn.

We’d make our way slowly away from the huge white barn, and it would get small, hard to see the peeling paint and rugged green shingles leaving patches in the roof when I twisted around to make sure my parents didn’t see me ride without a helmet. When we were far enough, I’d turn back around, and she’d move freer cause my twisted torso wasn’t resisting anymore. Her sides a little too fat between my thighs, but that was okay, rocking my dangling feet through rows and rows of corn and grass, and my mind would just sit there, riding along on the back of my horse, and that would by my education. How the muscles on her neck lobbed back and forth and her black mane glistened like wet and I sat heavy behind her withers and sunk in with each step. How the land dropped off quick next to the irrigation ditch so I’d guide her to stay to the left. How I’d stop her and lay myself back onto her croup, just above her tail, my hair flat against my head, ribs stretching out, and the sun would burn my grinning face and she’d lower her head, pretend I wasn’t even there, and grab a chunk of grass with her bit in her mouth, even though she knew she wasn’t supposed to. I’d let her.

And we’d return home, in a sort of slow-moving bliss that happens when you’re out in the sun for so long, rocking with the wind-waves through the grass, and I’d rub the oval sweat marks from her back and I’d massage a towel on the corners of her foamy mouth where the bit was, and I’d brush her off once more, lazily this time, swinging long strokes across her body, and pick the packed dirt and rocks out of her feet and turn her out to pasture. If I didn’t feel like going back into the coldness of our air conditioning, I’d swing a leg up and over our white pasture fence and sit there a while, eyes lining the backs of my three mares with heads sloping to the ground; the only suggestion of time the shadows of blades of grass, my Glenbrooke a copper penny in the sun.

Contact the Columbia College Fiction Writing Department for your copy of Hair Trigger 30.  312.344.7611