The $60,000 Dog: My Life With Animals (11 page)

“Every single time we tack up, and ride a horse, they could trample us, or buck us off; they could kill us in a second,” I repeated. I paused. The wind made the sweat on my scalp tingle in a wonderful way. “But they don’t,” I said. “I mean, even though they have the strength to really harm us, they hardly ever do. We put on their saddles, put in their bits, tighten the girths, sit on their backs, even a two-hundred-pound man could plunk down on their backs, and in just a second any of these horses … they could decide to just throw us off and stomp us to pieces. It would be so easy for them. But for some reason, they, every time, they don’t do that…. Instead of killing us,” I said, trying again, “horses choose to …” I couldn’t find the word.

“Move us,” Aggy said.

“Yes,” I said. Precisely.

There were two babies—Jack and Jill—who, said Rose, were ready for “breaking.” I had scant knowledge of what “breaking” meant, how, for years men had believed the best way to tame a horse was to sap its spirit. In pursuit of this, men used—and many still do—methods that make one wince, the pictures preserved in books. Here is a mare with her lips sewn shut, here a stallion, hung upside down, his eyes full of terror, his hoofs pawing at air.

Humans have used great cruelty in trying to tame the horse, this despite the great gifts the animal has given. For the thousands of years since horse and human first struck up a relationship, we have been blessed with a beast that, while of nature, has enabled culture to proceed in ways that would have otherwise have been impossible. Horses have aided people in thousands of ways that include ameliorating autism to enriching the soil from which our nation’s crops grow, year after year after year. A single horse daily sustains its massive bulk on a mere eight hundred calories of stringy vegetation otherwise known as weeds and then, from its internal factory, spins out,
daily
,
reliably
, pounds of manure so rich in organic matter it can practically turn friable asbestos into a rich and rot-black loam. And anyone who has ever tilled manure into a failing field, and seen it yield a crop of pungent lacy herbs and scarlet vegetables knows, they know, what a horse is worth in this world.

Surely Rose knew, because her family survived in part by farming; Flat Rock Farm’s pastures were ringed by harrowed fields from which Hank grew and sold broccoli, squash, corn whose husks you could peel back before the time was right and see the pale kernel pattern slowly going saffron, ripening in late July. We’d tasted this corn, husked it when the cobs were much too tiny, eating these starchy embryos with only the frailest tang of what would soon be its sweetness.

On July 15, 1974, Rose pulled on fringed batwing chaps and a showy platter of an oversized cowboy hat—an outfit entirely out of character as in general she was a hunt seat rider—and, along with Hank in steel-toed boots (how odd, his sudden switch)—they went in search of the colt Jack, whose turn it was for “training.” “Rope ’im in, Dad,” Rose screamed that day as Jack fought the knot that brought him to his knees. Together Hank and Rose tied Jack up in what Hank called a Scotch Hobble, bringing the hind leg up and tying the rope to a post so Jack couldn’t move or change positions: pinned, he was, in place. And so the horse stood there, trembling on three legs while Rose and Hank left him like that and we girls whispered, watching from the tree line:
let him go, how, no why when
, and too soon the heat claimed the day completely so by noon the colt was drenched in sweat and they came back. Hank untied Jack, distracting him with his escape-about-to-be while Rose sidled up and jammed the bit into his soft maw. Jack’s eyes rolled up, his slab of tongue clamped completely down under this bit made especially for breaking, studded with small tacks. For four days Jack, a breaking-to-bridle horse, wore this bit so when it came out his tongue was toughened and his mouth was ready for snaffles, kurbs, cumberwics, hackamores, or any of the other hundreds of possible bit types without which control would not be possible. For four days we heard Jack’s cries, watched as he was roped and reeled, hour after hour, Rose’s face blank, her eyes oddly empty as she cracked the crop so hard Jack’s hide opened up and red ran down his withers.

On July 15, Jack got broken. On August 15, one month away, Jill would follow. We dreaded this date, but maybe because we were children, or maybe because we were immersed in our chosen passion, we trotted on, centaurs, slipping between forms and foci.

As for time, it turned over. Our faces tanned; our muscles thickened. I was still the weakest rider, even as I got stronger. I learned to trot, and then at last to canter, more or less. Three days after Jack, Rose scrawled a star on the stable’s whiteboard, which held our schedule:
July 21st.
No explanation written beneath. What? we wanted to know. “That’s the day,” Rose said to us, “when you all will learn the secret and
essential
equestrian skill.”

What secret skill? Why essential? And were we really
all
going to learn it, or only the advanced riders?

“Every one of you,” Rose said. “The secret skill does not depend
upon
experience. It
creates
experience.” Beyond that, Rose wouldn’t drop a clue.

July 21 came, breakfast as usual, barn as usual, tacking up, riding into the ring, all as usual, but then, once we’d assembled, Rose walked to the far end of the ring, unlatched the back end gate, the one we never used, kicking hard so it swung open on screechy hinges, rasping the unmowed meadow beyond. We never entered that meadow, unkempt, clotted with vines, lined with cherry trees and their droplets of red fruit. But now, without saying a word, Rose walked into this thick field as she beckoned over her shoulder for us on our horses to follow. Bees fussed with flowers. Rose kept beckoning. The grasses were hip high, and when we rode through the whole world was filled with silken sounds.

And then, at last, our teacher stopped, and when she spoke her voice seemed thin in the hugeness of the space. “Form a circle around me, girls.” We did, maneuvering our horses into position. “Now,” Rose said, standing in the center so we could hear her better, “you can’t really learn to fly unless you learn to fall.” She paused for a moment, as though to let this statement sink in, her hands clasped dramatically beneath her chin, and that’s when I noticed she was wearing her hard hat, uncommon only because she wasn’t riding, so why would she have it on?

“Know what I mean?” asked Rose.

“I’ve fallen plenty of times,” said Aggy.

“I’m sure you have,” said Rose. “But have those falls been orchestrated? Or have they been just …” and here Rose paused, searching for the words, “just chaotic attempts to cope?” Again Rose paused, appeared to be thinking and then added one word: “Retrospective.”

Rose and Aggy stared at one another for a few moments, and then Aggy shrugged.

“Come on” said Rose, suddenly striding over to Aggy, who was riding Oh Gosh! that day. “Down with you,” Rose said. “Time for a demonstration.” And now Rose gently knocked one of Aggy’s feet from the stirrups. “C’mon,” Rose said again. “I’m going to show everyone how.”

This was a rare event, an illustration during a lesson. For Rose, riding seemed to be an essentially private activity, mostly between her and her beloved Mr. K. It seemed to be like praying, her church the mowed fields behind our bunk, where the spools of hay were.

Aggy dismounted, went to sit on a nearby rock, while in a seemingly effortless little leap Rose cleared the back of the fifteen-hand gelding and settled herself into the saddle like it was an easy chair, getting deep down in it, angling back, then stretching her hands high, high towards the sky, fingers interlaced, the clear cracking sound of knuckles and neck. “Feels good up here,” Rose said and smiled at us. That was the first I noticed it, something off, or wrong about her smile, something slightly tilted, like a bike when it begins to wobble.

Now, Rose patted Oh Gosh’s neck, then picked up the reins. “It’s been a long time since riding you, buddy,” Rose said to the horse. The horse seemed unsure of what to think. His ears went forward, then back. Rose poked them with her crop. “Don’t pull an attitude on me, my man,” Rose said. At that, Oh Gosh’s ears shot forward and the horse—you could practically see the ripple of transformation, his slack muscles tensing, his head lifting, his eyes filling up with fear and focus both. His tail, swishing back and forth. Back and forth.

We moved our horses off to the side. Rose picked up the reins. “Now,” she said, “you can
always
fall off a horse.” She smiled, looked at me. “That’s what makes it fun, right?”

I smiled, nodded yes, felt no. Something had shifted the moment Rose got on that horse, but what or why I couldn’t say. My lips were cracked and dry.

“It’s possible to fall when you’re at a walk,” Rose continued, now walking a highly alert, energized, anxious Oh Gosh! in circles. “It’s not likely,” she continued, “but the horse might stumble and you might—” and then, with a whoosh, Rose slipped from the saddle and landed, feet first, on the ground—“… fall,” Rose said, ending her sentence on two feet. “If you fall at a walk, you’ve got time to go feet first, or what I like to call birth backwards.” She smiled.

She climbed back on Oh Gosh! “I was born backwards,” Rose said. “I came into this world and landed right on my feet. Almost killed my ma,” she said and laughed a harsh, brief laugh, and then stopped, suddenly. “All right girls,” she said, “enough about that. It’s the trotting, cantering, or galloping falls that really matter. Fact is,” Rose said, “the human head is a highly important piece of the machinery, so you gotta protect it. If you land on your head and don’t kill yourself, you could wind up no better than a string bean. Hats are good,” Rose said, “but not enough when you’re coming off an animal going up to forty miles per hour.

“Unless you like string beans, of course,” Rose said, and then laughed again, looked up, her mouth slightly open, as though swallowing some sun.

We were all listening, looking, lined up, quiet on our mounts. “Falls never happen in a snap,” Rose said. “They’re a
process
. Do you understand? A
process
. First, your feet come out of the stirrups. Or maybe you lose one stirrup, and then the other. This isn’t like falling from a tree, or a building. A fall from a horse is
unique
because you have
prior clues
, and so you always have the chance to
plan
it.”

All the time Rose was talking she was walking Oh Gosh! in fast circles before us. She seemed to be talking half to us, half to herself. She was grinning, enjoying her lecture, almost tickled, you got the feeling. “How lucky is that?” said Rose, turning her head towards us. “How often do you get to plan your own downfall, huh?”

Now, Rose moved Oh Gosh! into a slow, tight trot, working her reins on him, drawing his whole body up and inwards, insisting on both intense energy and its fierce control. The horse was starting to sweat, high stepping, Rose sitting deep down in the saddle, keeping contact, conversation through her slow seat and intricate rein work. “And because you can plan your fall,” Rose said, her voice trotting right along with her body, “you’ve got time to remember to put your arm out to the side of your head, like you’re sleeping on it, so when you hit the ground, you break your funny bone but not your brain.” She pulled Oh Gosh! to an abrupt stop. “Got that?” she said, eyeing us one by one down the line. “Is this making sense to you?”

We all nodded. Yes. It was.

“Let me tell you a little story,” said Rose. “Horses are in my blood. My family’s been riding all the way back to my great-great-great-granddaddy Lindquist, a German.

“A German,” Rose repeated, as though this had some special significance. My great–great-great-granddaddy Lindquist had a terrible temper, so I’ve heard, and wound up an old man screaming at invisible elves. But he was supposedly one heck of a rider when he was still a gentleman, and that talent got passed on down and down until it was Alice’s turn to take it on. Bet you didn’t know that. My mama, Alice, was nearly Olympic,” Rose said. She was talking, and then she urged her horse forward again with a velvety cluck, a quick tight trot, Rose looking at us as she circled, checking our faces, seeing we were rapt.

“Nearly,” said Rose, huffing a little now. “As it turns out,
nearly
is as far on the map from
is
as North to South. So when I was born, and I got the gift, Alice wanted me to take her
nearly
North life and find my way South, to the
is-land
of the Olympics,” said Rose. “And I got the gift.”

Then Rose paused for a long time in her tale, kept riding the horse round and round, posting up and down, her jaw working, tense. “Thing is, girls,” Rose finally shouted as she went round, “thing is, you can have the gift, but that’s got not a lot to do with
the prize.
Prizes and gifts, they’re different things. Alice trained me from my first cry to go Olympic, but I got tired of the training, got tired of the winning, because you know what’s on the other side of winning?” Rose asked, and then, before we could answer she yelled, “Losing. I got high up there, got a lot of ribbons, all blues, mostly. I even went to England, but I was going gold,” said Rose. Her voice kept rising with every slow circle she trotted. “Going gold, like Midas himself, ever heard of that story? I couldn’t see my life. I wanted a life, you know, college, clothes. Of course, a horse, too. But just for me and … my kids,” Rose said. “Horses are huge, but riders, they come in different sizes. I didn’t want to be huge. But I didn’t want to let Alice down either,” Rose said. “She’s makes damn good biscuits, but she’s a bitch to disappoint, let me tell you, girls. You don’t cross Alice; you don’t mess with her doilies. So, know what I did? I learned how to fall off a horse going fast, so I had a guaranteed goof at the Olympic tryouts. And it worked. It worked!” She laughed in a choppy, all-wrong way.

And then, she pulled Oh Gosh! in, squared him to another tense stop. “It worked,” she said again, softly. “I’m living proof.”