The Story that Never Was: Part Two

Click here to read Part One.

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For the day’s work was done and in the peace of the evening there seemed to be a quiet understanding between the girl and her horse, who watched her with a dreamy and trustful gaze. (Marjorie Stace)

It was there, slaving away at my barn after Hurricane Katrina, that I found him (cliche as it sounds), "my perfect horse."

His name was Jake. He was a Quarter Something: whether a Pony or a Horse, I'll let you decide. He straddled the line at exactly fourteen point two hands. But whatever he was, he was packed full of muscle and young foolishness. He was a green Western horse being retrained as a hunter/jumper, and I watched as Donna and Shannon worked like scientists, running their experiment with a ruthless determination to force their desired result.

Now, those months after "the storm" are a bit blurry, and I can't remember exactly what happened when. But I do know that sometime after Jake arrived, Carousel Farm officially reopened for business. Many of the school horses had been sold to out-of-state farms because Donna couldn't afford to keep to a keep her riding team of a dozen horses when there was no one to pay for lessons. So the arrival of Jake, and two or three other new horses, symbolized the new era of Carousel Farms Riding Academy.

The consensus around the barn was that Jake was a pony. That horse could've been eighteen hands tall, and everyone still would have referred to him as "that pony." It was a title he deserved; he bit and kicked and cribbed and generally behaved like the SuperBrat. I'm not saying his vices weren't a result of bad training or the bad conditions he was in (in fact, more often than not, I blame Donna and Shannon for all their horses' problems), but his modus operandi was certainly that of the "pony mentality". And oh, was he spoiled! That gelding was the horse equivalent of a three-week-old banana. Horse-starved little girls swarmed like fruit flies around the cute, bright Quarter Horsepony with his four perfectly stockinged legs and a chestnut coat that shone like the skin of a fresh apple. He even had a bright blaze of white that read like an exclamation point on his happy, little face.

I had worked with him briefly- maybe less than a week- and I got along with him easily. We came to an agreement: If he wouldn't bite me, then I wouldn't bite him back; I might even give him a treat. He knew better than to nip or kick me. The most I would get was a harsh flick of the tail. He would lick my fingers after I fed him peppermints, and though I didn't see him on a regular basis, he would sometimes nicker when I approached his stall- as if he remembered who I was and was happy to have me there.

When my regular riding lessons resumed, I put in a request to ride him. The schedule of who would ride whom was always made up a week in advance, but after each lesson, I would request to ride him the next week. And then that "next week" came, and I was told "Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot, and the roster's already made up for the week now." I remember that there was always a girl who rode him during my lessons. I'd see her in the ring next to mine, and it seemed like an poorly told joke to watch those two together. I don't remember if she was less or more advanced than I was, but I do know that she had not put any time or effort into helping Donna rebuild Carousel Farm. All my hard work, and I was stuck riding every school horse but the one I wanted to be on.

And then, one day, I arrived at the barn, glanced at at the roster, and bit back a gasp. There it was: my name, and next to it, Jake's.

Maybe the poor woman who worked the front desk got tired of my whining, maybe the girl who had been riding him moved on to a different horse... I don't know what happened to make Carousel Farm finally honor my request, but they had. I had finally received my wish: I would get to ride Jake, the horse I knew only from the ground, but whom I had come to love, nonetheless.

[To be continued]

Part Three