They surge forward when released from the chutes, fluid and boundless like water set loose from a dam.  No matter how good the jock is, in the end he's just hanging on.  Some hang on better than others, that's for sure, and she is one of them.  That is part of what makes her so good.  Another is training; still another is love.  She'd never throw a race, never intentionally hurt these animals or ask them to go against their desire to run.  She knows the risk both to herself and to the animal, but she reasons that the whole thing is only a little fabricated, only a little removed from how these animals behave naturally when moving in herds, when in flight.  People say that horses are dumb, but she knows they are wrong because her mother told her so and because she experienced this truth first hand over and over throughout her twenty years alive. 

Now as she and her mount are being ponied out to the starting gates, she thinks about her mother’s words.  They have come down, years later, to this: The thing about horses is, no matter how much you think you’re in control, no matter how much you think you know, there is always his side.  There is always the probability that you are wrong, and what you do to be right on any given day was only kept secret because the horses can’t talk.  Maybe, after sustained “training” a horse could begin to show the wear, the anger he’d absorbed with such patient confusion.  If the body held up, the eyes died..
The thought those words contained trails off half finished, mimicking her breath as it hits the cold morning air and then just as quickly evaporates into the ether and disappears from her sight.

They will break out of the gate after having knocked themselves, their riders and handlers against the metal sides of the mobile start, combustible like revving engines freed from the brake.  Few stand quietly, for the claustrophobic stalls mean only one thing to these youngsters: at any moment the front end will open abruptly and they will leap and tumble forward and start galloping as fast as their spindly Daddy Long Legs can carry them.  They know this through repetition.  They know this because horses move in herds.  They know this because it feels good to their bodies to move and stretch the growing muscles and solidifying bones.  They know this because they have been taught nothing else.

 Her horse enters the gates, bumping off one side and then the other.  She holds her legs even higher than their already crouched position to avoid jamming them as her ride bounces back and forth against the entrance to the gate.  Once inside, the antsy horse steps in place, on the verge of rearing straight up and hitting his head and hers against the top of the gates or spitting himself backward out the gate so fast that he flips over.  His ears pin down as he looks back at her and the whites of his eyes strain into a reddish pink.  He grinds his teeth and bites on the bit like humans chew the inside of their mouths.  This one never did really develop a knack for the chutes.  A knot forms near the base of his back, which means to her that he's feeling like he's about to buck; the only problem is that, at the moment, there's nowhere to do his bronco act.  Instead he settles for hopping up and down.

She sits still yet relaxed so that she becomes as much a part of him as possible without actually fusing her body to his.  Smiling at his behavior she slowly lowers her legs so that her feet can feel for the stirrup irons, talking to him in a low, slow voice, “Whoooaaaa.  Hey, theeerrre, heyyy.”  She makes noises to him, chirping, “Prrrrd.  Prrrd.”  She knows he’s still looking at her, and she can tell by the way he has rotated his left ear backwards, instead of pinning them both down, that he’s even begun to listen.

She puts the palm of her right hand steadily against the top of his right shoulder while her left hand holds the bridged rubber reins and the stick.  His dark bay coat is glistens from the hours of grooming, the feed supplements, exercise and his own hormones.  He snorts and tosses his head, and she momentarily recollects the nose that just an hour ago she ran her index finger over, down to his lips just before he took a nip at it; his eyes that gauged her as the groom tossed her up into the air before she landed like a sponge in the saddle.

His nose is soft as whispers.  She can smell the leather and dirt, sweat and liniment, manure and straw, all mixed with the cool morning mist to create the scent of the only world she has ever known, the only world she ever wants to know.  There is no other way to live.  She reorganizes her reins and begins to focus on the strategy of ride she and the trainer discussed earlier that morning: out in front and on to the rail early to set the pace.  Then maintain through the first turn, and accelerate coming out and down the home stretch.

This horse isn’t a comer.  He needs to be at the head from the beginning or he loses his heart.  For this reason he’s tough to train when he has to run with the others for the morning gallops.


At 5am everyone in the world is asleep, it seems, except for her and the stable.  She has awakened at 4am, as usual, without the interruption of an alarm clock, and in the darkness feels for the bedside lamp.  Sitting up in bed, she lets her chestnut eyes become adjusted to the light.  She treats her gymnast’s body with the same respect she shows the bodies of the young horses, and respecting her body took a long time to learn.

Her life had always been in the service of others, in a sense, in that horses are three year old children for twenty-odd years because they require constant attention in a domestic life.  As a young girl she would always attend to the horses' well-being before her own.  Even after injuring herself in a fall, the horse came first; he's the athlete and his body must be fit, healthy and
comfortable, even if he did just angrily toss her into the dirt with a few twists and spins.

Taking care of the animal meant that she took him back to the barn and, always working from the left side first, she rolled up the stirrup irons, loosened the girth, put a halter on the horse and then put the horse on the cross ties in the barn aisle so she could be free to remove her hat and chaps.  Then she picked out of his feet any mud or small stones that got wedged between the frog and wall of the hoof, unbuckled the girth and slid it off the horse’s back making sure to unbuckle the right side of the girth so that it would lie flat on top of the cantle.  She removed the horse’s polo wraps, snapped on a lead rope, and took him to his stall to urinate and get some water before leading him to the wash rack to soap-wash his legs and give him a warm Vetrolin bath.  Then she covered him with an Irish knit sheet and light wool cooler and took him out of the barn to graze in the front pasture while he dried in the sun.

After he dried she led him back to the cross-ties to stand while she curried, brushed and then rubbed a towel over him until his coat lay thin and sheen against his skin and all his muscles were relaxed.  If the weather was cold she left the coolers on him, moving them up and down the length of his body while she groomed.  If the weather was warm, she pulled the coolers off him and folded neatly them before hanging them on the cooler rack next to the cross-ties.
She combed his mane and forelock with a human hair brush and ran her fingers through his tail so as not to pull out any hairs the way she would if she used a brush.  If he had worked particularly hard, she would rub liniment gel on his tendons and then wrap his legs with cotton standing bandages.  Then she picked out his stall with a close-pronged pitchfork and turned the shavings over and over, and then re-banked the stall with fresh shavings so that it was clean and fully bedded.  Finally, she unhooked the cross-ties and led him back to his stall so he could rest before dinner.  Then she went to another stall to start the process all over again: grooming, tacking up, riding, untacking, grooming, cleaning and bedding down.

After all the horses had been schooled and fed dinner, she would pause and listen to their noises as she cleaned the tack.  Then she would close the barn doors for the night. 

Yes, she thinks as she sits on her bed, she has begun care for herself more and more since she realized that her body's health is important to being a good jock.  Now her movements are more fluid and thoughtful.  As her eyes adjust to the light she slides forward from the bed until her size four feet sink onto the carpet.  Shhh, not a word, not a sound as she slinks about her room getting dressed: white underwear, peach turtleneck, cotton socks, Levis, belt and shiny brown paddock boots.  On to the bathroom to brush her teeth, comb her shoulder length hair back into a ponytail — it began to turn from blond to brown when she was nineteen — dab some moisturizer on her face and roll some deodorant under her arms.

Mornings are fast because she has always taken showers the night before, and she has always taken showers at night because she works around the horses all day and comes home sweaty — some would say smelling of horses, as if that were offensive, but she never could imagine why.  Coffee is ready in one of those automatic coffee makers, and she grabs a bran muffin from the basket on the kitchen table.  She eats her breakfast while leaning against the kitchen counter, staring off into space, chewing to the three beat rhythm of gallop strides: they are coming through the final turn and the last three strides out begin the acceleration toward the home stretch.  She doesn't need to encourage her mount with the stick but sinks down lower into the crouch as her quadriceps burn and her arms extend so far forward to follow her horse’s head and neck that her shoulders feel as if they are about to be pulled out of their sockets at the next full stride.  Funny, though, she thinks to herself, that these pains are so sweet and so inconsequential when they occur.  The last mouthful of bran muffin is swallowed and her eyes return to the kitchen.  She grabs her ski jacket and heads out the door to the stables. 

Down the barn aisle toward the office at the track, she passes through the dividing line between world and life.  Her lips feel full and her cheeks are blushed by the frigid air but no one, save for her creatures, is witness.  The lights on, she does not stop to watch and listen until the horses are already finished with their morning grains and have moved on to eating their alfalfa.  Some munch away slowly and contentedly like turtles chewing on lettuce; others attack the hay nets hung in the stall doorway as if they're afraid that someone will come up and steal their chow at any moment.  As she passes by each horse, she thinks, “hey”, and absentmindedly holds out an upturned palm.  Most of the youngsters ignore her in favor of their hay, while others pin their ears back, stretch their necks and heads out, baring their teeth to protect their food.  She laughs quietly at them, makes a growling face back and then smiles again.  In about forty-five minutes she'll be walking them out to the track, one by one, for their daily breezes.  A morning just like every other.


The last of the horses enter the gates.  She readjusts her feet in the stirrup irons and leans forward, reorganizing her reins again and entwining her fingers in his mane, about two thirds of the way up toward his ears.  This way she can help herself to stay with his motion when he lurches from the gates.  Other horses enter the chute with varying degrees of turbulent behavior, but her concentrated focus is straight ahead, down the track, to the beginning of the first turn.  By the time she and her ride will have reached that point everything to her will be a matter of communion.  Before that however, during those first four strides, all is chaos.  At that time her control over her world is nonexistent.  During the first four strides out of the gate her world is one thought, and that one thought is forward.  She knows that God exists and is manifest in Horse’s body by the way that the animal runs for his life and our money.  She races because God exists on the track, in the horse and in the way the three of them come together falling in and out of balance around and around, and she cannot live without what she has come to know as the faith of the first quarter mile. 

The gates blow open like a tornado slamming through a farmhouse, and she forgets about repetition.  The first stride covers about twelve feet and feels like she’s riding a leaping frog.  The sound of hooves punching the ground doesn't just surround her ears, it invades them, demanding entrance into the pit of her stomach.  The second stride increases the ground coverage to about thirteen feet, and after that, it increases again until it smoothes out to a steady sixteen feet.  Rhythm has been established by the horse who moves to the rail first and at the head of the pack.  Everything settles for a moment as the group progresses in a cohesive unit — a squad of infant officers being commanded by mini-colonels — as the herd reaches the beginning of the first turn. 

Then, as suddenly as the rhythm begins to hum, it is broken by a silent crack.  The first horse on the inside puts his left fore down to end a landing stride, but the leg buckles as the canon bone snaps in two just below the knee.  He trips to his nose at thirty-five miles an hour, and then to the flat of his face before she is pitched off directly ten feet in front of him.  The other animals, astonishingly, leap out of the way in stride, and continue down the track; her horse attempts to rise out of the somersault to give chase for the half second it takes him to put weight on the broken leg.  He falls again.  And again.  And again until he can but lift his mouth off the ground and roll his eyes far back into his head.  She lies in a crumpled mess on the track, her face mixed in with the dirt and its beloved smell.  The crowd is momentarily distracted by this oddity before focusing their attention back to the race at hand.  There will be time afterward to attend to everything else.

***