Training Harry

by Meghan Namaste

  Amber let herself out of Soiree’s stall. “I always thought he was a nice horse.”

  I started currying Harry again, easing into the familiar circular motion. “It’s so easy to write a horse off because of how they behave. You can’t do that. You have to think about why. Then you can get somewhere.”

  I caught Amber’s eye, and she didn’t move away. “Do you want to help with Harry?” I asked. “I could use your eyes on the ground.”

  Amber hesitated. I turned my focus back to Harry. I took the pressure off and I waited.

  “Okay,” Amber said. She walked across the barn aisle and picked up a brush, smoothing down Harry’s coat and flicking the fine grains of dirt away.

  Lawrence

  My hands clutched the wheel as I drove down a country lane, fine gravel flanked by little homes and family farms. I was pretty sure I knew where I was going.

  As I drove on, the houses were set farther apart. Empty land stretched on between them, and the buildings were older, some in obvious disrepair. The grass was green but overgrown. Wildflowers and weeds grew untouched in people’s yards.

  I’d been on the same road for a long time when it split in front of me. To the left, the road was unchanged, though less populated. To the right, it twisted sharply, bare dirt riddled with ruts. Stones rose out of the road surface, almost menacingly. A stooped over, crumpled road sign that was mostly rust read DEAD END. I turned the wheel without looking down at the directions I’d scraped together. I knew it was my road.

  It narrowed quickly to pretty much one lane. My truck shook and rattled, and I looked back often, expecting to see parts on the road. I watched for boulders and steered around them as much as I could, hoping to at least spare my truck’s axle. The woods on either side of me were thick, a tangle of live growth, dead trees and branches.

  The curves were severe, and I would’ve feared a head-on collision if I’d had reason to believe anyone else would be driving out here. A stream flowed across the road up ahead, cutting a deep path through it. My truck negotiated the stream crossing with a deep, metallic groan, and I cringed. I patted the dashboard apologetically and wished for a good trail horse, or maybe a mule. I was really starting to doubt my intuition.

  The road went on, exactly the same except worse. I checked my phone, but I had no service and no number to call, anyway. I stared out the windshield and cranked the wheel left, dodging a rock. I’ll give it one more mile, and then I’m turning back, I decided.

  I turned a corner, and everything changed, so sharply that I took my foot off the gas and just stared.

  A driveway lay before me, with a broad, weathered gate frame above it. Beyond the drive and on either side, sloping, rounded fields rose and fell, surrounded by solid, hand-driven split-rail fences. I didn’t see the horses, but I knew they were around.

  I stepped on the gas again and drove through the empty gate frame and up the flat, straight drive. The openness was startling and calming after the narrow, isolated road lined with trees that didn’t let the light in. I shut down my truck and stepped down from the cab. The air was cool and silent. The lush, green smoothness all around me was gorgeous.

  I looked around in marvel, just pivoting dumbly in place. Then I caught a glimpse of something. I looked again and I saw a small cottage set into a hill, at the very top of the property. I started off for it, moving slowly, still in slight disbelief. Soon my steps quickened. I knocked on the door, panting slightly. My heart hammered out a quick beat, and not just from the climb.

  The door creaked open. A man stood in the open space, a pleased expression on his honest face. His hair was white and the skin around his blue eyes sagged and pooled a bit, but he stood tall and straight. He was perhaps a very healthy sixty, I guessed.

  “Richard Davis?” I said, and held out my hand. “I’m Lawrence Cavanaugh. I have a pony of yours. Harry.”

  The man took my hand and shook it strongly. “I’m so happy to meet you, Lawrence.”

  I took that to mean he was Richard Davis. “I came to find out about Harry’s past. I’m hoping you can give me some answers.”

  Richard nodded. “What answers are you looking for?”

  I took his lead and got right to it. “Harry is having trouble progressing in his training. He’s very reluctant to submit to a human agenda. This is an ongoing thing with him, it seems. That’s how I got him. Gerard Montague sold him to me earlier this year, nearly gave him away. Montague had him for two years, and he couldn’t get through to him. He gave up.”

  I went on. “Harry has had moments of absolute brilliance, but much of the time he’s resisted. He’s just fought me so hard. I didn’t begin to understand him until recently. I’ve had someone helping me, and she saw that he was afraid. She made me see. If he feels like I’m holding him back, he panics. He can’t handle being controlled. He doesn’t trust me to be in control.” I looked away. “And he’s terrified of storms.”

  I looked back at Richard. He looked deeply sad, but in no way did he react to the story with surprise. “Let’s take a walk,” he said. “And I’ll tell you what happened.”

  I walked at his side, down the hill and out toward the fields. There was relief in my heart, and fear.

  “Harry was a challenging colt. A quick thinker, quick on his feet too. He had such an attitude.” Richard smiled as he said it. “He was distrustful; it took a lot to get him to work with me. I like that in a horse. His dam was just the same. Best pony I ever bred.”

  “With patience Harry started to come around. He started to trust me, and listen to me. He was a young three year old, and we were just working on the basics. He was really coming along.”

  Richard paused. I glanced at his face, which hadn’t changed. I looked out at the fields. I couldn’t see the end of them.

  “My friend Tom and I used to work the young horses in pairs. It helped if they weren’t by themselves. I often rode Harry while he rode this other colt, Sherwood. The two of them were pretty bonded. I like to ride the youngsters out, take them all over. I think it’s good for their minds, their balance. So one afternoon Tom and I saddled up Harry and his friend and we rode them out pretty far. They were a little nervous, but they stuck by each other and they did fine.”

  Richard got quiet. I knew something was about to happen, more than two years ago in his words.

  “The weather changed on us real fast. We were miles out when the sky went dark and a storm just came down on us. It was a bad one. There was nothing we could do to hide. We rode into a little valley, and Tom got down and crouched under Sherwood’s neck, but Harry was really agitated and I figured he’d run me down or get away if I got off him. So I stayed in the saddle and tried to keep him from taking off with me.”

  Richard’s eyes stared through the air. “The storm just got worse. The lightning was all over the place. I was turning Harry in a little circle, trying to calm him down. The thunder just exploded around us, and Sherwood lost it. He started spinning around Tom, almost pulling him off his feet. We weren’t ten feet away from the colt when the lightning came down and struck him dead. Instantly.”

  I looked at Richard in horror and recognition. It was clear now. Everything.

  Richard shook his head. “After the storm we got Harry home somehow. He could barely move. He was completely traumatized. He lived half-wild in a field for weeks after that. I couldn’t get anywhere near him. Slowly he let me handle him again, and even ride him.” He looked at me, the strain evident on his face. “He seemed okay, so I sold him. I thought he would be alright.”

  He stopped talking and looked down at his boots. Gradually my face unfroze, and I started breathing naturally again. “He will be,” I said to Richard. “Thank you for telling me.”

  I looked straight ahead, and I saw horses. Richard’s broodmares dotted the pasture that spread before us. I stepped closer to the fence, drawn in.

  His broodmares looked athletic, even fat and hairy on pasture. A black mare with a blaze on her face stood out amo
ng all the fine mares around her. She was a little broader through her back and body, and her legs were strong. She looked fast. She looked right at me, and her eye was intense like a bird of prey or a border collie. She was Harry’s dam. Richard didn’t tell me because he knew I could see it.

  Erica

  I sat at the dinner table, picking at beef bourguignon while my mother chattered about her friend’s daughter, Caroline. She had been shamelessly working to set us up for years. My mother’s greatest fantasy was that I would be somehow converted into a better daughter/woman/sex object if I would just spend some time with Caroline Fisher, Perfect Girl. The sad reality was that Caroline was one of the most vapid, dull and uninteresting people I’d ever encountered. She was little more than a breathing shelf for designer labels, the latest trends, and guys who told her she was pretty (seriously, that was all it took). My mother, of course, loved Caroline because she fit the supermodel-waif standard for beauty, and she didn’t possess sufficient intelligence to talk back.

  She kept talking. I let the words kind of bounce off my skull and float around the room. “That’s nice, Mom,” I cut in randomly, “But Caroline and I don’t really have anything in common.”

  “Oh, Caroline rides,” my mother hastened to assure me.

  Oh, yes, she rides alright. She rides drilled, aggressively tuned-up horses in equitation classes. And she beats me because she looks good in her riding boots.

  “I’m not going to be her friend, Mom,” I said flat out. “We’re never going to be besties. Accept it.”

  My mother let out an expulsion of air. My dad looked poised to run for cover.

  “I don’t know why you’re so opposed to my idea, Erica. You always have to shoot down my ideas, don’t you? Every time! All I ever do is try to help you…”

  I stood up, knocking my chair back. “I don’t need your help, Mom. Stop trying to help me. I don’t have to be just like you to be okay. That’s your need. Not mine.”

  Then I fled, because I knew she would just drag it out and I couldn’t make it any clearer by repeating or expanding.

  I walked out of the house, into the air, my arms looped around me. Pink and lavender streaks coated the sky. Pastel colors looked so much better in nature. I didn’t stray on my path to the barn. I always ran for the barn in times like this. It made sense, in a way. Everything I cared about was in the barn. That was where I fit in, among the horses and everything that went along with them. The towering house I’d grown up in wasn’t really my home. It was rooms, spaces, and stuff that I could take or leave. The barn was home. Any barn, really, was more home than my family’s house.

  I walked down the aisle without pausing to flick on the lights. I wanted dark and quiet. The horses, with their good night vision and finely tuned food possibilities radar, nickered at me in varying tones and volumes. “You were just fed,” I told them, but they still looked at me with considerable hope. I got to D.M.’s stall and leaned on his door. The gelding came up and stood with me. I rubbed the fine hairs on his blaze, roughing them up and smoothing them over and over. No one came looking for me, and that was just fine.

  My cell, forgotten in the pocket of my jeans, came to life. I startled at the feel and sound of the vibrations, reaching down to drag it out of my pocket. Lawrence. My heart thudded and my stomach tightened. Harry. It has to be news about Harry. I flipped the phone open and jammed it up against my ear. “Yeah. I’m here.”

  I listened hard. He told me everything, and then he fell silent. I felt a dull, throbbing ache in my throat. My eyes stung. I didn’t say anything for a while. Neither of us did.

  “Poor Harry,” I said. My voice sounded very small. “It makes so much sense now.”

  “I know.”

  “His fears…loud noises, being held back…” I shook my head. It was shocking and terrible, what happened, but it also fit.

  “I want to believe knowing this will help,” Lawrence said. “But I wonder…I wonder if it will. Especially after the other night.”

  I didn‘t consider the dim possibility of failure. I believed in Harry too much, and he needed us to be courageous. “Harry will come through this,” I said strongly. “That horse is brave. The fact that he allows himself to be ridden at all is proof of that. He’s also highly intelligent. He realizes he didn’t die, and he knows we took care of him when he was vulnerable. There’s a connection he’s seeking that wasn’t there before.”

  There was a pause. “And we understand him now,” Lawrence said. He was quiet for a moment. “I found that helped with Eloise.”

  I nodded, although I knew he couldn’t see me. “Are you back home yet?”

  “No, I’m still on the road. I’ll call you when I get to Lexington.”

  “Okay. Bye,” I whispered.

  “For now,” he said, and he hung up.

  I stroked D.M.’s face, staring unseeingly across the aisle. I knew the story now. The story was tragic. It had scarred Harry, shaped him into the seemingly ungenerous, resistant, complicated horse we had been dealing with. The twisted, wrought iron puzzle of Harry had suddenly unlocked, snapped and it now lay in perfect pieces. My mind whirred. Harry had been intrinsically difficult as a colt, cautious about allowing a human’s control. Then, at a critical stage in his life, when he’d been young and impressionable and probably a bit fearful, too, his rider had taken him out into the fields, stretched him and taken him out of his known, safe zone. The weather had turned on him violently, and Harry had been held by his rider when all he wanted to do was run from the storm. Then, right in front of Harry’s eyes, his friend had been fatally struck by lightning.

  So Harry had been going through life with that in his head. He had recovered, but not fully. He went along, compensating amazingly well, allowing humans on his back, but fighting for control the whole time. Harry could never progress this way. He tried. Harry wanted to be good, but he could only go so far, and then he was stuck, because his trust had been absolutely destroyed. He didn’t know it was a freak thunderstorm that blew in and killed the other colt, and there was no way for him to perceive the horror and grief of the two men who had ridden the colts out on that day. Harry only knew that he had gone beyond where he felt safe because his rider asked him to, and he knew how that decision had turned out.

  There were so many triggers for Harry’s fear. That was how a simple turn or a light rein aid could cause a meltdown or an explosion. Harry fought the work not because he was lazy or stupid, but because his every instinct screamed for him to run. He had learned not to go along with what people wanted. He learned it the hardest way imaginable.

  Harry needed to learn something different. He needed to learn to do what his rider asked, and that in return, his rider would never let him come to harm.

  How do we teach that? I wondered. How do we tell that to Harry, and how is he supposed to believe it?

  Lawrence

  It was early afternoon, and the air crackled with electricity. Every living thing felt the approaching storm, deep in their soft tissues, in their blood. The horses twitched as if electrical currents ran through them, shocking them. I paced my home’s interior, restless. Deciding.

  I had no one here to consult, and it wouldn’t have crossed my mind to ask anyway. I strongly felt this was my time to step in. I had been feeble and stupid with Harry. I had assumed the worst about him, talked down to him and threatened him. He couldn’t understand my words, but I knew he read me. Now when I looked at Harry I felt deep shame and inner, self-directed anger. I saw a living tragedy. I saw his strength and resolve and pulsing, vibrant life. I didn’t know what Harry saw in me.

  I stopped at the front of the house, peering through a window. I wondered what it was that Harry needed. Time, most people would say. Erica might even say that. Months, possibly years of slow, careful work, building back what Harry lost. I didn’t know how much that would help. Harry would never forget what happened. It loomed in his head, too overwhelming for him to let go. Events like that held on, and they
either paralyzed you or eventually you learned to see past them and go on. You never forgot something like that. You couldn’t.

  Eloise was changed, no matter how she appeared. Her mouth had healed over, but the feeling of being held down and struck would never leave her mind. I had things like that in my head too. The snap of Elle’s leg, even though I hadn’t heard it. It wasn’t something I could separate myself from, so it became part of me and I lived with it.

  I saw Harry through the window. He stood, preoccupied and stiff among the blowing objects and dancing horses. Two years had passed him by, and the fear held steady, powerful. It hadn’t dulled. Time wasn’t helping Harry. He needed something more.

  I twisted the knob and pushed through the door. I walked past the paddocks, through the open barn door, my steps falling rapidly on the concrete. Soiree’s eager, golden head blurred in the corner of my eye as I set out all the tack in the barn, spasming and twisted inside. I whirled and rushed out of the barn, stopping in the doorway. Breathe. Come on. Pull it together. I breathed in some charged air, and by the time I stepped outside I had control of myself. I opened the gate and Harry’s eyes moved, seeing me. He stepped toward me. He sought me out. I led him to the barn with a wetness in my eyes that I blinked furiously against even though no one was around to see it.

  Harry calmed inside the structure. I brushed him slowly but sparingly and saddled him, wasting no time. I threw on my helmet without thinking, and I found I was glad I’d done it. I released the cross ties and slipped the bit into Harry’s mouth, sliding the crownpiece over his ears. As I fastened all the little straps, I looked into Harry’s bold, honest face. I hated what I was about to put him through.

  I led Harry outside. Through the yard, past the silly and inquisitive horses. Past the edge of maple trees. Harry stuck by my side, and I felt a pang that I shoved away. I had to believe in what I was doing. I couldn’t give Harry anything unsure to feel. I took a deep breath and I took Harry out onto the field. Harry had never seen it before. We had never gone beyond the arena. The field lay all around us, huge and open. Neither of us could see the end of it. I saw Harry’s eyes get large in his frozen face. I stuck my foot in the stirrup and threw my leg over his other side, urging him to move.