Riders

by Jen Gann

She had a light seat but the saddle still pinched my shoulders and the girth was too tight around my middle.  She waited until we were out of sight of the barn before loosening it.  She murmured that the grooms didn’t mean to hurt me, that they were only doing their jobs.  She slipped me the ends of carrots and small handfuls of sugared cereal.  I licked her hand until my mouth frothed.  I nickered every time I saw her, until I didn’t anymore.

A man plunged his face into my neck.  Together, we surged through smoke toward crash and crush.  First the trunks crashed then the limbs crushed.  Most of my body wanted to spin and run, but the legs draped over me were urgent, strong, and sure.

The child’s heels were sharp.  So were her toes.  I liked to run with her because she bounced so lightly in the saddle, shrieking in a way that always lost to the trees.  I could duck and send her soaring, crashing in a pile of braids and dirt smudges.  She would tear to a stand and wipe the startled tears from her cheeks, telling me how badly I’d behaved.  Once she cursed and said she’d never wanted me; that it was her mother living daydreams, not her.  I always stood still, reins slipping down my neck.  Finally she learned to sit up straight and keep a calm, steady leg and so I tossed her less and less, then found myself sold.

A woman with long, thin legs shook atop me.  She talked to herself.  She said she had to do it, she had to do it, that she could not back down.  She said she could do it, she could do it, she could.  We would walk forward a few paces until her body seized and the bit pulled my lips straight back.  Stopped, she talked to herself again.  Her kicks were loose and fluttery, like darting birds.  After I ran, she often hopped off and walked beside me, where her body perked up, I noticed, and she talked to me about what we were seeing—light sifting through the trees and onto a fallen log, a line of quail babies hopping along, the red t-shirt of a jogger bounding on a trail across from us.

One fall no one rode me and I stayed inside my stall, hooves burning.  I shifted my legs to try to get away but couldn’t.  The rain beat down on the barn roof and I spent a lot of time on my side, nipping at my stomach if I got bored.  Someone had to pick the sawdust from the open wounds piece by piece.

He was there once and once only, a man with iron legs and stiff hands.  His heels and calves closed on my sides so I scurried forward.  But his hands were closed on the reins too, so tight the bit clanked against my teeth.  My neck rose up to escape then crammed down when I could not.  I sweated until white lather foamed at my flanks.  He took the saddle off in the stall then left me to nip at the hot, sore spots by myself.

Someone took me outside just to eat grass.  I danced away on the lead line, showing my back off to the sun.  The spot where the saddle usually went was so warm.  I got so excited I bit the lead line and yanked it like a common dog, trotting in place as the metal parts jangled.  A voice said whoa but a whinny rose over it, calling from some place inside the barn, way down the aisle from where I usually went.
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Jen Gann’s work has previously appeared or will in American Short Fiction, PANK, Annalemma, elimae, and others. She lives in California and is online here: jengann.com.

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