6

The Last Ride

BEFORE I WAS EVER ADDICTED to alcohol I was addicted to horses. The minute I first laid eyes on a horse, I was lost. There was no creature so magnificent, noble, or beautiful as a horse. Giraffes and moose were close, but they weren’t as shiny and wouldn’t let you ride them. I drew horses on every flat surface and even created a cartoon horse character named Foster Grain. He was a fat little creature who always wore sunglasses. His plot lines were dull, but he had spots on his ass, which more than made up for it.

I learned to make horse noises with my mouth, including the sound of a horse galloping, and I spent an inordinate amount of time going around on hands and knees pretending I was a horse. None of this is unusual. Children have been doing these things probably since the first cave youth saw a Dinohippus. The only thing that was unusual about it is that I continued wearing out the knees in my pants until well past the age when such behaviour could be considered normal.

Finally, when I was around ten and was pretty sure I’d die if I didn’t get my own horse, my mother and stepfather said I could take my savings and use the money to buy a horse. I had ridden only a few times and, other than the many books I’d read, had no real knowledge of horses. A family down the road heard that there was a sucker on the lookout and they offered to sell me their horse for eight hundred dollars. The horse in question was an elderly gelding called Echo’s Little Wonder. He was supposed to be an Appaloosa, but I think his registration papers may have been fake. He was white with fleabite-looking speckles, stood nearly seventeen hands high and looked like a cross between a fridge and a rhino. With his massive Roman nose, all that was missing was the horn and the freezer compartment. He had a habit of lowering his head and fixing me with a baleful look. I loved Echo and was terrified of him in equal measures.

I kept him at a small farm a few miles away from our place. Each day I would walk an hour there and an hour back to see him. Each day he did his best to scare me to death. Horses are big and Echo was huge. As I spent more time with him, I gained an appreciation for the hundreds of ways one can get hurt around horses, including getting kicked, bitten, squished, and smashed or bucked off. Echo did all of the above to me. Once in a while, for variety, he’d place a plate-sized hoof on my foot and grind it into the earth.

I had only a bridle, and when I first got on him I felt momentarily on top of the world or at least on top of a mountain. I was riding! I was riding!

Then Echo lowered his head and gave a combination shiver/ shrug that landed me on the ground.

I wasn’t riding.

I finally figured out how to stay onboard for upwards of ten minutes or longer at a time and we began to venture out of his field and around the neighbourhood. Echo dumped me in mud puddles, creeks, and ditches and onto nearly any other surface you can think of. But he was a gentleman and usually waited for me to get up and brush myself off (or staunch the bleeding) and get back on. This was in the days before many people wore helmets, and there were several occasions when I hit my head hard enough that I couldn’t remember my name for several minutes. I blame my inability to do even basic math on some of the brain damage I got from those early concussions. A better name for him would have been Echo’s Little Concussion.

As time went on, Echo and I would head out in the morning and come back when the sun fell. We crossed rivers and swam into lakes. We explored every trail and every road. Owning a horse was like having a best friend, confessor, and car all wrapped into one slightly unpredictable package.

After trail riding for a year or two, I got a saddle and started taking riding lessons. My mother had been supportive of my riding before this. She had horses when she was growing up, and she was in favour of anything that kept me busy and out of trouble. She paid for all my riding expenses, including the lessons and shows that I started later. Echo’s Little Wonder was not a show horse. He was old. He was huge. He had a rotten attitude and we won nothing.

Echo was finally retired, and my mother bought me a fancier horse, a little mare called Honey. I switched from western to English and then discovered dressage and got more and more into showing. I rode (or at least I was supposed to ride) every day in the summer, and my mother and I drove all over the northern interior going to horse shows.

My focus changed. I started to think about riding in terms of winning and money. Who had the most expensive horse? Who won the most competitions? My mother made serious sacrifices in time and money to pay for my riding. When I was competing, I don’t remember her ever buying herself new clothes even though she worked full time. In return, I was expected to be disciplined and take my riding seriously. The problem, of course, was that I had developed other interests. I liked boys and parties. Riding was getting in the way of all that. It was also interfering with my drinking. I still loved horses and I enjoyed doing well at shows, but I liked getting wasted even more.

Near the end of my high school years, a high-level dressage teacher came to Smithers to give a clinic. Somehow, Honey and I caught her eye, and when the clinic was over she asked if I wanted to come and train with her at her barn when I was finished high school. She lived in another country, and the offer forced me to make a decision. Was riding and working with horses what I wanted to do with my life?

After giving it some thought, I decided I wasn’t ready to make the commitment. That was the beginning of the end of my riding career. Riding slipped down the list of my priorities until my mother had to nag incessantly to get me to spend any time with my horse at all.

The last show I went to was held at the Smithers Fair Grounds. I had, as usual, entered every possible class. After a successful first day, I made a plan to meet my non-riding friends, Brenda, Charmagne, and Nan, at the midway so we could go on the rides that evening. My mother warned me that I had to be home early in order to be ready to compete the next day. As soon as I had a few drinks with my friends, I forgot all about going home and all about my horse.

It was well past my curfew when my mother arrived at the fair to take me home. I refused to go with her. She lost her cool. She began dragging me through the fairgrounds amid all the strobing lights and jangling music and the sickly scents of dust and vomit and cotton candy. Drunk as I was, I still remember people watching us pass, her leading me by the neck and the arm like a reluctant steer and me resisting all the way.

When we got home, my mother, nearly crying with rage and frustration, informed me that if I couldn’t abide by the rules of the house, I was free to leave. Gathering up my wasted dignity and my new down-filled duvet, I walked out of the house and made my way up to the highway, where I stood, wrapped in my quilt, waiting to meet my non-living-at-home/non-horseback-riding destiny.

It was only when the old motorhome screeched to a halt in front of me that I remembered serial killers and their fondness for young, female hitchhikers. They probably especially liked girls wearing quilts in which their bodies could be conveniently wrapped later. I got in anyway. The RV was being driven by two French guys in their late twenties. They were from a small town in Quebec. The first thing they showed me was their prize yogurt container full of pot. We smoked up, which did nothing for my already tenuous emotional well-being. As luck would have it, they were headed for the fair. When they unloaded me and my duvet, I wandered around to discover that my friends had left. I’d run away from home with only a down-filled quilt for nothing.

I ended up at a house party some time later and spent the rest of the night in a blackout. I woke up in a strange room, beside a strange guy, and was instantly filled with the sickening realization that I was homeless. Worse, I’d missed my first class at the horse show. Who was looking after my horse?

I got someone to drive me home and when I walked into the house I was met by my grim-faced family. My mom had gone and picked up Honey from the show grounds. After a horrible conversation during which I promised to behave, I was allowed to come home. But that was the end of my riding career. Not long after, Honey was sold. The horse and the sport that had made life worth living for so long were gone. In truth, I barely noticed.