10

Callie hasn’t appeared. From the hut I see Unusual picking at a biscuit of alfalfa in the field by the drive. He’s been spelled for two months now; he bowed a tendon in the Virginia Gold Cup and still came third. I think of him galloping hurt, still trying. He won’t race again. Tom Shackelton gave him to me.

I get up from my bed to go straighten his fly rug, though I know it’ll only slip again. Something about the point of his croup and the angle to his hips makes it hard to keep his blanket in the middle. He stamps at a horsefly, turns to scratch his flank. I put my face against him for a moment, feel down his tendon.

I lie on the dry grass beside him like I did with my pony as a child. The familiar sound of a horse picking at grass nearby, the warm dry breath from his nose in my hair, sniffing me. His feet near my face but no danger. He wouldn’t hurt me.

Callie wants him as a show jumper. She thinks he might be good enough to get her on the team and go to Europe. She wants to take him swimming. I said, “Hardly likely.”

A truck rattles past but she still doesn’t come. The sun sets over the forest, a mushroom above the trees. The warm air lies around me like a blanket; clouds of tummy-pink salmon. I close my eyes and listen to the road.