Page 74 - WTP Vol. XIII #3

Resonance (continued from preceding page)
I have never been very good at hiding what I want.
“She says yes,” he adds. “But, you may only go as fast as I can on Otis.”
“Ah. And now you’re going to tell me that Otis is actu- ally an ex-racehorse.” I look at the stocky roan, built like a tank with short legs, lower lip drooping as he stands catching a nap.
“Otis very slow,” says Brought with a wise nod. “He knows it is not always better to go fast. Waste too much energy. Better to take it easy.”
“But Fidget and I are excellent at wasting energy,” I say, watching the Arabian twitch and arch his neck suspiciously towards a chicken that is pecking up the fallen feed from around his tub. “I mean, it’s easy to waste energy when you are afraid of chickens.”
“That’s why you come here, then,” he says, with finality.
“Is it?” I say, like I’ve been waiting for someone to tell me why I’m actually here.
“To learn,” he shrugs, angles a head at Fidget, who has sidestepped to examine the chicken from a different angle. “Not waste energy on a chicken.”
~
We have been out on the horses for about half an hour when Leanne comes galloping up behind us on a leggy dark bay thoroughbred named Leo. “I thought I could catch you all,” she says with her quiet smile. “This may be our last easy ride for a while. We have
a big group coming in tomorrow for the Botswanan trip. Brought, you still good with leading this one?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says, with a surprisingly good fac- simile of a two-syllable southern ‘ma’am’. I’ve told these people entirely too much about my life. I have no regrets—not here anyways.
She gives him an odd look and shakes her head. She does not ask me if I want to go along, which I’m grateful for. The friendliness and lovely ease of these strangers is making me feel anxious to go back and find something that finally feels like home.
Since I left Iowa, I’d always thought I should be searching for something else—a new place. Some- where that represented that I was my own person. Which is all feeling more like a myth that I’ve been chasing, and the closer I try to get the more nebulous it appears.
~
I should have seen the accident coming.
We ride through a gate into an open field divided by a flat access road, not marked by the deep aardvark holes that make riding here so sketchy. Leo tosses
his head and Leanne looks over at Brought and me.
I grin and collect Fidget’s reins as the Arabian picks up on the mood and lifts himself into a lofty trot, ears pricked high and straight ahead.
Brought smashes his hat down further on his head and pulls Otis’ head up from the grass he has tried to reach for. “Now you see racehorse,” he says calmly, giving Otis a firm tap with his heels. The horse breaks into a stumpy trot, Brought sitting upright in the saddle with a superior look on his face. I hold Fidget back, watching and laughing.
Then, Leanne gives Leo the reins and the thorough- bred catapults forward, dropping into a low racing position as he flies down one side of the track, his hooves spitting clods of dirt in his wake. At the same time, Brought leans over Otis’ neck and bellows,
his legs clamping around the gelding’s sides. Otis’ chunky haunches rope with muscle as he finally charges after Leo.
I let loose Fidget’s reins and feel every tightly wound muscle in his back and shoulders unfurl. Fidget runs with typical Arabian enthusiasm—head up, forelock flying back between his ears, tail flagging high behind him. He catches Otis in a few hundred yards. Brought is already letting off and laughing uproariously as we pelt by.
I see the herd of impala over to one side of the track, but we have ridden by dozens of herds of impala
in the days I’ve been here. They raise their delicate heads and watch us and a few of them twitch. I don’t see one lose its cool until it bolts out from a taller stand of grass and directly across the trail a few yards in front of us.
Fidget executes a marvelous maneuver where he seems to lift several feet off the ground, while simultaneously spinning and leaping sideways. I fly forward over his shoulders and instinctively grab him around the neck. He responds by ducking and twisting his neck as he heads in the opposite direc- tion without seeming to have slowed down at all.
I spend a second hanging off to one side, held only by my grip on the reins and one foot still in the opposite stirrup, before Fidget leaps over a small bush beside the road. Finally shaken lose, I fall into the bush, tumbling over and rolling a few times before I finally stop.
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