The God of Animals
Chapter Nine, pages 191—192

My father spoke to me in a low voice as the other riders went, but I couldn't concentrate on his words. "Everyone else is doing simple lead changes," he told me. "So don't feel like you have to do anything fancy." Small circle to the right, lead change. "You don't even have to take her above a trot if you don't want to." Small circle to the left, lead change. Sheila came out and the gate was open into the length of the empty arena. "Okay," my father said. "Just take her through it. All you have to do is stay on."

I turned my head to the bleachers and Mrs. Altman made a double thumbs-up at me. Patty sat beside her, blank and smiling — I was just showing your father my ribbon. My father let go of the reins and I felt the tension in Darling's steps, the spring of her knees, the lightness of her feet on the ground as we walked under the covered arena. The gate closed behind me and I was on my own.

As soon as the open space of the arena stretched before us, I could feel the mare's body tighten beneath me. And then I knew it: the broodmares, the kicks and bites and days of beatings — none of it had worked. She was not smaller, not meeker. She had endured them, just as she had endured the days she spent tied up in the sun. She was nobody's pet. There would be no trotting. Her mother was a racehorse and she was going to run. Everything came back to bloodlines.

The mare would run and I would not be able to stay on. She would throw me, stomp me, kill me. There would be pain. I waited a moment, waited for the fear, the dread. But it didn't come. If this was it, my moment to die, then it was. The world was ruined. So be it.

I don't remember touching my heels to her sides, don't remember loosening the reins. I only thought the word inside my head: Go. And her body sprang beneath me.

The speed knocked me out of myself. For a moment I was afraid she had leapt out from underneath me, leaving me to watch from the far side of the arena. I felt myself slipping back over the saddle, losing myself in the blur around me. The speed stole my breath, my vision, any control I'd ever thought I had. It was gone. All of it. It was over. I was over. So be it.

But then I saw it — the point between her ears where the world was still in focus, the place where we were seeing the same thing. Everything else turned into pounding: hooves, heart, fear, speed. The dust rose from the ground beneath, and my legs fused to Darling's sides. In that moment, we were a single body — destined to crash, destined for death. I felt the tuck in my own spine as she spun, the dig of the single point of her hoof as we lifted and rotated around it, the sky and earth and bleachers bleeding into smears around us. In my head, I counted — one, two, and a half — and we lifted, springing toward the other side of the arena. In the center, we turned and my stomach rolled into my chest as she shifted beneath me, changing her lead in midair, coming down on her opposite foot in one single, breathless motion. As we came around the arena I felt the speed swell inside myself and I let her go, let it all go. There was nothing left except the point between her ears, the core of her body clenched beneath mine. Through the blur of dust and heat, I saw the end of the fence approach before us and I thought we might crash straight through, might rise over the top and lift into air, into flight, into whatever came in the moments when life ended and the next thing began.

The word appeared behind my eyes: Stop. And we sank. Her hind feet glided through the dust like sled blades through snow. The dust rose in clouds around us. And it was over.

The world came back from the inside out. Heartbeat, breath, dust, judge, audience. There was a moment of silence and then an explosion of sound, cheering, the Catfish standing in the bleachers, doing their little dance, while Mrs. Altman bounced beside them, clapping her hands above her head.

My tongue was dry and coated with dust, my lips stuck over my teeth so that I had to work my jaw to free them. I turned Darling toward the gate where the Pope twins hung from the fence with their mouths gaping open. Beside them, my father hopped up and down on his good leg, waving one crutch above his head and slapping the metal rail of the fence with his free hand. "That's my kid," he whooped. "That's my baby!"

And after that, it was a whole different game.