How I Found Him

In the picture, I'm newly pregnant and saying good-bye before I leave for New York City. The horse is my old love, Rillo.

When I was thirteen, still grieving the death of my first horse, a dimly remembered red quarter horse named Smuckers, my mother decided I had to have another horse. Smuckers had been gone for about eight months. I was bored and considering getting into trouble in some mediocre adolescent manner. I went into the woods behind the house to plot. I remember I'd just had some shouting match with my mother, but I don't remember what it was about. It was two days before Christmas.

"NATALIE!" came from the house.

I ignored it and went on laying plans to start fires and do other tiresome thirteen-year-old acts of rebellion.

"NATALIE!"

"WHAT!"

"COME IN AND GET READY TO GO AND SEE THIS HORSE!"

Horse? Okay.

We'd seen one other horse that I can recall, a six year old Thoroughbred mare named Annie. She was dark bay, delicately built, with tremulous, worried eyes. She had picked delicately through the muddy riding arena at the boarding stable along the St. John's River and we had driven away shaking our heads a little. Cute, but no. With childish impatience, I was certain that I was never going to find the right horse. I didn't realize then that every horse is for sale, for the right price. Certainly Thoroughbreds.

We drove to Fort Pierce, a dull two hours south on the interstate. We listened to a tape of "Octave" by The Moody Blues. The one with "Nights in White Satin." I can still repeat the poem at the end, and when I do, I picture a cloudy December afternoon, driving south through pine scrub filled with cattle.

We passed through orange-scented groves, past a Tropicana bottling plant, drove down a long sand road to the barn and arena of one of those thousand acre cattle and citrus ranches that are still common in Florida. A red-headed man in a cowboy hat introduced himself as Curtis. He drove a teal green F-350 dually with purple lettering across the windshield. "PLUM CRAZY." While we were talking, a horse wandered up and casually took a bite out of the bug shield across the front, inadvertantly teaching me a few great new cuss words.

He showed us his two Thoroughbreds for sale. They were in a muddy paddock together. (Everything was muddy that day. I think it had been a wet December.)

There was a plain bay and a dark bay. The plain bay had a white star, was in good condition, and clearly had a good temper. I can see them walking across the paddock towards us. I still see it as it happened, my gaze sliding from the plain bay to the dark bay just behind him, lurking in the corner.

He was skin and bone, perhaps a very low 3 on the scale, and he had no hair at all across his flanks and down his hindquarters. His eyes were both bright and quiet. He looked trusting. He came to us and I shoved aside the inquiring nose of the plain bay - I think his name was Indian - and went straight for that skeleton of a dark bay.

I'd left my girth at home and there were no English girths within ten miles of that barn, so Curtis cinched on a Western saddle while I bridled him with a plain fat loose-ring. I got on in the roping arena while he described the horse's background: claimed cheaply at Tampa, abandoned by owners with financial troubles that seemed to necessitate that they visit foreign climes, found in a sandlot by a concerned young woman, delivered to Curtis to rehab with only a copy of his papers to keep anyone from racing him again. Curtis took him on trail rides, moved cattle from field to field, and popped him over enough logs and ditches to think he'd be a nice English horse. He curried him and washed him and got off the rain rot that had left him hairless.

I nudged him into a trot and got a bouncy trot full of suspension and air-time. Too much, in fact, for that Western saddle. I asked for a canter and got a springy, joyful gallop. I stood in the stirrups and felt it. You know, it.