You know what I like best about horses? They don’t judge you, even when life doesn’t quite play out quite the way you thought it would.
They just listen and accept you as you are. Unlike people.
It was a beautiful Thursday in April, and I was standing in a pen at Buckley Stables, palpating the foreleg of Sockeye, a beautiful race horse, while checking the tendons in her knee and ankle for any signs of change.
I stood in the forty-five degree position where, even if I did accidentally piss her off, she at least wouldn’t be able to kick me. A foreleg kick will put you in the hospital. A rear leg kick will put you in a coffin. The horses don’t realize how strong they are, so I’d learned to watch my step.
Sockeye had her head cocked around, trying to watch me as I worked my way down her leg. I paused before switching legs, gently resting my cheek against her neck, allowing myself a moment to take in the wild warmth and grassy smell of her. She twisted her head around, and I could almost imagine we were sharing something like a hug.
“You’re so sweet,” I whispered to her as I drifted around to her other side. She shook her head twice in what I imagined was a reply.
Awww, nuh-uh! You’re the one who’s sweet!... or something like that. Nobody in my life complimented me like my horses.
Sockeye and I stood in the middle of the auditorium-sized round pen used for exercising the horses. The floor was covered mostly in manure that had been beaten into dust and dirt by a thousand hooves. Surrounding us was fencing, and above us a roof of corrugated aluminum that roared whenever it rained.
I felt certain there had to be other PTs who talked with the horses they worked with—and probably even some, like me, who imagined the horses replying back.
But none of them seemed to work at Buckley Stables. Especially not the one who was now approaching to interrupt my train of thought.
“Hey,” said the female voice. I gently lowered Sockeye’s leg back down until her hoof met the ground, then turned towards the noise. Lily stood in the doorway about fifty feet away, in the jeans, rubber boots and purple ‘uniform’ t-shirt we all had to wear, the one that read Buckley Stables across the chest in a white Derby-esque font.
“Hey,” I said back, diffident. People said Lily and I looked alike, the same delicate features and nut-brown hair, the same gold-brown eyes and full figure. But that’s where our similarities ended.
She said something I couldn’t make out, hand resting on her jutted hip.
“Huh?”
And there it was—the signature eye roll. She gave a deep sigh and cupped her hands to her mouth, blaring,
“I said Royce is looking for you.”
“Oh,” I called back. “What does he need?”
“How should I know?” Before I could offer a reply, Lily turned and walked away, ponytail bouncing as she stormed off.
“Okay, well, guess that’s it, baby,” I said to Sockeye, with a tone of finality. She looked at me with disappointment in her eyes; what I called ‘therapy,’ she called ‘playtime.’ And I could tell she always looked forward to it.
I took up the harness, and she came willingly enough, through the wide metal gate and across the little strip of pasture separating the round pen from the stables.
Sockeye wasn’t ready to run the pastures just yet, not until her ankles and knees were stronger.
The previous owner had started her far too early, rode her far too hard; she was nothing but a bundle of bad habits and psychological problems when Royce bought her. It fell to us—to me, really—to fix those issues, so Royce could race her.
After Sockeye was back in her stall ten minutes later, munching on the sugar cubes I offered in my hand as a peace offering for a therapy session cut short, I knew I couldn’t avoid it any longer. Royce was a man who didn’t like to be kept waiting.
The double-wide trailer he used as his office sat in the middle of a large gravel parking lot, a hundred yards or so away from the stables. The rest of Royce Buckley’s considerable land holdings were dedicated to pasture for the horses, four thousand acres of Utah scrub and grassland outside Provo.
The double-wide was aseptic beige, edged with 70s-style gold and burgundy stripes. The trailer door was a dirty white from many hands, clashing with the rest of the color scheme. The lot around the unit was full of familiar cars, including Lily’s blue Jetta and my own white Honda. Royce’s Porsche, bumble-bee yellow with a black stripe, was parked on the only twenty square feet of the lot that was paved. An engraved metal sign in front of it read: Reserved.
I noted an unfamiliar car in the lot and wondered if Royce had hired a new PT. We didn’t really need one—but Royce had his own way of hiring. This one was an old Volvo station wagon, possibly diesel, beat-up and battleship-gray, but still as tough and functional as rubber boots. Hopefully the driver was just as strong, if they were to be a match for someone like Royce...
