Large Animals in Everyday Life by Wendy Brenner Page A

past dozens of horses’ calm rumps, under ceilings of ropy cobwebs. In the back the stable opened up into airy box stalls for the boarder horses of higher quality.
    â€œHow about if she takes Cocktail Hour?” Claire said, and Dale nodded and unbolted the sliding door on one of the boxes, making the hefty chestnut inside sidestep and toss its head.
    â€œIt’s nice that you get to ride these horses,” I said, balking.
    â€œWe don’t
get
to,” Dale said, all the time working the heavy door, buckling a halter, chaining the big horse up for me. “That’s what the boarders pay for—boarding, training, and exercise. We’re training and exercise. Now we’re going to make this easy for you, give you the
western
saddle, and just a snaffle …”
    â€œGo on in,” Claire said. “He won’t breathe
fire
on you.”
    I stepped in and my feet sank a little, sawdust after concrete. Between Dale and me was the high red wall of the horse, not yet saddled. “This is the curry,” Dale said, handing me something over the horse’s shoulders. I knew something was about to happen as I reached for it, seeing the horse’s muscles seem to contract under its skin. The sawdust shifted and I saw the chestnut’s big head cocked like a kitten’s, its white eye rolled back at me. I felt the wall of the horse’s ribs against my ribs, my back hittinghard wood, and I thought:
Dale’s ribs, I’m wearing the black bra
, and then I fainted.
    â€¢ • •
    â€œWhat will you do, what will you do?” I thought I heard someone saying, but when I really came to, Claire was saying, “Dad’s gone genealogy insane,” and Dale was holding a cold can of beer against my throat, and the way I was propped between them made me feel like some kind of king. “She’s fine,” Dale said, his fingers on my ribs.
    â€œCaroline,” Claire said, “did you know our great-great-grandfather was master of the hunt in England—I was just telling Dale that some people don’t have horses in their blood like we do,
you
probably have sea blood or mine blood or wheat-field blood …”
    â€œShut up,” Dale said.
    I reached for the beer can at my neck, but he took it away, drank it off, crumpled it, and tossed it a few yards, all the time keeping his eyes on my face, his hand under my sweater. “Say something,” he said, beginning to smile.
    Something twitched under his hand, under my skin. “Oh,” I said.
    â€¢ • •
    In college I once went tubing with my friends, a group of hopeful, sloppy-hearted girls like Claire. We went to the local cold springs the day before we all were to graduate, and for once I was relaxed enough not to talk or even paddle; we’d gotten through college, after all, so I lay back and shut my eyes against the Southern sun, altogether thrilled with such a batch of luck: friends, weather, success. What got me then was nothing as drastic as a cloudburst, but when I opened my eyes my friends had drifted a good thirty yards ahead, keeping hands on each other’s tubes, and oneof them was getting up on her knees, cheered by the others—I was at that moment invisible, and not just to them. Almost as an experiment after that I let things and people drift as far as they wanted, and found it didn’t take anything away from my success. But now I was finding out the experiment’s inverse: when someone drifted my way it was a windfall, it was winning the lottery. In all my wanting Dale, I had never thought so far as to
expect
him. In my small bedroom, finally, where he stayed when he came down to check on me the evening of my faint, he was as large and unlikely as a grand piano, a gift from another, richer world.
    Claire came down inscrutably the next morning, carrying sweet rolls, and I couldn’t tell if she was spying, consoling, or just visiting. Her knock gave me a