Game Over 
Good-bye to a Horse
My daughter's first love was tall, dark, and handsome. He helped her grow from a girl into a woman. Then the day arrived when she had to say ...
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The hardest thing I had had to learn about horse shows was to keep quiet and do little more than what Vivian asked of me. Every time she entered the show ring, I wanted to give her words of advice, caution, and inspiration. Instead, I had to leave all that to Glenn or Phoebe. They knew more than I ever would, and for that matter, Vivian knew more than I did. She liked my being there, but she was independent of me too. This was her territory. If she wanted to go into the ring after her collision, I couldn't stop her nor would I, even if it meant facing Tracy about it.
I stood next to Tracy along the rail and watched Vivian come up to the ring. She looked quickly at the order of the jumps posted near the entrance.
"Have you got it?" Glenn asked her about the course.
"Yes," she said and pointed at the jumps in sequence.
"Then keep him at a nice, steady pace and you'll be fine," Glenn said.
She entered at a walk, then nudged Mark with her heel. He began to canter immediately. She made a nice circle and headed for the first jump. Mark was moving quickly but not frantically. He took the first jump, then the second. Now she was at the opposite end of the ring. She turned him to the right and got the proper lead change to the right leg without any trouble. She took the next two jumps with Mark accelerating just a bit too much between them. Still, he arrived at the proper spot for the second jump and took it naturally in stride. As she turned left, I could hear her saying, "Whoa, whoa." Again she got the lead change, to the left leg. Mark took the next two jumps in perfect stride and finished the course at his rapid but even pace. After the last jump, Vivian reined him to a trot, then to a walk without much trouble, and they exited the ring calmly.
Tracy and I moved quickly over to meet her. "Excellent, Vivian," Glenn was saying. "That was excellent." Her color had returned in force. In fact, she was radiant. "Good boy," she said patting Mark's neck. "Good boy, good boy." She wrapped both her arms around his neck and hugged him. There were some 35 riders in that class. Vivian got the red ribbon.
VIVIAN COULD NOT ENTER EVERY show on the Central Texas circuit, but she entered when she could. She and Mark turned out to be a formidable team. Alert yet calm, responsive but not impulsive, eager and willing but not uncontrollable, Mark looked and acted like the noble animal he was. He moved with real grace both on the flat and over fences. He knew what he was there for, and he went out and did it.
Vivian was remote and sometimes a little testy as we drove to shows early in the morning, but that was all right. I had learned to let her do things her way, and the truth was that she could do things her way. She had always groomed Mark carefully and cleaned her tack and polished her boots so they'd look sharp entering the ring. She was always warmed up and ready when her number was called. She had studied the course and knew her own personal strategy for riding it. Occasionally, she had a perfect ride. More often, she had a very good ride. But she never beat herself. She entered the ring ready to win and expecting to win, even though her competition now consisted of many seasoned and imposing veterans of the Central Texas horse-show wars.
The bulletin board in her room was covered with ribbons she'd won on Mark, but as she got older, she had less and less time to ride. There was school. There were boys and parties. There was a job at an ice cream parlor and volunteer work at an animal shelter. During her junior and senior years, there was getting into college and all the preparation and tests and applications that requires. She rode as much as she could, but it wasn't nearly enough, according to the world of horses. It did happen that in June, after her junior year, we both entered a show. We spent a long summer day together. I fulfilled my subordinate role with her, but when it was my time to ride, she helped me too. We were precisely in tune with each other. We won our share of ribbons, hers in considerably more advanced classes than mine, and we drove home, smelly and exhausted and happy. I had a daughter who was independent of me, but we were also still connected.
As it happened, that was the last show she would ride in. Mark was lame again. Even basically sound horses have problems from time to time, so at first we weren't overly concerned. But his condition persisted. There were visits to the vet, each one beginning with increasingly desperate hope. None of the treatments worked. Vivian loved Mark, but she had always planned to sell him before she left for college, hoping to get more than we had paid for him because of the training he'd received and the ribbons he had won. She saw him leaving her for a life with a loving new owner who would win her share of ribbons too. That dream might have come true if he had been sound. But he was not sound.
Friends said he could stay for free on land they had, but Vivian adamantly rejected that idea. Mark would be out there alone, basically uncared for, and the thought of that desolate, lonely existence would haunt her. Someone at the stables knew about Boysville. I called the home and they agreed to take him with the understanding that if it turned out they couldn't use him, they would sell him at an auction for whatever they could get. I told Vivian. The thought that he might help children appealed to her and was something to hold onto against the thought that he might be sold. She looked at me. She seemed distant, distracted. Then she looked down, seemed to shrink a little, and said, "Okay."
WITH SOME OF HER MONEY from the ice cream shop, Vivian bought Mark a new halter and lead rope for the trip to Boysville. When Tracy and I arrived at the stables later that morning, Vivian had led Mark in his new halter to a patch of grass beside the parking lot, where he was eating ravenously. I had brought some carrots. I gave him one or two, which he ate with equal urgency and then went back to the grass. He was getting a little fat from not having been ridden.
The man from the ranch showed up right on time in a light-brown pickup pulling a matching horse trailer. He was a thin, elderly cowboy in Wrangler jeans, a big, square belt buckle, and a pearl-button shirt. We greeted each other, and I filled out the proper forms. Then, gently and with extreme politeness, he said it seemed like it was time to load up the horse. Vivian led Mark out of the grass toward the trailer. Mark took a look at the trailer and stopped. Vivian lured him forward with a carrot. He followed her up into the trailer, then backed out again. She still had half a carrot left and this time got him to go in all the way.
As soon as she left the trailer and the man shut the door behind her, Mark knew something was up and began to kick. "Easy, boy," she said.
"He has plenty of room in there," the man said. "We'll get back too late tonight, but by tomorrow morning we'll be riding him." We shook hands all around. He got into the pickup and began to pull the trailer slowly out of the parking lot. That seemed to take forever. The trailer had solid sides that ended in bars that attached to the roof. All we could see of Mark was his eye between the bars. He was looking at us. His eye was wide open, and we could see white all around the large, round, brown iris. He looked alarmed, indignant, accusing.
As the trailer began to roll, Vivian was crying. I hugged her but she accepted only reluctantly, then stood apart from me. The truck and trailer moved on, going very slowly over the speed bumps in the parking lot and very slowly down the driveway until it disappeared at last around a curve. That was the last we would ever see or hear of Mark.
I went over to Vivian again, and this time she accepted my embrace. I could see rivers of tears flowing down her cheeks. But she pulled herself together. "Okay," she said with finality. "I'm going to clean out my locker and then I'll be home." She walked off to do her last bit of work at the stables and be with her emotions and get ready to face what her new life would be.
Tracy and I got into our car. I couldn't talk. She put her hand on my leg. "It's the end of something," I was able to say at last. I couldn't say it was the end of childhood; I couldn't have gotten it out. We rode on in silence for a block or so.
"Well, at least we got him for her," Tracy said. "At least she was able to have him."
"Yes," I said. "She might ride again. She might have another horse someday. But it won't be the same."
"No," Tracy said, "it won't."
It was so clear that even if Vivian bought a horse as a grown woman and even if she pursued riding with more dedication than she had already shown, it wouldn't be the same. It would not be bad, but it would be wiser and less awed and it wouldn't be for the first time. It would be one responsibility among many, something to make time for, an escape from life itself. But it would never again be life itself. Mark must have known it too. That was why we saw him kicking in the trailer, his eye wild and accusing, seeing only betrayal when the woman he had helped create had to turn and let him go.
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