The approach of the hurricane taking aim at Florida this year, its storm clouds muddying the sky, made me think of him again. He was every rider’s dream come true, a once-in-a-lifetime horse. Of all the horses that inhabited our Tampa stable, he holds the blue ribbon in my heart.
Born on my birthday in 1969, he showed promise right from the start: a large, boisterous colt, he was up and around shortly after birth. Although his color could have changed once he shed his baby coat, it didn’t, and he remained one of those rarities, a midnight black Thoroughbred. John Fogerty had a song that was popular at the time, and my dad let me name my horse after the title: Midnight Special.
I was old enough to partake of his training, and as time went on, he and I would reward ourselves after a particularly good lesson by taking the trail that led up to the orange groves. Once he realized where we were headed, his breathing quickened, his head came up, and he would playfully lean on the bit. A current seemed to run between us as my childish, calloused hands kept tension on the reins. Once we had established this rapport, I would let him go and we would tear blissfully, dizzyingly, along the path until the orange trees would become blurry and I couldn’t catch my breath because of the wind buffeting me in the face. Even after all these years, I have only to close my eyes to experience a fadeout into our old world, with the fragrance of the citrus blossoms and his escalating hoofbeats in the sand, the sunlight splintering through the trees.
Training him to jump was a treat; you showed him what you wanted him to do, then he went ahead and gave you what you wanted but with his own particular twist. No amount of cajoling, beseeching, threatening, or pleading could convince him of the simplicity of an In and Out fence – a two-part structure that was, well, you jumped in and then you jumped out. 99 percent of the time, his version of this was to jump in and then stay in. So he would remain for several seconds, pensive, cogitating, peering over the top rail of the Out, then proceeding to execute an outlandish, avant garde jump from a standstill. He was such a big horse that he always made it; my father never pushed him beyond what he knew the horse could deliver. My horse thought he could jump the moon, and he would have been willing to try if I had but asked him.
I remember the lessons in our indoor arena at night. The big florescent bulbs on the inside of the roof would crackle and turn on, one by one. My dad would walk around, adjusting the fences to fit our lesson plan, and every time my horse heard the “clunk, clunk,” of the bars being raised, he would whip around in delight, almost unseating me. One night, we rose so high that at the apex of the jump, I could feel the heat emanating from the roof, smell the cobwebs and dust, and time seemed to stall out before our re-entry into mortal airspace.
After my horse had been to a number of smaller shows aimed at prepping him for the more prestigious show circuit, my dad announced casually at dinner one night that we would be going to Ocala the next week, and only taking a few horses. I didn’t question this at the time, but three days later, as we pulled into the stabling area of the showgrounds, I saw a billboard. This billboard was advertising an “International Horse Show” and the dates seemed to coincide with our stay. By the time we had set up our area and unloaded the horses, I could only speak gibberish. I spent that night transfixed by the Gideon Bible in my hotel room. I was sure that Armageddon was at hand. In short, I was terrified; we would be competing against horses that had been in the Olympics. As I thought of this all through that long, sleepless night, my gabbling and drooling increased. I said little the next morning as I prepared for the first class. To make matters worse, the rain was pouring and we couldn’t find the blacksmith who was supposed to put caulks on my horse’s shoes so he didn’t slip in the mud.
Those fences were big; some were as wide as they were high. Oxers, verticals, triple combinations, a wall, several fillers, and a hogsback, and there it was – as the last fence combination on the course -the biggest In and Out that I had ever seen. Watching us as we walked the course, my excited horse aggravated his handler by trying to spin and rear in ecstatic delight.
We were next, “On Deck,” as they say, when I saw the rider and horse slide into the mud and fall at the second part of the In and Out. The downpour showed no signs of letting up as the ambulance, always required to be present and running, trundled into the ring and scraped up the fallen rider. We had to wait while they caught her horse. I frantically scoured the crowd for my dad but I couldn’t see him. Then it was our turn and the gate to hell yawned wide to admit us.
As we made our first turn and passed the blurry digital numerals that monitored the seconds, time seemed to stall out again and I remembered that jump where I could have reached up and touched the rafters. My horse’s ears were pricked forward and he was barreling through the rain to the first fence. Suddenly, I wasn’t nervous anymore. I was on a horse who thought he could jump the moon! In spite of not having the mud caulks on his shoes, he floated over the fences, his stride fairly eating up the ground. The crowd was quiet as we finally approached the fence where the previous horse and rider had fallen. As we sailed over the In fence, I asked my horse to make the combination with one stride in between, not two, as the girl ahead of me had tried. He took one huge stride, but then, at the base of the fence, skidded to a stop and stared over the rails. People sighed in disappointment. But they didn’t know what he was going to do. They didn’t know him. I wrapped some of his mane through my fingers, sat and waited, blinking in the rain. Seconds ticked by, then he seemed to give a sigh, rolled back on his haunches and launched himself into the air. I shut my eyes and didn’t open them until I felt him reach the ground and take another stride. The crowd shrieked in approval, and as we galloped, trotted, then exited the ring, I was congratulated by riders who were much older, much more experienced than I. Many other wins were ahead of us, but never one like that again.
I was there when he came into this world and I was there when he went out, quickly, like a candle that had been extinguished. I remember that my breath skipped precariously because my heart had stopped beating for a second, perhaps feeling the absence of his. The sun abruptly came out from behind the clouds and his faded ebony coat caught the sun. I felt the world drop away.
Over forty years have passed, but I have only to close my eyes and we are in the orange groves again. My hands are holding his reins, I feel him take hold of the bit and we look up; my face is cool against the clouds. There is still a course to be jumped, and my dad waits at the end of it, waving happily at us.
