The horse beneath me was wound as tight and stiff as wire, twists of twine where his neck should have been and stiff braces inhibiting the movement of his muscular legs. My own legs were shaking, shifting back and forth, up and down on the leather of the saddle from nerves and exhaustion, but I knew I could hold on longer. He was under my control and utterly powerful at the same time, a mystifying feeling I should have become accustomed to after so many years and so many mounts, yet it still caught me off guard each time my hands felt the anchored tug of the reins in a horses mouth. Is it going to happen? I wonder each time. Is he going to see through the illusion? Realize I’m just the puppet master―he’s the beast straining at the strings, capable with one tug to bring me toppling from my post in the rafters.
            “Bring him down!” my boss Smith, the barn’s head trainer, shouted from the rail, his sawdust weathered voice barely rising above the roar of the wind in my ears. I shifted my weight, tightening my pinkie fingers on the thin lower rein, the one that works like a hinge between the sharp steel bit and the leather curb strap pulled tight under the horse’s jaw. I felt the bulk of him hesitate, then sit back into the pressure and reach out further with his front hooves, striking at the sand of the riding ring with steady, stomach hollowing beats. “Pull him up!” Smith yelled again. Pull him up, rein him in, bring him down, ease him through. Who did we think we were to have so much say in the matter?
            “Wup,” I chirped, my head just inches from the horse’s raised neck, his bristly mane flapping at my cheeks, tangling around my fingers. “Wup, wup, easy, boy,” I said over and over, trying to sound assertive through my fatigue. I felt it starting to work. The thick muscle in his back began to deflate, his nose inched away bit by bit as he relaxed his neck and allowed himself to sink into the pressure of my hands on the reins, giving into the power of the strings.
            “His injections need to be upped,” Smith said flatly after I had dismounted and unhooked the girth. One of Smith’s Mexican grooms, Lupe, appeared beside me and took the horse’s reins, careful to keep the animal, always unpredictable no matter how hard he had just been worked, at arms length as he led him down the hallway to his stall. Lupe’s head barely cleared the horse’s shoulders, and I marveled at the ridiculous size of the animal. They always looked so much bigger from the ground than from their backs. It was such trickery, what we did. Fooling them into thinking we were more powerful by overwhelming them with commands and alien equipment.
          “We need to up the injections in potency, or frequency. Or maybe we need to tighten the curb chain on him,” Smith said, still concentrating on the thick flanks of the animal, glistening with sweat as they shifted away from us down the hallway.
            The horse’s name was Calloway’s Radar, a tan colored American Saddlebred with a long flowing flaxen mane and tail. Smith had purchased him the previous year as a two year old and his plan was to have him in the show ring by the beginning of the next season with either me, the assistant trainer, or him, the head trainer, in the saddle, the only two safe options, as the horse was far too unpredictable to let any of our customers show at the amateur level, even though that was the easiest way to secure a sale. Let one of the customers have a successful ride on a new horse, and there were usually no limits to what they would do or pay for the opportunity to make that success their own.
           Smith had stopped riding Radar himself three weeks before, after he was thrown in the indoor ring and twisted his ankle. The task was mine, and after six rides I was feeling the ghost-like pressure of zero progress lurking around the stable. I would have probably given up on Radar months before, probably wouldn’t even have bought him in the first place knowing his bloodline’s reputation for stalling in progress at the three-year-old mark and his previous trainer’s reputation for pushing too early with the young horses. Smith had a fascination with bad reputations, though. His eyes, as he watched an ornery or headstrong horse, squinted in contemplation; you could practically see the zinging path of his thoughts, zeroing in on the horse’s stiff back, or soft hooves, or sensitive mouth. Problems he wanted to fix like nobody else could.
           I often wondered how much I fit into his fascination, dropping out of vet school after the first semester, wasting my parent’s money, screaming at them that I needed to follow my dreams, not become some trophy child for them. I started with Smith as a customer when I was eleven and most of the fights I had with my parents took place at the barn in front of him, since that’s where I spent every waking hour outside of school. Maybe he wanted to fix me, too. Show my parents that he could make me into a horse trainer.
            Over the five years we had been working together, since I left college, Smith’s tack room had become our lab, and Radar was our most recent Frankenstein. Over drinks at the Embassy Suites bar at the last horse show, Ami Daniels, the assistant trainer from a competing barn, couldn’t stop gasping and laughing as I told her the list of methods Smith had already tried on Radar. A staple placed permanently in his forehead by an equine acupuncturist, weekly massage therapy, a device constructed somewhat like a brace worn after a car accident or neck injury, designed for Radar to wear for twenty minutes each day, holding his head at an angle to promote muscle strength and habitual shape, daily injections of Tryptophan, the chemical in turkey that causes drowsiness.
            “How the fuck do horse trainers sleep at night?” Ami asked as she took a swig of beer.
            “I don’t, really,” I replied.
            “Yeah, me neither.”  

            The week after we failed to enter Radar into the first show of the season, Smith decided to give him some time off. A week off of work, a week off of Tryptophan, a week without the neck brace. The day after the break ended, a Saturday, Smith resumed the routine, and the following day Radar and I had our cleanest workout ever, smooth transitions between each gait of movement, no head bobbing, no grinding on the bit with his thick stamp shaped teeth. So that was our answer—two and a half weeks after Radar’s refresher break, we would enter our first show.
            We had thirteen horses going to that April show in Clemson, South Carolina. Ten were customer horses; Smith and I prepared them with easy workouts, keeping them calm and steady, running them through the same routine they would be called upon to execute in the ring, a thousand times over. Our customers appeared at odd times through the two weeks for their final practice lessons, some of them children with small bouncy horses, some adults with flashier mounts—those were the horses that required the most working out. We spent all our time working to make them appear strong and powerful, all the while moving them through their paces so frequently they could do it all regardless of the skill of their owners.
            Three of the horses, including Radar, were Smith’s horses, to be shown by me at that particular show in the professional divisions. Apart from Radar, we worked Smith’s horses the least, wanting them to be as fresh and game as possible when they entered the ring. Usually we rode them with blinders on, like cart pulling horses, shielding them from the usual distractions of the barn and riding ring, so that once they entered the show ring with bare faces and clear vision, the unfamiliar sounds and bright lights would wind them up even tighter. The horses in the professional divisions were all feverish balls of energy and unpredictability. Whoever is able to keep their mount closest to the edge of control usually wins. I was nervous for Radar—I had never worked a horse so hard without making even a chink in their intensity, but at the same time I knew if he could be controlled, there would be no beating him. No horse with his amount of force and motivation could be ignored.
            “Talk,” Smith grunted as he passed me on packing day. The two show trailers were parked out front and I was in the process of loading up all of our tack trunks to be piled in the cargo hold. Smith was always a man of few words, perhaps out of habit from barking terse commands to horses all his life. Whoa, trot, get up. 
            I dropped the handful of brushes I was holding into a trunk and followed him to the office, which was heavy with the smell of muddy boots and horse manure, masked by the sugary odor of artificial hazelnut flowing from a wall socket air freshener. 
            “Heather,” he said. “I’m gonna show Radar. I think it would be best. I still want you to take care of Dreamer and Seneca.” And that was it. I nodded, following him back out to the fresh air of the open hallway, then going to grab his saddle from the tack room to be loaded with the rest.
            Was I relieved that Smith was going to handle Radar, or disappointed? It had happened to me before. It was the way of the business. Customers often asked me to show their horses, to work out a problem or to make sure they could handle an unknown arena, then at the last minute, as the moment approached, they would change their minds. Perhaps the feel of possible glory just seems too much to hand off. The intoxicating buzz of success always outweighs the emptiness of disappointment, and it is usually the pressure found in the instant before that a person can truly make the decision on which is most important to them.
            Smith and Radar’s glory would be all of our glory, though, no matter what happened. We both knew that.
           Horse trainers all know, in some way, to some degree at least, that what we do before shows to the gamer horses, and to the horses with the most inexperienced riders is…questionable. Maybe even a little unethical at times. There are always certain steps, though, that a trainer feels the need to take, both to ensure his riders’ safety and to preserve their own reputation.
           At the time of Radar’s first show, there were no mandatory drug tests, only inquiries based on individual protests. Radar was enough of an unknown to not garner too much attention on the matter; Smith and I both knew that the only chance of drawing attention was if he won the class against a competing trainer feeling the pressure from an owner, so Smith went soon after we arrived at the show grounds to check the entry sheet and examine the spread. Radar’s class was a Novice Horse class held on the first night of the show, no horses were allowed to enter who had won three blue ribbons yet in their career. The class was open to all horses, unrelated to age, but the unspoken rule was that the division was saved exclusively for trainers with young, crazy mounts.
            I knew immediately once Smith returned from the show office that there were no red flags on Radar’s entry sheet. He flashed me a devilish smile where I was sitting on a tack box, filling out our workout schedule for the week, then disappeared into the tack room. When he returned, he marched up to me, his eyes focused on the plastic syringe cradled carefully in his hands, filled about three quarters of the way with clear, syrupy liquid.
            “I want you to give this to Radar right before you bring him out tonight,” he said to me. “I’ll be at the warm-up ring waiting for you, that’ll be the best way.”
            Radar was our only horse competing on that first night, most of our customers hadn’t even arrived yet, so all afternoon my thoughts were focused exclusively, excruciatingly, on him. The drug Smith had given me for Radar was a drug I was familiar with, one we had used before at the barn, but never before in the show ring. It was harmless to the horses, as far as our vet told us and as far as I had observed, but it served quite a potent purpose. I suppose it must feel like a main line shot of caffeine, and for the ten minutes or so that a horse is in the ring, they look and perform as if they are at the peak of awareness. Ears pricked, senses heightened, reflexes crisp. They are just alert enough to appear flashy, and just uneasy enough to obey the softest of commands. With the wrong rider, or a rider in the wrong state of mind, Smith and I both knew the drug could be a disaster. With every whisper of a command seeming to the horse like a roar, each and every order must be issued perfectly. 
            An hour before Radar’s class. Forty minutes. Twenty minutes. Ten. The time ticked down in my head like the swinging of a pendulum, slamming up against the sides of my scull each time I glanced at my watch. From our barn location at the bottom of the hill (where Smith always liked to be at shows to avoid the hype of the show ring) I couldn’t hear the announcer over the loudspeaker, so we had agreed that two classes before Smith and Radar were to go in, Lupe would run down to the barn and let me know, then I would give Radar the injection and walk him up to the warm up ring, where Smith would be waiting.
            I glanced over at Radar in his stall, fully saddled and bridled, held secure by two cross ties attached to the walls on either side. His body was still, frozen stiff as if he had just heard a suspicious sound he was trying to identify. The only thing moving on him was his eyes, darting back and forth, zeroing in on any hint of movement that crossed his path. He had been worked for an hour earlier that day by Smith, brought to a foamy sweat down in the back training ring where Smith knew there wouldn’t be an audience. I watched from the alleyway of our barn, focusing on the rhythm of Radar’s steps as Smith moved him repeatedly through his gates- walk, trot, canter, walk, trot, canter. Smith’s hands were heavier than mine, as only the most seasoned trainer or inexperienced beginner’s can be. I knew I fell somewhere in the middle—practiced enough to know the value of moderation, not quite long enough in the business to have lost faith in its effectiveness. I watched the casual flip of Radar’s head, and the misstep he kept taking each time he passed by the entry gate, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I would have been able to show him better than Smith. It had been only me that had been on Radar’s back for the last two months. Smith undeniably had more experience than me as a trainer and a rider, but maybe we hadn’t put enough value in the bond that horses form with their riders over time. Maybe Radar was beginning to trust me, and now I had handed him over to Smith without so much as a word of protest.
            “Señora!”  Lupe came shuffling around the corner into the hallway to give me my cue, his eyes wide with adrenaline and lack of sleep. “Señora, it is time! Mister Smith say to bring Radar now!” I stepped off of the trunk and went to the tack room to retrieve the syringe from where it was sitting out on the refreshment table, taken from the refrigerator by Smith to warm to room temperature an hour before. I glanced at Lupe, standing impatiently in the doorway to the barn, staring up toward the illuminated outline of the arena.
            “One second!” I yelled out to him before stepping into Radar’s stall. When I slipped in front of Radar he jerked his head up as high as the cross ties would allow, peering down on me with his golf ball shaped brown eyes.
            “It’s okay,” I cooed to him, keeping my voice low and soothing. “It’s all okay.” His head didn’t lower, even once I placed my free hand carefully on the bridge of his nose, the spot where the hair is as soft as suede. But why should he lower his head? It wasn’t all okay. We could fool them into accepting many things: that natural movement should be restricted to around in a circle and up and down a narrow hallway, that comfortable living quarters is a cramped wooden box with bars on one side, that “play time” consists of being turned loose in a bull pen for twenty minutes three times a week.
            Maybe I didn’t want to fool him into thinking this was okay. I looked down at the syringe in my hand, at its thick plastic barrel and sickeningly long needle. I reached a foot out and dug a little hole through the sawdust into the red mud of the earth beneath his stall, then I pointed the needle down and squirted its entire contents into the ground, my head filling like a vacuum with the soft whoosh of the liquid escaping from the tip onto the dirt. When I was finished, I unhooked the cross ties from Radar’s bridle, lifting my hand along with his head as he tried to shake free. I slid the empty syringe into the back pocket of my pants and walked Radar out into the light of the hallway.
            “You take him,” I said to Lupe. “I need to stay here.”
            “All is good, Señora?” Lupe asked, and I nodded, handing the polished leather show reins across to him. “You come to watch?”
            “No,” I said. “No, I need to stay here.” I watched him jog Radar up toward the arena, forgetting himself in the hurry of it all just long enough for Radar to get close for a little nip at the skin of Lupe’s shoulder. I couldn’t watch was about to happen in the show ring.
           Either Radar was going to prove me wrong for trusting him without the strings, or prove Smith wrong for trying to keep him tied. Either way, I couldn’t bring myself to imagine the sight of it. 

The End.

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