Chapter 2 Carson
two
Carson
I am usually up at five on a good knee day.
Spring damp gets in, so most mornings it's four-thirty. Lying still stops being worth it. I feed the horses in the quiet I've learned to like. Six years of it, and I still notice it, which probably means something.
Carl had offered me the job two weeks after my last ride, when I am still walking with a cane and have nothing but a truck and whatever prize money I haven't already spent on entry fees and motels.
He'd pulled up alongside me at the feed store in Saddlehorn and said did I want to come work at Wild Vista, said it the way you'd offer a man a cup of coffee. Nothing in it but the question.
I'd said yes before I thought about it.
He hadn't made a thing of it. Just put me to work with the horses and let me find my footing.
It takes a few months, and then it feels permanent in a way I haven't expected.
The rodeo circuit life leaves marks. Not just the knee.
The way you learn to pack light and move on.
The way every relationship you try to keep gets thinned out by months of absence until there's not enough left to hold.
Lauren had tried longer than most. I give her that.
But I'd taught her that waiting for me is pointless, and by the time I am ready to stay put, she's built a life that doesn't have space for me.
That's not her fault. That's the particular kind of guilt you don't get to be angry about, because you did the thing.
I don't think about it much.
This morning I'm thinking about Josie.
I've had hundreds of nervous guests. The ones who booked beginner riding on a whim and showed up to find out they actually hate horses.
The ones who quit after twenty minutes. The ones who gritted through it and came back changed.
I can categorize people in five minutes: scared but motivated, scared and stubborn, scared and using it as permission to stay small.
She is something else. The flinch is full-body, involuntary.
The kind that comes from something real in the past. And then her jaw sets.
I watch it happen, that hardening in her expression, the way a person squares up for a fight with themselves.
She is furious at herself for flinching.
Anger directed inward, at her own body for betraying her.
I tell myself to stop thinking about her.
She shows up at five to eight.
Nervous riders come late. Stalling, building excuses. Five to eight is someone who gets up early, sits with the fear for a while, and decides to show anyway. There's a specific kind of stubbornness in that. I've seen it in good horses and in better people, and it gets me every time.
"Good morning," she says. Professional voice. A fraction too composed to be natural.
"Morning." I hand her a soft brush. "Start with Bonnie. Long strokes, neck to flank. Let her know you're there."
She looks at the brush. Then at Bonnie in the cross-ties.
"Do I need gloves or?"
"You'll want to feel it. What the coat tells you."
She takes the brush. Approaches Bonnie the way someone approaches a stove they're not sure is off. Stops just out of reach. I keep busy with a bridle on the other side of the aisle. Watch without watching.
After thirty seconds, she reaches out and touches the mare's shoulder. Once. Then again. Bonnie flicks an ear. Josie exhales. Another stroke, longer, more weight. Her shoulders drop half an inch.
I already know, right then, the way you know things you're not ready for. I turn back to the bridle and don't say anything about it. There is nothing to say.
We do thirty minutes of ground work. Reading body language, how a horse signals discomfort, what relaxed looks like versus wary.
She asks good questions. I can tell she's used to absorbing information fast and building something with it.
Her hands are steady on the buckles when we get to tacking up, concentrating hard enough that the fear goes underground in stretches.
Then we get to mounting.
She stands at Bonnie's left side with her boot in the stirrup and her hand on the horn and goes completely still. The fear moves through her like a wave.
I don't say anything. Stand by Bonnie's head, one hand on the mare's neck.
After a minute, I say, "Took me forty minutes to get my boot in the stirrup the first time. After the wreck."
She looks over at me. She doesn't ask about the wreck, and I don't continue.
"Bonnie's patient," I say.
That lands somewhere. She looks back at the saddle. Takes two breaths. And then she swings up. Not smooth. More like determined. But she gets there.
She sits absolutely rigid. Hands white on the horn. Barely breathing.
I keep one hand on the stirrup strap and walk beside her.
Slow circles around the round pen. Talking low about balance and posture, nothing dramatic, just enough to give her something to aim at besides her own fear.
She's shaking. I can feel it through the leather when I rest a hand briefly on the stirrup.
Ten minutes. She's still shaking when she gets down, but she gets down on her own. Stands there with her palm flat on Bonnie's neck.
"That was harder than anything I've done in years," she says.
"You did it anyway."
She makes a small sound. "Don't be nice about it. I looked ridiculous."
"You looked scared. That's not ridiculous."
She holds my gaze for a long moment, deciding whether to believe it. I watch her land somewhere quiet behind her eyes.
"Tomorrow," I say. "Same time."
She nods and walks back toward the cabins. I stand in the barn door and watch her go, and then turn back to Bonnie and tell myself to stop before I fall for this city girl and get my heart broken again.