Educated

It was a hazy summer evening, a month before I turned fifteen. The sun had
dipped below Buck’s Peak but the sky still held a few hours of light. Shawn
and I were in the corral. After breaking Bud that spring, Shawn had taken up
horses in a serious way. All summer he’d been buying horses, Thoroughbreds
and Paso Finos, most of them unbroken because he could pick them up
cheap. We were still working with Bud. We’d taken him on a dozen rides
through the open pasture, but he was inexperienced, skittish, unpredictable.
That evening, Shawn saddled a new horse, a copper-coated mare, for the
first time. She was ready for a short ride, Shawn said, so we mounted, him on
the mare, me on Bud. We made it about half a mile up the mountain, moving
deliberately so as not to frighten the horses, winding our way through the
wheat fields. Then I did something foolish. I got too close to the mare. She
didn’t like having the gelding behind her, and with no warning she leapt
forward, thrusting her weight onto her front legs, and with her hind legs
kicked Bud full in the chest.
Bud went berserk.
I’d been tying a knot in my reins to make them more secure and didn’t
have a firm hold. Bud gave a tremendous jolt, then began to buck, throwing
his body in tight circles. The reins flew over his head. I gripped the saddle
horn and squeezed my thighs together, curving my legs around his bulging
belly. Before I could get my bearings, Bud took off at a dead run straight up a
ravine, bucking now and then but running, always running. My foot slipped
through a stirrup up to my calf.
All those summers breaking horses with Grandpa, and the only advice I
remembered him giving was, “Whate’er you do, don’t git your foot caught in
the stirrup.” I didn’t need him to explain. I knew that as long as I came off
clean, I’d likely be fine. At least I’d be on the ground. But if my foot got
caught, I’d be dragged until my head split on a rock.
Shawn couldn’t help me, not on that unbroken mare. Hysteria in one horse
causes hysteria in others, especially in the young and spirited. Of all Shawn’s
horses, there was only one—a seven-year-old buckskin named Apollo—who
might have been old enough, and calm enough, to do it: to explode in furious
speed, a nostril-flapping gallop, then coolly navigate while the rider detached
his body, lifting one leg out of the stirrup and reaching to the ground to catch
the reins of another horse wild with fright. But Apollo was in the corral, half
a mile down the mountain.