From the ashtray sitting on the end table, her cigarette smoke curled into the room. My mother’s perpetual Pepsi bottle sat next to it. The stale smell of tobacco permeated our house.

         “You never spend any time with Susan.” Her jaw was squared; her chest heaved with a sigh. No anger, just frustration.

         “What am I supposed to do with her? She’s not my son,” he stated with 1960’s chauvinism.

         “Something, George…. figure it out. She thinks she doesn’t matter to you.” My mother really tried to bring us together. She was whistling in the wind and knew it.

         Early the next Sunday afternoon my father knocked on my bedroom door.

         “Put your shoes on,” he said to me. “And long pants.” Without a question, I did.

         He whispered in my mother’s ear, “Don’t forget what you promised me.” With a wink he went out the door. She cringed and looked at the ground, “I won’t.” 

         In silence, we drove for miles down the highway. Finally, my father turned down a dirt road, leaving a cloud of dust behind us. It hadn’t rained in a week. Gravel pinged against the underside of the car. The temperature hovered at 90 degrees.

 ***

         The outside of the barn was weathered, and some of the boards had rotted. Rusted tractor implements and an old truck sat unattended. Weeds grew up through every crevice. The air smelled of hay, leather, and manure. To me, it was a scent as sweet as Chanel #5.

         My nine-year-old heart had fallen in love with horses from books borrowed from the library: Black Beauty, Flicka, The Black Stallion. If there was a horse in the story, I read it.

         The only real horse to cross my path, however, had been pulling his wares down the street we lived on in Detroit.

***

         “Susan, meet Norm. He’s going to let you ride one of his blue-ribbon Quarter horses.” I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. I could not believe what was happening.

         Mr. Norm had me follow him to the barn and gave me a leg up on an already saddled horse. He put my feet in stirrups, adjusted their length put the reins in my hands, and led me out of the shedrow.

         “Keep your heels down. That will keep you in your seat. If you want him to go to the right, pull the right rein, same to the left. Grab the horn if you need it but try not to. Follow that trail.” His crooked finger pointed to a dirt track that curved around the barn. “Give him a kick to make him go, pull back on the reins to make him ho.” He walked away and left me there. 

         My dad opened his car trunk, took out a brown paper bag and a six pack of Coke. They opened a bottle of cola each, poured half of the soda on the ground and filled the bottles up from the satchel.

         As I sat on this old, swayed back horse, I didn’t know what to do. Applying pressure with both legs and a gentle kick, pressing my heels into his sides, he didn’t move, not even a flinch, again and again. The third time, he moved out. I jerked forward and remembered to keep my weight in the stirrups. Feeling unbalanced, my left hand grabbed the saddle horn.

         That horse was so well ridden, an infant could have stayed on. He made me believe I was riding. I wasn’t. He knew by rote to go round and round that circle. 

         My body bounced up and down like a bobble head. His hooves kicked up the dirt. The dust made my eyes water. Wiping the tears with my filthy hand and spitting the grit out from between my teeth made me feel like a real cowboy. In my mind’s eye, I wasn’t a grimy little girl. I was an elegant, postured, talented equestrian, gliding in perfect sync with my horse’s gait. We moved as one. I was Judy Garland riding Pi in “National Velvet.” I was a jockey in the Kentucky Derby.

         At each turn around the barn, I counted how many bottles of Coke were left, knowing that when the rum ran out, so would my ride.

         Bow legged and drunk, Mr. Norm waved his arm for me to come off the trail. He took the reins from me. “Lean forward, swing your right leg behind you and slide down.”

         When both feet hit the ground, my knees buckled underneath me, falling backwards to my bum and bruising my pride. That didn’t happen in the stories. Red faced, I stood up quickly and wiped the dirt off my bottom. Then I asked, “Mr. Norm, may I brush him?’

         “No,” my dad answered for him. “You had your ride. It’s time to go.”

         My heart sank; a lump formed in my throat.

         Driving home, I looked over at my father. “Dad? Thank you for taking me to Mr. Norm’s.” Silence.

         With hesitation, I asked. “Can we go back there again?”

         “Jesus Christ, Susan.” He said through clenched teeth, hands tightened on the steering wheel. “We haven’t even left his road.” He reached for the dashboard, pushed in the cigarette lighter

and turned up the radio.