The Black Beauty (Wattys 2015)

∞The Black Beauty-Part Two∞

By morning, everyone has been fed except me. A lady, wearing a checker plaid shirt the color of horse manure and jeans that hug her legs tightly and some sort of black boots walks over to my stall with the food, but she doesn’t give it to me.  She walks into my stall with a halter and lead rope.  She approaches me and talks in what she wants to seem a soothing voice, but to me it sounds scratchy and rugged, like she’s hoarse (pardon the pun).  Well, it wasn’t very calming at all whatever tone it was in.

I let her take three steps into my stall. I pin my ears back and lower my head towards the ground.  I paw the ground, trying to let the lady know I wasn’t pleased at all.  She still comes forward, no hesitancy at all.  I rear up and scream.  She tosses the lead rope around my neck.  I land, trying to regain my balance, but before I could rear up again, she quickly puts the halter on me.  The lady clips the lead rope to the halter and shoves the stall door open.

I bolt out of the stall, but I was harshly yanked back.  I’m scared and nervous.  I don’t know where I am going, or what is going to happen to me. The lady, whose name come to find out is Sarah, leads me to a sand area.  It’s fenced in, but the fence is too high for me to jump without a head start.  Sarah unclips the lead rope and lets me into the sand arena.  She stands outside the gate, and just stares at me.  She is making mental notes about me, and what happened and how it affected me.

I scream for other horses, but no replies.  Sarah calls for someone, but I couldn’t hear the name.  A man, around 20 in a red orange shirt and dark blue jeans and boots runs over to see what the commotion is about.  His name is John, and he seems more interested in Sarah than he does me.

Sarah hops the fence, and enters the arena.  I stop dead in my tracks.  She comes towards me, but I back away.  She keeps coming towards me.  I turn and bolt towards the gate.  It’s short enough that I can jump it at the pace I’m going.  That man is standing at the gate, not moving.

I kick it into high gear and gallop straight at John.  I start driving from my haunches, instead of on the forehand.  I’m at least 20 strides from the gate.  I’m ten strides; then five.  John still hasn’t moved.  I decided against jumping the fence. I slow down a bit and turn towards Sarah.  I gallop towards her.  She steps out of my way, and I rush past her but stop and turn back. I canter towards her, but she steps away again, but I turn my path towards her again. I brush past her, and knock her over.

She lands hard on her left shoulder. John hops the fence and rushes towards Sarah. I slide to a stop and face John and Sarah in the middle.  I’m out of breath and dripping in sweat.  John looks at me with a nasty scowl look on his face.  He gets up and walks towards me.

I back up until my rump hits the fence.  I can’t back up any more, and I know is inadequate to try and run now. John grabs my halter, and he clips a long lead rope onto my halter, clipping it on both sides of my halter. He leaps onto my back without any thought.  Only being three years old in horse form, I didn’t know what to think.  But that’s the thing; I didn’t think at all. I reared up and pawed the air.  My ears are pinned, and I scream.  I take off at a mad gallop around the arena. I couldn’t make the turns because the arena wasn’t big enough. John managed stay on my back, not bothered by my speed or consistency.

After 30 minutes of galloping wildly around the arena, I finally stop dead in my tracks. I just stopped. My head was hung low, and I was light headed.  John slid off my back and patted my neck.  He rubbed my face and unclipped the lead rope.  He then walked away from me and went to see Sarah. I stood there, breathless. I followed him a few minutes later, and met up with him and Sarah in the middle of the arena.  I stood by John and rested my head near his hand.

He walked towards the gate and went outside the arena. I tried to follow, but he closed the gate before I could get out.  Sarah walked up to me and rested her hand on my neck. I moved away from her, and went to the middle of the arena where John once stood.  Sarah followed me and clipped the lead rope to my halter.