WINNING second chapter of South Paw

WINNING:    Rainie

“Kat, remember that last fox hunt when I came home with Shasta, and Hailee and Becca had eaten my cookie?”

“Yea, I remember the twins ate your whole cookie after that,” she said gently. Everybody knew my sisters had died right before Shasta did, in an accident. But very few people ever knew the actual story. I hadn’t told anybody, and the only people who knew the story knew it through my mother. Kat was going to be the first person I had ever told. I brushed my blonde hair out of my eyes, the loose strands falling back into my face. I needed somewhere to put my hand, somewhere to keep it from shaking. I settled on twisting my fingers in a lock of Dash’s mane.

“Well, after that, we went home. Hailee and Becca went outside to play with the neighbor boys. They were running down a street, racing. I went outside to call them in to a late dinner. They were running down the street. It was Friday night, at around ten. They did one last race, when a strange pickup truck came barreling down the street going so slow. I thought it was a friend of our neighbor’s, a high school boy. It was black, and had a cover over the license plate up front. My sisters were walking back to the house, panting and laughing and threatening to race again. The men drove up behind them, slowly and quietly and snatched them and pulled them into the car. There was nothing any of us could do about it. We chased the car, called the cops, did everything in our power to find my sisters, but it just appeared like these men had fallen off the planet. Then, three days later we found them. They were gone, and had been for awhile. The men weren’t ever caught, and to this day, I’m constantly in fear. We cleaned up the bodies and let forensics run the tests. They were prayed for, and were buried with a family funeral in the local cemetery, right next to each other as they had always been.”

“Oh my god, Rainie, I didn’t know.”

“I know. I didn’t tell anybody. It was too much to deal with, you know? Those were my little sisters, and I couldn’t protect them.”

“Rainie, it’s not your fault.”

“I couldn’t warn them! I was too incompetent to do anything.”

“Hey, it wasn’t your fault. You weren’t the murderers in that car, now were you?”

“No. It’s just so hard to forgive myself. And then Shasta died three days after that.”

When my sisters had died, I became a complete barn rat. I was going to a pond swim with Shasta, and we tacked up western. We led, and did a walk, trot, canter, and gallop. We jumped and did everything perfectly. Shasta was being so incredibly perfect. Everything we did was wonderfully done. When we reached the pond, our barn owner checked the water for snakes. She didn’t see any. There was a fallen tree that went out into the water, but we all just climbed on in the water, swimming onto our horses. Shasta loved to swim. It was his favorite thing to do besides gallop. We soaked in the water, and he made the funniest noises. The only way I could describe it was a motor boat purr. We went swimming, and he launched himself off the bottom of the pond, and I came right off. It didn’t hurt; I just kind of dived in. I was laughing the whole way. This was the first laugh I’d had since I lost my sisters. I led Shasta over to the fallen log to get on. I walked him up right next to it, and stood up on it. Shasta immediately started acting up. I thought he was just being a goof, so I pulled him back over. Shasta reared up slightly, and pushed me off the log with his head, pushing me behind him and I flew six feet. He was thrashing and making the scary horse in pain screaming noises. He finally jumped away with a snake attached to his shoulder. I pulled it off, and killed it by twisting its head off. It was a water moccasin. And Shasta had taken the bite for me.

The barn owner rushed over, and called the poison control. Shasta had an hour left unless we could get him out to the road. But the road was eight miles away. She suggested that we let him loose and leave, so nobody has to see him die. I refused it, though. I was crying at that point. I got off, and clipped the lead rope to his halter. I took off his western bridle, and walked him out of the water. The bite was on his shoulder, so there was no way to tourniquet it. I walked him out of the water. At that time, he didn’t look like he was in too much pain down his leg, so he wasn’t really limping. He only flinched once or twice when I touched it. I walked him out, taking it slowly. We reached the two mile mark when Shasta’s legs started showing pain. He was limping and limping. He started breathing hard, and nudging me with his nose. He pushed against me with his nose, looking into my eyes. I realized what my horse had done. My horse had pushed himself between me and the snake to try to save me. We made the four mile mark, when he collapsed.

He fell hard onto the ground. He was puffing, and just touching his leg hurt him. We had been doing this for forty minutes. We had made it four miles. I slunk down next to him, and talked to him. I told him how we had to keep going, how we could do it. He could make it. We just had to keep trying. I was going to be there for him, and he was going to be okay. I was about to give up, when he turned over. He stuck his legs out so far, and pushed himself up with his back legs. I hugged him around the neck, and he hugged back. We walked. We made it farther and farther out to the gate. We made it back to the road. Ms. Liz told us how we shouldn’t have made it that far, how Shasta was being so strong.

The veterinarian came, and we didn’t notice until too late when the bull dozer came down the road. When the veterinarian came, she had Shasta lie down onto his side, and she tested him. She told us, with sadness in her eyes, that he wasn’t going to make it. The venom had destroyed huge amounts of his muscles, so he wouldn’t ever be able to move again without pain. He couldn’t ever gallop or jump or foxhunt ever again, so Ms. Liz decided it’d be best to put him down. I broke down a little, stunned.

When the veterinarian put the sedative into him, to calm him down, and I placed his head on my lap. I sat with him, stroking his nose, talking to him as he looked into my eyes. I wasn’t going to let him see me cry. I held myself in, not wanting to make it worse on him. I stayed that way, until they gave that final shot, when one minute he was there, and the next minute my horse wasn’t in there anymore. He wasn’t behind those blue eyes anymore. My horse was gone. I couldn’t stop crying. Ms. Liz took me into her arms, and about a billion other people tried to talk to me, to explain things to me, and to help me. But I was as gone as Shasta. This had been my last connection to the world; Shasta had been my last link to what actually used to be. And now out of the blue, my horse was dead. I had to be taken away when the scoop machine came to get him. The hungry, steal mouth on that thing was going to cut into my horse’s once beautiful body, and mar him and I wouldn’t be able to take the time to give him one last bath to clean it off like I would have before. They had me double up with Indie on Shocka and ride back to the barn, ahead and away from everybody else. I couldn’t stop crying, and nobody wanted to try to stop me. When we got back to the barn, everyone ate lunch except for me. I lay down on the floor of his stall, and cried. I lay exactly where he had when I had gotten him up to go on the last ride, the last pond swim.

I was this broken for days afterwards, where I couldn’t do anything but hurt and remember what we had been. I had been in Shasta’s stall when my mother tried to find me, spending forever and eternity trying to get me. Ms. Liz had called her, and I was taken home and took a hot shower.

I didn’t eat for four days afterwards, only drinking water and fruit juices. I didn’t talk and I wouldn’t look anybody in the eye. Everyone understood what this had been. This had been the breaking point, the point of no return. First it was my sisters. Then it was my horse. Now it was me. I lost twenty pounds of muscle and fat in the next couple of weeks, because I would go out and run for hours and then come back and not eat. I was getting too sick, and my parents knew it, so they did the one thing that they knew would get me to be better again. They took me to the barn.

That first day I came back, everyone had decorated Shasta’s stall. They made me a DVD of us riding together, and some of our funniest moments. It had our foxhunts, our lessons, our trail rides. It had footage of when we were play training him, and he tried to jump over the barrel. We had footage of when he wouldn’t stop licking the wall one August day. I was so glad to have this, because if I didn’t, these moments would have been lost forever, since they exist in only Shasta’s and my own minds. They decorated his stall with flowers and made him a tower of granola bars. Lilly wrote a poem about Shasta and I. That was the day I started to eat again. We each ate a granola bar for Shasta, and I had to do it for my horse. He deserved it.

His real owner came out that day, also. Her name was Jessica, and she was as sad as I was. She wanted to see his lease person, the one she heard he walked eight miles for with snake venom flowing in him, killing him. The one he stood up for again after he collapsed in exhaustion and pain. The one who he loved so much. When I looked at her, we both started crying. We hugged for awhile, then sat down and shared funny Shasta stories. Then she asked me if I thought it had been the right thing to put him down. I told her yes, because every movement he would make would have been made in pain. I told her how much he loved to run, race, hunt, and jump, and how he would have never been able to do it again and how he would be horribly bored. He didn’t deserve that. 

After we talked, she ordered Baskin Robins out to the barn, and we started to get out of the muck. I didn’t move on, though, I couldn’t. My mother and father weren’t the same so I couldn’t be at home, and my horse wasn’t there so I couldn’t be at the barn. I ended up choosing the barn, because it was too much to be at home now.

In two week’s time, I went back to school. My sisters had their memorial service and Shasta had his funeral. I received a chunk of mane that AnnLee had cut off for me after he had died and I had been taken away. We moved out of our house, since it seemed to be haunted with my two little twin sisters. They seemed to be everywhere, and I couldn’t override the guilt. That’s when I started having the nightmares, and they were terrorizing me until I was afraid to go to sleep at night. I also found out something that my parents had been keeping from me until after I somewhat raised out of the funk. They had become billionaires in the stock. And dad’s company had been sold, so he was receiving huge amounts of money. Not once did they choose to inform me that this meant moving, not across the country, but to England.

When everyone thought I was ready, my parents did the best thing they could have done for me. They bought me horses. Not just one horse, but horses. Lyra was the first, after we spent a month trying to figure out which horse was best. We tried all sorts of different horses who claimed to be jumpers. We tried an Arabian who bunny hopped, a Danish Warmblood who spooked at the poles, an ex race horse Quarter Horse who did a flying lead change at every stride, and so many others that I didn’t even want to go through to remember. Only two really stuck out: Lyra and Jeremy. We put the down payment in, and brought them to the barn for trial. It was an adjustment riding two horses, but not an unpleasant one.

We started training for the other shows, first the local, then the regional. Everything we competed in, we would place in. I was getting four lessons per horse a week, showing every Sunday, and fitting school work in between those. I should have been fox hunting also; Jer and Lyra would have done stunningly. But I couldn’t. That had been Shasta’s thing. I couldn’t even consider taking the others with me. It wouldn’t be right.

When I had won my third regional show, my parents bought Dash. When my sisters had been alive, they liked to look at paints online. They had a slight obsession with overo paints. They had picked out a favorite, a black overo named Every Little Dash. They clicked the link, and found out that he was for sale, and spent three weeks raising money for this horse. It doesn’t sound too long, but two eight year olds don’t have a super long attention span when it comes to reaching goals. They made a lemonade stand, sold potatoes, and even tried to do a car wash. Eventually they got bored, though, and went back to doing what they did best before: playing imaginary games. They still had wanted this horse, though, and the day before they died they had me look up the ad again, and show them “Dashy” so they could draw pictures of him. I still have those pictures.

Dash was my little sisters' horse, in my mind. I rode him for them, because I was just helping him along until it was his time to go meet them. It was the least I could do for them. I did, after all, accidentally kill them.

Eventually, Jer, Lyra, and I reached a point where we were up very high in the Eventing arena. We were looking at nationals, and maybe after that, world’s. This whole time, I had had my girls with me, my team and my best friends. They had done everything with me. Then one night, our instructor Mrs. Caroll came in, and sat us down in the trailer’s tack room.

“Girls?” she said, “You’re all really good friends, right?”

“Yea,” said Kat, “we always have been, we’ve been riding together for nine years.”

“Ever since kindergarten!” Kaitlyn and I said in unison, like some type of corny television show.

“Well, I need you guys to forget about that for now. This next show is about you and your horse and me. Everybody else is competition. AnnLee, do you see Kat?”

“Yes Mrs. Caroll.”

“Well, Kat right now is against you getting to Nationals, because she wants to be at there. Rainie, do you see Indie?”

“Yep.”

“Indie right now is probably thinking about how she and Payton can get into Nationals instead of you and Lyra. I’m not saying this to put you guys against each other.  In fact, if anything vicious goes down, both parties are getting suspended for the month from the team. I just want to give you guys the heads up that it’s not always good to compete against your friends, and right now they aren’t your friends. Do ya got me?”

“Yes ma’am,” we all said.

We all knew what Nationals had in store. The top two riders in each State competed in Nationals, and that was a new competition. It was a huge prize. If you get into Nationals, you get an immediate sponsor, depending on how good you are. The sponsors were a great deal of people, the range being from food companies like Cheeto’s and Lays, horse companies like Henri De Rivel and Pessoa, and other random things like Febreeze, Victoria’s Secret, and Charmin’s. Everyone inside and outside of the horse world wanted to grab a kid to sponsor. I felt horrible for the kid who got stuck with Charmin’s. How embarrassing would it be to advertise toilet paper?

It’s a three day event, just like all our other rides, but this one just had the best junior eventers in the country in it.  This was supposed to be one of the toughest three day events in the country. It was modeled after the Rolex, just in a smaller, more kid friendly size and placement. That doesn’t mean the jumps are less than four foot, though. The whole thing was going to be broadcast on television, with interviews for the riders with the best odds. The purse is also supposed to be fantastic, because if you win, you win one hundred thousand dollars. The thing was, though, there are one hundred riders. We’re riding against people we have read about in magazines. Jakob Pelsinson is going to be there. He won Young Equestrian’s “Most Likely to be in the Olympics Award.” Then there is Lila Taylor, who was interviewed by The Horse Magazine, and had comments that said things like “hardly any competitor will ever be able to beat Lila’s grace and precision,” and “Lila Taylor is the definition of true competitor.”

How do I, a rookie who has literally only been showing for two years, stand up to that? The odds are completely against me. But first, I had to get through States. I have to beat my friends. That is going to be hard. My teammates are rock solid riders. All of us have been riding nine years together, and have the same riding style. We are all sincerely equal in ability. We have had three way ties before at horse shows between us. It’s almost always myself, Kaitlyn, and Kat tied up at the top. Then we usually have a jump off, where I almost always take first, Kaitlyn second, and Kat third. It always comes down to who does best under pressure. Kat always cracks under pressure, because she hates the whole “Jump Off” idea. Kaitlyn is very ADHD, and after her course, she almost always veers off somewhere in her mind and doesn’t come back until the next day. After the twins died, I made myself practice intense concentration. I had to; to ignore everything around me took great talent. I found it was easier to drown everything out than to take everything in. This skill helped amazingly in the eventing world.

As I cleaned tack and loaded it into the air conditioned tack room in the trailer, I looked at the shiny bridles on the wall. Each of these bridles went on the head of a horse that I was going to have to try to beat. My best friends became my enemies. This is what I had left. I had nothing left but my riding. And I had to try to make it to the top. This was about me. This was about my sisters. This was about Shasta. This was about beating the odds. And the competition to start all competitions was about to begin in two days.