Rusty was not a small pony but he was not a big horse either. He lived in the middle category and had opinions about it. Carol’s family had three horses. Hers was a bay hunter named General that stood sixteen hands and knew it. Her sister Margaret rode a gray called Finn that was nearly as tall. Rusty was Western and shorter and had a pommel on the saddle which Trout considered a significant tactical advantage.

Trout had a theory about the pommel. The theory was that if a horse went wrong you could hold on with both hands and wait it out. He had explained this to Pee Wee once in detail. Pee Wee had listened and then said he didn’t ride. A horse had bitten Pee Wee the previous summer and that was the end of the horse relationship. Not the end of coming to the pasture. Just the end of the riding part. Pee Wee came and walked the fence instead which was its own activity requiring its own concentration. The fence was white wood with a top rail and the goal was sections. You put your arms out and moved rail to rail and counted how many sections before you fell off. Pee Wee’s record was eleven. He was working on twelve when Trout brought Rusty out of the barn.

The first part of the ride was fine. Rusty walked and occasionally trotted and did not volunteer anything faster than that. This was his habit leaving the barn. Carol had explained it to Trout the first time. Horses knew where home was and leaving it cost them something and they let you know. Coming back was different. Carol rode General behind Trout. Margaret rode Finn behind Carol. The three of them went out along the fence line at a walk and then along the back field where the grass was longer and the ground softer and Rusty’s hooves left clean prints going out. Pee Wee moved along the fence in the other direction counting sections.

It was hot. It had been hot since June and showed no interest in changing. The kind of heat that made the barn smell stronger and the flies worse and the horses sweat along their necks without being asked to do anything difficult. Trout could feel it coming up through the saddle. They turned back after a while. That was all it took. Rusty felt the turn the way he felt everything, immediately and completely, and made his decision before Trout had settled back into the saddle from the turn. His whole body changed under Trout the way a machine changes when you find the right gear and then he was running. Not trotting. Not cantering. Running.

Trout grabbed the pommel with both hands the way he had planned. The saddle moved. Not a little. The whole saddle shifted sideways under him with a slow terrible certainty, the cinch having worked loose from all of Rusty’s effort, and Trout felt himself going with it and there was nothing the pommel could do about that because the pommel was also going. The ground came up. He somersaulted. He didn’t plan to. His body did it without asking him and he came up facing the barn with cow manure on his shirt and his left cheek and a mild ringing in one ear and Rusty already twenty yards ahead still running.

Rusty did not look back. He went through the barn door at full speed and turned into his stall and that was where he stayed. Not breathing hard. Not upset. Just done. Carol pulled General up beside Trout. She looked at him on the ground. She looked at the direction Rusty had gone. She looked at Trout again. “You fell exactly right,” she said. “I didn’t mean to,” Trout said. “That’s how they teach it,” Carol said. “Chin down. You go with it instead of against it.” Margaret pulled Finn up behind her and looked at Trout’s shirt. “You landed in the Holsteins’ side of the field,” she said. Trout looked at his shirt. “I know,” he said.

Pee Wee had seen it from the fence. He was on section nine when Rusty made his decision and he watched the whole thing from the side, arms still out for balance, and he stayed on the rail through the somersault and the landing and was on section ten by the time Carol reached Trout. He finished the section before climbing down. He walked across the field and stood over Trout and looked at the shirt. “How many sections,” Trout said. “Ten,” Pee Wee said. “Almost eleven.”

Trout sat up carefully and checked his hands and his knees. Nothing serious. His cheek stung where it had touched the ground. The ringing in his ear was already going. He looked toward the barn. Rusty was visible through the door in his stall. Not looking out. Just standing there in the cool dark the way he’d been planning to stand since they left. “He didn’t even check,” Trout said. “No,” Pee Wee said.

Carol dismounted and ran the stirrup up the saddle the way her instructor had shown her, efficiently, without thinking about it. “You should take lessons,” she said. “I fell right without them,” Trout said. Carol looked at him once. “You fell right without them this time,” she said. She led General toward the barn.

By the next morning the whole school knew. Not about the falling right part. About the shirt. Pee Wee had told exactly one person on the way home. That was enough.

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