THE SADDLE

“I think she saw how desperate my love was.”

I’ve had this nothing-fancy saddle for 30 years, since I was nine—the year I bought Rascal, a black-eyed Morgan, for a dollar, and his previous owner threw it in for free. Why’d she let him go so cheap? I think she saw how desperate my love was. I’d put my cheek to his and palm his wobbly chin, and he’d scratch his forelock by rubbing it against my spine and wedge his face into my arms, resting it there. He was the first boy I loved.

Rascal was among the horses boarded at the ragged Napa-adjacent ranch where my family rented a house. In those days, I spent more time outdoors than in. I’d beg whichever owner was around to let me help groom and maybe even ride their horse, just a few slow laps in the sawdust arena. In the first year I was thrown, stomped, and headbutted, but never by Rascal. He was gentle, eager to please, aching for affection. The woman who sold him to me had gotten him from an animal rescue after he’d been left in open pasture for years, rarely groomed or seen to. You can read a lot in a horse’s eyes, and worry never left his.

One of the times I was thrown, I landed with my legs splayed in an awkward, tearing split and couldn’t walk right for weeks. Nobody took me to a doctor. I owned no helmet, no equestrian boots. I’d stay out with Rascal all day unattended and come home past dark, only because I was hungry. I’d pour a bowl of cereal for dinner and stare from my bedroom window at the paddock where he slept.

Rascal and I did far more hanging out than riding. I’d pluck botfly larvae from his bony fetlocks, brush dust from his mane, sit in the window of his stall and sing him improvised love songs. Once a week, out of a sense of duty, I’d cinch the saddle to his belly, hoist my little self onto his back by standing on an overturned bucket, and walk him in plodding ovals, too afraid to go faster. But I knew Rascal would never hurt me, and eventually trust won out. I nudged him to a trot, a canter, a gallop. 

The saddle is an ingenious object: The curved English seat slides you forward and back, easing the canter. The knee roll lets your legs grasp while posting—sitting and standing in time with a trot. The stirrups offer leverage. A saddle lets horse and rider speak without speaking. With time, I felt safer in Rascal’s saddle than almost anywhere else.

A few years passed, and then came algebra, maudlin songs, calls from boys of the human variety. I drifted from the barn, from Rascal, in the oblivious way of kids—believing time was infinite, that I could go back whenever and find it all waiting. When his previous owner moved out of state, she asked gently if she might take him. I kissed Rascal goodbye in his stall and never saw him again. He died years ago. For a long time, I was sick with the thought that I’d abandoned him as he’d been abandoned before. But with the grace of age, I can look back and see the truth: I was so, so young.  

I hope that in our brief time together I gave Rascal what he gave me, the gift everyone deserves: the knowledge that to someone, they are the most precious thing.

—Katie Arnold-Ratliff