Free The Whip by Karen Kondazian Page B

say.
    She took the four reins in her left hand, cracked Jonas’ whip with her right and yelled out at the team just as he had. She gave the reins a confident shake. They were off. The team started to move back toward the crossroad. She glanced over at him. He sat there staring straight ahead, his face a mask. This she expected—it was part of the game—and she smiled to herself at the anticipation of his rueful praise: “Dang it Charlotte, can’t nobody beat you as far as horses is concerned. What a girl.”
    She shuddered with a sudden recollection: Lee last night saying to her, “you’re not a girl.” Why would he say that then? She didn’t understand him anymore. When they were younger, they knew each other always with a look, a smile, a whistle, without words. It was like they were the same person somehow. Now he was a stranger. Like he was… .
    She needed to focus. Which rein had Jonas used to turn the team around? They were tangled in her hand. The lead horses had already passed the midpoint, and she hadn’t started the turn yet. Impulsively, she yanked on one of the reins hard and the left lead horse turned, crashing into its team mate. The right wheel horse, confused and frightened, began snorting, neighing and kicking at the lead horse in front of him. For one of the few times with the horses, she didn’t know what to do. She yanked hard on the reins.
    Jonas started to turn his head, about to say something to her, but the little wagon at that instant hit a jagged rut in the road. It lurched and teetered and, with a great gasp of wood, tipped over onto its side. Charlotte cried out. The horses came to an abrupt, confused halt. Charlotte and Jonas were dumped into the dust.
    “You alright? You hurt yourself?” Jonas asked as he picked himself up.
    Charlotte was already getting up on her feet. She was alright. The horses were all right. The wagon seemed alright too, even if out of commission—it’s wooden wheels spinning in the air.
    “Why didn’t you help me?” she shouted. “You let it happen.” Tears were coming to her eyes.
    “Now you know this was your doing, Charlotte. I don’t have to tell you that. You know you weren’t concentrating. You weren’t studying how I drove, like you usually do. Your mind was other places. When you’re working with horses, you got to be thinking only of them. You got to be here with them, breathing with them…and tears is not going to help set this wagon straight.”
    Charlotte rubbed the tears hard from her face with her fist. He was right. She had let herself be distracted. She would never let that happen again.
    Jonas walked over to the horses to check on them. He stopped and looked back at her.
    “Life’s going to do that to you missy. Gonna upset your wagon, not just once but many times. And you got to choose who’s sitting next to you. Someone you can trust…or not.”
    Someone you can trust or not? He was talking about Lee, she thought with amazement. He knew her so well. He seemed to always know what she was thinking. Her eyes lighting with love and trust, she went to him. Together they moved among the horses, calming them. Then together they righted the little wagon.
    When that night Lee came to her again, she would not let him touch her.

Twenty-One
    When people tell time by the sun and the seasons, time becomes irrelevant, foreign to one’s everyday thoughts. If you have children and watch them grow, then you know time…every day you see it moving, right there in front of you. But if you are alone, then time moves in other people’s world, not yours. And all you know or care about time is that your body awakens at the same instant, the hunger in your belly arises at the same moment, and the seasons and life move along, day in and day out, day in and day out, no different from any other. Then it happens one day that you look into the face of an acquaintance, or maybe into the face of a long lost friend, and you see something alarming,