Free The End of the Road by John Barth

Rennie’s father kept the two horses for his own pleasure but rarely had a chance to exercise them properly, and so he was quite pleased with Joe’s project. The first thing he said to Rennie when he saw us approach in our riding outfits (Rennie had insisted that I purchase cotton jodhpurs and riding boots) was “Well, Ren, I see Joe recruited you a companion!”
    “This is Jake Horner, Dad,” Rennie said briskly. “I’m going to teach him how to ride.” She was quite aware that her father’s remark had told me something I wasn’t especially intended to know—that Joe’s project hadn’t occurred to him on the spur of the moment, but had been premeditated—and being conscious of this made her awkward. She moved off immediately to the paddock where the two horses were grazing, leaving her father and me to shake hands and make pleasantries as best we could.
    There is no need for me to go into any detail about my instruction: it is uninteresting and has little to do with my observation of Rennie. About the only prior knowledge I had of horses was that one mounted them from the “near,” or left, side, and even that little piece of equine lore I found to be not so invariably true as I’d believed. I was introduced to the mysteries of Pelhams and hackamores, snaffles and curbs, of collected and extended gaits, of the aids and the leads. I made all the mistakes that beginners make—hanging on by the reins, clinging with my legs, lounging in the saddle—and slowly corrected them. That I was at first very much afraid of my animal is irrelevant, since I’d not under any circumstances have shown my fear to Rennie.
    She herself was a “strong” rider—she applied the aids heavily and kept frisky Tom Brown as gentle as a lap dog—but most of her abrupt instructions to me were aimed at making me use them lightly.
    “Stop digging her in the barrel,” she’d blurt out as we trotted along. “You’re telling her to go with your heels and holding her back with your hands.”
    Hour after hour I practiced riding at a walk, a trot, and a canter (both horses were three-gaited), bareback and without holding the reins. I learned how to lead a horse who doesn’t care to follow; how to saddle and bridle and currycomb.
    Susie, my mare, had a tendency to nip me when I tightened her girth.
    “Slap her hard on the nose,” Rennie ordered, “and next time hold your left arm stiff up on her neck and she won’t turn her head.”
    Tom Brown, her stallion, liked to rear high two or three times just out of the stable. Once when he did this I was horrified to see Rennie lean as far back as she could on the reins, until Tom was actually overbalanced and came toppling over backwards, whinnying and flailing. Rennie sprang dextrously out of the saddle and out of the way a second before eleven hundred pounds of horse hit the ground: she caught Tom’s reins before he was up, and in a few seconds, by soft talking, had him quiet.
    “That’ll fix him,” she grinned.
    But “It’s your own fault,” she told me when Susie once tried the same trick. “She knows you’re just learning. No need to flip her over; she’ll behave when you’ve learned to ride her a little more strongly.” Thank heaven for that, because if Rennie had told me to flip Susie over, my pride would have made me attempt it. I scared easily; in fact, I was extremely timid as a rule, but my vanity usually made this fact beside the point.
    At any rate, I became a reasonably proficient horseman and even learned to be at ease on horseback, but I never became an enthusiast. The sport was pleasant, but not worth the trouble of learning. Rennie and I covered a good deal of countryside during August; usually we rode out for an hour and a half, dismounted for a fifteen- or twenty-minute rest, and then rode home. By the time we finished unsaddling, grooming, and feeding the animals it was early afternoon: we would pick up the boys, ride back to Wicomico, and eat a late lunch