Her mother had made her promise that she wouldn’t quit.  But as she sat amidst the other kids with their instruments listening to the cacophony, it was like the cacophony was of its own life, its own blood, and had nothing to do with the students making it.  “Get me out of here,” she thought to herself.  She was useless at these times, and muttering the same words made no difference to her, only made her feelings worse.  She vowed to quit band, even though she enjoyed going to band camp in the summers, where there was mostly silence before rehearsal, except kids talking.  Including herself.  She had band camp friends.  They were all friends at band camp.  After band camp, they all went their separate ways, back into the stream of life. 

Earlier that day, Ron made fun of her again.  “Hey, Melanie.  You ever meet a horse you didn’t want to marry?” he asked.  “Hey, Melanie.  There’s a penguin that needs a shrink.  He’s making threats and is a danger to himself and others.  Are you available?”  That was Christopher, too smart for his own good, and always following Ron.  Kristine made a face, as though these weren’t the most childish, stupid things she had ever heard.  But it was sad to Melanie, because Ron was so stupid and his parents had recently got divorced and everyone knew he missed his dad, that his dad and he were now “friends,” “amigos,” “brothers,” rather than dad and son.  Ron was now the man of the house, or so Melanie supposed.  Somehow she knew this was what had happened, because if Ron’s team lost an important game, he would start bawling like a baby.  And sometimes he policed the other boys.  Everyone knew Melanie liked animals more than she liked people.  And instead of putting up a reason not to, giving her a choice, they only chided Melanie for this, as though….”Just try, Melanie,” her mother had said.  “I need you to try.  We won’t always have–”  “No, Mom!  That’s unacceptable!”  It would be a losing effort if she did.  She once heard someone say: “Some things we are simply meant to know too young.”

Her dad had fallen down one day and couldn’t help out on the farm anymore.  He wasn’t meant to be bedridden.  Melanie promised she would take over as soon as she could and her dad didn’t believe her, but instead reassured her that he wouldn’t sell the farm “right away.”  Uncle Patrick came by and received instruction on what needed doing.  Melanie had that sinking feeling, that feeling in her stomach, that she didn’t know how long this could last.  She tried and she tried, to observe Patrick and understand how he was doing the things he could do, that Melanie couldn’t yet do.  He seemed to know what needed doing without having to be asked.  There was so much work, and Melanie had school, which seemed now even more useless to her with the farm on the line.   Anyway, her dad would probably get better.  Melanie knew he had to, because he couldn’t stay miserable and angry forever.  Somehow this made sense to Melanie, knowing her dad.  Uncle Patrick was Melanie’s dad’s brother, and Melanie found herself wishing that her mom’s brother would help out instead.  Because Uncle Patrick was “intense” and sometimes had strange eyes, like those of an armadillo.  It was Melanie’s mother who had said Uncle Patrick was intense, but she had said this in a way Melanie didn’t like, as though this were a good thing, a kind of blessing.   Melanie’s mom’s brother had never married and lived in the city.   He knew nothing about farming, and everyone in the family knew he couldn’t learn it, not soon enough.   If everything went to shit, Melanie would stay with him, she vowed to herself.  If they sold her horses….For the time being, nothing would take her away from the horses, and she nearly collapsed with fear over the thought something like this could ever happen.

In the art and science room, they are finishing their class project on the sun.  “The sun is our “star”!!!”  Melanie feels utterly bored, feels utterly nothing for the stupid sun.  She plans to take out Sheffield when she gets home.  She’ll keep him at a canter because he has a sore on his foot.  The vet said it was nothing.  She thinks Sheffield may like to see the land and the sky today. There is an eerie calm in the air, someone was saying, although Melanie doesn’t think this is true. They will make their way to the dugout at the far edge of the property and then they will head back where she will feed the three of them, Sheffield, Rasputin, and Harmony.  Her uncle will be somewhere out there. He’s got a wife and two sons.  The boys are learning, he says.  This’ll be fine for a while anyway.  It’s good they’re learning.   Thank God they’re old enough, Melanie’s mother said.  Because, at just that moment, Melanie was watching her little brother walk past the open door.  He then reappears in the doorway, leans in and waves to her.  She doesn’t know why she shudders.  Or maybe she does know this.  It feels different now, like it’s no longer a joke, having a little brother who…she knows he just doesn’t understand anything.

The mean girls, who are sneaking cigarettes along the fence across the street, which isn’t school property, call out to her.  “Hi, Melanie. Going to feed your horses now?”  Melanie feels her legs weaken beneath her.  “Do their parents even know they smoke?” Kristine asks at Melanie’s side.  Bold, Melanie’s mother would call those girls.  No one ever says anything about Kristine, Melanie thinks.  It’s like Kristine doesn’t even exist to anyone, being taller than the tallest boy in the school.  Well, taller than the second-tallest boy anyway.  Is that why?  What does that have to do with anything though?  Me on the other hand, Melanie thinks, I’m smart, but I’m not a browner.  And…I like horses?  I love my horses, I do.  Well, if they were my horses….But it just doesn’t make sense to her, why she exists to them and Kristine doesn’t.  What could anyone see wrong with loving horses anyway?  They’re…beautiful, more beautiful than…She trembles at the thought that they’ll be sold to her uncle, or, more likely, someone her uncle knows.  Kind of knows.  Her little brother boards the bus and sits at the front.  He’s got lots of friends, Melanie thinks, and has little interest at his age in farming.  Ever since Dad’s injury.  Who does her brother even want to be anymore? Melanie thinks.  A thought enters her mind unbidden, of her brother thumbing rides into the city, like she’s seen some of the other boys do, to try to find work. This makes her feel unpleasant, because Thomas isn’t like those boys.  Not at all.  What, then?  Melanie begins to cry and Kristine puts her hand on Melanie’s shoulder.  “Sorry,” Melanie says.  “Next year will be different,” Kristine says. “We’ll be at a new school. It’s totally different there.  That’s what my sister says.”  Melanie makes herself feel better without knowing how or why she must.  She understands now that she has always just pretended things can only get better.

She sits on her bed and looks out the window.  The horses have been left in the field and she watches them briefly.  They’ve always seemed so still to her, what’s the word?, more like gods than animals.  She looks at her clock and remembers the time. 5:32.  A minute engraved in her mind for that day by the teachers at the school.  She looks at the scene outside her window, at several branches of the evergreen next to the farmhouse.  She thinks it’s the eclipse, but she isn’t sure.  She refuses to get up and look to the sky, focuses more closely on the branches.  The light has definitely changed, is changing, losing its definiteness for a moment, becoming more glassy, but then she isn’t sure.  It’s like the shadows are settling in and won’t budge or disperse.  Shadows that are deep and dark, with sharper edges than she remembers them having.  But the light then returns to normal, and the shadows are now more definite than before, haven’t changed from a moment ago.  She feels panic grip her, like she might be the only one who sees it, everything this way, with everyone else looking at what was causing the change all around them rather than at everything that was being changed.

– Justin Dittrick

Author’s Note: “Horses” conveys in the mind of a young girl the experience of a lost ideal in the form of her beloved horses she may have to part with. It is a story about the experience of a great loss that is about to happen, so that the ideal is suspended in the mind and heart, reflected in her consciousness of the world around her in anticipation of the loss, so that we might find that the ideal (or perhaps, it’s “gravity” in our universe) can be more fully appreciated in the experience (or, the likelihood) of its loss.