Part 2
“Three mornings,” Kate said. “I told her you’d give Rook three mornings.”
Noah stared at her. A few feet away, Lena reached for her hat and then stopped, as though even that movement might be taken as pressure.
“You volunteered me?”
“I asked if you could watch him. That’s all.”
“You told her I would.”
“I was afraid you wouldn’t come if I told you.”
“That should have told you something.”
Kate flinched. Noah hated that he saw it and hated more that some part of him wanted her to. Since the wreck, anger had been the only thing that reliably moved through every part of his body.
Lena stepped back from the gate. “Mrs. Mercer wrote to me. I said you were welcome to observe if you chose. Nobody here has a claim on your time.”
“Then we’re done.” Noah released his brakes.
Rook moved along the fence when the chair turned. One hoof, then another, matching the slow grind of Noah’s wheels for three steps before he stopped. Noah did not look back.
They made it halfway through the vendor barn before Kate’s phone began vibrating. She ignored the first call, then the second. At the parking lot, a message appeared on Noah’s screen from a number he barely recognized as belonging to a former teammate.
DUDE IS THIS YOU?
The link opened to a vertical video filmed from the grandstand. It showed Rook striking the panels, Noah shouting about the banner, and then—after a clumsy jump cut—the horse’s muzzle resting on his chair. The caption read: PARALYZED TEEN TAMED A WILD MUSTANG IN 60 SECONDS.
The clip had been online for forty-two minutes. It already had more views than all Noah’s old competition videos put together.
Kate peered at his screen. “I didn’t film that.”
“I know.” She had kept her phone in her bag at the fence. That did not make the rest of it better.
By the time they reached their motel, the video had acquired music. Someone had slowed the moment Rook lowered his head and added a line about two broken spirits recognizing each other. Noah watched three seconds before throwing his phone onto the bed.
“I am not a broken spirit.”
Kate stood beside the air conditioner, still wearing the canvas sun hat he had teased her about that morning. “I know.”
“Do you?”
She took off the hat and folded the brim between her fingers. “I know you’re my son. I know you can transfer into a car faster than I can fold your chair. I know you still leave every cabinet open. I know you haven’t answered June’s owner in eleven months, and I know I went behind your back because I couldn’t think of another way to get you near a horse.”
Noah looked toward the window. Beyond the parking lot, the land ran flat and silver-green to a line of brown mountains. On the glass, his reflection ended at the bedspread.
“That last thing is the problem.”
“I know that now.”
“You knew it before.”
Kate sat in the motel’s straight-backed chair. She did not apologize again. A second apology would have asked him to make her feel better, and perhaps she understood that.
At five thirty the next morning, Noah was awake. He told himself it was the air conditioner kicking on and off. He told himself the strange mattress had made his hips ache, though he had checked his skin and found nothing wrong. At six, he gave up, transferred into his chair, and wheeled to the window.
The fairgrounds lay three miles away. He could picture Rook in a temporary pen behind the arena, the black of him fading into the hour before sunrise. Federal holding was not a death sentence; Noah knew better than the comments under the video. But it was a life of corrals, feed trucks, and waiting unless an adopter with enough patience came along.
Kate woke when he zipped his bag. “We’re not doing three mornings,” he said.
She pushed herself upright. “Okay.”
“We’re doing this morning. I set the rules.”
“Okay.”
“No pictures. Nobody touches my chair. If Lena says it isn’t safe, we stop.”
Kate reached for her jeans. “Do you want me to call her?”
“I already did.”
Lena had the back gate open when they arrived. The public entrance was locked, the arena silent except for sparrows in the roof trusses. She had moved Rook to a rectangular pen beside a strip of packed dirt wide enough for Noah’s chair.
“He gets a choice about distance,” she said. “So do you.”
The first half hour was almost insulting in its lack of drama. Lena led Rook at the far end while Noah rolled forward and back outside the fence. Each time the caster bearings clicked, Lena watched the horse’s ears and feet. When he raised his head, Noah stopped. When he lowered it, Noah moved again.
“He isn’t afraid of the chair,” Noah said.
“He isn’t afraid of it at this distance, in this light, moving that direction.”
“You correct everybody?”
“Only people who might believe me.”
Noah almost smiled. Lena placed a rubber feed tub near the fence and asked him to roll past it. Rook followed her at twenty feet, then fifteen. Noah could feel the old measuring part of his mind waking: the angle of a shoulder before a turn, the half-second between attention and motion. But a manual chair changed the geometry. He could not step sideways. Backing quickly over dirt caught his small front wheels. If Rook came close, Lena—not Noah—would control the lead rope, a fact that bruised his pride more than he expected.
Near the end of the session, Lena handed him a short target stick with a padded blue end. Rook already knew to touch it with his nose. Noah held it through the fence, low and still. The horse stretched, withdrew, then touched the pad.
Lena marked the behavior with a soft click of her tongue and gave him a piece of hay from a bucket. Rook chewed, watching Noah.
“That wasn’t trust,” Noah said before she could.
“It was a trained answer in a new situation. Which is useful.”
“You make everything sound smaller.”
“Small things are what horses can repeat.”
They worked for another ten minutes. On the last pass, Noah set the target aside. Rook stood at the fence without it, close enough that Noah could see a healed nick on the edge of his left ear. Noah offered the back of his gloved hand. The horse smelled it and moved away to drink.
Noah let him. Outside the gate, Kate was speaking with Mara Bell, the event director. Mara wore a radio at her shoulder and the alert expression of someone managing twelve problems while discussing a thirteenth. She introduced herself to Noah, apologized for the unauthorized filming, and said staff were asking the original poster to remove it.
“It’s copied everywhere,” Noah said.
“I’m afraid it is. We can control what appears on our own channels, though, and we won’t use your name or image without permission.” Mara looked toward the pen. “There is one thing I’d like you to consider.”
Lena came through the gate behind him. “No.”
Mara sighed. “You haven’t heard it.”
“I’ve heard three versions since dawn.”
She turned back to Noah. “Our placement finale is in two weeks. Adopters and several partner facilities will be here. If you and Rook showed even a little of what happened yesterday—under Lena’s supervision—it could help find him a qualified home.”
Noah looked at Rook. The horse had returned to the hay, black neck bent, one hind foot resting.
“And if I don’t?” he asked.
Lena answered before Mara could.
“Then on Monday morning, he goes back to holding…”
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