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About the Author: Paul A. Barra's latest short story will appear in the MWA anthology WHEN A STRANGER COMES TO TOWN, due out in April from Harper Collins.
Wrestling with a large horse in a small room tends to excite the senses, so I was surprised to see Charles Becknell smiling benevolently as he was being thrown about by a beast named Sampanion. I was strolling down the shedrow, sipping coffee when I heard the commotion in a nearby stall. Charles was a slender brown man, Sampanion a huge brown stallion. They were having a disagreement over the animal’s plans for the day, much as a mother might have with her third grader on a cold school morning. The horse didn’t want to run around The Oklahoma, the training track at Saratoga Race Course. He wanted to stay in his warm, moist barn and watch the world go past. But Charles had a job to do; the trainer and the exercise rider were waiting for Sampanion out in the early mist, whether the horse was ready for a workout or not.
Charles was a skinny man and had one of his skinny arms slung around the beast’s thick neck. The snorting horse was able to raise him to the balls of his feet and haul him from side to side while I watched silently, but Charles knew that even a big human was no match in strength for a horse, so he just hung on, not resisting. He used his wiles to outmaneuver the animal. In another minute he had the bridle on and the halter off. Sampanion gave in to the inevitable then and calmed down. He clopped out of the stall behind Charles as if he’d intended to do just that all along.
“Nice job, Charles.”
He smiled widely. “Thanks, reverend. You seen this rascal fussing, eh?”
“I did indeed. It looked like he wanted to kill you.”
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