Roll Out the Barrel

Matty sets her palm on the door to the barn. Her stomach is full of rocks. Big rocks. There are five or six of them at least, and each one is the size of her fist.

There are no rocks in your stomach, you idiot, she tells herself. She takes a deep breath.

The rocks are still there.

* * *

When she was fourteen years old, Matty quit riding lessons forever.

“You love riding,” her mother objected. “Why would you want to quit? You have a real shot at the finals this year. Why would you choose now to quit?”

Matty just shrugged.

Her mother wasn’t letting her off that easily. “A shrug? That’s all I get? No reasons, no explanations, nothing?”

Matty shrugged again. “I don’t wanna do it anymore,” she said.

The argument lasted two weeks, but Matty never went back to riding lessons. She never went back to the barn, insisting that her mother return her riding gear without her. She never said goodbye to Coach. She never regretted any of it.

She missed it, though.

* * *

Twenty-six years later, thirty-year-old Matty finally gets beyond the palm-on-the-door stage. She pushes the door open.

The smell of the barn hasn’t changed. She can still feel the joy of making a perfect turn, the worry of touching a barrel一will it tip?一and the hope, the impossible hope, of being named champion.

She can still hear Coach Beau calling her name. “Way to go, Matty,” his voice calls. “A perfect run.”

At least, most of the time.

Rock number seven drops into Matty’s stomach as she steps into the barn.

* * *

Don’t tip, don’t tip, don’t tip…

The barrel tipped.

“Come on, Matty, what is the matter with you today?” Beau’s voice cut through her, ripping away what concentration she had left. She pulled too hard on the reins, and Tucker shied to the left, nearly dislodging her. She held on, squeezed her knees, kept her seat, and finally got Tucker stopped. Beau wasn’t done yelling; she’d missed some of it while she wrestled with Tucker, but her attention was back on him in time to hear the conclusion… “never make finals at this rate. How did you even qualify for this?”

Shame flooded her gut. “Sorry, Coach,” she said, lowering her eyes. She rested a calming hand on Tucker’s withers, trying to draw comfort from his solidness.

“Extra practice,” Beau said. “That’s what you need.”

“Mom has to get to work,” Matty said, keeping her eyes lowered. She didn’t want Beau to know how badly she wanted this, but her single mother could never afford to miss even an hour at the diner. “You know I can’t stay late.”

“I’ll call her. I can run you home after.” Matty was thrilled with this idea, thinking how many extra runs she could get in, thinking of one-on-one time with Beau.

She hopped from foot to foot as Beau phoned her mom. “No worries, Mrs. D. It’s not even out of my way.”

* * *

“Breathe,” her therapist has said. “Bring your attention back to your breath. Count to five. Hold for six. Out for seven.”

Matty tries. Counting slowly, she takes a breath in. She gets to three. Then she finds herself on her knees, gasping, crying, unable to hold it back. The deep breath in brings in the smell, and that smell sends her back in time.

* * *

Matty finished putting Tucker in his stall, brushing his coat, hanging up the saddle and tack. “Good boy,” she said.

“Good girl,” said Beau’s voice behind her. “Perfectly done. You have such a great rapport with all the horses.”

Matty flushed with pride. Beau laid a hand on the small of her back, and she flushed deeper, but didn’t push his hand away.

* * *

Sitting on the floor by the door, Matty finally gets her breathing under control. Digging her heels into the ground, pressing her fingers against her jeans, and not breathing too deeply一this last one wasn’t therapist-approved, but it was the deep breathing that sent her into the panic attack in the first place一Matty opens her eyes, looks around the deserted barn.

It’s easy for her to picture the place twenty-six years ago. The horses, the people, the equipment…

Most of the equipment was sold off after it closed, sixteen years ago. But the clean-hay smell, the horse smell, has lingered. An old barrel lies in the corner, half-rotted, and Matty wonders if it tipped during someone’s practice and was never righted.

“You don’t have to relive it,” her therapist always says. “You don’t have to go back there and see it. You can move on. You’re stronger than the pain.”

“He was so handsome,” Matty always responds, thinking of Beau. “His name suited him.”

“People don’t look on the outside the way they are on the inside,” her therapist reminds her. Don’t judge a book by its cover, Matty thinks, but doesn’t repeat the cliché. She knows what the therapist, and everyone else, means when they say this.

He was handsome. He was charming. He told me I was special.

It is not my fault.

* * *

That last day, telling her mom she was quitting, that was all she kept thinking. This is all my fault.

Her fault that she had let Beau give her “private lessons.”

Her fault that she had agreed to a “rub down” after practice.

Her fault that her mother loved Beau so much. “It’s so good for you to have a man in your life, since your dad left,” her mom was always saying. “It’s so good of him to spend so much time helping you.”

Her fault that she never told her mom what Beau was really up to.

“I don’t wanna do it anymore,” she said to her mom. Another lie. She loved riding, loved it with all her might. She wanted so badly to go to the finals.

She just couldn’t face Beau. Not ever again.

* * *

Matty stands in the deserted barn. It closed about twelve years ago, when a girl who was taking riding lessons made allegations against one of the trainers.

Beau.

It’s impossible for Matty not to think about what she went through herself. It’s impossible not to think that she could have saved this other girl. How many girls were there? In between her and me, how many?

But there are no good answers.

Coming to the barn has not brought any closure. She is still wrestling with everything that happened, and everything she didn’t say.

But there is one thing that helps, one thing that her therapist said that didn’t feel like a cliché, like a technique, like a coping mechanism. One thing that feels real, and that gets her through each day.

One thing that gets her out of the barn, and once she is out, she does not look back. She just keeps repeating it to herself, putting one foot in front of the other, driving away.

“It doesn’t have to be okay.”