acceptable breaks from reality.

[Socks]

"Calvin, how much do you weigh?"

Calvin stared James for almost a full minute, leaning his pitchfork against the inside of the stall.

"What kind of question is that?" He responded, with a kind of lackluster brutality behind the words.

His face was turned down slightly to hide his red-rimmed eyed, where he'd been sobbing into Cookie's mane - quietly... but sobbing nonetheless. Not for shame of her, but for shame of them both. He'd failed often enough in his life to know how it felt, and seeing Cookie come in dead last in her last race... She'd simply dropped off, finishing ten lengths behind the field and coming in at something that was barely a gallop. For two days afterwards Calvin had been half out of his mind with worry thinking that she was sick, that she would never race again... but she'd been eating her grain just like normal and casing him thoroughly for treats and acting generally like herself.

But that interlude had gotten him to thinking a lot, about loss. Not just death, but losing in general. He'd dropped out of high school - failed his mother and his late father. Perhaps Cookie was like him, tired of trying. Tired of going through life with that ghost of hope haunting every turn....

"Calvin?" He looked up sharply, broken from his swiftly crashing train of thought.

"One forty eight," he responded, automatically. All the fight had gone out of him, all the desire to deflect the odd question, the advances of James, who he'd never been fond of. A bitter fire burned in his mouth - a week before the race it had been James's stupid idea to put the horses in a mock race, to run them full out for eight furlongs instead of the usual workout. Cookie had won that, but... Calvin couldn't help but wonder if that hard work had been her downfall.

"Hm," James looked thoughtful for a moment, "...I guess it can't hurt anything more that anything else already has... There's some old english tack in a box in the tack room that was left there by an old boarder, why don't you go get it and tack Cookie up?" Calvin looked up at him curiously, a bit hesitantly.

"If it's been there for a while, won't it need soaping? Or... be useless, in any case?" James just shrugged, averting his eyes, and refused to say anything more. Calvin rolled his eyes and set off anyway, returning with the tack. It was perfectly supple and smelled.... like saddle soap. Someone had been at this recently, and he had a sneaking suspicion he knew who. "What do you want this for anyway?"

"Well, see," James shuffled his feet, then grinned a little at his own cleverness. "Since I couldn't get Luke to come out today, see..." - mainly because he hadn't called Luke at all, - "I figured.... well, Cookie's been wound up lately, you know. Stressed. I figure it's a good idea to get her out in the field, you know, take her on a nice little trail ride... And you weigh the least of any of us. She's well built... it won't hurt her..."

***

Cali trotted a little ahead, her butt swung out away from Cookie, joyous in freedom. Calvin held the long lead rope attached to her halter with one hand, against Cookie's neck, which he was stroking. Taking Cali along was his suggestion, not James's, but it was a good one. Away from the stable, Cookie tended to get anxious for her distant friends, her herd, her place in life. But she was relaxed, now... A little long-necked and wary of the open space, but enjoying the chance to slow down a little, to take a little break. Perhaps that's what she needed... a break.

Calvin had never gotten one, lucky or otherwise. Around the time of his father's death, everything had been press press press. Excel, conform, don't show emotion. He wished sometimes that he could be more like Cookie, less upset over a loss and more looking forward, at the tumbledown march grass, thick and tangled as a mustang's mane. The way the shadows pooled in dips in the ground, the way the sun grinned down, jubilant from above.

Out here it was high and lonely. Once there had been a fence, this had been a paddock like so much else had. Over time the wood fence had rotted, and only traces of it remained. It was far from the road, and quiet.... The only things to look out for were quail and the occasional deer or fawn stalking in the higher grass. It was seldom mowed, and only a few weeks ago the weeds would have tickled Cookie's stomach, but Wingo had found it unsightly and cropped it back again. Now the ruins of the far fence could bee seen, a strand of trees that separated this property from the next, the ground itself flat and as formless and timeless as ever...

Out here, where the sky could be seen touching the earth, unbroken by trees and buildings, if you faced westward, it was almost possible to believe again. To believe that the future would get better, that there was still time to make it through... That death would never come and time was suspended. This place existed on a plane unaffected by loss, by sorrow....

Cali snapped her head up in alarm at a swift darting close to the ground, jarring Calvin's arm and shoulder and eliciting a laugh from him. Cookie, who hadn't done so much as jig, shook her mane with amusement, but the spell was broken and real life came crashing down.

Still, it was hard to think that things would not keep going up from here.