“Hey,” he said, “I said let’s go. Where the hell was your brain at just now?”
I couldn’t tell him Rome in 2008.
He’d had Emilio set a water jump today, Gus telling me that there would probably be water in every one of the big events we had coming up over the next couple of months.
“Remember,” he said. “We focus on process here. Every day. Every jump. Whether you’re here or in competition. Treat them all the same and then you’ve got less chance to choke your brains out once the lights get turned up.”
I saw him grinning at me.
“You know the real definition of choking, right?” he said.
“Help me out,” I said.
“A cold rush of shit to the heart,” he said.
“Have you ever considered motivational speaking?” I said.
He moved the Zinger closer to me.
“You want to hear my motivational speech?” he said. “Here it is, for the first and last time, and don’t let it go to your head. You’ve got as much natural talent as anybody I’ve seen.”
He’d never said anything like that to me before. Nothing close. I was so floored by what I’d just heard I wasn’t sure how to respond, worried that he might take it back if I even tried to thank him.
So I didn’t say anything, simply angled Sky toward the first jump.
He wasn’t quite finished.
“But what you need to understand is that talent is never enough,” he said. “The way having a fast little horse isn’t enough.”
“I know,” I said.
“So know this, too,” Gus said. “You never know how many chances you get in this sport.” He paused and nodded and said, “Shit happens. Got it?”
“Got it,” I said.
He squinted into the bright morning sun then, his face almost looking angry as he did, like he wanted to yell at the sun the way I knew he was about to yell at me.
“I hate light like this,” he said.
SEVENTY-EIGHT
I’D STOPPED COMPARING his style of training, of coaching me, to Daniel’s. It would have been like comparing an apple to a chocolate cake.
But I was starting to enjoy my time with Gus in the ring, even though I would never admit it to him if my life depended on it. The truth was, we seemed to have developed a mutual mind-reading ability. I was riding the way he wanted me to ride more and more, getting yelled at less and less. His style, if you could even call it that, wasn’t for everybody. Wasn’t sure I would have ever volunteered to work with Gus Bennett. But by now I’d figured out that his toughness was irrelevant.
My toughness was everything.
And there was something more: Seeing his love for the sport was making me love it even more. One of these days, if I could screw up my courage, I might even ask him how much being a trainer filled the competitive void in him, accessed all the qualities that had made him a great rider in the first place.
“Sit up straight in that saddle, for chrissakes,” he shouted at me now.
I turned my head so he couldn’t see that I was smiling.
Six jumps ahead of me in the moment, in the high morning sun and heat. The water jump was second from the end. Gus was right. As usual. Sky did need more work on entry and exit: take off at the last possible moment, make sure not to land even one leg in the water. What we called dipping a toe. You did, you got a fault.
“Focus!” he yelled.
“I am focusing!” I yelled back.
I did that sometimes, just not too often.
Six strides to the water jump.
Then four.
Then two.
I could see the distance was going to be perfect. Could feel it.
Then in the very next moment the sun was in my eyes, reflecting off the water in the small pool, as if a spotlight was suddenly shining into my eyes.
And Sky’s.
She came to a stop, turned her head, blinded the same as I was.
“Noooooo!” I heard Gus Bennett scream.
Then I was the one spinning through the air, staring straight up at the sky one last time before I came crashing down on one of my own fences.
SEVENTY-NINE
I WAS ON MY BACK when I opened my eyes. Sun still in my face.
I didn’t think I had lost consciousness. But wasn’t entirely sure of that. The last thing I remembered, other than the sound of Gus’s voice, was hitting the top rail.
I lay there without moving. Feeling pain concentrated in my hip and lower back. No desire to move or try to move. This wasn’t like the time on Coronado when I’d bailed before I went sailing over the horse’s head. I’d been the one to decide how I ended up on the ground that night. Not today.