ClostGoth

Heat beats down unrelenting and I hear the screen door slam behind me. Breezes push the porch swing, heavy and palpable with humidity, and it moans in protest. The oaks standing solemn above me wave and rustle.
Footsteps resound from inside and my heart quickens its pace. They are heavy and a throat is cleared. To avoid the inevitable confrontation, I stand and move down the steep, cement steps and into my grandmother’s yard. He won’t follow me in this heat, not today. I’ll be safe.
My Aunt’s old horse crops lazily at his circle of grass, dragging his clinking chain. He is more of a pony, really, with his shaggy coat and round body. He is a Marsh Tacky, pride of the South. The Swamp Fox rode one to victory in the swamps near my home in the war. I’ve grown up hearing the stories and being told I’m a “Daughter of the Revolution”; the war is much more alive here today than it probably should be.
Trouble, aptly named because of his wilder, younger days, raises his head and whinnies at my arrival. Perhaps he’s hoping for a breath mint or a chew of tobacco – they are his favorites and my uncles indulge him shamelessly. I rub his satin soft nose and burry my face against his sturdy shoulder. The warm fuzz and homey horse smell seem to make everything safe, and I wrap my arms as far as they will go around his beloved neck. He stamps a foot impatiently, but good-naturedly accepts my attention. He completely ignores the black lab that has followed me.
The breeze has died and the sweltering heat is trying to become unbearable. Unwilling to return to the house, I pull softly at Trouble’s halter, unhitching his lead. “Wanna go for a trot, old man?” His ears prick and he whickers. I’ve finally said something worth hearing.
Grabbing a handful of wiry black mane, I hoist myself onto Trouble’s back and wrap my legs at an awkward angle around his bloated belly. Shorts were probably not the best choice for bareback riding, but his fuzzy, chestnut coat feels nice against my skin for the moment. I push his neck and move my body toward the fields behind the house, communicating my desired direction without the use of reigns. Poor Trouble’s mouth has been so sorely abused through years of training riders that it would be more work to use them than not. He turns and obediently plods toward the freshly plowed fields.
The rich smell of freshly turned black dirt doesn’t accompany this trip into the wilderness. We have had a drought and the fields lay fallow; the fertile soil dry and cracked and more closely resembling a desert in Arizona than a cotton field in South Carolina. Trouble’s hooves send puffs of dust up in our wake. I know that they will have seen my dust trail at the house, and I glance behind me at the lumbering Victorian. All that is visible is a small kitchen window framed in a blank white wall and capped by a sharp, green-tiled roof. Most of the house is hidden by the oaks that surround it, but I know I am much more visible to them than they are to me.
I nudge Trouble in the side and slide low around his neck, wrapping my hands securely in his mane. I aim him toward a clump of trees in the distance and lean forward, and he takes the hint. His normally slow, plodding gait gives way to an even trot. He’s not exactly a prize winner in the pace department, but I don’t mind the bumps as the hot wind whips my ponytail behind me and the house I so wish to avoid disappears. We are headed to the old Indian burial ground, though I’ve never been certain there are any human remains there. I believe it is more superstition than fact, but its air of mystery and the stories that are spread will certainly mean we will be left alone as we wander. I would like to think that Trouble shares my elation. For now, this moment in time, a small blip in the life of a 16yr old, I am free.

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I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.
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