BOOK EXCERPT
THE YEAR OF THE HORSES
A Memoir by Courtney Maum Reprinted with permission from Tin House
IT WAS AN E ARLY MORNING like any other at the upstate
polo club: Danny, Carlos, Victor, Leah, and I were readying the ponies for the gallop track. I was put on a horse I’d never ridden named Tequila, who, from the moment we left the stable, nerved and twitched beneath me with unbridled energy. I could feel her exuberance and restlessness through my tack as we danced out of the barn with the extra horses at our side. “I’ve got a runner,” I yelped, hoping that if I voiced my fear, I’d be better equipped to fight it. But true to form, none of the grooms acknowledged my doubts, because it would only coddle those doubts into becoming an actual problem. Victor had told me time and time again that he would never put me on a horse I couldn’t handle, and I reminded myself of that as we headed out to the
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THE PLAID HORSE
April 2022
track, repeating another mantra that my coach Alison was always yelling at me: “Believe, Courtney! Believe!” Believe and breathe, I thought. Don’t let her feel you’re anxious. But Tequila’s energy only mounted as we approached the racetrack. I was too embarrassed by a scenario in which we all had to turn back so that I could switch horses to try speaking up again. Inconveniencing my
friends was a greater mortification than having mounted an animal that was too much horse for me. But once we hit the track, I knew I was in trouble. Tequila’s head was high, her steps prancy. Her mouth pulled at the bit and her body surged. I managed to control her at the walk, but as our trot approached our fourth lap, when we habitually moved into the canter, she strained at the tack. We burst into a canter that soon became something else in the slow-but-fast-moving way you recall an accident. I can still feel my own reckonings with the quickening pace: This is fast, but is this too fast? Yes, it is too fast. We were racing by this point, Tequila, a high-goal polo pony, at a professional-grade gallop, faster than that, actually, because she had my panicked legs goading her on. Later, the grooms would tell me that I was clenching her
PHOTO: KENZIE ODEGAARD FIELDS