Nitro nudges my shoulder with his velvet nose as I arrange grooming brushes in the bucket. His warm breath fogs the October air – little puffs of visible patience. Across the arena, Sarah from the grief support group struggles to drag metal chairs through sawdust. “Five minutes till the kids arrive!” calls Marcy, our therapist, tapping her weathered boot against a hay bale.
The ritual begins as always. We form our lopsided circle of folding chairs, volunteers avoiding eye contact like middle schoolers at a dance. Marcy’s question floats between horse stalls: “Why does being here matter tonight?”
My fingers find the plastic horse in my jacket pocket – its smooth edges worn from thirty years of nervous touching. Before I can stop them, the words tumble out: “When I was ten, a bay gelding taught me how to breathe after loss.”
Twelve-year-old laughter bounces off the Missouri camp lodge walls. Leila and I are crammed between sweaty shoulders in the amphitheater, giggling as our off-key hymn merges with cicada songs. Counselor Aubrey’s hand lands on Leila’s shoulder – a cold splash of adulthood in our summer paradise.
“Both of you,” she says, her usual sunshine voice gone flat. The screen door’s angry slam silences our chorus. Through the dusty office window, I watch Leila’s shoulders crumple like fallen leaves. My sneakers swing wildly beneath the chair, keeping time with the whip-poor-will’s haunting call.
Back in the present circle, a freckled boy places his toy horse by the flickering LED candle. “For Grandma,” he whispers. The group echoes “For Grandma” like a prayer. My turn comes. The yellow plastic feels alive in my palm.
“For Charlie,” I say. Thirty years dissolve. The group’s murmured “For Charlie” carries me back to that camp office where life fractured – where Aubrey knelt with trembling hands and said “There’s been an accident” – where a stablehand named Charlie later led me to a patient bay horse who stood motionless for hours while I buried my face in his mane.
Nitro bumps my elbow now, demanding attention. A curly-haired girl approaches, clutching a brush. “Will you show me how?” she asks. As we demonstrate circular strokes on his flank, Marcy whispers what I’ve come to understand: “They know. The horses always know where the hurt lives.”
Dusk paints the arena in lavender shadows. One by one, children pocket their symbolic horses. The boy who remembered Grandma slips me a folded drawing – a stick-figure girl hugging a brown horse. “For your Charlie,” he says solemnly.
In my truck later, the plastic horse rests in the cupholder. Nitro’s earthy scent lingers on my flannel shirt. Through the windshield, the first stars emerge like pinpricks in black velvet. Somewhere beyond those stars, Charlie’s laughing – the gruff stablehand who unknowingly prescribed equine therapy decades before it had a name.
The highway hums beneath my wheels. Ahead, a whip-poor-will darts across the moonlit road. Its call blends with the wind rushing through my open window, carrying whispers from a Missouri summer when a grieving child learned that healing smells like hay and horse sweat and endless patience.
