“OK,” she says, straightening out the unwieldy vaulting whip. Dressed in black only, a classical horsewoman all of her life, her tall boots are planted firmly in the sand. She draws her shoulder blades down and gathers the rest of herself up with all the poise of her hefty ballerina career, peers at him over the rims of her dark sunglasses, reeling in at least a yard of line in a leather-gloved hand. “Here’s what I want you to do.”

Joseph is nearly unseated as the vaulting horse unleashes a tsunami of shudders all the way down her spine from tail to muzzle, scratching an itch that’s been bothering her way too long, flapping her big red ears and groaning. Grunting. Finally letting loose a yawn that’s all teeth and gums. But he manages to compose himself into a modicum of cool, dragging himself up from the shapeless lump to which he’s just been reduced―long languid legs, indolent arms, baggy britches, oversized high-top sneakers all askew―then scans the arena. After all, there are girls scattered around the periphery.

Their giggles waft across the deep sand, wood chips, manure.

And, in just a moment, although the boy doesn't have a clue, she is going to light a fire under his torpid behind.

“Someone come and attach the side reins for me,” she calls out. One of the ten-year-olds hustles to do her bidding. All reined in, muzzle close to her chest, the vaulting horse’s sinuous neck suddenly fans out like a cobra’s hood.

The boy looks startled to have his name called, “Joseph,” she says, assuming a rider’s stance to demonstrate, “I want you to hold the surcingle handles like this.” She places her arms in the correct position while artfully managing to not become entangled in all that heavy line and whip. “With your shoulders back and down in a V, legs long, seat deep and still, zip up your core, keep your hip flexors loose and open, toes pointed down hard, ankles against her flanks, thighs long, and looking straight ahead between that horse’s ears and beyond.”

The boy considers all this for a moment, synapses actually firing, having practiced it more than a couple of times at a walk and on the vaulting barrel, while the draft horse remains glued to her spot, one ear cocked towards the inside of the circle, anticipating her cue for flight.

“Just sit back and enjoy the ride.” She bestows a brilliant smile of encouragement upon him that catches him completely off guard. “Ready?”

“Yes,” he nearly croaks, as the vaulting horse leaps forward in a clean departure from a standstill. He’s almost left behind the mare’s center of gravity, but she is talking him up into the correct seat. “Sit back, Joseph. Back. Farther. Legs longer. Gooooooooood!” He is riding now.

Moon in her left hand, sun in her right, she conjures horse and boy, flesh and blood and bone and breath and spirit with a series of half-halts on the longe line and rhythmic flicks of the heavy vaulting whip near the horse's hindquarters. She suspends them in a perfect three-beat balance along the circumference of the circle between her two outstretched hands. Joseph’s braid wafts behind him like the mare’s tail. They revolve around her three times, a fourth, and then she tells the boy to prepare for the halt, circling the vaulting whip around the back of her head in an arc and down to flicker in front of the thundering horse, speaking the calming incantation to the mare, “Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!”

Sixteen hundred pounds of horse and boy and steel and leather grind to a stop.

The mare’s nostrils are flaring.

Joseph’s dark face is flushed. He’s smiling. His chest rises and falls. His eyes are wide open, taking it all in.

She is grinning at him mightily now. Places a hand on her hip. “Good morning,” she says.

Flickr photos: loratliff; antomic; tommyMartin