Page 48 of Everything We Give

At least now I don’t have to follow up with Al Foster. One less call to make tonight, as it’s evidentNational Geographicscrambled with my request for the schedule change and got their writer here on time.

I take a breath and upload my patience. I’ll need it over the next few days because I know how she works. I can already anticipate the angle she’ll take on this story, and it won’t be favorable. I’ve got three days to convince her otherwise if I want to attach my name to this feature.

I force a smile. “Hi, Reese.”

CHAPTER 14

IAN

The Rapa das bestas happens annually the first weekend of July. During my visit earlier this summer, I had just been granted access to the curro floor packed with wild Galician horses when I first saw her. This was my second of three ten-minute slots that allow a photographer who signed a disclaimer into the center of the Rapa’s commotion. I was stressed, worried, and exhausted, my head on Aimee, a long distance from the mind-set I should have been in while surrounded by thousands of pounds of horseflesh.

I’d been up since dawn trying not to read into—but doing so anyhow—my call with Aimee the previous night, along with the several conversations we’d had since I arrived in Spain nine days prior. She said she was fine whenever I asked, but her voice implied that she was anything but OK. We’d been married long enough. I knew when my wife was out of sorts. She couldn’t hide the tears in her voice. I offered to come home. She insisted I stay. I’d been talking about the Rapa for years. I’d been planning this excursion for months. We’d talk when I got home. She disconnected the call and I tossed and turned through the night only to drag myself to mass the following morning with the villagers, many of them knights, local men on horseback who’d be rounding up the horses, and aloitadores, the horse handlers, who’d been up most of the night themselves, celebrating. The church smelled of incense and booze, a nauseating combination that left me feeling faint. They prayed to San Lorenzo that those participating in the Rapa survived injury-free. I should have taken that as my warning.

After the service, I hiked with the villagers and tourists into the hills, following the paths the knights had taken to round up the herds. What surprised me the most about the event was how calmly and methodically the entire process unfolded. It wasn’t rowdy. The horses weren’t agitated. They obediently moved down the hill and into the village where they were penned in a large, open field until their time to be herded into the curro.

The second surprise was not how many horses they crammed into the small arena, which was about two hundred at a time, but why. Without room to move, the risk of injury to the horses drastically diminished. That wasn’t the case with the aloitadores. They suffered broken noses, toes, and cracked ribs from wrestling the beasts to stillness. One by one they worked in teams of three to trim manes and tails, deworm, and inject a microchip should the horse not have one. They sacrificed their own safety for their love of the beasts that roamed the green hills surrounding Sabucedo. It’s how they managed the herd, how they kept them healthy and wild. An ancient ritual that has evolved with the times and is nothing short of spectacular. I couldn’t believe I stood in the middle of it all.

The packed curro smelled of manure and horse sweat. Barbecue smoke thick with the scent of burning meat filled the arena. I snapped picture after picture, following the aloitadores around the floor. I kept one eye on them and the other on the horses near me, ready to jump out of the way should they rear up or kick. The back of my neck dripped with sweat from the blistering sun and my clammy hands rapidly worked the controls on my camera. While the horses were relatively calm, their panic was all too evident in their eyes. And it was getting to me. Flashes of my mom’s own panic that I’d captured in my photos kept clouding my vision.

Chest tight, I took a momentary breather, looking away so as not to get further sucked into the emotional turmoil my lens captured shot after shot. I knew all too well the types of shadows that lurked in a subject’s eyes and shooting the Rapa was affecting me in a way I hadn’t anticipated, reminding me of why I’d initially taken the path of landscape photography.

I wiped the sweat from my brow, lifted my gaze to the stands, and saw my mom. Dizziness washed over me and time stalled. She turned her face toward me, unseeing, and the anguish tightening her expression, the tears that drenched her cheeks, smacked me hard in the chest. I stumbled back only to realize it wasn’t my mom, but Reese. What was she doing there?

I lifted my camera, zoomed in, pressed the shutter button, and an aloitador shouted in my face.“¡Cuidado!”

A stallion reared up beside me, his flank knocking my shoulder hard. I fell back into another horse, my camera swinging around my neck. Regaining my balance, my heart pounding wildly, I looked back up into the stands. Reese was gone.

Later, in my hotel room as I iced my shoulder, I reasoned she’d never been there in the first place. That I’d imagined her because I’d been caught up in the energy of the arena and my mom had been on my mind. The image was too blurry on the camera’s viewer screen to confirm if the woman was, in fact, Reese.

Guess I hadn’t imagined her, after all.

My eyes narrow on Reese. She smiles. “How’ve you been, Ian?”

“Why are you here?”

Her gaze shifts away and returns. “Same reason as you.National Geographicsent me.”

“You don’t like covering wildlife.”

“I’d hardly call semiferal horses wildlife. They aren’t lions, tigers, or bears.”

“Oh my,” I sarcastically add.

She mocks a laugh. “You’re funny. I don’t like animals penned. Surely you remember.”

“That’s right. You let the cat I adopted for you go free. Same day, while I was at work so I couldn’t talk you out of it, as you told me.”

“I was allergic.”

“I didn’t know.”

“You didn’t ask,” she huffed.

“It got hit by a car.”

“That was an accident. I’d never had a cat. I didn’t know he’d run straight for the road. You know how bad I felt.” Remorse flashes across her face.

“It was going to be euthanized. I was trying to save it.”

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