One Native Life by Richard Wagamese Read Free Book Online Page B

allow anyone but me in her stall. When I came back alone, she let me slip the halter on. I led her into the big pen and walked her around it slowly. Everyone was amazed.
    I got on her back the next day. I mounted off the fence rail, easing down onto her. She shivered, shifted her feet nervously, but she stood still and let me find my seat. We didn’t move. I sat and rubbed her and talked to her for half an hour and did the same the next day. Then I walked her out into the field.
    Riding Dimples was pure joy. We walked around that forty-acre field for a couple of days, and she relaxed. Soon, I got courageous enough to push her up to a trot. And one day, after a week of this, she cantered for me. Coming back one evening she broke into a full gallop. It scared me at first, then filled me with glory.
    I rode her every day of that vacation, and Dimples learned to love it as much as I did. Finally, she let Kathy ride her. Watching them from the stoop of the farmhouse, I felt like an adult for the first time in my life.
    My adopted family moved away shortly after that, and I never saw Dimples again. But I still think about her whenever I ride. Riding her was a challenge that I met and won. But it was more than that. It was the first time I’d felt kinship with a creature, a joining that went far beyond mere domestication. It was a union of spirits that transcended earthly things such as loneliness, sadness and hurt. I felt like a healer, even though I didn’t have the words for that yet.
    We heal each other with kindness, gentleness and respect. Animals teach us that.

Running after Werezak
    . . .
    I BECAME a long-distance cross-country runner when I was fifteen. In a life filled with turmoil, running gave me a sense of freedom. It allowed me to expel the anger, hurt, confusion and doubt I struggled with, and every heaved breath felt like an answer somehow.
    After a notice went up on the school bulletin board, I turned up for the tryouts. We had to run three miles, and I finished in the top five. I’d never been particularly fast as a sprinter, but long distance seemed to suit me. I’d never been on a school team before, either, and the day I was handed my singlet, shorts and spikes and became a Grantham Gator was a small triumph. My family, a hockey family, didn’t understand that running was a sport. But I felt like a winner.
    We ran every night after school. Our coach, Mr. Waite, was a competitive runner himself, and the drills we did were hard: running in sand, running up and down the steepest hills in the area, doing half a dozen half-mile wind sprints. Mr. Waite believed in training the body to its peak, then resting a day before each race. Every practice was a test. But I loved the feel of running, and it never seemed like a chore.
    There was a local runner named Ken Werezak who ran for our rivals, the Lakeport Lakers. Werezak was a legend. He’d never been beaten; he was big and strong and set a pace that crushed anyone who tried to stick with him. Beating Werezak and the Lakers was all the team could talk about in the locker room.
    When I ran I imagined myself running after Werezak, chasing him on a long climb uphill, passing him and coasting on to victory to the cheers of my teammates. Every practice session I imagined running after Werezak and beating him.
    I trained hard. I ran faster and longer than anyone else. I ran extra sessions alone in the dark at night and first thing every morning. I ran home from school and I ran in the hallways. I ran and I chanted his name under my breath: Werezak, Werezak, Werezak. I was filled with a burning desire to pass him in a race, to see him at my shoulder struggling to maintain the pace I set.
    The day of the first race arrived. A teammate pointed out Werezak, and I lined up beside him. He was taller than me, heavier, blond and intense-looking. I eyed him carefully, gritted my teeth and prepared for the running.
    The gun went off, and I stayed right on his shoulder for the