Milk

I knew it was him coming along the avenue of trees, mostly Moreton Bay Figs, on his white horse. I could tell by the way the horse walked with his neck stretched out, his head down ready to take a sly pick of grass escaping the neat edge of the track. I could tell by his size, the whiteness of him like a tall glass of milk I take from the refrigerator and hold to my lips.

He once told me I was good at the two things he most wanted to do. This was in the days when he began painfully to learn to ride, teetering on the end of a lunge rein while pigeons nested in the roof of the indoor arena. Their shit landed, green and messy, a white rim like the white of a poached egg which later calcified on his saddle. I watched slyly through a crack in the wall. He said it was the hardest thing he ever did, much harder than medical page 53 school and this is what kept him going, this and the Polish riding instructor who is so proud of him. He wears him on his shirt, a small star pinned there for everyone to admire.

He told me he admired my skill, something I learned as a child and his compliments discomfited me—an inability to accept praise, something also left over from childhood. Now he rides his own horse, rides well—possibly better than me—and I stand on the ground outside the restaurant where dogs are tied to metal stakes in the ground, where dogs lap water from stainless steel bowls while their owners eat lunch.

I adjust the bit where it has caught on the drop-noseband and it is as if I have touched him, smoothed the back of his collar where it has become wrinkled—this intimacy with his horse as it shoves me and leaves white hairs, the tail of a comet in the night sky of my shirt. He doesn’t bother to restrain it, his reins dark loops falling on either side of the horse’s neck. He tells me he has discovered a way to remove the green stains from its coat. These stains arrive like mould after a night spent lying in soiled straw. He shows me the piece of charcoal like a black, porous cuttlefish and how you can use it to lift the dirt, rubbing with the nap of the hair.

His face is in shadow beneath the broad brim of his hat and I can’t see his eyes. His hands, in response to mine, reach down to pat the horse’s neck. There is between us a moment of awkwardness as if we don’t know how to part. His stirrup winks at my shoulder, the toe of his boot almost touches my arm as I tilt my head to let him know it’s over and I’m about to step over the sleeping dogs. But it is he who leaves first, taking up the slack reins and walking the horse away. Its hooves make a hollow, ringing sound on the road. A sound with steel in it. I call him back to tell him something else, as if to postpone the moment of parting.