Riders Down (2011)
“Each night, after going through the laborious process of transferring herself from her wheelchair to her bed, she settled back on the pillow almost resigned to what she knew her uneasy slumber would produce. She had the same two dreams almost every night, both of them amazingly accurate replays of events in her life.
The first dream was all too short. She was ten years old, riding her saddle horse Monty through the fields of her parents’ southwest Iowa farm. It was a morning in early summer, sunny, the dew glistening on the thick pasture grass, and she thrilled at the sense of speed and freedom she felt as she rode swiftly and surely in the protective envelope of her childhood. Nothing that followed in Marnie Rankin’s life ever approximated the innocent exhilaration of those Iowa mornings. But this dream never lasted long enough.
In contrast, the second dream was far too long. It always began the same way, when she heard her own voice crying out: “No…no…no room, dammit, no roo...m.” She was standing up in the irons aboard the blocky, hard-trying horse named Royal Rascal in a race at Bayou Downs in Louisiana, hauling back hard on the reins as Royal Rascal’s front hooves came dangerously close to the heels of Tucker’s Dream, the runner directly in front of them on the rail.MoreLess
The first dream was all too short. She was ten years old, riding her saddle horse Monty through the fields of her parents’ southwest Iowa farm. It was a morning in early summer, sunny, the dew glistening on the thick pasture grass, and she thrilled at the sense of speed and freedom she felt as she rode swiftly and surely in the protective envelope of her childhood. Nothing that followed in Marnie Rankin’s life ever approximated the innocent exhilaration of those Iowa mornings. But this dream never lasted long enough.
In contrast, the second dream was far too long. It always began the same way, when she heard her own voice crying out: “No…no…no room, dammit, no roo...m.” She was standing up in the irons aboard the blocky, hard-trying horse named Royal Rascal in a race at Bayou Downs in Louisiana, hauling back hard on the reins as Royal Rascal’s front hooves came dangerously close to the heels of Tucker’s Dream, the runner directly in front of them on the rail.MoreLess
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