Whisper sting

The summer of the cut tails

My sister, Meg and her horse, Stig, showing off

It was hot and dusty, and the indoor arena had a way of turning every sound into an echoing boom I can still feel in my chest if I close my eyes and think about it, which I try not to do. I hated the place. Once, I rode my pony into that arena to compete in a class, only for him to take 10 steps forward, execute a breathtakingly fast 180-degree turn, and gallop straight back out of the gate. People shouted and jumped out of our way like a high-speed chase scene from a blockbuster movie.

They had someone man the gate after that.

The T. Ed Garrison Arena was the closest showground to our house, and yet it was a place of last resort. It was industrial in scale—made for rodeos, demolition derbies, and sprawling 4H-style shows. The barns were featureless shed rows, stretched out in seemingly endless parallel lines in the middle of a gravel parking lot, the roofs a jarring shade of bright red. There was no grass, no landscaping, no flowers. It was a far cry from my favorite place to go to horse show—a place called Harmon Field, a quaint little showground tucked into the North Carolina mountains where one of the riding rings was fenced in by a charming circle of hedges. But, like I said, Garrison was really close and so we went all the time.

Aside from the high-speed fleeing incident, I had nothing but bad luck at Garrison. I fell off, was bucked off, was excused from the arena, and only ever earned a ribbon if there were six people in the class (they give out ribbons to sixth place). It seemed like every time we rolled out of there, I thought to myself, Well, that couldn’t have gone any worse.

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We probably would’ve kept going to Garrison for the rest of my childhood, muscling through miserable weekend after miserable weekend, hoping our perseverance would pay off in the form of a blue ribbon or two if not for two things that happened in a single weekend late in the summer. First, my (new) beloved pony—the one who won who had a good chance of winning flat classes (though she did, admittedly, go way too fast over jumps)—colicked so severely she had to have surgery at an equine hospital many hours away. The other was the tail cutting.

My pony getting sick, being hospitalized, and needing her belly to be cut open from end to end like a pumpkin was traumatic, for sure, but she was a stoic thing and recovered quickly. The drama of the cut tails, however, has stayed with me. When it bubbles up (which is often—essentially anytime I brush my own horses’ tails), I compulsively turn it over and over in my mind, trying to make sense of it.

Here’s what I remember about the crime: someone, for reasons unknown, snuck into the stalls of four horses, all belonging to one owner on Saturday night after everyone had left. They sheared off the tails of each of the horses, right beneath their tailbone and left. The owners were baffled—they couldn’t imagine who or why anyone would’ve done this. They were also devastated. Cutting a horse’s tail off is painless, but inhumane. They use their tails to keep away flies, mosquitoes, and anything else that tries to bite them—in South Carolina, bug season is year-round, and so the tails are essential.

But more than that—in the show world, a horse’s tail is an emblem of superiority. So much so that often riders will braid in a length of fake tail—like hair extensions for humans—to make the tail look fuller. Some tails are carefully “banged” at the bottom—meaning cut in an exacting horizontal line mere inches above the ground—to give them a full appearance. They are shampooed, conditioned, and sprayed with silicone sprays and high-shine mists. It sounds absurd, I know, but, objectively speaking, a horse’s tail is mesmerizing. It’s expressive. It waves and bounces and swirls. It can serve as a warning—windmilling and twitching means bad things are coming. A red ribbon tied to it means stay away—this horse will kick you.

A horse with a beautiful tail scores higher, looks better. But also: a horse with a beautiful tail is just more beautiful.

The morning after the tail cutting, as the news circulated around the show grounds, the mood reminded me of the strange hush just before a tornado hits—it even seemed suffused with the same subtly greenish light that makes everything seem surreal and tinged with fear. Things went on as usual, but we didn’t stay long—we ended up scratching from our classes and leaving early, as my pony was already showing signs of being sick, but I think we were also genuinely freaked out.

We speculated the entire car ride home. Who would do such a thing? Was it a spontaneous act of revenge from a fellow competitor? Was it the fruition of a longstanding grudge between two people? Was it a jilted lover? A random prankster who thought it would be funny? An illegal harvester of horse hair? Why those horses? Could it just as easily have been ours?

“We’re never going back there,” my mom declared.

I felt relief, but also a sadness I couldn’t shake. I was an overly empathetic kid, (I religiously whispered nightly apologies to the stuffed animals who didn’t fit into bed with me) and so the idea that these horses were now out there, living their lives without their beautiful, shining tails haunted me. For weeks I fell asleep thinking about them and dreamed—as they might’ve dreamed—of whipping, flicking, undulating tails, whisper-stinging as they touched flesh, twisting gloriously through the air. I felt sorry for them but also, selfishly, quietly grateful for their sacrifice.

Thanks to them, I’d never have to set foot in that godforsaken place again.