Breaking Horses ©

by Lauren Elise Daniels

Prison inmates in Colorado are breaking wild mustangs for private sale this morning. Because the horses are overpopulating the West and grazing themselves out of resources, the U.S. Government has designed a round-up program that benefits the animals, the environment, and some select minimum security prisoners. The horses are corralled, broken and trained by the prisoners, then auctioned off to private owners.

The scene is tangled and intertwined. A bright blue sky against the eroded rust-tones of a Southwestern landscape. A gnarled hand clapped on a horse's withers. Blue prison shirt sleeves, rough whiskers, sunglasses and cigarette smoke. Large eyes are cloaked by a rag.

The inmates are thieves, robbers, the sober penitents of vehicular homicide and aggravated assault. The animals are wild beasts of hot sun, cold nights, a scant food supply and the whispers of coiled rattlesnakes.

One blindfolded stallion tears from a gang of prisoners like a car wreck. A single, flailing man clutches the animal's shoulders. The stallion flings himself repeatedly at the corral walls; planks yaw and crackle under the pounding. With a sharp blow against the enclosure, the animal heaves the man from his shoulders into a sea of dust. He scurries on hands and knees, away from the threat of unforgiving hooves, away from the springing beast whose twisting spine contracts into impossible shapes. The rest of the prisoners stand back and wait. They watch the brown body plunging against the ground in the center of the corral. They watch silently as the horse slows and eventually abandons his violent protest. He drops his head and tries to shake off the blindfold, a sigh rumbles from his chest and blasts dust from his nostrils. The prisoners begin their work again.

The man who was thrown runs a hand along the neck of the blindfolded stallion. The animal quivers under the man’s touch. When the prisoner tries to climb back on, the horse will throw him to the ground again. And again. Until there doesn't seem to be any point in it anymore. The prisoner was picked up repeatedly for theft, until he wound up in the pen. When he gets out some say it’ll be a matter of time before he’ll be back.

All day the prisoners work with the horses. Muscles strain, dust clouds settle, breaks are taken. In the evening, they wait and crush out cigarettes. Horses doze standing up. The passage of time is dictated by the lengthening of shadows: indifferent to both horses and men and reading like scratches in a fence. In the morning, they will rise with the sunlight that drips across the canyon walls and begin again this battle of wills, each other’s and their own.

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Published in The Newport Review, Summer 1997; Reprinted in Brick: Emerson College's Online Graduate Magazine, March 1998