By L.A. BERRY
Cancer was the only beast she could not out-ride.
I was nine years old in 1970, when I started lessons on Sundays at a barn an hour’s drive from home. I suspect the hour’s drive was a good excuse for Mom to sidestep the otherwise long mornings on a hard bench.
The alternative: listening to the sleepy drone of a Latin Mass in a church our pater familia had not so much chosen as dictated would be his Polish Catholic family’s house of worship. Now, we had a barn.
It was a private facility in Preston Hollow, owned and operated by a 100-pound-soaking-wet horsewoman, then in her mid-50s. Her name was Mary Beall.
In size 2, black, high-waisted saddle seat pants flared at the bottom, an always-immaculate white shirt, and a French bob (whose soft waves remained perfect even with hay stuck in them), Mary was cut from the guts-and-glamor cloth of 1940s heroines like Dietrich, Markham, or Stanwyck.
Her personal horse was a black Morgan named Midnight, who glistened blue in the sun. When he was brought in from the pastures behind the barn, he occupied the most choice stall, the first on the left at the entrance.
There, he might poke a head over the Dutch doors to assess each visitor, from parking lot to barn, as either a ‘food source’ or a ‘job.’ Except for Mary.
Mary was never a job to Midnight and far more than a meal. Midnight loved Mary.
It was the first real example a horse-crazy little girl, raised on every Walter Farley book the rural library could hold, would see of that connection. That immutable relationship between two souls working together.
Mary rode her barely-15-hand bottle-rocket saddle seat.
I marveled at how she stayed connected in a saddle—so smooth and flat. Arguably, the circa-1960s English hunt seat saddles we students used for lessons were no kinder in the flaps. The seats and pommels were so hard, a high-withered horse could cost a virgin her reputation.
At the time, we didn’t really understand that Mary was giving us a foundation in dressage. (Or that the discipline’s own, American origins were taking root 50 miles to the north, in Saratoga.) Our lessons were a practical balance of ring work to learn our gaits, and then fieldwork to apply them to practical use.
Field lessons always began with Mary and Midnight in the lead as we followed in perfect sequence. We’d do circles and serpentines and cavaletti across a derby-like field that was adjacent to the town’s 19th-century church and cemetery.
Every Sunday, like ducklings earning our water wings, we wove and bent and navigated the outdoor courses. Our parents would watch proudly, ringside, Mary and Midnight in the lead.
Winters in Upstate New York were never easy, and the rhythm of those earlier riding eras—when indoor arenas were rare—put lessons aside until warmer weather. There was no reason to expect this second season of lessons with Mary to be any different.
We checked in at the barn that spring. My Mom had a soft spot for sporting big-brimmed, straw hats on nice days, tied under the chin with a pop of chiffon. She did so to keep her hair in place after dropping the ragtop on her cherry-red Midget MG.
And so, we thought nothing of Mary talking with us that afternoon while also wearing a large straw hat. It was tied with a scarf so wide it covered half her face, already masked behind large sunglasses.
Did she seem smaller? Frailer? Surely it was just the hat’s oversized proportions.
When lessons started again, it wasn’t always Midnight that Mary rode. Sometimes, it was a quieter horse, and she would brush it off by saying that that particular horse needed, “A little refreshing.”
We were schooled to never question our instructor, so we were certainly not going to question why she would not choose her brilliant ball of fire.
Perhaps, we thought, she was setting an example of how important it would be for all of us to try different horses?
During field exercises, Mary began ceding the head of the line to her students. We thought we were becoming better riders, and she was telling us to trust how we navigated our own course.
It was her rose-pink chiffon scarf I remember best. That scarf that covered the left side of her face from ear lobe to nose. As did the cancer it was meant to camouflage.
The cancer that devoured her gorgeous high cheekbones, but not her high spirit. She showed up for us every Sunday. If there was chemotherapy, she never spoke of it among her kids. If there was nausea or suffering, she never let it show.
By the end of that second summer, she trained our riding group to find balance on our horses and in ourselves. But we never heard the clock ticking. She made us believe life stretched as far ahead for us as a horizon of fields on which to gallop.
There was no third summer with Mary and Midnight.
But before cancer outrode her, like any good trainer, she made sure that mom and I knew we could ride out whatever was ahead of us.
Mom found a better church among horses. She never rode, but could hitch and back a mean two-horse before a show.
I found the inspiration to create a career promoting the animal I loved, the one that always mirrors back to us what we need to see. While introducing the world to its World and Olympic champions, I’ve used the media to tirelessly bridge the invisible divides between those who own and ride and those who can only.
Mary B.’s quiet bravery and discipline, through her cancer and our lessons, still makes each day’s grace of life a Sunday morning riding lesson. A place where I try to keep improving when to bend and when to yield, when to follow and when to lead.
This was a submission to the 2024 Equestrian Voices Creative Writing Contest sponsored by The Plaid Horse. The goal of the contest is to promote fine, literary prose involving horses and the equestrian experience. This contest is open to writers of fiction and non-fiction, regardless of any previous publications, and awards 16 prizes. To learn more about the 2024 contest click here.
