My Horse Escaped 14 Times in One Month, and Every Time I Found Him in the Garden of the Same Woman. She Was a Retired Opera Singer, and She Was Not Amused

I don’t know how he knew.

I’ve thought about it a lot. Maybe he followed the smell of the carrots in my truck. Maybe somebody left a gate open. Maybe horses understand things that people don’t.

Valentina came to get him with me. She stood in the empty courtyard of the old mission and looked at the place where the stage would go.

Then she looked at Bandit.

“Fine,” she said to him. “Fine. You win.”

She sang three songs at the Sonoma Mission in September.

I was in the third row in my only good shirt. Half the town was there. So was Bandit, because the organizers, after hearing the story, let me tie him to the old hitching post at the back of the courtyard, as long as I signed a waiver and my insurance agent sent them a certificate. He came personally. He wanted to see the horse.

Her voice didn’t break.

It wasn’t the voice of La Scala. She told me so afterward, a dozen times. It was smaller. Darker. More careful.

But when she held the last note of the last song, a hundred people stood up at once, and at the back of the courtyard, a twelve-hundred-pound palomino lifted his head and whinnied, loud and long, like he was singing back.

The whole audience turned around and laughed.

Then they cheered him.

Valentina came down off the stage, walked through the crowd, past all the people trying to shake her hand, straight to the back of the courtyard.

She put her arms around Bandit’s neck.

Then she looked at me over his mane.

“I’m going to need a fence,” she said. “A good one. Between our properties.”

My heart sank a little.

“Of course,” I said.

“With a gate,” she said. “A big one. Right in the middle.”

“Why?”

“So you two can stop teleporting,” she said, “and just come over.”