Half Broke

by Ginger Gaffney

  Belle spooked sideways into the corn at first, then gathered herself and raced after the deer, who was flying ahead at about twenty miles per hour. We were fifteen feet behind her when the doe made a sharp right into the cornfield. Belle crashed through the broken stalks at a full gallop, the corn slapping our faces as we slashed by.

  I was in trouble. That morning I couldn’t get Belle to open her mouth and take the bit. She was getting more resistant to the metal after every ride. Bob had made a bitless bridle to try, a leather bridle, built just the same as a standard bridle, only the reins attached to a ring underneath her chin. This was our first morning wearing it. With no metal in her mouth there wasn’t a way to hold Belle back. When I tried, she pulled against me and started thrashing her head in a tantrum. We were moving so fast there was no way I could jump off. And there was no way to turn her away from the deer. She would have tossed me if I tried.

  Through Belle’s pointy ears I could see the deer’s back end, her white fluffy tail rising and falling in quick succession. I needed to be strong, so I gripped with my thighs. I needed to be smart, so I started to breathe. I needed to trust myself, so I lifted out of the saddle, leaned over Belle’s neck, and grabbed her mane.

  Glenda says she stood on the hill in shock, watching us chase that deer through the field. She was terrified, mesmerized. It was at that moment, on that particular day, when she finally understood how a horse can save a person. How they can bring a body back to life. I had stopped talking or sharing conversation with Glenda at that time. Withdrawn and depressed, I rarely spent time at our home. When I did come home, I went to my room alone and closed the door. The feeling of Belle’s back rounding underneath my seat, the way her ribs expanded and pushed against my calves, the rush of air pumping through her lungs—I could feel my entire nervous system firing under my skin. Watching me hover over Belle’s neck, standing up in my stirrups, and latched onto Belle’s mane for dear life, Glenda saw something she had not seen in over a year—my body: strong, solid, and alive.

  We came out of the field onto Bob’s farm road, riding at a lope. The doe in front of us was much calmer, running at ease, accepting us behind her like we were part of the family. Belle slowed her pace, first fifteen feet behind the doe, then twenty. Finally letting the deer run ahead of us, back toward the forest where she belonged.

  ELIZA’S EYES ARE open now, their whole circumference visible, no longer hiding behind her droopy lids. With most of the hairs pulled out from around her face, she looks lighter than her size. She doesn’t wait for Omar to come with the ice. Back in position, she reaches down for Willie’s leg and starts over again. Willie pulls against Eliza’s grip and raises both front legs into the air, performing a mini levade, about two feet off the ground. Eliza tucks, squeezes, and performs it with him, moving in tandem off the ground and then back down. Willie bounces off the earth and pulls free of Randy’s grasp on the lead line. He’s lurching forward on only three legs, free now. Eliza’s hair flies forward and covers her face. They circle the barn lot, Eliza leaping back and up, like a kangaroo in reverse. Holding tight to Willie’s leg like her life depends on it. Willie comes to a stop right in front of the hay barn. Eliza loosens her grip and Willie’s hoof falls to the ground. She unfolds her torso, stands up straight, and lays her left arm across Willie’s back. Flor and I lock eyes.

  “You know,” Eliza says, “I can tell he wants to be free, but he doesn’t seem anxious or mad about this.” It’s the first full sentence I’ve heard her speak. Her upper lip now twice as big as her lower. She scratches the line of bug bites bubbling on Willie’s chest. He picks his head up and lengthens his neck, pokes his nose to the sky, pushing into her touch. I move toward the hay barn and off to the side of the cottonwood tree. I see Daniel and James watching from inside the tack-room shelter. They sit in the back corner of the shed, on five-gallon buckets turned upside down, hiding themselves from our view.

  The lead rope swings from Willie’s chin. No one’s holding him. He’s free to run.

  “One more time. Pick his leg up one more time. If he’s good, we’ll start trimming,” I say to Eliza.

  Randy walks over to grab the lead rope. “No, leave them alone.” My command stops Randy in place.

  Eliza turns and positions herself. Willie’s ears go backward as he listens for her. For the first time, I realize how quiet it is. The rest of the crew is enthralled by Eliza and Willie’s transformation. They watch carefully, creeping in closer to get a good look at the bottom of Willie’s hoof. She touches him just behind his knee to pick up his hoof, and he flips it off the ground and lands it in her hand. He lowers his head and doesn’t take a step when she presses his leg between her thighs. With his leg between hers, Eliza looks up to find me.

  “He’s ready, Ginger. I can feel it. Where are those tools?”

  Rex carries the tools over to Eliza and Willie. I lean over her back while the rest of the residents gather around us in a tight bunch of bodies. The bottom of Willie’s sole is cracked and ready to peel away from his hoof wall. I show Eliza the right-handed hoof knife. It curves into a crescent moon, matching the shape of a hoof. I hang over her, as if I am her arms, and take the knife to Willie’s hoof. My palms and forearms face up as I glide the blade over Willie’s sole, slicing at dead hoof growth that needs to be trimmed away. His feet are as hard as stone, but the knife rides right through. I have to be careful not to cut myself. As Willie’s hoof peels away with ease, I realize I’m getting nervous. I will be handing this blade over to Eliza. Right in front of James and Daniel and all the other residents. Everyone’s aware of her struggles.

  I take Eliza’s hand and wrap it around mine, showing her the movement of our wrists, the pressure of the blade. I smell my breath mingle with hers as our bodies wrap around each other. She, holding my hand. Me, hovering over her like a mother.

  It’s steamy in our huddle, my shirt sticks to my belly and my back. Eliza’s forehead is wet with sweat. It drips down the side of her cheek.

  “Ready?” I ask, close to her ear.

  “I am.”

  I turn her right hand over and put the knife in her palm. She holds it lightly, like an egg. I guide her hand sideways from the wrist, showing her again the motion of the blade. As our hands slide together, I see the thin jagged lines across her forearm twist and straighten. Eliza grunts out a breath, trying to hold onto her bent position. We place the blade down on Willie’s hoof and begin to carve.

  GREEN ACRES

  June / 2013

  “Ginger, Willie’s sinking. He’s in the goddamn septic field, and we can’t get him out,” Tony shouts over the phone. “What do we do? If I try to move him, he starts thrashing around and goes deeper. It’s like he’s in quicksand.”

  “Jesus. What the hell? How’d he get in there?”

  “They took the fence down yesterday.”

  “What fence? Shit. How deep?”

  “He’s in over his belly. You know the fence they had up around the old septic field? They took it down, the stupid fucks.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Tony. Let me think . . . alright . . . alright. Get some alfalfa. Put it down right in front of him. Get him haltered. Keep him still. Give me twenty minutes, and I’ll be over.”

  I train and teach riding lessons at a horse farm two miles north of the ranch. I walk back into the arena, where I have just finished teaching a lesson, and tell my client that I’ve got to go. I have a lunch break, then two more clients in the afternoon. I’ll call and cancel. I’ve been changing my schedule a lot lately. Trying to fit more time in at the ranch. They still don’t pay me for my work, but that doesn’t matter. I’d rather spend time around some of the people on livestock than just about anyone else. When I’m with Sarah and Flor, Paul and Omar, I feel more alive than I have in a very long time.

  I make my calls, cancel my lessons, and run off looking for the farm manager to tell him I need to borrow one of the farm’s tractors and what I’m going to attempt with it. He suggests the
small Kubota with the bucket on the front. “Anything bigger might sink,” he says.

  The black driver’s seat is scorching hot. I drive out the gate and turn south onto our poorly maintained county road. The bulleted potholes toss me up and down. I look like a white kernel of popcorn, flying down the road at top speed, 25 miles per hour. The scrappy neighborhood dogs run out to bite my tires. I pass three different burned-out trailers. Meth has been in residency for a long time in this part of northern New Mexico. Two older men on bikes ride up the middle of the road and slow me down. They’re heading to the small, family-owned tiendita to buy their minis, the tiny liquor bottles our governor wants to make illegal. I’ve seen these two men most days when I stop in to get gas. Their saggy pockets stuffed with driblets of alcohol, easier to carry and to drink, as they ride their bikes along. They wave at me with already inebriated faces as I pass them on the left, trying to get the tractor back up to speed. I wonder how long Willie’s been sunk in that field.

  I drive up to the ranch entrance where Omar and Rex meet me at the gate. They’ve been waiting for my arrival. Seeing me on the tractor brings their faces some relief. They pull the gate open and I bounce through the entrance, like a kid on a trampoline. Rex comes over to the tractor and asks what they need to do.

  “Run and get as many shovels as you can find,” I tell him. He and Omar take off in different directions and return quickly, shovels in hand.

  I look to my right and see Tony, waist deep in sewage, standing next to Willie, holding him by a short lead rope.

  This ranch sits on a floodplain, and the old septic field, now abandoned for a brand-new wastewater treatment facility, is usually fenced off from the residents and the horses. The fences were removed to start rehabilitating the area, and it didn’t take long for Willie to seek out the lush grasses growing out of the fertile soil. The Rio Grande rises in the spring and early summer. Mountain runoff pours west and east along smaller creeks, arroyos, and rivers. The spring flooding affects all the farmland alongside the Rio. River water bubbles to the surface on any low-lying land. The timing was just right—or wrong—when the fence came down. With the old septic field flooding from below, Willie walked right in and dove down for the sweet, young stems.

  I wave to Tony. He looks up and then back down at Willie, who is as happy as a bug in juice, eating his alfalfa, standing in the sewage that floats up past his belly. Just beyond the septic field is a line of old cottonwood trees that border and wrap around Swan Lake on the south side of the ranch. The septic field has goo oozing to the surface. Tony and Willie stand in the middle, with the bright green leaves of the ancient trees sparkling behind them in the late morning light. I need to gather myself. I throttle down the tractor.

  “We’ve got to get them out of there as fast as we can. I’ll dig till I hit something firm enough they can walk through. You’ll have to keep shoveling the shit off the trail as I dig,” I tell everyone.

  I barely recognize my team. They have their worst set of clothes on for this occasion: torn jeans, dirty, sweat-lined baseball caps. The women have their hair pulled up and stuffed underneath old winter hats, wearing baggy sweatshirts three sizes too big. Their faces are pale, empty, and remote. No one is enthusiastic about walking into this swamp, and for some reason no one is talking. I feel like I’ve walked in on a married couple at the end of a heated argument. Eye contact is sparse. Rex, Randy, and Omar stand fifteen feet away from Flor, Eliza, and Paul, who stand together in a clump. Saving Willie isn’t the only problem they have today, but it’s my job to make it their priority. Corralling these difficult personalities into a functional team is the primary goal on this ranch. Even Flor looks caught up in the aftereffect of some turmoil. Her clearheaded confidence has evaporated. Today I can’t tell her apart from the cloud of recovering addicts and felons who stand next to her. How easily recovery can be stripped away, I think.

  “You want us in front of you or behind?” Omar asks.

  “Both. I’ll try not to splash this crap all over you,” I say. “I have to dump the buckets of this mess somewhere. Where should I put it?” Randy and Rex gesture over to the hard driveway where I’ll make the pile.

  I fire up the tractor and spin 160 degrees to the right. I give the crew a quick jut from my chin and kick up the hydraulics, grinding the gears into four-wheel drive. I lever the bucket down and dig beneath the soggy grass to pick up my first load. It comes out of the ground like soup. As I pull up and out, the tractor tires spin septic debris into the air. The muck of it lands on the tractor hood, my baseball cap, and the residents all around me who are shoveling fast, trying to keep the sludge from sliding back into my hole. I back up, dump, go forward again, and lunge the tractor bucket into the ground.

  My buckets of decomposed poop create a mountain of stench. The livestock team looks sick to their stomachs. They have their sweatshirts pulled up and over their noses. Every so often, I see Randy bend over in a fit of dry heaves. He picks his shovel back up and continues with the mission. The orange tractor looks bruised and incompetent, with dark-brown plops dotting its surface. About four feet down, we hit something hard. Clack. Clack. Clack. Round river rocks clank against the steel bucket. It’s the old riverbed from before the dams were built, when the river wandered wide through what is now considered the bosque, or river forest. It will hold the tractor, so I move forward onto the new surface and start digging again. We’re making some progress.

  When I check on Tony and Willie, I see that Willie is unconcerned about the commotion going on around him. He’s busy gumming the alfalfa with his ancient teeth. Tony’s as quiet as I have ever seen him. He holds Willie’s lead in his left hand; his right hand lies against Willie’s mane, rubbing the crest of it back and forth.

  Tony runs manic most of the time. He talks fast, walks fast, and halters the horses fast. Even when he’s standing still, he has moving parts that won’t quit. His fingers wiggle up and down, and he pinches his lower lip in such a grip with his one upper tooth that a thin, pitchy breath comes through its crack. He is smart, physically strong, college educated, and was a meth addict for twenty-five years. He pulled off this habit most of his life while holding down demanding jobs in the aeronautics industry. Then one night, he slammed into an oncoming car, totaling the car and injuring all of the occupants. He was sentenced to ten years. Six he did in prison, and then he interviewed to come to this ranch for the remainder. When I met Tony, he had been on the ranch for only six months.

  I thrust the bucket back in. Five feet wide, four feet deep, fifteen feet long. Our trail is holding. Two hours have passed and about another fifteen feet to go. We’re covered in waste. The smell worsens as we dig. There’s no getting used to it. The sun has baked sewage onto our pants, our arms, the inside of our fingernails. We can’t wipe the sweat off our faces for fear of smearing muck onto the one clean surface we have. The residents hold to their silence. They’re all business. Omar, Rex, and Randy have taken the lead; they shovel the extra sludge away as I back out and continue dumping. Everyone else follows behind me as I reenter the septic field, scraping up the crud that creeps back behind the tractor. All at once I realize Sarah’s not with us. I’ve worked for hours without noticing her absence. I turn down the hydraulics and call to Flor.

  “Where’s Sarah?”

  Everyone in unison shouts back at me, “She’s on the bench.”

  “Is she okay?” I ask.

  “Don’t know. We’re not allowed to talk about it.” Flor’s answer is quick. She never looks up from her shovel. Here it is, I think to myself. Here is the extra trouble I have felt today, sunk under this pile of floating sewage.

  Fuck. I can’t lose Sarah. She won’t make it back in prison.

  I push the throttle up to 2500 rpm and stab the bucket into the earth.

  WE’RE NOW FIVE FEET AWAY. Willie and Tony concentrate on the ground. Nothing breaks their focus. Not even this nasty, smoking tractor that spews sludge around as I dig. I take out a few more bucketloads,
then put the bucket down and turn off the tractor. I’m a mere three feet in front of them. Omar and Rex take over. Shovel and toss. Shovel and toss. They look like rat terriers going after a ground squirrel. Everyone else leans on their shovels. Still, no one speaks. No one jokes. The day has taken a toll.

  Tony starts sucking his leg out of the steady stance he’s held for hours.

  “Shit, I lost my boot,” he says, with one soaked sock stepping onto the path laid out before him. He bends Willie’s neck around to show him the direction. Shhhwappp. The sound of sludge releasing Willie’s hooves pops into the air. Willie stumbles and falls forward onto the clearing. Clickity. Clickity. Clickity. Clickity. I hear the knock of his hooves hit the rocks. I turn on the tractor and reverse myself back onto the driveway. Everyone follows. We stand together, waiting for Willie and Tony to make their way. They walk toward us, slipping and sliding on the slimy surface of the river rocks. Willie’s head is low, almost touching the ground with his nose. He bends his knees and crawls out, like a dog after a thunderstorm. Tony keeps a loop in the lead line, leaving Willie to balance on his own. His one shoeless foot working harder for traction.

  We move like a grimy railroad gang as we walk down the drive and turn north on the ranch road heading to the corrals. Tony and Willie walk the pasture edge, just to the left of the road, moving slowly. Tony’s sock is pitch black. The hard ground and brittle grasses make him shorten his stride.

  Down at the corrals we pull the hose out, put the spray nozzle on, and turn it to jet. The water shoots out in a firm, thin stream that knocks the clods of septic debris off our clothing and skin. Tony stands still and patient. He hasn’t said much on the return to the barn. It’s as if he’s been placed in a liquid meditation chamber, floating in water. He seems so completely different. His breathing goes deep and deflates the rigidity he usually carries in his shoulders. They roll forward and down, away from his ears. He has his legs spread just wide enough that he can rest himself, leaning slightly backward. His arms fold across his pooched-out belly. Willie’s lead dangles from his thumb.