Half Broke

by Ginger Gaffney

  “How you doing, Tony?” I ask.

  “Good. Good,” he tells me. His head and body bob up and down as he speaks.

  “You want to hose Willie off?”

  “Yeah. Oh yeah.”

  He waits patiently for the last resident to rinse their body clean, then he picks up the hose. He turns the nozzle to mist and starts spritzing Willie along his back and loin, rubbing his palm deep into Willie’s coat. Willie’s springtime, black, shiny hair begins to reappear. Tony drops the lead line and follows the mist around to Willie’s other side and scrubs him clean. Once he’s finished, he washes himself off and leaves Willie to stand on his own, while he pulls the hose back onto its reel.

  “Goooooood boy.” He squeegees the water off Willie’s back with the edge of his hand and looks over to me. “Thank you for coming today,” he says. “You didn’t have to come. I mean, I know you ain’t making money at this. Daniel and James told me.” He pauses, then wipes more water off Willie’s chest. “I’m sorry about how I acted with Moo.” He looks away from Willie and right into my eyes. “I really was an ass. I hope at some point you can forgive me.”

  No one has ever apologized to me so candidly and honestly. No one, that I can remember, has ever taken full responsibility for something awful they have done. And I can’t remember a time when I have, either. I shouldn’t, but I feel uncomfortable with this much clarity, this much sincerity. It makes me look in the mirror, and I’m not liking what I see.

  “I’m sorry, too, Tony. For my anger. For not finding a better way to speak to you.”

  Again, he looks right at me, but I can’t meet his gaze. I shuffle my clean, wet boots in the dirt and the dust sticks, turning them a dark brown.

  “Why do you come over here? Why keep coming? Is it Luna?”

  “It’s not just Luna,” I confess. “I come because I need to, because I want to. It’s helping me, too.”

  Tony takes his arm, wraps it around my shoulders, and gives me half a hug. “That’s cool,” he says and smiles the first true smile I have ever seen grace his face.

  I feel relief to just admit it. I come because I need to. Because it helps me. Because I want to. Because it feels like home.

  “Are we finished for today, Ginger?” Flor comes up from behind. Her baggy clothes are covered in green-brown smears and still she can’t meet my eye.

  “Are you alright, Flor?” I ask her.

  “Yeah,” then a long pause. “I’m just tired,” she tells me. I remember one of the first things Flor ever told me about herself, that she’s a compulsive liar. It is something I think about often when I am around her. On the outside she is a perfect role model. Her clothes, her hair, her manner of speech—these outward manifestations draw a portrait of someone on the road to recovery. Yet I can’t help but wonder what she feels like on the inside. Would she even be able to say?

  Everyone looks dog-tired and hungry. It’s dinnertime.

  “You guys go ahead to your dorms and get cleaned up. I’ll see you in the dining hall,” I tell the group.

  I look up the road toward the dining hall and see Marcus walking down to the corrals. I haven’t seen him since he started his work out. He gives me the happiest wave I’ve seen in months, then rushes over for a hug.

  “I got a full-time job today,” he tells me after a long embrace. “I’ll be working for a trucking company, making seventeen bucks an hour.”

  “Oh, Marcus. That’s exciting. Please stay in touch and let me know how you are doing.”

  “I will, Miss Ginger. I will.” He walks over to another group of residents to tell them the good news.

  I hang back with Tony and Willie. Tony is taking his time combing Willie’s mane and tail. He doesn’t seem in a hurry to go anywhere.

  “Tony, are you ready to put Willie back in his corral and head to dinner?” I ask him.

  “You know, Ginger, I haven’t felt this good in a long time. I’m forty-five years old, and I’m just learning to give a damn. You know, to care about others. Willie let me do that; he trusted me. I mean, it felt good to have him trust me. No one trusts me. Never have. Guess I’ve never earned it, either, now that I think about it.” Tony stares past me as he speaks.

  He pushes slack into the lead line and gestures for Willie to take a step. Willie’s weathered eyes are half ovals. He rolls them backward in their sockets and yawns.

  “Come on, Willie; let’s get some rest.”

  TONY LEAVES ME at his dorm room, where he can shower and get into a clean pair of clothes. My clothes are wet and still stinky, but I enter the dining hall anyway. The residents are just sitting down for dinner, and I feel like a grotesque sideshow distraction. I come through the doorway and turn right toward the check-in desk. Turning right again, I stop at the bench where Sarah sits. Her head tilts sideways. Her bottom lip sags and I can see her tongue pressed up against her bottom teeth. She lets out a sigh with each exhaled breath. When she looks at me, she looks confused, like she can’t remember who I am.

  I know to follow the rules; I cannot speak with anyone while they’re on the bench. I bend my knees and sit down beside Sarah. I feel the stiffness of my back and the ache in my neck from the ricochet of the tractor. I lean my torso against her side and pick up her hand. It is cold, dry, and shaking. Today the wrinkles around her eyes curve down. Her cheery, positive outlook is gone. I imagine this is her prison face, the one she had to wear to survive. I stop myself from thinking about what will happen if she goes back to prison. Instead, I imagine her rose-colored cheeks and lips welcoming me to the ranch the first day I met her.

  I look away from her face, down to our knees, which are waving back and forth with worry.

  CENTAUR

  September / 2013

  Paul and Rex are haltering the horses near a pipe corral railing that runs a thirty-foot distance, east to west, and fits neatly between two old cottonwood trees. A large water trough sits at the east end of the railing, a shiny, steel beacon planted right in front of the ancient trees. The horses come here throughout the day to rest and drink in the abundant shade. They huddle together in tight groups to swat off the gnats, flies, and mosquitoes that bite and cling to their chests, ears, and muzzles. To the south of the railing is the bright-green twelve-acre pasture where they spend most of their days, heads down, teeth grinding side to side, ears flicking back and forth.

  The horses are all gathered, attentive and perpendicular to the rail, with their lead lines looped loosely around the three-inch metal bar. Each member of the livestock team has a brush in one hand and a curry comb in the other. The sound of horse-hair brushes swooshing across necks and spines whispers into the air.

  Tony is standing back from the group, his legs spread wide, hands on his hips. He’s upset about something, rocking his torso side to side, trying to contain himself. I ask him, “What’s up?”

  “Oh, you know, it’s Eliza and Randy fighting over Scout again. They’re such babies. If they aren’t careful, they’re gonna get us all in trouble. You watch.”

  I look past Tony, down to the end of the rail. Randy is on the right side of Scout, combing his mane. Eliza is on his left side combing his tail. They both hold a low-slung pout on their lips. Their shoulders roll forward and down, hunching their backs into the shape of tortoise shells. For some reason, they’re both obsessed with Scout, a fourteen-year-old, brown-and-white spotted Tennessee Walking Horse gelding who has his own issues with neurotic and obsessive behaviors.

  “They fight over him every day. We’re all tired of it. They need to grow up,” Tony complains.

  Flor comes over and asks, “What’s the problem?”

  “I’ll handle it, Flor,” I say to her. “Tony, you’re getting too involved. Focus on Luna. She needs your attention. How’s her face healing?”

  “She’s good.”

  Luna hangs her head low next to Tony’s hip. I look down at the scar on her face. It is almost gone. Hair is starting to grow back in patches inside the gray-brown dead tissue, l
ike weeds in the cracks of cement.

  “You’ve done a great job with her, Tony.”

  “Thank you.” He turns his concentration fully on Luna and settles back down.

  SOME DAYS the residents are spookily silent, and other days they’re full of chatter and chaos. Rarely a day goes by where someone hasn’t broken a rule, gotten in a fight, or had an outburst or some other infraction, and that person brings a whole group of other residents down with them. Those troubled days are the silent days. No one wants to talk. They keep to themselves, move slowly around the horses, grooming each horse with steady attention to detail. First the face, down the neck, over the front legs, then back up to the chest. Short, repeated strokes, over and over. They brush the same small corner of their horse’s body, like they are staring into a mirror.

  As Tony and the others finish their grooming, I give them instructions for the afternoon: what horses they will be working with, the groundwork and riding skills I want each of them to practice. Everyone is listening. They ask questions, then fan out with their horses into the pasture to get to work. Paul works with Willie, trying to get him to stand still for mounting. Paul’s big, tranquil body looks like a grounding rod next to Willie’s thin, fidgety frame. Eliza bends Scout’s neck to the right then to the left. We need his neck to be more flexible, which helps us turn and stop him more easily. Rex is already on Hawk, walking up the road toward the main office complex. Riding Hawk by himself, without another horse by his side, has been a challenge. At times, Hawk still likes to think he’s king of the herd and resents leaving the pack. Rex, with his long legs wrapped around Hawk’s side, is changing that opinion. Omar and Flor work with Estrella in the middle of the field. Estrella has her saddle on, as they ask her to trot a twenty-foot circle at the end of a long rope. They each take their turn, standing in the middle of the circle, asking her to keep moving along at the trot. They will warm her up like this until she’s settled enough to let them mount. Flor and Omar are proud to say that they are the first people on livestock to ride Estrella.

  Tony walks Luna alongside the twelve-foot adobe wall bordering the west side of the ranch. Walking and stopping. Turning and backing. He repeats himself, taking his time. Luna’s ears twist and turn trying to listen to each request. If Tony asks too quickly, she’ll hit the end of her lead line and try to flee.

  Sarah is not with us today. She is still on the ranch, though she has lost the privilege of working with the horses. We don’t know if or when Daniel and James will let her back on livestock. I haven’t spoken to her in months. She’s not allowed to speak with any of us.

  Everyone spreads themselves out wide across the twelve-acre pasture, up the road, and over toward the south end of the property, trying to claim what there is so little of here—privacy.

  I know they need their space, but I also know that no one is ready to be fully on their own with these horses. If they lose their focus, even for one second, the horses will take advantage of the lapse. These horses remain hypervigilant. We have brought them along from being utterly feral and predatory. They are almost trained, but it is tenuous. They need only one moment, one second of misunderstanding, and they’ll launch to assert or defend themselves.

  It’s called self-preservation, and all horses have it, but these horses have it in spades. Luna is the poster child for self-preservation. She can still be difficult to catch. She lets Tony and Paul groom her, work her in the round pen, and lead her around the ranch. But her muscles still tremble when they touch her. Her eyes still narrow to slits when they approach too quickly. She’s stuck in flight mode, always looking for an escape. I was just like her before I met Glenda, before I got my first horse.

  Some of these horses may never learn to trust, to fully give themselves over to a human. We must prove ourselves worthy of them. Moment by moment. That’s the best we can do. They are the teachers. They keep us present, keen, concentrating.

  I make the decision to assign Scout to Eliza today. It pisses Randy off, but he holds it together, standing by the water tank, staring at the ground. Randy, like all the residents, has his demons. A fiery ball of anger pulses just beneath his skin. When he comes close to exploding, he removes himself from the group. He walks over to Willie’s gate and grabs hold of it with both arms straight out in front, rocking his body back and forth. His long, sighing exhales make my heart drop to my gut.

  “Randy.”

  “Yeah, Miss Ginger.”

  “You’re working with Moo today. Can you get him from my trailer and take him to the round pen?”

  Every day I come to the ranch, I haul Moo over with me. He’s my anchor, my horse of choice for anyone who may be struggling. Moo’s a solid equine citizen. He will do no harm, and often he helps a resident build confidence.

  “Will do, Miss Ginger. Hey, Miss Ginger, did you know? I got the horses up today, all by myself. Groomed them all before anyone else got here.”

  For whatever reason, Randy makes shit up.

  I ignore this lie. He continues, “Where’s Moo? Did you bring his saddle? Can I ride today? On Sunday, I worked with Willie, did all the groundwork. Tony helped me. I think I’m ready. Yeah, I’m ready. Think I can ride today? Where’s Moo?”

  I point at my trailer.

  Randy’s chatter is the background noise to which we have all become accustomed, a blustery repetition of mostly nonsense. I keep an eye on the residents and horses in the pasture as they work their skills, while Randy fires off his questions and comments without ever looking up or taking a single step. It’s as if these verbal calisthenics are his form of a physical activity. Even when I’m fast enough to slide in a few answers to his endless barrage of questions, it doesn’t make a difference. Randy doesn’t listen.

  “I don’t know if today’s a good day for riding. You still need to get your groundwork skills, and when you get those skills—”

  “No, no. I got ’em. I got ’em, Miss Ginger. Wait till you see me. I’m ahead of the game. I can ride. I’m ready. I’m not afraid of these horses.”

  Randy’s world: that’s what we call it. As each resident becomes more and more skilled with the horses, Randy lags behind. Everything I teach him is up for reinterpretation. He’s a man floating in his own bowl, with minimal awareness of anyone around him. Randy holds onto a fierce denial of his fear around the horses. He is terrified of them. His arrogance and fake bravado repel the other members on livestock. No one trusts him.

  He is big but not strong. Hardworking but completely unskilled. Artificially confident, selfish, angry, disruptive, and fundamentally fractured. And he is loud, overweight, and clumsy. He’s broad across his shoulders, top-heavy. He waddles instead of walks. He speaks a goofy style of street-gang slang, and he pops up and down off his toes when standing in place, always pumping his arms downward in time with the upward gyration of his legs.

  He’s a wreck waiting to happen. But he loves, loves, loves the horses. Two months ago, Randy put himself on a diet, proclaiming himself a vegetarian. He knows that his overweight body is an obstacle, a teetering, cumbersome mass that could keep him from being able to mount up and ride.

  The only horse I truly feel safe enough to let him work with is Moo. Moo, I know, will not flat-out kill him, which is the fear I hold for Randy whenever he works with the ranch horses.

  “Here we go, Moo,” Randy scrambles the lead line around his arms.

  “Slow down, Randy. Loosen the rope. Be careful not to—” He’s not listening.

  “Watch out. I got this thing.”

  “Randy, be careful. You’re getting too close to the trailer. Randy!”

  “Hey, yeah. Yeah, I got it.” He’s bouncing up and down in place.

  “Randy, listen to me. That’s not what I want you to do.”

  “No, no, no. Wait, wait, wait a minute.” He ignores me and goes off on a rant with Moo.

  “Dude, listen up. Come over here. I got it. I got it! Cool. See that? Did you see that? Did any of you see that?”

&nbs
p; Randy is screaming. His face is flushed. His mouth is wide open and in the shape of a childhood howl.

  No one looks his way. No one except Moo. Moo finds Randy absolutely captivating. He is mesmerized by Randy in a way I have rarely seen. Moo, for all his many great attributes, loves to check out from reality. I call him my Dreamer. He likes being gone more than he likes being here. He has a higher calling. When coyotes and bobcats prowl his pasture, when forty-mile-an-hour winds blow his mane and tail sideways, when blizzards white out his entire vision, Moo stands stoic and perfectly still, peering into the portal of a different world. But, with Randy, Moo is all ears, animated eyes, his hooves adjusting to keep up with Randy’s constant jostling motion. Randy is a quirk of nature, and Moo finds him fascinating.

  “Miss Ginger, Miss Ginger, Miss Ginger. How ’bout we ride today? I gotta ride today. I’m feeling it.”

  Why anyone wants to ride horses when they are clearly scared shitless of horses has always interested me. It is fear mixed with a deep yearning, a profound need to be close to the power of an animal. This mixture can ruin a person. Some people make it through, but so many more are left stranded and starving.

  Randy’s fear is housed in a complete and mindless denial. He can barely handle basic skills, yet he demands I let him ride. Though I have my hesitations, I decide to put my trust in Moo.

  “Okay, Randy. If you show me your round-pen work first. If you can perform all the turns with Moo, stop him on cue, back him up, then I’ll consider the riding thing. But first you have to prove to me you have the skills.”

  “I got it. I got it! I’ll make you a believer. You’ll be singing my praises. Watch me.”