“Just let it rest here,” I say to her. “Give him a nice round spot to cradle his hoof. You can use both hands if that feels better.” Olivia cups her hands together in front of her waist and looks into their empty pocket. I place Hawk’s hoof back on the ground as Olivia moves around in front of me and into position. Her fingertips rub together in a fit of nerves. Her legs wobble. Her torso is frozen in place. She lifts her arms and hides her hands behind her head.
“I can’t,” she says. “I can’t.” She shuts her eyes. “Greenhouse—I need the greenhouse,” and she takes off at a fast walk toward the greenhouse, talking to herself in sentences that are incoherent. “We were here first. After dogs and the tile guy plumber man.” I follow closely behind her, past the ceramic shop and commercial freezer, up toward the top of the property where the greenhouse sits. She opens the glass door and heads in, and I enter behind her. She places both her hands into the dark cultivated dirt and starts kneading the soil like a cat on a soft pillow.
Eliza runs in after us. She looks at me, then at Olivia. “It’s okay,” Eliza reassures me. “She runs in here sometimes. The dirt seems to help her.” Olivia looks over at Eliza, nods her head, and keeps kneading.
“Olivia, talk to me. Tell me what you had for lunch.” Eliza tries to bring her back.
“We had burritos, Eliza. Don’t you remember?”
The dirt seems to help her.
When Moo was younger I taught him to lie down. He was shy and fearful of most things. Anything that came up behind him made him bolt. Lacking confidence isn’t uncommon in young horses. As their experience grows, as they learn how to accept objects and movements in the world around them, they eventually become gentle and accepting. Still, at the age of seven, Moo was bolting and leaping sideways over the slightest sounds in the bushes. I had read that lying horses down to the earth calmed their nervous system. I learned how to take him to the soft ground of the round pen, in the cool morning air, and quietly lie him down in the warm sun. I’d put a rope over his neck, pick up one of his front legs, and rock him sideways. First his knee would buckle, then he would drop onto one shoulder and pause. He would let all his weight settle over to one side of his body and gently fall to the ground. He’d stretch his long neck over the sand and rest there for fifteen minutes or so as I caressed him all over his body. His breathing relaxed and slowed to such a pace he sounded as if he was snoring. Every few weeks during that year, I’d lie him down. That was twelve years ago.
“I’ve got an idea,” I tell Eliza. “See if you can get Olivia back to the barn.”
Moo is hot and sweaty from Randy’s recent ride around the obstacle course when I return to the corrals. The timing couldn’t be better. Moo will love a roll in the round pen dirt to dry himself off.
“Olivia’s coming back,” I tell Randy, following with a request to take off Moo’s saddle and bridle, then tie him to my trailer.
Olivia has her hair pulled away from her face. Her cheeks are flushed. She and Eliza walk back to the barn without a care in the world.
“Are you feeling better, Olivia?” I hear Tony ask. The sound of his question makes me realize that everyone has seen Olivia duck into the greenhouse on multiple occasions.
“Yes, thank you,” Olivia tells him and heads over to where Moo and I are standing by my horse trailer.
“Hey, Olivia, I’m going to try something. I hope you can trust me. I won’t make you touch anyone, I promise.”
I ask Eliza to take Olivia into the round pen and sit down in the four inches of deep sand over near the far rail. I bring Moo through the gate and take him to the center of the pen. He starts to paw the ground, telling me he’d like a good roll. I back him up and make him stand still. Olivia and Eliza are looking up at us from their low position on the ground. I take the rope over Moo’s neck and pick up his left front leg. I rock him onto his right shoulder until he begins to fall off balance. It doesn’t take long for him to buckle to his knees and rest sideways on his right shoulder. He lets out a long droning sigh, then falls over, flat onto his side.
“Holy cow!” Randy exclaims, then runs over and leans against the rail. Tony and Joey, the other new member of livestock besides Olivia, come up behind him.
I sit on the ground behind Moo’s back and start scratching his withers with my fingernails. He rubs his neck back and forth against the sand in rhythm with my hand. Everyone is silent. Eliza and Olivia crawl through the sand on all fours and sit down behind my back. Moo’s ribcage heaves and fills with air, then rests back down. A low rumbling groan of contentment leaves his mouth as I rub all over his body. Olivia sits so close to me that the side of her rump touches mine. I scooch over and she crawls right beside me, her knees touching Moo’s back. My arms rise and fall with the rhythm of Moo’s breath. I look to my side and meet Olivia’s amazement.
She sits up on her knees with her arms out in front of her body, floating her hands just above Moo’s ribcage. She rolls up the sleeves on her light blue hoodie. I look down at her right forearm where the scars tell stories of her battered childhood. Moo lets out another long groan.
“Touch him, Olivia,” Randy whispers from the other side of the rail.
Olivia tips her head in Randy’s direction. One thin tear drips down her cheek.
HIDDEN LANGUAGE
April / 2014
Language can be taken. It can be lost. Stolen. Severed. It is not a birthright. Not everyone is heard. Not everyone gets to make a sound.
Many of the people I have met at this ranch enter the program like zombies: pale, silent, ghosts of themselves. Their thoughts, their sentences, their ability to answer a question, have atrophied. Whether it was prison that silenced them, or foster homes, poverty, or rape—almost everyone I have met on this ranch struggles to find words, to speak, to share and communicate.
Over this past year, I have watched them shed their protective cocoons of silence. Eliza hardly muttered a word before she held Willie’s hooves between her thighs. Randy could rarely speak the truth before Moo stood above his crumpled body and waited for him to get back up. Olivia hasn’t needed the greenhouse since the day she met Moo. She speaks in lengthy, coherent paragraphs as she grooms the horses, touching their bodies with the softness of her palm. Tony is kind. He’s not angry. He’s no longer quick with his words. His hands rest at his side, without twitching or rubbing. Occasionally, I see him standing in the middle of a group of residents, his arms folded loosely across his chest. He is just standing there, listening, not saying a word.
The back of my throat hasn’t burned in months. I have relied on the language of these ranch horses. I knew that if we could learn to listen to what their bodies were saying, then maybe they would learn to trust us. They remind me that listening is the first step towards speech.
I wasn’t born without a language. I chose to listen to movement over words. I craved silence not sound. Speaking aloud was something I slowly grew into, first by reading books aloud in my room. Standing in front of the mirror, I would read the words over and over, watching how my mouth formed the sound.
At the age of six, I still refused to speak in public. Never raising my hand to answer the teachers at school. I could talk to my mother, and sometimes my sisters, but most of the time I hid in my room. Kindergarten, first, second, and third grade were discordant, a jangle of harsh repetitious noise.
During school recess, I would run to the far corner of the playground and lie in a tall pile of leaves. I’d sink down below the surface and watch the shimmer of sunlight filter through the patterned maple leaf. When the bell rang, and the schoolyard calls of boys and girls faded behind brick walls, I would shake the leaves off and rush back into the building, just before they locked the doors.
I’m still trying to find my language. At parties, over dinner with friends, I feel slow. While everyone rushes in with words and laughter, sometimes it’s hard for me to keep up. I could chime in, but my words don’t match the tactile sensation I feel on the inside. I struggle
to say the things I can’t feel. Maybe that is what suppresses so many voices: sensing that our words are empty shells.
Every word I speak on this ranch is necessary. Essential. I realize this now. What I say, how I say it, can make the difference in someone’s life—big or small.
Yesterday Randy was saddling Estrella. She was unsettled and walking circles around him as he tried to cinch the saddle onto her back. I heard his frustration. His constant refrain of “whoa, whoa, Estrella” was getting her more excited. It wasn’t just the words, but the sound, the frantic tone of his words that made her spin. Animals hear the vibration more than they hear the words themselves.
“It would be better if you said nothing at all,” I spoke to Randy in a soft voice. He knew, as soon as I said those words, what change he had to make. Randy took in a long breath and let it out slow. He closed his eyes. He remained silent, his eyes opened, then he reached for Estrella’s mane and began scratching her behind her ears. Estrella dropped her head and exhaled, the sound of it made Randy smile.
Randy has told me, over and over, how much working with the horses has helped him get along better with the residents on the ranch. When things get tough, when there are arguments and people lose their temper, he relies on the skills he has learned with the horses. For the first time in his life he has learned to calm his mind and use it as an asset inside his community.
Here on this ranch every word has meaning. Every pause, every moment of silence, every nuance of inflection; these can hold great consequence. It has taken a year for me to recognize that my voice, the words I speak, have the capacity to save lives.
BROKEN
April / 2014
Joey trembles as he greets me. As I reach out for his hand, the quivering of him races up my arm. His sentences are run-on, out-of-breath monologues. He tells me he has six months on the ranch, three years before that in prison, and two more to go to fulfill his term. He asks me if I think he can learn how to care for Luna.
Luna is not a beginner’s horse. Mostly she trusts Tony and Randy, but even they have some difficult days with her. Luna is the one horse we still can’t ride. She won’t let us saddle her, and putting anything over the area where she broke her nose sends her into a tantrum. I know Joey feels a sense of closeness to her. He tells me this every day when I arrive. He’s not alone in his desire to care for Luna, just about everyone wants to help her. Most of the time Luna’s not interested.
“We need the help,” I tell Joey. “We’ll take it slow and see how it goes.”
I show Joey the curry comb. It’s a large, round metal comb with a wooden handle. The bottom ridges will scratch away the dust embedded in Luna’s black-and-white coat. I place it in his hand, lay my hand on top of his, and start to groom. We make swirling circles across her chest, belly, topline. I stand behind him, close. Our bodies touch like dancers. We move along her curving spine, down to her rump, parallel with Luna’s powerful body. Joey is just a few inches away from her. I can feel the rise and fall of his breath on my chest. I give him directions.
“Take your time, Joey,” I encourage. “The one thing Luna likes is a good scratch.”
Luna exhales and blows out through her nostrils. Tiny droplets of misty snot hit the pipe corral fencing and give a faint ring like a faraway bell. Joey stops for a moment. He checks Luna’s eyes. They are shut. She is in that standing-up, resting place.
Joey sits at his desk, in front of the phone lines, every day. Hello, this is the DS Ranch. Can I help you? Under the desktop his legs bounce up and down, his heels tap in rapid fire. His head scans left to right, as he chews and snaps on a small piece of gum. The phone job is teaching him how to talk to people, to care about others. Can you hold, please? I will get you that information. He takes a long exhale after each call, audible sighs heard across the room. In between calls, he holds his breath and bites his nails.
Many of the people on this ranch started using drugs in high school and never graduated. Their addiction took over before most of them ever held a job. During the first six months on the ranch the residents focus on life skills. How to greet and speak with each other respectfully. How to dress in public. Basic hygiene protocols. Being on time for work. Joey hasn’t made much progress. He tries but rarely meets my eye when he speaks. His hair is cut short but never combed. He dresses in baggy, oversized clothes most days when he comes down to livestock. His parents abandoned him and all his younger siblings when he was twelve. He had no role models. No one to show him what the rules were and how to live by them.
Joey grabs a hairbrush and pulls on Luna’s mane. He picks up the hair conditioner and works it into his palms. Spreads it, with his fingers, between the twisted knots tying up her long, white hair. He reminds me of a father readying a daughter for school. He works the knots out, one by one, holding down the roots with his other hand. He is worried he might be pulling too hard. Luna stands perfectly still. She cocks one leg and moves her mouth in a circle. Joey lifts her hooves. She bends her knee and flips her leg into the air, offers her body to him. He picks at the rocks and clay caked into the crevices. He inspects each hoof, then places them back down. He takes a soft brush from the grooming box and starts his deliberate journey across her body.
Joey has ulcers high up into his chest. He eats small meals, half a peanut-butter sandwich. Snacks on cookies all day. Carries their crumbles in his pockets. He is alone. His parents are gone to addiction. His siblings are either in jail or are using. He is illiterate even though he is in his late twenties. Eliza helps him with reading on Tuesday nights in the library. He wants to pass his GED. He would be the first in his family.
Joey leans against the top rail of the round pen as Tony takes Luna by the lead and places her in the round pen.
“Go ahead, get in there, you can do it,” Tony encourages.
Joey shrugs his shoulders.
Luna roams around the pen. She’s distracted. Alone. The rest of the horses are turned out to pasture.
“Go ahead. Jump in and work with her.” Tony’s trying to be helpful, but Joey doesn’t budge.
Joey moves away. He walks over to the cottonwood tree, plants himself beside it, looking away from Luna. Tony shakes his head, then turns and heads off to get Hawk. I am over by the pipe corral fence trimming Willie’s hooves. Bent over, I observe Joey from my upside-down view. His body has that downward slump that says he wants to fold into nothingness. His legs are spread, shoulders hunched, his head is tipped to the left. He looks like the eternally disappointed child. What he wants most is in that round pen, but he has no idea how to get it. Joey wants to be close to Luna, loose inside the pen, but he needs support.
Luna stares at Joey’s back. She tries to smell between their bodies but can’t grasp the scent. He is too far away. She waits for some movement. I can see she wants his body to turn, to move an inch, to show some sign of life. The emptiness of him confuses her. Ears pricked forward, chest pressing against the rails of the round pen, she is transfixed by Joey’s disappearance, his body becoming a hollow shell.
Horses look for life in a body. Our outer shell is rigid, but on the inside we are like water, continually fluid. Animals feel the absence of that flow: the stagnation, the crippling death of no motion. Everything is movement to a horse. Everything has a current; the smallest ripple has so much to say. Luna stares across the short distance, watching a body that has no life.
I finish with Willie, put him back in his corral. Skirting past Joey, I can feel the brush of air between us and imagine he can, too. I know not to pull or push on him; I know this will only shut him down further.
Luna breaks her gaze from Joey and meets me by the round pen gate. She stands a few feet away. I wish she would move closer. I raise my arm and reach out to scratch her neck. Don’t touch, she pins her ears and backs away. Wanting anything from Luna sends her into retreat. I put my arm back down. She returns, just close enough to wave her nostrils in and out to take in my scent.
Joey pads across the dirt
driveway and comes up behind me without a sound. I feel him on my back. He’s waiting for me to notice him. Why won’t he speak? He haunts me when he leaves his body like this. I want to shake him, rattle his shoulders, ask him what he needs. But I know better. I don’t turn around. Luna shifts her feet, slants her body in his direction. Ears pushed forward. One blue eye, one brown eye, both are on him.
“I want to go inside the pen,” Joey says.
“Do you want me to stay?” I ask.
“Yes.”
Luna’s half-broke. She lets us groom her mane and tail, clean her hooves and trim them. She allows Tony and Randy to halter her in her corral, but no one else. A few weeks back, when Tony was leading Luna into the round pen, she turned and swiftly kicked him on the side of his ribcage just above his hip and sent him skidding sideways. He was black-and-blue for over a week, but no broken ribs
“She’s a hard one, just like us,” Tony has said many times.
I’m not sure Luna will ever let down her guard. I’ve met a few other horses like her over the years. Horses who hold onto their sovereignty. They will never let their trainer take full control. It is a hard thing to learn how to do, to leave some power in the hands of the animal. I met a horse a lot like Luna in 2008 when I went to Raleigh, North Carolina, to teach a horsemanship clinic.
Her name was Coco, a young warmblood mare, six years old, whose owner was a fox hunter. There were twelve women in the clinic, and everyone wanted a private lesson. That meant I taught each rider privately, no one standing around watching. That wasn’t true when Coco entered the arena. Her owner led her through the gate with a crowd of interested spectators following behind. Coco was already high on adrenaline. Her knees bounced off the arena footing like balloons, hopping and lifting her front legs into the air. She was saddled and bridled, with the reins not yet over her head. Her owner pulled on the reins, trying to keep Coco from leaping on top of her.
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