Half Broke
Page 22
SOFT CREATURES
September / 2014
“Sit. Sit.” Tony drags Randy’s mounting box close to the round-pen rail and places me down carefully. I’ve been gone for over six weeks. I’ve been sick—very sick. My appendix burst while on a four-day horse-packing trip into the mountains near Creede, Colorado. The first day I felt a little queasy. The second day I took three ibuprofen, drank a few beers, and felt better. The third day I couldn’t eat and had to take six hundred milligrams of ibuprofen every six hours just to stay upright. The fourth day I headed home. Glenda took me to the emergency room right away.
“You are lucky to be alive,” the doctor said to me after he saw my CT scan. My appendix had burst, but the infection encapsulated itself into a sealed pocket around my appendix. It had not spread all over the inside of my body, which would likely have killed me. I spent four days in the hospital corralling the infection, then a month and a half resting and healing at home.
“We have something to show you,” Randy says as he walks Luna out of her corral and over to the round pen. Her muscles are tight and lean. The lower edge of her ribcage is showing through her thin summer coat.
“We’ve been working with her every chance we get. Tuesdays and Thursdays, plus Sundays after brunch.” Tony carries the saddle and blanket over to the round pen and throws it atop the rail. “You just sit here. We’re gonna show you how she’s doing.”
Eliza and Olivia come over and hand me a bottled water. They stand by my side, each one with a hand on my shoulder.
“We are so glad you are feeling better, Ginger,” Eliza smiles and tells me. “These guys are so excited to show you what they’ve been doing with Luna.”
Joey comes out of the tack room with a bridle and hangs it on the gate. He climbs over the top rail, looks back at me and waves, then heads over to Luna. Luna adores Joey. She will do just about anything he asks. Randy lays the blue tarp on the ground inside the pen and spreads it out wide. Joey and Luna walk back and forth across the tarp as it crackles under their feet. Without a halter or lead over her neck, Luna follows Joey over the blue plastic, occasionally stretching her neck down to take in a sniff. After a few minutes Joey picks up the tarp, spreads it over the full length of Luna’s body and starts walking the perimeter of the round pen.
Luna carries her head low and blows out gently from her nostrils. The tarp swings along as they go. It is a long, blue dress that drags the ground on either side of her body. She shows no concern. Her eyes are as soft as cotton balls; she blinks them shut, then open, every few minutes without a care.
Fear was the lens from which Luna always saw the world. She was hardwired for surprise. Her entire body was spring-loaded to obey her eyes’ command. The shape of her eyes always told her story. Looking at her now, she doesn’t even slightly resemble the animal I once knew.
“Change can be immediate,” one of my teachers told me a long time ago. Once a horse makes a change, you won’t be obliged to go back every day and repeat yourself. They will remember it. Even if they don’t see you for another ten years, once you return, they will remember you.
For the last year, I have seen a version of myself in Luna. Her isolation, her inability to trust anyone, her not being able to be at home in this community; Luna has, on many occasions, reminded me of my own lonely, reclusive childhood. Now I watch her doze around the round pen, looking more like a stuffed animal than the fierce beast she once emulated. Sitting atop Randy’s mounting box, I watch Luna and Joey sway along, like two old friends out for a walk. I wonder, have I changed, like Luna, into a softer creature? One who can finally trust others and feel like she belongs?
Randy enters through the gate. Luna stops alongside Joey, who slides the tarp off her back and throws it over the rail. Still without a lead rope or halter on, Luna stands next to Joey and doesn’t take a step. Randy throws the saddle blanket over her back. Adjusts it up to her withers and makes sure it sits just right on her back. She doesn’t move. He brings the saddle over, flips it onto her back, and takes his time cinching it down tight. Luna yawns.
We have tried to place a saddle on Luna’s back before but have never succeeded. She would twirl and spin around us when we got close, kicking out sideways to defend herself from the foreign object.
Eliza squeezes my shoulder from above. “You have given us all this, Ginger.” I look up and see her thoughtfully watching Randy’s every move. “We are horsemen now. Real horsemen.” I reach up and squeeze her hand. If I look into her eyes, I know I’ll lose it.
One of these days, sometime in the future, Tony, Eliza, and Randy will leave this ranch. As soon as their prison term is up, they will reenter our world. Joey and Olivia will eventually move on, too. I’ll be left here, with Luna and her herd. Maybe more residents will join livestock, maybe many more. I must let my fear, my loneliness, my desire to cut and run—I must let it go. Change can be immediate.
“We are saving lives,” I heard Eliza say a few months ago, to a woman who was interviewing to come onto the ranch from prison. “One life at a time.”
“We aren’t done yet.” Tony walks up from behind me. He picks the bridle off the gate and climbs over the top rail. “Oh no. There’s more.” He is so light on his feet that I think he’s going to blow away in the breeze.
Tony spreads the bit between his thumb and pinky, then tickles Luna’s lips with his opposite thumb. She parts her lips and the bit and bridle slide into her mouth and over her ears. We have never had a bridle on Luna. She chews lightly on the taste of the metal lying over her tongue. Tony gets along her left side and bends her neck gently. Her neck curves around, loose like a rubber band. He begins to twist the stirrup around, ready to place his left boot in its center.
“Whoa. Wait a minute.” Surprised, I stand and walk up to the rail. Everyone gathers closer to me, reaching for me, making sure I don’t fall.
I hesitate. I think I’m going to say, “No, Tony. Let’s wait.” But it doesn’t come out of my mouth. Tony has his boot in the stirrup, bouncing up toward the saddle, then back to the ground. Luna has one ear flipped onto Tony, showing a quiet interest. Her eyes still kind and gentle.
“Where is the blue rider’s helmet I brought over?” I ask everyone. Eliza runs off to the tack room and brings it back. “Put this on, Tony,” I tell him. “And, Randy, slide a halter and lead on her, too, please.” Randy hustles to get a halter, then slides it under the bridle.
Tony has both feet back on the ground. He turns and faces me, waiting for my approval.
“Can I swing up?” Tony asks me.
“If you think she’s ready.” But in my heart, I know she is.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
These essays have appeared in modified form in other publications as follows:
“Learning to Walk,” in Witness magazine, Spring 2016, edited by Maile Chapman. Utne Reader republished this chapter in Fall 2016, edited by Christian Williams.
“Broken,” in Animal magazine, July 2016, edited by Danita Berg.
“Centaur,” in Quarterly West, no. 91, June 27, 2017.
“Moon and Star,” in Tin House magazine, Winter 2017, edited by Emma Komlos-Hrobsky.
Gratitude
For many years, horse owners have trusted me to ride, train, and help their horses. The intimacy of listening to and learning from these horses over a long period of time gave me the gift of language and sight. It is these horses, and their owners, that made the writing of this book possible. And to my horses—especially Belle, Moo, and Izzy—who save me.
I started writing this book while getting my MFA in creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts in New Mexico. The community of faculty and students in this program created one of the most inspiring moments of my life. I thank Chip Livingston, Ina Lenard, Kat Wilder, and everyone in the poetry department who set the standard for raw, beautiful, and vulnerable writing. Pam Houston inspired me endlessly in the grounding details of my physical experience. Melissa Febos and Lidia Yuknavitch gave
me the courage to write the hard stuff.
For two years I worked with the writer Jamie Figueroa, who slowly walked me through these pages with such care and delicacy, coaching me about the craft and the art of writing. And my dear friend Heather Laab helped me edit the first versions of these stories before I submitted them for publication.
Corporeal Writing, Tin House, Writing X Writers, and Writers at Work offered me fellowships and residencies, which gave me the confidence to keep pushing these stories forward.
My partner Glenda Fletcher has been my go-to reader for each and every chapter. My first reader, my last reader. A songwriter by trade, her ability to find the heart in every story and polish it has helped keep this book on its emotional path.
Throughout the writing of this book I have been blessed with the strength, support, and love from the amazing women in my family. Judy Primoli, Lynn Meighan, Trish Kridler, Kathleen Homo, and Carol Gaffney; their presence sits between the pages of this book.
Thank you, Elizabeth Wales, my agent, who exemplifies that book publishing is still a very beautiful human endeavor. And to Tom Mayer, my editor, who guided me gently into making this book better and better. I know how fortunate I am to have you both in my corner.
I don’t know how to thank all the amazing men and women in recovery, and out of prison, whom I have met over the last seven years. You have changed my life forever. I hope I have helped support you as much as I have been inspired by the life you continue to fight toward. I have tried to capture a sliver of truth here in these pages so that perhaps the readers of this book can start to admire the person behind the addiction as much as I have. To all of you. This book is dedicated to you.
PRAISE FOR
HALF BROKE
“This book astonished, excited, enlightened, and humbled me. I loved it, loved it, loved it. Half Broke is about the myriad conscious and unconscious ways we communicate with one another, and with creatures of different species—of language both spoken and wordless. This marvelous memoir taught me as much about language as have my seventy-seven years on the planet. Hard earned wisdom, the best kind.”
—Abigail Thomas, New York Times best-selling author of What Comes Next and How to Like It
“Half Broke asks us to look at horses and ourselves in a new way. Gaffney’s vivid and engaging stories of ‘teaching horses how to feel comfortable in the world of humans’ inspires us, like the author, to ‘love their world more.’ A very moving book for all animal lovers from a true horse whisperer.”
—Brenda Peterson, author of Wolf Nation: The Life, Death, and Return of Wild American Wolves
“Perhaps you’ve heard of equine therapy, of how time spent with a horse can stitch a person back together, tethering mind and spirit back to the body. It’s easy to doubt such magic. But reader, trust me: no matter your belief or understanding, prepare to be changed, because in the pages of Half Broke is the rare gift of a story exquisitely told, a book that shows us how to save ourselves by saving what we’ve left behind.”
—Nickole Brown, author of To Those Who Were Our First Gods
Copyright © 2020 by Ginger Gaffney
All rights reserved
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