Chosen by a Horse

by Susan Richards

  “Could be worse,” Allie said. She pulled the stethoscope off her neck and folded it back into the bag.

  I was so relieved I was willing to listen to any details she wanted to offer. But Allie ignored me as she pulled a thermometer out of her bag and lifted Lay Me Down’s tail to insert it. None of my three would have allowed this without being held or tied. Lay Me Down wasn’t restrained in any way and chose that moment to close her eyes for a little nap.

  Standing by Lay Me Down’s rump, Allie got a good look at the foal for the first time. “What a cutie,” she said. “She needs a new halter.”

  I was afraid she’d notice. It meant chasing the foal around a wet pasture, and if we could catch her, wrestling off the old halter and then wrestling her into a new one. Allie and I would surely get roughed up in the process. Two hundred and fifty pounds of kicking, biting horse is a lot to contend with. “I don’t think she’s been handled at all,” I said.

  “We’ll need a third person then.”

  I tried to think of all the people who wouldn’t mind risking their necks. The list wasn’t too long, even among my horsey friends. It might be better to ask someone who didn’t know anything about horses, a big strong man who wouldn’t think twice about helping with a baby horse. That’s what I’d call her, a baby. It sounded so innocent.

  Allie pulled out the thermometer, told me Lay Me Down’s temperature was slightly elevated, and then talked to me about feed, supplements, and vitamins. We discussed moving her into a stall in the barn, someplace I could completely enclose in order to run a vaporizer to help clear her lungs. It wasn’t a bad idea except we both knew it was out of the question. I didn’t want to expose my other horses to a sick horse, and even if I had been willing, Lay Me Down was too weak to introduce to an established herd. Even if Lay Me Down had been in perfect health it would have taken a few weeks of controlled introductions before my mare would have allowed another mare in the same pasture. I had seen how ferocious Georgia could be. And then there was the foal.

  Thirteen years earlier, a few days before Georgia birthed her own foal, I had moved the geldings (who had been with us for almost a year by then) to the pasture where Lay Me Down was now. After Sweet Revenge was born, I gave mother and foal eight weeks together before reuniting them with the boys. Even then, I divided the communal pasture in half with a single strand of electrified fence wire—boys on one side, mother and foal on the other. Weeks passed. There was much nose sniffing and getting acquainted across the fence, a barrier that was mostly psychological. Yet it allowed Georgia to feel she controlled how close the boys could get to her foal. When it looked like the herd was as reintegrated as possible with the electrified wire still between them, I took the wire down.

  It was as though I had allowed men with machine guns into the pasture. The minute that single strand of fencing disappeared, Georgia flew at Hotshot, driving him into a corner, where, it was clear, she intended to kill him. Poor Hotshot was as unprepared for this explosion as I was. He seemed incapable of defending himself against the barrage of hooves and teeth that attacked him from one end of his body to the other. He kept his head low, facing into the corner, trying to let his hindquarters absorb the worst of the blows. Blood spilled, horse hair flew, and into this fray stepped the foal.

  I don’t know what the foal was thinking, what could have possessed her to decide, at that moment, that the best place to be, in the whole three acres of her world, was in the corner with Hotshot. By then, Georgia was so out of her mind she didn’t seem to realize that part of the time she was kicking and biting her own foal. The foal screamed, Hotshot screamed, Georgia screamed, I screamed. I thought it would never end. Probably no more than a minute or two had elapsed since the attack began, but it felt much longer. I ran to that corner, too, and was looking for a way to get close enough to grab someone’s halter. Anyone’s. Ideally Georgia’s. We had a strong relationship. She was my girl, my Georgia peach, my peachums-weechums, my Georgie-Porgie-pooh-bear, my fuzzy-wuzzy-wuzzums. That’s how it is when you love a horse. Silly language and sometimes silly beliefs, like hoping my relationship with fuzzy-wuzzy-wuzzums would supersede her instinct to protect her young from the “death threat” cowering in the corner.

  When the electrified fence wire pulled loose from the middle rail and wrapped around the foal’s neck, I finally sprang into action. I couldn’t untangle the foal while Georgia was still in a rage because I’d just get kicked, too, so I grabbed the nearest stick, which was actually a large tree limb, and made a lunge for Hotshot’s halter.

  “Move!” I screamed, pulling him in the direction of the gate, hitting him with the branch to get him to follow me. Hotshot, sweet and dumb, had never been slapped, let alone clubbed. Finally, he moved. My plan was to get him to the gate, open it, let him out, then go back and untangle the foal. And that’s more or less what happened.

  Within minutes, all four were grazing within a few feet of each other as though nothing had just happened, albeit with Hotshot now on one side of the fence, while the other three were clumped together in the pasture. I could only guess that the reason Georgia perceived Hotshot to be a threat and not Tempo, was because during the get-acquainted phase, when noses were touching across the electric fence, Hotshot showed far more interest in the foal than Tempo had. The foal seemed to return his interest, and the two of them often grazed as near to each other as the fence would permit. My theory was that Georgia was jealous.

  Allie and I were still standing in the turnout talking when Judy appeared, the friend who had called to tell me about the SPCA’s televised plea for help. Like me, Judy was a social worker and someone who loved horses, though she didn’t own any. She had come to see whom I’d brought home and to offer help.

  “Well,” I said, glancing at Allie, “we could use some help putting a new halter on the foal.”

  We were three small women in our forties. Allie needed all her fingers to make a living. I had a herniated disc. Judy was just plain out of shape. It was raining. The foal was wild.

  “Sure,” Judy said.

  After disinfecting my hands and boots in a bucket of Clorox and water, I went to the tack room in the barn and found the little leather halter Sweet Revenge had worn when she was a foal. It hung on a wall cluttered with halters and lead lines, bridles and saddles, including the first saddle I’d ever had as a child, a small all-purpose Steuben, as good now, thirty-five years later, as the day it was bought. It flooded me with memories, and I felt old and sad surrounded by the smell of leather and mildew.

  The gloom lifted when I heard my three horses trotting across the field toward the barn. They had seen me and had come to find out what was in it for them. I fished around in the treat bucket and pulled out three alfalfa cubes as steel shoes clattered down the cement center aisle of the barn and stopped outside the tack room. A nose snorted into the space under the door, someone squealed, more clattering as they jostled for position. I opened the door, and Georgia was so close it touched her chest. Her neck arched over me and she gave me one of those utterly surprised looks, eyes big and wide, ears cranked forward. The same look I’d get when I’d find her grazing on the lawn after she had used her rump to knock down a section of fence: I was minding my own business and suddenly there was this noise behind me and I found myself standing on this really green grass. I handed out the treats, gave everyone a quick pat, and left while they were still chewing so they wouldn’t come after me for more.

  Back in the turnout with the new halter, we planned our strategy. We would surround the foal right there, inside the turnout, until one of us could grab her halter while one held her around the rump, and the other, around the chest. Allie was the strongest so she was assigned rump control. I’d go for the chest and Judy, the halter.

  Before we budged, the foal sensed something was afoot. She jerked her head up from the hay and flattened her ears. Lay Me Down gave the foal a tired glance and went back to her nap. I handed the new halter to Judy, and the three of us started to
walk around the back end of Lay Me Down toward the foal, who had already positioned herself in the corner.

  I sensed our mission was doomed.

  As I got closer to the irate foal, I remembered I’d never lost a tooth or broken a bone. I’d never had stitches. My various body parts suddenly seemed precious. I really like my knees, I thought. My hands looked good hanging at the end of my arms like that. So what if her halter was a little snug?

  I didn’t used to be such a chicken. It had gotten worse with age, since my back problems began a few years earlier. I felt so fragile sometimes, so vulnerable. I think it started the first time my back gave out. That day I spent six hours on the kitchen floor, since I couldn’t reach the phone for help. My dog came over and lay beside me and, eventually, so did my Siamese cat. My back seized up in the morning, right after I’d come in from barn chores, and I lay on the floor in my smelly clothes until three o’clock in the afternoon when two friends showed up unexpectedly. It could have been worse. Sometimes no one stopped by, and I might be alone in the house for days. I don’t think you’re ever the same after you’ve experienced that kind of helplessness, never as confident in your independence. After that, I bought a cell phone and carried it everywhere—I, who hated telephones.

  “She doesn’t look very friendly,” Judy said as the foal bucked herself straight into the air.

  “She’s just scared, poor thing,” Allie cooed, taking a few steps closer. The foal bared her teeth and squealed. Lay Me Down watched under heavy, bored eyelids. Either she knew her foal could hold her own against the likes of us (this was a no-brainer), or she was tired of mothering this nasty little baby and hoped we were the people from the circus.

  Allie continued making reassuring sounds, and we crept closer until we were just out of kicking range. “Now!” At her order, we charged forward: Allie at the rump, Judy at the head, and me at the chest. We had her, all two hundred—plus, squirming, squealing pounds.

  Every time the foal bucked, Allie was lifted into the air, but she didn’t let go. The foal spun and twirled, and we spun and twirled with her. Judy wasn’t holding onto the foal’s halter, which was good because we didn’t want to injure the foal’s neck as she yanked away from us. Judy’s job was to stay close enough to the thrashing head to unbuckle the old halter, slip it off, and get the new one on and buckled. As far as I could tell, she hadn’t been able to get that close. I had one arm across the foal’s chest and the other flung over her back. Her mane was fleecy soft against my face, reminding me that even though she was strong, she was still a baby.

  The baby dragged us out of the turnout into the rain. It was as if she knew we didn’t have a prayer in our rubber boots once we were on the wet grass that provided perfect traction for her little hooves. They dug into the soft ground and she pulled us around like water skiers. We lost Judy somewhere along the way so I wasn’t sure why Allie and I continued to hold on. Perhaps it was because letting go was as tricky as catching her had been. Once we released her, we’d have to get out of the way fast.

  We were bounced around and dragged around for a few more minutes, and then I knew I’d had enough.

  “I’m going to let go,” I yelled to Allie.

  “On the count of three,” she yelled back.

  When she got to three, we both let go. It was like being flung out of a moving car. We landed flat on our backs almost on top of each other. The foal sprang away from us as if she were charging out of the starting gate at Churchill Downs. Her victory lap around the field was breathtaking, full of grace and fury. She ran effortlessly, carrying her head high as though flaunting her victory. We lay where she had ditched us, a little out of breath. Judy appeared and knelt beside us in the wet grass. The drizzle had changed to rain, and it was colder.

  “Are you OK?” she asked.

  Water trickled inside my collar and down the back of my neck. Bigger drips fell off the ends of hair flattened against my forehead and rolled down my face. They felt like tears, tears about being forty-three and too old to handle horses, tears because everything hurt: my back, my arms, my feelings. I didn’t like being dumped, not by a horse, not by anyone. Tears because I was wet and tired and scared. If Lay Me Down died, how would I ever manage to take care of this crazy foal?

  The foal bounced to a stop in front of the turnout, tossed a final nicker at us, and disappeared inside. It felt like a slap in the face. At that point I wasn’t so much wet as oozing self-pity.

  “What an asshole,” I said.

  Allie wiped at the raindrops running into her eyes. “Stop anthropomorphizing,” she said, squeezing water out of the end of her braid, “she’s not your ex-husband.”

  [ 4 ]

  THE NEXT MORNING I was up early and stood at the living-room window barefoot, searching Lay Me Down’s pasture. I was relieved to see mother and foal grazing together near the turnout and rushed into jeans, a turtleneck, and an old parka to clean stalls and distribute feed. I made a bran mash for Lay Me Down before I went out and left it cooling by the deck door. I took care of my own three horses first because they’d been waiting for me at the gate ever since they’d seen the light go on in the upstairs bathroom. They knew that once they saw that light it would be about fifteen minutes until I appeared in the pasture with carrots. Much longer than that, and I was asking for a broken fence.

  Except for the rare vacation, and once when I had the flu, I hadn’t missed a morning feed in fifteen years. I almost couldn’t imagine what a leisurely morning would feel like. I allowed myself one hour to do chores and another hour to get ready for work. With Lay Me Down and her foal to care for, I’d need another forty-five minutes.

  I didn’t mind. Taking care of horses was the best way I could think of to begin a day. Most of the time I felt lucky, as though I was living a way of life that had ended with gas lighting and parasols—the way my grandmother had lived. I was the keeper of a precious legacy, an ancient rite. Until my back episode, I had never considered riding or horse care as physically demanding or even as particularly risky. After that, for the first time I questioned my assumption that I’d have horses forever. That I’d be like my aunt, still riding into her eighties. For the first time, I saw that love alone might not be enough to enable me to keep horses into my dotage.

  I reminded myself of all the women I knew who were older than I and who still had horses. Then I checked my pocket for the cell phone and headed for the barn. As soon as I slipped through the fence into the pasture, Georgia flattened her ears and flicked her tail at the geldings to keep them away so she could frisk me for carrots all by herself. She jabbed her nose into my armpits, my neck, my ribs. This was rude horse behavior, and I felt like a bad horse owner for allowing it. Nobody I knew let their horse shove them around the way Georgia shoved me around every morning on my walk to the barn.

  She was smart and gregarious and in some ways, more like a dog than a horse. She followed me around (whether or not I had carrots), came when she was called, and changed gaits on voice command (walk, trot, canter, and stop).

  She had other endearing qualities. If I was at work and she broke out of the pasture, she’d graze on the lawn for a while, then stand at the end of the driveway and wait for my car. As far as I knew, she’d left the property only once, and that was on a brief visit to my next-door neighbor’s bird feeder. She had always had a mind of her own, and before my back gave out, when we were riding miles and miles from home, I’d let her decide the best way to navigate streams or go up and down steep trails.

  I didn’t like saying no to a horse; humans have restricted equine lives in so many ways. Still, I made a halfhearted attempt to discipline her. I pushed her away and said no a few times—none of which worked very well. What worked best (if there was snow on the ground) was making a snowball and lobbing it at her rump. This signaled the beginning of her favorite game. She’d buck away from me across the pasture, anticipating the next snowball. Snowballs didn’t have the same effect on the boys, but the mare’s playfulness did
, and soon all three would be galloping around me in circles, dodging snowballs.

  There was no snow on the ground in March, no snowballs to distract her from my pockets, so we jostled along together until we reached the barn. She stopped just outside the entrance to make sure the boys couldn’t get in, while I disappeared inside to prepare feed buckets. Afterward, I broke up a bale of hay and threw it out the hayloft door onto the ground below for the three to share when they were done with their grain.

  I decided to forgo grooming because I was anxious to check on Lay Me Down and her foal. As a five-year-old, neglecting to brush daily would have been unthinkable to me, the result of being raised in an atmosphere just this side of a cult. It wasn’t a deity we blindly venerated, it was The Horse. There were certain rituals and practices that, if not performed daily, had consequences too catastrophic for a child even to imagine. For instance, if you didn’t groom your horse twice a day, you were asking for it.

  “Mats!” the German riding master who taught at the local stable would scream at some tiny child, flicking the mane of her pony where a small tangle appeared. “Vut are you tinking?”

  An ungroomed horse was a disgrace, an embarrassment, a sign the owner was bad. It was a clear indication that she was as unprepared for life as she was for riding. She was lazy. She was someone who would never amount to anything and would never fit in. If she didn’t brush her horse until her arm ached, its skin might rot, its circulation might stop, it might keel over right there in the stall, too filthy to live. And, worst of all, not brushing her horse would reflect badly on the instructor.

  At the very least, not grooming your horse meant you didn’t deserve to own one, and it might be snatched away, given to some more deserving, nameless child who thought nothing of getting up on a December morning to walk to the stable in pitch-black cold to feed and groom before school, and then returning after school to repeat the routine. Failing to do this cheerfully, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, meant something was wrong with you. It meant you didn’t have any friends, and your family was mad at you, and there was nowhere on this earth to hide from your shame and wrongness until you went away to college and discovered not everyone in the world was horse obsessed.