Animal Magnetism

by Rita Mae Brown

  Just where this was going to take me I didn’t know, but I did know I could write a little. My teachers had always praised me. I love praise. I read promiscuously. Language was like music to me. I could write in the Latinate style—much of eighteenth and nineteenth century literature is like that—but I could also pare it down to the bone. We can thank Gertrude Stein and her great imitator (far more accessible than Gerty) Hemingway for that.

  Worth a try.

  Skippy the cat and I walked everywhere together. He rode in the car, too. He read the library books I took home as I thought more and more about being an English major. Just how I was going to hook that up with horses, foxhounds, timber, and hay, I didn’t know. But I was taught “Trust yourself, trust the Lord, and keep putting one foot before the other.”

  Dad died suddenly of a heart attack on July 13, 1961. Not only did Mother, Aunt Mimi, Uncle Merle, and I mourn, so did Sunshine, Skippy, and even that spoiled rotten Chin. So many people and animals loved my father.

  With Dad gone I really couldn’t be indulgent. I needed to help out. Aunt Mimi wanted me to go right to work. Mother knew I had one year of high school left and we figured I could work after school. She didn’t discourage me from going to college. Nor did she encourage me to go.

  A career in farming seemed hopeless. I kept thinking about animals. Each animal is born with a body and skills to survive in its environment. How could I use what I had: physical power and speed in a small package, the ability to read nature’s signs quickly? Oh, not as quick as a fox, but very fast for a woman. The other gift, a fighting heart, was going to have to pull me through.

  On to college I slogged. Did I enjoy myself? I made friends who are still my friends, but I lived apart from animals. That’s hell for me.

  I knew Skippy loved me, and Dad’s love never died. His body left. The love remained.

  I learned that love knows no boundaries. And I learned later on that I had been given good advice.

  Hounds taught me to follow my heart, hence I am never lost. Photo by Danielle A. Durkin.

  Finding My Way

  The core American emotion is loneliness. Our earliest literature, which I would put at James Fenimore Cooper, pinpoints this. Melville also allows us to feel our smallness from a perch on a topsail. These two New Yorkers wrote about the wildness of our continent and the power of animals. That power is obvious in Moby-Dick. But Cooper, although focusing on the intersection between various Indian tribes, the British, and the colonists, provides glimpses of how untamed the land was. In some parts of our country, it still is. If he wandered above Saratoga, Cooper would not feel out of place. The Atlantic Ocean remains eternal. Melville would understand.

  Anyone from those pre-Revolutionary years who hiked into the Appalachian chain today would be surprised at the trails and the Skyline Drive, but other than that, the hawks still stop over there on their way south in the fall, the bears do as they please, and the bobcats stare at you with large, gorgeous eyes.

  Florida is shot, except for the Everglades, which must be protected no matter what the price. The rim of the Gulf of Mexico, dubbed the Redneck Riviera, would shock early settlers.

  The Dakotas, and much of Wyoming, might not depress our ancestors. Montana’s eastern or plains side still looks much the same. The western side, thanks to its great beauty, has been gobbled up by mere millionaires now ousted by billionaires. However, they aren’t putting up parking lots, so that’s to the good.

  The far reaches of the Pacific Northwest host the lumber industry, which causes dissension, but Oregon and Washington state maintain their wildness. California is gone, an incalculable loss to those of us who love nature. California, like Florida, hosts an environment unique. South Florida is semitropical, whereas southern California is semiarid. The loss of animal habitat, the killing of the animals themselves, can never be reversed.

  Once humans kill off enough animals they turn to killing one another. So it seems to me. I can’t change it, but I do want to escape it.

  At age nineteen, however, I found myself at the heart of Murder Central. Now a junior at New York University, I lived in a hovel during the destructive years in New York. You couldn’t walk through Central Park at night. You couldn’t walk through any park at night. Drugs created much of the misery, although there had to be other reasons, too. When a city fails on so many levels, there’s more than one cause. The whole nation seemed to be convulsing. It’s just that one notices things first in New York. When I was little people didn’t lock their doors in New York or any major city. Melville certainly wouldn’t have left his post office job because people were, as the expression has it, “going postal.” Colliding with this was the rise of serial killers covered in newspapers and on TV (I didn’t have one, but I sure heard about it) as though they were movie stars. Surely this must have encouraged other imbalanced minds to seek fame.

  Technologically advanced as we are, I don’t think we are particularly civilized. We haven’t lived together for enough centuries to be a civilization. A culture, yes. A civilization, no.

  Berlin was founded in A.D. 1000, give or take. The Italians consider the Germans much less civilized than themselves. Imagine how we look to any European, to say nothing of someone from an ancient Asian country.

  The only animals I saw in New York City were squirrels, pigeons, house dogs. How I wound up in these city barrens was a tribute to ambition and scholarship. Apart from the lack of animals, the vulgarity of the place often upset me. People spoke harshly, sometimes obscenely. I was a long way from Dixie.

  Mother struggled after Dad died. I worked odd jobs and sent home twenty dollars a month. I always sent catnip, too. Latin took some study. Greek took a lot and I wasn’t very good at it. Working and studying proved difficult. I learned that in order to advance I would have to surrender a social life. That was okay. It was worth it.

  Then I fell in love and everything changed. A tiny six-week-old gray tabby with extra toes was being carried into the cat shelter on Greenwich Avenue (read: death sentence). I plucked her out of the carton before the two little girls passed through the door. The two girls forced to give up the kittens cried and cried. I could only take one. I wished I could have taken them all, but I saved one. And she saved me.

  There was just enough jingle in my pocket for cat food and some eggs. I put the little girl in my jacket pocket as I bought the food and raced back to West Fifteenth Street, where I lived in a cold-water flat on the fifth floor. I had no bed, slept on blankets on the floor. I did my schoolwork on some wooden crates I’d hauled up from the street along with a chair from which the stuffing protruded. I named my new kitten Baby Jesus.

  She ate. She purred. She crawled into the blankets with me. I hid her in my Greek cloth bag. She attended classes, sleeping in the bag. As she grew she was harder to hide but more self-sufficient. I could leave her in the apartment, although whenever I could, I took her along. She completed a class in Latin. Livy. Livy is as elegant as Tacitus is not, and both were difficult to translate. You can either be grammatically accurate or stylish. It’s hard to be both. I wasn’t. Baby Jesus evidenced no trouble at all with either Latin or Greek.

  We read Milton together, finding pleasure in certain passages. We reenacted the Restoration dramas. She was Lady Teazle.

  She brought me mice she’d dispatched.

  She loved me. I needed that. Some people like to proclaim they don’t need anyone, they don’t need love. They come a cropper. Sooner or later those deluded, egotistical “loners” come home by Weeping Cross. We all need one another. I knew I needed love, most especially from cats, dogs, and horses.

  We’d go down to Minetta Lane, the party part of the Village. One of the police horse stables was there, literally under the ground. Once the fellows learned I knew my way around a stable, they allowed me to groom the horses. Baby Jesus caught mice there but she had to listen to the other cats bitch and moan about her. Oh, what heaven to smell horses, leather, Absorbine, Jr., saddle soap.
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br />   I never asked to ride the horses. Most of them were crossed; many had Morgan blood, I think. No Thoroughbreds, but as Thoroughbreds often have thin coats and sensitive temperaments, this showed good judgment. In fact, the New York Police Department is quite a good department. The tarring and feathering they’ve endured because of some corruption is so out of proportion it infuriates me. New Yorkers are far luckier than they know to be served by such people. And the riders liked their horses. How funny, because a lot of these men (all men then) hadn’t known one end of a horse from another when they were first assigned to the equine unit. They learned. They hit the ground a lot in learning, too.

  Baby Jesus and I were happiest brushing, picking hooves, noticing the hoof angle the blacksmith had chosen. Learning about hooves is a lifelong study. I know the basics. A good blacksmith is as important as a good vet.

  The other joy for Baby Jesus and me was our walks in Washington Square Park during the day. She wore a harness and walked on a leash. Any dog foolish enough to charge her soon sported a bloody nose.

  Mother and Aunt Mimi, far away, wrote letters and I wrote back. Phone service was expensive, so you only made a phone call if someone had a baby or died. Mother wrote three letters a week on average. I managed one.

  I’d made some friends, although their accents occasionally made it difficult for me to understand them. Eventually I got the hang of it.

  New York University forced me to take remedial speech to eradicate my accent before they’d give me my diploma. I can talk Yankee, but as soon as I cross that Mason-Dixon Line, I speak the King’s English.

  Baby Jesus grew into a sleek tabby. She liked to play catch. She’d even retrieve. Once a friend who actually owned a car drove us out of the city, up into Dutchess County. James Cagney was alive then, active, owned a great big gorgeous farm. He loved horses, so my friend drove me by. Mr. Cagney was clearly a man who knew horses. How I wish I had known him. He ran an impressive operation.

  New York State, formed by wide glacier swaths into a long series of ridges and hills, is just different enough from Virginia to provoke comment but similar enough to feel comfortable.

  Once I graduated from New York University, I spent a couple of years in the city to take advantage of all the museums, the theater, and the grand New York Public Library at Forty-second and Fifth. I never could sneak Baby Jesus in there. She would have liked the Celeste Bartos Room. Her kind of style.

  The jogging craze swept New York. The cat and I thought it was funny to watch people huffing and puffing. Good for them, though. We knew it was time to leave town when we were passed on the east side of Central Park by a woman jogging in a black cashmere sweater and a simple strand of pearls.

  A part-time teaching job became available at Cazenovia College in Cazenovia, New York, which is twenty-some miles east of Syracuse.

  No car. Little money. One suitcase of clothing. We were ready. Baby rode in a carrying case on the train. We picked a time when there wouldn’t be too many people so no one would fuss. She wasn’t happy on the train, but she was elated when we reached our destination. A yard. Woods. Farms. Horses. Cattle. Deer. Real life.

  It would be another decade before I could finally buy my own farm, but I was on my way. I could learn from animals again instead of just smiling at a Norwegian Elkhound being walked on a leash on a city street.

  In August I noticed squirrels picking up the pace. In Virginia, August is hotter than the hinges of hell. Baby Jesus stopped shedding. By September the nights had cooled. The days, clear for the most part, couldn’t have been more perfect. Usually it was in the mid-sixties. By the end of the month, a blush shone on the maple leaves and nights could even be cold. Horses’ coats grew heavy. The first snow fell mid-October.

  Baby and I took long walks. We could be in the country in fifteen minutes, especially if we walked toward the northwest. Wildlife needed higher calories earlier than they did back home. They needed fat on their bodies.

  Weak things died fast. As much of the farmland grew corn, the gleanings helped. Nothing helped during pounding storms, blinding snow, and subzero temperatures. Those animals with the thickest coats, best dens, or most sheltered nests pulled through.

  Most people put out birdseed. A few put out food for deer (this was before deer overpopulation). I put out a five-gallon bucket for foxes, with a two-inch hole drilled near the bottom. It’s filled with kibble mixed with corn oil, and refilled once every two weeks in bad weather.

  This magnolia blossom isn’t meant to live where the mercury sinks to twenty below. I gained respect for the people and animals who endured it. Some may even enjoy it. What with the layers of clothing, the heating bills for nearly eight months, the extra tending to your vehicle, Upstate New York sucked the salary right out of my pocket. What winter didn’t filch, that greedy state government did. New York folks pay outrageous taxes and most of it slides down to New York City. Why the residents of Upstate New York don’t march on Albany I will never figure out.

  Another thing I noticed, and this was in 1971: fewer farm animals. People couldn’t feed as many animals as we can in Virginia because the forage season is so short. If you can’t make enough hay you must buy it.

  If you live through winter, which ends about May (mud season), June, July, and August are spectacular.

  When my term ended, fate stepped in. Hollywood called. I answered. What a jolt from Upstate New York’s climate to semiarid California. As I spent most of the day in the studio, I saw few animals other than coyotes and birds if I managed to get out for lunch.

  My tour of duty finally ended and Baby Jesus and I zoomed home. Hay. Trees. Wildlife everywhere. Four distinct seasons with winter lasting three to four months. Virginia, to me, is paradise.

  The richest period of my life was about to begin, and all the lessons of my youth would be intertwined with it.

  My favorite opponent. I love foxes! Photo courtesy of Bill Gamble.

  Pretty Is as Pretty Does

  Horses, like women, dazzle. The result: brains fly out the window. Even experienced horsemen can lose their composure. You pay for beauty. How men can afford mistresses, I don’t know. A stay-at-home wife costs plenty (not that she doesn’t do her part), but if a man had to pay for all her services it would roll up the annual bill over a hundred thousand dollars. Thirty-some years ago Ms. magazine totted up the cost, and it would have been sixty thousand, if memory serves.

  Same with a horse. A bad one costs as much as a good one to keep. As to initial purchase, that, too, can be influenced by emotion.

  My farm outside Charlottesville was a piddling thirty-four acres. The barn needed work. The stall floors sported potholes that would have made a New Yorker feel right at home. This is the result of horses pawing and owners not filling in the holes and tamping them down tight. Rather than fool with potholes, I just dug out the stalls three feet down and releveled them. At the bottom, I put in six inches of number-five stone. That’s stone about the size of a shooter marble. Helps with drainage. Over that I poured pea rock, dirt, and finally, on top, rock dust, which I watered and rolled. Over all this I put a layer of masonry sand. Rolled that, too. Six stalls gave me a good workout. If I could rent five and provide care, I figured I could own my first horse.

  The farm, tidy and bright, showed well, as a real estate agent might put it. I hung out my shingle and in one week I had those five stalls filled. I had put up new fencing, the paddocks were spacious, and the pastures were in pretty good order. Naturally, one overseeds every autumn. At least if you’re smart in central Virginia you do because our climate swings wildly, not just in terms of temperature but in terms of rainfall. Central Virginia is the transition between a southern climate and a northern one.

  Baby Jesus, sixteen now, watched me work perched on a bench in the garden. Her sidekick was a Great Dane puppy, black as coal, named India Ink. I never had to train the puppy. Baby Jesus did it for me. India was one of the best-behaved dogs I’ve ever known. I can’t say the same for Bab
y, as she was a tyrant.

  Once the boarders were in the barn she’d saunter down, not a trace of arthritis, visit each stall, and hiss great big hisses. Then she’d turn and saunter out.

  The horses blinked. A few stopped chewing hay to study the skinny old cat with the luminous green eyes. Occasionally, she’d climb one of the support beams and drop down onto a stall door. The old boards, thick oak, would cost a fortune today. Back then it was castoff lumber. The boards rose up to five feet. Above that, a mesh screen made of wire about half the width of your little finger separated the stalls. Wouldn’t do to have one horse reach over to take a hunk out of another. Even horses born together can get into it, and my boarders had to learn to get along with one another.

  Baby would drop onto the stall door just to prove she could do it. Her chest swelled with pride if she scared the occupant enough to bolt to a corner or run outside (I usually opened the back door of the stall so they could come and go as they pleased). If they needed larger turnout, I’d walk them to one of the big pastures.

  India tagged along, falling over her giant paws. This always elicited a snotty comment from Baby, whose tail would stand straight up as she delivered her sarcasm.

  I knew hardly a soul. Sure, I knew a few merchants, but I mean real friends. Baby, India, and the boarders were my buddies. I did know one friend from high school. However, he had two small children, taught full time, and was on overload. Still, it was nice to know I could pick up the phone if necessary.

  He told me who the reputable horse dealers were and whom to avoid. If you think about it, the horse business is the original used car business. Lucky for me, I knew something about horses. I knew enough to stop myself from buying a great beauty who had a screw loose. Instead, I bought a horse that was so ugly he made your eyes water. A bay of nondescript breeding with a common clunky head, he needed groceries to put some meat on his bones. He had an old low bow on his left foreleg, little knots and windpuffs on the others. I liked him. He was a survivor. The vet listed his blemishes but told me what I hoped to hear: he was serviceably sound. I looked at X-rays of his front hooves (always a good idea when you’re buying a horse) and he was okay.