by Andrews
Unlike the storm we’d experienced at Ann Colton’s farm, when Liz and I had our first horse adventure, we couldn’t just jump in the car and drive away from this one. It suddenly dawned on me that we had roots now. We lived here on this wild piece of land. These were our animals, and if we ran, they would be left behind to face it alone.
We were getting our first experience at riding it out and my first experience at being committed to what I’d created. I understood why our ancestors had stuck it out fighting famine and fires and unfriendly neighbors to save what was theirs. And I also understood why it might have scared them senseless, as it nearly did me.
“It’s right here!” Liz said loudly.
“We need to take cover!”
“Wow, look at this!” Liz whooped.
Off the porch, sheets of dark rain swirled in a hypnotic and powerful water dance. I didn’t know if we were under the storm or off to one side.
“Let’s get into an interior closet!” I yelled.
“It’s okay,” she said, marveling at the buckets of rain pummeling the ground.
Suddenly the rain shifted like someone redirecting a water hose and it came at us at a ninety-degree angle, the porch roof now meaningless as weather protection, the world as wet as if the earth had tilted on its axis and rain pelted us sideways.
“This is amazing!” Liz was joyous.
“Where the hell is the tornado? We could be killed!”
“It’s off to the north a little. These are the winds on the edge of it.”
Within twenty minutes the entire event was over. The world was dark and wet and a lot less windy. I checked on the horses. Their bedding was wet from the sideways rain and they were soaked, but no other damage. I let them out of their stalls, then walked down to the pastures looking for any problems.
“The paddock fence posts,” Liz shouted.
Little white squares lay all over the ground, a veritable confetti of vinyl fence caps ripped off their posts to join in the swirling water dance, ultimately landing dozens of yards away from their original locations. I started to pick them up on foot, then realized the entire back forty was dotted with small white squares.
We finished picking up the fence-post caps and drove our new four-wheel Kubota ATV up to assess the damage out by the main road. The CCR gate, so beautifully hinged to swing its three hundred pounds smoothly even in a stiff wind, was intact.
Liz pushed the gate open with little effort, took a look around, then came back in, the gate trailing behind her. Suddenly, the heavy gate picked up speed, traveling faster than she was walking, snagged her heel, and flipped her up in the air like a steer. She came down hard and fast on her arm.
“Omigod, can you get up?” I ran over and secured the gate before checking on her.
“My elbow,” she moaned.
I carefully helped her to her feet and got her back into the Kubota. We drove over the lumpy ground as she cried over every painful bounce, and I worried over how badly she might be hurt.
At the house I wrapped her arm in ice packs and a towel, located keys, and helped her into the truck. She rode toward town cradling her hurt arm.
Emergency room X-rays showed a chipped bone near her elbow and torn muscles in her arm. By three a.m. she hadn’t slept; she couldn’t turn over or even let a quilt brush her arm, and she was in agony. Lying there in the predawn darkness, we were both exhausted and depressed.
“Did we do the wrong thing moving out here?” she asked. “In twenty-four hours we’ve had meth dealers, a tornado, and a trip to the hospital.”
“I don’t know, but we’re here now. What’s the worst that can happen? We hate it, and we end up selling it, and we make a profit, because it’s one of the last gorgeous pieces of land in the county.” I was despondent at the mere thought.
I knew that this accident had ramifications beyond our horse accidents. Everything on the ranch weighed thirty to a hundred pounds: bags of horse feed, bales of hay, cases of bottled water, furniture to be stored, furniture to be moved, boxes to be packed and unpacked as we transferred our lives from our city homes to our ranch, and now instead of four arms to lift and haul and carry, we had three. I suddenly understand the literal meaning of ranch hands.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Liz was angry, difficult, and impossible to help.
“Will you let me get that?” I barked.
“I can get it myself.” She yanked the muck bucket away from me and proceeded to muck out the stall, using her hip to leverage the loaded pitchfork of manure up into the air, then tilting it into the bucket.
“You’ll have the muscles of a lumberjack in your right arm,” I snorted.
“Fine with me.”
Her tone angered me. “Could you step out of the way so I can lift the shavings into the stall, then lift the feed bags into the barrels so I can then go in and unload the groceries?”
“Look, I know you’re doing all the lifting, if that’s your point. I can’t help it!” she yelled, and threw the plastic-tined pitchfork across the aisle like a javelin, just missing my head.
“Did you throw that at me?” My voice rose an octave.
“No!” The insanity of the moment made her laugh despite herself. “If I’d thrown it at you, I would have hit you, which is what I’d like to do!”
I got in her face. “You want to hit me?” My executive nature failed me in domestic situations. I wanted to be angry, but instead I felt tears welling up in my eyes.
“Oh, that’s good. Now after being totally obnoxious, you’re going to cry, and I’ll have to give you sympathy.” Liz’s voice softened.
Tears were already running down my cheeks. “I’m sorry. I’m just so tired, and everything on the damned planet weighs fifty pounds. My back is out, my right knee hurts, and an old tennis injury in my foot is flaring up.”
Liz was giggling now. “You’re pretty pitiful.”
“And I’m feeling pretty pitiful,” I said, reveling in the attention. “I mucked the alleyway between the pastures to keep manure off your beloved Kubota wheels, and off our boots, and when I lifted a pitchfork full of manure up in the air to throw it over the north fence, the wind shifted and blew horse shit back in my face. It bounced off my cheek and into my shirt and fell down into my shoes and, frankly, I’ve had it!”
“So I’m hugging someone who’s full of shit? Come on,” she said. “I’m going to make you a cappuccino.”
“With one arm?”
“You’d be surprised what I can do with one arm.” And she kissed me sweetly.
“I love you.”
*
A week had gone by, and we both awakened in our usual pain, having slept little over the past few nights. My knee and back and shoulders felt like knives had been slid into them in the middle of the night. The pain from Liz’s arm was so intense that she awoke each morning with tears streaming down her cheeks. We could barely stagger out of bed to get dressed. Going out into the barn to muck out the stalls, feed our new rescue dogs, Lily and Lila, take the horses down to their pasture, and lift a never-ending load should have been an effort, but an odd sensation had begun to take place within me.
As I staggered into my sweatpants, jacket, and barn boots, then opened the door to the bracing air and furry animals, all of whom wanted a pat or a hug, the pain in my aching body eased up. The sunshine cut across the sky in the most radiant colors—colors I had never seen from my city home.
We lifted thirty-pound muck buckets and dumped them into the manure spreader, determined not to act like city people paying to have our manure hauled off, then paying to have fertilizer hauled in. So every day, regardless of weather conditions, we turned our manure into fertilizer, hopefully a metaphor for our new lives.
Afterward, I sat down on a bench outside the barn, with our ninety-pound dogs who had big furry coats and gigantic paws and never stopped imploring me to hold them. They leapt up on either side of me and put their heads on my knee and jostled my coffee until it went down m
y sweatshirt, and I laughed.
I marveled at the beauty of the land, and I wasn’t sorry I had done this. The damp, sweet morning dew, the kaleidoscopic sunrise, and the animals joyously nickering and barking made me smile more than I had in a handful of years. I was discovering that after the initial shock of knowing the vast amount of physical work that awaited me, I was happy to wake up.
Rune wandered over to the fence and I stood up to greet her. When she dropped her head, putting her face in my hands, I looked into her eyes, the morning sunlight making me squint, and suddenly her eyes were blue—lagoonlike, iridescent pools that mesmerized me. How can they be blue? My mind registered that thought as I stared into them and she stood perfectly still. Goose bumps covered my body as, in her eyes, I saw— A woman—that’s insane! I thought. My horse as woman?
We stared at each other lovingly, and then she raised her head, putting her lips on my forehead. I closed my eyes and saw what she saw—the sunlight cresting the eastern hills bursting through my closed eyelids with shards of color; the celestial light of golden fields and deep blue sky and green patches of grass and splashes of orange from the wintering shrubs, rays of light like lasers forming stained-glass windows from heaven’s church. And at that moment, I felt as if I’d been kissed by a goddess.
When I opened my eyes, Rune’s eyes were brown again and I was jarred out of this spiritual experience by my cell phone ringing. It was Jack.
“What do you, me, Hugh, and Maxine have in common? We were all doing such a great job that we had to be fired! Can you explain that?” he said. “I hate the sound of ‘fired.’”
“Well, they did you a favor. You’re a smart guy and you need to be with a company that will appreciate you.”
“I love you. It’s like calling Mom. Can I use you as a reference on a possible job in Chicago?”
“I assume you want me to lie.”
“Tell them that I’m the most wonderful man you’ve ever known. Hey, you’ll be happy to know that they’re selling the company. Ran it into the wall and now they have to sell it for parts.”
“Not all breakups are bad,” I replied, feeling no malice toward my former company or any of its people, but only peace for having moved on.
“What are you up to?” he asked, changing his tone.
“Right now, I’m cleaning out the barn and every day looking for work. Maybe I’ll hire out as a cowgirl.”
“Oooh, tight chaps. Send me pictures,” he said, and we said our good-byes.
Jack’s call put my stomach in knots, reminding me that executives were having to leave town to find jobs. How was I ever going to find an entertainment job near my ranch, for God’s sake? I had always had a big job. I was, in fact, defined by my job. Without it I was adrift and tense and worried.
One problem, of course, was money, and the fact that ours was being depleted. I didn’t know how to reinvent myself with speed and certainty. Liz was still working, of course, but ours wasn’t a one-income lifestyle. However, if I looked more closely, the bigger problem was power—and that mine had been usurped. Certainly, power as I’d come to know it—an anointing by men who knighted me with money. Deep down, I knew that true power wasn’t bankable—but I was hard-pressed to believe that truth in my gut.
Liz put her arm around me, startling me with her stealthlike presence. “You don’t want a traditional job. You want something with animals and the ranch and the earth. Leave the bullshit back in the corporate pastures,” she said, nuzzling my neck like a horse.
“My horse’s eyes turned blue this morning,” I said, and looked at Liz for a reaction. “I swear. And I thought I saw…a woman in there.”
“In your horse’s eyes?”
“Yes.” I shook my head. “Don’t say anything. It’ll only make me feel crazier.”
Liz gave it a beat. “She does have nice legs.”
*
Another week went by. I glanced over at the stack of mail as the bills piled up. Liz had taken over handling them, as their mere existence threw me into depression. Beside the bills sat another package just like the first one, postmarked San Francisco. I opened the package and found another runestone, a repeat of the first stone—almost as if the old lady who’d sent it wasn’t sure it was getting through.
“Teiwaz.” I held up the runestone with mock sanctity. “What’s she doing?”
“Maybe saying you were a warrior then and you’re a warrior now. Twice a warrior, in case you’re missing the point.”
“I doubt she’s thinking it through at that level,” I said, exasperated at the old woman who was so daffy she was sending me runestones without either of us knowing why.
I located her number on my desk and rang her. No answer. And yet I believed—I knew—she was there. Was she not answering because she was crazy, or because I was bothering her, or because…she wanted to see me in person? I don’t know why I believed the last thought was true, but I did. She wants to see me in person. I decided I was losing my mind just by association.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Do you need help?” Liz handed me pliers and an electric screwdriver. Her arm was doing better now, but I still didn’t want to take the chance she could reinjure it.
“No, I’ll figure it out.” I trudged off toward the far pasture to fix the horse waterers in the field. I was certain, once I unscrewed the center lid separating the two watering holes, I’d see the apparatus and figure out how to fix it.
Once in the pasture, I realized I needed a socket wrench to get the lid off, so I trudged back to the feed room for more tools. It was thirty-four degrees out, and not unpleasant. I marveled at how I used to think fifty degrees required a coat. Now a sweatshirt in thirty-degree weather was fine.
Field waterers for horses were fairly limited in design, and we’d chosen a style that looked like large encased plastic tubs with two balls on top. The balls covered the water and kept mosquitoes out, thus thwarting the spread of West Nile virus, a deadly killer of horses. When the horses wanted to drink, they pushed the balls down with their noses and drank the water beneath. But now the entire apparatus was leaking, threatening to freeze and burst the valve once the temperatures got down to fifteen degrees for any period of time.
I returned to the waterer and, after angling the wrench, I got the nuts unscrewed, released the lid, and lifted it off. Underneath, the apparatus looked exactly like the tank of a toilet: the large black float had two joints with interlocking screws. I chose the larger joint, which looked like it had more control over the tilt of the float, and gently unscrewed it.
The result was catastrophic. Water shot out of the top of the waterer like a geyser and never let up. I retightened the screw, but nothing happened to change the water show. Water was gathering around my feet at the base of the waterer, and with a hard freeze predicted in twenty-four hours, this wasn’t good. I pulled the flotation device up and out of the water, trying to temporarily stem the flow. Nothing slowed it. As the pasture flooded, I ran toward the house.
“Call the plumber! I turned the wrong valve.”
“Turn it back!” Liz shouted to me.
“Don’t you think I tried that? Call the plumber!”
I ran back to the feed room and found a long metal rod, intending to cut off the water flow below ground at the waterer’s shutoff valve. I also grabbed a huge wrench to wrest the PVC pipe cover off, then looked down the narrow three-foot hole in the ground that housed the shutoff valve below the frost line. Instead of the valve that I expected to see, I stared into a three-foot-deep tube of mud and water. Sticking the iron rod down into the hole, I felt around for the shutoff valve, while every second the pool of flood water around me was growing, the clay ground unable to suck up any of it.
“Shit!” I shouted to the heavens as I realized I was going to have to put my arm down the hole, feel for the valve, and turn it off by hand. I pushed the sleeves of my sweatshirt up and started to put my arm into the water, then realized my shirt would be soggy with mud. I gave it
up and jerked off my sweatshirt, realizing I hadn’t put on a bra this morning, then threw the shirt on the ground. Naked from the waist up, in thirty-four-degree weather, I hoped the neighbors didn’t own binoculars.
Rune had her nose down a few yards from me, watching with real interest as my naked breasts lay pressed against the mud, my cheek smashed into the dirt. I jammed my arm into the mud and water, right up to my armpit. “Crap!” I muttered for good measure. After a few seconds I located the valve and strained to shut it off, but it was so deep, my fingers could only brush it, not grasp it. I pulled my arm out and grabbed the iron turn key. This time I knew where to aim it. I locked it onto the valve, carefully turned it, and watched the water shut down. I stood up, naked to the waist and covered in mud.
“Good news, the plumber was right around the corner. He’s here!” Liz waved her arms in the air to make sure I could see her, as she stood a hundred yards away shouting at me, the plumber standing at her side.
I yanked my muddy shirt back on as he and Liz jogged toward me.
“I thought you couldn’t get the water shut off,” he said, obviously startled by the sight of me.
“Just did.”
He gave me the once-over. “You see this valve?” he asked, pointing to the one I’d loosened inside the horse tank and taking the tone of a vo-tech instructor. “The key thing is…don’t ever mess with it.”
“I’ll make a note of that,” I said as the plumber left, promising to return later if need be.
I was washing up at the barn sink, letting the warm water take the chill off my arm. “I had to put my arm down that three-foot mud hole up to my armpit.” I scrunched up my face at the mere thought of what I’d endured.
“I can’t believe you did that. Water moccasins spend the winter underground, and there could have been a snake in there.”
“Are you kidding me?” My voice rose.
“You didn’t know that?” Liz grinned.
“No, I didn’t know that, or I would have approached it a little differently!”
