Faraway Horses

by Buck Brannaman

  For some reason, Adrian didn’t put her arms out to break her fall. Her head slammed into the ground. When I got to her, she was unconscious. She wasn’t breathing, and her heart had stopped.

  I yelled for help, and Jood ran out of the barn. Fortunately, Jood knew CPR, and as she worked on Adrian, I ran inside to call an ambulance.

  Although the local hospital arranged for a flight to the trauma center in Billings, the doctors told me they were pretty sure Adrian wouldn’t live through the flight. Ninety percent of her brain had hemorrhaged, and even if she made it to the hospital alive, the swelling would likely kill her within a day or two.

  Adrian was in a very deep coma and put on life support. She was at what the doctors call a level eight, which is non-responsive. The neurologist was blunt about it. He told me on several occasions, “I can’t give you any good news. I can’t even tell you that she’s going to live. In fact, I’m surprised she’s lived this long.”

  I spent the next seven weeks by Adrian’s side. I slept in my clothes in her hospital room for the first few weeks, and then I stayed in Billings on the living room couch at a place that belonged to the daughter of a friend from Belgrade.

  My insurance was not enough to cover all the medical bills. Plus, I had other expenses. I fell way behind because I wasn’t working. When I ran out of money, Tom Dorrance and some of my other California friends put together a benefit clinic in Malibu on my behalf. The event gave me the money to live on while I was by Adrian’s side in the hospital.

  The frustration was awful. I missed Adrian horribly, but I couldn’t talk to her. There was nothing I could do to help her. It was the same kind of frustration I had experienced when my mother died, and in my misery I got a tiny glimpse of what my father might have felt.

  The Logans spent lots of time at the hospital, too. Their beautiful daughter had been hurt, and since it seemed as if they had to resent somebody, they resented me. I couldn’t tell if they blamed me for the accident or if they just hated me because I married Adrian and took her away from home.

  They didn’t mince words. When I’d walk into the hospital room, Audrey would look at me and ask, “What are you doing back here? She never wanted to be married to you.”

  It wasn’t true, of course, but it didn’t matter to me then. Adrian’s getting well was all that mattered.

  Weeks went by, and I sat with Adrian every day. The only times I wasn’t by her bed and talking to her to try to make contact, I was in the hospital chapel praying like I’d never prayed before. Desperation makes for a religious man. Seven weeks went by, but there was still no sign of improvement. It seemed there was no hope.

  A constant stream of people came by to tell me how much they loved me and cared for me. They all gave me a lot of support. Allan and Jood and Preacher Dave were there. Chas Weldon, the saddlemaker, came by, and so did Bob Mulkey, and my friends Bob Potts and Greg Eliel. Ray and Caroline Hunt called, and so did the Dorrance family. I wasn’t alone, but it was a very lonely time.

  I was in the hospital’s waiting room when a phone call came from Jeff. The last time I’d seen him, I wanted to beat the hell out of him because I felt that he’d taken advantage of our friendship. I’m sure he felt the same way. I can only imagine what he must have gone through deciding whether or not to call after he heard about Adrian. But he did call, and I was grateful. We talked a little bit, and a few days later he visited me at the hospital. A lot of what had seemed so important in the past no longer mattered now, and continuing to harbor the bitterness and anger that I had felt was now senseless. Jeff and I spent time together and rebuilt our friendship, both of us realizing that the reason our friendship had ended was the reason we were friends once again.

  Betsy rarely went into Adrian’s room. She felt that Pete and Audrey resented her, too, if only because she was my foster mother. She waited in the hall or in the waiting room for me. When I came out for a few minutes’ breather, she would give me a reassuring hug. Betsy was almost seventy years old at the time, and the days she spent at the hospital were hard on her, too.

  At nine o’clock one night during the eighth week, Jood came by to help out. I had run out of strength and hope, and while Jood stayed with Adrian, I went down to the chapel. I got down on my knees and said, “God, You’ve been listening to me for a long time, and I’ve given all I’ve got. I feel like I’m used up. I don’t have anything left. All I ask is that You just give her a chance—give us a chance—that we might get our lives back, and that I might talk to my wife … my friend again. I don’t know if You really give signs, but I need one now.”

  I sat there for a long time, feeling sorry for myself, and lonesome, too. Then feeling a little guilty for trying to tell God what I thought He ought to do, I went back up to Adrian’s room.

  As I walked in, Jood looked at me and asked, “Where were you two minutes ago?”

  “Down in the chapel,” I replied. “I was just praying, asking God to give us a break.”

  “Well, you got your break,” Jood said. “Two minutes ago Adrian’s eyes opened and she squeezed my hand. She didn’t look at me, but her eyes did come open.”

  Adrian started to regain consciousness. She became aware of things, but only on a very basic level. At first she didn’t recognize me. One of her doctors, a woman named Morstad, suggested that I go home and get her wedding ring, on the possibility that seeing it might eventually help Adrian remember she was married to me. I didn’t want to leave the hospital, so I asked a friend to get it, and when it came I put it on Adrian’s hand.

  Whenever the Logans came to visit, I left them alone so they could have private time with their daughter. They told her she was not in love with me and had made a mistake in marrying me.

  And because Adrian’s memory of her parents was long term, she recognized them long before she recognized me. To her, I was just a friendly guy at the hospital who was taking her to her different therapies, cheering her on, helping her in and out of her wheelchair, washing her, changing her diapers, and getting her ready for bed at night. She still didn’t know I was her husband, so I wasn’t much competition for her parents.

  The doctors had suggested that Adrian not be asked to deal with adult situations or be expected to be capable of adult reasoning and thinking. In short, they asked me not to put any sort of demands on our relationship. They knew full well that Pete and Audrey were trying to turn her against me, and although the doctors advised them against it, the Logans weren’t listening. Adrian was very childlike when she came out of her coma, which the Logans seemed to appreciate. Manipulating their little girl was much easier than misleading the adult woman who had made the decision to marry a cowboy like me. They wanted their daughter back home again, and this was an opportunity to tear her away from me.

  Before the accident, Adrian was never foul-mouthed, she never swore, but when she came out of the coma she could put a truck driver to shame. Her recovery wasn’t like in the movies, where someone wakes up out of a coma and gives you a big hug just before the closing credits roll. When Adrian wasn’t hollering and swearing, she was a wild animal, screaming and making no sense. It was as if a bunch of tape players were all going at once, as if thousands of words were coming out of her mouth at the same time. Every thirty seconds or so, I’d hear a word that I recognized. Adrian’s mind was so jumbled up, it seemed as if she was possessed by the devil.

  The pain and despair of being the spouse who had not been hurt began to make me question my own sanity. I’d rather have been dead than to see Adrian go through what she was going through. If I could have traded places with her, I would have. And I know that if I had been able to trade places, I wouldn’t have been alone. My friends and my family would have been there for me.

  Adrian spent nearly three months in rehabilitation. Minute by minute, day by day, her recovery continued. She had a busy schedule. Every day she’d go from occupational therapy to physical therapy to speech therapy. I pushed her wheelchair to each session. When I could help
the therapists by taking part, I did. Sometimes I was the cheerleader, and sometimes I was the therapist. The doctors wanted me to take part as much as possible because they were trying to help her remember me and remember what we were.

  It wasn’t easy. When you look at someone you love so much, your best friend, and she is finally able to speak again, and her voice sounds like it used to, as if she’d never been hurt, and you look in her eyes and see hate, and when she looks back at you and she says, “I hate you, I wish you would never, ever come back,” it’s hard. And then when a minute later she says, “I love you so much. Thank God you’re here, I couldn’t do it without you,” that’s hard, too.

  The entire time Adrian was in rehabilitation, her parents tried to convince her to go home with them rather than stay with me. They knew why the wedding ring was back on Adrian’s hand, and they didn’t want her to remember she was married to me. And since the ring didn’t mean anything to the Logans, they convinced her sister Leslie to take it off her hand.

  By the time I saw the ring was missing, Leslie and her parents had already gone back to the apartment they had rented in Billings. I knew what had happened. I went to their apartment, and when Leslie answered the door, I asked, “Where’s Adrian’s ring?”

  She said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I want her ring, and I want it now.” I knew she was lying.

  Leslie knew she was caught. “I’m not going to give it to you.”

  Pete and Audrey came to the door. I knew Pete carried a gun in his coat pocket; he’d told me he did. He had his hand on it now.

  I looked at him and lost my temper. “You better not pull that gun out of your pocket unless you plan on using it because I’m going to shove it up your ass.”

  Audrey jumped in front of husband and pushed him back out of the doorway. “Pete, don’t do it.”

  “You better not, Pete,” I continued, “because if your wife can hold you back, you don’t want any part of me.” I turned to Leslie, “This is not the end,” I said and walked away.

  A few days later Adrian left the hospital. She left me, too. The day she got hurt, we were as close as we had ever been, but the person she was before the fall no longer existed. During her recovery she and I hung in there and saw it through, all the tough parts and the tougher parts. She did great, but it wasn’t enough.

  Still, as I helped Adrian into her parents’ car, she told me, “I’m just going to go home to get well.”

  Perhaps she genuinely believed she would come back to me, but I told her, “Adrian, you aren’t responsible for what you’re saying right now. You don’t understand what you’re saying. I know your parents will never let you leave. In a few days, they’ll have you convinced that I’m some kind of monster. This will probably be the last time I ever tell you that I love you, and it’ll probably be the last time we ever see each other.”

  A week later, I was served divorce papers. I lost everything. Our house and twenty acres, the barn and corrals that I’d built were all gone—my few assets were added to the Logan estate.

  I had no money, but my bills were paid and I had a little time before the divorce became final and I had to get out of the house. My response was to hide. I stayed indoors with the door locked and shades pulled down, watching TV and drinking coffee. I didn’t talk to anyone.

  After two months of such mourning, I woke to a sunrise much the same color as the sunset I remembered October 18. I got up, walked out to my round pen for the last time, and stepped onto a horse. And as the sun rose, so did my spirits. It was time to live again.

  I drove out of that part of my life with only a pickup truck and a horse trailer. For most of that spring I just kind of bounced around, hanging out with Jeff and his dad and some of my other Flying D friends and helping out with sorting cattle and branding. I did a couple of clinics, which kept me going part of the time, but I wasn’t really going anywhere in particular until later on that summer when I went to work for Jorie Butler Kent’s polo operation.

  Later that year I got a letter from Adrian. She sounded as if nothing had really happened. It was as though the way she divorced me hadn’t devastated me financially, hadn’t taken everything I had ever worked for. She didn’t come right out and say it, but reading between the lines it seemed as if she was trying to patch things up. She did say she wanted to hear from me, but by then it was too late. The pages had already been turned on that chapter in my life.

  6

  Welfare

  ONE OF THE MOST INTERESTING and important horses in my life was named Bif.

  He came into my life during the summer of 1988. I was in despair over the ending of my first marriage, and I had been looking for months for ways to save myself. Once I started working with Bif, however, things began to look up. He was an important turning point in my life, and I damn sure was in his.

  Because Bif was a dangerous horse to be around—he was lethal with his feet—I had to put so much of myself into working with him, not just to succeed, but to survive. It was hard to figure at the time, but Bif was quite a gift to me, all part of the healing process. He was also a validation of the approach to training horses that I had become associated with.

  I named him Bif after Marty McFly’s nemesis in Back to the Future, a popular movie at the time. The movie Bif was a big, tough, violent sort of person. (“Bif” was also an acronym for “Big Ignorant Fool,” something my friends came up with when I started working with the horse.)

  Bif had belonged to a horse outfit on the Madison River in Montana, an outfit that had a reputation for raising tough horses, broncs that tended to have problems with people. Rodeo stock contractors who knew about the horses figured anything with that outfit’s brand had a pretty good chance of making a good bucking horse, a real draw at rodeos.

  I was working on the other side of the river at the time, and I had been watching the outfit’s cavvy of horses for several weeks. Bif stood out from the bunch. He was a big red thoroughbred-type Quarter Horse, and I knew he had some age on him—he looked to be four, maybe five years old. I needed a good gelding for the clinics I gave, so one day I rode across the Madison for a closer look.

  The horse had a head that only a mother could love, and then only with a little effort. I could see he was pretty troubled and pretty scared. And I knew the reason why.

  The folks who owned him had their own way to halterbreak their horses. They’d put them in tie stalls and manhandle the halters on. This wasn’t too hard to do when the horses were babies and were in tie stalls that measured only twelve by twelve feet. Then the horses would be kept tied up and away from food or water, sometimes for long periods of time, so that when they were untied, the young horses would readily lead to the stream to drink.

  Even though the people had the best of intentions, the treatment was rough, and what came next was worse. Instead of teaching the horse how to give to pressure, one man would pull on his head as another one whipped him from behind. That’s because the people thought the horse would associate getting a drink of water with leading. I don’t know which brain trust thought this up, but it lacked a little in the logic department, not to mention how unkind it was.

  You can only imagine the wrecks that resulted. Some horses couldn’t handle the pressure, and when they’d try to pull away, they’d flip over backward. They’d begin kicking and striking and biting at the rope, with their ears pinned back.

  Unfortunately, a lot of people still use this primitive method. They muscle their horses around and give “cowboys” a bad name.

  Bif had been “trained” to lead this way. He’d also been branded and castrated during this time. Everything that had been done to him had been negative, and as far as he was concerned, humans were the enemy. But Bif was a survivor. His spirit didn’t bend, and so rather than work with him, the horse handlers simply turned him out to pasture for a long period of time. This was a bad move all around. It meant he got to dwell on his negative exposure to humans.


  That was the way Bif came back in from pasture when I met him. I could tell that he’d pretty much decided nothing like his past was ever going to happen to him again. But I still liked what I saw, and, after some thought, I bit the bullet and made the deal to buy him. I basically paid what is called “canner price,” what the dog-food people would have paid.

  The folks in the outfit ran him into a big pen, and I rode in on my saddle horse and roped him. I thought I’d try to lead him into the horse trailer, but at the time I didn’t realize just how unhalterbroke he was.

  There was a bunch of activity as we were getting the trailer positioned, and I had Bif stopped with the rope around his neck. I needed to check on the truck, so I asked someone in the corral to hold on to Bif. “Don’t pull on him at all,” I said, “just hold the rope, and keep it from getting down in the manure.” The corrals at this outfit were really dirty, and the manure and mud were a couple of feet deep.

  As soon as I started to walk away, Bif felt pressure from the rope and flipped over backward four times within about sixty seconds. It was awful. I ran back and got the rope off Bif’s head, then urged him into the trailer free, just as you would load a cow.

  As I hauled Bif away, I reflected on what a potential idiot I was for getting myself into another “project.” I just couldn’t have picked a nice easy one. Oh no, I needed to prove something.

  When we got home, I chased Bif into an indoor round corral. A round corral is essential to the kind of training I do because there are no corners where a horse can run and hide. A round corral allows a horse to know that there is no place he can go where he can’t move forward, no place where he can stop and lose his energy.

  Bif stayed down at the west end, walking in and out of shafts of afternoon sunlight. I took a deep breath and walked toward him. Holding the tail of my halter rope, I tossed the halter harmlessly on the ground behind him. I was hoping he’d move his feet and step away, which would be a beginning. That’s because a cornered horse instinctively moves his hindquarters toward whatever is threatening his safety. He stops his feet and prepares to kick (some studs will present their front end to be able to bite as well as rear up and strike with their forefeet).