Moral Disorder

by Margaret Atwood

  In those days they picked up animals the way they picked up burrs. Creatures adhered to them. In addition to the sheep, cows, chickens, and ducks, they’d gathered in a dog they called Howl – a blue tick hound, possibly even a purebred: he’d been wearing an expensive collar, though no name tag. He’d wandered in off the side road – dumped there by whoever had mistreated him so badly that he rolled over on his back and peed if anyone spoke a harsh word to him. There was no point in trying to train him, said Tig: he was too easily frightened.

  Howl slept in the kitchen, sometimes, where he barked in the middle of the night for no reason. At other times he went on excursions and wasn’t seen for days. He would come back with injuries: porcupine quills in his nose, sore paws, flesh wounds from encounters with – possibly – raccoons. Once, a scattering of bird-shot pellets from a trespassing hunter. Though he was a coward, he had no discretion.

  They’d also sprouted a number of cats, offspring of the single cat that had been transported to the farm from the city, and was supposed to have been spayed. Obviously there had been a mistake, because this cat kittened underneath a corner of the house. The kittens were quite wild. They ran away and plunged into their burrow if Nell even tried to get near them. Then they would peer out, hissing and trying to look ferocious. When they were older they moved to the barn, where they hunted mice and had secrets. Once in a while, a gizzard – squirrel, Nell suspected – or else a tail, or some other chewed-up body-part offering, would appear on the back-door threshold, where Nell would be sure to step on it, especially if her feet happened to be bare, as they often were in summer. The cats had a vestigial memory of civilization and its rituals, it seemed. They knew they were supposed to pay rent, but they were confused about the details.

  They ate out of the dog’s dish, which was kept outside the back door. Howl didn’t bark at them or chase them: they were too terrifying for him. Sometimes they slept on the cows. It was suspected that they had dealings in the hen house – eggshells had been found – but nothing could be proved.

  The white horse – the white mare – had a name, unlike the cats. Her name was Gladys. She had been installed with Tig and Nell because of Nell’s friend Billie, who was a horse-lover from childhood but who lived in the city now, leaving her no outlets. Billie had seen the white horse (or mare) standing in a damp field, all by herself, hanging her head disconsolately. She was in a sad condition. Her mane was tangled, her white coat was muddy, and her hooves had not been dealt with for so long that her toes were turned up at the ends like Turkish slippers. Any more time in that swamp, said Billie, and she’d develop foot rot, and once a horse had that, it would soon go lame and that was pretty much game over. Billie had been so outraged by such callous neglect that she’d bought Gladys from a drunken and (she’d said) no doubt insane farmer, for a hundred dollars, which was a good deal more than poor Gladys was worth in her decrepit state.

  But then Billie’d had no place to put her.

  Nell and Tig had a place, however. They had lots of room – acres of it! What could be more perfect for Gladys (who was past her prime, who was too fat, who had something wrong with her wind so that she wheezed and coughed) than to come and stay at the farm? Just – of course – until something else could be found for her.

  How could Nell say no? She could have said she had enough to do without adding a horse to her long, long list. She could have said she wasn’t running a retirement home for rejected quadrupeds. But she hadn’t wanted to sound selfish and cruel. Also, Billie was quite tall and determined, and had a convincing manner.

  “I don’t know anything about horses,” Nell had said weakly. She didn’t add that she was afraid of them. They were large and jumpy, and they rolled their eyes too much. She thought of them as unstable and prone to rages.

  “Oh, it’s easy. I’ll teach you,” said Billie. “There’s nothing to it once you get the hang of it. You’ll love Gladys! She has such a sweet nature! She’s just a cupcake!”

  When he heard about Gladys, Tig was reserved. He said that horses needed a lot of care. They also needed a lot of feed. But he’d accumulated all of the other animals – the ones that had been chosen and paid for, rather than just straying onto the property or being spawned on it or dumped on it – and Nell had had no say in those choices. She found herself defending the advent of Gladys as if she herself had made a deliberate and principled decision to take her in, even though she was already regretting her own slackness and lack of spine.

  Gladys arrived in a rented horse car, and was backed out of it easily enough. “Come on, you old sweetie pie,” Billie said. “There! Isn’t she gorgeous?” Gladys turned around obediently and let herself be viewed. She had a round thick body, with legs that were too short for her bulk. She was part Welsh pit pony, part Arab, said Billie. That accounted for her odd shape. It also meant she would want to eat a lot. Welsh ponies were like that. Billie had made the trip in the horse car with her; she’d bought her a new bridle.

  Nell was expected to pay for this bridle, and also for the horse-car rental: Gladys was now hers, it appeared. Surely that had not been the original understanding, but Billie thought it had been. She seemed to feel she was doing Nell a favour – had given her a priceless gift. She didn’t charge for the original hundred dollars, nor for her own time. She’d taken a week off work to set Gladys up with Nell. She made a point of mentioning that.

  Gladys regarded Nell through her long, frowsy forelock. She had the weary, blank, but calculating look of a carnival con artist: she was sizing Nell up, figuring her out, estimating how to get round her. Then she ducked her head and snatched at a tuft of grass.

  “None of that, you naughty girl,” said Billie, jerking Gladys’s head up by the bridle. “You can’t let them get away with anything,” she told Nell. She led Gladys to the end of the drive shed, where there was a fenced-in space originally intended for goats – Nell had fought off the goat idea – and tied her up to one of the posts. “We’ll put her in here for now,” she said.

  Billie volunteered to stay at the farm until Gladys was settled in, so Nell made up the recently acquired pullout couch in the former back parlour. The previous summer, Nell and Tig had tried to incubate some eggs in there, turning them and sprinkling them with water as per the instructions in the booklet that came with the incubator, but something went wrong and the chicks emerged with goggling eyes and swollen, blue-veined, unfinished stomachs, and had to be hit with a shovel and buried in the back field. Howl dug them up again, several times, after which the cats got into them, with unpleasant results. Nell kept finding tiny claws in unexpected places, as if the chicks were growing up through the barnyard dirt like disagreeable weeds.

  Nell had taken to keeping tomato plants under a grow light in the back parlour, but she’d moved them to the upstairs landing in preparation for Billie’s week-long stay.

  Much had to be done for Gladys. Equipment was needed. Billie contributed some of her old horse things – a brush, a curry comb, a hoof pick – but the saddle had to be bought. It was second-hand, but still – thought Nell – breathtakingly expensive.

  “You need the English, not the Western,” Billie had said. “That way you’ll learn to be a real rider.” What she meant, it turned out, was that with the English saddle you had to grip with your knees or else you would fall off. Nell would rather have had the Western saddle – she had no interest in plummeting off a horse – but at least with Gladys it wasn’t very far down to the ground, because of her stumpy little legs.

  Saddle soap had to be applied to the saddle and worked in, metal items on the tackle had to be polished. A horse blanket was needed too, and a crop, and some old towels, for rubbing Gladys down. Gladys would have to be rubbed down like a boxer after every session of exercise, said Billie, because horses were delicate creatures, and the number of diseases or conditions they could get was staggering.

  After the tackle had been brought up to scratch, Gladys herself had to be gone over, inch by inch. Nell di
d the work – because she had to learn how, didn’t she? – with supervision by Billie. Dust and old hair came off Gladys in clouds, long white horsehairs from her mane and tail detached themselves and floated onto Nell. Gladys bore all this patiently, and might even have enjoyed it. Billie said she was enjoying it – she seemed to have a pipeline to Gladys’s mind. She spent some time patiently explaining that mind to Nell so Nell wouldn’t do anything that might spook Gladys and cause her to panic and bolt. The hens were a potential danger; so was the laundry. Nell had strung a clothesline between two of the apple trees out at the front of the house, which was therefore a no-go zone. “They hate flapping,” Billie said. “They see a different picture out of each eye, so they don’t like surprises. Life comes at them from all sides. It’s unsettling for them. You can imagine.”

  A farrier was called in – luckily Billie knew one – and Gladys had her hooves trimmed, and sparkling new horseshoes applied. She was looking friskier now, she was taking more of an interest. Her ears swivelled around at the sound of Nell, who always had a carrot with her, or a sugar cube – this because of a hot tip from Billie.

  “She has to bond with you,” said Billie. “Breathe into her nose.”

  Then Nell had to try digging the stones out of Gladys’s hooves. This needed to be done at least twice a day, said Billie, and also before riding Gladys, and after riding Gladys, because you never knew when she might pick up a stone. Nell was afraid of being kicked, but Gladys didn’t mind having her feet picked out. “She knows it’s for her own good,” said Billie, whacking Gladys on the rump. “Don’t you, you big lump?” Gladys was on a diet, despite the carrots. Being thinner – Billie claimed – would help with the wheezing problems. It would be necessary to ride Gladys every day: she needed the exercise, and also the excitement. Horses were easily bored, said Billie.

  At last it was time to try Gladys out. The saddle was lifted onto her, the girths tightened. Gladys put her ears back and gave a crafty sideways look. Billie swung up into the saddle and kicked Gladys in the flanks, and Gladys cantered off down the road to the back field. They looked quite funny – top-heavy. Tall Billie astride fat Gladys, with Gladys’s stumpy little legs whirring away underneath her like an eggbeater.

  After a while Billie and Gladys came back. Gladys was wheezing, Billie pink in the face. “She’s been ridden by too many people,” said Billie. “She has a hard mouth. I bet she was used for kiddie rides.”

  “What do you mean?” said Nell.

  “She has a whole bagful of tricks,” said Billie. “Bad habits. She’ll try them out on you, so look out.”

  “Tricks?”

  “You just have to stay on,” said Billie grimly, dismounting. “Once she knows you’re on to her, she’ll cut out the monkey business. You’re a bad girl,” she said to Gladys. Gladys coughed.

  Nell found out what the tricks were the first time she tried to ride Gladys. Billie ran alongside, shouting instructions. “Don’t let her get near the fence, she’ll try to scrape you off! Keep her away from the trees! Don’t let her stop, give her a kick! Pull her head up, she’s not allowed to eat that! Don’t pay any attention to that cough, she’s doing it on purpose!”

  Though Gladys wasn’t going very fast, Nell clung on, resisting the impulse to lean forward and clutch Gladys by the mane. She had a vision of Gladys rearing up on her two back legs or else her two front legs, as in films, with the same result in either case – Nell shooting off into the bushes, headfirst. But nothing like that happened. At the end of the track, Gladys halted, wheezing and panting, and Nell actually got her to turn around. Then – after Gladys had glanced back over her shoulder with an incredulous but resigned stare – they repeated their odd merry-go-round motion, back to their starting point.

  “Well done!” said Billie. “Good girl!” The praise was for Gladys. “See? You just have to be strict,” she said to Nell.

  When the week was over, Billie left, in a sullen mood, because Gladys had not been sufficiently grateful for having been rescued – she’d nipped Billie on the bum when having her head tied to a post as part of her diet procedure. Once Billie was no longer in the picture, Gladys and Nell came to an understanding. True, every time Nell approached with the bridle Gladys would start wheezing, but once the saddle was on she’d remember she might get a carrot at the end of her ordeal, and she would settle down, and off they would go, down to the back field – always the same track. They avoided the gravel side road – neither of them liked trucks – and the front of the house as well, because of the laundry; they didn’t ride across the fields, because of hidden groundhog holes. During these rides Nell spent most of the time trying to make Gladys behave and the rest of it letting her do what she wanted, because Nell was curious about what that might be.

  Sometimes Gladys wanted to stop in mid-canter to see if Nell would fall off. Sometimes she wanted to stand still, swishing her tail and sighing as if extremely tired. Sometimes she wanted to revolve slowly in a circle. Sometimes she wanted to eat weeds and wayside clover – Nell drew the line at that. Sometimes she wanted to go over to the barnyard fence and watch the sheep and cows, and also the cats, which had taken to sleeping on her broad, comfortable back.

  Between the two of them, Nell and Gladys passed their riding time pleasantly enough. It was a conspiracy, a double impersonation: Nell pretending to be a person who was riding a horse, Gladys pretending to be a horse that was being ridden.

  Sometimes they didn’t bother cantering or trotting. They ambled along in the sunlight, lazily and without purpose. At these times Nell would talk to Gladys, which was better than talking to Howl, who was an idiot, or to the hens or cats. Gladys had to listen: she couldn’t get away. “What do you think, Gladys?” Nell would say. “Should I have a baby?” Gladys, trudging along, sighing, would swivel an ear back in the direction of the voice. “Tig isn’t sure. He says he isn’t ready. Should I just do it? Would he get angry? Would it ruin everything? What do you think?”

  Gladys would cough.

  Nell would have preferred to have had this conversation with her mother, but her mother wasn’t available. Anyway she probably wouldn’t have said much more than Gladys. She too would have coughed, because she would have disapproved. Nell and Tig were – after all – not married. How could they possibly be married, when Tig couldn’t manage to get himself divorced?

  But if Nell’s mother knew about Gladys, maybe she would come up to the farm. Her mother had been a devoted horse person once, a long time ago. She’d had two horses of her own. Was it conceivable that, with Gladys dangled like a lure in front of her, she might overcome her reservations – about Tig, about Nell, about their unorthodox living arrangements? Wouldn’t she be tempted? Wouldn’t she long to have one small idyllic canter out to the back field, for old times’ sake, with Gladys’s pony-sized legs going like an eggbeater? Wouldn’t she want to know that Nell now loved – improbably, and at last – one of the same activities she herself had once loved?

  Perhaps. But Nell had no way of knowing. She and her mother weren’t exactly speaking. They weren’t exactly not speaking, either. The silence that had taken the place of speech between them had become its own form of speech. In this silence, language was held suspended. It contained many questions, though no definite answers.

  As spring turned into summer, Tig and Nell had more and more visitors, especially on the weekends. These visitors would just happen to be driving by, on a little outing from the city, and they’d drop in to say hello, and then they’d be invited for lunch – Tig loved cooking big impromptu lunches, featuring huge vats of soup and giant wads of cheese, and Nell’s home-baked bread – and then the day would wear on and the visitors would stroll out to the back field for a walk. They were not allowed to ride Gladys, because of her bad manners with strangers, said Nell, though really she’d become possessive about her, she wanted to keep Gladys all to herself. Then Tig would say they might as well stay for dinner, and then it would be too dark or too late or they would
be too drunk to drive back to the city, and they’d end up on the pullout couch in the back parlour, and – if there were a lot of them – dispersed here and there, some of them on foam mattresses or sofas.

  In the mornings they would sit around after breakfast – stacks of Tig’s wheat-germ pancakes were featured – saying how restful it was in the country, while Nell and Tig tidied up the dishes. They might stand around with their arms dangling at their sides, asking if there was anything they could do – Nell could remember when she herself was like that – and Nell might send them out to the henhouse with a basket padded with tea towels, to collect eggs, which gave them a thrill. Or she would put them to work weeding the garden. They would say how therapeutic it was to get dirt on their fingers; then they would breathe deeply as if they’d just discovered air; then they would have lunch again. After they’d left, Nell would wash their sheets and towels and hang them up on the outside line to flap in the sunshine between the apple trees.

  Usually these visitors to the farm were couples, but Nell’s baby sister, Lizzie, would come up by herself. The frequency of her visits was connected with the troubles in her life: if there were lots of troubles she would visit, if there weren’t many troubles she wouldn’t.

  The troubles were about men, of which there had already been a number in her life. The men behaved badly. Nell listened to the accounts of their thoughtlessness, their contrariness, and their betrayals, coupled with descriptions of Lizzie’s own shortcomings, flaws, and mistakes. She joined in the task of deciphering the men’s casual remarks – remarks that usually had a mean and hurtful undertone, it was decided. Then Nell would take Lizzie’s side and denounce the men as unworthy. At this point Lizzie would turn around and defend them. These men were exceptional – they were smart, talented, and sexy. In fact, they were perfect, except that they didn’t love Lizzie enough. Nell sometimes wondered how much enough would be.