My Million-Dollar Donkey

by East, Ginny;

  Occasionally, all thousand pounds of Chiquita would accidently step on my boot and I’d yell and punch her, but I followed the reprimand with sugar cubes, two for her and one for me. I’d suck the sweet sugar slowly, running my hands through Chiquita’s mane and whispering that she had to watch where she stepped. It never occurred to me that I should take my own advice.

  I don’t remember when or why we gave up that horse. I don’t recall saying good-bye, or pining for her months later. Most likely, school started, so Dad simply stopped the rental program and I went back to the dance studio, my horse affair becoming nothing more than a summer fling once I returned to my true love, dance.

  Thinking about horses now felt like rewinding my life to that specific point when I decided to choose dance over all other interests. No one ever told me I had to make a choice, yet make one I had, and suddenly the idea that my narrow youthful mindset might have stopped me from exploring the world beyond dance seemed a correctable mistake. Where better to rediscover the love of a horse than on 50 acres?

  “Donkey needs a companion,” I told Mark while running a curry comb over his coat (the donkey’s, not my husband’s). We were the only family in Fannin County with a donkey groomed as finely as a prize show dog. “Donkeys are herd animals, and without a herd to hang out with, he’s unhappy; I can tell.”

  Mark looked at the donkey, now blinking calmly and munching on the M&Ms he found in my pocket. (Again, the donkey, not my husband).

  “He looks perfectly content to me.”

  “He’s not. Trust me. He needs a horse.”

  Mark was cleaning up fallen wood around the pasture. He stepped over a tree trunk and put his chainsaw on a stump. “He needs a horse?”

  “We need a horse. What’s the purpose of having 50 acres if you don’t use it for something?”

  “We are using it. We’re building a house here. What do we know about taking care of horses?”

  “What do we know about building log cabins? Nothing, but some things you just rely on instinct to accomplish. For your information, I had a horse when I was young. I was quite the rider. If we get a horse, I can teach Neva all the basics. I thought we were moving here to spend more time together as a family. So far, you have been doing your thing alone, and the kids spend their time in school and soccer. If we had a few horses, perhaps the kids will ride with me. We need to do things as a family to forge togetherness.”

  “Your sister was the horse woman. You danced. Besides which, horses are expensive to keep, aren’t they?”

  I gestured to the pasture. “Not like you have to have a million bucks to own a horse. They eat grass. Everyone living around here has a couple of horses, and none of them are millionaires. You promised that if I agreed to sell our business we would devote some of our money to recreational toys and trips, but you don’t want to buy a boat, or take a trip.”

  I was beginning to suspect that if I didn’t convince him to allocate some of our money to play now, there wouldn’t be anything left when he was finished building. Mark seemed blind to any notion of proportion or conservation, so my chance for enjoying just a small portion of our windfall was now or never. Animals, while a small concession to what I really felt we needed, were at least “fun”. I let my eyes slip to the chainsaw next to him, a subtle insinuation that all the tools he had purchased and the snazzy new workshop he was building were a much greater investment than a measly little horse could ever be. Donkey let out a loud bellow as if to add his pro-horse vote to the conversation.

  The mention of travel always made Mark’s eyes go blank, as if my reminders of his travel promises made me the greatest bore on the planet. “If a horse will make you happy, and you believe the kids will be into riding, get one,” he said, turning his back on me once again.

  I should have been delighted, but his acquiescence seemed obligatory rather than enthusiastic.

  The next week, a man named Eric came out to fence in another section of pasture.

  “Awful nice pasture for just a donkey,” he said.

  “I’m getting a horse to keep him company,” I proudly boasted. Eric nodded in that slow, country way common to those born in Appalachia. “What kinda horse didja buy?”

  “I haven’t bought one yet. Mark just decided we could get one recently.”

  “It just so happens I’m sellin’ a horse, if ’n you want to come have a look-see.”

  Here I was, wanting to buy a horse, and the first person in the country I mentioned this to just happened to be selling one. I marveled at the coincidence.

  That evening we went over to Eric’s farm—just to look, of course. Doghouses were plopped around like plastic houses set up on a hard dirt Monopoly board. Several dozen oversized, collie-type dogs wandered about, but I didn’t see any horses.

  We parked in front of an old barn with graying boards and rusty hinges and were immediately greeted by three carefree children with sunburned faces and dirty jeans. Each child held a puppy, the youngest one’s dog dangling like a stuffed animal with paws sprawled over his forearms and the animal’s head flopping to and fro like a rag doll.

  “Come see our pups,” the boy said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand and wiping the hand on the dog. My son lifted his eyebrows as the kid grabbed his hand and pulled him into the barn.

  “How many dogs do you have?” I asked, losing count because the animals wouldn’t stop moving.

  “Twenty-three or so...not counting the puppies.”

  Blue Ridge had an epidemic problem of strays, despite the efforts of several grass roots organizations trying to make neutering affordable. Country residents considered drowning an unwanted litter or dumping strays on the side of the road more practical and cost-effective than paying for neutering. Eric obviously was an exception to the rule. I liked him for that.

  “Must be hard to find homes for all these puppies,” I mumbled, petting one dog’s matted head as I followed Eric into the barn. “That’s why I’ve got twenty-three dogs.”

  Inside, eight adorable puppies nestled around a nervous border collie mother. My son, a dog aficionado, fell to his knees before the snuggly, whimpering pups and was instantly lost in the bliss of puppy heaven.

  “Why don’t you take one home?” Eric said, ruffling my son’s hair. “They’re ready.”

  My son turned hopeful eyes up to his dad, and to my utter surprise, Mark nodded. “Go ahead. You’ve been asking for a dog.”

  This, from the man who’d been complaining for years about our little schnauzer, griping that the dog smelled, dug up the yard, and farted every time we gathered to watch TV?

  “Is he kidding?” my son whispered as Mark stepped outside to talk to Eric.

  “Just pick yourself a dog and say no more,” I advised, deciding I would employ the same tactic when we got around to looking at the horse. I watched my son bend down to tenderly pick over the puppies feeling a powerful sense of rightness. It was such a small thing, allowing a child to pick his own dog, but the moment felt symbolic, as if we were offering our son not just a dog, but a chance to experience a world of new, expanded choices.

  Eric led us across the barnyard to a stable that looked in even worse shape than the barn. Half the wall boards were missing and those still in service were held up by two-by-fours wedged against a nearby tree. Two miniature horses, a dozen chickens, and a few donkeys watched me with curious eyes as I gazed at an animal I considered the most unappealing horse to ever set hoof on the planet.

  “Hope that’s not the animal he’s selling. That has to be the ugliest horse I’ve ever seen,” I whispered to Mark.

  Eric flashed an amused grin. “Probably because that’s a mule.”

  I blushed as I realized he had heard me. “I knew that,” I lied.

  “I’ll take a mule over a horse any day. Mules are smart, good-natured, and stronger than any horse.”

  I paused t
o take a good look. The beast had a big head, long ears, and a scraggly coat, but otherwise resembled a horse in every way, as if a mule was a horse with the beauty gene removed, leaving only muscle, buck teeth, and the barest hint of equestrian finesse behind.

  “Is that one pregnant?” I asked, pointing to a rather portly mule farther back in the corral.

  A small dimple appeared in Eric’s cheek. “Nope. She’s just fat. Mules themselves are sterile. You can only get a mule by breeding a horse with a donkey.”

  “I knew that.”

  Eric, no doubt, could guess I didn’t really know the reproductive cycle of a mule. Heck, I didn’t know the difference between mules, ugly horses, donkeys, or probably unicorns for that matter. But kindness in the country was offered up as freely as a flick of the middle finger in suburbia, so he was warmly tolerant of my naïveté.

  He led us to a riding ring where a lovely bay mare named Dixie was standing. I don’t know if it was luck or fate that this horse happened to be the exact replica of my childhood horse, Chiquita, but the moment I saw her there was no question whether or not I’d be taking her home. I took a two minute ride around the ring, pulled out my checkbook, and wrote the price quoted me. It didn’t occur to me to bargain. How was I supposed to know the price of a horse was a starting point, like when buying a car?

  Eric acted surprised, guilty even, at how easily the transaction occurred, so he threw in some tack, a saddle, and offered to deliver the horse for free.

  “You’re getting a good bargain considering this mare is pregnant and all,” he said, leading Dixie to the trailer.

  Mark’s eyes doubled in size. “Pregnant?”

  “I bred this horse to my best stallion a few months ago.”

  “We’ll have a baby horse in the spring, honey. We’re getting a great deal, two horses for the price of one.”

  “I don’t know...”

  Eric waved his hand as if we were being silly. “You’ll have a mule of your own next season if you keep this mare with your jack after she drops this colt. At least by buying a pregnant mare, you won’t end up with a mule this season.”

  “Our donkey’s name isn’t Jack.”

  “Every male donkey is called a jack. A female is a ginny,” he explained patiently.

  “I knew that.” I not only didn’t know that, but until that moment, I had no clue I’d been named after a female ass. I was, however, feeling like one more and more nowadays.

  We got into our car and followed Eric’s trailer towards our land. Kent cradled his new puppy with more reverence than he ever afforded his X-box or Legos. I listened to him gush forth lofty plans to train his dog to be so perfect Lassie would seem like a slacker by comparison. I wanted to throw my arms around Mark and kiss him for saying yes to our son, to me, and to life in general.

  I leaned over in the car to offer the kiss, but he shrugged me away. “Are you sure you’re ready to deal with a baby horse?” he said, as we watched Dixie’s tail swish at flies a few car lengths before us. “You have the donkey to take care of already. A horse and a donkey is enough to make our property feel like a farm, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose.”

  I craned my neck to get a closer look at a bunch of chickens pecking in the dirt at the side of the road. “Gee, but chickens are interesting! The kids would have fun raising chickens, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t want chickens. I want a puppy like Kent’s. Can I have a puppy too, Dad?” Neva said.

  “One pet at a time,” Mark said as he craned his neck in the same direction as I. The difference was he wasn’t looking at chickens.

  “See that tree they are cutting down back there? I wonder if I could nab a section of the trunk. I could make something nice out of that.”

  “Chickens can’t be hard to raise. I see them everywhere. And they lay eggs, you know.”

  I smiled at the variety of birds I spied scratching in the yards we passed.

  “Maybe I’ll come back later with Kent and toss a piece of that tree into my pickup. Whaddayasay, want to thank me for the dog by helping me with that log?”

  Kent and Neva were so engrossed with the new puppy that they couldn’t care less about chickens, logs, or anything else their parents found interesting.

  “Are you even listening to what I say?” I said to Mark.

  “Are you listening to what I say?”

  In that moment, Mark and I were together, both gazing in the same direction, both wanting to create a new, country life, yet we were seeing totally different things in the same landscape. For a couple who had always shared a common vision, this difference was as if we were going blind.

  “Let us first be as simple and well as Nature ourselves, dispel the clouds which hang over our brows, and take up a little life into our pores. Do not stay to be an overseer of the poor, but endeavor to become one of the worthies of the world.”

  —Henry David Thoreau

  SIXTY FIVE PERCENT REAL

  My Eliza Doolittle project was set to begin and I was armed with information.

  Sixty-five percent of all written literature is composed of 300 “instant” words. Beyond that, reading is simply a matter of building vocabulary. If a person can read only the 300 primary words, they can get by, but there are an additional 600 important instant words that a beginning reader must learn in order to function well. Thanks to the Internet and a book on literacy, I was ready for my first reading lesson.

  I arrived bearing flashcards:

  and, a, to, in, is, you, that, this, the, and it

  The words seemed easy, although I imagined memorizing random words without subject matter to string them together would be difficult. So I wrote Kathy a story, trying to use as many of the above instant words as I could.

  “Kathy wants to learn to read. Reading is not hard, but when you first begin, it feels as if you are facing a big mountain that you cannot imagine climbing. But, if you take it one step at a time, and keep your eyes on the top, you make progress and before you know it, you are up there in the sky, enjoying the amazing view. Sometimes, Kathy will not be in the mood to read... Sometimes she will enjoy the work. She must keep at it when it feels good or when it feels bad, because the top of the mountain is a very wonderful place to be. Once Kathy can read, she will be able to see far and wide and all the words and sentences and paragraphs will have been worth the effort.”

  I knew Kathy wouldn’t be able to read all the other words in the paragraph, but that wasn’t important at this early stage. I had used as many of the little words on the 300 list as I could, and I planned to read the story aloud then let her take the paper home to scout out and circle the instant words as her first homework assignment. I also created an “interest inventory” questionnaire to help me pick material she’d be inspired to read. If she liked cooking, I could bring in cooking magazines. If she liked movies, I could bring in pulp magazines about the stars. I had no shame, plotting ways to conquer her handicap. Once I found out the vacation destination of her dreams, I could find books about that place. I’d use the information to write short stories for her, too, so we wouldn’t be limited to reading preschool children’s books, which I feared would seem condescending to an adult student. Yep, I had this reading thing all figured out, or so I thought.

  I arrived for the lesson early and sat on the reception couch filled with a mixture of anticipation and confidence. The clock ticked away, first for seconds, then for minutes. Eventually an hour had passed and Kathy hadn’t shown up.

  After waiting yet another thirty minutes, I had to accept that my reading student had blown me off. I cried. Left. Cried more on the way home.

  There was a garbled message from Kathy on my answering machine when I got home, explaining that something had come up and would I meet her on Wednesday instead? I was leery of devoting further time to someone whom I now feared was less committed t
o enriching her life than I was. But I’d said I wouldn’t quit, and here I was with all these nifty flashcards all ready to go, so I agreed to try again.

  “Why are you so upset that she didn’t show up?” Neva asked putting aside her copy of Harry Potter’s newest adventure. At only eight, her nose was buried in a book more often than not.

  “I feel it is important I help this woman so she can read books like you.”

  “Reading is not very hard,” Neva pointed out. “I’d be happy to help you teach her.”

  “Maybe someday,” I said, imagining how self-conscious an adult reader might feel if an eight-year-old showed up to give her instruction. Still, I was moved to imagine my child wanting to help, and pleased to think I was setting a good example for my kids by volunteering time to someone less fortunate. This was a benefit I had not considered before, and now I was more anxious than ever that my new student show up.

  When I pulled up to the college on Wednesday, Kathy was leaning against her rusty truck, smoking. She flashed a happy smile and called out a confident, “I’m here!”

  She didn’t look at all concerned about whether or not I’d show up after our miscommunication before, but when I approached, I noticed the cigarette trembling in her hands. Any notion I had that she was casually abusing my time dissipated instantly.

  We settled into a conference room and discussed the weather, our kids, and the price of gas. Then I began easing into the task at hand.

  I explained that just as she was a beginning reader, I was a beginning teacher. I told her I had spent the weekend studying how I should go about helping her and had some good ideas and pointed out that her going to school for ten years and never learning to read may mean she had a learning disability. We would have to explore that possibility.

  “I ain’t got no disability. I was tested. They just kept passing me,” she said.

  “Well, then, the problem must have been with the teachers and not with you.”