Saving Simon

by Jon Katz

  We knew we had to keep Simon away from the other donkeys. These animals can be gentle, but they can also be mean-spirited, ungenerous, and less than gracious when it comes to making room for strangers or sharing their food. Equines often greet new members of a herd with kicks and bites, and Simon could not have withstood any of that.

  Simon was also a male, and I knew from my time on the farm that males behaved differently from females, and females behaved differently around them.

  I knew there would eventually be some considerable butting and kicking and jockeying, even though Simon was a gelded male. But at this point, he was far too weak to engage in animal politics—a sharp kick or head butt or bite could have killed him.

  Lulu and Fanny were inseparable and peaceable, but it would take a while before they got used to sharing their food, treats, pasture, and humans. They were also wise to the ways of trailers. Donkeys do not like to go places in moving vehicles—it rarely leads to good things for them—and so they stood well up the hill watching.

  Even though I had seen Simon the day before, I was once again shocked by his blackened skin, his twisted legs, his clouded eyes and emaciated legs and ribs. As a former police reporter, I have a good idea of what humans are capable of, but the sight of Simon drove it home in a painfully direct way. He made me want to cry for all of us.

  I felt somehow connected to Simon’s experience of aloneness and confusion, of fear and discomfort. I had spent a lot of my life that way. I seemed to know where Simon hurt, and I seemed to know what he needed—how to make him feel better.

  My wife, Maria, and I took turns giving him medications, cleaning him, feeding him, administering his painkillers, and applying his potions and creams. But she was not as affected by him as I was, nor was he as connected to her. Something in me connected with something in him, but it was something I could not yet define. It wasn’t an intellectual reaction; it was an emotional one. I knew I had to bring him back, heal him, to reaffirm the better parts of being human.

  The rear pasture was about seven acres and had the lushest, greenest grass on the farm. There was a covered hay feeder near the gate that provided shelter for the hay during rain and snow, as well as shade for the animals. A one-acre corral surrounded the feeder and sealed the area off from the larger pasture. I used it for lambing. There was a large door leading to the big barn where Simon could go to get away from the flies, if there was a lot of rain and mud, or if he got too hot and wanted to cool off.

  He was too weak to mount much of a defense against the voracious horseflies that torment livestock in the summer. We were concerned that flies and maggots could get into his wounds and sores. He was weak, and the vet said he had little or no resistance to bacteria and infection. It would take weeks, even months, to build up his immune system.

  So Simon needed to have plenty of shelter, and to have his wounds checked several times a day. We bought gallons of thick black balm to keep insects off of him, and tubes of antibiotics. We had to be careful about feeding him. Like humans who have been starved or malnourished, he couldn’t handle a rich, full diet. I’d have to hand-feed hay to him until we could trust him to eat what he chose.

  On that first morning, it took Simon a long time to walk the fifteen yards or so to the covered hay feeder and then, spent, he collapsed on the ground. Jessica, Chris, and McKenzie said good-bye, handed me a bucket of salves and other medications, and left. They would come back in a few weeks, they said, with some adoption papers if we decided to keep him.

  I think Simon decided from the first that he would live. It’s what donkeys do: endure hard times and keep going. That is surely their history. My first days with Simon are a blur. Maria and I moved back and forth from the house to the barn all day, ferrying water, medicines, hay, carrots, apples, oat cookies, balms and salves, anti-fly sprays and ointments.

  It turned out that our farrier, Ken Norman, a big, gruff, profoundly gentle man, had gone to Jessica Barrett’s farm to work on Simon’s hooves when he was first taken out of his pen. He said it was one of the worst things he had ever seen done to an animal—that the hooves had grown out nearly a foot on either side and that Simon was walking on his ankles.

  Ken came by to check on Simon, and to trim his hooves a little further—Simon was too beat up to endure much more work at the moment. I was told his legs would never be straight, and walking might always be painful. But he was a good boy, Ken said, and he wanted to live.

  In those first few days, I wasn’t sure he would. Simon was usually lying down under the covered hay feeder when Maria and I came out. He was gentle and trusting. He did not resist the many ointments, pills, and salves we tormented him with for days and weeks. We had to make sure the flies stayed off him, that the wounds healed without infection, and that he had soft food that wouldn’t challenge his healing gums. Many of his teeth had literally grown into his jaw, he had been lying on his side for so long, and they had been removed. He had most of his front teeth, but chewing was difficult for him, and still painful.

  Since walking was also difficult, I pulled up fresh grass and piled it next to him, and brought him some hay from the bales in the barn. He had terrible diarrhea those first few days, and the evidence of that was all around the feeder.

  Simon watched me closely; his big brown eyes were always on me. How could I help him, I wondered. What did he need?

  I’ve lived with animals for years, seen them born and die, get sick and heal, get sick and die. I have always kept some distance from the animal rescue culture. I resist seeing animals as piteous and abused creatures—it is a prism that is too narrow for me. But I had never seen anything quite like Simon, an animal in such extreme distress and suffering. I felt it rearrange my heart, penetrate it, unleash old anger, hurt, fear.

  I think part of my problem with the rescue culture is that I don’t like to see myself as piteous and abused, either, and yet to a large extent, I was, and I had been working to heal those wounds my entire life, and to move beyond them.

  And here those wounds were right in front of me, lying on the ground, needing me to rub all kinds of pastes and oils and balms on them, to massage them, knead them, inspect them. It was a shockingly intimate experience for me, and it engaged the deepest and most private and painful parts of me. Simon made me see myself in a jarring, intensely emotional way.

  I felt an enormous pull to bring this animal back to life. We would not lose this one. This creature would not be sacrificed to the inexplicable inhumanity and cruelty of human beings.

  There is something about the mistreatment of children and of animals—helpless beings, in so many ways—that stands out in the spectrum of human failings.

  Lying down on the ground, in the mud, in the waste and vomit that spewed out of Simon, hand-feeding him hay, gagging on the smell and maggots, fending off the savage horseflies, I felt right away that I was knee-deep, not only in the broken and open wounds of Simon, but of me.

  Something about the way Simon looked at me, the intense focus of those big brown eyes, spoke to me. There was trust in that look, and great interest. Perhaps not affection, not yet. I was too new and strange for him, and he was too disabled and stunned. But a part of each of us had found the other.

  If I could help Simon heal, maybe he could help heal me. A grand bargain.

  The second night Simon was with us, I thought back to Carol and how much she had seemed to love listening to Willie Nelson with me. Donkeys, I had seen, need people in much the same way dogs do. They have been living with people for so many thousands of years. Whenever a donkey meets a human, they first look for some food—an offering or tribute, a cookie, a carrot, or an apple.

  But then, satisfied with their deal, rewarded for their time, they always—always—offer something back. They press themselves against you and allow themselves to be touched, brushed, even kissed on the nose.

  What might Simon and I do together? Where might we go? What might our story be? I wondered, what could I offer him beyond food and m
edicine? What might we share?

  As it happened, I had the first part of my answer waiting on my bookshelf, right on the farm.

  Considered a masterpiece, Platero and I is a lyrical, even magical, portrait of life in a remote Andalusian village in Spain. Its author, the Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez, was awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize for Literature.

  Jiménez and Platero, his gentle donkey, travel through the tiny Andalusian town of Moguer and the beautiful country lanes beyond, Jiménez speaking of the sights and sounds that touch and inspire him—white butterflies, sparrows, an old building, ripe pomegranates—and of human emotions of love, fear, nostalgia, and longing.

  Platero is a small downy donkey who loves mandarin oranges, grapes, and “purple figs tipped with crystalline drops of honey.” He is, writes Jiménez, as loving and tender as a child, as strong and sturdy as a rock.

  Someone gave me Platero and I as a gift after Carol died, and it seemed that Jiménez captured more gracefully and sweetly than anyone I had read before the great duality of donkeys—they are the most gentle and loving of creatures, and also the hardiest and most determined and willful. In my own life with animals, I have encountered none who embody that contradiction as powerfully as donkeys. There is no end to the amount of work we ask them to do, and their great hearts seem to forgive us the most unimaginable insults and cruelty.

  To the people of Moguer, Platero is “like steel,” but the poet corrects them. “Steel, yes,” he tells them, “steel and moon silver.” This, it struck me, was Simon. Only a creature of steel would have still been alive, yet the moon silver was already shining through in him.

  I took my dog-eared copy of Platero and I and some carrots and I headed out into the back pasture where Simon was sitting up, gazing out at the valley below. He seemed to be paying particular attention to the huge full moon hovering out over the valley.

  He turned to look at me, as he always did when I came near, and I thought I heard a soft bray coming from him as I got closer. Donkeys have a sixth sense about treats, and I guessed he smelled the carrots in my pocket or perhaps saw one sticking out. I had brought a blanket, and I laid it down beside him. I changed his dressings, applied his ointments, gave him his pills, and squirted syringes full of medicine through an opening in his jaw. I brought him fresh hay and water, checked for lice and maggots, and squirted medicine into his eyes.

  Simon was almost shockingly gracious about all of this. I knew Carol would have butted me all over the barnyard by now, sick or not. Miraculously, something in Simon loved and trusted people. Animals don’t do self-pity or revenge, certainly not donkeys, who have endured the harshest treatment and retain their genial and affectionate nature. If you study the brutal history of donkeys and their lives serving people, you wonder why any donkey would go near any human being, but that is, of course, a projection. They are not like us.

  They don’t have expectations and do not flirt with disappointment.

  When the ministrations were over and Simon had eaten his hay and cookies, chewed his carrot, and taken his medicine, I took out a reading light and clamped it to Platero and I.

  “Look, Simon,” I recall telling him. “This is a story about a man and his donkey. Every night, I’m going to come out here and read you a different story from this book. I hope you’ll like it.”

  Simon and I looked out over the valley for a minute, and I wondered what was going through the mind of this battered creature. Many people think they know what is in the minds of animals, but the longer I live with them, the less certain I am of what they are thinking. Simon was not, I am sure, aware of the drama of his life.

  Yesterday he was suffering and starving; today he was not. He seemed to relish his view over the valley. The shade of the feeder gave him some protection from the flies and gnats. We covered the barn floor with straw, and as soon as he was strong enough, we hoped to get him inside, but for now, the softer ground outside seemed more comfortable than the concrete of the barn.

  He seemed at ease in my presence. This was somebody’s donkey, I thought. He was used to people—trusted them still.

  A soft breeze came up from the valley. We paused to drink it in, both of us at ease. I brought a bottle of water to sip, and I saw my border collie Rose come cautiously into the barn and sit to watch us.

  Rose had been living with donkeys for a couple of years, and she had a great deal of respect for the distance she wanted to keep from them. Up on the hill, I saw Lulu and Fanny standing by the gate, staring at us. Donkeys are alert creatures. They miss nothing, and Lulu and Fanny had become Simon scholars, studying every minute of his life and treatment. It would be many weeks before the three would get together, and then only after a slow and deliberate process of acclimation.

  How curious life is, I thought, that I would be sitting out in a pasture getting ready to read to a donkey I barely knew.

  When we had all settled, and the sun was sinking below the mountains, I read Simon the opening paragraphs of Platero and I: “Platero is a small donkey, a soft, hairy donkey: so soft to the touch that he might be said to be made of cotton, with no bones. Only the jet mirrors of his eyes are hard like two black crystal scarabs.”

  When he called to Platero softly, wrote Jiménez, he came “at a gay little trot that is like laughter of a vague, idyllic, tinkling sound.”

  Jiménez and Platero had begun their journey through beautiful Andalusia, and Simon and I had begun our own.

  We had just had our first real conversation, our first moment together. If Simon did not know what the story’s words meant, I have no doubt he was reading my tone of voice. He understood, I am sure, that I was offering him an invitation into my life, my journey.

  As I read him the first pages of Platero, I noticed that Simon never took his eyes off me. His blackened ears swiveled to catch the words, but, more important, the intonations and the feeling behind them.

  I had heard, and then learned, that you cannot fool a donkey: He will see right into your heart and right through deceit and prevarication. He knows where you are going before you do.

  I felt that night that Simon accepted my invitation. I was excited to join the glorious fraternity of strange men who roamed the world observing it and sharing it with their donkeys.

  “Simon,” I told him, “your name comes from the Bible, and the girl who gave you your name chose it because she hoped you would be blessed and would never be harmed again.”

  I leaned over and stroked the side of his neck, one of the few places on his body that was not scarred or infected or covered in sores. “I promise you that you will not be harmed again.”

  THREE

  Simon and Bryan

  It became clear that Simon would survive his wounds and troubles. For one thing, he was eating everything that wasn’t nailed to the ground and many things that were. Within a few weeks of Simon’s arrival on the farm, his coat began to grow back. He stood a bit more on his feet each day. He took his medicine and drank his water and ate his cookies and apples and was always watching the barn door, waiting for me to come through it with my treats and copy of Platero and I.

  Simon loved life—I could see it in his eyes. He wanted to live, and I knew donkeys are hardy, among the most durable animals in the world. Under the proper care, he would recover unless there was something terribly wrong with him that we could not see.

  He was almost instantly more comfortable. The lice were dead and the flies stayed out of the shadows of the hay feeder and the barn. His infected jaw healed; the swelling reduced. He was taking painkillers for his twisted feet, and he figured out how to chew without the teeth that had been removed.

  His eyes were bright and clear, and always focused on me. I saw right away that Simon loved attention, and that he needed it. It was like breath to him; he just closed his eyes and purred when his soft nose and ears were rubbed.

  Simon and I wandered through the beautiful town of Moguer. We stopped to visit the shy female burro Platero loved, and the little
shepherd playing his pipe under the twinkling light of Venus. We sniffed the flowers in the church garden and watched the sparrows fly out of the vestry trees. We tasted the peaches Platero helped himself to from a neighbor’s grove. We witnessed his encounters with children playing on the farms he trotted past.

  Donkeys are known to love children, and they seemed to bring life to Simon, to stir his soul in a special way. I saw this with McKenzie Barrett, who named him. It was even more powerfully evident in his new friendship with Bryan, a twelve-year-old boy who lived up the hill.

  When Maria and I first spotted the small trailer about a quarter mile up the hill from the farm, we just assumed no one was living there. Some of the windows were boarded up with plywood, much of the asbestos siding on the side of the house was cracked or broken, there were shingles missing on the roof, and brush grew over the front door. The mailbox had no lettering, and the hinge to the mailbox door was broken, so it dangled down toward the road. We never saw any lights on, nor was there smoke from the chimney. People often associate the country with beauty and industry, and cities with poverty, but there is a kind of grinding, soul-shattering poverty you see off the main roads in upstate New York and other rural areas that is heartbreaking.

  In the country, poor people and families are up against the elements in a very direct way, and it is never more wrenching than in the middle of a brutal winter when they struggle to stay warm. A neighbor shocked us by telling us that five people lived in that trailer: a mother and her four children. The husband had been taken out by the state police and ordered by a judge not to come within a thousand yards of their home.

  Shirley was struggling, and everyone on the road contributed some firewood and soup and clothes if they could. We signed up. The oldest boy, Bryan, we were told, went up and down the road looking for work. He was a nice kid, a bright kid, and people found odd jobs for him. Our neighbors told us to look out for him.