Saving Simon

by Jon Katz

  Just about everyone told us the same thing, and it squared with our own sensibilities. Separate Rocky and the donkeys for a few days; let them become aware of one another. And then introduce them, leaving them together for short periods of time.

  The advice was unanimous: they would work it out. Animals always work it out. The donkeys would sense that Rocky was old and infirm—would see that he was no threat.

  And to be honest, this was also my experience. Animals don’t feud or make war; they survive and adapt. And why wouldn’t they work it out? An old blind pony is no threat to healthy donkeys and sheep. As always, they would take their cues from us. Maria and I always set the tone on Bedlam Farm. Everybody gets fed, everybody has shelter, everybody gets fresh water and lots of attention. The animals in my life have little to envy and no reason to squabble; they all get what they need.

  Animals always act in their self-interests, not out of emotional motives. Donkeys are companion animals for many horses, and I’ve often seen them out grazing together. The farm was compact, the pastures small. Maria and I were almost always on hand to keep an eye on things, to encourage the right behaviors, to reinforce the atmosphere of our farm. It was a peaceable kingdom. It would stay that way.

  We moved the donkeys first. Ken came by with a friend and a small horse trailer. We backed it up to the barn. That morning, we had lured the donkeys into one of the barn stalls with some carrots.

  Lulu, the watch-donkey of the group, the smartest and most vigilant, was not fooled. Fanny and Simon came running in for the treats. Lulu got to the door, took a look at me and Maria, and balked. But it was too late. Fanny and Simon were already inside munching on the grain we had put down in bowls. I got behind Lulu, smacked her on the butt, and slid the barn door closed. She had nowhere to go, but I could see that she sensed something was up.

  Ken showed up with his trailer and backed it up to the barn door. By now, Fanny knew something was up as well, and she and Lulu tried nosing the barn door open. Simon, trusting as always, was hoping for another carrot.

  We opened the barn door, put up gates to the back of the trailer, and got into the stall behind the donkeys. Lulu led the charge out, but there was nowhere to go except into the trailer. She tried to bust through the gates, but Ken was waiting for her. We put some grain in the trailer, banged some trash cans behind them, and Simon was the first one to jump in. Lulu and Fanny followed, as donkeys do. They were not going to be separated.

  It took less than half an hour to drive the trailer over to the new farm. We had put Rocky in his stall inside the barn, separated by a gate.

  When we got to the new place, we opened up the back of the trailer, and Simon was the first one out. All the donkeys looked a bit rattled from the drive, but curious about their surroundings.

  Simon came walking quickly up to me, and I gave him a carrot, which he chewed gratefully. Lulu and Fanny weren’t buying it yet and wouldn’t take any food, but seeing Maria and me calmed them down. Rocky neighed in the barn, and all three donkeys were soon outside of the gate, sniffing the air and looking in. We left them to get used to the place. Later, when we left to go back to Bedlam Farm—we humans wouldn’t be moving into the new house for a few days—the donkeys were out grazing in the field.

  Like most animals, they did not waste a lot of time missing what they had left behind, not when there was fresh green grass. They checked Rocky out from time to time, but we were pleased by the first encounter. It seemed like no big deal. They would figure it out.

  The move changed us both in ways we had not considered or really even imagined. Every day I did things I had never done before. Necessity is the mother of invention. And of self-reliance, as well. I learned how to steam wallpaper off of a wall, pry open jammed windows, stack firewood, putty holes in walls, polish and paint wood.

  I was at the hardware store a half dozen times a day looking for glue, the right screwdriver or hammer, the right kind of nail. I got Florence’s creaky forty-year-old mower repaired and kept my promise to mow my own lawn instead of paying someone else to do it, as I had for years.

  Each day I talked to Ben about slate roofs and putting new windows in the barn to keep the snow out. I hauled debris from the pasture out to the woods and down to the dump.

  Maria and I did most of these things together. She had once forsaken making art for a career in home restoration, and the last thing she wanted to do was spackle and paint, but she did, and I did, and because it was something we were doing together, because we were working on our new house together, we both loved doing it. Most nights, we collapsed into bed, filthy and exhausted, and were asleep before we could even turn the lights out.

  I didn’t realize how much we had needed to leave Bedlam Farm until we left. I was often asked, “How could you leave such a beautiful place?” Pride kept me from confessing at least part of the truth—we couldn’t really afford the upkeep anymore. But the real reason was more difficult to explain. The scale of my life had changed. My values, too. I was finally running my own life responsibly, and I wanted to do some of the things that other men did, to learn to repair and build and care for the physical objects in my home and in my life. I was astonished at how much money we were saving doing so much work ourselves. It was something of a breakthrough when the toilet kept running and I started to call a plumber. Instead, I put the phone down, went to the hardware store and got a rubber stopper for the tank, and fixed it myself.

  I began calling the new farm Bedlam Farm 2.0. It had all the qualities we loved about the old farm, but was scaled to fit to our current life. The grounds were smaller, the hay right upstairs in the barn, the water buckets fifty feet from the back door. The house was more compact and intimate. I had to be careful about cluttering it up—the old Bedlam Farm house was big and sprawling; it easily absorbed all of my junk, papers, books, and clothes. We no longer had a screened-in porch, and the old windows were rotten at the sills. When we opened them it was like a superhighway for bugs and flies. Still, we coped, and I dragged two Adirondack chairs out by the back pasture where we could sit and enjoy our beautiful new surroundings.

  The move drew us even closer together; Maria loved having our house rather than us living in my house. She took ownership of the new place so differently and intensely. The new house was her “adorable place,” as she put it.

  We were now close to several towns, including Bennington, Vermont, and Cambridge, New York. Everything we needed was closer—gas stations, hardware store, friends, doctors. We lived a few hundred yards from Momma’s restaurant, so we could walk down the road to get a burger or a wrap when we were hungry; we didn’t have to drive thirty miles. I spent so much less time in cars.

  Simon and I still enjoyed our daily chats. I offered the opinion that the new farm was a good place for both of us and he seemed to agree, watching me closely, chewing his carrot. He seemed as content as I was. He loved the new pole barn, and walking the flat pasture was much easier on his battered legs (and on mine).

  We built a dog run behind the house, and the dogs settled in, as dogs will. Red had sheep in the backyard again, my Lab, Lenore, had a pasture to explore, and our guard dog, Frieda, had a lot of trucks to keep at bay.

  We scrambled to fix up the old schoolhouse on our property to be Maria’s studio. We needed help for this. Ben came and sanded and polished the floors. He poured insulation into the walls and fixed all the holes in the side. We put in track lighting and a baseboard heating system. Maria settled in to her new studio happily, cranked up her blog, and began making and selling her quilts and fabric art. I was happy, too. I took over the parlor where the pastor used to visit and set up my Apple computer. We got right to work.

  The old Bedlam Farm had been remote, but our new home was close to friendly neighbors. One by one, they came over to welcome us, offer us help, and tell us the secrets of the neighborhood. And we began the exciting and draining process of entering a new community. I volunteered to teach a writing workshop at an arts center in to
wn, while Maria volunteered to work at the town food co-op.

  Our days were rich and full. We did our work, visited the animals, scrubbed cabinets, and repaired old lamps. At night, Maria and I would head out to the Adirondack chairs by the back pasture and hold hands and watch the moon rise in the sky.

  “How does it feel?” I asked Maria one night after many hours of wallpaper scraping; there were bits of wallpaper down my back and in my hair. “It feels like home,” she said. For me, too.

  EIGHTEEN

  Trouble in Paradise

  Maria and I both like to remember that sunny fall day when Rocky took us for a walk in his secret garden. He had several spots—hiding places, perhaps safe places—which he would visit regularly, usually daily.

  One of Rocky’s regular haunts was the corner of the south pasture where clover grew. It was private and shrouded by old trees, bounded by a busy road. Another was below the apple tree behind the big barn, where he would often graze and stare out at the world, listening, perhaps remembering when he could see.

  But I think Rocky’s favorite spot was out of sight, down the hill behind the big barn, across a marshy stream. Sometimes, when we called him, he would be down there. Sometimes he would come out, sometimes not.

  One beautiful Sunday afternoon, when we finished brushing and grooming Rocky, he whinnied and pranced around us playfully. We had never seen him so exuberant before. Old as he was, Rocky usually moved slowly and deliberately. But this afternoon, buoyed by some time with Maria, his old spirit seemed to surface, and he turned his head down toward the bottom of the hill and then seemed to wait for us.

  It was hard, sometimes, to separate love from compassion when it came to Rocky, but sometimes compassion can grow into love. When I first met Rocky, I just felt sorry for him, this old blind pony alone in his pasture for years, his human fading after a century of life. But as I got to know him, this feeling of being merciful deepened. I loved the way he and Maria connected. I admired his independence. He accepted. He endured. There was something wonderfully noble about Rocky—something heroically stoic—and I came to love him for that.

  That morning, he trotted down the hill, turning several times to wait for Maria, Red, and me. We waded across the wet grass, pulling some wooden planks across the swampy water. The marsh was about ten feet across, and then a gentle hillside rose up. Rocky stood there until we caught up, and then turned to the right, to a path hidden from view up the hill at the barn.

  A field opened up—a gentle pasture, surrounded by shrubs and brush and another stream. Rocky went over to the stream—we saw his hoofprints everywhere—and drank from it. He sniffed some of the wildflowers, nibbled on some berries, pulled up some deep green marsh grass. He came over and sniffed Red and whinnied, it seemed in great pleasure, time and again.

  It was a golden memory, one of those connections between people and animals that bond us to them, and they to us. We walked all around Rocky’s secret garden, a place that had given him comfort, safety, and food perhaps all of his life, a place tucked away out of the consciousness of any human. And he had shown it to us; he had brought us there, just as he had brought us to the farm.

  To this day, Maria cries when she thinks of it.

  I’ve learned a lot of things in my time on my farms, and perhaps the single biggest lesson is that my plans and hopes and expectations must be a source of great amusement to whatever forces govern the earth. The farm is a powerful teacher; life and death and crisis and mystery all happen almost daily.

  We watched Rocky and the donkeys with some anxiety. We wanted things to work out. We loved these animals and expected to be with them a long time.

  Caring for Rocky and keeping him on the farm was one of the most beautiful experiences Maria and I have ever known, and the fact that we could share it made it even more powerful. At first, he seemed to be living in a fog, but as he got to know me, and especially Maria, this changed. He seemed to be thriving. With his teeth fixed, he was eating more comfortably and keeping his weight up, something that was important for an aging pony. He moved more quickly, and sometimes even broke into a trot. One moonlit night I swear I saw Rocky dancing in the mist, out by the stream. He was so sweet and appealing.

  Sometimes I would sit and watch him and Maria, as she sang to the pony, talking to him, brushing the burrs out of his coat, this long-neglected creature visibly soaking up the attention. He had someone loving him again, caring for him.

  Everywhere we went in our new town, people asked how Rocky was doing and told us how great he was looking, all shiny and brushed. Many people remembered and loved Florence, and many others just loved to drive by and see the pony grazing quietly. Like Florence herself, Rocky was a symbol of other times.

  Florence had once said that there was really no reason for either she or Rocky to still be alive; they were both just too tough to die. Florence’s love of Rocky was perhaps one of the most merciful and compassionate things I had ever seen between a human and animal. It just touched my heart, and deeply.

  Caring for Rocky became a part of our lives, our routine, the string of chores that connected Maria and me to the farm, to Simon and the other donkeys, and to the rest of the animals.

  It was also a lot of work. Because Rocky had to be kept separate from the donkeys for a while, there was a lot of mucking to do in his stall. He got fresh hay twice a day and we hauled buckets of water in for him. He was also brushed regularly and given special high-calorie grain to put some weight on him for the winter.

  We hadn’t quite figured out yet how we would feed him in the winter. The donkeys would be eating in their hay feeder, and we couldn’t expect a blind old pony to bump his way into that scrum.

  At the end of two weeks, we were pleased with the acclimation process. Simon and Lulu and Fanny spent a lot of time outside of Rocky’s stall, nosing the gate, sniffing him, staring at him. It seemed as if the herd was already forming. They all seemed to be together a lot of the time, even if separated by a gate. Simon just stared at Rocky sometimes, but otherwise didn’t seem to know he was there.

  So at the beginning of the third week, we opened the stall. Red was there, and he walked out with Rocky, who stopped, sniffed the air carefully, and then sniffed for Red.

  It took him a few minutes, but he walked out of the pole barn entrance, found his path, and headed out to his pasture, out by the road and alongside the farmhouse. Simon and Lulu and Fanny were a few yards away, and all three of them stared at Rocky and seemed to freeze.

  Rocky lifted his nose to sniff them and then trotted quickly down his path. He didn’t seem to care about the donkeys; he just walked past them. Maria and I had decided to be present for the first week or so when Rocky was with the donkeys. We would either be right there watching or in a spot in the house where we could look out and see the pasture. This was relatively easy to do, as the pastures wrapped around three sides of the farmhouse. We decided to be cautious. Rocky would be out for only several hours a day, at first, until everyone could get used to one another. What we were told, what we expected to happen, was that there would be some tension, some curiosity, even some bumping and snorting before things settled down.

  There were also gender dynamics to deal with, of course. Rocky was gelded, as was Simon, but males could be competitive around one another. They could also be protective of the females. Most of the people we talked to believed that donkeys were sensitive enough to grasp that Rocky was old and infirm. They would, after a while, have little interest in him.

  For the first two weeks of the trial, Maria and I were back and forth in the pasture all day. After a couple of hours, we would bring an apple out, call Rocky, or send Red out to get him. He always followed Red and stayed close to him.

  We were pleased with the results. All was going smoothly. Rocky got his exercise, visited his pasture and secret garden, and by afternoon he was back locked safely in his stall. Simon was always vigilant around Rocky, but that was natural for donkeys.

  Our theori
es of animal care—animals with food, attention, and shelter have few reasons to quarrel—were working out. My triad of powerful new animal spirits—Rocky, Red, and Simon—was coming together and living together. Simon was reborn. Red was happy and busy. Rocky was no longer alone.

  Here’s the thing about hubris though: you can coast along on it for a good long while, but when you fall off the cliff, it’s a long drop.

  By the third week, we no longer felt it was necessary for us to be present. When Rocky was out in the pasture, he kept to his routine—the far pasture grazing in the morning, his secret meadow in the late afternoon. We were planning to keep him out in the outer pasture with the other animals at night, where he had always been, unless the weather was bad. Because of his age, we decided Rocky would have dibs on the stall in the barn if it was awful outside. The donkeys and sheep would have plenty of shelter in the pole barn.

  One day I needed to go into town to pick up some groceries. As I was walking to the car, I sensed some movement out in the field and I turned. I saw Rocky walking slowly toward the barn. Beyond him, with his ears flat and his head down—the posture of the charging donkey—was Simon, bearing down on Rocky at full speed.

  Red was not in the pasture. Rocky was staying on his familiar path. It was like watching a slow-motion horror film. I saw Simon moving toward the blind creature, and I shouted and ran, waving my arms, hoping to stop Simon or at least alert Rocky.

  As I ran toward the gate, I saw Simon plow right into the pony, braying and snorting. He bit Rocky hard on the back, and with his great forward motion drove the pony off of his feet and directly into the electrified fence and fence posts behind him.

  Rocky didn’t know what had hit him, and I could hear the charge from the fence crackling and popping as he slammed into it, bounced off, and fell to the ground. Rocky’s ears and tail were twitching. For a second I thought he had died of shock. Simon, ears still down, circled and began to charge again, just as I opened the gate and, waving my arms and shouting, ran between them.