Horace of the Horses

I met Horace beside a sewer pipe.

It was a brand new sewer pipe; Horace was connecting it to my house, digging its trench with his backhoe. When work was done for the day, I offered him a smoothie, since I’d just made one for myself. And by smoothie, I mean frozen mixed drink. Rum was the primary ingredient, and no vegetables were harmed in the making. He accepted, and we sat and talked on top of my picnic table.

Horace, as it turned out, had a new foal. His mare had given birth a few weeks before, and did I want to come see?

Of course I did. What tan-blooded girl doesn’t love baby horses?

That following weekend, I drove out to Horace’s and visited the cutest little spindle-legged fella there ever was – a chestnut colt whose head barely reached my shoulder. And oh, I loved him. He was shy, hiding behind his mother, but I snuck in a few brief pats and kissy faces.

Then, Horace showed me the rest of the property – a two-acre dirt stain of fenced paddocks, old barns, and stables. No less than fifteen horses called that place home, and Horace had seven more at his house across the street. He loved loved loved horses. And the more he talked, the more it became apparent that Horace fancied himself a cowboy.

He wore cowboy hats and cowboy boots and cowboy jeans and a monstrous cowboy belt buckle. He talked with a drawl. His eyes were lonesome and earnest, his nose broken from a bucking bronco. He was a bit bow-legged. And then, of course, there were the horses. He was obsessed.

But for me, horses were just a passing fancy.

I’d ridden a few times, on mounts that could be trusted to carry toddlers and Depression-era glassware across the continental divide. For my eighteenth birthday, I’d rode horseback through the sound on Cedar Island. But I had no experience with real horses. Unlike my mother, who competed in dressage as a teen on sleek high-stepping show breeds (the kind Snoop Dogg likes). Her cousin even won the five gaited world championship. She knew her way around a wither, and when I was young, she read me Misty of Chincoteague and My Friend Flicka. Still, horses were a foreign language.

The following weekend, on a whim, I called Horace, intending to see that foal one more time. He answered breathless and upset.

“I just got out here,” he said, “and the foal’s mother’s dead. He’s going crazy; I can’t get him to stop screaming and running around the pen. I’m going to trap him in the other paddock while I bury her.”

“I’ll be right there,” I said.

When I arrived, I saw he was right – the foal was inconsolable. Horace had already buried the mare with his backhoe, right where she’d died, in the paddock under bleached beige sand. There wasn’t even a divot to indicate where she lay, and the foal was darting across her grave, whinnying.

(I’m sorry, reader. My author friend Sam Bass says all cowboy stories are sad, and he’s not wrong, but this one gets better.)

I tried to catch that colt. I thought, if I could just hold him, he’d feel better. But no sooner would I touch him than he’d go off again, careening in wide circles, making those heart-wrenching sounds. Did you know that horses can cry?

Nothing we did helped.

Evening came on, and Horace was ready to leave, but the foal was still so sad. He was old enough, Horace said, to eat hay and grain; the baby did not need his mothers milk. But he needed SOMETHING, and I couldn’t leave him like that.

“What if we put another mare in with him?” I asked.

“Hmmm. Maybe. Let’s see…” Horace ran through his mental inventory of 21 horses. “Sugar might be best,” he said. “She’s foaled before.”

And Sugar looked like the foal, too, her coat a shorter and lighter version of the baby’s deep chestnut. I helped Horace take down a fence and hold back the other three mares in the adjoining paddock while he brought Sugar to the colt.

Man, you should’ve seen it. That colt went right up to Sugar and stood not an inch from her side. He leaned on her. He made a grunt of satisfaction. He stopped the nervous pacing and squealing. He became quiet and calm. He did not leave Sugar’s side, not that day or for the next two years, during which I tended those horses.

I named the foal Phoenix.

– by Jessi Waugh