By Lisa Hannon
Last night I discovered my parents’ neighbor had left a message regarding Dad’s horse, whom he’s feeding while they’re out of town. She’s not been doing well since Sunday, and yesterday evening he couldn’t get her up, let alone into the barn. He thought she’d probably be okay till morning. But then he just ha-a-d to say, “I don’t know what will happen if a pack of coyotes finds her.”
Well, crap. I got in the car and drove through the starry countryside to the farm. Here’s how big a chicken I am: I was in tears because I was scared of how scared I was going to be when I got there. I’d asked a couple friends to come along, and they weren’t keen on the idea, so I was going alone to do… what? Sleep on the grass beside the horse? Fight off coyotes with my bare hands? I think a lot of things are getting to me right now and I feel utterly helpless to ease the suffering in the world, like the pain my friend Dave is in while dry heaves rack his frail, cancer-eaten frame, and the suffering our upcoming war with Iraq will bring.
I pulled into the pitch-black yard and left the headlights on, pointing past the barn. The darkness was hugely silent and thick with stars, and as I found a path through the long grass to the gate, I could hear water dripping off the barn into a tall patch of nettles, and it sounded like the echo of someone hitting a baseball. Some of the weeds were over my head, and I walked down through the shadowy barnyard and out into the pasture, until the bobbing circle of flashlight picked out the buckskin stripe of a large, plump horse lying on her side. Uh oh. But then–bless her–she hove onto her feet and stood. Her backside was aimed towards me as if to kick should I come too close. I know next to nothing about horses, but this was an encouraging development. I did not think my wavering courage extended to exploring the yawning farm buildings for a rope, but I did cast my flashlight beam ‘round the barnyard to see what might be out in the open.
Eyes. There were brilliant, gleaming eyes in a tall stand of weeds across the cement yard. I strode quickly in that direction, expecting the eyes to disappear and the thing to slink away like a ‘possum or raccoon would. But they stared me down. “HAH!” I shouted, thinking to myself that I wouldn’t be scared of me, either. I made out a long, grayish form, too large to be a cat, standing silently and watching my approach. This ridiculous plastic flashlight was not going to be any use if I needed a weapon. Just then the eyes disappeared. Not a sound, not a rustle of movement in the weeks, but they were gone.
I exhaled. Somewhere in the next field, you could hear a soft squealing and grunting, just on the edge of hearing if you strained. I’d read some director of thrillers, possibly the director of “Signs,” quoted that it builds anxiety when the audience isn’t sure whether they heard something or what it might be if they had. I could personally attest to that dynamic right now. No, I don’t think seeing “Signs” would have helped me one bit.
I went into the dark house, turned on several lights and tried again to dial my dad, getting busy signal after busy signal. Finally, at 11:30 p.m., the phone rang and there was my dad’s comforting voice of optimism, telling me to go home. He didn’t think the coyotes would hurt the horse, and she should be fine until I reached his veterinarian in the morning. A part of me wishes I’d had the guts to sleep next to the horse that night, but I almost leapt at my dad’s advice. I didn’t even turn the yard light off because I couldn’t handle walking back to my car in the black of night. I felt anxious and exhausted.
As I crossed the lighted circle of gravel, a sudden loud shriek tore the stillness. “Oh, Jesus!!” I cried. This time it was clearly raccoons, squabbling in the branches above my car, trilling and squealing and making my heart shake as hard and fast as the leaves beneath them.
I drew in a breath and laughed at myself, but locked my doors as I drove away past the towering, silent corn.
Part 2
I met the veterinarian the next day, and he gave the horse a shot of vitamins and painkillers. As I write this years later, I no longer remember what he said in response to my fearful question of whether my dad’s old horse had reached the point she should be put out of her misery. I think he acknowledged she was on the downhill slide, but the injections would make her easier, and we could see how it went. Neither do I remember why I made another visit with my friend Linda, when the neighbor who’d first called lived so close and we didn’t. Maybe I’d offered to relieve him, since the easy favor he’d agreed to do had morphed into a more stressful responsibility.
Linda, whose own horse was in the prime of his life, burst into tears when she saw my dad’s elderly pet lurch to her feet and stand trembling, balanced on the edges of her hooves. Her knee-jerk reaction was to suspect my father of neglect. My tears were quieter, and the reason that Dad would probably rather I hadn’t been involved: I’m a worrywart with a tender heart, and a tendency to see things as worse than they are. No doubt it was a balancing act for him to gauge the horse’s condition through the long-distance lens of me; he also didn’t know that the neighbor was privately almost as worried as I. When I asked him if I should have the vet put her down if she was suffering, he said a loud “NO,” and was adamant that he would be the one to do it if it became necessary. He’s not usually stern with me, but this horse had been part of his life for decades. Please, God, help her, I thought, because Dad is five days out and there’s no way I can leave her suffering. But at what cost to our relationship? What if he didn’t get to say goodbye because of my decision?
Linda decided, on further reflection, that she wasn’t accustomed to older horses and the situation wasn’t as dire as it had felt, just heartbreaking to see an animal enduring pain; still, she dreamed about her that night. The vet called at 8:00 p.m. to say he’d given the horse a sedative, and she might sleep. Because I’d called the Department of Natural Resources the preceding day, and the guy who answered supposed it was possible coyotes would attack a horse if they thought she was on her last legs – which they might if a sedative had knocked her out – I headed for the farm after my desk job. Sometimes you just gotta do something because you’d kick yourself the next day if it went wrong because you hadn’t.
It was again dark as I drove down the lane, which was like a tunnel formed by the steep embankment on the left and the Autumn-high corn on the right, and turned into the barnyard. The asphalt around the old gray barn was cobbled now, season after season of Iowa frost having expanded and contracted it, so I inched along with the light from my headlights bouncing from the barn roof to the asphalt to the trees beyond the barn back to the asphalt, and then onto thick grass, where I accelerated to keep moving into the pasture. The horse was still awake, and didn’t seem to mind a vehicle pulling in beside her. The night before, it hadn’t occurred to me that I didn’t need to doze on the grass exposed: I could sleep in my car. I switched off the headlights, reclined my seat and listened to soft music on the radio for awhile, breathing the sweet smell of horse and hay until I was sleepy, then turned off the car, rolled up the window most of the way and let crickets be my lullaby.
I dreamt my ex-boyfriend realized he’d made a mistake and still wanted me. It had hurt every day without him, and I was just on the verge of kissing him when I remembered he was married now and woke with a start. It was 3:00 a.m. Darkness, softness, bright starlight registered on my awareness. I’d forgotten how you can see in the country night like it’s deeper day, or a bedroom-lit blue. The chorus of insect song was dense enough to touch. I could see the shadowy form of the horse, still upright after the shot the vet had given her. In fact, she was walking, slow and faltering, but walking all the same, and she could reach the ground now to pull grass. The soft tearing and munching sounds came closer in the darkness.
I got a pan of water from the barn, no longer afraid of shadows, and held it for her while she drank. Maybe somewhere inside me a horsewoman does sleep, because I could have stood there a long time breathing in that wonderful horse fragrance and understanding viscerally the closeness my dad felt to this large, gentle animal.
In the morning when I opened my car door, she neighed at me and it was better than the sunrise.
Lisa Hannon was born in Cedar Rapids and still calls Iowa home, even though she’s fallen in love with her adopted city of Portland. She earned her BA in English from Iowa State University, and, like many English majors, has held a variety of jobs, including bar-tending, flipping burgers, answering a switchboard and dissecting rat brains. She is a professional “hugger,” having learned from the best of them, Amma, India’s “hugging saint,” and rockstar of the Free Hugs movement, Ken Nwadike Jr. Now she combines blogging with hugging on her Facebook page, HUGS HERE Portland.
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