My neighbor owns a horse. I
see it standing in the field across from my house every morning as
I leave for work, and when I come home the horse is still waiting
there, like a picture of grace and power that has no place to go.
My neighbor rides the horse up the road and back again on
weekends, a sort of cowboy without a cow, horsepower enough to
rustle a few moments from the week, then turn them loose before
heading back to his modern life at the doublewide ranch.
I could theoretically be his partner, for I watch him — even
watch for him — as he rides up the road, and somehow feel an
affinity for his refusal to sell the animal or let somebody put the
old horse out to pasture. Oh, we’re a sorry bunch, Easterners
and Midwesterners transplanted in the West, imagining an eternal
frontier.
We see the mountains rise up like so many
bucking broncos, hunker down beside a side-winding river, and
we’re forever romantic, cellular phones and paging devices
flashing in the holsters strapped to our belts. And the real
Westerners, the few around us, the ones born in the valley and
nursed on a secret formula of chewing tobacco and beer, they think
the only reason strangers keep showing up is because someone forgot
to close the gate.
My neighbor doesn’t care what
people think. That’s obvious to anyone who drives past: His
yard is a clutter of junk cars, broken appliances, twisted bicycle
frames and iron parts from something unnatural that seems to have
planted itself as a memorial.
His horse has a little
piece of ground fenced off from the chaos, its own grass, bathtub
trough and a good view of the mountains. Granted, it’s not
much, but how much does a horse need? A cowboy, on the other hand,
has to keep his stock in line, and though my neighbor’s horse
doesn’t appear to get as much attention as his pickup truck,
boat, camper, snowmobiles or his ATV, it stands as an idle reminder
that we, too, can be saddled by whatever holds the reins.
Everything I own eats a little of my time, even if it claims to
save it in the long run. My car guzzles gas, my computer consumes
bytes of information, my telephone beeps and swallows half a dozen
voices only to regurgitate them when I finally get home. My VCR
tapes the shows I don’t have time to watch so I can view them
once I’ve pulled an hour free, just like an old farmer
clearing his land, tree by tree.
Last year, my
neighbor’s horse suddenly bolted through a barbed wire fence.
Two deep gashes were torn into its chest as well as a multitude of
smaller ones across its front legs. The horse might have died
— would have died — but my neighbor caught it, and
because he owns no stable or shed where he might confine a horse,
he came to me to ask if he might use my garage.
There, he
tied the horse to the front wall and with no more than a quick
injection of veterinarian Novocain, began to stitch the
horse’s flesh together using a curved needle he’d
packed away with his experience as a medic in Vietnam. I’d
never seen anything like it, except to watch my grandmother stitch
a quilt in her lap, but here were blood, tissue and muscle exposed
like so many anatomy schematics in a textbook, things that belonged
on the inside somehow laid open.
My neighbor put all the
parts back and shut the fleshy door, the entire time complaining
about how much hay a horse can put away in one winter. As he led
the horse out, I suddenly knew how such a placid animal could have
behaved so rashly, charging a barbed wire fence.
The last
time it happened to me, I wound up in western Colorado.
But I was pulling a trailer packed tight with a few hundred
necessities. I unpacked them all, took a deep breath of the clear
Western air, and started planning where I’d teach school
next.
I’d like to think that that horse and me are
some kind of kin — patient, yet yearning for the unbridled
life. We make our halfhearted breaks for freedom, searching for a
slightly different perspective of that same old mountain.
Meanwhile, another year begins, and we keep on plugging.
David Feela is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a
service of High Country News in Paonia,
Colorado. He is a teacher in Cortez, Colorado, and a freelance
writer.
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