I didn’t get much information about him. My friend, Kara, works at Animal Rescue in Tulsa and calls me when she gets calls about abused horses. Some horses I rehab and place in appropriate homes according to their personality.
The horses that have suffered too much, I make sure theyare healthy so I can transfer them to the wild horse refuge north of us. Sometimes they’ve just had enough of people and I respect that.
Kara said this guy was left on a foreclosed farm in his paddock. His ribs just visible under his fur told me he had been on his own longer than he should have been. Some scars on his backside and across his nose tell me he didn’t have a good relationship with his previous owners.
He looks a little rough for wear right now, but once he gets some nutritional attention and TLC, he’ll be beautiful. He reminds me of General, Mason’s horse from when we were younger. He has the same beautiful reddish-brown body with black socks and mane. General had a ring of white between his hooves and black socks, but this guy has no white on him at all.
The way he’s standing as he watches me can only be described as regal. Yeah, he’s gonna be beautiful.
Mason raised General. He was one of the best horses we had, but he had to be euthanized because of cancer while Mason was in the service. It killed him that he couldn’t be here for him in his time of need.
It killed me that had it not been for me, Mason could have been here to take care of him.
Pushing aside the familiar guilt sweeping through my chest, I lock it down so I can focus. I don’t want my new friend to feel my negativity.
It’s bad enough that I’ve been pushing thoughts of another sort from my head since the wedding a few days ago. My thoughts have been ping-ponging between his hand holding mine during the dance, his angry glare when I basically told him he didn’t have a chance, the barely there caress on my arm by his finger when he was trying to comfort me, and the look on his face when I told him I was just a challenge for him.
My thoughts and feelings are so tangled up because of him I getangry when I see him. And that’s been often. Since that jerk showed up at the wedding, Jax won’t leave, he and Mason say it’s better to be safe.
So, now he’s always hanging around my stables, asking if he can help.
Part of me wants so much more than just ‘help’ from him that my stomach flips every time I see him. The girl in me who is still clinging to the possibility of love, family - normal - she keeps me up at night thinking about the warm tingles that shoot through my belly when he looks at me.
But that naive, trusting girl was also the one who told me it was okay to walk out into a dark field alone. Look where that got me.
Dropping the slice of alfalfa onto the rack on the fence and then sliding a bucket of feed under the fence rail with the toe of my rubber boot. I take a few steps back, away from the fence, to gauge just how scared he is. He sniffs the air and turns his body toward the food, but he’s decided the reward isn’t worth the risk and stays put.
When he stomps his foot with a huff, I stare at him in confusion; what is making him feel threatened? But then I hear an acorn crack on the ground behind me and I realize someone is behind me. That explains his huffs of warning.
“What happened to him?” Hallie’s throaty voice behind me breaks through the silence of the morning. She has a singer’s voice. The mental picture that always comes to mind is one of a woman in a sparkly dress sitting on a piano in a lounge.
Glancing over my shoulder as she steps up beside me, we stand side by side and watch him watch us.
“Most of the time, I don’t know what’s happened to them, not until they let me get close to them. Usually, it’s just people.”
“Ugh. People.” Hallie crosses her arms over her chest,tucking her fists under her arms, and sighs. I glance in her direction, but she’s gazing out over the round pen, her brown eyes don’t have their usual shine. We stand in comfortable silence for a moment.
The early morning sun is starting to warm the cool air, and the birds are singing loudly in the trees around us. It’s a beautiful morning. I can hear Gray on the tractor spearing hay in the barn to move to the big stables where he and dad are working.
Hallie has opened up some about her past in the last six months she’s been here. She’s shared stories of her relationship with ‘D’, as she calls him, but mostly she avoids talking about what she’s been through. If he showed up unannounced the other day, I’m worried he’ll be back, so I’ve been trying to think of ways to pry without overstepping.
Or avoid talking too much about my trauma to try to open her up more.
I guess one thing that I can’t figure out is why won’t he just move on?
Turning to look at her puts the sun in my eyes and I squint with my hand shielding my eyes. “You okay?”
She’s quiet for a few moments before she nods. “I’ve never understood how it’s so easy for humans to hurt and betray.” Just the tiniest flashback of a fist coming at my face and a hand around my throat makes me suck in a measured breath and I turn my gaze back to the horse. I feel Hallie look at me. “I mean, even the animals aren’t as mean to each other as humans are to each other.”
It’s like she’s peeking into a forbidden room in my mind, I have the same thoughts often. I cling to my spiraling thoughts and feelings, like trying to keep laundry from flying off the line during a storm, refusing to lose my focus.
Some days it’s like walking a tightrope. If I lose my balance, I’ll spend the rest of the day fighting unwantedmemories, pushing back feelings I don’t want to feel. I would rather not have that kind of day.
I remind myself that Hallie is next to me and a beautiful horse is in front of me as I tap my fingers against the pads of my thumb, counting each tap and its rhythm.
Focusing on the here and the now, the things I can see, hear, and touch, always helps to keep distance between me and that black hole.
Taking a deep breath, I look over the pen at the pond on the other side of my paddocks to ground myself. There are a few cattails on one side I keep cutting back, but they return every year thicker than the year before. I’ve read that the only way to stop them from taking over the pond is to drain it and starve them of water.
