A Handmade Wilderness by Donald Schueler

Author:Donald Schueler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

There was at least a sort of logic behind my decision to get involved with cattle. Whereas there is no rational way to explain why I bought Joker and Big Jim—except, as I’ve said, by blaming Roddy Ray. When he visited us on his own, he always rode Joker; and the sight of him galloping up the drive, looking as dashing and devil-may-care as a Cossack, put it into my mind that I might look that way too if only I owned a horse. I was especially vulnerable at the time because I had been rereading a number of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English novelists like Austen and Fielding and Trollope and was going through a country squire phase. I figured that now that Willie and I had our own private estate, it was no more than fitting that we should go riding around it like proper gentry. So when Roddy Ray casually remarked that I could have Joker for a very modest sum, I jumped at the chance. And when he mentioned that his uncle also had a horse, a nice quiet one, for sale dirt cheap—just in case I wanted to buy one for Willie—I jumped at that too.

I know more about horses now than I did then. For one thing, I know they eat half again as much as a cow and are generally more expensive to maintain. For another, they tend to fit into one of three categories: They can be high-spirited but tractable, which seems to be the kind most people have; or they can be tractable but somewhat dispirited, which is the kind Willie had; or they can be high-strung, stubborn, man-hating, and hard-mouthed, which is the kind I had.

I was so pleased at the prospect of owning Joker that I didn’t ask Roddy Ray about his background until some time later. Then, when it was too late, I learned that he had done time as a bronco on one of those backwoods rodeo circuits—the sort of ramshackle weekend setup where local would-be cowboys win a few dollars if they can just stay in the saddle for a little longer than most of them are able to, and where the broncos buck as they do because they’ve been jolted by sadistic rednecks armed with electric prods. It seems likely that many of Joker’s failings as a mount were attributable to all those traumatizing shocks he had endured. However, that aside, he also had some very fundamental life adjustment problems. Unquestionably, he saw himself as an aggressive, horny stallion—an equine Rambo—yet this macho self-image was starkly contradicted by the fact that he was a gelding. I tried to be understanding, for I genuinely sympathized with the poor brute; but after he had done his best to kill me a few dozen times, I couldn’t help but feel like an ACLU lawyer whose clients keep mugging him.

When I test-rode him before I bought him, Joker gave me some warning of what to expect, but not much. True, he was apt to hurl himself into a headlong gallop without any prompting from me.

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