Sweet Tea and Jesus Shoes by Various

Author:Various [Various]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

COOKIE THE ONE-EYED HORSE

By Virginia Ellis

Lady Godiva put everything she had on a horse.

—W.C. Fields

When I was seven, I had three best friends: Mary Jo Taylor, a boy named Jesse and Cookie, a one-eyed horse.

Cookie, a little more than two years old and not a plug, was of no use to my friend’s father, a horse dealer, because of her obvious disability. So, Mr. Taylor had given her to Mary Jo.

We’d been told Cookie lost her eye when some mean boy had shot her with a BB gun. She looked perfectly normal except for the smooth flat place where her right eyeball used to be. Mary Jo and I didn’t care that she wasn’t perfect, we had a horse for a friend and since she loved cookies, that’s what my friend named her.

I don’t believe Cookie knew she was a horse, however. I think, perhaps because she’d suffered a trauma in her youth, she got confused. Cookie thought she was a dog. If we didn’t tie her up, she’d follow us wherever we went: in the paddock, all over the yard, even up the steps to the house once, before Mary Jo’s mother opened the screen door and chased her off. She knew we were inside eating cheese sandwiches for lunch and thought she must surely be invited.

Cookie had an overall kind disposition, didn’t bite or kick. She’d let us ride her double and barebacked, running like the wind through the pasture till one of us fell off. The only time she ever hurt me was when I was unlucky enough to fall underneath her at a full canter. Her back foot yanked out a whole handful of my hair and put a good-sized knot on my head. It was the only time in my life I saw little circling stars like the cartoon characters when I came to.

Mary Jo and I didn’t tell anybody about my spill because we didn’t want them to take Cookie away from us. Later in life, when I had to have a CAT scan for a physical, I found out that Cookie’s memory still resides in my grown-up self. One side of my skull is thicker—exactly where she stepped on my head.

Now I guess that means I can claim I wasn’t always so hard-headed. I don’t bother to do so, however, because I doubt anyone who knows me would buy it.

When you live out in the farm country of Florida, you don’t have a wide choice of kids to play with. You’re fairly restricted to family and close neighbors, which is why a variety of animals became our friends and in some ways, our guardians. When you’re on a horse in the same pasture with a Brahma bull the size of a Volkswagon on stilts, for example, and your horse suddenly tenses up and heads for the barn like its tail is on fire, your job is to hold on with all your fingers and toes because the horse is trying to save your life.

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