A Country Called Home by Kim Barnes

Author:Kim Barnes
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307270276
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2008-09-30T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

The mare stood straddle-legged in the evening dusk, trembling, her breathing gone from quick and shallow to a deep, prolonged moan. Manny leaned against the tractor’s bucket, shouldering deeper into his jacket. He’d risen at dawn and found Allegro down. She’d been showing signs for the last two days, ever since the fair. He should have been paying more attention, but Sunday had been filled with dropping Elise at church, and then the stone boat pull, and then the carnival. He’d encouraged the mare up and walked her out into the pasture, whetted her with sweet-feed, but she’d stepped away, pulling her legs forward as though they were mired in mud, and made her way to the hawthorn, where she leaned into its thick trunk. He’d called the only vet for miles, who injected her with penicillin, but both understood what came next. Manny had started the tractor, dug the grave only a few feet from where she swayed and shuddered like a thin-ribbed ship, each hoof a weak and tremulous anchor.

He lit a cigarette and cupped it for warmth. The horse stumbled but did not lift her head. Dog rose to a sit, then curled back down, tucking her old bones tight against the chill air. This mare had been with them a long time, ever since Elise had read the ad in the paper for the Tennessee walker. Allegro had been delivered to them with her head poked through the canvas roof of the trailer like a circus giraffe. “Damned stubborn,” her owner had groused. It had taken him an hour to shag her into the trailer, and she had kicked and reared, denting the side panels, tearing the roof.

“She doesn’t like trailers,” Elise had countered, reaching her hand to stroke the mare’s withers. “She’s afraid of what’s inside.”

“She needs to be more afraid of me.” The man slapped the greasy thighs of his jeans, shook his head over the ripped roof. “How in the hell am I going to fix that?” Manny could have told him—a patch, a heavy curved needle and industrial thread—but he didn’t like the man’s temperament or the smell of his clothes and wished him gone.

The first year with the mare had been a test of patience, more time spent recovering the animal’s good instincts than was spent riding her. She’d been hit in the face and shied every time a hand was raised, had been spurred and whipped until her hide began its tender rippling before she was ever mounted. Finally, the horse was intelligent and kind by nature, and Manny had taught Elise how to start her over, just as his father had taught him, working the mare in the round pen with gentle ropes and gunnysacks slipped across her back, a plastic bag at the end of a stick to get her used to noise and movement. “Here,” Elise would say. “This isn’t going to hurt you. No one here is going to hurt you.” Manny had felt pride in the truth of her statement.

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