Half Broke

by Ginger Gaffney

  “You alright?” I can see the silhouette of the famous trainer in the doorway, with the sun bright behind his back. All the women I know love him, but I didn’t come here to fall in love. Other trainers, men I know from home, suggested that I spend some time around him.

  I wonder now what he thinks about my ride, my fall. I don’t ask, and a big part of me doesn’t care. I know he would have been able to stay on top of Terry. He can ride anything and make the most difficult ride look easy. I must have looked like a tattered rag flying off her back.

  “Yeah, I’m alright,” I say.

  “What’d you learn today?” he asks.

  “That I’d better start listening better. That little mare, she’s got a lot to teach me.”

  He looks down at his watch and calls for Jorge in Spanish to come help unload hay from his truck, then turns away, never meeting my eye.

  November / 2013

  “You want a bite?” I ask Sarah and pull a strip of elk jerky from a small saddlebag I’ve got strapped to the cantle. Sarah twists and looks at the back of my saddle. She points behind the bag to a long, braided ponytail tied to the saddle skirt.

  “What’s that?” she asks.

  I’m surprised she noticed. She hasn’t asked me a question or shown any sign of interest in anything or anyone all afternoon.

  “That,” I turn and lift the bundle of hair and caress it in my hand, “well, that is Domecq,” I say.

  “Who’s Domecq?”

  I let the bundle fall back to the saddle. Moo’s fluid, undulating walk has the blond braid swishing back and forth alongside his golden-brown flank.

  “He was a stallion I cared for over the last ten years. I had to put him down a few months ago. That’s his mane. Part of it.”

  Domecq was over thirty years old when I put him down. I was his primary caregiver. I watched him wither away this past summer to skin and bones. There wasn’t anything more I could do for him, except make the hard decision to let him go. I walked him past the mares one last time, on his way up the pasture, to the place I chose to lay him down. He puffed himself into a stud as we passed the girls. Arruff, ruff, ruff. Grunting and calling. The mares squealing, eeallll, and swirling around in their pens as we passed.

  Domecq was a champion distance racing horse. He spent most of his competitive years running across the Sierra Nevadas, the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, across the peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northern New Mexico. I came to care for him in his later years as a standing stallion for one of the horse farms where I work.

  Sarah can’t stop staring at Domecq’s flaxen braid. Her eyes open with curiosity, and for the first time today she shows me that grin I’ve come to lean on.

  “You kept part of him?”

  “Yeah, I guess I did. I mean, I wasn’t sure how to get on without him. I just carry him around now. It makes me feel like he’s still with me. Makes me feel stronger. Sometimes I have some hard, fucked-up days, Sarah. I need help sometimes. We all do.”

  She pivots around in the saddle and faces forward. We see Eliza and Billy back by the barn, awaiting our arrival.

  “Can you bring me a photo of him, please? I want to see him. He must have been—” Her voice trails off as she turns again to look at me.

  “He was the best part of my workday for the last ten years,” I tell her, as I wipe my eyes with the back of my sleeve.

  “I’m sorry, Ginger. It’ll be alright,” she assures me. She sits straight up in the saddle and picks up Scout’s reins for the first time today.

  Colt Starting / 1998

  My Ford diesel idles as I load my gelding into the trailer. The air is dry and crisp. For the first time in three weeks, the wind is not blowing. The sky is turquoise. Not a puff of cloud in sight. Spring may be starting to finally poke its head through this soil, but I’m heading home. Three days driving south through some of the most beautiful parts of the west, hauling myself and my gelding back to New Mexico.

  I shut my cab door and turn the heat to high. It’s twelve degrees above zero at eight o’clock in the morning. I drive past the barn, the corrals and round pens. Just ahead of me I see the breeder’s rig, pulled off to the right, where the famous trainer has been loading all the “broke” horses into the clamoring metal container. There must be twenty or more horses stuffed into the skin of that rig.

  Out the back, I see him working her. Back and forth on a tight circle. She’s the last to load. Still with the vet wrap support around her right leg. The overnight rest, the medicine, ice—all of it has helped. She’s not quite as lame. But she doesn’t want to load, either. She’s the last to be squeezed into a space so tight, it brings out the fight in her all over again.

  I drive up slowly and come to a stop behind them, about fifty feet away. I turn down the heater and watch him work her. She’s sweating. Steam rises off her back. Her owner, the woman who dropped all of them off three weeks ago, is off to the side, far away, hoping to keep herself from being trampled. Her skin is weathered. She holds her back straight. Her arms fold tightly across her chest. Proud with a mix of privilege, I think to myself. Proud yet dependent on him, the famous trainer, to get this mare, the not so generous one, finally loaded into her trailer.

  I roll down the passenger side window and look over toward where the owner is standing. She’s not looking at me. Her eyes are focused on the famous trainer. His instruction is all she wants. I want to tell her that her filly isn’t ready to be ridden. That she tried to show me, but I rode her anyhow. I didn’t listen.

  I roll up the window, put the truck into low gear, and drive past Terry, who is still refusing to put one hoof into that rig. I wish I was more like her. That clear. That certain. I wish I could trust my instincts like she does. I wish I had fought harder for what I knew. Ginger, I tell myself, next time you will.

  November / 2013

  “Did she tell you?” Tony asks me.

  “Tell me what?” I say.

  Tony and Randy have known Sarah since the day she entered this ranch. Those who come onto the ranch around the same time period are referred to as peers. When they hit their eighteenth month of living on the ranch, they are required to tell every detail of their entire life. It’s called Dissipation. Peers sit in a room full of mentors and elders for three straight days. From early morning and long into the night, each peer has their turn. They take as long as needed to tell every painful, embarrassing detail of every terrible thing they have ever done. Tony, Randy, and Sarah know each other very well.

  “I don’t know if I should say this or not,” Tony continues.

  “She should know,” Randy says.

  “Know what? Come on. It’s been hard enough today,” I answer, leaning back against the round-pen rail as I watch Eliza and Sarah walk away from us, stepping up the road on Billy and Scout.

  “When Sarah was in prison,” Tony says, “she was beaten pretty bad. You know, by the women in her pod. Left to die.”

  “That’s why she’s so messed up. That’s why her leg looks like that. The guards found her,” Randy tells me. “I think these last few months have sent her back into that hole. That’s what it seems like to me, anyhow. Man, it’s hard to go back, Ms. Ginger. Go back to some of the places we all have been.”

  I leave Randy and Tony and hustle over to Moo to remount.

  “I’ll be right back,” I tell them, then lope up the road toward Sarah and Eliza. They turn their horses around to face me when they hear our hoofbeats coming. “Wait a minute,” I say as I swing off Moo. I move around to Moo’s hindquarters and untie Domecq’s braided mane from the skirt of my saddle. Moo stands quiet with the reins slack around his neck. I slide around Scout’s hindquarters and pick up one of the saddle ties behind the cantle. I wrap the thin leather around Domecq’s hair and tie it into a knot around the root end of the braid. Sarah watches from up above.

  A little color has come back to her face. She reaches around and holds Domecq in her hand. His shiny golden mane dangles from her pal
m.

  “Thank you, Ginger. Thank you for everything.” Her face is solemn and lost in thought.

  “You know, Ginger, I’m half-broke. I need these walls. These fences.” Her arms wave wide, marking a full circumference of this ranch.

  I KNOW SHE’S RIGHT. She’s not ready to be on her own. And I don’t know if she will ever be.

  CROOKED LINE

  February / 2014

  The smell of alfalfa blends with diesel smoke and chokes the cold morning air. I’m watching Richard Sanchez in the front seat of his king-cab Ford truck fussing with a torn sheet of paper and his calculator. Two hundred bales times eight dollars, plus delivery fee. He’s covered in a light-green dust; it sticks to the sides of his nostrils under his drooping eyeglasses. His hair is a curly black nest stuffed under his sweat-stained baseball cap.

  “Eeeeh. I don’t know. I may have to go up on my bales. This diesel is killing me.” He looks at me from under his thick brown glasses. “Plus the tractor repairs, the truck and trailer tires, eeeeh, there’s no money in it.” He complains in his usual way.

  Tony and Randy are busy cleaning out the hay barn. They have pulled out all the remaining bales from last September’s final cut, trying to make room for the new hay Richard has delivered. Randy pushes the broom over the wooden-planked floor made of thin and graying pine boards. A black, moldy cloud of old alfalfa debris puffs out the door.

  “$1,750,” Richard announces. “I’ll only charge you half my delivery fee.” I smile and thank him. His farm is two miles north of this ranch. He charges us the same delivery price that he charges when he hauls to Santa Fe, one hour away. Not complaining about price is an essential part of keeping the hay grower happy.

  “Thank you, Richard.” I take off my gloves and shake his hand. “Tony, can you run down to headquarters with this bill and pick up a check for Richard?”

  Tony gives me a nod, swipes at the front of his jeans, and stomps the tiny green flakes off his boots.

  “Can you give me a lift up to the office?” Tony asks Richard.

  “Jump in,” Richard says and shoves to the floorboard of his truck his grease-stained Carhart jacket, a pile of old newspapers, and a broken cardboard box filled with washers, nails, and empty Styrofoam coffee cups. Tony climbs in, and the truck blows a cough of diesel through its knocking muffler.

  “Nice and green.” Randy goes over to the fresh hay and takes a giant whiff. He bends from the waist and pulls a grab of alfalfa from a bale. “Old Richard has some nice hay, no?”

  “Let’s get this loaded into the barn. Is it all cleaned up?” I ask.

  “Yep. And I raked up some of the scraps for the ducks, too.” He points to a pile of loose hay mounded in front of the cottonwood. “These bales are heavy. Can we ask Rex or Paul to help us out?”

  I shrug my shoulders and shake my head sideways. Two hundred bales are not too many for two people to stack. Randy’s always looking for ways to make life easier.

  “You bring them in; I’ll stack,” I tell him. Randy walks over to put his gloves back on, then picks up the first fresh bale. He comes through the door, takes a few heavy steps across the pine boards, and one of the boards pops free and smacks him hard on top of his kneecap.

  “Ahhh! You goddamn motherfucker.” He falls to his knees and lands belly first on the hay bale. “What a bitch.” He grabs at his knee, turns, then sits on the bale.

  There goes my worker, I think to myself. Randy doesn’t recover quickly from things that surprise or hurt him. Underneath his beefy frame, he’s fragile. I’ll have to wait, let him rub his pain away and listen to him moan. Tony comes through the door almost at a run. He’s the opposite of Randy, always ready to work hard, to take on a new challenge. He’s already dragging a new bale into the barn, when he stops in front of the hole in the floor.

  “What the hell happened here?” He bends over and picks up the board.

  “Fuckin’ thing swung up and bit me,” Randy announces.

  Tony goes into the tack room and gets a hammer. He bangs out the old nails and kneels to put the board back in place.

  “Huh. What the fuck?” Tony takes the hammer, twists the end around and rips out another board, next to the missing plank. Then the next board after that.

  “What are you doing?” I ask Tony.

  “I think there’s something down there. Can you get me your cell phone? I need the flashlight.”

  Randy crawls off his bale and leans over the gap in the floorboards. He pushes his head down close to the hole. “It’s a box.”

  I turn my cell phone’s flashlight feature on and shine it into the dark space. There’s a black box sitting in the dust under the floorboards, a foot below.

  “These boards are pulling up way too easy,” Tony says. “Someone’s put this box here pretty recent.” He keeps pulling more boards until there is space enough to release the box. Randy reaches down and lifts the box, then sits it down on the fresh bale. It is covered in a light dust, and the lid is latched with a twisted paperclip. I swipe the top of the box clean.

  The hay barn is locked daily, along with the equipment shed. Only livestock members have access to the key that is kept at the front desk, under supervision, with all the other important keys for the ranch. Tony and Randy look at me. I am the obvious choice for who should open the box. They step back three feet, trying to keep their distance, but still bending toward the box with anticipation. Their faces stretch with worry. Tony taps his fingers impatiently against his thighs.

  I lift the lid. Inside sit three 6cc syringes filled with a cloudy liquid. The needle applicators are locked in place. An open bag of condoms lies next to the syringes. A half-full metal jar of a gray-white powder sits on top of a few packs of cigarettes. Three rolled joints spin around on the bottom. As I rummage through the box, my hands start to shake.

  “We’re fucked,” Tony states with certainty.

  “No fucking kidding,” Randy snaps.

  I shut the lid, twist the paperclip into lock position, and set it down on the bale. I grab my upper lip with my right hand and pinch it tightly.

  “What should we do?” asks Randy. Tony is now pounding his fist on his thighs.

  I don’t answer. Staring at the box, I feel my temples start to pulse. “Let’s get these bales in and stacked,” I tell the guys, standing up quickly. Then I pick up the box and walk out to my truck, placing the box on the front passenger seat.

  “I can’t fucking believe this shit.” Tony knows finding this box will change everything. This box commands great power on this ranch. It is an undercover sex and drug cache, something that can be found in almost every prison. Randy and Tony have spent many years in prison. They understand, they recognize, far more than I, what this box represents.

  They start pulling in the bales. We heave and stack them from the back corner of the shed toward the door, leaving exposed the gaping hole in the floorboard. We move faster than usual, sweat dripping off our chins and noses. The bales weigh at least sixty pounds each. We are silent as we work. I’m thinking hard about what to do next. When we finish, the guys sit briefly on the last two bales. Their heaving chests pump up and down, and I can see veins popping from their necks above their shirt lines. I stand facing them. Green dust sticks to the sweat dripping down my arms.

  “I’ll go find James and Daniel.” I wipe the crust of alfalfa off my face. “You guys better get back to work. I wouldn’t talk about this to anyone right now. Keep it quiet.” But I know they will spread the news; secrets don’t last a minute on this ranch.

  I drive over to the ranch office looking for Daniel. I am told he’s busy in the Vatican room, the room where residents go when they have broken ranch rules, waiting on their contracts or punishment for misbehaviors. I get back in my truck and head across the property. The residents wave to me from their work stations, curious about my irregular activity away from the horses. I park near the dining hall and tuck the box under my sweat-stained denim shirt. The dining hall is empty, and th
e sound of my footsteps echoes off the thick adobe walls. Past the check-in desk, I turn and walk the long, thin hallway that leads to three different doorways. A chair sits outside the second doorway, and I hear the muffled voices of James and Daniel inside. I sit down and slide the box under my chair, out of sight.

  Inside, James and Daniel are talking slowly. They ask questions to another man, whose voice I can’t identify. There are long pauses and what seems like indecision or hesitation, then soft, quiet answers are fed back to James and Daniel by a voice so little it sounds like a child’s. Could he be the one? I think to myself. Then I shove the box farther back under my seat. I hear three chairs squeak backward, indicating a conclusion to the meeting. The shuffle of feet follows and the doorknob turns. A young man with short, cropped red hair and bushy eyebrows leaves the room first and turns toward me. He bows his head as he passes but doesn’t say hello. Daniel and James walk out behind him and stop in surprise to see me sitting there. I stand up and face them, waiting a few seconds for the redhead to move farther down the hall.

  “I need to speak with you guys.” I bend over and slide the box out from under the chair. “I have to show you something.”

  “Come on in.” Daniel waves me forward and walks back through the open door. James turns behind me, and we duck down to enter.

  The room has no windows. It is shaped like an oval, with chairs circling the perimeter, reminiscent of an AA or NA meeting. Each chair is placed at just the right angle where everyone can meet the eye of every participant. I sit on the first empty chair next to James. He scuffs his chair back a few inches and turns it slightly toward me. I lay the box on my lap, placing both palms flat against the top. I tap my nails nervously against its surface. It could be a jewelry box. A box of candles. It could be filled with intricate glass beads. Someone’s prized possession.

  “What do you have there, Ginger?” James asks me.