Half Broke

by Ginger Gaffney

  “Is this it? Is this all that’s left?” I ask them.

  “Eliza is still here. She’s waiting for you to arrive. They won’t let her come down here by herself,” Randy tells me.

  Eliza walks around the corner of the women’s dorm. Without Flor. Without Sarah. They are gone, along with Paul, Rex, and Omar.

  I turn toward Eliza and bend over, holding my wet face in my hands. Eliza grabs me and picks me up. She holds me in the middle of her strong body for so long it feels like I am dissolving into her muscles.

  “Where are they?” I whisper into her ear.

  She shakes her head. No.

  “I can’t,” she says. “I’m not allowed to talk about it.”

  Whenever anyone is asked to leave the ranch, the rule is no one can talk.

  “Come on.” Tony puts his arm around my shoulder. “Let’s get the horses saddled. We need to go for a ride.”

  CUT ME OUT

  February / 2014

  The arroyos are flash flooding on my way home. They bubble and churn through the culverts under the highway, the water heading west to the Rio Grande. Branches of juniper, a baby’s diaper, the cushion from a sofa flush by, as I drive north heading into an ever-darkening sky. Two to three times a year we get torrential rains like these. My cell phone buzzes with weather warnings, and I’m grateful I remembered to put my dogs inside before I left the house.

  At the gate, I see my horses pacing in their corral, six inches deep with mud and floodwater. When it rains this hard, the mesa behind our house sends a monsoon of water into our low-lying corral. Moo lets out a scream when I open the truck door, which sends Izzy and my youngest horse, Ra, sliding and bucking around their pen. I pull through the driveway while Moo stands close to the fence, staring at me. His pawing splatters sludge all over his chest and belly.

  I run to the house to get my raincoat and muck boots off the porch. My dogs wag their tails but don’t get up. I wade through the ocher-colored water toward the farthest gate where the halters and lead ropes are tied. Ra runs into the horse shelter as I splash by. He crams himself into the corner like he always does each morning and evening when I come out to feed. Ra is four years old and our least-broke horse. He came to us terrified of people; his entire body trembled when anyone approached him. His routine of running into corners and hiding always makes me sad, but today it reflects the mood.

  I look around at the fences that contain my herd. Every day I love nothing more than to come out and feed them, groom them, get on their backs and ride them. Today I see this swamp-filled corral, measured by fences and corners, this metal container of manure mixed with rock, sand, and slurry, and I wonder how in the hell could I ever feel good about this. Izzy pushes his hind legs out behind him, straightens his hocks, and takes a long yellow-red pee. It pours into this waterlogged mess and swirls around my legs.

  Daniel and James met me at the gate late this afternoon. They were checking in to see if I was okay. I wasn’t. I couldn’t hide it. My face was so swollen from crying I could see my own puffy cheeks when I looked down. James leaned through the window on the driver’s side, and Daniel’s head tilted in the opposite window. They both looked as if they hadn’t seen the sun in weeks.

  “There wasn’t much else we could do, Ginger,” James informed me. “None of them came clean. No one would rat on the other.”

  “They were on the bench for two days, and no one said a word,” Daniel said, his face void of expression. “They were a team, and they went down like a team.”

  When pinned into a corner, two dogs will usually fight, I thought to myself. But what did I know about any of this? What did I know about the livestock team? Not much. Not much at all it seemed.

  “Not even Sarah?” I asked them, hoping they would give me a hint that she tried to save herself.

  “Not a word. She never said a word.”

  My attention snaps back to the clatter Moo is making as he paws at the metal gate that leads toward the pasture. Izzy is walking the fence line pacing and turning. His neck swings like a saw. Cut me out.

  I think about walking into a place I could never leave, like this pen where my horses live. I would learn every inch of this space. I’d smell my own piss over and over, tug at my manure for meaning. I’d lean and chew on the fence posts, putting splinters in my gums. I would pace the line with dull, witless eyes, barely lifting my hooves off the ground as I wove, back and forth, in a corral so small I couldn’t see when the rain was coming. I wouldn’t remember the scent of sagebrush and meadow; instead I’d smell this stink of manure, and urine, and sweat that surrounds me.

  Sheets of rain come pouring from the sky; I can see it land like walls around me. Visibility is low. Moo bangs on the gate three times with his hooves, then snakes his neck and tosses his mane. He wants out. I’m taking too long.

  Today I’m grateful for the pasture we bought from our neighbors ten years ago. It’s a small pasture that sits above the floodplain across the road from our house. Three acres of irrigated grassland that run alongside the Rio Grande. It cost more than most people pay for a home. Irrigated land is expensive and hard to find in the desert west. Glenda and I have worked multiple jobs for years to pay it off. We water the grasses on the one day a week we’re not working.

  Ra is still stuffed into the corner of the shed when I pass him carrying the halter, sliding downhill toward Moo. I lay the halter over Moo’s neck, not even bothering to pull it over his head. I back him up as I open the gate inward. His hooves ker-plunk, ker-plunk through the muddy water, splashing sludge into my muck boots. My socks fill with goo.

  Containment casts a spell over a body. Ra was chased by two men into the corners of his paddock for the first three years of his life. Whipping their ropes at his hindquarters, they would jam Ra’s terrified body as far into the pipe corral corner as they could squeeze him. He tried to escape, jerking away from one corner and galloping straight into the next, where the men would lash at him again until he gave up. Until he stood shivering and motionless, screaming through his eyes. Some bodies will never be truly free.

  I take Moo out the gate and cross the road checking for cars, but no one is out in this weather. Izzy tucks himself behind Moo’s rump, while Ra splashes by and flies out in front. Moo pins his ears in irritation. Ra romps ahead of us, running into the pasture, tossing his front legs high into the air. I release Moo, and Izzy follows him into the field. I shut the gate behind them. The two of them lope across the pasture toward the bosque, the forest of trees growing alongside the river that protects the horses from wind, rain, and snow in the winter.

  Ra finishes his youthful dash and pulls up between Moo and Izzy. The three of them bend over and feed on the leftover grasses from last summer’s pasture. Behind them, farther to the west, I hear more calls of thunder and see the strikes of lightning hit the Jemez Mountains. The horses will move into the bosque if another storm comes in. They can take care of themselves now.

  That night, I lie in bed unable to sleep. Glenda slumbers next to me, already two hours into a good night’s rest. I roll from side to side, every ten minutes, taking a deep breath and trying to let go of the tension in my legs. I close my eyes and see Flor in the dining hall, talking to the newly arrived women. She sits across the table and speaks with calm, clear, deliberate words. She encourages them to take it one day at a time. She speaks about trusting their mentors and letting the system of the ranch change them from the inside. I’ve heard her give this talk many times. I know she believed it. She was certain of the new Flor. She thought her change was finished, finalized. But all she had was a foundation, with no house to put on top. I cover my face with pillows to quiet my tears.

  Flor isn’t finished with her prison term. The ranch will have called her parole officer to let them know that she has been kicked off the ranch. She is required to turn herself in if she ever leaves the ranch. Will she go and hide out at her mother’s house? Will they pass the time on the sofa, talking about her brother, her aunt,
how her dogs are doing? How long before she tells anyone the truth, that she’s heading back to prison?

  I roll over again, now facing Glenda. I can hear her quiet breath. I see her chest rise and fall with the moonlight. I begin to count with her breathing: one . . . two . . . ten . . . twenty-four . . . I fall asleep with tears crusting my eyes.

  In the middle of the night, I am startled awake by the sound of voices carrying up our country road. Three men, obviously drunk or stoned, are shouting and laughing. They stop just outside the south gate of our property and start bantering back and forth. One man’s demanding a smoke. Another man can’t find his wallet.

  Naked, I sit up, slide the blankets off, and walk out of the bedroom, onto our glassed-in porch. I see the men sitting on the black boulders we placed out in front of our fence, to keep the drunk drivers from flying around the curve in the road and careening into our front yard. They are passing a bottle between them. I poke my head out the storm door.

  “Hey, guys, move along. We’re trying to sleep,” I shout loud enough so they can hear me. The dogs come to the open window and start to growl. The moon is up behind the men, and I can see their silhouettes rise and turn to face me.

  “Fuck you. You fuckin’ bitch,” one of the men stutters. His words slur together. Glenda rattles out of a deep sleep and calls from the bedroom, “What’s going on?” The dogs start barking.

  “Get out of here, or I’ll call the police,” I say. The men laugh at me and keep passing the bottle.

  “What the fuck you gonna do about it?” one of the men garbles.

  I shut the storm door. Pissed, I rush through the hallway, back to the bedroom closet, and pull my gun out from under my winter sweaters. Still naked, I unlatch the safety on my handgun and step out the porch door, onto the wet cement stoop. I turn and face the sound of the men.

  “What are you doing?” Glenda calls again.

  I widen my stance, grab my right wrist with my left hand, and take a firm grip on the gun. I raise the loaded weapon over my head and point it straight at the sky. I suck in air through my nose. My lips are locked shut. My tongue shoves against the roof of my mouth. I fire off five bullets into the night sky. The ricochet of the gun jams my elbows down into my shoulders. The muscles on my neck turn to bone.

  “Go! Go!” the men shout at each other. I can hear their sneakers slap against the pavement and see the vague outline of their bodies tracking south, down our country road. Their arms and legs pump and swing, pump and swing. Their torsos stumble and fall forward, picking themselves up just before they hit the pavement. I lose sight of them as they race around the curve of our road. I’m still holding the gun over my head.

  “Get in here,” Glenda grabs me off the stoop and pulls me onto the porch. “What is wrong with you?” She looks like she can’t recognize me, standing there with the smell of a fired pistol in my hand. “Did you know them? Who was that?”

  The adrenaline is leaving my body, and I can barely stand up. My arms go numb and start to shudder, with the gun vibrating in my hand. I taste the salt of tears leaking into the corners of my lips.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know who they were.” I lay the gun on the porch floor. The dogs come over and start sniffing it. I can’t stand anymore. I’m light-headed. My skin prickles over my shoulders and neck. I sit down on the cold porch and the dogs start licking my arm. I place my head between my legs to calm the dizziness.

  Glenda picks the gun off the floor and clicks on the safety. She goes into the living room and places it on the ledge just above the fireplace. I see her bare feet come back onto the porch and stand next to me. She bends over and wraps her warm body all around me.

  “They’re gone, right? They’re gone?” I keep repeating.

  “They’re gone, Ginger,” she says in a quiet voice. “Come on, let’s get back to bed.” I feel like a child next to her. I’m cold and trembling and falling apart. I can’t see. I stub my toe into the rocking chair and wince forward. “Here, follow me,” she says and leads me back to the bedroom where we lie together, faces to the ceiling, eyes wide open, the gunshots still ringing in our ears.

  WALMART

  March / 2014

  It’s Sunday and the parking lot is filled with work trucks and family vans. Near where I park, there’s a young guy selling pit-bull pups out of a cage made to fit the bed of his Dodge Ram. Shopping carts are abandoned between cars, and the remains of empty plastic bags flap like pigeon wings against tires and light posts. This parking lot is always busy. An unarmed security guard drives past me in a silver Ford Focus. Sia booms from his speakers. I’m gonna live like tomorrow doesn’t exist. Like it doesn’t exist. His curly hair squiggles out from under his official company hat, and his face is covered in a full black beard and dark sunglasses. I wave to him as he passes.

  I haven’t been to the ranch for a few weeks. I can’t make myself go back. I haven’t called, either. I’ve busied myself at the other two ranches where I work, and today I need to shop for a week’s supply of food. There are clouds coming down from the mountains, covering the sun and spreading a dull, gray light across the valley.

  They were dropped here in this parking lot, I was finally told. They were given one phone call. They could call family, they could call friends, or they could call their parole officers. Each was driven off the ranch, one by one, and left here in the parking lot of Walmart. Left alone to wait for whomever they had asked to pick them up. By law, Flor, Sarah, Omar, and Paul were all required to call their parole officer. If they didn’t, that would be considered breaking parole. The ranch is also required to notify the police once someone is asked to leave. Everyone, except Rex, had two choices: go back to prison or be on the run.

  Maybe they begged for money while they waited. In their clean clothes, with their hair nicely cut and styled, looking nothing like addicts, they could have fooled a few people. They have learned to be gracious and greet people in the eye when speaking. They have learned how to listen and form a conversation full of interesting sentences. I imagine some of them were shaking. Sarah could have been crying, she had nowhere to go. I wonder if Flor was solid. She looked and acted like a person in full recovery, yet she was still a lying, sneaking drug addict who just had better cover now. Rex, tall and handsome with a beautiful smile, most likely waited for his father to drive up from Albuquerque. I hope he didn’t call his friends from the street—homeless boys who could have rallied and found a car somehow. I’m almost sure Paul called his sister and brother, or someone in his family. Being in trouble was a way of life for Paul. Something he could always rely on. Or maybe some of them did call their parole officer. I prayed Omar made that call. He is young, insecure, and fully impressionable. He followed the livestock team into this trouble and will follow others like them into more if he doesn’t have supervision.

  I imagine Sarah wanted to call me. She knew my number by heart. She also knew the call would have been wasted. I could never go pick her up and save her from herself. I think she knew that much. Out of all the residents, Sarah broke my heart the most. There were times when I could see her as the young, happy Sarah. The way she must have looked before the pain. There were days when her skin would lie tender over her face without sags or wrinkles. Her hair draped down to her shoulders. Untangled, pure, straight hair that looked like a soft breeze waving around her. I remember seeing this carefree Sarah when she rode Scout through the obstacle course, knocking most of the obstacles over, laughing and falling forward, wrapping her arms around Scout’s neck in a giant hug.

  Over breakfast, with our plates full of pancakes, we told each other childhood stories. How my mother made me try out for cheerleading and how on the day of the tryouts I wiped out on my skateboard right in front of all the pretty, perfect girls. My knees were shredded and pocked with road pebbles, bleeding so much I couldn’t perform my routine. Sarah told me she had a younger sister she would dress for school every day because her mother was drunk, or stoned, or gone. She searched the ni
ght before for the matching components: light-blue socks, pink ribbons for her sister’s hair, miniature floral print dresses. She’d lay each item out carefully on the edge of their shared bed in preparation for the morning routine. Sarah often cried while she told me stories about her sister—a sister she hasn’t seen in over fifteen years.

  Walking into the fluorescent lights of Walmart, I realize I have no idea whom Sarah called to pick her up. She had no family nearby, and no one would have come even if they were close. Her father, her sister, her own children had given up on her. Sarah came to the ranch from a prison in Texas. She was alone and an outsider, and I would most likely never see her again. I don’t know where to put the memories of her.

  A woman dressed in Walmart blues with a round smiley face pasted on her chest rolls a shopping cart toward me and I thank her. She’s frail and hunched over, but her eyes meet mine and we share a smile. I want to ask her how she is. Can I get her anything? It feels like she should be in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, not standing here in these bright lights.

  Shopping carts full of plastic toys, cheap clothes, gallons of milk and doughnuts, frozen lasagna, and sixteen-inch pizzas, pounds of hamburger meat, bags of avocados, and burlap sacks full of green chiles crowd the aisles. There are so many shoppers, every space feels narrow and tight, like my skin after a bad sunburn. Children swarm around their parents’ carts, screaming for a toy or fighting with a sibling. Mothers’ faces sag with fatigue and annoyance, pushing their overloaded carts along at a snail’s pace, scanning the shelves for necessary items. My cart is empty, as I hike up one aisle, turn right, then right again, and head down the next.