by Joe Henry
And seeming to see clearly for one moment before it all clouded up again and slipped back into that vast obscurity of question and doubt, I suddenly saw how each life’s joy and pain were made just exactly right for that life so that they fit that life perfectly like its own skin. And so no other body could possibly get in and try it on for itself because every other body had its own perfect skin too.
And the more you could stand the more you’d be given, so you were always filled right up to your own personal limit where one more drop, which you could count on, would push it over the edge. And so you would somehow have to find the way to contain it too, that one drop too many, and maybe just to see how much you could actually bear. And whether your capacity be a thimbleful or the whole damn ocean, the well of your precious collected humor be it tears today or your life’s blood tomorrow will surely drown the fragile flame of your existence given the addition of that inevitable next drop. Unless you grow. Unless you become big enough to still hold it all.
And so like it or not, you would learn what you were given the breath of life to learn. You would learn what you unknowingly came here to learn. And your sorrow and grief and your joys and pleasures too would teach you your lessons in a curriculum devised just precisely for you. The man who spends his life chasing golden rings for his naked and grasping fingers, and the man who mourns his fingers with rings of gold in careless abundance but no hands to put them on.
PASSAGES
When my mare died, Luke says, the day we put my mare down. I hadn’t been able to ride her for over a year because her back had gotten so bad. And Spencer had told me that she would have to be put down someday because eventually the pain would just be too much for her. You could run your hand along her backbone and feel the muscle wince up as you passed over these arthritic edges that had grown there. Until finally she could hardly lie down nor stand back up again. I’d go into her stall and she’d move back and forth from off one foot onto the other trying to find one position of relative neutrality that maybe would hurt her a little less. And so I finally had to admit to myself that leaving her like that was more cruel than the alternative.
Spencer was away on business and I’d gone down to the barn to grain her early one Saturday morning, humping my shoulders up at how cold it was right at the beginning of October. And I remember cutting more corn into her feed for the heat we’d been taught was generated digestively or something, and so I emptied the bucket of it into her trough and then took some of it in my hand as she began to move over to that side of the stall. I put my arm across her withers speaking to her as she nuzzled the grain off my open palm and she nickered deep down in her throat. And I remember watching her great gentle eyes as I spoke to her until it suddenly hit me as if she’d spun around and nailed me, it suddenly hit me as I talked to her eyes just how much pain she was in. And all the while she kept mincing from one foot to the other as she continued to sidle her way over to the grain trough.
So I storm back through the kitchen past Whitney who’s still at the table eating and reading his sportspage, and looking up at me as I’m dialing the phone, he says, What is it? I look in his eyes as the line opens and I say, Stony? And Whitney keeps watching me with his spoon in his bowl as I ask our vet, Stony Walls, if he could come over that morning for my mare. Which was our mother’s horse that she’d raised from a foal. And I say, I think she’s just hurting too bad anymore. And Stony says he’ll be over right around nine o’clock.
I sit down at the table with my own bowl and pour out some of the breakfast food and Whitney asks, What time? I tell him and he buries himself back in his paper while I try to eat, staring out the window as morning comes on bleak and grey. And then Whitney says without looking up, Today? And I answer him without looking back from the window, Today.
I go back down to the barn and soon I hear Whitney start up the backhoe and chug away, and then as it begins to run smoother and quieter its sound fades down toward the meadow. The mare’s still eating at the trough and I bring her a bucket of fresh water so she looks up from the grain and drinks and then goes back to her feed as I begin to brush her down. And I work over her slowly, remembering her through all the years of my life, with the winter hair already on her. And all the while the sound of her eating in the dim emptiness of the barn is a peace to both of us. I rub my free hand over her following my other hand with the brush and then comb her long thick tail and finally her mane too. And for a moment she stops the grinding in her jaws and turns and just looks at me and then bows her head over the grain once again.
I run my hand down her leg and kneel beneath her and then lay each leg in turn across my thigh so I can clean her hooves. She hadn’t had shoes on in over a year since we’d stopped working her, and I remember thinking how good her feet looked all trimmed up even and all. My lifting her feet troubled her though for she continued to shift back and forth and from side to side, and so I worked quickly letting her lean her weight against my shoulder.
There’s a white Y-shaped scar between the second and third knuckles of my left hand that runs into the webbing between those two fingers that reminds me of a day a couple of years ago when we were out looking for strays and somehow ended up all the way over into Whiskey Basin where I’d never been before. We come out of the timber just at dusk and there’s an old settler’s cabin down below and I know we need to be getting back. But instead we keep on across the abandoned pasture that’s all gone to sage and scrub oak and past the corral that’s twisted over and buried in the tall grass beside the fallen-down barn. Until we approach the disused ranchhouse with the evening star, Venus I think it was, hanging just above the caved-in roof. And with all the windows poked out too like some old veteran of some ancient war still dressed in the tattered faded remnants of his uniform and with his skeleton’s eyesockets staring and lifeless.
And I knew I should have dismounted and led the mare on foot in case there was wire somewhere that I couldn’t see, but it was late and I told myself she’d be alright. But I knew even before she stepped between two of the old rotted fenceposts that I was wrong. She steps again and begins to lift that hoof out of the dust and the refuse of decayed leaves, and time somehow seems to slow down almost to a standstill. And so her right forefoot begins to come away from the darkening ground, and with it a careless loop of barbed-wire that’s snared about her fetlock. And as that hoof lifts higher than it should for the next step she begins coming back on her hind legs slowly and slowly so the front of her reaches even higher still and paws at the dark sky as if she were trying to touch Venus which by then shines as bright as a miniature moon. And as I’m trying to coax her with infinite care come girl come girl ahead and down with my voice and my spurs, she overpasses her balance and tumbles backward with a shriek of fright as I crash down too. With her on top of me.
She rolls across me and as my body turns in the dust I sense her arcing high above me shrieking again at Venus and at that dark barbed stubbornness at her foot that still won’t let go. And waiting and waiting but where she finally breaks herself free and falls back to earth. And waiting and waiting but where the steel-shod hoof as final as nightfall comes crashing down on my hand my left hand and the force of it seems to throw me just half again in the red but tasteless dust leaving only an echoing silence that dims to black. Until however later I don’t know when I feel the reins that must have fallen over her head brushing past my face, and then the soft skin of her muzzle and lips as she nibbles at the ground where I lie seeking my touch.
I’d finished my grooming and she her eating, and unconsciously I glance again at that scar between my fingers as I fasten her halter and then lead her out into the dull morning. We walk far down the knoll that fronts the ranch along the creek and she drinks again and then we move back along the rising slope where we can drop down through the dense wood and into the clearing. Whitney’s machine was quiet by then and I knew he had finished. He’d meet Stony back at the house and’d take him down to the meadow in the old uncovered jeep
that’d also been there as long as I can remember.
The trees are all bare, naked white trees that rise all around us, and we walk across a silent carpet of mottled golden leaves as we pass through the wood. It’s still real cold and the breath-vapor puffs out from both of us as I walk beside her with the leadrope slack in my hand as if she knows where we’re headed, although I know it is really just the downgoing of the hillside. We finally come out of the trees at the far side of the clearing for I had glimpsed the backhoe and so have taken us the long way around as if we were trying to evade some mortal force that awaited us with a great yellow arm, which indeed we were. I walk up against her so her cheek brushes against my arm as we go. I know they’re waiting for us across the field but I’m having a difficult time turning back towards them and so we keep walking further and further away in the direction of the barn and home.
We have walked enough so that her stride has evened out and she seems to move without any lameness at all and I dwell on her familiar innocent face as it swings up against me with her step. As we approach the rise of the hill that climbs up to the lowest corral I will myself to turn away and we move quickly back towards where the jeep and the machine are parked and where the two men await us. Whitney comes over to me as I approach and takes the leadrope from my hand and moves a few steps off with the mare as she begins grazing. Stony is leaning against the jeep and begins to fix a syringe with the contents of a vial that he’s taken from his jacket.
Stony, I say. And he says, Mornin Luke. I’m awful sorry. And the way he says “awful” goes straight through me as I look at him working with his gear and I’m reminded of what a kind and gentle man he is behind all his gruffness, and that for all the years I’ve known him I have never seen him be harsh with an animal. I suddenly hate the look of his instrument though and without looking up he says, It’s the best way son. You know me and your pap come from the old school of getting things done, but this is the best way. She’ll just kneel down in the grass and then lie over and be done with it.
And I say, Just as long as it’s quick enough so it won’t be a hurt to her. And he says, Don’t you worry son. This here is enough for two animals her size and I’m giving her all of it. If’n she feels anything at all it’ll be the first moment in all this time when she wasn’t hurting.
Whitney brings her alongside the deep slash he’s dug in the raw earth with the backhoe and hands me the leadrope. And I’m holding her face against me, my fingers under the straps of the headstall and my thumbs rubbing at the soft corners of her mouth which was something she always liked. Stony moves next to her and rubs his left hand flat along the length of her neck and suddenly jabs the needle that he’s holding with his other hand into the vein that runs there, and there’s a bright instant of blood that he closes off with the syringe. Then he depresses the plunger and almost immediately one of her forelegs starts to bend as I keep her great head against me trying to hold her upright even as she crumbles under me and rolls onto her side with her legs facing the hole.
Stony kneels down and feels at her chest and says, She’s gone boys. Her heart’ll beat on for a few more moments but it’ll just be the reflex. Whitney kneels down and replaces Stony’s hand with his as Stony stands back up and says, I’m gonna run up to my vehicle. I meant to bring a scalpel to dissect the top of her backbone, see what that actually looks like, least if you boys don’t mind. And Whitney says, It’s still beating. And I say, No, I don’t guess it’d make any goddamn difference now anyway. And so Stony gets in the jeep and goes off.
I kneel down next to Whitney and he moves aside and I lay my hand up against her and feel her heart beating raggedly within her. I watch at her dead face with her eyelid nearly closed and she groans and so I stay there on my knees. And her heart which had been racing against the inevitability of the poison seems to ease into a slower rhythm and so I say to Whitney, She’s goin now. It’s slowin down now. But it keeps on with a dull and steady persistence until she suddenly takes in a great inhalation of air and lets it back out and I say, Jesus, out loud to myself. And Whitney says, What? And I say, She’s still alive, Whitney. And he shakes his head and says, You heard him, Luke, it’s just the reflex. And I say, I swear to Christ, Whitney. And he kneels down beside me as she breathes again and presses his hand under mine and says, Goddamnit. And then standing back up, Where the Fuck is he?
The jeep is finally audible coming off the hill and as I watch her, her eyelid rises enough for me to see her living pupil. And I’m repeating over and over inside myself, I’m sorry I’m sorry. And her heartbeat is slow and steady in her breast which is still warm against my hand.
Whitney has gone past the backhoe as Stony drives up and Whitney yells, She ain’t dead, Stony. And so Stony comes and kneels down where I am and I stand back up and he injects her again and this time stays against her until there is an absolute nullity where his hand lies. I kneel at her head and move her eyelid back down and then lift her face so I can move the halter around where I can unfasten it.
And I think now she is free. Now there is nothing to hold her back. And I let her go.
LOVE
He could hear the August wind again, and then broken and quiet and then perfectly clear the clash of hay machinery from the field down below and for one instant Spencer’s voice calling, Where in the blazes did Luke go? Who at that moment, fugitive and on foot and having already turned all the bales on the ground in advance of whoever was driving the flatbed which was still a whole pasture away, had apparently disappeared. And wondering if she’d be there as they had planned and before he had to return to his chores, when Luke finally did climb up and over the ridge, she was already running towards him.
And then the warm wind must have changed again because there was only the sound of the dry rustling grass rubbing together beneath golden tassels that waved and bowed over them while her skin under his hand made a flame in him that he could hardly stand, her fingers locked about his wrist where his pulse ran crashing in his ears and pounding in his chest.
They both must have fallen asleep, wearied by the force and heat of the blood risen so precipitously that it carried them right up to that line that still wouldn’t be crossed. And then they woke to the noise of more machinery that sounded as if it were nearly right below them once again the way the wind carries sound sometimes so you can hear voices or an animal or a bird as if they were nearby when in fact they were actually some distance away. And almost with that same facility that sometimes makes time and distance seem nearly interchangeable, so you could swear you’d been someplace before that you were seeing for the first time. Or maybe in truth, just seeing with new eyes.
He could hear Whitney’s voice this time over the clashing noise and then it was quiet again. She sat up and turned around to button her blouse while Luke sat up too and brought his t-shirt back over his head saying, I guess, the way Red always said “I guess” when it was time to go back to work. But just as his face reemerged she pushed him back against the ground crushing her mouth against his. And then she was gone.
When he finally climbed up behind the tractor that Whitney was driving, standing on the axle and catching the back of Whitney’s seat with his hand, Whitney turns and shakes his head and then turns back around and raising his voice says, You got your lip all busted. And still running his tongue across the place where she had marked him, Luke climbs off the rack that holds the hayrake and jumping down strides across to where more finished bales are spaced haphazardly on the new-mown ground and begins turning and straightening them so they’ll be ready to be bucked up onto the flatbed when it comes. And that was a day’s workout that easily surpassed anything you could make up in the gym. Ten and sometimes twelve hours a day, and day after day, until the hay was all in. Which usually took the better part of at least a couple of months.
That was the summer before their senior year and the football team was practicing in the evenings under the lights because everyone else was haying during the day too. Even the k
ids from town, even they were working on someone’s hay crew. And it had been a good summer for both the hay and the team. And they knew they were going to be good. You could just feel it when they came out of the lockerroom because there was something almost kinetic, almost explosive, in the way they took the field. Almost as if the violence of practice and then of scrimmage released like a nightly catharsis the harsh sum of the highland sun in their backs and shoulders and the hard stiff labor of the day that still formed their hands. And so it seemed that if they just put in enough time and gained enough repetition so the patterns and the plays became natural responses or really instinctive reactions rather than problems to solve, which in the physical world gets you there a step too late, then they just might have something.
So it was a good summer. And the team started off good too. They won the first six games and then lost the next one on a fumbled punt when they ran out of time before they could score again, although they were knocking on the door when the game ended. Then the following weekend they had to travel all the way across the state to Plainview, a perennial powerhouse and state champions the last two years. And it started to snow before the end of the first quarter and never stopped.
Luke went up as high as he could and somehow came down with Percy’s pass which had led him a little too far but he was still able to hang on. He remembered it hitting the fingertips of his right hand and as he flew into it getting his other hand on it too and drawing it against his chest just as the defender racing across and almost out of control with the poor footing caught him with a knee to his side before he hit the ground.