Half broke horses: a true-life novel

by Jeannette Walls

  I’d wanted to go to a real school for years, and the day finally came when Dad hitched up the buckboard and we set out on the two-hundred-mile journey, camping at night on bedrolls under the stars. Dad was almost as excited about me going off to school as I was, and seeing as how I hadn’t spent too much time around girls my age out on the ranch, he gave me an earful of advice about how to get along.

  I tended to be a tad bossy, he said, as I was used to ordering around Helen and Buster and Lupe and the migrants. But in school there were going to be a lot of bigger, older girls who’d be bossing me around—not to mention the nuns—and instead of fighting with them, I’d have to learn how to get along. The best way to do that, Dad said, was to figure out what somebody wanted, because everybody wanted something, and make them think you could help them get it. Dad admitted that, as he put it, he wasn’t the best exemplar of his own creed, but if I could find some way to apply it to my life, I’d go a lot further.

  Santa Fe was a beautiful old place—Dad pointed out that the Spanish arrived here even before the first Poms got to Virginia—with low adobe buildings and dusty streets lined with Spanish oaks. The school was right in the middle of town, a couple of four-story Gothic buildings with crosses on top and a chapel with a choir loft reached by what was known as the Miraculous Staircase.

  Mother Albertina, the Mother Superior, showed us around. She explained that the Miraculous Staircase had thirty-three stairs—Jesus’s age when he died—and that it went in two complete spirals without any of the usual means of support, such as a center pole. No one knew what type of wood it was made of or the name of the mysterious carpenter who showed up to build it after the original builder failed to include a staircase and the nuns prayed for divine intervention.

  “So you’re saying it’s a miracle?” Dad asked.

  I started to explain what Dad was saying, but somehow Mother Albertina understood him perfectly.

  “I believe everything is a miracle,” she said.

  I liked the way Mother Albertina said that, and from the beginning, I liked her, too. Mother Albertina was tall and wrinkled and had walnut-colored skin and thick black brows that formed a single line above her eyes. She always appeared calm even though she was constantly on the move, checking in on the dorms at night, inspecting our fingernails, walking briskly along the paths, her long black robes and white-trimmed headdress billowing in the wind. She treated all of us students—she called us “my girls”—the same, whether we were rich or poor, Anglo or Mexican, smart or utterly lacking in any talent whatsoever. She was firm without being stern, never raised her voice or lost her temper, but it would have been unthinkable for any of us to disobey her. She would have made a fine horsewoman, but that wasn’t her Purpose.

  I also really liked the academy. A lot of the girls moped around feeling homesick at first, but not me. I had never had it so easy in my life, even though we rose before dawn, washed our faces in cold water, attended chapel and classes, ate corn gruel, practiced piano and singing, mended our uniforms, swept the dorms, cleaned the dishes and privies, and attended chapel again before going to bed. Since there were no barn chores, life at the academy felt like one long vacation.

  I won a gold medal for my high scores in math and another for overall scholarship. I also read every book I could get my hands on, tutored other girls who were having problems, and even helped some of the sisters grade papers and do their lesson plans. Most of the other girls came from rich ranch families. Whereas I was used to hollering like a horse trainer, they had whispery voices and ladylike manners and matching luggage. Some of the girls complained about the gray uniforms we had to wear, but I liked the way they leveled out the differences between those who could afford fancy store-bought clothes and those of us, like me, who had only home-dyed beechnut brown dresses. I did make friends, however, trying to follow Dad’s advice to figure out what someone wanted and help her get it, though it was hard, when you saw someone doing something wrong, to resist the temptation to correct her. Especially if that someone acted hoity-toity.

  About halfway into the school year, Mother Albertina called me into her study for a talk. She told me I was doing well at Sisters of Loretto. “A lot of parents send their girls here for finishing,” she went on, “so they’ll be more marriageable. But you don’t have to get married, you know.”

  I’d never thought much about that before. Mom and Dad always talked as if it was a matter of course that Helen and I would marry and Buster would inherit the property, though I had to admit I’d never actually met a boy I liked, not to mention felt like marrying. On the other hand, women who didn’t marry became old maids, spinsters who slept in the attic, sat in a corner peeling potatoes all day, and were a burden on their families, like our neighbor Old Man Pucket’s sister, Louella.

  I wasn’t too young to start thinking about my future, Mother Albertina continued. It was just around the bend and coming at me fast. Some girls only a year or two older than me got married, she said, while others started working. Even women who got married should be capable of doing something, since men had such a habit of dying on you and, from time to time, running off.

  In this day and age, she went on, there were really only three careers available. A woman could become a nurse, a secretary, or a teacher.

  “Or a nun,” I said.

  “Or a nun,” Mother Albertina said with a smile. “But you need to have the calling. Do you think you have the calling?”

  I had to admit I wasn’t sure.

  “You have time to reflect on it,” she said. “But whether or not you become a nun, I think you’d make a wonderful teacher. You have a strong personality. The women I know with strong personalities, the ones who might have become generals or the heads of companies if they were men, become teachers.”

  “Like you,” I said.

  “Like me.” She paused for a moment. “Teaching is a calling, too. And I’ve always thought that teachers in their way are holy—angels leading their flocks out of the darkness.”

  For the next couple of months, I thought about what Mother Albertina had said. I didn’t want to be a nurse, not because I was bothered by the sight of blood but because sick people irritated me. I didn’t want to be a secretary because you were always at the beck and call of your boss, and what if it turned out you were smarter than him? It was like being a slave without the security.

  But being a teacher was entirely different. I loved books. I loved learning. I loved that “Eureka!” moment when someone finally figured something out. And in the classroom, you got to be your own boss. Maybe teaching was my Purpose.

  I was still getting comfortable with that idea—and in fact, finding it mighty appealing—when one of the nuns told me that Mother Albertina wanted to see me again.

  MOTHER ALBERTINA WAS SITTING behind her desk in her study. She had a solemn expression I’d never seen before, and it gave me an uneasy feeling. “I’ve got some unfortunate news,” she said.

  Dad had paid the first half of my tuition at the beginning of the year, but when the school billed him for the rest, he’d written back to say that, due to a change in circumstances, he was unable to assemble the funds at this juncture.

  “I’m afraid you’re going to have to go home,” Mother Albertina said.

  “But I like it here,” I said. “I don’t want to go home.”

  “I know you don’t, but the decision’s been made.”

  Mother Albertina said she’d prayed on the matter and discussed it with the trustees. Their thinking was that the school was not a charity. If the parents agreed to pay the tuition, as Dad had, the school counted on the money to meet expenses, provide scholarships, and support the order’s mission on the Indian reservations.

  “I could work for it,” I said.

  “When?”

  “I’ll find the time.”

  “Your entire day is full as it is. We make sure of that.”

  Mother Albertina told me there was one other option. I could take the
cloth. If I joined the order of the Sisters of Saint Loretto, the church would pay my tuition. But that would mean going to the novitiate in California for six months, then living in the convent instead of the dormitory. It would mean marrying the Lord Jesus and submitting totally to the discipline of the order.

  “Have you had any chance to reflect on whether you’ve felt the calling?” Mother Albertina asked.

  I didn’t say anything right away. The truth was, the idea of being a nun didn’t exactly fill me with enthusiasm. I knew I owed God a hefty debt for sparing our lives in the tornado, but I figured there had to be another way of paying him back.

  “Can I have the night to think on it?” I asked.

  “May I have the night,” Mother Albertina said, then added, “What I tell all the girls is that unless you’re certain, it’s probably a bad idea.”

  Much as I wanted to stay in school, I didn’t really need a night of contemplation to know I wasn’t cut out to be a nun. It wasn’t just that you didn’t see a lot of nuns on horses. I knew I wasn’t called. I didn’t have that serenity nuns had, or were supposed to have. I was just too restless a soul. And I didn’t like taking orders from anyone, not even the pope.

  Dad was a grave disappointment to me. Not only had he welched on the tuition commitment, he didn’t have the guts to face the nuns, and so, instead of coming to pick me up, he sent a telegram telling me to take the stagecoach home.

  I was sitting in the common room in my home-dyed beechnut brown dress, my suitcase next to me, when Mother Albertina came to take me to the depot. The moment I saw her, my lip started quivering and my eyes welled up with tears.

  “Now, don’t start feeling sorry for yourself,” Mother Albertina said. “You’re luckier than most girls here—God gave you the wherewithal to handle setbacks like this.”

  As we walked up the dusty street to the depot, all I could think was that, my one shot at an education blown, I was going back to the KC Ranch, where I’d spend the rest of my life doing chores while Dad worked on his cockamamie Billy the Kid biography and Mom sat in the chaise longue fanning herself. Mother Albertina seemed to know what I was thinking. Before I boarded the coach, she took my hand and said, “When God closes a window, he opens a door. But it’s up to you to find it”

  WHEN THE STAGECOACH PULLED into Tinnie, Dad was sitting in the buckboard outside the hotel, with four huge dogs in the back. As I got out, he grinned and waved. The stagecoach driver tossed my suitcase off the roof, and I lugged it over to the carriage. Dad got down and tried to hug me, but I shrugged him off.

  “What do you think of these big fellas?” he asked.

  The dogs were black with glistening coats, and they sat there regarding the passersby regally, like they were the lords of the manor even though they were also drooling ropes of slobber. They were the biggest dogs I’d ever seen, and there was hardly any room in the back for my suitcase.

  “What happened to the tuition?” I asked Dad.

  “You’re looking at it.”

  Dad started explaining that he’d bought the dogs from a breeder in Sweden and had them shipped all the way to New Mexico. They were not just any dogs, he went on, they were Great Danes, dogs of the nobility. Historically, Great Danes were owned by kings and used to hunt wild boars. Practical and prestigious, Dad said. Can’t beat that. And believe it or not, no one west of the Mississippi owned any. He’d checked into it. These four, he said, had cost eight hundred dollars, but once he started selling the pups, we’d make the money back in no time, and from then on it would be pure profit.

  “So you took my tuition money and bought dogs?”

  “Watch that tone,” Dad said. After a moment he added, “You didn’t need to be going to finishing school. It was a waste of money. I can teach you whatever you need to know, and your mother can add the polish.”

  “Did you take Buster out of school, too?”

  “No. He’s a boy and needs that diploma if he’s going to get anywhere.” Dad pushed the dogs over and found a spot for my suitcase. “And anyway,” he said, “we need you on the ranch.”

  ON THE WAY BACK to the KC, Dad did most of the talking, going on about what great personalities the dogs had and how he was already getting inquiries about them. I sat there, ignoring Dad’s prattle about his harebrained schemes. I wondered if buying those dogs had simply given Dad an excuse to stop paying the tuition, so I’d have to come back home. I also wondered where in the blazes was that door Mother Albertina had talked about.

  The ranch had fallen into a state of mild disrepair in the months I’d been gone. Fence boards had come loose in a few spots, the chicken coop was unwashed, and tack lay scattered on the barn floor, which needed sweeping.

  To help out around the ranch, Dad had brought in a tenant farmer named Zachary Clemens and his wife and daughter, and they were living in an outbuilding on a corner of the property. Mom considered them beneath us because they were dirt-poor, so poor that they used paper for curtains, so poor that when they first arrived and Dad gave them a watermelon, after eating the fruit, they set aside the seeds for planting and then pickled the rind.

  But I liked the Clemenses, particularly the daughter, Dorothy, who knew how to roll up her sleeves and get things done. She was a big-boned young woman with ample curves, handsome despite a wart on her chin. Dorothy knew how to skin a cow and trap rabbits, and she tilled the vegetable garden the Clemenses had fenced off, but she spent most of her time at the big kettle that hung over the fire pit in front of the shed, cooking stews, making soap, and washing and dyeing clothes she took in from the townspeople in Tinnie.

  Dad let the Great Danes roam free, and one day a few weeks after I’d returned home, Dorothy Clemens knocked on the front door to report to Dad that she’d been out collecting pecans near the property line we shared with Old Man Pucket’s ranch and had found all four dogs shot dead. Dad charged into the barn in a fury, hitched up a carriage, and drove off to confront Old Man Pucket.

  We were worried about what was going to happen, but talking about your fears only scares you and everyone else even more, so nobody said anything. To keep our hands busy, Dorothy and I sat on the corral fence shucking pecans until Dad drove back up. He was usually careful to avoid overexerting his horses, but he’d pushed that gelding so hard his sides were heaving and his chest was covered in lather.

  Dad told us Old Man Pucket had unapologetically admitted killing the Great Danes, claiming they were on his property chasing his cattle and he was afraid they were going to bring one down. Dad was cursing and carrying on about how now he was going to bring down Old Man Pucket. He ran into the house and then came back out with his shotgun and jumped into the carriage.

  Dorothy and I raced over. I grabbed the reins as Dad kept trying to crack them. The reins were snaking up and down on the horse’s back, and it panicked, starting to bolt, but Dorothy leaped up on the seat and, being a big strong woman, pushed down the brake and wrestled the gun away from Dad. “You can’t go killing someone over dogs,” she said. “That’s how feuds get started.”

  When her family was living in Arkansas, she went on, her brother had killed someone in self-defense when a dispute broke out during a game of horseshoes, then he’d been killed by that man’s cousin. The cousin, afraid Dorothy’s father was going to avenge his son’s death, had come after him. They’d had to leave everything behind and take off for New Mexico.

  “My brother’s dead, and we ain’t got two nickels to rub together,” she said, “because a stupid argument over a damn game of horseshoes got out of hand.”

  I thought about how Lupe had stepped in during Dad’s spat with the tinker, and how no one with a level head had been there to calm down the man who’d killed Dad’s pa when he was shot in a dispute over eight dollars. So I reminded Dad about all that.

  Dad eventually settled down, but he kept stewing over the matter and the next day went into town to file a legal case against Old Man Pucket. He prepared obsessively for the hearing, detailing his
grievances, researching the case law, taking statements from vets about the value of Great Danes, and writing the politicians he’d corresponded with over the years to see if they’d file friend-of-the-court briefs. He appointed me to speak for him in court, and he had me rehearse my statements and practice my examination of Dorothy, who was to be a witness testifying about her discovery of the dead dogs.

  On the day of the trial, we all got up early, and after breakfast we piled into the buckboard. When the circuit judge came to town, he held court in the lobby of the hotel, sitting in a wing-backed chair behind a small desk. The various plaintiffs and defendants leaned against the walls, waiting their turn.

  The judge was a rail-thin man who wore a string tie and a jacket with a velvet collar, and he looked at you alertly under his bushy eyebrows, giving the impression that he didn’t tolerate fools. The bailiff called each case, and the judge listened to the two sides, then made his decision on the spot, brooking no argument.

  Old Man Pucket was there, along with a couple of his sons. He was a stumpy little guy with skin the color of beef jerky and thumbnails he left untrimmed because he used them to pry things open. By way of dressing up for court, he had buttoned the top button of his frayed shirt.

  Our case was finally called late in the morning, and I was kind of nervous as I stood to make the presentation Dad had cooked up for me.

  “The history of the Great Dane is a proud and storied one,” I began, but the judge interrupted me.

  “I don’t need a damned history lesson,” he said. “Just tell me why you’re here.”

  I explained how Dad had imported the dogs from Sweden, planning to breed them as an investment, but they’d been found shot to death in the pecan grove near the fence line we shared with the Puckets.

  “I’d like to call my first witness,” I said, but the judge cut me off again.

  “Did you shoot those dogs?” he asked Old Man Pucket.

  “Sure did.”

  “Why?”

  “They was on my property chasing my cattle, and from a distance I thought they was big ol’ wolves.”