The Barn

Dreams chase me back and forth across the bed. By three I know I didn't feed the extra flake. Four a.m. I'm pulling on my hat, vest. The moon is steeping behind clouds. Wind against my blue pajamas. Dogs jump off the porch and scatter. No horses in the barn as I drop the flake in the manger. Walking back up, calling dogs by name: Al, Scout. Jenna's on the porch. Company is gone tonight. Don't know if she left in irritation. More company comes today. Tony comes tomorrow while I'm working the next three nights. He says he might sleep in the barn with me but then can't figure out how to coordinate the dogs.

Awake again at seven. Hiss at the dogs, quiet. Coffee in bed. Eyes leaking tears. I get my computer. Start typing a message to my cousin who likes horses. Who's going to start riding seriously now that she's retired, now that she's almost seventy, next time she comes back from Haiti.
And I tell her my first two horses when I was thirteen, when I was twenty were disasters, absolute disasters. Now I am so lucky to have somwhere to flee to. Two times this week I ave had to brush past all obstacles to climb on a horse and realign, reaffirm. I ask my cousin how other people do it?

Walk back up to the house, pale sun, red bushes. Get the crock pot going and sweep athe floor. three heads of cabbage. I'll put my company to work with me slicng for saurkraut.

I think I'll put a CD on. I'll turn it up loud.

Clean stalls in my blue pajamas while the horses are eating oats and barley. I'll be back I say. We'll all go out this morning. The arena's already raked. with my friends we'll turn this day around.

Tuesday

The horse shoer comes at nine thirty, more or less. Ten after eight, Mary is waking up, humming, clearing her throat. She is my company, my guest, but I am unsure about almost everything today. I sit on the porch in the cold, a blanket over my legs. The sky is so blue it is silvery. The service berry, currants and hawthornes are red globes in the staw grass. We all steam in the cold.

I am tangled in a bad night that won't let me go. My only salvation is my horse. And I run to her. Brush while she eats chews her hay. Put the saddle on. Give her an apple. Run out the door, open the gate, run down the flat septic field, the knobs of knap week. Run down the ravine picking my way around rocks until I finally trip but do not fall close to the driveway. I swing the gate open and turn to run back.

My horse takes me on a beautiful ride. She says she is very relaxed. We go to the pond where Beau had enough trouble yesterday to jostle my back this way and that and I finally got off. Today Kansas chews the reins out of my hands as she stretches her neck so long.

The shoer is here.

Second day of hunting

Horses cause you to dream. Besids velvet coat, muscles as thick our whole bodies, horses magic is to compose dreams. Horses whisper in your ears. They nudge you in your sleep. In your dreams you learn to ride. You take the next step.
Second day of hunting season and I can no longer stomache riding in circles, bending to the right, bending to the left, a little leg yield on the way out. Instead I brush Kansas every inch. Mix water and peroxide, dab it on the neck bite. Spray with Schriners. Carefully tie her blue beads, her silver bells around her neck and roach clip to her gray mane. Saddle up and mount from the front porch. We are a long legged vison passing the bright red service berry bushes, the orange gooseberry leaves. Black dog Jenna does not listen and dips under the neighbors gate. His dog is not out. Black dog Scout backs us up.
Kansas and I crunch over the gravel. I move my sit bones like stilts and in a straight line. I pull up on my right side that will sag the second I let my mind wander. My hands, elbows and shoulders are bungies. We make our way as far as the pond. It is a mirage of hues sifting over its skin. There are horses on the other side. I see a black and a brown behind a far fence. Two old men dig at the bank of the road hunting for blue agates. Their shirts have pulled free, stripes of pale skin. I yell: Can you say hi? One man looks up. I yell again: Can you say hi to us? And he gets it. He yells hi back, says it is a beautiful day and then he asks if he is talking to the horse or the dogs. The horse I say. Beautiful horse he answers. Come down he waves. Oh, we're going to turn around here anyway. This is our first time to the pond. Really he asks. Too bad he says.
When we turn around, there are black angus far out in dry field. They are calling to each other. Kansas dances to turn her neck. Her good eye is wide open on the cows. She twists around. When I nudge her forward, she backs up.
I hum to keep my breath even. I tell myself to lean back. I turn her toward the barbed wire and she steps forward down the road. there is no weight on her front hooves. And then she twists around again to oggle the cows. Hum, lean back, turn to the fence. We head back down the road. I call out to the dogs. Jenna does not even flinch. Jenna is making her way back to the neighbors.
It's not until I get off at the mailbox, stuff my sweatshirt pocket with envelopes, that I start to daydream on the walk up the driveway. Kansas does not interrupt. She hangs her head and might as well be tiptoeing beside me. Her eye is bright. Clear as day I can see her with me riding, travel all the way up the road we just came down. We walk past the pond, the men are gone, and make the turn to the right where the road is rutted. There is no more gravel, just the dirt and we are climbing all the way toward the trees, the pines until we pass through the gap in the hills and dissappear from sight.

Dark at seven thirty now. Hot tub feels more than ninty-five degrees. The water buoys me. Steam swirls across the surface. Lean my head against the cedar rim. North is uphill. There are three lights then the darkness of the forest. The Big Dipper sags across the horizon. Straight up, darkness is coated by the Milky Way. High, over to the right, headlights, then they disappear. Coming down from the mountain. In and out, thin shouldered staggering height of pines. Last week it was us coming home from cutting wood. Wood in the bed. Three dogs in the back seat. In the forest we could see our breath. Maybe we have enough for the winter now but all day I stoked this hot tub stove just to sit in the heavy, hot water to watch these head lights spark back and forth out of the evergreens and wind their way down the open slopes so steep your heart will catch. Finally tires hit the nearest cattle guard, the metalic clang. This is where we laid the two dead goat babies last spring. Like a sinking stone. But right now, in front of me this night, on top the first two set of slopes a light where there is never a light. I did not tell my son this morning on the phone, the gunshot that woke me up. I told my daughter. This morning I wore my blue pajamas down to the barn and Tony's big shoes because he's gone all week and the black dogs danced rings around me. I stopped a minute. Stood in the stall door, the weak sun, while thoroughbreds chew their oats and barley, beau's dribbling out the corners of his mouth, Kansas licking up every grain. Another gunshot. Deer running along the open spaces, the dry, white grass, below. Two deer going one way, switching back another way, not knowing. You can come this way, come this way to the creek I whisper. I wonder if they are near by as I shift in the hot tub water and the soles of my feet let loose. My toes are free and I listen to the creek. There is a deep sound besides the steady rush of water. There is the deeper gurgle and in my mind's eye I can see where the water widens a little pool then passing through the willow brush. This moment and the next, the creek is the only single sound. I said I would not build near this creek. Over there where there are rocks and nothing green grows except the Bitter Brush and the Sage, maybe some cheat greass. Keep this the way it is. But the witcher found well water here. The septic on this side. At least the house is tiny, yellow light in the windows, the string of blue Christmas bulbs outlining the porch and the barn holds its own against the sky. I'd like to try the bigger bulbs in red, orange and green. I told you that and you wondered how we'd climb up to the peak. Well, it would not be you Tony, it will be me that does the climbing. But right now, dark night, my first hot tub up here alone.