Monster

Jo's eyes were laughing, although squinted from the glare off the hood of her Chevy truck, as she pulled down the gravel driveway of her family's small ranch. The blue tarp, which secured her dorm room belongings, rustled and hissed in the hot air as she passed the arena, sending the sheep and three of the four horses running and snorting in aggravated circles. To further mark her indignation at having been startled, the youngest of the horses, Coco, kicked violently and let out a high-pitched RRRRIIIPP!! from her rear. The fourth horse, Monster, who did not run, merely raised his large head and let out a roaring snort, which he directed more at the flighty mares than the noisy truck. The muddy-red edges around his brught blue eyes, once white, quickly vanished behind the greying, droopy eyelids, and he sleepily shook out his short mane.
Coco, Otto, and Dotty, seeing that Monster was not alarmed, lowered their heads and tails, and walked, embarassed, back toward the shaded pens. Following behind them, ears bobbing in vacant exuberance on either side of his head, the sheep, Lambo, took long strides to keep up with his much larger herd-mates.
Jo met the horses and the sheep at the gate of the arena, digging in a garbage can that served as a feed barrel for a fistful of the rich, sweet, Equine Senior kernels for a treat. The three mares nipped at each other and shoved their way toward the gate to be the first to receive their treats, and soon the wiry whiskers that stuck through their velvety lips were tickling the palm of Jo's academically-softened hand. Jo ignored the gutteral bleats from Lambo, and called to Monster, who lingered pensively in one of the nearby pens, half-watching, half-dozing. Monster obeyed the call only after Jo put another fistful of Senior into an empty coffee can and shook it gently for him to hear. Only then did Jo realize that the thirty-year-old gelding was beginning to get a little hard of hearing. Still, Monster pushed the mares aside, and while they rolled their eyes menacingly and nipped at the air around his neck and shoulders, they stepped aside when he pushed them with his broad shoulders. Jo held out the coffee can, and Monster stuck his nose in, his loud, puffing snorts echoing inside the cylinder of aluminum. Jo scratched him behind his ears, surreptitiously peering inside for evidence of mites or some other potential cause of what seemed, to her, to be such a sudden loss of hearing. Seeing nothing overtly sinister, however, she scratched his forehead, smiling tenderly as her fingers scooped in and out over the goose-egg-sized dent in his forehead, near his right eye--a birth defect that made him look much goofier than he really was.
With a powerful shove with her left arm, Jo slid the tack room door open, straining her reach with her right arm to do so, as Hootie had not yet finished the last kernels in the bottom of the can. When Jo could feel that he was no longer picking up kernels but licking the can with his smoothe tongue, she pulled the can out of his reach and tossed it into the feed barrel. A small cloud of flies had escaped from the newly-opened tack room. An exasperated sigh slipped between Jo's lips and curled into the dim room. A good quarter of an inch of dust covered every up- or outward-facing inch of leather, and Otto's bridle was missing altogether. The red mare's ornate bridle, with its white, braided reins with red-knot accents, and the engraved floral plates of silver were undoubtedly at her aunt's house, being dismantled and reassembled improperly by Jo's younger cousin. Monster's simple bridle, dark sienna-hue leather with a widow's peak headstall, studded with pewter, and sporting an easy-going three-bar snaffle, was always left alone--not pretty enough to attract the attention of little girls. The reins were as black as Hootie in the summertime--soft, well-worn and braided cotton that was still curled from the places where the reins rested in Jo's hands--stuck in the same shape from years of sweaty palms and finger-creases holding them the same way. Monster's dark saddle was as pale as the arena sand from the layer of dust that coated it, and the saddle blankets, still upside down over the top of the saddle so that the sweat could dry, were enameled with cobwebs and fly corpses.
Bitten by black widows so many times that the poison no longer affected her, Jo grabbed the saddle and blankets from the rack without pause, and in a single motion, stepped out of the tack room and flung the load over the top of the fence. A stirrup fell down the other side, balancing the weight of the old saddle on the narrow fence. Jo pulled down the blankets, one by one, and shook them out over the gravel at the entrance to the tack room. In all three blankets, only one black widow emerged; it had been a cooler year than normal. The hole at the base of the saddle horn, usually Widow-City, was barren--even of cobwebs. Having been sheltered by the blankets, no small creatures had managed to find entrance to the spacious and dry saddle-cavern. Jo wiped down the saddle with the corner of one of the saddle blankets, revealing the old-fashioned and lavish leatherwork that rarely existed in saddle-making anymore, and then shook out the blanket again. She stepped back into the tack room, snatched up the grooming bucket and Monster's bridle, and slid the door shut behind her. When she turned to face the arena, she was smiling.
Monster had been eyeing the saddle with interest, and seeing her with the brushes and bridle as well, he turned and headed into the nearest stall, his ears moving happily around in circles, finding every sound that they could manage. Jo tossed the headstall of the bridle over the horn of the saddle, grabbed the saddle through the hole at the base of the horn with her free hand, and followed Monster into the stall. As she picked his feet, curried, brushed, and combed, Jo could feel Monster smiling. His legs smiled back at her with ticklish twitches in all the familiar places as she rubbed them down and stretched them. His coat smiled at her as she brushed it with a few more strokes than absolutely necessary, admiring the gleam of the perfect blackness, and the velveteen whiteness of the heart-shaped spot of white on his shoulder, and across his belly. His black was blackest, his white whitest, in the summertime. When every other 'black' horse shed his winter coat to reveal amber dapples beneath the black, Monster only grew blacker in the summer--the fluffy winter fuzz having left him with unique, watery sheen. Jo noted his toes--a little longer than they should be. By the looks of them, the farrier was due any day. She felt the wieght of the hooves in her hand, testing the shoes with her fingers. That she could not wiggle them was no indication that they were not loose, but at least there were no glaring concerns. Just to be safe, she wouldn't ride too far.
Monster swayed lazily, side to side, as Jo secured his saddle. Even without excercise, he managed to maintain his weight more steadily than any horse she'd ever known. Although his body changed shape--his withers stuck out more, his hips protruded slightly, and his legs grew slimmer and lost much of their muscular bulge, all from lack of excercise--the cinch always reached to the same notch. A crease had been worn so well into the cinch that it shined an even darker hue than the rest of the leather--polished to a glassy gleam from the steel loop that secured the leather strap to the main body of the saddle. The Native American blankets--black, red, and white zig-zags on the top layer, turquoise and brown stripes on the second, and navy, black, and purple stripes on the bottom--made Monster look as if he belonged on the frontier of two centuries before--a feather in his mane, and red arrows and circles painted onto his already "painted" coat. His bright blue eyes were wide as Jo swung herself into the saddle. Her Justin ropers weren't as dusty as they had once been, her hands not as coarse, her hat band not as clean, but anyone could tell that her thighs had not forgotten the spine and flanks of her horse, and her hands still knew the intimate tug of the reins against her fingers. Jo ducked the roofing as they left the stall, and with the confidence of a pro--as if no more than a day had passed since their last ride together, Monster navigated the turns and side-stepping so that Jo could open the gate. In tandem, they closed the gate behind them, and Jo breathed the air from her high place on Monster's back. With only a few more feet of elevation than normal, the air was still cleaner and looser than the air when she stood on her own two feet. They passed her truck, its bed still loaded with dorm room supplies and covered with a bright blue tarp, and strode easily down the driveway. The other horses called and called in shrill neighs of panic as they watched their companion leave the arena behind. The sheep bleated at nothing, peering up at the horses and then after Monster's vanishing rump without the slightest inkling of the source of his herd-mates' anxiety.
The smoothe clip-clip, clip-clip of Monster's shoes against the asphalt grated against Jo's eardrums more than she had expected. The sound was familiar, but sharper than she remembered, and they had gone nearly half a mile before she was finally able to dismiss it and pay attention to the absense of sound everywhere else. Monster's ears stayed pricked and alert for the first mile, his head high and anxious with the novelty of being outside the arena for the first time in so long. Although his confident and fluid stride betrayed that he recognized everything and was unafraid, Jo spent several minutes repeatedly stroking his neck and gently teasing his mouth with the reins to release the tension. After a mile, his head was lowered; his body extended and his rump rocked in easy swoops from side to side.
After only a mile, Jo noted the glossy dampness at Monster's shoulder where the sweat had begun slick down his coat. She reached behind her to the edge of the saddle blanket, recoiling her fingers in slightly repulsed surprise upon feeling the frothy mass protruding from beneath the blankets. Jo twisted in the saddle to see the ochre foam of sweat and dirt that had been unearthed by the heat and pressure of the saddle blanket--much more sweat than she had been expecting. Scraping with her fingernails and the pads of her fingertips, she scooped away as much of the mucky mass as she cood, and reined Monster in a little, although he gave no indication of wanting to slow down his easy step. Jo breathed a sigh of relief as they rounded the turnaround. Just over a mile until they were home again. In the back of her mind, she resolved to water Monster's legs more thoroughly than usual, and give him some bran to settle his old-man's tummy after so much excercise. A minor pang of guilt sidled through her chest and across the base of her neck--too much excercise too fast for a horse that was too old--a friend deserves better than that. The guilt faded; Monster was happy to be outside. He pulled a little, wanting to follow the longer route, rather than take the first turnaround, but Jo goaded him homeward, knowing his heart easily outstripped the stamina of his legs.
The first turnaround brought them to a familiar gravelly road. Monster's hooves sank into the sand beneath the stones, and the tiny rocks rattled and even clanged against his hooves. They had been on the gravelly road only a few minutes when Jo noted that there should not be a clang. She held her breath and forced every sound out of her ears, straining to measure the tones the rang from Monster's hooves. Churrrh-churrh, churrrh-cling, churrrrh-churrh, churrrh-cling. The unmistakable bell-tones of a loose shoe pulled on Jo's ears, sending electric buzzing up through her thighs, hips, spine, and shoulders with every painful clang. She knew that Monster was not in pain, but a loose shoe meant that it would only get looser, and the stirring and chafing of the nails as the shoe rotated against the bottom of the hoof, could shred the outer wall of a hoof--potentially laming even the best of horses. She cursed the farrier for sloppy craftsmanship, and halted Monster alongside the road. Knowing the rhythm of Monster's steps, it only took a few paces for Jo to discern which shoe was loose. She dismounted quickly and walked to Monster's rear. Tapping his rump and sliding her hand down his rear leg, Monster lifted his hind leg for her to examine. She tested the shoe with her fingers; she was still unable to move it. With only a hoof pick handy, she had no way to remove a shoe that was still secure enough to not be removed by hand. She wriggled the hoof pick out of the back pocket of her Levi's and scraped a small pebble that had become lodged at the base of the frog. As she examined the rest of Monster's feet, she muttered a quick and anxious prayer that the loose shoe would not cause any damage while they were out. The resolve to carry metal-clippers with her whenever she went on a ride passed through her mind, but in the space between examining the last two hooves, she cast the resolve aside. If they had a farrier worth his salt, she wouldn't have to.
Jo considered walking the rest of the way--Monster would follow--but she knew it would make no difference. 1500 pounds of horseflesh on such a small surface would not be much affected by an addition 130 of human weight, placed largely on the front of his body. Despite this knowledge, she mounted more delicately than she had before, and made a conscious effort to sit farther forward in the saddle. Placing as much of her weight in the stirrups as she could, Jo and Monster continued.
Soon, gravel gave way again to asphalt, and the soft cling of the loose shoe against gravel became a sonorous and Fury-like clang. A long stretch of fence, built from gnarled Eucalyptus branches by the owners and secured with simple notch-work began off to their right. Jo counted the posts, and after the sixth, she nudged Monster into a sidestep and halted him beside the rails. She leaned down and lifted one of the rails, placing it across her lap. With another nudge, Monster turned to face the fence and she felt the usual derailing of rhythm and funny vibration through his shoulders as he stepped over the lower rail.
On the other side of the fence, great, tall, lily-pad-leafed weeds sprouted all around in a cloudy green knot. Jo felt Monster's feet sinking into the gopher hole-perforated earth, and she reined him in. The ground was tentatively held together by the shallow roots of the weeds, but only inches beneath the surface, a thriving metropolis of gopher tunnels weakened the support. Monster's weight would linger momentarily above ground, and then with a barely audible thud, his body would drop several inches until his ankles were fully submerged in the dirt. Jo felt her horse lifting his legs in a crude prancing motion as he tried to step out of the mulchy, weak earth, which muffled the ringing of his loose shoe. Despite the risk of twisted ankles and pulled muscles in the unpredictable earth at Monster's feet, the reprieve from the jarring knell of the horse's loose shoe was a gentle relief for Jo.
The wash ahead, twenty feet deep and almost fifty feet across, did not stop the lily-weeds from growing just as thick. Even looking straight down from the saddle, Jo could not see so much as a speck of the red earth. As the level earth dropped off into a steep hillside, smaller, emerald thistles and the powder-green, fibrous stalks of milkweed shot up through the clouds of lily-weeds. Jo leaned back in the saddle as Monster took his first steps down the deep-sanded wall of the wash. Only a few steps in, and not only had the sinkholes of gopher tunnels not decreased, but the loose shoe began to toll against the rocks that were lodged in the hillside from the last rain. Against the matted mess of lily-weed, thistle, and milkweed, the ground was completely shielded from Jo's eyes. Monster's ears, pricked forward and occasionally swooping a few degrees from side to side as the weeds shivered from a startled gopher. His hind legs, supporting most of his weight now, sank deep into the soft wall of the wash—almost halfway up to his hocks. As he stepped out of a deep sinkhole, his hind hoof clanged noisily against a larger rock, sending a handful of hunched crows cawing aggravatedly into the air. The shuffle of black, glossy feathers against the twisted eucalyptus branches sent the cicadas in every tree whirring into a droning, rattling hiss.
The cacophony of horseshoe-clangs, caws, rustling of leaves and feathers, and rattling of cicada shells tightened Jo's legs against Monster's flanks. Monster, almost completely deaf to the sound, was only able to pick out the rattle of the cicadas, and his head shot straight up in irritation, tossing his mane. His eyes fixed on the oak on the far bank of the wash, and he let out the same roaring snort as when Jo had first driven down the driveway and startled the other horses. Jo stroked his neck and clucked to him, anxious to get out of the precarious wash and not spend one second longer than absolutely necessary outside the soft, friendly sand of the arena. Somewhere in the back of her mind, somewhere in the vicinity of her ears and entirely deafened by the chaos of clanging, cawing, rustling, and rattling, it occurred to her that she ought not to rush him—not when he was irritated with his surroundings and undoubtedly increasingly aware of the loose shoe on his hind leg.
The clanging grew louder with every step as the rocks got bigger and bigger toward the bottom of the wash. Still, the thickness of the weeds had not abated, and she was forced to allow Monster to choose his way by feel. She'd trusted his Montana feet his entire life, and she had never known him to stumble. Even now, with a loose shoe and invisible earth beneath them, he was not surprised by a single rock or sinkhole.
They had reached the bottom of the wash, and the clanging was aggravatingly louder. They no longer sank into the earth, as the ground was now nothing but rock and an unpleasant home from gophers. Jo cringed as each step sent grinding and ringing sounds of steel, rock, and hoof scraping against one another. Each step made her wonder more and more how much damage the hind hoof had sustained with the nails straining against the wall of his hoof. She nudged her heels into Monster's sides, urging him forward to the far wall of the wash. The far wall bore only sparse thistles and a few lily-weed sprouts. The earth was softer and richer, and the hardy milkweed preferred only the coarsest and shallowest of earth. Monster picked up his pace, and Jo felt a pang of guilt as his hooves slid and sheared themselves against the rocks. Just the same, she could tell that even Monster was anxious to get out of the rocky wash and launch himself up the smoothe, black wall of the wash.
Jo leaned forward in the saddle and lifted the reins so they rested halfway up Monster's neck, tangling her fingers a little in his mane. Monster's first lurch into a steep gallop sent out a terrible ring of steel against coarse stone, and a rattling, ripping sound from his hind foot that drowned out even the noisy cicadas. The silence that followed lasted the eternity of a nano-second, as Monster tucked his head down and lifted his hind leg in pain. Together, Jo and her painted horse somersaulted against the steep, black earth of the wash. Jo did not cry out, or even feel the impulse to do so as she pressed herself as tight to Monster's neck and shoulders.
Monster's screams and snorts aroused enough distress in the neighbors that paramedics and animal control arrived within a little less than an hour. The source of the problem was immediately recognizable in the shredded hind hoof and a bent horseshoe gleaming on a nearby rock. The leg was bent in a U-shape above the fetlock. When Monster had been euthanized and lifted away in an attempt to rescue the motionless body beneath him, the body moved with him. Jo's sternum had been punched through by the saddle horn, against which she had pressed herself, and her neck twisted and broken by the weight of the horse's falling neck pressing her face into the ground while the rest of her body faced forward, bound to the saddle—sternum to saddle horn, her feet still facing forward and her heels pressed downward in the stirrups, and her hands reached around and resting on the black chest.
Arrangements for the funeral included large pictures of Jo and Monster together. The only picture not included—Jo's favorite—was of her leaning forward in the saddle, her arms draped around to rest on the horse's chest, and her head pressed affectionately against his neck, her chest resting peacefully against the saddle horn.