The $60,000 Dog: My Life With Animals (15 page)

“But in Mr. K’s heart,” Rose had continued, “the valve doesn’t quite completely seal, so his door is always open. And that’s why he’s my sweetheart.”

Then Rose and Dr. Fascal, plus the men who had come with her, all laughed, and Dr. Fascal had patted K on his big brunette rump, which was, right this minute, weeks and weeks after Dr. Fascal’s last visit, getting ever larger as Rose guided him butt first from the stall he’d been cooped up in for days.

Horses were not made for stalls or boxes of any sort. Some animals, like dogs, are. Their human-made crates mimic their natural inclination for enclosed dens, but horses have not the slightest desire for any sort of shelter, except that which is provided by their coats, their fur layered and waxy so weather slips off them. Some horses, when kept too long in stalls, develop what’s called “stall fever.” They start to gnaw at the wood, or themselves. Mr. K had plenty of pasture time, so he’d never had stall fever, as far as we knew, except maybe now, after four rained-out days.

As K cleared the stall’s door and Rose emerged, pushing on his chest, I turned to view the pasture, those fields, the meadow where she’d done her diving trick. The barn doors were open wide so I could see the sky, too blue, the clouds a mix of stain and sun. The trees swelled and settled. Far up, at the farmhouse, I saw a figure—Hank?—pacing back and forth before the third-floor window. Where oh where was Alice? In the barn, Rose hitched her horse to two lines, one on each wall, so he’d stay still as she tacked him up.

“Look at you,” Rose said to Mr. K. She leaned in close, nose to muzzle. We were out of her world now, entirely. She reached up and fluffed Mr. K’s mane of bangs, the thatch of hair that grows between the ears and brushes across the wide eyes.

“Getting long,” Rose said. She stepped back, as though to better appraise her horse’s hair. “Can you even
see?”
she asked Mr. K.

I swear the horse nodded no.

“Neither could I,” said Rose, “if I had bangs that low.” She fluffed her own hair now. “We both need new do’s.”

It was charming, watching Rose talk to her horse like this, and yet, I was not charmed. I still had the weather in me, the rain, the sudden sunlight, the splashy drops that kept falling, and then stopping. The weather was unsettled. So was Mr. K. Now that she had her horse, Rose seemed to quiet, but Mr. K, well, he might have had stall fever, because he was pawing at the concrete floor, dancing back and forth on his cross ties, like a child waiting for recess.

From far out across the soaking fields, almost an acre away, I heard the rattle of car coming fast down the dirt road, the sound of its splash and squeal. Mr. K’s ears popped forward, his head cocked in question.

“I’m gonna give you a trim,” said Rose, “before we go.”

A horn sounded then, in the worst way. It was not one long solid sound but rather a series of brief screeching blasts, the kind that could get under anyone’s skin. Rose seemed not to hear, or care. The horn kept up. It had no rhythm or reason. It would go
blat blat blat
in a series of rapid, unpredictable exclamations, and then fall into silence, and then start up again,
blat blat.
Long pause. Now over. No.
Blat. Blat blat blat blat.
We all turned towards it. High up at the house I saw a tired old Hank open the porch door, lean into the crazy day of clouds and clearing, and look out, craning, his hand a visor. No car visible. But the horn kept coming. When I turned back, all the horses in all their stalls were now starting to pace and paw, and Mr. K, cross-tied tight, well, I swear I could almost see his whole coat bristle up, billions of tiny tacks.

Rose always kept a pair of shears hanging from a huge hook screwed in one of the barn beams. They were old electric shears, the kind where the cloth cord has long since frayed, exposing the charged veins inside.

Now, Rose reached for the shears, popped the plug into its socket. She depressed the big red button and held up the clippers as they chattered. “Will you look at these?” Rose said, but to whom was she speaking? To Mr. K? No. He was obviously distracted, if not worried, his eyes darting here and there.

Blat.
To us? No. She had ceased to register our presence at all, to the point that had we all simultaneously burst into a Latin chant, I doubt she’d have even noticed.

“Will you look at these goddamn clippers,” Rose said as they gnashed and clattered. “How many times have I suggested we buy new ones? How many times? Penny pinching, pound foolish,” Rose said.

“But you know what, K?” Rose continued. “You know what? Me and you, we can’t let old patterns preclude new adventures. We can’t continue on as we have. We’ve gotten stagnant, old K Man,” Rose said. “And that’s not what we’re about.”

And with that, Rose lifted the clippers to her own head, and
crick-acrick-acrack,
I saw her cut off a few snarly pieces of her own hair, just strands here and there, blond
S’s
and darker
C’s
floating to the floor, letters lying there; she looked down. For a few seconds it seemed she was reading her own wispy sentences, or trying to; I don’t know. What I do know is what I saw. All of a sudden, and I mean
all
of a sudden, Rose pulled back her leg and gave a swift, vicious kick to her curls.

Rose kicked her curls with the same pent-up rage I’d seen on occasion in my massive mother, and instead of flinching as I might have before I’d come to this camp, I simply stood, knowing:
Not me.
True, I hadn’t found a way to fling myself off living ledges, but I could ride a horse bareback while he walked into the water, a second spine now mine, and later on, side by side with this big beast in a stall, I could cradle his foot in my hand and expertly pry dried crap from its innards—and how many people could do that?.

And it was strange, that I should feel this quick surge of pride at just that mad moment, the moment of Rose kicking her curls and the clipper clipping, and then my pride coming, and then my pride going, so it all came down in flakes around me. And I was back in the barn then with nothing but pure plot, the events happening very fast now. Rose kicked her curls, switched off the shears, so for a second there was a blessed silence, and then I saw a brief shudder go all through her; her body just jolted, and she switched those damn shears on again, the blades clacking like mad beaks in front of Mr. K’s face, invading his space as she lifted them to his eyes for the quick trim he never said he wanted. What he wanted? Who can say. What he saw? No one knows. This is the saddest part for me, that we will never be able to say, for sure, what happens inside the minds of the four million five hundred thousand other species with whom we share this planet, even as we have our wordless ways of sensing. Still, I cannot say what Mr. K saw or felt as Rose lifted those buzzing blades to his face, but what he
did
, that I can tell you because I was there. Rose lifted the lip-smacking shears to his hair, came close enough to take a single swipe from the strands that fell into his eyes. She aimed those shears directly
at
Mr. K’s tethered face, and Mr. K, cooped up and freaked out from the swirl of crazy sounds around him; Mr. K, at once utterly obedient and regally self-possessed—a paradox only he had had the genius to master—Mr. K lost it. He reared back, this massive muscular horse going back high on his hind legs, so strong he snapped the ropes that tethered him and split the barn beams with a satisfying
crrrack.
And for a shaving of a second, Mr. K hovered there, freed, high on his hind legs, a huge but breathing statue of some equine in an ancient war, and I could see, I think, the imperfect pump pumping in his terrified chest. So, perhaps, could Rose. And he stayed there, risen up, his nostrils infernal, his chest sweat-slicked and erratic, and in my memory of this, I ceased entirely to see myself. Like Mr. K, I lost it; we all lost it, our hearts jammed with static while we dangled, waiting for the page to turn.

And then it did. Turn. Mr. K, all one thousand six hundred pounds of him, including his heart and that valve that didn’t seal shut—came crashing down to the ground. And as he did, Rose grabbed hold of the broken rope with one hand but she couldn’t keep a grip on her horse. He was bucking back and forth now, side to side, unable to get calm, so the rope slipped right through Rose’s fist. Really, Rose had no business insisting on intimacy with an animal seventeen times her size and sixty times her strength, at least. She dropped the shears she’d been holding. They circled the floor idiotically, chomping on air.

And then Rose grabbed hold of the rope with her two hands now while the shears clacked and Mr. K reared back again. And this time, when he came down, his front hoof sliced into Rose, so a small smile of blood appeared right above her temple; it was weird, how it appeared. It was as though a dark red smile appeared on her skull, just emerged there on the white wall of her skin, complete and insistent for an instant before dissolving into drips.

I wonder if all warm-blooded mammals have a singular response to the sight of blood. Maybe here is where our perceptions touch together. It was just a little bit, really, a superficial slice, as these things go, but it stopped Mr. K in his tracks. Rose reached out and pressed the cut with the heel of her hand, then looked at the heel of her hand, and the second stretched out to the point of snapping as she studied her blood, the rich smear of it. And then she lifted her hand to her lips, mouthed her own fluids, and a sour-lemon look crossed her face.
But blood is NOT sour
, I wanted to yell, as if that might help the situation I was seeing form right before my eyes. Rose didn’t have her whip. The shears had at some point ceased, gone completely to sleep, lying on their side in a drunken coma, the plug pulled out in the melee.

And now, slowly, Rose lifted her arm, palm flat, blood sucked, wound its way back, folded her hand into a fist, and then hurled her grip forward in a blow across the bony bridge of K’s face. And Mr. K, well, he hollered, let loose a sound I’d never heard before and have never heard since: pain, shock, insult, betrayal. And then she did it again. Sock. Sharp. Crack. Was that a bone in his head? Or was that her head, breaking up, gone mad for good; good-bye.

Yes, good-bye. Because the force of her wallops made the huge horse stumble backwards, his eyes all bloodshot and startled. And then Mr. K—fantastic, brave, dignified Mr. K—the pain of her punches was such that he did what we’d never seen a horse of his spirit do. He buckled. It was like watching a person who has been hit over the head, or who has had the breath knocked out of him by surprise. You could practically see stars whirling around that horse’s stunned, scared face and his heart had always been just a little off, which is maybe why the animal crashed down, all one thousand plus pounds of him, falling first to one knee, then to the other, keeling sideways, the whole stable shuddering as he hit the floor hard, landing on his left side. He lay there, one eye open, the shears next to him, all unplugged. And so still.

Silences come like characters—there are many kinds. Some are sweet, some are sad, or severe. The silence that followed the fall of Mr. K was unlike any of these; it was stunned. Rose held her hand up before her eyes, then let it drop uselessly to her side.

“He’s dead,” whispered Jenna.

“Shut up,” said Aggy, tears squeezing out of her eyes. We were, all twelve of us, pressed back against the far wall. Rose stood frozen, and for a second I thought I’d see her topple right on top of Mr. K, but she didn’t. Moments passed. More moments passed. The flies seemed unaware of the atmosphere; they kept right on buzzing, as busy as ever with their germy work. I kept brushing them from my face, my hair. Outside rain began again in those soft loose splashes; we could hear it on the barn’s tin roof. “Mr. K?” Rose finally asked, her voice a tiny, barely there question. And then the floodgates broke. “Mr. K,” Rose screamed, and she rushed towards the horse she loved and hated to love, and loved to hate, and that voice shattered the spell, and the giant, Mr. K, well, his huge body shuddered and he snorted in air, and then, as though pulled by some puppeteer in the sky he awoke and stood, one leg up, second leg up, steadying on the strings of god, the massive animal moved, lurched back on his haunches, heaved forward, chest to floor, and then, gathering the energy it takes a one-thousand-pound beast to defy gravity (which is why horses rarely lie down), Mr. K heaved himself onto his hoofs and got back into balance.

And now there they were, woman and horse, face to face. I swear, it seemed like Mr. K was staring her down. And then he turned, apparently disgusted, and at his own behest, trotted right out of that barn, neighing high into the hills, his herd answering back from their locked stalls. He was picking up speed now, his gait as magnificent as ever, trotting through the grasses, the mud meaning nothing to him; he’d go as far as he could, as far as the wires would let him, but we could see, as he broke into a canter, we could see the fence was of no consequence to him, because he’d have his dignity back long before he ever reached that point.

And down in the barn now stood Rose, all alone. She stood there silent for a while, and we never saw her face, and then we heard her whisper. “Shit,” she said, and walked away.

That evening, the old farmhouse was quiet. Around 7 p.m., Alice’s station wagon crunched across the driveway. She got out, kicked the door closed, unlocked the basement door, and slipped inside. Maybe an hour passed before the dinner bell rang. We never ate in the family’s dining room, or even in their house for that matter. Alice served us our meals at a long table on the screened-in porch, just as she did that night, the table set as it always was, apron tied around her waist, as it always was. The only differences I could detect: the lipstick she was wearing, a fruity pink that made her mouth stand separate from her whitened face, plus the food she served, fried chicken and butter beans, both unusually good that night. Hank wasn’t at that dinner and Rose never came to any meals, instead eating by herself in the stable office. But Alice was there, trying to be bright because that was her way, but something was beyond broken in that family, and we could feel it. “So much
stuff
to do,” Alice said. She pointed to the calendar, an exact copy of the one Rose kept at the barn, each box crammed with appointments. We could see large X’s drawn through the boxes of the past. The box of tomorrow had a full moon in it and beneath that, a single event scrawled; no surprise. We knew what was up: Jill’s turn.