wrote the story that is attached below. Thanks to Don Peter Dvm for refreshing my memory about things that happened almost fifty years ago. Enjoy: The bright yellow yolks of three fried eggs slowly ran down between the long crisp strands of fried hash brown potatoes on my plate. Thick hand-sliced strips of bacon on the platter still had the rind. There were two clear-glass bowls of jelly (elderberry and chokecherry) with silver teaspoons on the table and freshly baked hot rolls in a small wicker basket. We could have pork link-sausage, but there was no room left on my plate. The warm smells of fried meat, fresh coffee, and wood smoke from the kitchen were all about us. Sunlight was starting to shine in through the thin white curtains across the table telling us we needed to get moving. There was work to do. Milk in the picture had at least an inch of cream that rested on the top. I tried to be careful to get as much cream as possible when I poured a glassful to drink. Jerseys and Guernseys don’t give as much milk as Holsteins, but there is more fat in what they give. Albert had milked this morning, so when we finished up with breakfast, Margaret told me to take the stainless steel bucketful of warm fresh milk down into the spring house where it could cool off for lunchtime. The spring house was like half a house. The door was only about three feet tall and if you hadn’t ever been inside you might wonder why anyone would build such a short little house. The roof was covered with heavy wooden shake shingles that looked like they had been split by hand. Pine needles were lying on top and dark green moss grew between the shingles. The above-ground part of the spring house was made from logs, and you had to duck your head as you bent through the door and stepped down the stairs. The heavy wooden door opened to the inside and hung above the stairs. There were twelve stone steps that led down into the ground. The mortar that held the stairs in place was course. It looked like the sand might have come from a sandbar that was upstream at the river bend when the original homesteaders built the place. There were small smooth pieces of gray, black, beige, rust, blue, and brown sand that were clearly visible where the stairs had been worn down by walking. The stairs made up one entire wall. The other three walls were all straight and were made of stone that had been cut, hauled, laid, and held together by the course mortar. There was a light switch to the right of the door frame, just above the latch of the door, which was at ground level. You could flip the latch with your left hand and reach for the switch with your right hand as you stepped down into the cool moist air. Water from the spring flowed from a steel pipe that was sticking out of the wall to the left; about halfway down the wall. It trickled into a long stone trough that was about two feet wide, two feet deep, and ran the full length of the floor. There was a small hole in the wall on the other end so that the trough wouldn’t overflow. The depth in the ground, stone walls, and cold water kept the spring house cool. There was a thermometer on the wall and no matter how hot it got outside, it always read 50 degrees F., inside. From the ground level to the stone floor was the depth of a grave. I remembered wearing my church clothes and a dark tie. There were square dirt walls and sharp corners. The dust rolled up from the top of the casket as the gravediggers filled in the hole. The cold wind at dusk touched our faces and brought fresh tears. The grave was covered with flowers that soon withered, wilted, and blew away. My dad dug a cellar under our house before he died. The walls were dark and moist. He carved the walls and trimmed the floor with a square-nosed shovel. There was a root cellar my grandparent’s house. Their parents lived in a dugout that had caved in long ago. The hand-hewn logs had collapsed leaving little more than rotten wood on the useless possessions of poor settlers. The snow would fall and the wind would blow, but they hunkered down and waited. In the summer they worked in the heat and light and then slept within the cool walls. Dust and heat couldn’t reach them. They lived in the earth and now they were all dead. I put the milk bucket on the top edge of the stone trough. There were shelves on the far side of the trough with wooden crates that were filled with potatoes, carrots, onions, and cabbage. Slats of wood on top of the stone shelves held baskets of eggs, bowls of butter, and loaves of cheese covered in white cloths. I climbed up the stairs, reached for the latch, and opened the door into daylight. Albert was leading a young black stud colt from the corrals by the tack shed to an open place on the other side of the big house and told me to come with him. Myron was walking in the same direction toward a man who was standing near a white pickup truck who I’d never seen before. Albert said he was the vet. Demon Bar was the horse. He was about a year and a half old, probably weighed less than a thousand pounds; fine looking horse, but lately he had been discovering he was a stallion. Albert said he was “Three Bar; bottom and top.” That meant he had excellent bloodlines, but he was small and we needed working stock, not breeding stock. Today everything in the world was going to change for Demon Bar. Of course he didn’t know what was up. He was broke to lead, so he just walked easily along to whatever was going to happen. It doesn’t matter who you are, you usually don’t know what’s coming. Nobody does. You’re walking along, minding your own business, and may not even know you’re wearing a halter. The trust you have isn’t going to do you a bit of good. You’re too young, too dumb, and too innocent. You’re ass is out there hanging in the wind and you don’t have any idea. You’re broke to lead and you’re so damn dumb, you thought that was a good thing. When we all got to the same place the men started talking to Demon, stroking his neck, rubbing his sides and hind quarters. His eyes flashed and he was a little skittish, so they just kept talking and stroking. The vet had a thing that looked like a bareback saddle. He said it was a Scotch halter or Scotch hobble. If it was for one leg it was a single. If it was for two legs it was a double. This was a Double Scotch Hobble. It had a cinch strap and a couple of steel rings that rested on a horses back about mid-rib. He also had a coil of soft white cotton rope, like nothing I’d ever seen before. It was tight and about as big around as your finger; soft, strong, white. Soft rope isn’t what you think. There’s a reason soft rope is soft, and it has everything to do with you missing the clues. Albert handed me the lead rope and took the cotton rope from the vet. He put it around Demon’s hind leg and let it slip and rub on the back side of his leg. As the rope moved lower, he flinched a bit. The rope slid down to the joint behind his hoof and he raised his leg. Albert pulled it up a bit, then let him put his foot back on the ground; just letting him get used to the softness and tension of the rope. This went on for a while as Demon gradually settled down and got used to having the rope around the back of one hind leg and then the next. The ropes were connected to the strap and steel rings across his back so they slipped easily, back and forth, as Demon would lift one leg, hold it up, stand there on three legs, put it back down, and lift the other leg. Pretty soon he had two soft white cotton ropes connected to the steel rings that were attached to the double hobble that was cinched around his midsection, and he was standing on three legs. Albert had one rope. The vet had another. Myron had a third rope lightly looped around his two front legs. I had the lead rope that was connected to the halter. Demon raised his hind leg higher to get out of the rope. He seemed unsteady and leaned back on his stable leg. When he did, we pulled the slack of that rope. He flinched and we pulled the slack. His eyes flashed. He flinched and we pulled the slack. He sat back on his ass and we pulled the slack. Now he was balled up. Both legs were pulled up near the bottom of his belly, one on either side, snubbed off tight with soft white cotton ropes. Myron tightened the loop and pulled his front legs out further as we all rolled him onto one side. Albert told me to kneel down next to his neck and hold his head. He wrenched, struggled, thrashed, but he wasn’t going anywhere. That door was closed. He wasn’t backing up or backing out. Demon looked at me with the one eye that was not facing the ground. He struggled and writhed, but he was going nowhere. He knew it. We knew it. I put one knee on his neck, just to the lower side of his jaw so he couldn’t throw his head around or bang it against the ground. Myron had his front legs all stretched out while Albert and the vet were down on either side of his hind legs that were now spread wide open. When he was as tight as we were going to get him, the vet reached in between his legs and took a hold of Demon’s scrotum like you’d hold a baseball. Demon thrashed. The vet squeezed. The testicles shifted over to the near side until the skin of the scrotum was tight. When everything was just right, he took a little surgical knife and made a slit about an inch and a half long. The testicles just “popped” through the cut and were resting in the vet’s hand. Demon was looking at me holding him down. I was looking in his eye, thinking we were the same; all tied up with somebody holding you by the balls. There was nothing to do about it. The vet took a silver tool that looked like a curved pair of pliers called an emasculator, and pulled and reached around to get the right position for the tool, and then he tightened his grip, and pressed the handles down. There was a sickening, crimping, crushing sound of the tough tissue of the cord that connected Demon to his testicles. He flinched, struggled, lurched and let out a sound that was somewhere between a cry and a yelp and then he just went still. The dark part of his eye disappeared and white showed as it rolled back in his head. He quivered and sighed. His tongue came out of his mouth. He slobbered and rested his cheek on the dirt. It was finished. I thought I might puke. I wiped sweat from my upper lip and stared into the single lifeless eye. We stood up, loosened all the ropes, and took off the hobbles, but Demon didn’t move. Albert took the lead rope from me and raised Demon’s head, pulling to one side as he slowly stood him up. There was a dazed, faraway look in his eyes; absence, abandonment, confusion, dismay, betrayal, finality. The young stallion he had been was gone. Like a star that flames out on a dark night, a world, a life, a future, had come to an end. Who he was had been cut off from who he might have been. There would be no fillies and no colts from this blood line. The vet put the double hobble in the truck and coiled the soft white cotton ropes. His testicles were lying in the dirt and he was led away to nowhere. Demon would limp around for a few days. The emptiness between his hind legs would drain and heal. In time he would work and eventually he would die. Walking back I slipped away. Opening the door of the spring house I went down inside the darkness. The smell of cold wet stones and the sound of clear trickling water soothed me, but I couldn’t linger. Outside, above ground, in the sunlight, there was work to do.
Posted on: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 03:13:36 +0000
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