by Larry Brody
Huck is crying.
He hides it with a stallion’s squeal.
Last week in this space I wrote about the death of Rosie the Romantic Arabian while Gwen the Beautiful and I were out of the country.
Mostly, I quoted the e-mails about her illness, because I was too stunned to find my own words. It’s still difficult for me to separate my sadness at the loss of this fine young woman (who also just happened to be a horse) from my shock at it having occurred without so suddenly.
Huck the Spotless Appaloosa, however, has no such problem.
He feels miserable, and he knows it.
And he’s angry. Testosterone-fueled sadness flaring as fury.
Although Huck officially is a gelding, he’s what horse people call a “proud cut,” filled with as much spice as many stallions.
“I couldn’t escape from the knife,” he once said to me. “But I’ve beaten it.”
And now, only a few weeks since his mare died of colic, he’s beating me.
“You weren’t here, Larry,” he whinnied this morning. “Rosie and I needed your help. But my two-legged brother who swore to keep us safe was gone!”
“I had work to do,” I said. “I’m writing a movie about something that happened far away. Gwen and I had to check it out.”
“How far?” Huck said.
“On the other side of the globe.”
“Is that as far as across the road? Or down the other side of The Mountain?” He regarded me accusingly. “Were you where those mares I smell are? The ones I call to but never get to see?”
“Farther than that, Huck. Much farther.”
He snorted. “You expect me to believe you could go way off like that with only two legs? And no hooves! How far can you get with no hooves?”
“You’re the one complaining that I wasn’t here. So it must seem to you like I got pretty far.”
Huck kicked out with his hind legs. Whirled as though trying to catch the kick in his own chest. “Seems to me you must’ve been hiding in a shed, or in some trees. Hiding from Rosie’s sickness and my pain. Doing whatever you could to not have to deal with that bellyache that killed her.”
“I wanted to be here, My Brother. I wish I’d been able to do something for her —”
“You and me both, Brother,” he said, making the word sound like a curse. He tossed his head, mane flying. Looked at me more closely. “I wonder…what you could’ve done.”
“No more than Billy did,” I said. “Maybe less.”
“Billy took her away,” said Huck. “He’s the reason I’m alone.”
“He took her to the vet. So you wouldn’t be alone. Brought her home, too. And buried her.”
“I smelled that,” Huck said. “I smelled it, and I heard it. But I didn’t see it.”
“Want to?”
Huck nodded. Hard. I went to the hay shed and got a lead rope. Came back and put it around his neck like a lasso. I took him out the far gate of the corral, and together we walked down the unpaved driveway to the pond, then up to the little meadow where Billy Morningstar and Delly the Interstate Trucker, with the help of a backhoe, had buried Rosie.
Huck and I stopped at the marker Billy had built. A round-capped fencepost with a crossbeam across which Rosie’s halter and lead rope hung. In the center of the crossbeam was a little metal sculpture—a horse’s head within a horseshoe. Everything was in the colors of Cloud Creek Ranch. Barn red with white trim.
“I still don’t see her,” Huck said. “But I feel her.”
“Is that better for you?”
“She feels beautiful.”
“How do you feel?”
Huck hesitated. Then:
“Empty,” he said.
He took a couple of steps away from the bare earth that covered his lost love. Lowered his head. Munched on the auburn Autumn grass. “This ought to fill me up fine.”
As I watched him I thought about other deaths of beloved ones Gwen and I have experienced here in the wilds of the Ozarks.
Dogs.
Cats.
Horses.
Chickens.
Humans too.
All these creatures are people to me, whether they were human or not.
Oh! So many people!
Here and then gone. And what do I do?
I write about them.
It’s what I’m best at.
My way, I tell you, Huck—and all my other Brothers and Sisters—of trying to help.