Twenty-Five

Comet and Sally

After a few days of acquainting Sally with Comet, Comet with Sally, I put them together in Comet’s pen. Almost instantly, she’s fawning. I’m glad they’ve clicked, it’s what I’d hoped for, and the fact that Comet has the upper hand was actually necessary to my plan, but I can’t help feeling just a little annoyed by Sally’s submissiveness. I think again of what Wayne says about horses being a reflection of the human who owns them. Sally doesn’t seem to mind that Comet is the boss; she follows Comet around regardless of how much attention he pays her.

I learn that Comet has a jealous streak. If I brush Sally, Comet wants to be brushed too. When I pitch hay, Comet chases Sally off, and only when I’ve pitched enough hay for both does Sally return. Because of this, I’ve been taking Sally out of the corrals, tying her up to the hitching post in front of the tack shed to brush her, leading her around the yard out of sight of Comet. Which makes her nervous. The house makes her nervous, the trees by the dugout make her nervous. The flowerbeds make her nervous.

One afternoon I saddle Sally and ride her around in the corral. It goes well, but I can tell by Sally’s ears, by her halting movements, that she’s guessing at what I want. I can see I’m not making myself clear. And I know I’m not making myself clear, because I don’t even know what it is that I want. I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do. My friend Joyce says to take baby steps, to take it slow, that the important thing is for both of us to feel comfortable. Emilie is waiting for me to ride Sally across the fields to her house.

The entire summer has been a blur. A few weeks ago we had a thunderstorm that shook the house. Four weeks ago I went to see my kids. Once, while visiting my parents, I tried to wake my father from a nap and couldn’t. I called 911. The ambulance came. “He’s having a stroke,” they said.

“No heroics,” I told them, and I know there was a kind of hysteria in my voice. I said it more than once—“Whatever you do, no resuscitation.” The thought of him paralyzed and spending the rest of his years in a comatose state terrified me. I know he probably didn’t mean it when he asked me to put him out of his misery if he ever got the way he’s become, and that even if he did mean it, he’s no longer the person who once made me promise. But there’s a part of me that thinks, If this is the end, how lucky. It would mean he was going without visible pain; it would mean he’d never have to go into long-term care, something he’d always dreaded. But he does come out of it. At the hospital, in Emergency, his eyes start to flutter and then open. “I’ll bet you thought I was dead,” he says.

The next time Wayne phones I tell him I can’t come to Mayfield. “I can’t leave my mom. And I would never forgive myself if my father dies and I’m not here.” There is a long pause before Wayne responds. “Well,” he says, “you have to do what you have to do.”

“To thine own self be true,” Wayne will say, and what he means is, if you’re not happy doing something, then don’t do it. I knew Wayne would be disappointed that I wasn’t coming in this year. I also knew that if I went through huge machinations to make it work, he’d be happy—but only if I was. Just as he took seriously his own desires and dreams, he assumed that I would as well. It had taken me years to believe that. I was more used to the politeness strategy in which invitations were made as expected gestures, not to be taken seriously. When I first met Wayne, I made all kinds of offers, and Wayne’s response was always, “That would be good.” It had taken me aback, and feeling somehow duped, I’d honour the offer, but then feel bitter about it. “But you offered,” Wayne would say when I’d fall apart over it. Now I know that what he really means is, I have to do what I have to do.

Some days, Comet’s wound looks like a riverbed, all pebbly and log-jammed, the water coursing its way through. Other days it looks more like the bark of a cottonwood tree. His wound, as it heals, grows itchy. When I scratch the hide that edges the wound, Comet’s lower lip drops and quivers with pleasure.

When a wound begins to heal, the undamaged hide gathers itself together and stitches inward, closing in on the wound like fine embroidery, creating at first a thin outside ring of white. So beautiful and precise, that bit of white, so neatly and tightly woven to the edge of the wound, like a moon’s crescent of light and within the wound, the scabs now come off with hardly any bleeding. As I hose, I pull the loose skin off. I rub the wound with my hand to loosen little bits of straw and leaf. I press my hand against the wound. Something about the heat from his body transferring to mine is soothing. Maybe it’s because I am touching something that was once so damaged. I am touching something that is nearly healed.