All SPRING I WAS SO IMMERSED in teaching and dodging the escalating indignities that I grew increasingly distracted from Caleb. As I sped away from the college, I said to myself, “I’m about at the end of my tether.” Just that day, a terse email had informed me that my once-lost and later-restored computer lab needed to be vacated — again — by the end of the week. With finals less than two weeks away, I begged for a delay. It was denied.
To top it off, I had gotten an email from Joe that morning. His ship was delayed at sea in the South Pacific because of heavy weather and yet another equipment breakdown — all-too-frequent occurrences. His normal three-month shift had ended, but now he wouldn’t be home for another month.
All these frustrations brought to mind the mounting battle of wills with the donkey that awaited me twenty-five miles up the road. Since I had no time for trail outings, we had resumed lessons in the ring. After three years of slow but steady improvement, our hard-won achievements — basically turning, stopping, and trotting on command — had deteriorated rapidly over the last several months. Since the winter, I had ridden Caleb only twice a week, sometimes just once. I really needed to just spend time brushing and hugging him, walking and talking. Unfortunately, he reflected my moods perfectly. Lately, on every visit I was set upon by a swirling, biting, kicking, shoving tornado.
I parked the car at the stable and grabbed my riding gear. I had forgotten to stop off for carrots or apples. Too bad. No bribes or rewards today. On the way to the barn, a gust of cold wind sent me shivering back to the car in search of warmer clothes. I grabbed my helmet, which I usually donned just before mounting, and a heavy-duty safety vest, which I kept only for trail rides.
At the stall, no head or ears popped up over the gate to greet me. I peered inside. Deep in the early-evening gloom, a pale rump faced me. “What? No friendly snuffle?” I unlatched the top and bottom bolts. Hoping to find solace in his gentle nuzzling, I faced a cold haunch instead. I lost my temper. “Oh no, not today, bud,” I warned him. “No playing hard to get.”
Caleb looked at me over his flank. His ears were pinned back tight to his head. “So you’re in a mood, too,” I said. “Well, today I can out-ornery anybody!”
I stepped inside. Lead line in hand, I paused to let my eyes adjust to the darkness. But before my vision cleared, Caleb spun around and charged me. I hopped back outside his stall and slammed the gate. Snorting like a deranged bull, Caleb rammed his chest hard against it. I leaned with my full weight but couldn’t connect the latch.
Fine. I’ll just let him win this round. He’ll brush past me and scamper around the dressage ring and through the barns. Everyone will yell at me.
The gate swung wide and hit the wall with a bang, not leaving a second for me to jump aside. Unlike previous times, Caleb didn’t veer around me or brush my shoulder as he flew past. Instead, he aimed straight for me. I tried to dive out of his way, but he matched my dodges before barreling into me, knocking me to the ground. It was not the first time I’d tripped over my own feet or lost my balance from one of his rough nudges, but I expected him to trot off a few defiant steps and watch me struggle to my feet.
Instead, he kept coming. His front hoof landed on the back of my left calf. The leg felt as if it was bending the wrong way. The other front hoof came down on my right thigh.
“Stop!”
A rear hoof stepped on my ribs. The zipper and Velcro straps on the safety vest burst open. One, two, three, I counted. One more hoof. My face in the gravel, I hunched my shoulders and braced my hands behind my neck. The fourth hoof flicked the back of my neck and kicked the helmet off my head, breaking the chin strap. I watched helplessly as that most crucial protection bounced across the ground.
Caleb rushed into the middle of the yard and stopped, his agitation visible in the violent swishing of his tail. Maybe he wasn’t finished with me. I rolled partway onto my side and reached out to try to grab the helmet. Intense pain shot through my ribs. I couldn’t reach it. I paused to catch my breath and stretched for it with the other arm. Helmet back on, I pushed up onto my scraped and bleeding palms and lifted myself onto all fours. The tiniest movement sent sharp pains through my torso and legs.
Watching Caleb carefully, I struggled to stand, but my legs had turned to jelly. I sank to my knees in the dirt. I yelled at some girls passing by, “Stay away from him!” My voice rose to a shriek: “He trampled me!”
I tried to refasten the safety vest, but the zipper and Velcro straps were ripped from their seams. Holding the side of the barn, I staggered to my feet again and inched around the corner. Shaking from head to toe, I sank down onto a mounting block.
Laura was just finishing a lesson nearby. She spotted Caleb and hurried over, grabbed his halter, and led him to his stall. I listened for the scrape and click as Laura latched both the top and bottom bolts of the door before I slumped over and exhaled. She rounded the corner and sat down beside me. She wrapped an arm around my shoulder and said softly, “It’s okay, Margie. It will be okay.”
“No, it’s not!” I gulped air. “He tried to kill me!” My heart threatened to beat a hole through my chest.
Laura asked me, “Are you hurt?”
“My ribs, my leg. . .”
“Stand up and put weight on it.” As soon as I did, I swooned from the pain and sat down again. “Sit here while I finish up this lesson.” She called to one of the girls to fetch an ice pack. After fifteen minutes, Laura came over and draped a heavy horse blanket over my shoulders. “Are you feeling better?”
I stared at the ground, weeping. I wasn’t shaking as much; I could breathe. “A little.” But when I tried to say more, tears leaked down my grubby, scraped cheeks. Blood was smeared all over the front of the vest from my scraped palms and cheek. Nothing major was damaged, except my shin and ribs. Nothing visible, that is. Already I could feel my throat closing up, my heart racing. Soon a full-fledged panic attack would dwarf all other concerns.
Laura, a firm believer in putting a rider back in the saddle, said, “Let’s lead Caleb out of his stall.”
“No way! I’m not going near that animal. He tried to kill me!” My voice came out as a croak. “You didn’t see it. Every time I come here, he’s worse. This time he came straight at me, ears pinned back, snorting like he didn’t know me. All four hooves stomped on me. One, two, three, four!” I stabbed a finger in the air for each count. “It was no accident.” The last came out as a sob.
Laura let me blubber on her shoulder.
“I think I need to see a doctor.”
“Okay, then. I’ll call you later.”
I limped to my car. On the way, a fresh wave of terror shook me to my core. If I could have moved faster, I would have jumped in the car and torn down the driveway. As it was, I could barely figure out how to insert the key in the ignition. Just around the corner, I pulled over into a church parking lot and burst out in renewed sobbing.
The next morning, I saw an orthopedist, who suspected I had a hairline fracture and wrote a prescription for painkillers. I hobbled into work; I needed to concentrate all my efforts to finish the semester. Besides the lost computer lab, springtime meant thesis defenses, as well as final exams. I shrugged off questions about the bandages on my hands and cheek. No one, except possibly Laura and the Bridgmans, had understood why I had yearned for a donkey in the first place. I didn’t mention anything in my emails to Joe, either. As fond of Caleb as he was, I knew what he would say: “He’s already caused you enough grief and expense. And now that he’s attacked you. . .get rid of the damned animal.”
Once Caleb realized that I was afraid of him, I was sure he would hurt me again. Maybe hurt someone else at the stable — even a child. In recent months the barn employees had grumbled about Caleb’s increasing aggression. I had ignored them. If I didn’t get rid of him, Laura would. Sure, she’d wait until I was healed and had time to think, but she had gotten rid of horses for far less. At Silver Rock, safety always came first.
Just like the time I’d been thrown from a horse at the age of twenty, I now developed a genuine phobia. Flashbacks of his hooves grinding me into the dirt gripped my whole being.
During my long career as a field geologist, I had fallen off cliffs and had broken my leg, fractured my knee, and injured my back, so I can say with some authority that the drowning, gasping-for-breath, heart-pounding symptoms of a panic attack are worse. With a panic attack, the rational mind is completely overridden by whatever chemicals produce outright terror. It was like drowning while having a heart attack.
Over the next week, Laura called almost daily, but whenever she asked when I was coming back, I dodged the question. Two weeks later, the semester ended. It was the longest time Caleb and I had been apart since I had brought him to Silver Rock. I couldn’t put it off any longer. I drove over to the stable. I would be firm: I would tell Laura that he and I were finished. At this point, I didn’t know which scared me the most: his violent outburst, Laura’s likely reaction, or the difficult decision I needed to make. Ultimately, it was up to me. My donkey, my responsibility.
As soon as I pulled into the driveway, my heart began to race and I felt dizzy. By the time I found Laura mucking out a stall, my legs barely held my weight. I squeezed out the words through a tight throat: “Can we talk?”
She propped the pitchfork against the wall and said, “Are you ready for a lesson?”
“Are you joking? He knows I’m afraid of him. It’s all over.”
She cocked her head to the side and said, “You know, he’s telling you something.”
Not more “horse whispering” bullshit. I broke eye contact and looked at the ground. “Okay. What is he trying to tell me?”
“Well, you haven’t been around much these last few months.”
“That’s true, with my heavy teaching schedule, the long commute, and the problems with the administration, and. . .”
“Yes, I know all that. You’ve told me over and over,” she said with more than a hint of impatience. “I understand, but Caleb doesn’t. All he knows is that he doesn’t see you much, and when you’re here, you’re not here. Don’t you agree?”
A glimmer of Caleb’s point of view — my hectic arrivals, my clothes reeking of stress-induced sweat — overwhelmed me with guilt. How I huffed and cursed under my breath, how the reins slipped through my hands or jerked while my mind with its worries drifted miles away.
“Margie, Caleb understands more than you think he does. He thinks when you fly in here all in a rush that you’re mad at him, but he has no idea why. He is telling you he’s mad at you because you’re mad at him.”
“I get it, sort of.” But I didn’t. Not really.
“Next time. . .” she began, but noted my shaking head and raised hand. She amended her plan to “We’ll hand-walk him on a short line until you’re ready to ride.”
At this pronouncement, my gut flipped. “I don’t have time. I’ve got an appointment.” The coward’s response. On the way to my car, my mind considered one thing, and one thing only: there won’t be a next time. At that moment I was never more certain of anything in my life.
This was the worst point in my overextended career to devote time to anyone or anything else. A decade earlier, I had become so burned-out as department chair during a several-year fiscal crisis that I developed mononucleosis twice in six months and was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. I already recognized the early signals of impending disaster: severe fatigue, depression, migraines, and now panic attacks. My whole being cried out for time away from Caleb — time to rest, time to think things through.
My denial of Caleb as a large, muscular beast that needed a firm hand had doomed our relationship from the start. At this stage, I had neither the time, the energy, nor the will to turn things around. I was a fool to even want a donkey, more of a fool to think I could train one. But who would buy or even take a donkey that had harmed someone? I already knew the answer: no one.
A few days after my exchange with Laura, I flipped through the latest issue of The Brayer and came across an updated ad for Bridgman Stables, which offered a new “boot camp” program to rehabilitate troubled donkeys and mules. By sending Caleb away, I could focus on the upcoming meetings and battles at the college. Maybe I could meet up with Joe in some exotic port and relax on a beach with him.
Over the weekend, I called Lou Bridgman. I hated to tell her that I had failed, but the Bridgmans no doubt had expected it all along. The sound of Lou’s slow, gravelly voice on the line comforted me. I edged toward the point of my call: “Caleb’s been acting up lately. He, uh, bites and kicks me and others. And, well, he trampled me. What do you think?”
“Well, I know you don’t want to hear this,” she said. “There’s nothing sadder than a ruined donkey. Once they hurt someone, no one will buy them.”
I was shocked by her hard tone.
“Heck, no one’ll even take them for free. Even if you find someone with a pasture and pay them to keep them — which, believe me, you will have to — farriers and vets won’t touch ’em, either. So their health goes downhill pretty fast.”
I sank into my chair. A picture of Caleb on the day we met, bright-eyed and eager to please, leaped to mind. “Is there anything you can do?”
A metallic rasp came down the line as Lou lit a cigarette. “Thinking about sending him up here for rehab?”
“Yes!”
“We can do that. Farley will work with him.”
“Oh, I’d much rather work with you.”
Unfortunately, she and Jack would be visiting their other daughter for a month. Farley’s method, I well knew, could be described as take-no-prisoners. Yet, if brute force was the only way to get through to Caleb, then it was time to give her free rein.
“Lou, I know you’ll tell me the truth. Do you think he is salvageable?”
“Well.” She paused. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
Despite her cold prognosis, I sagged with relief. Someone capable would take over, and I wouldn’t have to deal with Caleb or my fears for a while. Could they turn back the clock so that we could begin again?
Lou had wrapped up the conversation with “The owner must stay away for the whole month. Okay?”
To tell the truth, I wasn’t sure I would come up at all. Once Caleb was in their hands, all it would take was a phone call from me and they could sell him for me. That is, if they could tame him again, and if not, maybe they could calm him enough to give him away.
In a lifetime of uphill struggles to become a field geologist and a tenured professor, all the while tenaciously honing my skills to accomplish impossible tasks, I had never quit. At that moment, I knew what I was going to do: I was giving up.
Whatever made me think that Laura and I could do better than they, the donkey experts, could? I believed that Laura would be delighted, or at least relieved, by this sensible idea. It would free her from worrying about Caleb’s dangerous behavior toward me and others. The next day I drove over to the stable and found her in her office. “I’ve got a great idea. Until my schedule opens up, I can send Caleb upstate to the Bridgmans. They have a ‘boot camp’ program for problem donkeys.”
Laura spun around in her chair. “What’s wrong with my method? We can do the same thing right here.” Her response stunned me. “I’ll work with him every day.”
Laura already worked sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. She had no time to spare. I said, “It’s not working.”
I recognized my mistake when she strode out the door without another word.
My first impulse when confronted by stronger-minded, confident leaders was to fall into line. That was why I twisted and turned in the breeze at work, unable to stand up for myself. I just couldn’t endure the massive anxiety I felt whenever anyone was angry with me.
I ran after her. “Look, the problem, don’t you see, is me,” I said. “It’s all my fault.”
In the face of her silence, I soldiered on: “The Bridgmans’ specialty is donkeys and mules, you know. They’ve been training them for decades.”
“How long would he be away?” she asked in a calm and casual-sounding voice.
“I think the program lasts four weeks,” I said, “but I was thinking of sending him away for the whole summer.”
“You know, there’s a long waiting list for stalls here,” she said in a flat voice.
I stared at her, speechless. In other words, if I removed Caleb, even temporarily, he couldn’t come back.
Over the next several days, I cringed at my disloyal behavior. Laura was, after all, the one stable owner in the county who had welcomed us and who believed that a donkey could become a reliable ring and trail companion. She had worked with Caleb and me for three years, despite abundant evidence that we were poor students, to say the least. On the other hand, she had decades of experience teaching riders — on already-trained horses. But Caleb was no horse. Nor was he trained. Surely she could see that.
I had already noticed that Laura usually balked at unwelcome suggestions but often came around in a few days. I’d let the idea percolate. Meanwhile I would arrange transport for Caleb.
At my lowest point, something occurred to me: if I couldn’t bring him back to Silver Rock, the Bridgmans could find him a new home, a better owner. Caleb might flourish with someone who had more time, a steadier temperament, and a stronger will. He deserved a better life. My determination to send him to the Bridgmans bore all the hallmarks of a logical decision. Joe would certainly agree.
Why did my heart feel so hollow?