The Horse Messenger
She opens her eyes,
as the god-like force,
pulls the massive rippling curtains apart,
lively notes of music dance through her ears,
adventure, dreams, drama.
Saturday morning was special. A kid with 2 Williams Bread wrappers in hand gained free admission to McDonald Theater. Inside love awaited. He was probably her first love. Weekly, they would spend an hour and a half together in undisturbed fixation. His skin was light in color, with long flowing whitish blond hair; his body muscularly commanding attention; every step he took powerful yet graceful; his behavior perfect. Larger than life, he was dependable, always ready for action and adventure, always the winner. His name was “Trigger” and every Saturday morning he could be seen on the big screen chasing bad guys and conquering the world with his partner, Roy Rogers. The connection was mesmerizing, the lifestyle captivating.
It’s hard to believe his fate was to be stuffed and preserved forever by a taxidermist. Statically confined to one stationary stance forever. A game show hosts on television asks guest to guess Trigger’s current stuffed value in order to win a prize. Whatever the answer, it is not enough. The answer should be a MasterCard ad, priceless. How can a value be placed on inspiration or the dawning of passion?
II.
Smart people sitting
like small trees in the forest.
A knowledge dispenser moderates,
as wind sways the trees in agreement.
Muffled beliefs hide.
College baffled her. How could her childhood memories have been so wrong? Television brought characters into her world she adored. College said she missed the point. A show she loved was stereotyping groups of people and leading youngsters like her self to view diverse populations in bathetic ways. She never spoke up in class to say she loved the characters deeply and had nothing but admiration for their lifestyles. Couldn’t college see beyond the obvious into the world of connection? Silver was amazing. The union began when the Lone Ranger saved Silver from an enraged buffalo. Silver could carry his partner through all kinds of evil and keep him safe. Tonto and his horse, Scout, accompanied them. The William Tel overture whisked 4 companions off to new adventures every time she watched. A strong bond between horse and rider was illustrated in each episode. A lifestyle to envy. College focused on Tonto, what about Silver and Scout?
III.
Children’s illustrated Bible books sold door to door,
as angels float about.
Nappy abstractions hypothesized,
as imaginative greenness listens,
doctrine, implantation, ignored.
At an early age, she dropped out of religion. Her questions unsatisfactorily answered.
“Why didn’t John Glenn see heaven when he went to the moon?” she asked.
“He didn’t go far enough,” the book saleswoman replied.
“How far did he need to go?” she retorted.
Reading changed her life forever.
In third grade, she discovered a section of the school library that was filled with biographies of western folklore. There she found characters she could relate to: Annie Oakley and Wild Bill Hickok were among her favorites. She read volumes of information about their lives and personal character.
Annie was a smart woman who could out perform men in many areas. At an early age, Annie was trapping and hunting to support her siblings and widowed mother. Annie could ride a horse, shoot a gun, and make a living on her own as an entertainer. “Aim at a high mark, and you will hit it,” was Annie’s motto. She believed in what Annie stood for.
Wild Bill Hickok was a gunfighter, a scout, and a lawman. He always seemed to be saving someone or dodging some kind of trouble. Despite the various squabbles he got himself into, he appeared to be an honorable man. In the books she read, he traveled by horse and had a deep connection to his equine companion. They fought battles and out ran enemies. They survived together. That’s why she was so shocked.
She had been deeply engrossed in the tale of Wild Bill’s latest adventure. He was racing to beat the enemy and get important information passed on. He and his horse raced through the night. She did not expect the ending. Wild Bill rode his horse so furiously that at the end of the book the horse died. What? She was crushed. She no longer trusted books.
She sought her mother’s wisdom, and for the first time needed spiritual guidance.
“How could he do that to his horse?” she asked. “Will they be together in heaven?” she wondered. Some how, if they were reunited, it would be ok in her eyes. She began to wonder about death, spirituality, and connection.
IV.
Stories told with light,
as brumal air fills the morning.
Gaits like fingerprints foretell
as distinctive shadows linger,
whispering, unique, memoirs.
She knew them all by sound. Each one left a different impression on her ear. Milling about the pasture in the morning fog she listened to make sure they were all present, all accounted for. None had been lost in the night.
The sun began to come over the horizon hinting at the silhouettes of life. She had become a storyteller with light. The early morning’s mood waited for its opening line. She heard it coming. The backdrop of light coming through the trees revealed a horse rapidly approaching. The scene was planned in her mind. She clicked off a series of photos as the horse passed before her, then vanished into an unlit area of the pasture. She continued to listen. Hours spent eavesdropping with a camera revealed novel personalities. The horses shared their world through snippets of time captured with a lens. What story would they tell next?
Across the channel, a woman was watching her stories. She didn’t realize the significance of posting her photos to online.
V.
Three men and a horse
blending together like storms.
Lost in a sea depression,
admired, cherished, united.
Roger Ebert says he has a theory that, “People more readily cry at movies not because of sadness, but because of goodness and courage.”
An awkwardly built horse, with a rugged beginning, too small to be a giant, gave a tired nation hope during a period of great depression. Seabiscuit did what only a racehorse can do; he took whole group of people for a ride of their lives all at once. During the Great Depression, Seabiscuit was listed as one of the “Top 10 Most Influential People “ in the world. On race days, the nation sat spellbound around radios, listening to him race. When he won, they won. When he lost, they knew he would try again. Despite great adversity, he ultimately triumphed, and so did the country.
She didn’t know much about Thoroughbreds when she adopted a 22 year old, off the track, mare that she called, “Sage.” Innocence allowed the union. Sage’s background was illusive. She came with a lip tattoo and a photo of her as a 2 year old winning a race at Calder Race Track in Miami, FL. A readable lip tattoo can trace a pedigree. Thoroughbreds breathe history. Sage was a descendent of Man o” War, the top racehorse of the 20th century. The Man O’ War connection indirectly linked Sage to Seabiscuit. The history was enticing.
Despite the passage of time, the trauma of a book ending badly had not left her. She deflected reading novels and frequently avoided finishing books altogether. She loved history, but avoided literature classes that required reading books like, “Animal House.” No need for an animal parable, with the horse dying near the end, to tell the tale of Stalin. She took to the practice of reading the end of the book first.
A friend suggested she read the book Seabiscuit, by Laura Hillenbrand. She was reluctant, but knowing the horse’s place in history, the story’s ending, and the connection to Sage, she agreed. Seabiscuit sucked her into reading. The characters and the book resonated deeply with her. Many of the words took on timeless meaning.
George Woolf, “Wanta know what I think? “
Charles Howard, “ Of course.“
George Woolf, “I think it’s better to break a man’s leg than his heart.”
~From the Movie Seabiscuit
VI.
A dark bay gelding,
comfortable as mid-summer,
a silken tapestry trusting as youth,
cushioned wisdom,
blind.
Muscular bounds of joy racing across his pasture; moments of endearment nuzzling with a friend; munching longs blades of grass causally in an early summer’s field; splashing water on himself as he played in the water trough; and the deep penetrating look of his brown eyes, as pools of thought lurked inside; images of life whittled by her camera’s lens over time. Her photographs displayed online for the world to see. Beau had fans outside his fences. People knew his story without words.
Their partnership had been forged through connection: daily lives entwined by ordinary moments, combined with time spent leaping fences and doing precision maneuvers without a second thought. Devastation surrounded her at the thought of it ending. The onset of Beau’s blindness seemed sudden, unexplainable. Two possible scenarios surfaced: he had gone blind slowly without anyone noticing, adapting constantly to his familiar surroundings and hiding the problem, or something suddenly snapped inside him. Either way, now he was 1100 pounds of fear. It was like death, but worse. Beau was 17 years old, and otherwise, a healthy horse. Was blindness enough of a reason to choose to end his life? She pondered death, spirituality, and connection.
“You know, you don’t throw a whole life away just ’cause he’s banged up a little.”
~Tom Smith, from the movie Seabiscuit
Words from Seabiscuit flooded her mind. She studied the soul she knew so well for guidance. Beau seemed to be saying he wanted to try, to be brave, to see what he could learn to do without his eyes. He would let her know what he needed. Day by day they put life back together. The environment needed to adjust. Paths were rocked to guide him to important landmarks, gates, shelter, water, and the routes to the barn. Her photos documented the transition. In the past, there had been photos of his athletic brilliance. The images morphed into demonstrating him learning to do ordinary things again: finding his water trough and diving his muzzle deep into the water to splash about in the way he loved; relearning the joy of to being able to move about freely in his pasture, to walk, trot, and canter as a horse should; the braveness he demonstrated by rolling on his back, to scratch an itch, and then leaping upward afterward; the trials of returning to being ridden again. What could be more valiant? The world beyond his fences was watching and cheering him on.
VII.
She opens her eyes,
as the god-like force
flies over the war, never looking down.
A childhood tale brought to life
War Horse, her horse
hope survives.
The horse is the animal most associated with war. Countless statues around the world display a rider and his horse in a battle scene. The role of horses in the military has changed with technology. World War I was a transitional period for armed combat. Horses served an essential component of offensive battles. They maneuvered better than awkward machines through difficult terrain, often-pulling artillery, ambulances, and supply wagons. The affection soldiers felt for their equine companions boosted moral among the troops; men were comforted by the presence of horses. Horses lost their lives along side the soldiers they fought with. Horse trailers were originally developed as equine ambulances to transport wounded horses to the Veterinary field hospitals. During one year, on the Western Front, 120,000 horses were treated for wounds and diseases by British veterinary hospitals. By the end of the war, military horses were in short supply. At various points during war, up to 1000 horses arrived daily to join the troops.
A friend stopped by to tell a story recently heard at a family gathering. The person’s grandparents had given one of the family horses to the war effort during WWI. While serving in the war, the person’s uncles were unexpectedly surprised to be reunited with the family horse. The story made her wonder about death, spirituality, and connection.
A message came from the woman across the channel, the one watching Beau from afar. The woman turned out to be an award-winning British artist. Ali Bannister landed the job as the Equine Artistic Advisor for the Steven Spielberg adaptation Michael Morpurgo’s book, War Horse. Ali sent a link to the movie trailer with a message saying:
I am so excited to finally be able to email you with this…
Whilst working on Spielberg’s version of War Horse I had to produce sketches to go into the film. I produced a range of pictures which Spielberg himself picked from. The drawing he choose as the main sketch of the lead horse was one done from the lead horse playing ‘Joey’, but the one on the left might be more familiar to you!
I hope you don’t mind that I worked from your photo without telling you but I wanted it to be a surprise.
So Beau is famous in a Spielberg film no less :0)
I know it’s only a rough sketch, and only visible for a few seconds, but I drew it hoping that it might be a nice surprise, seeing all the heartache you’ve been through with your huge hearted horses and all the work you’ve put in with them and shared with us.
I’m sure that Sage would be proud too. Maybe she had a hoof in the selection process. Who knows…
Ali. x”
The words “hope survives” flash on the screen of the movie trailer immediately before the sketch of Beau appears. He leaps off the left side of the sketchpad’s page. Movies, books, and photos have a way of twisting stories through lives: inspiring when needed, planting new ideas in the garden of the mind, and filling the blanks of companionship during empty moments in life. The movie War Horse comes out in Christmas Day, Dec.. 2012. It will be a tough movie for her to watch. The pain of the horses and their connections will tug at her heart. She bought the book and knows the ending. Beau’s sketch on the big screen is too important a moment to miss.
To solve the problem, I took an old fly mask and sewed a towel onto the the side where the eye needed to be covered. This way no dirt would get into the wound and I could easily wash the mask if needed. The mask worked beautifully. Beau went outside every day and still kept his wound clean and dry.
Beau’s eye is comfortable and looking good again. He has some physical changes to the eye now. It has retracted and gotten a bit blueish. The deep brown pools aren’t quite the same, but his eyes continue to comfort me. His body has changed , but not his soul.
