WELL DONE! GIRL WITH SUNSHINE HAIR by Rita Welty Bourke

GIRL WITH SUNSHINE HAIR by Rita Welty Bourke

I have been in this dark place for so long, I’ve lost track of time. It’s hard to remember when I was last allowed out into the pasture. Days have gone by, days piled on days, weeks following weeks, months slipping away. It is dark and cold. I can feel winter approaching.

There’s a window high above my stall, and sometimes the light coming through is bright. I know then that it’s daytime. There’s a girl who comes to the barn and throws a few flakes of hay from the loft into my hayrack. She checks to see that I have water. And then she leaves.

A long time ago, when she was a very small, I used to give her rides up into the California hills. But that was long ago.

Once I had a stablemate; her name was Sadie and I loved her. She was a tiny thing, not thirteen hands. What a picture we must have made, grazing out in the pasture, delicate little Sadie and great big quarter horse Spunky.

Sadie has been gone for a long time. I am no longer so spunky.

There was a man who spent time with me nearly every day, but he rarely comes anymore. Like me, he is old. There’s a woman somehow attached to him, but she does not like to come into the barn. She wrings her hands and seems not to know what to do, either for the old man or for me.

The girl is trying to find me a new home. She has to be careful, she says. There are kill buyers out there who will her pay good money, if she will let me go. She will never allow that, she promises. Her grandfather has owned me for a long time, and he would be heartbroken.

She told me why he no longer comes to the barn, and she laid her head against my shoulder and cried, and I could feel her warm tears. He was climbing a ladder, she said, and he fell. I remember hearing the siren of the vehicle that came for him, and how the noise shattered the air, and I was frightened.

He broke his back, the girl said. And when he was in that place where they took him, they found other things. Something called Alzheimers. And cancer.

Sometimes I think I must be as old as the old man who broke his back. My back is not as straight as it used to be. She says I am swaybacked, which is something that happens as horses age. I am quite old, she says. Thirty-two years.

She would like to find a place where there are other horses, and green pastures, and softer footing. She has put pictures of me on something called Facebook. There have been offers, but she is suspicious. She will not let me go to a kill buyer, no matter how bad things get.

Many days go by before I see the old man again. But he finally comes home from that place, and he is happy, and he begins to come to the barn every few days. He runs his hand along the side of my face and he strokes my neck. And like the girl, he often begins to cry, and he has to leave me. In that dark place.

* * *

There are lots of responses to the Facebook thing, the girl tells me:

I’d love to be able to take him, but all my stalls are full. Can you make your post shareable?

Yes, we have room in our barn, we’ll take him. Can you message me with more information?

He’s been in a stall for six months? No electricity, no exercise, a 32 year-old horse? Maybe we aren’t the best fit. He might be better off at another barn. I’m sorry.

I might be able to take him. But not until spring.

Are there resources for his care, his vet bills, farrier bills, hay, grain, supplements?

“There is hay that will last a year,” the girl responds. “And some grain.”

Are you prepared to turn over ownership?

Kill buyer, she decides.

* * *

Finally, there’s a response from a young woman who says I remind her of a horse she owned when she was a girl. If no one else steps up, she’s willing to take me. She lives in a neighboring state where they get lots of snow in the winter, but she has a heated barn. There are stalls with outside runs if I can’t be on grass.

She comes with her husband for a visit. When the granddaughter is able to find my bridle, they put it over my head and buckle it and lead me outside. It is wonderful to feel the sun and breathe the cold air. It hardly matters that my legs are stiff and walking is painful.

I’ve always been a man’s horse, because I’ve been with the old grandfather for so long, but this girl, that skinny little blonde, I love her the minute I see her. Her husband stands to the side, appraising me, perhaps wondering how much trouble I will be for him. I am unsure about him. Yet something tells me he has a big heart. Like his skinny wife.

When we are outside in the paddock she begins to take off my blanket, and I step sharply away from her. She stops, and calms me, and waits until I settle. More slowly now, she removes the blanket and lets it slip to the ground. She takes hold of my bridle and moves me away from the old grandfather. I think she doesn’t want him to see the wounds on my belly where the buckles have rubbed, and on my back where the blanket has irritated my skin.

She looks to her husband, and something silent passes between them. He turns from her, toward me, and he holds out his hand for me to sniff. There is no carrot or sugar cube, but he is not a threat, I decide.

The girl turns to the old grandfather, and I know from the way she straightens her back that she has made a decision. She tells him she’ll come for me in two days.

And she does. With a friend, an older, long-legged woman with a sunburned face and eyes that miss nothing.

Climbing up into her trailer is almost too much for me. My legs are so weak. But the girl keeps talking to me, encouraging me, luring me with handfuls of grain. And the leggy woman is behind me, pushing, her face red with the effort. And finally, finally, I am able to do it.

I look back as we drive away, at the old grandfather, and the woman who is by his side, and the granddaughter who filled my hayrack.

* * *

It is a long time before we get to the place where the girl is taking me. We race along wide roads, faster than I was ever able to run, roads with many lanes, roads filled with vehicles of all sizes and shapes. Wind rushes into the open windows of the trailer. There are buildings on both sides of the road, so many buildings, all crushed together. Smokestacks, dozens of them, stain the sky a dirty gray.

After what seems like many hours we leave it behind. We climb a hill and there are steep mountains on one side and a great body of water on the other. Then a rusty bridge across water. The roads narrows, and twists, and turns, and I wonder how much longer this will go on. I try to prop myself against the side of the trailer to keep from falling. It is a long, hard, ride.

Then a short ride down a smooth gravel road, and we are there.

* * *

The smell of evergreen trees. Air the purest and cleanest I’ve known for a long time. Fresh-cut lumber. And best of all, horses in a pasture, looking at us, ears perked forward. A gray thoroughbred, a chestnut, and a paint. None of them are Sadie, but they are horses. I have arrived at my new home, and there are horses grazing in one of the pastures.

The girl is patient with me as she tries to back me out of the trailer. It is all so new. Her voice is soothing, and it doesn’t matter what she is saying. She is trying to calm me, fill me with the courage I need to at least attempt what she is asking me to do. She knows I am frightened.

The woman with long legs is again behind me, watching. When I step out onto the ramp and try to turn, she won’t allow it. I must go straight backwards, she tells me. Just a few more steps and I will be on level ground. She promises that it is so. And it is.

* * *

The stall is new, and roomy, and clean. But I am a weaver, something I have done since I was a colt. I stand at the stall door and I weave, back and forth. But the skinny girl knows about such things. She says it’s okay, that when I feel more at ease, maybe I will not longer find it necessary to do that. When she’s able to put me in the pasture with the thoroughbred and the paint, I won’t feel so alone and afraid. And if none of that works, it’s okay. The constant moving might cause me to lose weight, but when she’s certain I can tolerate something more than a starvation diet, she’s says I’ll gain it back. And if I don’t, that’s okay, too.

She’s brought two bales of alfalfa from my old barn, but she worries it is too rich for me. She gives me timothy and orchard grass with just a tiny bit of alfalfa. She tempts me with grain, but I am not interested. She moistens it, but still I am not interested. She adds things to it that smell different from anything I have ever had before, and I would eat these things if I could. She measures my girth, and I know she is hoping I will begin to regain some of the weight I’ve lost.

She keeps me in a special pasture for a time, and I hug the fence line, or I stay by the gate. She watches, certain that as time passes I will begin to feel more confident. The day comes when I venture out to all four corners of the field, and I can tell she is pleased.

What would please me most is if she would take me with her when she saddles the Thoroughbred and the two of them ride off together, into the hills. I catch glimpses of them in the evergreen trees, moving upward toward the snow-capped mountain she calls Mt. Adams. I would love that.

When she comes back she unsaddles the gray and bathes her and turns her into the pasture. Then she comes into my pasture. She tells me of the Buddhists who live in the shadow of the white mountain and of their mission to relieve suffering in the world. And of the Druids who have built a temple next to the Buddhist monastery. Outside the temple is a stone circle where they hold ceremonies of worship and healing. She will take me there someday, she says, and they will pray over me. But first I must regain some of the weight I’ve lost, and get stronger, and learn to trust that she will not abandon me. She never will, she promises.

She has a friend who comes to visit me nearly every day. He wears a tiny hat that covers just the top of his head and she calls him Rabbi. He talks to me in a language I’ve never heard before, and his voice is rhythmical and strangely beautiful. Sometimes I think he has gone into a trance, that he is talking to someone who is not there. On pretty days he will often take me for walks along the gravel road. He reminds me a bit of the old grandfather, and I like him, but I am no longer just a man’s horse. I have learned to love that skinny girl.

* * *

Winter has arrived, but the days are still warm with sunshine. There has been frost, and the grass is yellowed, but it has not lost its sweetness. The sky is blue, the trees green, the mountain white with snow. The water in my stall at night is warm, the footing soft, the sounds around me comforting. The gray horse has become my friend and the paint has decided I am not a threat to him. My legs are still weak, and my body is full of pain. At times I look toward the far corner of the pasture where there are tall pine trees and I yearn to go there. I could lie down on soft pine needles and rest. But spring is coming, and when the snow disappears from the trails at the base of the mountain, she says she will take me there. And on the way we’ll stop at the Buddhist monastery where she has friends. If the Druids are there, we will join them in their circle of stones and offer thanks for the gifts we have been given.

The pine trees call to me. But when the sky darkens, and the stars begin to appear, the skinny girl with sunshine hair comes into my stall. Every night she spends an hour with me, grooming me, putting salve on my wounds, talking to me. She says I am doing well, that I am gaining weight. She tells me I am a noble horse, and I am dignified, and I am powerful. I believe these things, because she says they are so.

From the window in my stall I can see the white mountain, and off to the side, the stand of pine trees where I could go and lie down, and the pain would be gone. But then I think of that skinny girl, and of the things she says to me, and I know I cannot leave her just yet.

Rita’s novel, "Islomanes of Cumberland Island," was published by Histria Books in November, 2021. "Kylie’s Ark: The Making of a Veterinarian," was selected as a Kirkus Best Indie Book of 2017. Her stories have appeared in numerous literary journals including “North American Review,” “Cimarron Review,” “Louisiana Literature,” “Shenandoah,” “Witness,” “Black Warrior Review,” and “The Southwest Review.”