WELL DONE! Essays, Memoirs, and True Stories - SLEEPING SICKNESS by Kimberly Parish Davis

Sleeping Sickness by Kimberly Parish Davis

1971—It’s difficult to say precisely where I was in 1971. It was a bleak time. My mother was driving back and forth to Wyoming marrying and divorcing an asshole who abused my dog. Superdog was only 12 pounds, but every ounce of him was fighting fit. Even when the bad man put him in the freezer, or on top of the china cabinet to see if he’d try to jump off and break his little neck. I think Mom and that guy married each other twice—each time only for about six months. Superdog and I just got dragged along for the ride. I had no choice but to change schools 5 times between fourth and sixth grades.

It’s interesting when I remember that the two horses Mom kept when she and Dad divorced didn’t have any trouble traveling out of the state of Texas, at least, not that I recall. There was that Venezuelan Equine Encephalomyalitis going on in Texas, and for a time, 24 states actually banned Texas horses from entering their borders. (Like you can stop mosquitos at man made borders.) It made sense at the time, though, because it could infect humans too. I have vague recollections of people being afraid to go to the barn. My mind shows me the barn on Brittmoore Road, so I know that for at least part of that time I was in Texas, but the regime had changed. I was a stranger in that place I’d roamed as my own when I was younger. My new step brother and sister rode their bikes to the barn to feed horses and clean stalls. That terrified me—crossing the Katy freeway on a bicycle.

My other grandmother was a great hypochondriac, and I know I stayed with her part of the time I was in Texas, and I know she talked to me about sleeping sickness. No doubt her fears colored my view of that place I’d once loved. That summer, 1971, more than 1500 equines died in South Texas. There were no human deaths, but 110 cases were reported. So, yeah, people were afraid, just like they were afraid of the Corona Virus coming from China in 2020.

I was in Texas on summer vacation, since Mom and I had gone to Wyoming towing four horses behind her lilac Sedan deVille. Not King Like Star, Mom’s special favorite. Daddy kept him out of spite, and it broke her heart because Daddy had King Like gelded almost immediately. In the divorce settlement, Daddy’d made Mom choose Triple Hope or King Like, and she’d kept the filly, who was worth more money. It had been an impossible choice. She loved them both. There’d been no contest over me or the house. As soon as Mom found another man with a barn to put her horses in, we headed out. And me? Daddy already had a new woman with a ready-made family to slot right into the space we’d just vacated. But the horses? They fought bitterly over the horses, both crystal clear about where their priorities lay.

I can’t remember the name of that colt of Bo’s that we took with us, but he set the tone with the Wyoming husband immediately. It happened the day we arrived when they went to unload the horses at their new barn. Mom’s horses never responded well to manhandling, and when the jerk tried to force the colt to do something, it went wrong in a hurry. Mr. Wyoming wore a scar on his face for the rest of his days.

Texans weren’t very popular in Wyoming. I can recall my first day in the fourth-grade classroom of my new elementary school. The building was old with dusty wooden floors that creaked and radiators that hissed. It smelled of damp, and I was cold. I didn’t yet have the right clothes for the frigid playground. The second semester was already underway, and since I had been having some difficulty in school back in Houston, it seemed like changing schools would be a good thing. Then I sat down in that cold classroom in Cheyenne. During the Wyoming History section the day I arrived, there was a lesson about Wyoming’s cattle boom, I think, because the topic somehow turned to Texas, where for twenty or thirty years immediately following the Civil War, Texas had a surplus of cattle, and men being men, always on the lookout for a way to make a buck, started moving massive herds north. When the “cattle bubble” burst, the cattle ranchers got nasty and started attacking sheep camps. Don’t quote me, but I think this is what was known as the Range Wars. So, as the teacher, a shriveled up old prune of a thing with cat-eye glasses and grey smoker’s teeth and skin and a phlemy cough, glared at me, she said, “We know someone from Texas, don’t we, boys and girls?” All thirty of those children turned in their seats to glare with the same contempt on their faces that their teacher wore. So, right off I didn’t feel welcome in Wyoming.

Our short lived home in Wyoming, though, was sublime. The sky and the land were so big, so open, so blue. The not-nice husband had 1500 acres with a house and barns set way back off the highway. A railroad ran through it, and I was scared when he and Mom went out at night. I’d bring the big dogs in from outside to keep me and Superdog company, and I imagined hobos jumping off the train and coming to slit my throat.

We must have barely missed the ban on Texas equines moving across borders. We’d never have gotten them through Colorado, but we had no trouble bringing them back to Texas.

*initially published in TellUsAStory 2/13/20

Kimberly Parish Davis is the director and founder of Madville

Publishing. She sometimes teaches English Composition, Creative Writing, and Technical writing. She spent five years on the editorial staff of Texas Review Press. She has a new short story collection forthcoming with Cornerstone Press, fall 2025. The title is Trust Issues. Find her on the web at kpdavis.com.