Horse scent
When nothing else subsists from the past, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered— the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, bearing resiliently, on tiny and almost impalpable drops of their essence, the immense edifice of memory ~Marcel Proust
Yesterday afternoon.
I am grooming Tobias. Running the currycomb over his flat withers, back, croup. The black horse dozes, so relaxed, I could drape him around me like a sun-drenched coat of cashmere. His bottom lip droops, hangs like a shallow coffee cup from a hook, making him look goofy and vulnerable and all the more endearing. I lay a hand on his neck while he snores slightly, stick my nose into the dark recesses of his coarse, unruly mane, and breathe him in. Hay. Moon. Sawdust. Sunshine.
1975.
I am standing in the aisle of our old barn. The one my dad keeps freshly painted with a coat of red every other spring. Tic-tac-toe patterns of sunlight are strewn across the stone floor. It’s hard beneath my feet. At 14, I spend nearly every waking moment here. Buck whickers a greeting over his stall door, the top of which is riddled with toothmarks. Still cribbing? I ask the quarter horse, happy to see him. His lustrous copper coat is redolent with cedar. I rub his forehead, while our butter-colored cat swirls around my ankles on tiptoe, hooking my calf like a tasty fish with the tip of his tail.
1995.
Horses can smell fear.
But the beautiful Andalusian seems to know that my fear is not related to her, but someone else. I spend every evening in her small corral, not going in the house until I have to. I still can’t believe the horse is mine, or that the thug I’ve been married to for five years—the one who pushes me, shoves me, tells me I’m ugly, says I’m nothing, nothing without him except just stupid, threatens me within an inch of my life, and finally hits me, more than one time— bought the exquisite mare for me.
Maybe it’s guilt. I don’t know.
But I do know one thing. Giving me Caprichosa is one of the less intelligent things he's done in his life.
1975.
In the August heat, the hot hayloft air is thick with the smell of sweet grass, molasses, black walnut hulls, dust. In the corner behind a stack of burlap bags my sister and I find a stall plaque with “Fiddlesticks—1942” painted on it in faded cursive letters. We hang it on the red barn wall. We are certain he was a trotter.
My dad and I are leaning against Buck’s stall door, admiring the handsome gelding. I still can’t believe the sorrel quarter horse is mine. My parents somehow raked up the money to buy him. My dad is feeding Buck the rock-hard, sugary Christmas candy he saves for him every year, because he’s not much of a horse guy, he says, and is just trying to make friends. While Buck chomp chomps chomps his Christmas candy, the scent of peppermint and oats fills my nostrils, and my dad tells me I can do anything, be anything, I want to be. My whole life is ahead of me, he says.
I have everything to look forward to.
1995
The Andalusian mare exchanges breath with me. The equine equivalent of getting to know you. She smells of sun, clover, loamy earth, the Pojoaque creek, cerulean sky. Nostril to nostril, the white horse explains her essence to me.
And reminds me of mine.
Not soon enough, I have the audacity to leave the thug. I do not look back.
Yesterday afternoon.
I am grooming Tobias. I stand back to admire his jet black coat gleaming in the sun. For some reason, I still can’t believe the handsome horse is mine.
My Andalusian Caprichosa is waiting for us at the pasture gate when we return.
Flickr photos: ObedientMuse; ObedientMuse; ObedientMuse; ObedientMuse
