Hot blood and spirit
These beautiful arabian photos are by Kramerton.
She is selling off her entire herd of Arabian horses because she’s dying of cancer. Not too far to go now, she says. I wonder if she's talking about the distance to the barn or months to live.
Dennis and I slog along behind the woman wheeling her oxygen tank through the mud, concerned that she will melt away in the rain in her tired gray sweat suit and wash down the nearest arroyo. I try not to stare at her protruding stomach that’s bloated from the illness, her breasts sagging with gravity and the weight of each step forward, wet hair hanging in rivulets down her back. Have to fight the urge to ask her if she doesn't have a wheelchair or something or if she will at least let me and Dennis help her down the path.
“We don’t have to do this today,” Dennis says, grimacing up at the leaden sky and then back at me, but the woman waves her free hand at us and plods forward. I cast an anxious glance back at the house, wondering why her husband waited behind where it’s dry and warm instead of coming out to the corrals with her. Or for her, for that matter. In between gasps for breath, she tells us she has several colts she needs to sell as soon as possible. The four boisterous youngsters are already lined up against the fence, looking at us with bright-eyed curiosity.
I make a mental note—trouble.
“We’re looking for something a little more mature,” I tell her, thinking that a good first horse for my soon-to-be-husband should be at least eight years old. And probably, although I don’t say it, because, after all, here we are, not an Arabian. She dismisses the full-of-bullshit boys with a nod. The rest are mares, the woman is saying. We stop at the gate to find them standing in a huddle, a veritable hothouse of Bedouin female emotions, next to a big loafing shed. “These are the ones who’ve spent the last year running loose on 750 acres?” I ask her, looking at Dennis pointedly. It’s more of a statement than a question.
One of the mares raises her head, breaks from the herd while at the same time sending the rest of girls away amidst tail swishing and squealing, and sloshes right up to us through mud and manure. She examines Dennis and I for a moment, then pulls herself up to her full not-quite-15-hands to sniff Dennis over the fence. She has soft, liquid eyes like a doe, a teacup muzzle, and one crazy, crooked ear. He reaches up to touch it, and the horse doesn’t seem to mind. Much. A stallion grabbed that ear during a breeding, the woman offers, wheezing. The vet says we could get it fixed, she continues, it would be a purely cosmetic surgery.
I’m staring at the ear tip bent at a wacky 90-degree angle, not sure I buy that.
Dennis is rubbing the Arabian mare’s neck, his fingers intertwined in her inky black mane. This one’s had some professional western pleasure training, I hear the woman say, and she's extremely gentle and reasonable, for an Arabian. But I’m watching this guy I’m getting ready to marry here in just a few weeks, and suspect I know what he’s thinking.
I make a mental note—trouble.
He nods, half hearing the sales pitch, rubbing the crest of the mare’s neck, speaking to her softly. This is the man in my life who has never owned a horse before and tells me that he wants one who is alive and awake. With a lot of spirit. On the way to the ranch, he stops me mid sentence from explaining to him in my best expert’s tone why a solid, middle-aged ranch gelding would be a better choice for a beginning rider like him when he blurts, “I want something like you.” Then he smiles at me across my full-of-surprise silence, blue eyes twinkling. "Something full of life—like you." He touches my cheek. We’re bouncing along the rutted ranch road in his truck, trying to find the farm with all the Arabians for sale, and once I get over my surprise, I’m grinning. It’s one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever been paid. The woman’s reciting the litany—this mare's all Polish, has bloodlines going all the way back to …
I make the deal with her for $500 less than the asking price, which pisses off her husband who has just come out of the kitchen. Well goddamit, Mary, he snarls at her after we’ve given her the check and signed the papers. It’s due to the crooked ear, I say. We’re not going to be able to show her. The woman gives her husband a ferocious evil eye, worthy of a lady who's managed an Arabian breeding operation, which shuts him up. And she says she’s pleased to sell the mare to us. It’s a fair price because she knows we’ll take good care of her horse. Her voice breaks a little over the last few words. I want to gather her up in my arms and hug her close. Instead, Dennis and I promise that we will.
For a week thereafter, until Miss Morningstar is delivered, I lay awake in the wee hours of each morning thinking about that woman and wondering if she’s awake right now too, staring into the darkness, heart beating, trying to see her way past it. I know I would be.
I gaze out the window where a single bright star hangs on the horizon and wonder what in the hell I’ve done. I can’t believe I chose an Arabian … the words pound around and around in my head like the hot blood I’m pretty certain courses through that unknown creature’s veins … for Dennis’ first horse.
