As I brushed my teeth I considered again the horse’s nasty wound. My thinking covered the same terrain. An intentional shot from a deadly weapon? An errant bullet of someone shooting at a ground squirrel on a fence post? Neither thought was comforting. The rain let up a bit. I sat up in bed and opened the novel I’d been trying to 25 plow through, reading having become my new attempt at dealing with the repetitive, empty nights.
The following morning the rain had eased up only slightly. A shift in the wind brought colder air and the effect was basically miserable. I was in my boots and jacket waiting at the back door when Laura rolled up and stopped near the foaling shed. I stepped out into the yard and met her at the back of her truck, where she pulled open a cabinet and grabbed a vial and a couple of syringes.
I looked at the sky, at the expanse of gray. Very far to the west there was a bit of bright blue. So, we’re going through with this, I said.
She regarded the rain and sky as well. I’m here anyway.
That you are.
She followed me through the shed and to the barn, where the gelding was still standing, in spite of my failure to come out in the middle of the night to check on him. While she prepared the shot I attached a lead rope to the halter, rubbed the horse’s nose, talked to him.
All right now, buddy, she said to the horse. This is going to make you pretty stupid, and then we’ll fix you up. She administered the injection. That should have him drooping in thirty or forty minutes. She looked at her watch and then at me. You got that coffee?
Some breakfast, too?
I never turn down a meal.
Oatmeal? I asked.
Wow.
Unless you’d prefer bacon and eggs.
I think I might, she said.
We walked back past Laura’s pickup truck and into the house. I used the bootjack to slip out of my Wellingtons. She sat on the bench seat in the mudroom to unlace her paddock boots.
You don’t have to take them off, I said.
Sure I do, she said.
Help yourself to some coffee, I said. Mugs are in that cabinet.
Thanks.
I dropped a skillet onto the stove and switched on the burner, then opened the refrigerator and grabbed the eggs and bacon. I laid the strips of bacon out in the pan. You like your bacon crispy?
You bet. She sat at the table.
I’ll try. I was used to the kitchen, to cooking, but I was wasn’t used to someone watching me and so I not only felt clumsy, I was clumsy. Each strip of bacon I put down into the pan I had to straighten out with the fork and my fingers.
I got left, too, Laura said.
What’s that?
My husband left me. At least I think he did. I’m never at home long enough to know.
Sorry.
He said I worked too much. Why’d your wife leave?
I was at once horrified and refreshed by the woman’s candor and apparent disregard for decorum. The oldest story, I said. Another man. Richer, better looking. I flipped the bacon.
She nodded. Sounds rough.
I suppose. But it’s better now, you know? She wasn’t happy. I wasn’t happy. Best to get happy.
That’s very Zen of you.
Strictly speaking and I love to speak strictly, there are no utterances in the world but only sentences, cut off from the actual world by their beginnings and their periods, question marks, or nothing but the fact that they end, cut off even from any real exchange between so-called speakers. Very Zen of me, indeed, in deed. Stay with me, son, there is no moral to this tale.
I laughed. I was pretty angry and broken up at first, for a while. But you get better.
Laura sipped her coffee. Funny.
What?
The two of us. Both of us left.
Yep, I said, not sure why it was funny but somehow understanding. I pulled the bacon from the pan and laid the strips on some folded paper towels.
Listen, she said.
I paused, just about to crack an egg.
It’s stopped raining.
I looked out the window and saw the sun was trying to break through. How about that.
Not bad.
How would you like your eggs? I asked.
Scrambled.
Pausing at this word, as you knew I would, must. A story Gricetold. To make some distinction between the standard utterance and its conversational implicatures is at best folly, at most malicious. I have looked through diaper after diaper for some standard utterance and all I have found is shit.
That’s easy enough. I cracked four brown eggs into the skillet and stirred them up.
I hope I haven’t made you uncomfortable.
You have, but I think it’s okay. I don’t need much help lately to feel uncomfortable. This kind of uncomfortable is probably a good thing. What do you think?
She nodded.
We ate without saying much else. She asked me about my horses and I asked her about her practice. We talked about the increasing amount of traffic and about how rarely we made the drive all the way into Los Angeles.
All this concern about the evenness of things, the weight cast forward or back, to this side or that, the flow, the wash, the balance. Alluvial patterns etched into the cheeks of old people, really old people. Now that’s an appetizing image, wouldn’t you say? Channels for what? I want to know. Tears? Traffic? Wisdom? The uncontrolled, incontinent plastic buckets of stale piss that I seem to have stored up in myself for the past seven decades; because no one apparently ever completely empties his bladder?
She looked at her watch. He ought to be feeling pretty silly by now.
Let’s do it.
This shouldn’t take long, but it won’t be pretty.
As we walked back across the yard I looked up at the broken clouds. We stopped at her truck and she collected her equipment. The sun was doing little to make the day warmer, but it was good to see the end of the rain. We found the horse with his head hanging low and his eyes glassy.
Oh, yeah, she said.
I held the lead rope, though I probably didn’t have to. She pulled a little battery-run razor from her pocket and shaved the hair away from the wound. She then washed his neck with a Betadine solution. She probed into the wound with a long forceps and came out empty.
It’s in there, but I can’t find it, she said. I’m going to have to cut him. She made a vertical incision across the bloody hole, and the horse neck spread open as if being unzipped. There was less blood than I expected, but his meat lay pink and exposed. She found the slug. There it is. What do you say? She held it up for me to see at the end of the forceps. A twenty-two?
I shrugged. I wouldn’t be able to tell.
Me neither, she said. She irrigated the gash, the stood back to look at it. She began to pack up.
Aren’t you going to sew him up? I asked.
No, let’s leave him open. Irrigate it the next couple of days with the Betadine, but not too much. Let it granulate over. It’ll be ugly for a while. But he will heal up right nice.
Healing up right nice would be a good thing, don’t you think, son? Or should I have you think that I think it so, your old man? Your old man posing as you in a voice that is at once yours and at once mine and at once neither? Your hands are my hands are my wands are your magic. And where is Meg Caro? Where is my daughter that I never knew I had?