Apocalypse Horses
I used to visit the equestrian ring about a block from our house in College Park. A University of Maryland riding club had gotten permission to build their facility in an unused sector of the park. They didn't bring horses into the place often, so I had time to explore it on most afternoons. The builders made the fences white and the roofs green. They painted the obstacles for the horse agility training with the same color scheme, green blocks and white rails. They put up a lot of fencing, too, and that was also white. All of it grew a bit dingy within a few months.
Usually I played in the dirt of the main ring or in the stalls. Sometimes, I found wood chips or stacks of straw. I found a dime once, and later a nickel. I returned to the same spot for weeks, hoping for more fallen coins.
On a day when the women and men brought horses, I stood off to the side and leaned against the fence. Every now and then, riders took their horses through the agility training course. Most of the horses seemed good, not flawless, but resilient about the obstacles and hurdles.
I watched for half an hour or more, like a kid with nothing to do, and I was surprised to see two horses shy away from the hurdles, one after the other. The second of them refused the smallest cross-bar, basically a step-over hop. I guessed that making horses jump took training like when I taught cats or dogs at home. Cats were pretty hard to persuade, too. How the riders negotiated with their much larger animals, I had no idea.
Most of the dressing up in burgundy jackets and participating in this weird hobby fell into the realm of adulthood mysteries, a large category to my mind, so I didn't give it much thought. Adults hardly ever explained their habits. Eventually that afternoon, the riders started packing up to leave. This was, itself, a mystery. One man seemed to do most of it.
A young woman rode off to the side and watched her fellow riders. After a moment, she encouraged her mount to sidle up to me.
“Do you like horses?” she asked. She had blondish hair in what appeared to be a mop-top cut underneath her helmet.
"Yeah ... it pooped!" My voice rose in pitch. Her animal had relieved itself suddenly, with a great plopping sound and smell. And it had done so as automatically as a fish or a bird. It had given no thought to its rider or me or, indeed, anything at all before letting go.
"Yes, horses do that." Her voice grew slightly tired.
I couldn't get over how it just stood there and did its business.
"But it pooped!" I pointed in case she'd missed it.
"Yes."
I rested my chin on my hand, still propped against the fence, and thought about how I would handle this at home. "Can you train it to poop in the straw or something?"
"Uh," she hesitated. "Horses eat straw. So no."
The conversation went on for a while. I'm sure I served as an inadvertent advertisement for birth control to the girl. The ways in which horses were so different from other pets seemed unbelievable to me then. I could not buy a clue about the behaviors she was trying to describe. Also, she was telling me her animal was smart. But it wasn't smart enough not to step in its own poop.
She let me pet her horse on the nose. It shivered and gave a sort of laughing sound.
"Did I do something funny?" I glanced from the horse to the rider.
"That was a whinny." By this point in our conversation, she could meet me at my level of understanding. "She makes that noise sometimes."
Although we talked a while longer, the young woman found a way to excuse herself from the conversation. Maybe she got called away to help pack. In either case, since watching grown-ups walk their horses on leads, stack obstacle cones, drag blocks to the fence, and fix rails was only moderately interesting, I wandered off.
I returned a week later to watch another team of riders lead horses by the reins, talk to one another, walk around, tie their beasts to the posts, and start a training session. Not long after, I came back to the equine ring to watch part of an competition. This was a vastly different experience - more cars, more trucks, and more people. The contestants seemed entirely competent in a grown-up way, which I took for granted. There was a very old-looking man, probably nearly thirty, who performed perfectly with his mount as they leapt over the most difficult hurdles, every one of them, without a flaw.
I watched the training sessions and competitions for two years more. They got boring, in a comfortable way, and I stopped by to watch them less often, partly because the place was getting too popular with adults who asked questions or stood in my way, partly because for my eighth birthday I received a five-speed bicycle, a spyder with high, raised handlebars and a banana seat. As I found myself more mobile, I realized I had friends to visit, a bowling alley to lurk in, magazines to read for free at a newsstand, and more I could do on the roads beyond my neighborhood.
Upon returning from my bike trips, sometimes I slowed down to see the horse club.
One day as I rode out on my bike, the insecticide trucks swept through. They sprayed a heavy mist that smelled hot, like menthol but worse. It fell on the grass, the trees, the streams, and the pond - everywhere. It wasn't DDT, I realized, but it was something else the local park monitors had decided was good for us. Whatever it was, it made my lungs ache. I recognized it as an insecticide that had given me breathing problems before. I pedaled out of there.
When I returned, I sped through the smelling-awful zone and ignored the horse trailers. I kept going west until I hit University Boulevard. I turned down the wrong way on the shoulder of the road, and checked out the next set of houses to see if any kids would play.
The yards looked empty, so I headed back home. As I came to my house, though, I noticed whirling lights farther up ahead, east into the park.
"You're finally back," my mother said. I walked my bike inside our chain-link fence.
"There's no kids out," I complained. "I'm gonna make a sandwich. There are some ambulances and fire trucks near the horse ring. I'm gonna go see."
"No. Definitely not," my mother said. She held the door for me as we walked inside.
"But why?"
"There's nothing to see."
"That's okay." I turned the corner into the kitchen. I headed past my father, who was at the table reading, and pulled on the handle of the fridge with the idea of putting together ketchup and cheese on wonder bread. Maybe I could grab a pickle, too. "I'll stay to the side. I'll just look at the horses."
"No," my father insisted.
"The horses are dead," my mother told me. I turned to find her only a foot to my right. She had followed me all the way through the kitchen.
"Why?" For the moment, I put the ketchup back on the shelf. I closed the refrigerator.
"No one knows."
"All of the horses?" My feet took me in a circle around my mother in the kitchen. She had wanted to make sure I knew this.
"I think so."
"But ..." Finally, I stopped. I tried to think of how this was even possible.
"Didn't they spray something on the grass this morning?" she asked. The tone of her voice told me she already knew the answer.
"Yeah." It had been the menthol-hot stuff. I hadn't been able to ignore it.
My parents exchanged a meaningful look.
"Horses eat grass," commented my mother, arms folded.
"Yes," said my father.
"Do you think they nibbled on the sprayed grass?" she asked. The question, by her glance and raised eyebrows, was meant for me. I tried to think. I hadn't paid attention to the arriving horse trailers. I had no answer.
"All of them?" I wondered. I couldn't comprehend the totality of it.
"They must have," my father said.
It turned out my parents were right. According to our neighbors who had gone to see the what the ambulances were doing, and according to their kids as well, all the horses at the equine competition had died. Every single one. Why ambulances had come for the horses, I had no idea. Maybe no one at the equine competition, with their animals dying, knew what to do. Someone had simply driven to a payphone to dial for emergency help. And the ambulances came.
That was the end of the equine sports club. They never met in the park near my home again.
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