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There Was a Horse Named Delay
Suzee Branch
I have to tell his story. I need to tell his story. I believe not only
that his remarkability deserves a telling, but that my heart must be
unwrapped, unshackled. It's taken almost exactly two and one half years
to face this harmless looking piece of paper with this everyday kind of
a pen. That’s not too bad, just about right don’t you think, all things
considered? But, here come the tears I have so diligently jailed yet
needed to liberate these many months. Now comes the luxury of collapse,
the locked door flung open so the pain can break out, rearing up to take
one good look at me before making its escape. It takes the time being
right to face it ..... cooperating with it as we stare one another down
to size. Well, we’re here so let’s go.....
.....
The horse was brought to me in a rented
trailer pulled by an old beat Dodge Ram driven by an authentic
desperado, his sidekick riding shotgun. They found him at an auction as
a “broke-to-halter” gelded two year old that had never been ridden. He
was named Delay and looking at him I knew he thought well of himself. He
was a spectacle standing in the sunlight, honestly shining like a newly
minted copper penny, a one half Arabian and one half quarter horse
youngster. I fell in love. It may have been then and there that our
interesting relationship took shape. I, the adorer and “himself” the
adored, aloof, royal, in charge and no chink in that armor of attitude,
no chink SHOWING I should say. I accepted my role with as much grace as
I could put together being rather on the spot. He let me ride him
bareback and that was all either one of us really wanted.
From then on, we pranced, danced and basically rode at a run everywhere
we went that was good for running. For the next twenty-seven years he
never once bucked, reared, kicked or bit which became the outstanding
cornerstone of my trust. He trusted me, too.
I
lived on one hundred and twenty acres, a chunk of undeveloped property
cut from a three thousand acre ranch in north east Washington. I had
just had my first baby two months earlier and her father, the desperado,
and I were digging a well, stripping pine bark from logs, cooking and
eating in an outdoor cooktent and all the rest of that “back to the
land” stuff. We had no roads into our place so when winter came Delay
agreed to pull us along with other things such as groceries, laundry,
Christmas trees, kerosene for the lamps, etc., on a long toboggan.
The snow was deep. We were so far north that our property was sitting
nearly on the very top of the Canadian borderline.
My
baby girl, Pollyanna, rode on my back when I rode on Delay to pick up
the mail from the box five miles away. I could set her on his smooth
bare back and he would pretend to have to put up with it. But I learned
to see right through him. This arrogant, no-nonsense animal took the
smallest of steps, pacing himself slow and treading so softly it was as
if he were walking on egg shells. When I wasn’t looking (I was spying)
he would sneak glances at my baby girl, checking her out, checking ON
her. But when he caught me looking, he would snort with disdain and
shake his fine head, acting sassy and bored with such
tomfoolery.
This horse jumped creeks, picnic tables, cattle guards, spun on a dime,
cut cows effortlessly, turned around them barrels like he was
supernatural and once put up with my urge to try goat tying at the fair.
We even signed on for a goat tying clinic! Bless his huge horse heart.
People started to notice my horse. One land baron fifth generation
rancher offered the strange notioned girl (that would be me) thousands
of dollars for her horse. Did I mention he went for one hundred and
twenty-five dollars at the auction?
When it became necessary to leave the
desperado (along with the now finished house), we went to live in a tipi
and Delay hauled our water. When we moved to a little house for winter
(equipped with yet one more outhouse for our wintertime enjoyment),
Delay was our “car” since we had none. It was only five miles to the
town comprised of ninety-nine folks where there was everything we
needed, Polly, me and Delay.
In
the summer we swam daily in the deep clear wide Kettle River. Everyone
would do well to experience the sensation of an athletic horse swimming
between your legs as you wrap your arms around their noble neck. And
this river was so clean and fresh and cold, you could drink right out of
it at the same time! Besides, we had friends on the other side to go
visit so I guess not only was he our car, he was our boat. Nights there
were, all lit with stars, Delay carrying me and Polly home at a
civilized lope, (he only did that for her), when a bear would waddle out
in front of us and Delay would snub him......more important business at
hand you see.
Now, one summer the local younger set of cowboys, sons of their genuine
dyed-in-the-wool rancher daddies, just couldn’t stand the fact that this
ex(well, maybe) flowerchild throwback in their midst had a fast
horse she rode everywhere bareback that supposedly no one else
could ride. The truth is that yes, they could ride him, just not for
very long. He simply loved to run. I’d warn 'em every time. They fell
off is all. I never could see how because he was so even and fine. It
must have been the speed that caught people off guard or the way he
stopped dead in his tracks or whirled his turns in one spot when you
asked with the reins. But then, me and Delay came to read each other’s
minds. I probably was guilty for taking it for granted that everyone
else would be sensitive to his calculated movements.
So,
what happened was this, the biggest flashiest cowboy guy made a brazen
challenge whilst imbibing at the saloon one night. He boasted that his
horse could beat Delay in a race at the airplane landing field outside
of town on the coming Sunday. I bet him a case of beer he couldn’t.
Sunday came. Fathers, sons, and a whole bunch of other folks lined up
along each side of the grassy air strip. Delay won, of course. The
cowboy was on a huge muscled quarter horse....didn’t matter. We beat him
bad. Huffing and puffing with indignation, the dad demanded another
race. He claimed his son hadn’t heard the “GO”. ( Was his Stetson too
big?) Waaaaahhh. So Delay and myself, loving nothing better than having
ourselves another full tilt run, went again, whipping the cowboy on his
Charles Atlas quarter horse worse than before. This meant that not one,
but two cases of brew made their way to me and all those people rooting
for Delay. We even shared with the cowboy set.
That next year, we moved to Spokane so I could acquire a trade and have
an indoor toilet. I would be hard put to say which loomed larger in my
prioritizing! So far, I’d been a postmistress, a cocktail waitress, a
meat wrapper in a butcher shop, a dairy queen server, an ex-college
student about eight times or so, a beauty parlor cleaning lady, a ranch
hand during hay season, a sales girl at a shoe store, a normal ol'
organic food restaurant waitress and a groupie. (I’m pretty sure that
last one qualifies as a real job......) BUT, now I had my beautiful
child and so I went to college yet one more time, this time with a
vengeance to become a registered nurse.
Delay moved to town. I found a place in an unzoned neighborhood where he
could be fenced in between houses. Once I rode him over a swarming,
seething- with- traffic interstate bridge to put him on some good
pasture I rented across town. He rolled his eyes at me that day. It was
like he was saying with exasperation, “Oh good grief, Suzee, what NOW?”
He gingerly pranced down the exact middle of the bridge while a cop made
cars wait on either end. Swinging his head back and forth constantly and
peering down he watched those speeding cars zoom under him on the left
and whiz out on the right. He forgave me. He ALWAYS forgave me. See,
that’s the thing......
Then we moved to Wisconsin where I had told him about the green grass
that grows thick and tall as a horse’s belly and how it rained when it
should, no irrigation needed for horse pastures! I was pretty sure he
didn’t believe me, being a western horse and all. So we moved and he
grew incredibly sleek and toned from training him to race at the county
fair. Delay could fly. And pretty soon he was the talk of the town
again.
Polly got a pony and then graduated to a horse so she and I could ride
in the annual week long wagon train ride that covered about seventy
miles. It was during one of those summer excursions that he almost
crossed his chosen line of strict independence. In the still of the
night before I crawled into my sleeping bag near the wagon where he was
tethered, he lay down and let me stroke his face and neck. That was to
happen just one more time in his life of twenty-nine years. But that
night there by the wagon he suddenly seemed to realize what he was
admitting to and stood up, giving himself a good shake as if to shake
off the moment of weakness. We had a good life in those lush rolling
pastures of the Midwest that surely loom legendary in horsedreams.
Our next home was Bozeman, Montana. I neglected mentioning my
wonderhorse’s one large problem. He pretty much flat out would NOT load.
Oh, he’d eventually condescend to end up inside the trailer or the back
of a pickup, but usually it took hours. We both dreaded it.....hmmmm, it
just occurred to me as I write that perhaps he didn’t dread it at all.
Perhaps he enjoyed being a reluctant loader, even looked forward to
it...I wouldn’t put it past him. And to show you the intensity of the
stand he took (no pun intended, I promise), I was contacted by the
famous Buck Brananhan himself who needed the worst possible loading
horse in Southwestern Montana! He aimed to use the horse in a
demonstration at a clinic for “problem loaders”. Within fifteen minutes
Buck had Delay loading like a perfectly trained Ringling Brothers circus
horse....an old pro don'cha know.....unbelievable. And from that day
forth my horse loaded like it was his new favorite pastime.
We shared so many Rocky Mountain adventures. I met a man as noble yet
less resistant to my affection than was my horse so I
married him. We got ourselves a pack horse and roamed hundreds of miles
through the high country over the next thirteen years. We even spent a
year living in Arizona and explored that foreign terrain with it’s lunar
type canyons and sometimes unfriendly looking vegetation. It had its
good points, though. I believe everywhere does.
Delay took care of me and continued to put up
with me. Once I braided his long flowing mane with hundreds of sweetpea
flowers so that we could show off in a festival parade. He rather
overacted, more studly than ever (the old ranchers always told me he was
“cut proud”) which I reckoned he needed to do to compensate for the
flowers hanging all over him! He danced up a storm and pranced so high I
heard the oooooohs and aaaaaahhhhhs. And SO did he, don’t think for a
second he wasn’t milking the crowd.
I asked him to do some reckless things over the years.....I just knew he
could do them was all. Once he got us not only up a hunk of ice snow
field looking like a small glacier, but when other people would have
gotten off to thread their way back down, I stayed on him. I trusted him
much more than myself. He had a job and it was me and he deserved more
than I could ever give back to him even if he’d let me. The best thing I
found to do was honor his act, his air of independence, pride and
nonchalance......to pretend I never knew he was pretending. Its just the
horse he was.
The last time we rode to go Christmas caroling with the local horse
people in the neighborhood, Delay almost blew his cover when instead of
sighing, stretching his head high in the air, and turning his face away
from the bells I made him wear, he forgot and agreeably bowed his tall
head down to make it easier for me to put them on. That was a first.
Not long after that, we decided to try a move back to Wisconsin. I
reminded Delay of the grass and immediately felt awful since his teeth
were now mostly gone so that the grass fell out of his mouth in wads
onto the ground when he grazed. But he did seem to enjoy chewing on it.
It probably still tasted good. We discovered Senior Equine to be a
miracle feed for the “older horse”!
After we found a farm to rent in Wisconsin, Delay and I were soon flying
once more across high green hills, through groves of maples and oaks
under lilac skies unique to Midwestern twilight time.
Then, one day when I drove the forty miles to the only feed store that
sold the Senior Equine, they were closed, so I picked up another similar
mix by a reputable brand at a feed store near home. My husband was away
on business and I was uneasy since he had been adamant about only
feeding Delay the Senior Equine. I thought I would just use up the one
bag and then get the right stuff the next time. I could tell he didn’t
like it as well even though I consoled myself by the fact that it had
all the same basic ingredients.
It
was autumn and I told Delay I was going to the woods to sit in the peace
to soak up the smells and colors. I didn’t try to pet him, of course. We
made that deal twenty-seven years prior. When I came out of the woods a
couple of hours later he was sick. It wasn’t colic. He even pooped when
I started walking him, but he was drooling cups of saliva and felt
awful. The vet came. He gave him a shot for pain and a treatment to
help. He couldn’t tell me what was wrong. He left me with another shot
to use if we needed it and said by morning he would be better or not. He
left.
It
started to rain and turn to dusk. I watched him lie down and stand up
over and over until enough time went by to give him the other shot. It
was dark by then. And he wasn’t trying to stand up anymore. So I went
and sat next to his head and he let me put his head in my lap in the
soft falling rain. It wasn’t cold. I begged him to forgive me for not
getting the right food. I was so afraid it was all my fault. And I told
him again and again and again how sorry I was he felt so awful. Then he
picked up his head and looked straight in my eyes and gave a low groan.
He turned away from me and imparted that it was time I left. He meant I
HAD to leave because he had work to do. I knew. He was busy dying. So I
stood up and told him I loved him, that I understood. I turned and
walked away. I didn’t look back.
I found him at first light in a nest of long grass where he chose to
die. I screamed and cried and wailed for a time and then wrapped my
memory with many layers to protect it and myself until now.
It
was my daughter Polly who finally gave me the gift of peace I so sorely
needed. When I told her how guilty I felt about the food, she said, “Oh
mom, maybe it wasn’t the food and EVEN IF IT WAS, DELAY HAS ALREADY
FORGIVEN YOU”. And I suddenly knew she spoke the pure hallowed truth
that set me free. Of course he forgave me. He always forgave me. See,
that’s the thing........
Suzee lives near Bozeman in Manhattan, Montana where she continues
to write fiction, act in community theater, owns a Fedex Ground territory with her horsy husband, and plays with her 8 year old
bay mare, Tinkerbell, or Tink or Tinker or sometimes Stinker. Suzee claims
with a knowing smile that Tinker mends her. Tinker will never be Delay, but at least she took some early lessons from Mr.
Delay that will help her to help Suzee remember how important THEY (Miss
T. Bell and Suzee) are together, a partnership and a special team of
two.
Contact Suzee
Branch.
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