Mare
It wasn't the government's fault, as far as anyone ever found out. A
lot of the weird trouble really might have been the old quilt lady at
the county fair. My dad got a mare that year. That quilt lady was
weird and nosey about everything. The times were different, but the
people were the same. People say they just always basically are. I
don't know how true that really is. All of human history is only a
few hundred generations of us. Times were hard for my family, but
they were weird times for everyone. A bunch of stuff happened. The
whole world was like that. For my family, a lot of it went back to
that fine white lady of a horse.
The times were hard really. Just hard times for everyone. People who
weren't loyal were like rats swimming away from splintered sinking
timbers. The people who couldn't get enough done to keep treading
water were all getting hooked on meth. Some people say that in hard
enough times, the only business that does very well at all is alcohol.
My dad said they say this because meth isn't regulated.
Hard times come and hard times go. My dad was of the opinion that
times like that can make a man strong. He said it was weak men who
make times hard, and hard times that make men strong. I never said it
to him, but I really always felt like ok times probably just make ok
men. Maybe I'm wrong.
This story all went back to that horse we got that weirdest of years
at the county fair. My dad was basically trying to seem real
upstanding like he didn't do anything wrong, especially because really
he didn't. Whatever people thought and said to each other, everyone
in my family knew the truth. People were seeing my dad for who he
really was. My dad was a real hard worker and, also, and not
adverbially, a real good man. My dad said God always knows best. He
must have accidentally imprinted a hell of a God complex on me about
himself. I never saw him fail to live up to it.
It was pretty weird for us to be on display like that whether it was
really the NSA or just the old quilt lady at the county fair. Like my
family was an attraction for people to come see at the fair. Just
like they sell cotton candy. My dad joked that he should have just
set up a meth stand and been done with it. Anyways, we got that mare
there. She was such a nice horse.
---
Somehow the mare got out and ran off. My dad took it in stride. He
always had this certain attitude about everything. He was always just
gonna see how this plays out. The mare ran off and he was just my dad
about it. Maybe she's gonna come back, maybe not. Maybe it's a bad
thing, or maybe that mare was too much trouble anyway. Who knows
what's really good or bad? The mare ran off and my dad was a man who
knew better than to be upset about it. He paid a lot of money for
that horse, too. He didn't even slow down to worry about it though.
That was just how my dad was.
Everyone told me a story so long through my life that I think I
remember a very early memory. I'm not really sure how our most vivid
memories work. Everyone told me the same story my entire life, so I'm
pretty sure I remember it. My mom was always a mystery to me. There
were some big, unanswered, sensitive questions. I guess she ran off
when I was just a little toddler. Everyone told me about a few
details for my entire life. It was probably true, and that's what
people told me, so I'm sure I remember it. It was always just
something that was normal to me. It's weird to explain to anyone I
guess, but it's normal to me.
The woman who was my mom to me was an immigrant lady named Svetlana.
She was really a beautiful, kind, good woman. She's who raised me as
my mom basically. My dad always had this certain attitude that left
people like that stupid quilt lady wondering how he really felt about
my real mom. Or what he did to her. Times got harder and harder, and
it was hard to get everything done. My dad was a natural about the
meth. He got a lot done and it wasn't that much of a problem somehow,
like everyone lies and says it is. It wasn't as much of a problem as
the reputation for it. Svetlana always followed my dad's lead. Never
anything to worry about unless you just want to waste time worrying.
My dad eventually got in a lot of trouble about the meth, but it was
just the same as everything else. Time to stop that and move on. He
moved on perfectly from it. Time to be the guy who was coming back
from the meth problem, even though honestly it wasn't ever even a
problem like the reputation for it goes. It wasn't a problem unless
you wasted time letting something be enough of a problem to worry
about it. So then he was the guy for a while who was a success story
just for quitting meth. Wow. What a story.
One kid at school never let me live anything down. He never let a
button go unpushed. He wasn't really a bully. He wasn't able to be.
He was just extremely annoying. After people were trying to decide
who they mistakenly believed my dad was, he pulled out any last stop.
It wasn't my dad who taught me the mechanics of throwing a good punch.
It was Svetlana. I don't feel it's appropriate to describe to you
here. I hit that kid hard enough to dislocate and cause a hairline
fracture in his jaw. Somehow because of everything going on with my
dad, I didn't even get in trouble. That kid's family moved away in
shame. I was just left wondering how much of it all was all that
kid's fault for being so annoying that he got his jaw broken.
This extremely weird girl at school really liked me after that. She
started always wrapping herself in a quilt like it was a robe and
giggling like she had something to tell me. I never even bothered to
ask. It seemed like she just got dumber every time I saw her in her
quilt toga on ecstasy playing tuba in front of the supermarket. The
rumors were that the gym teacher who mysteriously vanished had made
inappropriate advances towards her. I knew she must have been an
amazing person deep down inside to carry all of that so well.
What's really weird though, and made me wonder how much it all went
back to that mare, was that mare came back right on cue. I wonder how
the world really works sometimes. She had the most handsome jet black
stallion with her with jet black eyes. My dad said it was how things
go. Good thing we got that mare, and it was a good thing she ran
away.
---
That stallion turned out to be an extremely smart horse. It was a
smart horse but it was smart in weird ways. Not exactly mean. This
horse acted like it had read the Art of War or something. My dad
wondered if it was someone's horse, but no one came for it. I
wondered if it was that annoying kid's family's horse. That lady who
sold the quilts at the county fair kept nosing around. She didn't say
anything about either of the horses, but she clearly had some interest
in them. We would sometimes catch her parked in her truck in
sunglasses like a bad disguise and she would drive away without
chalance or any excuse my dad never would have asked for anyway.
My dad had been so sure it ended up a good thing that the mare had
come back with the stallion. That quilt lady was really snooping
around about it, but no one said they wanted their horse back. You
would have thought someone would want a horse like that back. It was
a broken horse but it was really smart, and it was truly weird how it
seemed like it was on some kind of mission or something. Mostly the
things it did were more just funny than malicious.
After the mare got out, my dad did try to keep her in better. Once
she was in by the fence and there was no way to explain it, but the
stallion was just outside the fence. It didn't want to go anywhere.
There was no obvious way that it had gotten outside of the fence. The
stallion was smart enough to open the gate and also to close it behind
himself. He had a sense of humor, and he played dumb.
Later he was out of the fence in the same spot, but the mare was out
again too. She was way down the road, just calmly walking away. The
quilt lady was parked in her truck right across the road from the
stallion. She was just sitting in her truck in her sunglasses looking
at the stallion and he was looking back at her. This horse probably
had an IQ about like a stupid quilt lady. I ran to find my dad, then
I went back to try to get them both back inside.
The quilt lady was gone. The stallion was still just standing there.
I ran up. It was stupid of me, but I just jumped up to ride the
stallion bareback after the mare. The stallion had his stance like he
was telling me to do it. This horse was smart, and he was just kind
of evil. It was like I wasn't sure what I was doing until I was doing
it, because of how he was standing there. I wasn't sure what to do
next. I pulled on his mane kind of, and he leapt up. He didn't go
after the mare. He started prancing around and I could only stay on
for a little bit, and he threw me off.
It was a bad fall. My leg ended up being broken in three places. I
never walked right again after what that stallion did to me. I see
the humor in it but I don't want to hear about it from anyone. It
wasn't a joke to me really. That horse was smart, he had a sense of
humor, and he was somehow just a real evil horse.
My dad was right there; the stallion was still prancing. My leg was
broken bad and the horse could have trampled me. My dad punched that
horse in the face. I thought hard enough to almost break his horse
jaw. The horse was actually stunned. Then he shook his head a bit,
then took off after the mare.
My dad probably saved my life from that stallion. He said maybe it
was a bad thing we ever got that mare. A surprising number of people
in the world lead these perfect lives on meth as long as the horse
doesn't turn on them for some reason and fuck them to death.
---
Times were just getting harder and harder. War was on the horizon or
closer at every point on the globe. It finally broke out for real.
Nobody was shocked when it happened. When times get harder and harder
some of the men get stronger and stronger, but the dumbest man is
always the loudest. On every side that man stood up proud and tall
above the flock to call on the strong men to do what strong men do.
Times were hard for everyone, and it was time to take it out of
everyone else's ass.
This was the attitude globally. The pieces of the pie got smaller and
smaller to the last fight over the crumbs, the last man standing, the
strongest, gets the last crumb. Times were hard, there were only
crumbs to go around. All human conflict at the bottom, at the end, is
over the one same resource that all conflict is every about. All
human conflict from a simple disagreement to a global war is over the
resource of people. The human beings not liking what the other human
beings are doing. Or maybe like some people say, it's always just a
small disagreement between two princes. Pumpkin or pecan. A global
military conflict.
The army started coming around to scoop us up and send us off. All
that anyone could ever say about it was how proud they were of each
other. In times of war there is never much room for objection. That
nosey old lady with the quilts, in her sunglasses, parked nearby. I
almost expected her to have a parabolic microphone. What was she so
interested in? My dad never did anything about her. He always let
things go how they were going to go. Going against the flow can only
ever wear a man down. A man gets strong if the way ahead is hard.
Fighting against the current can never truly build a man up in any
good way forward.
The army showed up to see about me. I was still walking with
crutches. I walked with those crutches for a couple of years. The
army decided I was not worth conscripting, and they left again. My
dad said it was a really good thing we got that mare, it was a good
thing she ran off and came back with that stallion, and it all ended
up being a good thing that stallion almost killed me. It all worked
out in the end. Eventually I didn't die in the war and married that
weird tuba girl.
I was out that evening giving hay to the horses. Did I forget to tell
you they came back? That stallion could open the gate and let them
both come and go whenever he wanted. He never did it when anyone was
looking. That mare was so dumb she would have foundered if that
stallion wasn't keeping an eye on her. She was a good horse, though.
A real fine mare.
I was out stumbling around on my crutches trying to tend to the
horses, and that old lady was parked in her truck across the road in
her sunglasses in the setting sun. Like a devil in myself I let
inside on a cold winter's night. She had a smirk of a smile on her
face. Just watching it all work out for the best all around me.