Behind the house on White Lake Drive, there was a dilapidated shed.
More than a shed, really.
We kept an occasional horse there for the winter, on loan from a local riding camp. Did we get paid for keeping the horses? I’m thinking we must have been . . . we had no money, so taking on a horse for the winter would have been pretty stupid. But we never seemed to have enough money to take care of the horse, so maybe we were just that stupid.
My mom was always filled with promises of how we would get to ride the horse during the time it stayed with us.
That happened a few times, but then winter would arrive and change everything.
When the horse was first delivered, we were overjoyed. This magnificent gorgeous powerful animal was ours! We couldn’t believe our luck.
My brothers and sister and I would visit the horse daily, hourly even.
We would pet the horse and feel the velvet of its nose.
We would ride the horse around the property, leaning forward to wrap our fingers in the horse’s mane.
We would brush the horse and smooth our hands over the horse and whisper words of love to the horse. We would bring the horse treats and special extra handfuls of hay. We would clean the horse’s water pail. We would sweep the floor and change its bedding.
We would make little nicking sounds with our tongues against the roofs of our mouths to get the horse’s attention.
“It loves me best!”
Then winter would arrive.
Harsh frigid snowy winter.
The windows of the shed were open rectangles.
The door was a flimsy wooden ill-fitting thing.
The roof was incomplete.
Inside the house, things were not much better.
We focused on survival.
The horse was an afterthought.
I remember carrying heavy slices of hay cut from the bale. I remember trudging through the waist-deep snow out to the shed. I remember the air, so cold it hurt to breathe. I remember the agony of carrying buckets of water . . . hampered by the drifts of snow, hampered by my winter clothing, hampered by the sheer weight of the water.
But mostly, I remember the guilt.
The helplessness.
The sad lonely eyes of the horse.
The low whinnies of greeting, the dipped head.
The posture of surrender.
The rough matted coat.
The duller thinner sheen that had replaced the rounded glow of health.
The steam that rose as the horse breathed.
The tiny beads of ice that clung to its eyelids.
It was too cold to take my mittens off, so I smoothed the horse’s cheek with my covered hand as it ate. Brushed its nose. Straightened its mane into a semblance of neatness.
The cold stung my eyes and made them water.
I stomped my feet and the horse did the same.
We stared at one another.
There was nothing to be done.
Nothing to do but survive.
I turned my back on the horse and left the shed.
Shut the door that kept nothing out.
I walked away.
If I was lucky, the sound of the wind covered the plaintive questioning sounds of the horse as I departed.
Mostly, it did not.
I walked away.
Eventually, the winter would end. Spring would arrive, but the horse was now too thin and too angry and too mean to be ridden. It hated us now, and there was no way for us to make things right.
So the horse would sit lonely and untended until it was time to go back to summer camp.
Leaving an empty dilapidated shed behind our house.
I used to spend a lot of time in that shed.
Pretending that it was my house.
I would sweep and hang little curtains I had fashioned from scraps of cloth. I would pick flowers and arrange them artfully in little glass jars. With the help of my brother, I rolled a few logs into the shed and called them chairs and a table. I drew pictures and impaled my artwork on the nails that decorated the walls.
I spent a lot of time in that shed where the horse had spent the winter.
Behind the door that kept nothing out.
Nothing to do but survive.
Surrender and survive.
