Walking on Foot with a Young Horse

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The rope halter has four knots and the tequila has four limes and the sun has four hours left in the sky. I catch the young horse and tell the old horse not today my friend– his back is a mountain range collapsing into itself, his ribs speak the language of years, his eye socket weeps dryly for the eye that left it behind, his knees are clenched fists, his heart a tired old shoe– not just yet- not today my friend.

I catch the young horse. Four limes and tequila in my left hand. The cotton lead in my right. Behind the split cedar corral the desert waits. Sunflowers so bright they burn the landscape. Sunflowers so bright there can be no other yellow in the whole world. The young horse beside me is a kite on a string. The young horse beside me is a thousand birds rising up. The young horse beside me is beautiful and I tell him so.

We walk the road. To the west lengths of barbed wire loose as old telephone lines strung from post to post, to the west indigo mountains and the end of the day, to the west are places to run-run-run. To the east more roads, to the east the plains that drop away-away-away, to the east are places to starve to death. I sip the tequila and the young horse drinks the air. We walk the road. Pale lizards start and vanish like thoughts I’ve had once and will never have again.

We walk the road. Black beetles stop and bow to the earth as if every direction were Mecca. We walk the road. Past discarded garbage bags filled with the gutted remains of a poached deer. The horns rising from the dark plastic like boney white phantoms. The smell rising in the heat like regret. We walk the road. Past black cattle with white faces as skulls stripped of their hides. The young horse calls a challenge to the cattle with their skull faces. As with all good spirits, they ignore us and graze on.

I drink tequila and the young horse drinks the air. On the road we encounter an easy chair. Blue leather and brass tacks. Slouched to one side, probably like the old man it had once held. I sip my tequila and the young horse drinks the air. I am touched by the humanity of it. I am touched by its desertion. I want a cigarette. I want to sit in the blue leather easy chair. I don’t. The young horse calls a challenge to the old blue chair in the road. As with all good spirits the chair ignores us and slouches on.

Once I caught a rattlesnake with a laundry basket. Once I gathered a black widow with my bare hands. I returned them to this desert. I sip the tequila and the young horse drinks the air. The sunflowers burn with all the yellow in the whole world. I have never tried to kill anything other than myself. Does that count for anything? What counts as deliverance in this life? Is it four knots in a rope on a young horse? Four limes in a mug of tequila? Four hours of sun left in the western sky? Or one old horse, like the old blue leather easy chair, waiting for me… waiting for me and his final today?

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