Horse Whispering (Coz)

Dear Coz,

° I was toddling down the lane the other evening on the way to nowhere when I found that the drastically shortened day (pace Jean Giono) was aiming the full force of the setting Sun into my eyes. So, unmanlike, I turned and went the other way.

° Was this a Susyn Reeve (like) leading?

° We shall see.

° Due East, under the trestle where the warmth radiating from the southfacing concrete pier was very pleasant, out past the dried and unharvested maize fields, over the creek--and there on the sandbar, aka the regional recycling center, there was a whole hotel lobby of sofas, so inviting, with the mosquitoes and all; and a man making a bonfire of--no, in fact he was unmaking one, he was rescuing useable lumber from somebody else's refuse. Well, past the creek, and I was just trying to espy the solitary roadside plant of bearsfoot, to see if it was still in bloom and maybe I'd collect a seed or two, when there he was.

° Mr. Ed.

° No, but it was a highblooded, butchmaned chestnut stallion grazing placidly on the verge of the highway. Not a heavily travelled highway, but still--in a collision he was sure to be bruised.

° Giac to the ready.

° I detoured to the farmhouse and knocked. No answer. No lights. No chattering tv.

° I hallooed to the barn half a mile away. No answer.

° Well, there was an answer, half a pack of foxhounds came running as if I were the Purina Chow Boy.

° So, consequently, Giac retreating to the ready.

° I recrossed the highway, waved smilingly at a passing car--they were outlanders, and thought it all very picturesque--and drew nigh to Signor Cavallo. I mean to say, I stopped as soon as he lifted his head from the grass and glared at me, about 15 feet away, I reckon.

° "Shouldn't you go back to your field," I asked without a question mark, like some Witch from Dune. ((Scene 130 in link)) (Star Wars borrowed the conceit, don't know the ursource, one of the Oz books most likely.)

° The Horse shook his head, snuffled, then crossed the highway into the front yard of the farmhouse, where he commenced to crop the recently mown lawn.

° I followed to the steep bank above the yard. I looked at him. Have I got to do it all, I said to myself.

° Well of course.

° So down I scuffled, drat that bad knee. Same drawing nigh, till again he stopped browsing, lifted his head, glared at me.

° "I bet you remember where you got out," I said urgingly, for I myself couldn't see a single gate ajar, indeed I didn't even know which pasture he'd come from.

° Shake, snuffle; then he trotted, then galloped past the house, past the machinery shed, and jumped over a hurdle in the fence I hadn't even spotted. And lo, he was back where he belonged, and grazing and glaring at me all at the same time.

° I resumed my walk, five minutes deducted.

§

° Well it was a miracle, wasn't it?

° It was a miracle, because when I innocently recounted the story to Nathan, he was impressed, he wanted to study coffee scum right then and there.

° All Giac's tarotiness, attested by the Strayed Horse, Il Cavallo Traviato, just add him to your own antique deck.

§§§§§

° Well you, goatherd as you sometime were, are just chortling.

° For you know I left out of the story the one detail that kills the Magick.

° For, of course, each time after I spoke to The Horse, I took one meaningful step forward. And that was the entire trick, the entire whispering, the entire miracle of Man-Horse sympathy.

° I knew it would work, I knew what he wanted and what he did not want.

° Yet you'd be surprised how many folks who've never set foot in a town bigger than Kosciusko never learn the trick, they can't even whisper a nursing calf back to its mother.

° Your cousin, Giac.