Emilie Tallent attached to our stable, breathing in the smell of dust, wood, and leather. Dirt daubers glitter like sapphires, humming into the holes they have chewed through the walls. While I hold the lead rope for him, my father stoops over the U-shaped hoof, the soft black frog, of our oldest mare Lucy, demonstrating how to properly hold the pick, to pry out the stones and brush away the mud and manure. He hands the brave students a curry comb, teaches them to move slow and smooth, to always keep a hand on the warm, heaving body. The others line the walls, trading snide looks. They can tell they’ve failed my father’s test, and try to behave as if they don’t care. They murmur to each other like an overrun stream. “I hate horses. They stink.” “I shouldn’t have worn this jacket.” “If I didn’t need this credit . . .” “What can she do?” a girl says as my father cradles Lucy’s back hoof between his knees, running it over with a large iron file. “She’s a good teacher,” my father answers. I stand at Lucy’s head, holding her rope. I’ve listened to this girl talk since the day started, telling her friends she knows a thing or two about horses, that her grandparents own a ranch near the expensive part of the city. She shrugs at the students near her. “So she’s not good for anything. You know, my dad always told me when something stops earning its keep, it ought to be shot.” “Well, your dad’s a goddamn idiot.” And in the midst of demonstrating to a handful of students how to properly trim a hoof, my father’s voice thunders, the same voice he uses when Toby and I are in serious trouble. The stable stills. I can understand my father’s anger. Whenever something needs killing on the farm, he is the one to do it—he shot a dog we owned after it pulled a goose through the chicken yard fence. He wrings the necks of sick fowl, shoots downed cattle. Once, caught without his rifle, he beat an opossum to death with a walking stick. I have always wondered at the effect of each death, whether they chip away at my father’s heart that cares so much for growing things. I wonder—admire—how a man can continue to raise animals when the fine print of a farmer is a contracted executioner. At my father’s words, the girl quails, turning an ugly red. Quietly, her friends usher her to a corner where she can cry, throwing him dirty looks. He continues with the lesson as though nothing has happened, and Lucy’s golden eyes close in half-sleep, barely flinching even when someone drops a heavy lacquered brush to the floor, or touches her sensitive belly. I whisper to her near-blind eyes, her tooth-worn mouth, “Good girl, Lu. You’re a good girl.” It doesn’t occur to me that the coyotes might be running, not until the small herd of mousing-cats that guard the feed in the barn vanish,
Crab Orchard Review
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