Old Shoes
By Robin Eich
Revised Final Draft
Calabrese
March 28, 2012
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The sounds of the tractor were those of a slow death being brought upon an enraged sow.
The gears protested under the strain of tearing up the earth. Continuous, there was no escaping
the purpose of the tractor's task. Cubic in shape, the depth and radius equaled that of a VW bug.
With a heave, the engine was killed and Jamie jumped down and stopped to glare at me before
walking away favoring her left leg. The time had come and there were no more excuses. Three
simple words damned my soul, “Just do it.”
Justin, my long time friend and veterinarian stepped forward with the two tubes filled
with the fluid that would end each life quickly. It did not make a difference which of the three
lead ropes I chose, I hesitated though because these three horses mattered to me. Barely 21 years
old and I was playing God. Three short years ago I had been excited to lead trail rides and amuse
tourists visiting the local area. Except now I felt so old and brittle, frustrated that all my efforts
had been for nothing.
Between saddling aging crippled horses and the verbal abuse I took from Jamie, I had
come to hate this business. The animals where ridden hard, put away wet, fed the minimum
amount, and discarded with little thought. I am here today because I feel obligated to give these
horses an advocate.
Since managing the stables, I’ve been able to oversee the feeding and riding time each
horse has. By properly fitting tack to each horse, deciding who rides what horse, and caring for
each horse’s health individually, I have done my best with the resources afforded to me. Renting
out horses and pack mules by the hour and day has become a dying business. No one wants to
pay forty-five dollars to ride something that can’t be controlled by mechanics and gas.
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Each lead rope was connected to a something that mattered to me. An animal, a horse.
No, a friend with whom I had shared more with than most of my family and friends. Who was I
to decide when, and where they were to die?
Standing quietly next to me were three horses that I had come to know and love. Charlie,
who was standing closest to me, was ageless gelding in the fact that he had long ago lost his
teeth, who was more bone than muscle and fat. He had been given to the Tweed ranch over 20
years ago. Someone once told me he had been a champion show horse in another life, definitely
before coming to Tweed ranch. A gentle soul, Charlie was the color of the dust on black shoe's.
He stood braced against his long time companion Lucky, who was no longer a lucky horse. He
too had been a part of the ranch for well over 20 years. More grey than black now, he was a giant
appaloosa that had been injured a month ago in a trailering accident. He had fallen in an
overloaded stock trailer, traveling for miles with frightened horses trampling him, resulting in
him severing his right hind-leg's tendon and several broken ribs.
At the end of the line of the three stood a gelding that is a shadow of his former self. His
knees shook with the effort to stand on three legs, his coat was dull and covered in crusted mud.
He lifted his head when the engine was cut and turned to stare at me with the understanding of
why he was there glistening in his eyes. The sun was fading behind his black tipped ears, the
light outlining his square face. His salt and pepper mane was ragged from laying down too long
in his effort to relieve the pain of his broken leg.
His brown eye's told me all that he felt. Eye's that were brimming with sorrow, he looked
into me and I felt his loss. I could taste copper as he turned towards the light as an unknown
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horse whinnied in the distance. With a shake of his head he arched his neck one last time and
cried out with the injustice of his fate before slowly lowering his head to the ground resigned to
his ending.
One after another, a part of my heart was euthanized, chained, dragged, and then buried
in a shallow mass grave. With each final gasp, my throat burned hotter and cinched tighter. I held
the tears that pounded at the lids of my eyes, and watched as the tractor dumped its last load of
dirt upon the now buried horses. Still silence deafened the surrounding area. Justin quietly
walked away, leaving nothing but the now empty halters and lead ropes beside the mass grave.
Beside me, stood my college professor and boss, Mr. Russell Tweed, his left hip cocked
forward and arms crossed. He grunted, and then kicked some dirt with his Tony Lama boots.
“Weelllll…” He cleared his throat, paused a moment more his face burning a bright red and
continued, “It’s a damn shame. They were wearing new shoes.” Having said his piece, Tweed
turned with a shake of his head, walked the short distance to his quad and left in a flurry of dust
and barking dogs.
Alone. Finally alone to let loose the pain. I felt the first tear slide down my wind chapped
face and stain my shirt. I felt as if I had been poisoned. I could not breath. Unable to hold myself
up anymore, I fell to my knees and cried as if I had a right to. I crouched there gripping the dirt
with my callused hands until the shadows appeared on the turned earth covering the now
deceased horses.
Numb, my first attempt at standing only brought me lower. Rolling to a crouched
position, I slowly eased until I had one foot planted and the resolve to stand. Slow breaths in and
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out centered my balance and mind. Turning, I walked a slow hitched gait to my truck and turned
over the engine. The diesel was cold but it rumbled to life. The blaring heat dried the remaining
tears on my cheeks. Shifting into first, the truck bucked and then stalled.
It was over. No marker would state the qualities of each of them and who had loved
them. By winter the dips in the mud that their graves make will be the at the brunt end of a cruel
joke the ranch hands will enjoy sharing with each other as they brave the elements to feed the
stock. I used to think it was funny when Jamie would hit a bump, cackle and gasp, "There's
another one!"
By spring, my friends would be forgotten. These horses that carried and honored each
rider's command, were treated like old shoes. Worth only the money they would bring in every
summer, they were forgotten just as soon as the dirt covered their bodies. They were condemned
to death by this company for breaking down, and for suffering with pain after years of
backbreaking work in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Pushing in the clutch, I shifted back into gear and drove along the rutted dirt road until I
hit the highway. I drove away with the memory of those three horses sightlessly staring back at
me gasping their last breath. Only taking with me the roughly braided salt and pepper tail of a
friend who I could not let go.
********
She had been someone I admired for the simple reason that she was a woman doing a
man’s job. Jamie was paid to breathe in horses and breathe out cattle she spent her summers
taking people out for a few hours at a time on trail rides and spent her winters managing cattle
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and stacking hay. I had been working for Tweed Horse and Cattle Co. for two years when I
realized I hated Jamie with a passion that only an Elvis Presley lover could understand. I had
been living the dream. Spending weeks at a time traveling on horseback checking some 300 head
of cattle for new birth's, illnesses, or breaks in the fence while drinking beer and smoking some
pot.
My boss, Jamie, is that person that you either loved or hated. She had an opinion and it
roughly translated to, “It’s my way, or the highway,” and for a while I didn’t mind her way. I had
never had a boss that was as laid back as she was. It seemed she never broke out of an amble
when working and yet she got stuff done. We’d be out collecting cattle on one of the ranches
1000 acre parcels and I’d catch a glimpse of her walking next to her horse lighting her pipe and
stopping to exhale and at the end of the day she’d come strolling in with 15 or so stragglers.
The ranch owned an estimated 80 head of horses and when we’d pull out for our week or
so of cattle work, we’d have no less than nine horses. There was nothing greater than waking up
and choosing a horse to ride for the day out of a whole herd. Sometimes we would joke that we
didn’t have a need for a shoe-shopping spree when we had the ability to pick and choose a horse
to ride just like you would shoes. I’d pick out the energizer bunny horse that had somewhere to
go and something to see and Jamie would faithfully pick one of two horses. Either her mare
Triple or Pawnee an old mustang that Mr. Tweed’s son had broken as a child.
I’d never liked Triple. A big black mare, when I stood next to her, my head was even
with the highest point of her back, or whithers, making her difficult to mount she was that tall.
She was spoiled and knew it. Pawnee was another story all together. He was a striking mustang.
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He was a roan paint, but I often equaled him to a sunrise, all purples, whites, and blues, with a
hint of black. He was a striking gelding with a thick salt and pepper mane that covered his eyes
and a tail that dragged the ground. He often had a scowl ingrained on his face, his eye was hard
glaring at you with the knowledge of many years of doing the same thing over and over,
knowing that the scenery didn’t change, just the people in it. Unlike Triple, Pawnee didn’t mind
doing what you wanted to do as long as you understood you were going to do it how he wanted
to do it. For 25 years Pawnee carried mostly big men and annoying dead weighted people who
were too afraid to move while on a horse. Pawnee was ridden almost every day of his life,
sometimes more than four times a day.
I hated Jamie because of all the Pawnees'.
Today I ride a burly brown filly with a soot-black mane and tail. She was recognizable
amongst the other 20 or so brown horses Tweed owned by her perfect white star high on her
forehead. I loved riding her because she was willing and her eye was always soft. Riding Bess
was fun until you hit a downhill. She tried but she liked to rush and throw her nose to the ground
and slide straight down. I hated that. It forced me to sit deep in the saddle with my feet flung
forward and to grab the back of my saddle. I was ready for if and when she slipped and fell. I’d
seen too many wrecks that way, and either the rider or the horse, or sometimes both, end up
seriously hurt at the base of the hill from one misplaced step.
Bess’s step was firm and had a rhythm of a hopping-sway. Her ears constantly flickered,
my free GPS and security system. Her bridle was jingling occasionally she’d roll her tongue and
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the bit would sing like a crickets leg's. Her breath was muted by the crunching of her hooves
fighting through the snow that came to her forearms.
I pointed Bess north and moved out. The morning air was frigid, the previous nights
blanket of snow had not only made it harder for my little quarter horse to move, but to breathe
was to inhale glass. The view between Bess’s ears was a white haven. The blue of the sky
ricocheted off of the glaring white of the snow. Mornings like today where one of the reasons I
had moved away from the Reno area. No smog, greenhouse effect, nor the scream of an
ambulance to take away from the beauty of the mountains and sagebrush.
The Tweed ranch was a cow/calf operation, relying on the cows to giving birth to light
calves that would quickly gain weight and muscle for shipping the next spring. The smaller the
calf the easier it was on the cow and heifer to carry, give birth, and feed.
The task at hand would take no less than four hours and that’s only if I didn’t run into a
new pair, which then I would need to catch, tag, and record the date and mothers tag in my
notebook.
A regular day of riding was chasing calves and worried mommas up and down hills
because the calf was too dumb to recognize his own mother or vice versa. I knew every ravine,
bush and watering hole they favored.
Below us, the sloping hill that was thick with waist high sagebrush, lead to the river bed
that snaked from the mountains just outside of Quincy and ran into a neighboring ranch further
south. Frozen willow bushes lined the water's edge, offering shelter for the cows that I could now
see. Shifting in my saddle, I rummaged through my saddlebag until I found what I was looking
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for. Looking again through my binoculars, I saw six white faced cows standing protectively over
their calves, staring off to their right.
Turning my binoculars the way they were looking I saw it happen before the wind could
carry the screams to where I was standing.
Sliding down the hill, screaming, was Pawnee. The gelding was flailing trying to find a
way to stop himself, but there was no purchase on which he could stop himself with. I scoured
the hillside above him but I could not see any sign of Jamie.
Gathering up my reins into my gloved hand, I urged Bess to move swiftly at a trot along
the hill's crest. I couldn't hear Pawnee anymore. Bess's heavy breathing matched my own as I
frantically searched for any sign of Jamie. It seemed as if it took me an hour to travel the halfmile or so to where I had last seen Pawnee sliding down the hill.
"Jamie! Oh God Jamie, where are you?" My voice echoed off the trees, seeming to stop
as it hit the snow covered landscape. I was standing in my stirrups as I followed the flattened
snow up and up the mountainside.
My cry for Jamie was met by nothing but the deafening silence of the snow. Bess was
restless, a young three year old, she was worried. I was worried about Pawnee who we had last
seen sliding down the mountain. I was worried too about Jamie who never left the valleys and
creek beds, preferring to meander while smoking pot and singing to her horse and herself.
Bess scrambled up the hill, her path was a zigzag at my request, I was trying to help her
to remember to not rush. Each step needed to be careful. My hands were tightly fisted in her
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coarse black mane as I leaned forward over the saddle scouring all around me for any sign of
where Jamie was.
Between Bess' twitching black tipped ears the crest of the hill came into sight.
"Jamie!" I cried again, the trees carrying my voice farther, echoing back my desperate
tone.
Both Bess and I were panting as she scrambled to the top of the hill and was finally able
to plant all four feet on solid ground. Standing in my stirrups, the leather creaking in tune with
my knees, I used my binoculars to look while I listened with straining ears. A thousands thoughts
were racing through my mind. Where was she? What would I do if I couldn't find her? The snow
came up to my hip when standing, which meant if she had fallen off and was laying in the snow,
the snow would swallow her whole making it so that I could walk right by her and I would never
know.
Bess tensed, holding her breath she looked to her left perking her tired ears. She heard
something I could not. Trusting her, I pointed her nose to follow her ears and began watching the
snow covered ground around us. As we moved along I couldn't help but think of my employer
Mr. Tweed.
Mr. Tweed, or as I often called him, Professor Tweed was the kind of man that you'd
gravitate to in a room full of people. He had a presence that encouraged you to listen and smile
while you were doing it. Of what I knew of his past I learned from those that had loose lips. A
tall man, Tweed was mostly bald under his grey cowboy hat, but what stood out the most was his
child like grin from underneath his white mustache. Some say his parents bought his ranch for
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him, although others claimed he bought it himself. Either case, he owns what had been the
largest ranch in northern California. Over the years, bit by bit Tweed had cut up and sold off
pieces of his land. By the time I had come to work for him my freshman year of college, the land
was butchered by streets, railroad tracks, and small family homes. Of what I know for certain,
Russell Tweed, no matter if his ranch was given to him or if he and the bank had bought it,
Tweed sure did love to play the gentlemen rancher.
He had the butchered land, the once grand barns who's history I would often wonder
about as I fed the stock or unloaded one thing or another. He had the cattle, even the two border
collies in the back of the pickup truck, and last but not least, the horses. Shrewd, he was willing
to listen and help you solve your issues.
While working for Tweed I learned that although Professor Tweed may own the ranch,
Jamie ran it. She was the one that gave the reports and held Tweeds ear. She was the one that
took the credit where the credit wasn't due. She was the one that would ultimately fire me.
Bess' nervous snort brought me back to the present. Not five feet from where Bess and I
had topped the hill was Jamie. Later I would remember more that her left boot was lying next to
her head than anything else. I found it comical for some reason.
I swung down from Bess and sank down in the crisp snow next to Jamie. She was
breathing shallowly, unconscious her face was sprinkled with snow. I bit the tip of my leathercovered index finger and pulled off my right hand glove. It took me a minute to unwind my silk
scarf and locate my iPhone in my bra. As I expected I had no cell service.
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Although I never asked, I knew Jamie was eight to ten years older than me. A barrelchested upper body on top of narrow hips and stubby legs, she was ill equipped to ride a horse
with comfort or ease.
"Jamie. Jamie wake up."
I didn't want to touch her. She seemed fragile, as if my touch would shatter her. She came
awake with a deep gasp. Her crystal clear blue eyes snapped open wildly, unseeing. She tried to
scramble up but I was quick to pin her back down as she was wracked with shuddering coughs.
"Take it easy Jamie. You're okay. Easy." I tried to speak to her as if I was talking to a
wild animal that was in pain.
Just as fast as she came awake, she relaxed in the snow and slowly turned her head
towards me.
Her voice cracked but she was able to croak, "Where is that glue factory bound piece of
shit?"
She couldn't mean Pawnee. For all of his short comings, he was Professor Tweed's go to
horse while teaching at the local college that I attended, and if that wasn't enough, Pawnee had
been started by Tweed's son well over 25 years earlier. Which to me meant he had a permanent
place at the Tweed ranch.
"Pawnee?" I exclaimed in disbelief.
"That mother fucker fell down on me and tried to take me with him over the hill's edge. "
Jamie rolled to her side and slowly straightened her pinned leg. Her grimace of pain wasn't one
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of a broken leg, but more than likely one of a strained ligament, or pulled muscle, and lots of
bruises.
"Slow down Jamie. What happened?" I felt my anger rising like an old friend knocking at
my door.
She sat up and cupped her head in her hands as she told her story. "I was traveling along
the base of the hill about a mile south of here when I caught sight of a pair by themselves. As I
got closer the cow freaked and ran up the hill coming this way."
I cut her off in disbelief, "You chased after one pair for a mile. In this snow? On
Pawnee?" The horse was ancient to put it kindly. Each morning his knees would be swelled the
size of grape fruits with arthritis from his work the day before. The last time I rode him, he had
grunted the whole trip while grinding his teeth periodically, which is a sure sign that an animal is
in pain. And here Jamie is telling me she ran the old horse for a mile in the snow?
Jamie continued after sending me a glare from between her hands that were still covering
her head, "Anyway, we got up here and the bastard tripped over something, probably his own
feet and did a summersault head over feet, that's the last thing I remember."
I stood slowly, my anger now pounding at the door. I wanted to kick Jamie in the face. I
wanted to run her for a mile and then push her down the hill. Scream at her. I wanted to know
what made her think it was okay to treat an old horse like Pawnee like she did. For all I knew, he
was dead at the bottom of the hill.
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I walked to Bess who had wandered a bit away from where I had left her. I leaned against
my saddle, breathing in and out deeply. Slowly stroking Bess' mane I tried to rid myself of the
roaring anger and disbelief that was choking me.
It seemed the madder I got the quieter my surroundings became. The land never changed,
each valley and clump of trees stayed the same. The Feather River creek snaked through the
land, twisted around the pastures, making a summer pond that we would ride the horses down to
and swim in. There was something reassuring in knowing that the land was predictable, honest.
In a suppressed voice I asked her slowly, "You didn't ask if Pawnee was okay."
I could hear her struggling in the snow to stand. Bess tensed, her ears flickering, she
could feel my anger rolling off of me as I tried to not imagine Pawnee running head long towards
the ridge where he probably had tried to stop himself before he fell. His screams still boomed
through my mind.
"What do I care if he's alright? He almost got me killed." By now Jamie had put her boot
back on and had reached my side. She was favoring her left leg. "Look, I'll send Little Doug for
Pawnee after you get me back to the ranch."
I barked a short laugh at her compromise.
"Just like last time?" Jamie paused in slapping off the snow that clung to her clothes.
"You remember don't you Jamie? You sent that runt Little Doug to collect the dude horses from
the summer pasture and he left Traveler because he couldn't catch him. Of course we didn't know
this at the time did we? What happened to Traveler Jamie?"
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We both knew what happened to Traveler. Of course I didn't find out until that next spring
when I went to collect the dude horses from the winter pasture that Traveler was missing. I had
panicked. Thinking the worst I drove to the ranch head quarters where Jamie spent most of her
days using a ten year old computer with dialup internet to do the ranches' office work. There I sat
down on the dust covered stacked boxes' of livestock ear tag's and vaccination catalog's. Worried
that I had failed the ranch, I met Jamie's impatient eye's and told her that I thought Traveler had
been stolen.
"Traveler?" She paused, turned back to resume typing on the ancient computer.
What seemed like a thousand years later, Jamie turned back with a thoughtful look on her
face. "You know what? About two months ago I got a phone call from the neighboring ranch that
they could see a horse carcass on our side of the fence, but I told them that it had to be theirs
because we had grabbed all of our horses a month before that. I guess they were right huh?" She
turned back to the computer and began to type again.
"Jamie, what do you mean they were right? Where's Traveler?" I didn't want to believe
the little grey Arabian with the square face that the kid's loved to ride in horse camp and paint
their hand prints on was actually dead. Worse, that he was dead because someone hadn't done
their job.
Without turning around, Jamie answered " Little Doug said he had got all the horses
down from the summer pasture but that he had had some issues catching a few of the horses. He
obviously couldn't catch Traveler. "
"You can't be serious!"
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"What do you want me to do about it? What's done is done."
"Does Professor Tweed know? Anger burned like hot coals in my chest.
Jamie paused from pecking away at the computer keys with her two stubby index fingers,
"With so many other horses, what's one less to him?"
That was the end of Traveler. A gelding that had been one of the best go to horses for
nervous riders and kids riding lessons. He hadn't deserved to die alone. Who knows how he died.
Did he starve? Freeze to death? It was obvious Jamie hadn't cared about Traveler and it's more
than obvious she doesn't care about Pawnee.
"He's dead, gone! What the fuck do you want me to do about it? What the hell does
Traveler have to do with Pawnee anyway?" She was mad now. Struggling in the snow, she was
panting as she reached my side. "Let's go. I think I've broken something and its going to take you
a while to walk me back to the ranch."
I turned around and gave her a once over. She was favoring her left leg, but she was
bearing weight on it. There was a snow burn spreading on her face from where she had landed in
the snow. "You're going to be fine." Turning back, I tightened my cinch and mounted Bess with
effort. Gripping my reins, I wheeled the filly around and pointed her to where I had last seen
Pawnee.
Jamie's clawed grip on my ankle stopped me. "What the hell are you doing? I can't walk.
I need to ride the horse back to the ranch." She tried to stare me down, but for once I was taller
than her. She broke eye contact, "Look, I know you were bothered by the Traveler fiasco, but
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what's done is done. Anyway, you replaced him didn't you? Tweed gave you fifteen hundred
dollars to replace him didn't he? And you did. You found five new horses. Younger horses." Her
voice was placating but her eyes. Her pot red eyes bore into mine with anger and scorn.
Through tight lips I replied, "A thousand horses couldn't replace Traveler... or Pawnee."
With that I jerked my leg out of her biting grip and quickly pressed Bess to begin navigating our
way back down the hill. Jamie's screams vibrated off of the trees. Bess tossed her head, snorting
her nervousness.
"Stop damn you! You can't leave me here!"
I lifted my face to the gentle breeze. Slowly inhaling the scent of pine and horse sweat, I
closed my eyes and smiled.
Without stopping I shouted over my shoulder, "Don't worry, I'll send Little Doug for
you."
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