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Short Stories & Tall Tales
PIG EYE
Maureen Gilmer
He heard them go that morning, Pap and the little brothers loading the horses for Saturday jackpot roping down valley. Glen feigned sleep to avoid his father's sad eyes that spoke of his most promising son's fall from grace. When it was quiet again he got up and hobbled out to the dusty back porch to lean against a fly stained post. He remembered so vividly what his life was before that saddle bronc went endo on him and broke him all to hell. His shoulder would never swing a rope again and the doctors said and he'd always walk with a limp. So he took the painkillers until he was numb to the disappointment. Rodeo was all he knew, rodeo and horses. And when the legal drugs ran out he drove down to Algodones on the Mexican border for more to kill the sense of loss that ate him up from the inside out. It was just a matter of time until his addiction landed him in jail, then mandatory rehab where he was finally forced to clean up.
The desert air felt good after so many weeks shut up indoors kicking the drugs, and as he stepped down onto the sandy soil he could feel the drag, the fatigue and the pain weighing him down. He walked slowly through the horse trailers and sheds and hay stacks that fed their horses. He mourned the loss of that spark that drove him since he was just a kid to be the best, to push the envelope, to swallow the fear. But that was a distant memory fading in the wake of that hideous wreck and the drugs that left nothing but an empty hole inside him.
The drugs still whispered to him from the depths of his soul, begging he take that short trip to the Mexicans down valley who could sell him a single little pill that instantly made him large and whole again. He'd already been arrested once doing the same thing, and just the thought of those few claustrophobic days at County locked away from the land and the horses made his skin crawl.
Glen reached the big back pasture where a handful of yearlings grouped around a bathtub water trough. Some weren't broke and others were just green, but all of them turned to see him, a new face in the quiet tedium of equine life. Eventually they came trotting up but didn't come close like they used to. It was as if they could feel the darkness oozing out of him, their ears flicking front to back, unsure of this person they recognized but yet did not. Even the little dark gelding meant to take him to the NFR in Vegas no longer knew him, suddenly whirling on enormous haunches leading the others away at a quick clip.
Glen turned to go back to the house just as movement drew his eye to the far end of the pasture. A ghost from his past stood quietly watching, a horse he thought long gone. This was the most screwed up piece of equine conformation his father had ever brought home. Pap was an expert at corrective shoeing, his forearms hard as rocks, those big hands could swing a rope with grace or drop a man to the barroom floor in a single stunning punch. An old customer of his had lost his ranch, but still owed a considerable debt to the farrier. The only way he could pay was to hand over this one horse, the last of his herd that nobody else wanted.
When they swung the door open on the trailer the colt was snubbed up short, its tiny eyes rolling wildly in panic. "You get him Glen," Pap said to his oldest son, the best horseman of them all.
Glen stepped into the stock trailer as his brother Dan untied the lead rope outside. When the knot loosed that colt slammed back into the side of the trailer, sitting down, then scrambling to his feet, banging loudly as he cow kicked the metal slats. In the gloom, teeth flashed. When Glen finally backed the sun bleached sorrel onto solid ground both were dripping with sweat, the horse's coat caked in mud, oversized mule ears laid flat back, the tail stained with red dirt and wound into a single enormous ball of hair. Glen jerked on the stud chain that ran under the chin, biting the tender tissue with such intimidation the rank colt wouldn't dare strike out.
The brothers all knew this was a throw away horse. He was pig eyed, a fault that could limit peripheral vision, making him spooky and hard to train. The front end was just wrong, Glen had thought, a chest just one hand wide that meant his lung capacity was limited, heart likely undersized.
"He's just what you boys need to practice bareback riding," Pap said studying the sorrel. "He's young and strong enough that I believe he'll teach y'all something."
With his good arm on the top rail, chin on his wrist, not moving a muscle, Glen watched the horse they named Pig Eye turn and slowly make his way along the fence line, steering clear of the younger colts. As he came closer Glen could make out the scars from the vicious sacking out to make Pig Eye buck like crazy. They'd get one brother up on the horse then chuck rocks at it from behind. Terrified by the invisible predator, Pig Eye'd start bucking again until he finally got so tired he'd just lay down in the dirt and pant.
About ten feet from Glen, Pig stopped, those small shifty eyes studying the man with great suspicion. Pig Eye remembered all right, Glen knew. Most of what they did to Pig wasn't a big deal to them, but it was a big deal to the horse, and horses always remembered big deals.
They stood there for quite some time, neither moving except for Glen's continual rearranging his body that pained him every day. His ribs had been stove in when he laid in the rodeo dirt and the bronc came down on him hard, collapsing his lung. But Glen came back after he recovered to try and pick up the pieces of his shattered career. By then he'd found Oxy though, and it became his best friend, transcending the need for his brothers, his Pap or the horses any more. Rodeo faded to vaporous ghost memories.
There at the sun drenched rail something in Glen sparked, the first true emotion he'd felt in a long time. It made his chest tight, his breath a bit short as he remembered his own cruelty. The feeling was something like pity woven into admiration for the throw away horse that managed to survive just has he had, making it through the pain and the fear and the wanting to go far away from the world without dying. Pig Eye didn't have Oxy. Pig Eye had to take it over and over without any comfort.
Glen straightened up and managed to step through the pipe coral into the pasture, Pig Eye backing up a few steps to keep the distance. He clicked and the mule ears moved forward, but the horse didn't budge. He could see Pig's lips were pursed, with wrinkles standing out amidst a haze of long whiskers, a sign of the tension. Glen took a step and Pig backed up in turn. Glen stepped to the side and Pig swung to maintain a protective stance.
Then Glen dropped his own eyes to the ground and waited. Pig didn't budge. Glen stepped and the bad ankle buckled, but Pig still held his ground. Then Glen turned his back and took steps away, Pig's ears flipping forward again. A few feet away Glen turned and stood there quietly, eyes down, hands at his sides. Pig took a first tentative step, then another and another.
He finally stood beside Glen, head down, licking his lips. It was the same way he'd done it since he was a boy, approach and retreat, eyes downcast. When Pig came to stand beside him, Glen bent over and breathed into the horse's nostril, Pig inhaling the scent of the man that had so deeply hurt him. They stood just that way for a long time, not touching but simply sharing breath in the silent language of recognition.
Glen's tears fell into the powdery fine ground, each one raising a tiny tuft of dust as it hit. Pig Eye brushed across Glen's cheek, the fur of his nose soft as silk. Glen felt the touch so light it was more like a puff of air. And then Pig Eye gently licked the tear trail on the man's cheek, lightly chewed with the sound of huge molars grinding loud and clear.
Glen straightened and raised his head to the clear turquoise sky, wiped the tears from his eyes, then stroked the throw-away horse's poll.
It was that moment when he finally understood what they'd told him in rehab about finding his Higher Power. In that horse that he'd beat up and ignored and hurt and left for the livestock auction was a definite power, a living essence that was so strong he coughed, then cried out loud for the first time since that horrible wreck. He sagged, lamenting in a deep groan all he'd lost, settling into Pig Eye's too narrow shoulder and hanging onto the ewe neck and its sparse mane. Still the horse didn't move.
In that bright morning sun Glen came to understand the true nature of forgiveness. It felt as if a new page was turned, and all the past pages darkened by blood and bruises and disrespect for the not so perfect horse had been torn out of the book. If Pig Eye could do that, Glen knew, if that animal that had every reason to become a fire breathing dragon could find peace in the aftermath, then perhaps once again, as his father said, he indeed had much more to learn from that horse.
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