Little Bluestem: Stories from Rural America

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  It was well past noon when they were ready. She had made sandwiches for their journey and packed away a couple of pop cans surrounded by ice packs in her saddlebags. They did this under the shade trees of the front lawn of the home place where they had left two riding horses from her small remuda of the night before. She always saved back two. They had an acre of pasture both to the right and left of the house and the two horses, both geldings, traded human attention for the night ramblings the others were enjoying in the bigger pasture to the west.

  Buck was her horse, named after his buckskin color. He was a good trail horse, slow and deliberate and almost fearless. She had to blind-fold and lead him across a rickey wood bridge, once, but after that he was good with the hollow sound of wood over water.

  Goober was the other one. She had no idea how he came about that name. The guy at the stable where she bought him after the summer riding season was done didn’t know either. She surmised that he was named something else earlier and that one of the summer hired hands—girls mostly out from the city, who worked the trail rides and fed out the horses—came up with that one. He was a grade horse while Buck was a registered Quarter. Buck had some cutting horse in him whereas Goober was just Goober, a good quiet horse, good for guests and country cousins, recently entitled, out from the city.

  Goober nuzzled Casey’s pants, and when he turned the horse ran his mug across Casey’s T-shirt, where a pocket would be, looking for handouts.

  “What’s with this horse?” he wanted to know.

  “Spoiled him, I suppose. Lookin’ for treats.”

  “Oh, that’s it. It’s not just me.”

  She pulled on Goober’s cinch and felt the horse’s stomach muscles tighten. “No, not just you. Now Casey, you stand there, relaxed like and run your hand along the horse’s neck and when you feel his muscles kind of relax, you pull on that cinch belt real hard.”

  “Okay.” He looked her way, “what about you?”

  “Well, Buck here is different. He wasn’t ridden every day most of his life, so he doesn’t mind the cincture so much. Doesn’t tighten up.”

  Casey pulled down hard. “Got him!” he said.

  “Now wrap it like I showed you and tighten that near rein up some before you mount him. He shouldn’t move off, much, but you never know with riding horses. Sometimes they remember old habits at just the wrong time.”

  They moved off from the farm and along the paved road of the ridge. Ahead they could see the valleys and the open field of CRP land where they would angle down towards the long, extended bottom of Trotter Creek.

  He had the lead and turned in the saddle to look back at her.

  “This is good, Amanda. I’ve been dreamin’ of this all year. Thanks.”

  She had never seen him so expressive. He had his slouch hat down low, but the tone of his voice along with the offering of the words themselves surprised her. A really nice kid, she thought, and Missy better know it in the midst of all her preoccupation with bill-paying and men and survival. She would tell her again, and maybe she wouldn’t bat it away this time and just look at it and relax.

  He turned Goober and led him down into the first rut of the trail through the grass field of the set-aside. Ahead she could see the first trees that would usher them into the shady portion of the ride. A breeze was up and that was good. The horses seemed ready for this excursion and that also was good. It was hot, but not hanging-hot and the flies eased off the horses and their riders in the wind.

  “Yep. A trail ride,” he said as Goober and Casey together slipped into the tall grass of the field. He put his right hand out and leaned over hard and touched the heads of the grass as the bay horse worked his way slowly down the gentle slope.

  “Any dew?” she said.

  “Nope. Too late.”

  Now Buck was in it, tossing his head a little above the waving stems of the grass he would be eating. You could almost lean into the heat, but it was an enfolding blanket and not a heavy firm hand, pressing down.

  They found the trees. Ahead of them was the cool of the woods. Casey knew the way, and so did Goober. The trail wound down past the first of the oaks and then past a clump of prickly ash and into the lush dark of the woods themselves. Already Amanda could feel the cool.

  “Listen,” Casey said.

  She did and heard the sound of the woodpecker below them in the trees. She looked down and saw just the first glint of the water, still quite a ways off, flowing beneath the canopy of the trees. The trail angled up and around a couple of ancient oak trees and some stumps where others had fallen. Ahead was a snag of an elm tree with a widow maker still angling off to the up side of the slope. Casey wound past her and the snag and then dropped down as the trail resumed its descent.

  He was looking all over. He looked relaxed and confident on his mount, she thought. Goober’s ears were forward: he had the lead.

  It took them about ninety minutes to wind their way down to the actual bottom land. When they arrived on the flat plane of the riverbottom, Trotter Creek itself had angled away to their right, to the north some, while the trail worked through some scrub brush and then some meadow grass. It was a good place to stop.

  Amanda carried two longer ropes on her saddle and she handed one to Casey for Goober. “Everybody’s goin’ to eat,” she said to the boy. “Here’s his halter, swap it out for the bridle and tie him to that tree,” pointing to a scrub growing all by itself and out some in the grass.

  She had taught him well. He had the halter ready when he slipped the bridle off, while the loop of the knotted reins were still around the horse’s neck. She did the same for Buck and then unpacked their saddle-bag lunch.

  “So Jimmie came down here?” he said, half into his first sandwich.

  “Yes. He rode all over as a kid and still does when he gets the chance.”

  “I wonder what it was like when he rode here as a kid.”

  “Oh, nothing’s much changed really. Perhaps the trees were smaller, although some of the bigger ones were surely logged off, and perhaps there was more pasture about. Maybe even some more fences. Farther on down, there is the remains of a house that was burned out one year by lightning. But the creek’s pretty much the same.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Why do you say that, Casey?”

  “Everything changes.”

  “Everything?”

  “Yeah, well, you know. People, houses, streets, cars. Everything seems to be flowing like the creek there,” he was looking and pointing to the glint of the water ahead of them at the edge of the meadow grass, “and sometimes you’d like something to hold, to stick and hold tight.”

  She did not realize that he was inclined to be so much of a philosopher.

  “Well, what if it did? What if it did hold?”

  “Yeah. Wouldn’t that be pretty nice…”

  “Well, I’m not so sure.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well the water needs to flow. It would stagnate. And the life forms down stream, waiting for the food and the oxygen in the flowing water would be denied what they need. And if you dammed it and denied it it’s proper motion downstream then this grass meadow would be asked to hold all that water and it would be forced to change. One change. Even one slight change from the pattern denies us the life that lies in its flow.”

  “So it’s got to flow?”

  “There is a force in the flow and in the design of the pattern that responds to the flow. And if you disrupt it, there are consequences. We are alive in the flow of life, my boy, my country cousin”—she added that to soften the seriousness of it all—“and you’d better get used to it.”

  “Yeah. Right.” He threw the crust of his sandwich at a dragon fly coming close. “But in my picture of the freeze, everything freezes, even the life downstream. The grass, the trees do too, so there’s no decay.” He worked another piece of crust loose and threw it out once m
ore. Let’s talk about something else.”

  “All right, you choose,” she said, throwing a clump of grass listlessly at his feet.

  “Okay. I choose silence.”

  It seemed a good choice. They ate in silence and drank their cold pop. One more can for each remained in her saddlebags, but she would surprise him with that one when they needed to climb back to the ridge when the afternoon sun would be again on their shoulders and backs. If it was hot enough, they would be walking the horses and sweating heavily and the pop would be good.

  Amanda watched the horses. Sometimes when Buck got too sweaty he would think about rolling, even with the saddle and blanket and bags. Both horses were calm, flicking flies with their tails, their heads down into the grass.

  “Jimmie ever say anything about this place?”

  “Trotter Creek?”

  “Yeah and this valley and the people who lived here and got burned out?”

  “Not the people, really. I never learned their name—where they came from and where they went. It was a long time ago, when Jimmie was a kid, I guess. No, the only thing he mentioned was that Trotter Creek was a nice ride. I told him that I liked it too, and liked riding the creek itself on hot days and he looked at me and said that I should be careful with that because there’s some soft places in the creek bottom.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, places where the bottom goes soft and you can sink down.”

  “Quick sand?”

  “Yeah, I suppose.”

  “Cool.”

  “He said watch out for places where the current slows some and test it out.”

  “He have trouble when he came down here?”

  “Casey, I really did not ask, but you can ask, he’s coming to dinner tomorrow night.”

  “Cool. Jimmie’s cool.”

  “Yeah. I agree. Jimmie’s very cool.”

  They swapped halters for bridles and mounted up. Ahead past the green heat of the shimmering grass was the cool of the trees that snaked along with the creek. She had been down here before, so she knew exactly where she wanted to enter the stream. Casey would insist on riding the creek after that story, that she knew.

  Amanda took the lead. She led them into the darkness. They worked their way along the stream, listening to the purling of the water in places where it shoaled and ran over rocks. It was dark, cool and inviting. A quarter of a mile of this and they came to the ford. The banks were alluvial, but the ford was well fortified by stones. She turned Buck into the ford and then sharply pointed him south, aligned with the flow of the water. He stepped off of the ford and down into the soft, packed sand of the creek bottom, the water up to his knees.

  “I suppose you wanted this?” she said to Casey who was following closely with Goober in the middle of the stream.

  “Cool, awesome!” he said, the horse splashing water from his forefeet as he stepped. He smiled and let go of the reins and leaned back in the saddle, his hand and arms making a wing span as though he would fly in his new setting, his new freedom.

  They ducked under branches and worked their way down. At the first pool, where the water noticeably slowed and expanded, Amanda stopped Buck. He nosed the water. She asked him to move and he took one step. The bottom held. She asked for another and he went down six, eight inches into hard packed sand.

  They moved ahead, repeating the process each time they left the obvious flow of the small stream and edged into a pool. The sun was shielded from them most of the time and the wind continue to blow through the woods, sometimes rippling the water. Off to the right in places, they could look out on the valley. There were Holsteins grazing and other clustered under some oak trees in the pasture of one farm. Way off to the north, occasionally a car could be seen across the open fields shimmering in the obvious heat of the land open to the sun. But their riding place was cool.

  “Any wild stuff down here?” Casey wanted to know.

  “You mean like panthers and that sort of stuff?”

  “C’mon, I’m not that stupid. I mean like coyotes or racoon.”

  “Oh, yes. Plenty of coyotes and coons are all about. But I think there are also turkeys around here and black bear. Wild enough, Country Cousin?”

  “I guess.”

  She offered him the lead. Goober’s ears again went forward and Casey sat up in the saddle. She told him to take the lead and check every slower, deeper spot before wading in. He did. There was a snag that he guided Goober around and low branches from some willow trees that he did well with also, riding with his head along the horse’s neck. He was learning real fast, she thought with a smile: this boy who did not like change. And she thought about Steve and their relationship and wondered if it, too, would change. If it would lead to marriage, if he would finally relent, quit all his opposition and arguments, and move into deeper water. These boy-men who are so fearful of ‘ever after’! And she smiled at him, too, trying so hard to be so serious about things and just not plain admit that he was scared.

  They passed through one of the deeper pools, with the water over Goober’s knees and Buck taking it higher up, water splashing some on his belly, and then the stream narrowed. Amanda took the lead back, for she was not exactly sure where the best place would be for them to climb the bank. She headed down the straight run of the stream, everything going smoothly, when all of a sudden he was swimming.

  She was sitting in water and the horse was breathing right at the water line, the nostril blowing heavily on the water and the legs beneath her churning. She looked down into the water and it held coffee grounds: water, sand and dirt. She eased herself down into it and turned and called to Casey who, Lord be praised, had lagged just a bit behind and was just coming up to where Buck had dropped into the deep.

  “Stay back!”

  “You okay?”

  “Stay back. See if you can climb the bank back somewhere.”

  “Quick sand?”

  “Stay back.”

  Goober’s ears were forward and she was alongside Buck’s neck, her legs out straight near the surface of the water, while beneath their heads and torsos his legs were pounding, churning the bottom. She kicked with her legs and held his head up. The reins were trailing back in the brown suspended sand and mud of the water, and her one hand was under his jar, while her other hand grabbed a clump of his black mane. She forgot to be cold or even wet. She forgot to breathe and to think. She held on to his mane, and pushed with her left hand under his jaw to keep his head up. If he breathed, they breathed.

  Casey was alongside. She was dimly aware of him, riding above her to her right. He was calling to her, but she couldn’t understand. The words were too much. She kicked with her legs and pushed with her hand. She felt frozen in time, locked in and held. Suspended like the coffee grounds of the water.

  Then his shoulder came up. She almost fell away. Then Buck’s muddy form rose and lifted, and she did fall away. He slipped past her until she reached his tail, finding the loose reins at the same time. Amanda pulled on the tail and her slim form aligned itself with his churning legs, the hocks now visible, and then her own feet felt the solid of the bottom as the horse came free and pulled away.

  She stumbled after.

  “Buck!” The horse’s sides were heaving, he was walking slowly.

  “Buck!” Casey said and then he rode down a broken spot in the bank and stopped Goober right in front of Amanda’s exhausted gelding.

  She slogged through the knee deep water to her horses and Casey.

  “Keep him right here,” she said to Casey. “You stay right there on Goober while I get this guy’s saddle loosened up and off.” She worked the cinch strap and lifted the saddle and heavy, sodden blanket off the horse’s heaving sides. Buck turned some and looked. She could not just carry it over to the bank. It was too much. It slumped down into the mud and Amanda took the blanket first and worked it up and down in the light colored water before throwing it to the bank. The sad
dle came next. She carried it over to Casey who helped throw it up onto the bank. She had not heard or seen him coming to help.

  “You get on back up there to your horse,” she said, brokenly, trying to breathe, and he obliged. Then she took water and ran it along the rib cage and flanks of her horse. His head was down. The muscles of his flanks were quivering.

  “Pretty tired boy, Bucky,” she said to the horse, who was blowing on the water. “Pretty tired boy.”

  They stood there this way, frozen in time: Casey with Goober ahead, Buck quivering, and Amanda knee deep in muddy water until she was satisfied that the horse was ready.

  “Don’t do to rush things,” she said to the boy when she felt the horse getting some energy. “Let’s see if Bucky boy here can climb the bank.” She led him along the flank of Goober and then up the incline that Casey and the horse had found. The reins stretched back to Buck’s head, but as soon as Amanda started up the slope, he followed, straining a bit until he was sure he was out. She had Casey hold the horse while she went back near the saddle and found the halter and ropes. She put the halter on quickly and gave the horse the rope and watched him move about some in the grass. Then he went down and rolled, like she knew he would.

  A horse is an ungainly sight in tall grass with its back and head hidden; with it’s soft belly open to the sky and its legs flailing about. He rolled and the tension rolled out of Amanda and she felt suddenly tired. She looked at Casey still holding Buck’s bridle with one hand and Goober with the other. He looked small now under his slouch hat as he looked back at her. What did he see? A woman in her late thirties. Wet jeans, muddy muddy boots. Hair a mess, that she was sure. But was it also lines in her face; was it also the listlessness that she felt that he also saw? She had been frozen in time and it was all she could do to come back from its sudden grasp and into its flow once more.

  Life.

  “What you lookin’ at?”

  He seemed to rouse himself—as if from a reverie—and straightened some.

  “What?” she wanted to know.

  “Well,” he wrinkled his nose and looked a little boy again. “Mud.”

  She looked down. It was all over her.

  “Yuck,” he said, as if to sympathize. “Amanda, you are mud-dee!” And he laughed and pulled some on his slouch hat and she looked back and laughed, too, in the glare, and in the sudden growing heat of the afternoon sun.

  RIBBONS