I THINK MY HORSE IS DEAD

Sympathy for people who cannot seem to change

I’m in Arizona. It’s sunset. I’m riding a horse named Cobalt. A few paces ahead (horse paces not human ones) Ellen rides a horse named Easter. My head hurts, and I imagine Ellen’s hurts worse because she outdrank me last night and she’s half my size. 

We reach the edge of a ridge and the horses (old pros) come to a halt. The desert air feels static, cloying. On our first ride together I’d spoken quite a lot but now I know better. “If you talk too much your throat will go dry.” Ellen told me back then. Not sure if that’s true or if she just wanted me to shut the fuck up, but either is a good enough reason to be quiet. 

“Do you want to stay and watch? We’ll have to head back in the dark.” 

“Is there something wrong with heading back in the dark?” 

She shakes her head. “The horses know the way.” 

I pat Cobalt as if to say, nice. He responds by stiffening, I feel a ripple pass through him, a half ton of muscle realigning. Readjusting. “Thank god they’re on our side.” I say. Ellen gives me a perplexed half smile, and turns her attention back to the desert. 

When I was seven my dad got drunk at an auction and bought a horse. He did this, I always suspected, to impress my mother. She’d been a jockey in high school, a national champion, but my grandfather sold her horse out from under her to force her to go to college. Perhaps my father thought he was righting an ancient wrong as his paddle bobbed in the air. What a hero was he? Replacing a dream that had been bound and shipped across the country so many years ago. 

The horse was called Solaire. According to the seller he was the grandson of a great racehorse, a derby winner named Genuine Risk. (That will turn out to be funny, trust me.) Solaire however, was no chip off the ‘ole salt block. 

At first my parents tried to hide him from us, but my grandmother had a habit of taking loud gossipy phone calls in our living room, so that didn’t last long. “Steve bought a horse.” I heard her say one afternoon. There was an odd undercurrent of distress in her voice. I blew through my bedroom door, elated, confused. “He did?” I yelled. 

My grandmother hung up the phone without saying goodbye. A beat. “Shit,” she said, sagely. 

Why the secrecy? Solaire was a Stallion, and as my parents quickly discovered, an unbroken one. With arthritis. In the clear light of sobriety and daylight it looked like my father had been scammed. Solaire’s arthritis made him illegal to breed, and incomprehensible to race. My father’s friends took to calling Solaire The Tripod, for his lameness. 

A multiple week inquiry was scheduled to determine if Solaire could learn to play ball or if he was truly unrideable. That was, unfortunately, enough time for me to fall in love with him. Solaire and I had an immediate spark. Kinship. As he limped away from his trainers screaming with rage I thought YES. WE ARE THE SAME. 

I wasn’t partial to either moniker, Solaire or the Tripod. I wanted to call him Starbuck because he was famous and tried to kill anyone who got near him. 

Solaire stuck to his guns until the end. I was informed one day, unceremoniously, that Solaire had been sent back to his original owners, on some faraway farm. Even then, I knew what that meant. My compatriot, my avatar, my second brother was dead. I cried in my room that day and internalized, to an unhealthy degree, a lesson that stuck with me for years: disobedience wins you nothing but death. 

In preparation for this article I called my parents to get their testimonies. They described the auction, a charity benefit. Stiltwalkers roamed through the equestrian center, in giant clothes, giving the event a ghoulish, surreal quality. The purchase of Solaire had not been made, as I thought, in a moment of blind, drunk passion, but under the duress of a fat, spitting, auctioneer and a hot spotlight. When my parents tried to leave the barn that night they were accosted by the landowner. “You gotta get this horse outta here.” He told them. “It’s violent.” 

My parents also maintain to this day that Solaire was not killed, at least not by their orders. “As far as you know,” my father jokes, “He’s still alive. As far as you know we got him some magic elixir and he’s jogging around in Kentucky right now.” 

I’m in Arizona with Ellen again. Riding back to her ranch on horses that bit the bullet and took day jobs. “You’re quiet,” she calls through the dark. 

“Aren’t I supposed to be?” I ask. 

She laughs, and I can hear the damage in her voice. Desert air and cigarette smoke. “It’s disconcerting,” she says. “More than I bargained for.” 

She gives me her canteen so I can drink deeply. I tell her about the last few years since I’ve seen her. Brushes with fame, disastrous financial decisions, breakups with people who told me that I’d be perfect if I were different.

Finally when the lights of her back porch come into view I tell her about Solaire. I tell her that my family history is littered with insubordinate animals, missing graves, and circumstantial evidence. She laughs so hard that I have to give the canteen back. 

“Have you ever had to kill a horse?” I ask her. 

“You’re a fucking trip, man.” She takes a gulp of penny flavored water. “Who asks something like that?” 

That night Ellen puts me to bed on the couch under some scratchy blankets. I dream despicable tequila dreams. In one I chug an energy drink and drive all the way out to Kentucky. I ascend the steps of a farmhouse. A man stands behind a counter, as if he’s the concierge at a hotel. He nods at me. “I’m here to see Solaire,” I tell him. 

“Oh god,” he moans.

I look down at the counter where his hands rest. There’s blood on his sleeves. 

“You just missed him, son.” 

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Just wanted to pop in here after the show to say hello and thanks. My latest book How To Piss Off Men hit the New York Times Bestseller list last week. I owe each and every one of you for your support and for fostering this laboratory, a place for my writing to mutate sadder, and weirder.

More soon, 

Kyle