I Ascend

by Eric Daniel Metzgar

 

My horse, Deer, used to stand over in the brightest corner of the field, at the spot where the fence made a big turn. From there she could see down into the valley for miles. She’d lean on the fence, up against her shoulder - only horse I ever saw who did that- just to brace herself so she could give her full attention to the view. Every once in a while she’d look back at the farmhouse to check on me.

I’d be standing on the corner of the porch, where the rails met. From there I could see across my land and down into the valley. I’d lean too, right up against the wooden porch rail, on my elbows, so I could be steady and still. And every once in a while I’d turn around and I’d look inside through the window to check on things in the house.

No one rode Deer but me. Not my wife or kids or brothers or sisters. Only me, and only to get somewhere. We never took joyrides, and I never showed her off the way some of my neighbors used to ride through town to show off their best horses. I never got on her without a reason. She and I had the strongest of ties- the kind that’s better and tighter than anything else in waking life, with the kind of communication that’s born between some people and animals, with the kind of understanding that never needs to be proved.

So, for most of my years, and for all of her years, she was my truest love, my first prize over all other things. You couldn’t know me without knowing about her. She was my first morning thought and most of my day and night dreams included her.

 

Way late in my life, after I’d given over any more chances of starting something new, I took sick with a whopping cold. My family rallied around me, but they couldn’t help. I was just too old to recover and soon enough we all saw that and lost our fear of it.

 So my days drew slow, then slower, then they began to creep like death had already arrived. I had never imagined a man could do so little in a day, but I did. I woke, ate a breakfast, walked outside to the porch, leaned onto my rail, watched the clouds cross the day, had lunch brought to me, ate it up, watched the sun pass over the hills, went inside, ate dinner, hobbled upstairs and fell right to sleep. That was it, and it went like that for almost a year.

Then one cloudy winter morning after my eggs, I went out on the porch for a day of leaning loose and quiet, and I saw Deer lying down in the grass on the far wrong side of the field. Before I could think, I was running to her, screaming back for my wife to call the police. I meant to say the doctor, and she knew it, and she right away called Dr. Ruby.

That horses could have heart strokes, I never knew. That Deer would never run again, I couldn’t believe. But that the end was close, I knew all through me, so that evening and into the morning, I tottered around the house trying to put together a visual picture of my life without Deer, but I couldn’t do it.

 

 

My wife didn’t cry at all when I told her I was leaving, and that didn’t bother me. She knew what I was, equal in most ways to the wilderness. Our life together had been like a walking tour of the woods. She kept to the path while I came and went for years. Our kids were hers more than mine. The house had always been hers to run. She had a hundred friends more than me, and liked them so much that she wouldn’t miss me at all. And I wasn’t paying for anything anymore, so in all, I was of no worth to her except for sleeping beside.

I hardly packed. Just put some hot dogs in a pouch and some water in a jug. I sharpened my knife, loaded my gun and packed it all into the saddlebag. At noon I went out for Deer and she looked down at me with eyes that reassured me about our leaving.

Dr. Ruby would’ve scolded me for taking off with Deer while she was still recovering, but regular logic never made a peep in my big decisions. The big voice of authority, it always came from inside me. Pastor Stevens called it divine insight. My kids called it instinct. My wife called it my stubborn pride. I didn’t call it anything, or care what it was. I just listened and made action of the ideas. Plain sense told me that Deer and me weren’t built to rust to death on some shriveling porch or field. We weren’t going to eek out little by little. We were going to empty out of life together.

 

For the first few days, Deer was upright. She walked long hours, never swayed, never turned to tell me she was tired, though I knew she was. I gave her every hot dog but one. The third day we stopped so I could do some hunting. Waiting for game, I filled a sock with berries for us and filled the other sock with long green weeds just for her. It took all the day’s hours, but I killed two rabbits and a snake. We ate all of it that night, leisurely as moneyed men.

The next day, we took out late from our camp. It took us time to tackle the chores that didn’t used to take so long. When we finally got to riding, we were tired already, tired and wordless. The lack of farming bustle and the hush of the mountain was making us both more serious than usual. I tried to keep us from sinking into thinking too serious. I started singing hymns and adding new words where I could. That pepped Deer right up and we made fine time until the afternoon.

The snow had started to build up on the path and there was ice on the rocks, so Deer had a hard time keeping good footings. We took it slow, but every once in a while, she’d churn into a short little run, and we’d make up the hillside like a fox. Those were our finest last minutes, and we stored them away deep in our memories.

Five days in, I started losing concentration to the cold. I starting thinking that Deer was leading me, that she knew the design of our mission. So I laid back and let her steer, but she felt the shift and slowed down to a crawl. She didn’t want to lead. She turned around a lot, checking on me, and I’d check right back with her. We were two blind owls out there, getting more lost and more unsettled by the step. My mind was wandering to places I’d never been. Deer cried me back into the world. She wanted me there with her. I wanted to be there, but I had all kinds of new remembering happening.