Flying Changes (5 page)

I may not know anything about foaling, but I sure do know a thing or two about Googling. Before long, I’ve had a crash course in foaling and its most common problems—breech birth? Got it. Dystocia? Retained placenta? I am
so
on the phone to Walter. But mostly I’m relieved to learn that in the vast majority of cases you’re supposed to just leave the mare alone to get on with it. Not only that, you’re actually
encouraged
to leave her alone in order to leave the umbilical intact as long as possible—the better to achieve maximum placental blood transfer to the foal.

In late afternoon, when I find myself skimming passages because I recognize the information within them, I shut the computer down and head back to the barn. Then I mix a bucket of bran mash, stick a dandy brush in my pocket, and wander out to the back paddocks to see Bella.

Bella is my personal project, a thirty-four-year-old Morgan mare who came into Dan’s care a few months ago. She’d had a good life until about a year ago when her owner got into a spot of trouble with a shotgun and ended up in prison. A neighbor who knew nothing about horses took over his twenty-six mares and geldings, turned them all out together, and tossed hay over the fence in one big pile. Bella, being old and arthritic, was driven away by the other horses, and since the ground was covered in snow, there was no grazing.

With her person suddenly missing, her arthritis untreated, and no food, Bella simply shut down. When the neighbor finally noticed something amiss, he sent the
emaciated old mare to auction. Dan intercepted right before the gavel came down, paying three cents a pound more than the killer buyer.

He brought her home on Christmas Eve, the saddest sack of bones I’d ever seen. Her chestnut coat was run through with gray, her mane and tail straggly. Her head hung low—as did her bottom lip, as though she couldn’t be bothered to keep it closed.

I’ve seen Dan coax horses back from the brink when anyone else would have given up, trying everything from equine massage to acupuncture to aromatherapy when traditional veterinary care fails—but in this case everything was failing. Since there was no medical reason for it, Dan finally concluded she wanted to die.

I couldn’t accept that. Something about her eyes haunted me. They were hollow and glazed, which is certainly not uncommon in horses when they first arrive here, but I saw something else, too. Since Joan and I were teaching on alternating days, I started spending my off-days here, working with Bella.

Dan was immensely grateful, because he was working fourteen-hour days trying to get his latest load of rescued horses adopted. His gratitude made me all the more determined to save the old mare, because I want him to know I support his work. I want him to know that I’m willing to do this with him. Hell, what I really want him to know is that I’m ready for us to start our life together.

I put Bella in a paddock by herself so she’d have no competition for food. I put Barney, an equally ancient Thoroughbred gelding, in the paddock next to her, for company. I brought her pellets, oats, apples, carrots, mints—I tried all the tricks I used on Hurrah last year,
but she was having nothing to do with any of it. She grew thinner and thinner, until it was hard to believe she could remain upright.

Naturally, the breakthrough that led to her recovery came on one of the days I was teaching at Maple Brook. Life’s like that sometimes.

Dan was in the quarantine barn, mixing up buckets of bran mash to disguise the taste of medications for his surgical patients. Somehow, Bella got free and her nose led her to Dan. Apparently she was quite insistent on the matter. I wasn’t there, of course, but Judy’s description of the commotion as Dan danced from medicated bucket to medicated bucket trying to keep Bella’s nose out of them was hilarious, particularly since Judy acted out the parts of both horse and man, flinging her long arms and legs about like a marionette.

And so began Bella’s recovery. She loved her bran mash so much she’d lick the bucket clean with her eyes shut, ears twitching in ecstasy. And she began eating hay again.

We realized she was going to make it the day we came out and caught her nuzzling Barney over the paddock fence.

Now they share a paddock, inseparable friends. They spend much of the day standing head to rump, snoozing in the sun.

As I approach with her mash, Bella lifts her head and lets loose a low rumble, a throaty
huh-huh-huh, huh-huh-huh.
It’s a greeting of honor, the one reserved for a horse’s chosen person.

“Hey, sweets,” I say, opening the gate and coming through. She plods over and shoves her head in the bucket. I haven’t even set it down yet. Barney turns to
look and resumes snoozing. He couldn’t care less about bran mash. They’re a perfect couple. Jack and Mrs. Spratt.

As Bella eats, I pull the dandy brush from my pocket and run it over her coat. Then I pick some tangles out of her tail with my fingers. She ignores me, continuing to lick her bucket long after the bran mash is gone, pushing it up against the fence with her eyes squeezed shut. When she finally gives up on it, she pulls her head out, turns to look at me, sniffs my hand, gives it a quick lick because it smells like bran mash, and wanders back to Barney.

As I turn to leave the paddock, I see Judy approaching. She stumbles on a clump of dirt.

“Whoopsy,” she says, staring back in consternation and then tripping over something else. She comes to an abrupt stop just outside the paddock, pushes her glasses up her nose, and places her hands on her hips. She squints even though the sun is behind her, shining through her hair so that it looks like a halo of steel wool. “Mind if I take off now?”

“What’s left? Just evening feed?”

“I got it ready. All you gotta do is bring them in.”

“Thanks, Judy. You’re a doll.”

“Don’t I know it.” She turns to go.

“Oh, hey, Judy,” I call. “When did you last check Maisie?”

“Just now. She’s sulking, so I think you’re safe.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“She’s attached to Dan, and he’s gone.”

Apparently I look baffled, because Judy continues.

“Prey animals. They have a smidgeon of choice when
things happen. But check her once an hour anyway, just in case. Say, you know how to work the foal-cam?”

“Uh, no.” I say.

“Put the TV on channel three, and then press the Input button on the big clicker.”

“Sounds easy enough.”

“It’s not brain surgery,” she says, walking away.

I wince, because she’s probably just jinxed me. In my experience, those words have always been the precursor to some disaster.

A quarter of an hour after Judy leaves, the sky splits with a resounding crash of thunder and
SLOOSH!
—an entire ocean’s worth of water drops on my head. Why, I can’t imagine, because the last time I looked up there was nothing up there but rolling puffy clouds. In retrospect, I suppose they
were
suspiciously tall and lumpy.

The water comes in sheets, sideways, never in the form of rain. Instead, it vacillates between hard sleet and clumpy snow, which melts the second it hits the ground and turns it into great squelching catfish mud whose many gaping mouths are constantly trying to suck off my boots. I rush back and forth from pasture to barn, desperate to get the horses in before they’re soaked through.

They huddle at the gates, shivering, with snow gathering along their spines and manes and wondering what the hell is taking me so long.

When they’re all safely inside, rubbed down and dry and munching on alfalfa hay, and after I’ve made sure I’ve been forgiven by each—because Lord knows I’m
the only human here and therefore responsible—I poke my head outside the main barn and gaze mournfully at the quarantine barn, where Maisie resides.

But since I think I should probably assess the swelling and discharge—not to mention the Leaking Whatevers—in person before relying on the foal-cam, I grab an empty feed bag, hold it over my head, and sprint out into the squall. Halfway there, one foot skids out from under me. I throw both arms out in an attempt to regain my balance, sending the feed bag flying from my head. On its way past, it sluices water down my back. The mud offers no resistance whatever and I crash to the ground. Something snaps in my hip just before I hit. I cry out and clutch it with both hands, my fingers curled into wet, slimy denim. The pain is severe, and for a moment I wonder if I’m going to be able to get up and keep going. When it occurs to me that if I don’t, nobody will find me, I steel myself and struggle to my feet. After ascertaining that I can, indeed, bear weight, I whimper and limp onward, with teeth clenched and the heel of one hand pressed against my hip. I leave the stupid traitorous feed bag in the mud, where I will no doubt slip on it in the morning and break my neck.

I finally reach the quarantine barn and stagger inside.

Maisie is the only horse in the barn, although the other stalls are set up and ready for the ones Dan is probably hauling behind him at this very moment.

She’s in a foaling stall, which is just two regular stalls with the partition removed. She’s a black-and-white draft mare, mostly Percheron, with feathered feet and long whiskers framing her large-boned face. She’s already been adopted, but her new family was nervous about having her give birth at their place, so here she is.

I peek into her stall and find myself facing a large black-and-white rump. Beyond it is an enormously swollen belly. Her tail is wrapped, presumably to keep it out of the way of the action, and she’s in deep straw instead of shavings so that wood particles won’t get inside the foal’s delicate nostrils.

Maisie pretends she doesn’t notice my arrival, but her ears flicker and then settle decidedly further back than they were. Her official greeting is to shift her weight and rest her right hind foot on its rim, daring me to come in.

Since there’s no way I’m opening the door with her foot cocked like that, I crouch down to investigate the foaling kit parked just outside her stall. Actually, I don’t crouch down so much as topple over and crash to the floor, adding a bruised tailbone and wrenched wrist to my list of complaints. I thought I could lower myself on my one good leg, but I guess I haven’t been working out enough. Or at all.

Anyway, I end up on the floor by the foaling kit, which is a blue plastic laundry basket covered with a folded bed sheet and stuffed with all sorts of objects: short and long gloves, a tube of KY Jelly, iodine, Purell, a plethora of fluffy towels and canvas sacks, surgical scissors that must be sterilized because they’re zipped inside a freezer bag, a flashlight, long bulb syringe, clamps, garbage bags, thermometer, stethoscope, loaded hypodermic needles, dental floss, and a cell phone. I extract and identify each artifact, filing it in my head. When I get to the bottom, I put everything back and rise, gasping at the pain that shoots through my lower body.

Maisie still has her rear end to the door. I stare at her
wrapped tail, wishing she’d flick it off to the side since it’s blocking my view of the very thing I have to assess. But she doesn’t. I look both ways down the aisle, wondering if I’m going to be discovered in the morning with my face missing.

I push my filthy wet hair away from my face with filthy wet hands and slip the latch on the door. Maisie’s eyes pop open. She adjusts her weight, still leaving one foot conveniently free for kicking.

I stay put and click my tongue. “Go on, girl. Shove over. Go on! Go on!”

Despite my clicking and pleading, she doesn’t move. I open the door a crack, reach inside to the full length of my arm, and give her a little push. She pins her ears flat and I retreat.

I look from side to side down the aisle, resign myself to my fate, slide the door open and hobble past the menacing hoof.

Once I’m inside, she sighs deeply and cocks her ears in an unmistakable gesture of
Oh, all right. Fine. Just get it over with and leave me alone.
And then I begin to remember how I felt when I was hugely pregnant, and before long, I’m awash with pity for the poor girl and her heavy load.

I approach Maisie’s head with the intention of introducing myself, because I don’t want to be like the rude doctor who came into my labor room and didn’t think to tell me his name until he was in up to the elbow—and even then it was only because I reminded him rather sharply that I also had a head.

I cup both hands beneath her muzzle and coo, but Maisie is not in the mood. Her ears swivel back and her eyes glaze over.

All right, so she’s grumpy. That’s completely understandable for a lady as pregnant as she is. At this point she probably wishes she could be like the lazy Mayzie-bird and leave her egg for Horton to hatch.

I stand by her shoulder—indeed, I brace myself against it since I don’t want to risk keeling over again—and peer beneath her. Her udder is full, but doesn’t appear to be leaking. There’s also no evidence of wax, so I think we’re good there. I approach her rear end somewhat more timidly and after a moment of contemplation grab her wrapped tail. This sets off a strenuous round of tug-of-war, with me yanking and her clamping, until eventually she gives in and lets me move it off to the side.

I observe for a moment, cocking my head and assessing. Certainly things are more engorged than what I’m used to seeing on a mare; but then again, she is hugely pregnant, and a draft horse to boot. I take a last look—mental flash photography, if you will—and drop her tail. Then I go back around to her head and thank her for not kicking me.

Since she still hasn’t forgiven me for having the social ineptitude to show up without so much as a carrot, I ask her nicely to please not have her baby until Dan gets home, skulk past her cocked foot, and stumble off through the mud and pelting sleet to Dan’s trailer.

The stairs are difficult to manage, particularly since I have to avoid the rotten middle one. When I fling the screen door open, it bangs against the outside wall and stays there. I stagger inside, ready to weep with relief at finally being indoors and able to stay there. And for not having to dig mud out of anybody else’s feet, or rub anybody else down, or check anybody else’s udder.