An Imperfect Creature

She comes late in the night like a ghost. I'm delighted. I hadn't seen her for two years, thinking she'd been shot or had succumbed to the harsh winter.

I watch from my window above the snowscape as she extends her graceful neck to test the air and advance another cautious step toward the food I'd left on the frozen ground. Hunger makes her bolder now as it does the other deer. The snow has remained many months and the weaker of them have died of starvation or predation unable to breach the deep snow for dry grass. In spite of it all, I see She has flourished, even roundly pregnant from the November rut, as most of the surviving does are.

She alone stands out from the others. She has only three legs. The fourth is intact but withered as if hit by an auto, possibly a birth defect or old gunshot wound.

She's an anachronism of grace for she advances awkwardly toward the dried corn laying on the snow. She bounces forward on the front foot while the rear hooves dutifully follow, throwing her head and 150 lbs upward in an ungainly lurch. To feed she must assume an even more awkward stance, somehow placing her good leg in a herculean effort to support most of her weight while she's able to reach the ground with her muzzle to feed.

It becomes obvious how she's survived when competing deer arrive for the food as well. She extends the withered hoof and leg like a sword, lashing out with it, even using her teeth to bite. I see the clumps of hair on the snow. The interlopers are keenly aware that she is different, a force to be reckoned with and respectfully wait until she finishes.

Last night she arrived early accompanied by yearling twin sisters, possibly her own. I inadvertently put out Sassy, our yearling standard poodle, on a lead attached near the door. The dog froze as the deer stood surprised as well. Remarkable. Both stared for an eternal five minutes, twenty feet apart. Three Legs finally hopped forward a single step, her ears forward as if she perceived the large long legged poodle to be a fawn or another deer. I held my breath.

Sassy could stand it no longer and gave a single "Whoof". Three legs whirled and raced away, far ahead of her companions. The speed of this tripod creature was incredible, the single front leg seeming to function far better than two!.

I love Three Legs. Why does she haunt me? What is it... pity? I don't think so. Is it projection? Do I love the the thing in her which I can only despise and try to amputate of myself? My own imperfections? Perhaps we're all more perfect than we think rather than more perfect than we feel. Perhaps Someone is watching us, marvelling and loving us for our imperfections. I hope so.

Good night, Three Legs....

To Ride a Black Horse

He watched me from the corner of his eye as he grazed nearby. He had a weakness for apples and one sat on the ground beside me beckoning as I feigned reading my book. He edged closer still grazing, the sound of his grinding teeth now quite audible. I sat motionless as he approached. In the stall he'd only tried to bite and kick me. Out here in the paddock he seemed more at ease. Good strategy.

I could see his breath in the chilly morning air, his huge black head inching toward the apple near my foot, noisily clipping grass around it. He extended his long upper lip to it and rolled the fruit toward his feet and gobbled it up. He smelled the other in my pocket and inched closer, his velvet nose now touching my leg then to the lump in my pocket.

I extended my hand slowly like the hand of a clock He smelled it, ignored it and pursued the apple. I placed my hand on his forehead. Good. I mockingly pushed him. He persisted. He hadn't eaten in several days.

I slowly picked up the rope and halter and placed the knotted end of the rope over his massive neck. Good. He smelled the halter, snorted and continued his quest for the apple. I took it out and lured his muzzle through the loops of leather, carefully securing the buckle above his ears as he crunched into the apple. I had him.

He didn't run but continued to sniff my clothing, undoubtedly for more apples. I now held the rope secured to his halter and continued to touch his head, his ears and his neck. If he bolted I at least had a rope to catch and hold him, a violent scenario I had no wish to relive. It was only days before I'd seen him lash out with teeth and hooves at the handlers who tried to load him into the horse trailer in Canada. His halter was broken in the struggle and they had to literally hog-tie and blindfold him, finally using a power winch to drag his huge squeeling black mass up the ramp and into the trailer. He screamed and struggled for the several hundred mile return trip. He was cut in several places and I was anxious to get some kind of antiseptic on the angry looking wounds.

I stood up as he lowered his head to sniff my book. Remarkable is the power of the biblical apple and an idealistic fourteen year old boy.

I moved toward the barn with the rope in hand and he followed, ears forward, though skittishly dancing around the book in his path. At the barn we stopped and I tethered him to a post and found the antibiotic ointement. He allowed me to tend the wounds though he frequently flinched. I tried to remain in his peripheral vision and he seemed content with it.

I decided to press my luck and pulled an eastern riding saddle from the wall. I layed it on the ground in front of him and he inspected it with a series of snorts and wickers. I picked it up and carefully placed it on his broad back being careful to loop the stirrups and girth together as not to tap his bruised sides. This was satisfactory though we both felt another apple was in order. Fortunately I kept a washtub filled from a nearby orchard.

I carefully lowered the stirrups and adjusted the girth strap loosely around his middle and began to walk him around the paddock. So far, so good. We stopped again for the bridle, the acid test. Again, the lure of the apple won out as I easily slipped the bit into his mouth with the fruit and fastened the throat and ear straps as he munched away. For good measure I placed a heavy burlap bag of oats on the saddle. No problem. We circled the paddock again.

In the spirit of anticlimax, he allowed me to mount him without so much as a snort. I jumped down, tightened the girth and remounted. Splendid. Despite my youth I'd ridden many horses at this boarding stable, but this monstrous black horse was different. It was to sit astride steel. Every muscle was defined as if designed by daVinci. He was a mountain of a horse. In fact his registered name was to be Mount Forest.

We circled the paddock at a walk avoiding the jumps but allowing him to sniff and inspect them. He suddenly lurched sidewise like a cat, nearly throwing me. Scotty, the alcoholic owner of the stable had approached the fence from the house and in his enthusiasm had thrown his arms over the top rail of the paddock fence to congratulate. The horse's skittishness escaped me and my youthfulness. I only considered him spirited. It was clear to everyone that the horse and I were mutually smitten with each other.

Scotty's speech was slurred as he chided,
"Looks like that horse is yours, Lefty. Sure wish you could afford him. Maybe you can make an Olympic champ out of that crazy son-of-a-bitch. Can he jump?"

"I dunno. Haven't tried him.", I said.

I steered him toward a deadfall tree trunk on the practice course. He stepped over it easily. I took him to the low stone fence at a walk and stopped at least six feet way, then tapped his sides. In a heartbeat I was on the other side. It was a standing leap of over 20 feet. Scotty's eyes were like dinner plates and seemed suddenly sober.

"Try 'im on the five foot, Lefty."

This time we cantered. His ears were forward and he seemed to gather speed against my tight rein. I wanted him to have time to measure but he was in the charge of a warrior. Again we left the ground well before the jump, this time an explosion of muscle and speed. My head was a good twenty feet in the air. The swift momentum landed us as softly as Pegasus on the other side. Indeed, he seemed to fly.

It was almost the last time I saw Scotty drunk. We worked from the time I walked in from school until darkness. We built higher jumps, wider jumps, water jumps, stone jumps, log jumps, brush jumps and board jumps. Scotty watched as the Black Horse followed me from task to task in the enlosed compound, knocking over my nail bucket with his curious muzzle, sampling tools, munching the green underbrush I dragged into place, as well as splashing precious water from the water hazard.

Our workouts were now in dead earnest. Scotty entered us in our first local hunter competition in which we cruised easily. The word was out now. There was a huge black wonderhorse who easily cleared six foot jumps by a foot

The only incident was one which should have flagged the future. Scotty had unwisely tied the horse to the unattached horse trailer between events. While feeding, the animal tugged at the thick rope and the trailer rolled backwards toward him and the tongue fell noisily from its support. The horse leaped away and of course the trailer followed at close range. The terrified animal bolted dragging the huge several ton trailer at full gallop thru the show grounds and parking lot, damaging several luxury cars, finally wedging against a tree breaking the horse's halter and freeing him. He stood quietly nearby as I breathlessly retrieved him while Scotty took insurance claims. It was a miracle no one was killed or injured, including Mount Forest himself.

The Ohio show was an unofficial Olympic trial. The finest horses in the midwest were there. I took special care in braiding his tail and mane, oiling his hooves to a shine. Mounty and I swept the first round easily to the murmurs of the crowd enamored by his performance and raw intimidating style.

It was the late afternoon round as I led him toward the ring as someone's noisy little terrier had gotten loose and ran nearby causing Mounty to bolt and rear. He seemed edgier as we entered the ring and began the course. He was flawless to the delight of the crowd, but I felt his muscles bunch well before the jumps, sometimes dog-tracking, skittering slightly sidewise to the blind jumps.

It was a high log jump next to the spectator fence. Easy. But as we left the ground a woman leaned over the fence with a flash camera, I could hear the click and saw the burst of light. It was too late. The horse tried to leap sidewise, twisting, but hooves had already left the ground in the high arc of his leap. Instead, a grotesque contortion, front legs smashing against the top logs with a dead thud, his huge head thrown over the top with me close to his neck, already unseated, driving toward the ground, the horse's rear hooves kicking frantically, head first, poised above me, falling, crushing...


We impacted together as his huge body rolled over me, his chin planted beside me in the dirt, his trailing mass a pile-driver, vertically crushing most of the bones in his neck. The body toppled across me, the pommel of the saddle crushing my arm with a grinding snap. I remember lights, red lights, voices, sirens, shouts, the sickening sight of his quivering hooves near my face as he gurgled for air. It haunts me still.

I walked out of the emergency room carrying the sling and heavy cast, my scratched face punctuated by two black eyes. I didn't remember being hit in the face. Scotty was waiting for me at the entrance. Seeing him, I began to cry harder for I knew that Mounty was likely destroyed in the ring and taken away. Sadly, I saw that Scotty was drunk again. Very drunk. I'd be driving the empty horse trailer home despite the broken arm.

He looked at me with swollen bloodshot eyes as I continued to cry and put an arm around my shoulder, his beer soaked breath in my face. His words still ring in my ears 40 years later,

"Nothin's fer sure, Lefty. Nothin's fer sure...."

Message In a Bottle

I circled the table again. The dark blue gun sat in the center pointing toward the window overlooking the beach. Silent. Final. I sat down, picked it up and checked the rounds in the cylinder. I'd kept it for this moment alone. Protection.


The pain had become intolerable. I finally understood what drives others to self destruction. It felt more like I was pulled to the moment; not really driven. It was a gravity, being pulled downward; a grave.


I pressed the cold muzzle to my temple without much process and silently looked out the window, over the water and to the horizon where the sun was now setting. My thought:

'If there is Anything out there in the universe, anything that can give me at least a foothold against this unbearable pain, tell me now'.

The pad of my index finger was firm on the narrow trigger, the hammer cocked and ready to fall, releasing me to the Unknown. I stared resolutely across the water to the peach colored clouds around the setting sun. I was fully prepared for the final sting and blackness.

There came a faint tap stirring, unmistakably, somewhere in my tattered psyche. There was another faint pulse, something emanating from somewhere. I lowered the gun to the table quite sure of my inner perception. After all, my inner life is where I'd been living for the past several weeks. I'd purposely isolated myself in the beach house accessible only on foot or by boat.

I stood. I could always follow through if I'd been mistaken.

I walked out to the beach, processing what I'd just experienced. The water was calm offering a mirror to the orange and blue sky. There had just been a storm yet the beach was uncharacteristically clear except for a single plastic soft drink bottle gently rolling forth and back on the sand with each wave.

As I drew closer I saw that, though partially full of water, there was what appeared to be paper inside. I picked it up, removed the already loosened cap and poured the contents over my open hand. The paper stubbornly remained inside.

I returned to the house and cut the bottle open, carefully removed the soaked paper and gingerly unfolded a single page note fortunately written in dark crayon. It was dated at the top a little over a month old.

It had been written by a twelve year old girl name Deena and her younger cousin. They'd dropped the bottle and note some hundred miles to the south. It gave a mailing address and a simple message to notify them if the message was found.

Amused, I scribbled a note giving my own address and mailed it the following day, venturing out to village for the first time in weeks.

I began cutting and stacking firewood from the surrounding woods again, the bottle, the note and the events of the previous days still persistently in my thoughts. I felt fairly good and ventured to the post office each day and finally, among the junk mail and bills, saw several letters from the hometown from which the bottle had come. I opened the one marked 'Deena'. It was the excited patter of a small town kid, a full page inventory of pets, hobbies, friends and family history. The other letters were from equally excited parents and cousins, marveling over the journey of the bottle and note. Secretly, I had to agree. It may have saved my life.

I returned a note explaining that I was a struggling artist on a sabatical and shared my own brief history, burning the three piece suits, alcoholism, a divorce, a distant family, all hopefully vague enough to keep future enquiries at arms length.

The exchange continued remarkably for several years in which Deena poured her heart out to an unseen confidante. Her parents were in the midst of divorce and she was in the throes of adolescence with all the accompanying hopes, fears, dreams and pain. I could only offer encouragement and as much support as I could muster.

Through the years she finally met a boy from the navy and was married. Children followed and apparent fulfilment. I finally told her about the circumstances I was in when the message in the bottle arrived years before. It was obvious she was pleased at being part of such a strange and wonderful syncronicity. I had to agree. Some things defy our feeble attempts to quantify, qualify and explain. It seems, as an alcoholic, that most of my important messages have come in a bottle.

Sierpinski Triangle 

Trek

I stepped off the bus into an icy wall of air that took my breath away. 2 AM. Shit. 'Home' was still five miles away over the ice. Usually there was a steady stream drunken snowmobilers from the island bar-hopping and returning from the mainland. Too cold I guessed - well below zero. I hated the noisy snowmobiles anyway.I remembered a few snowmobilers, who from past winters, crossed the five mile ice bridge during heavy snow storms while drunk, only to become disoriented and fatally wander into the unfrozen channels of shipping lanes cleared by the Coast Guard icebreakers. The bodies and sleds are seldom found. The dark currents beneath the ice are strong and 500 feet deep. Little comfort as I stepped from the shore and began my trek to the island, my heavy shoulder bag already cutting into my collarbone. The snow was several inches deep but light.

Though the night was windless and crystal clear, my mood was dark with a suddenly heightened sense of loneliness and aloneness. It was then the ice began to eerily rumble and roar as it does in response to subzero temperatures, expanding and shifting like the earth's mantle, cracking and quaking under foot. Unsettling, though I knew it was several feet thick by now.

During the first mile I consciously kept the faint lights of the island in view, occasionally removing my glove to remove the uncomfortable accumulated ice from my moustache brought by the freezing exhaled vapor beneath my nose. I still fought the overwhelming sense of isolation. The images began as if from an overhead camera high in the sky, seeing myself as a mere speck on the ice, at the same time a vision of the uninhabitable depth and darkness of the freezing black water below me, a 500 foot valley extending to a mountain, the top being the island. The shifting ice continued to thunder through the darkness in a menacing soundtrack for it all.

I stopped for a cigarette and on cue the ice stopped thundering. Silence. No, a thousand silences. It seemed as if the world was holding its breath. The smoke curled straight up. Not a bit of wind. The camera above seemed to zoom further away leaving me lost in the snowscape and unbearable darkness. I shook my head and blew it off to depression, still a familiar problem in recovery, but it persisted. I think I felt a tear freeze to my cheek. I had to move on.
I was about half way when something seemed to flash before my eyes. Lightning? An azure colored patch of light began to move across the sky before me, then a red one and green, violet and orange. Then they seemed to expand into brilliant curtains of light, throbbing, flashing and waving as if driven by winds. Aurora Borealis ! I stood transfixed. I'd not seen them since I was a child in the forties. I began walking toward them, following, centered above the island. The ice was as bright as day, awash in the reflected lights.

I suddenly felt relieved, an overwhelming sense of well-being and flushed with hope. It was inexplicable. The lights continued until I reached the shore of the island, then faded.

I asked folks on the island, that day, if they'd seen the lights. None had. I realised they were for me. Mine alone.

Crack Goddess

The temp agency sent me to landscape and clean up around an inner city school. It covered one square block of a notoriously bad neighborhood. I wondered why they would send a big white guy.

I was a little uneasy at the perimeter sidewalk repair since it brought stare-downs from slow moving cars, panhandling and too-close encounters in general but I kept my head down and busied myself as best I could, avoiding eye contact.

She passed by several times each day, sometimes with groceries or beer, offering, a "Good Mawnin' " or "Howyadoin' " depending on how high she was. Sometimes she passed silently, her glazed eyes straight ahead as if sleepwalking.

One day she finally stopped within several feet and engaged me about how hot it was. It was indeed in the nineties and humid. I waited for the pitch for money but none came.

She was trim but disheveled, about 30, maybe 40 years old, dressed in blue toreadors, flip-flops and a stained sleeveless blouse. An old cut jutted her lower lip and a high cheekbone was puffed. Her front teeth were absent. Scores of dark punctures and sores covered the insides of her arms, which she self-consciously folded in front.

I noticed that as she spoke, she lacked the hardness and bullshit of the street. Her name was Shaquila. Her people were from Mississipi. She'd moved here with her mother earlier that year, met a man who introduced her to crack and moved in with him. He obviously beat her up. Her speech was a torrent of profane history; her man beating her and taking her money, her kids neglected, her mother's blistering judgements and her addiction to crack, alcohol and heroin.

I offered that I too was cross-addicted and managed to free myself for quite a few years. She seemed to take a more hopeful tone and asked how I did it. I told her that the kicker was coming up with a 'higher power' than myself after 'quitting' hundreds of times. In a melancholy voice she volunteered that she used to go to church and was prominent in the community, took care of her kids. I offered that it was all possible again though really difficult and not for the faint of heart. The danger was bullshitting oneself and not changing the environment that keeps you using.
When we parted she seemed more animated and enthusiastic.

The next day she returned with her head high, eyes clear, her hair washed and styled. Her clothes seemed clean neat. She announced she was quitting and returning to Mississippi with her mother and kids. I marveled at her new confidence and sense of purpose, laughing and animated.

The next day was Friday and she returned wearing a dress and heels and said she'd just returned from church. I suspected it was a private fashion show but complimented her on the make-up and style. She was semi radiant, confident and lucid. I told her this was my last say at the school and her face darkened a bit but she smiled. She said goodbyes, shook my hand and thanked me for the 'kind words'. I told her my prayers were with her and thanked her for walking through my life and watched her walk away.

This one's for you Shaquila from Mississippi. Keep on keepin' on.

Carpet Ride

I followed a stone stairwell downward against the humid smell of sewage. Spiraling downward, it became darker but with a lone skylight opening somewhere above in the teeming streets of blue air, oxcarts, tuk-tuks, donkey carts, tongas, Suzuki and Mercedes.

The 'Old City' of Lahore is, some say, 30% more densely populated than the most populated part of Calcutta. It was there I spent my first day of several years on the subcontinent. It seemed more surreal since I hadn't slept during the 40 hour flight from Chicago. I was conned into a tour, my least favorite way to observe anything.

After several flights we entered a dim roundish chamber of about 50 feet in diameter. As my eyes became accustomed to the dimness, the looms appeared with small human figures hunched at each one, all in various poses of kneeling, some crosslegged, others a reclining before their looms, flying fingers tying tiny knots, the only apparent motion.

The faces looking up at us were all smiling shyly.... kids. Boys. I noticed their limbs, fingers and toes, many distorted from working in the same position hours, months and years on end. Elbows and ankles protruded with calcified or arthritic masses. I began looking for the exit. It was suffocating. Not the air but the images. I couldn't turn off my internal camera. It kept clicking though I tried to stop it. I flashed back to my own childhood in a poorer area of rural America.

The politically correct Americans all climbed on the 'child labor' bandwagon indeed asking the owner about child labor. He dryly responded that if the boys were above in the mean streets, they'd only be dead in a matter of time.

"Here", he said, "they can at least survive and make a living.".

I think it's quantum physics.: If something is really true, it can only paradoxically divide against itself.

The Americans and Canadians began buying carpets on the spot. I finally found the stairwell and fled to the mean streets above.

A Trial By Fire

I awoke. It was beyond a hangover. My head felt like gelatin, each nerve and ganglion compressed, screaming. There was something else through the fog and the shrieking smoke alarm. It wasn't fog. It WAS smoke; acrid, pungent, suffocating. Something felt hot against my face. I focused a little. It was fire! The mattress around me was aglow like an inhaled cigarette.
I gathered and leaped to the floor. My hand burned. Naked. Where was I... St. Louis? New York? Memphis? A hotel. The hotel. O.K.

I ran to the bathroom to find, in the mirror, my face and body blackened by smoke and ash, turned on the exhaust fan, grabbed an ice bucket and began to fill it from the tub. No good. There must be an extinguisher in the hall as I donned the bedspread on the floor like a cape and scrambled out the door amidst a dark cloud of smoke - a blackened and terrifying apparition to the startled guests and employees in the hallway. The word was out: Fire.

I sprayed a CO2 extinguisher on the smoldering mattress and saw the outline of my body, like a crime scene chalk outline. Miraculously, I'd pissed the bed while passed out and it had produced a fire barrier around me, keeping me mostly from being burned.

Being an upscale hotel, I was whisked away to another suite as if nothing had happened.I knew better. It had happened twice before. The Burning Bed is an advanced alcoholic's signature and calling card. Surviving the disease is another matter.

A Trial By Water

The nurse handed me a single thin bedsheet and plastic pillow. She led me into a stark and windowless room of ceramic tile with a bare stainless steel exam table in the center. My 'bed'. Beneath was a tarnished brass drain puncuating the floor. It was to be my room for the night. I hadn't slept in days and didn't question my new spartan quarters. The nurse said it was my third night after waking from my alcohol induced coma. My blood pressure was still high. Something was supposed to 'happen'. She pointed to the nurse call button on the side of the table and bid me good night. Red light came from a video camera overhead.

I crawled upon the freezing table not really caring and for the first time since admission, fell into a fitful sleep.

Something woke me. My eyes flew open. Water was trickling somewhere in the hollow room.

There was no sink or basin. Annoyance. It was coming from beneath my 'bed'. I peered over the edge as a stream of water cascaded from my chin and fingers. It was me! The water was coming from me. Every pore seemed to weep onto the table and cascade over the edge in an audible spatter. It was as if my body was betraying me, perhaps my mind. I must be hallucinating. But then two nurses burst through the door, turning on the overhead light and began to take temp and blood pressure.

Something indeed was happening. It was the longest my body had been without alcohol or cocaine. It was giving up. Surrendering. For the first time in years, I agreed.

A Small Death

We were in the rear of the barns, out of sight from the general public. There were several dead cows and calves waiting in the mud to be hauled away by truck - 'culls'. Likely birthing problems; an ongoing cycle in dairy operations where cows number in the thousands.
Among the bodies, she stood serenely, wearing a rope halter, the lead rope held by the foreman. The vet stood at the Holstein's side with an arm-length latex inspection glove on his right arm. Both men seemed impatient to get on to other matters. I'd only learned later that a staph infection had reeked havoc internally and she was doomed. A cull. It was hard to reconcile because she looked so vital and healthy. Someone asked where 'the gun' was. There was none. Someone had used it for hunting.

The vet suddenly produced a shiny scalpel and expertly made a large horizontal incision in her side. She seemed unconcerned. We stood transfixed. He forced his hand along with the scalpel through the wound and downward into her body cavity and quickly severed the aorta and withdrew his arm as blood welled from the opening, down her side and into the mud. The men removed her halter and hurried away to the next chore. She seemed to look to the horizon and, as if she suddenly felt tired, dropped to her knees to lie down on her side, head erect.

I could stand it no longer. The others had also walked away. I walked to her place on the ground and kneeled in the mud beside her head. Soon her eyelids drooped as if very sleepy, and involuntarily lowered her head into my lap with a deep sigh. Her head became heavier with each moment, her pulse a random throb. I wondered sadly if she'd had calves. I wondered how much milk she'd produced for America. I also wondered if anything in the universe knew that she died that morning. I wonder now.