Kerlak Enterprises - Reading Room

Simon Philipe by John Bruhwiler

   Low on the western sky, the April moon illumined the horses grazing in the dew-wet pasture. Jesse, the big-bellied red mare, was circling the herd, now and then cropping grass, easing toward the shadows in the fence line. Par Three, her four-year-old colt, lifted his head and watched his mother, wondering what she saw in the shadows. Then he lowered his head again, giving his full attention to the sweet clover. The next time he looked up, the big mare was gone. Simon Philipe woke up with a start. Not wanting to disturb Ellen, he slid out of bed and pulled on the shorts and shirt and jeans he’d dropped into the dirty laundry basket. Ellen switched on the lamp.
   "Go back to sleep," Simon whispered. "I’m heading to the barn."
   "At three a.m.?"
   "I’m uneasy about Jesse."
   "You said she wasn’t due until next week."
   "I know." Reaching across the queen-sized bed, Simon kissed Ellen’s cheek. She wrapped the sheet more tightly around her face.
   "Don’t forget your eight o’clock lecture."
   Simon had no reasonable cause to worry about Jesse’s giving birth. She wasn’t due for another ten days. Besides, it was more common for horses to be late than premature. Nevertheless, something had alerted him. Rather than cranking the old pickup in the driveway and waking his children and the next-door neighbors, Simon let the vehicle roll down the hill, starting the motor in the street. Even in heavy traffic, from midtown Memphis north to the barn on James Road, the drive took less than fifteen minutes. Cutting through the empty streets of a rough neighborhood that he usually avoided during the day, Simon made it to the barn gate in half the time.
   In the soybean field beyond the tracks, a couple of coyotes babbled, and a grey haze gave the place a magical air. When he found the dozen horses grazing peacefully in the back pasture, he felt foolish for having wasted precious sleep. But since he was there, he strode through the widely scattered herd to check on Jesse. He immediately found Par Three, his son Stefan’s bay gelding, but not his own hunt horse. After checking the stalls and crisscrossing both the front and back pastures in the rising mist, he remembered the panther that had leapt on a lame old gelding the year before and torn his back to shreds.
   Now with some concern, Simon started the search anew. This time, he found the mare. She lay in the deep shadows of the farthest corner, groaning, a foal’s leg sticking out of her rear.
   At his approach the tall horse jumped to her feet, swinging her butt against him. "Cool it, girl," he said, pretending to be calm. "You’re in trouble. I’m here to help."
   As if she’d understood, the mare plopped down again. He knelt in the wet grass behind her and took hold of the foal’s leg, praying it wasn’t a back leg, or she’d really be in a mess. It was a front leg, which meant the foal was positioned correctly. But with the other leg stuck inside, the mare couldn’t squeeze the foal out. To make the birth possible, Simon had to free the other leg, and in order to do that, he had to push the outside leg nearly back into the womb. Firmly he pushed it in until only the tiny black hoof with its soft leaves remained out, then inserted his hand through the torn placenta, feeling for the other, jammed foot. He was in a sweat, and almost in despair, before he found it on the leg bent at the knee and managed to straighten and ease it through the vagina. Both feet were out now, and with each contraction the foal slid toward him, its head resting on the legs, its eyes closed, unmoving. He folded the torn placenta back, and the eyelashes moved. When the mare groaned again, he just barely evaded the flood as the foal slithered onto the grass. The mare rose to her feet, breaking the navel cord, leaving the placenta on the ground.
   Simon rubbed the foal’s dark wet sides, neck, legs, scraggly mane, and touched the brush of a tail. Before long, the baby horse tried to get to her feet but collapsed into a heap of tangled legs. After long minutes and several more attempts to stand, she tumbled back into the slimy placenta. Simon picked her up and moved her a dozen paces away. Again she plunged forward and fell. In the next attempt, the foal spread her front legs, lifting her chest, but her hooves slipped. Again and again she tried. Finally, she kept her head up and chest and stood. The foal took three steps, wobbled, stayed on her feet.
   Then Par Three discovered the new addition to the herd. Whinnying, he approached at a high-stepping trot, drawing the other horses after him. Neck arched and ears pointed, he pranced around them in a circle, the others in tow, blowing, not sure whether to attack or to run. The new mother swung her rear end left and right and all the way around, snorting and kicking at her impertinent mates.
   Finally, the mare placed a violent kick on Par’s hip, drawing blood, and the leader of the mob decided to keep his distance. The others followed, staying thirty feet away, heads still high, ears pointed, whickering into the rising dawn. The foal slung out a long tongue, almost offensively pink, flinging it at her mother’s belly. She suckled, tentatively at first, then vigorously. Now she was safe. The colostrum in the first draft of milk would make her immune to foalhood diseases.
   Letting go of the udder, the skinny baby horse turned her eyes toward Simon, permitting him to touch her head and rub her ears. He stroked her back and belly, careful to avoid the stub of the navel cord, reminding himself to splash it with alcohol, and rubbed her legs all the way down to the hooves. He lifted her legs one after another and tapped the hooves with his open hand, desensitizing them for the farrier who would clean and trim and eventually shoe them. A few moments later the fi lly ran a circle around the mare, bucking, then, spreading her forelegs wide, lowered her head to the ground, and, as if she had done it a thousand times before, she tore a few leaves of grass. The long-legged filly, hardly out of the womb, was a finished creature, bold and bright-eyed, accepting the world as her due.
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