I’m a horse man. Means I raise horses. Always have been, always will be. My granddaddy, he was a horse man. My daddy, he was a horse man. My son Jeb, he’s six years old, once he’s all growed up he’s gonna be a horse man. Don’t know if I’m gonna live that long, but if Jeb has any sons I’m gonna make damn sure they’re horse men, too. Shit, if he has any daughters I’ll make ‘em into horse women. Don’t want no one thinkin’ I got a problem with women. Nah, truth is I love ‘em, even got married to one. Her name’s Ingeborg. One of ‘em Scandinavian names, met her while I was over in Norway on business.
See, I’m a stud milker and a damn good one at that. Got a fine breedin’ stock of stallions back at the ranch. Maybe most of y’all ain’t familiar with horses, but there’re folks out there who care a whole lot about ‘em. Me, I like ‘em fer the beauty, the majesty, but fer a lotta folk it’s about the sport. They need a horse that can run quick, turn on a dime, and jump real fuckin’ high. If someone’s tryin’ to create the perfect runnin’ horse, they sure as shit ain’t gonna pick the mommy and daddy all willy-nilly. No sirree, they’re gonna be lookin’ fer a mommy and a daddy that meet their needs. Problem is, let’s say you got the perfect mommy and daddy. Horse breedin’, it’s a real violent act. Maybe y’all know about that “Mr. Hands” feller, real shame what happened to him. But, that’s the kinda reality you gotta deal with when yer tryin’ to breed a horse. A mare, her hole ain’t much larger than an adult man’s. I’m not tryin’ to get too explicit here, just wanna make it clear that you got a high risk of damagin’ the mare when you let a stallion run wild on the poor thing.
So that’s where I come in. I got a real gentle touch, been doin’ this shit fer decades. I get a call from some feller who wants to breed himself a good runnin’ horse, says he’s got the mare right with him and all he needs is a particular one of the stallions I keep on the ranch. Well, what I’ll do is milk that stallion real good and then hand-deliver the stuff I get to the client in question. Most people, they probably can’t keep that stuff fresh fer more than an hour or two. Thing is, my wife’s real smart when it comes to freezin’ shit. Cryogenics, is what it’s called. She’s got all sorts of capsules and containers that she’s made that’ll keep the stuff good fer, hell, weeks. Never taken me that long to reach the client, but if humans ever start livin’ on the moon and I’ve gotta make deliveries up there, well, that’s already settled. Now, once I reach the client, it’s up to them to administer the stuff to the mare. Ain’t my business, you know? I handle everything on the stallion side of things and the rest is up to them.
That’s the way my life’s been fer a real long time. Woulda been perfectly fine with milkin’ studs ‘til the day I die. Sometimes, though, that just ain’t the way things go. I s’pose it was around half a year ago that I noticed one of my stallions, Embrego, was missin’. Embrego’s a jumpin’ horse, had a long and successful career in the jumpin’ circuits. Shit, I’ve never seen a horse that can jump half as high as that stallion can. Sorry, I oughta use past tense when I talk about Embrego. I didn’t do too well in English class on account of my fascination with horses. I was just a lad, s’pose in my head I figured if a horse don’t need English I don’t neither. I was totally nonverbal ‘til the age of ten.
Anyway, so I go into Embrego’s stable to give him his mornin’ feed and I see that the damn horse ain’t there. Well, I’ve had horses run on me plenty of times. Shit, sometimes I’ll find ‘em a mile away, walkin’ around some feller’s corn field like that’s right where they’re s’posed to be. Usually when that happens, though, I can track ‘em. You know, followin’ the hoofprints and all that shit. In this case, though, there just weren’t anythin’ to go off of, like Embrego’d just disappeared into thin air. Spent the whole day lookin’ around fer that horse, most of the next day too, but I couldn’t find jack shit. Problem is, stallion like that’s worth more than most fellers’ houses. If the horse hadn’t run off, must’ve been horsenapped, way I figured. So, I got the police involved. They couldn’t turn up shit. Eventually I just had to give up. Damn shame, it was. Don’t think the world’ll ever see another jumpin’ horse like Embrego.
A bit later I got an order from a client, had a strong prancin’ mare and wanted to try and pop out some prize-winnin’ show horses. A good show horse needs to be real smart, it’s a whole different type of competition compared to the runnin’ and the jumpin’ that most folk are familiar with. Well, I had the perfect stallion to go with that mare, a real horse-genius named Svengali. Picked him up a few years back, was honestly blown away by how smart the fucker was. I s’pose you could tell it from the way he walked, weren’t nothin’ like the other horses, more like a horse that’d reached one of them states of nirvana the fellers in Asia talk about. Sometimes I’d see him prancin’ ‘round his pasture, doin’ the kinds of routines he’d done as a show horse, like he was practicin’ them or some shit. Couldn’t believe my God damn eyes.
Well, I gave Svengali a good milkin’ and hopped on a plane to Canada to go meet the client. Been to Canada a few times before that, never been impressed. Too many trees fer a horse man like me. Well, I drop off the stuff and mosey my way back home, figure that’s that. Problem is, I get another call from the feller a few days later, tells me his mare just up and died. Damn shame is what I said, but there ain’t too much I can do. Feller starts beggin’ me, says he’s got another prancin’ mare that ain’t as good as the last one but’s still pretty good. Truth be told I felt a little bad fer the guy, so I decided to give him a discount. Five percent seemed reasonable to me but my wife managed to talk me up to ten percent, said the feller must’ve been in a real grievin’ state of mind and the least I could do is give him a two digit discount. Well, my wife’s a lot more sensible than me when it comes to most things that ain’t related to horses, so I decided to go with whatever she thought was best.
So I gave Svengali another milkin’ and went up to Canada again. Milkin’ a stallion twice in such a short span of time usually ain’t good fer the horse, but I knew Svengali could take it. If he weren’t up to it he would’ve refused to be milked, that’s the kinda horse he is. Anyway, I go back to the ranch and a few days later I get yet another call from the client, seems this mare died too. This time he sounds a little riled up, though, at least as riled up as a Canadian feller can get. He says the stuff I gave him was poison, I say that’s ridiculous, I got it right from the source, how dare a Canadian feller like you accuse me of killin’ yer horse. Then he tells me he saved a little bit of the stuff I gave him, sent it in fer testing, results came out all fucked up. I say how so, he says the DNA don’t match up, like the little squiggly things in it don’t all come from the same horse. I assure him that I ain’t dilutin’ the stuff in any manner, but I don’t quite think the feller believes me. It ain’t exactly a rare practice in my particular field, hate to admit, but it can kill a mare and that just don’t sit right with me. Can’t say I really understand how it works, but maybe that’s fer the better. Horse man’s gotta keep things simple if he don’t wanna end up losin’ his mind in this fucked up world we live in.
Well, had to retire Svengali after that. If he was squirtin’ out pure poison, not much I could really do to resolve the situation. And when I say “retire” I don’t mean I shot the poor bastard, just wasn’t milkin’ him no more. Only put down one horse in my whole life, never had the heart to do it again. Anyway, things quieted down the next month or two, then I started havin’ more problems. Studs started disappearin’ again, first it was a pullin’ horse named Baldr then it was a runnin’ horse named Late fer Breakfast (runnin’ horses always got funny names like that). Few days later it was another pullin’ horse, Fredo. By that point I had too many missin’ horse cases and not enough time in the day to figure out what in the hell was goin’ on.
Then, one day when I went out to feed him I noticed somethin’ strange with Svengali. My eyesight ain’t what it used to be, musta been why I didn’t notice it sooner, but that old stud weren’t lookin’ quite like he used to no more. Hell, he weren’t lookin’ like no horse I’d ever seen before. Had a few extra eyes just poppin’ out all willy-nilly ‘round his head, and when he opened his mouth there were so many teeth in there that they looked to be tryin’ to push each other out. His color weren’t quite right either, before he’d been tan all over but now there was browns and blacks and grays mixed in everywhere. He looked to have put on some weight, too, had what you’d probably describe as a beer gut, just on a horse. Thought to myself maybe the bastard’d found his way into the shed where I keep the horse food, but that sure as hell didn’t explain the eyes or the teeth or any of the other shit. I tried checkin’ his vitals to make sure everything was workin’ all right but when I touched his skin felt like something was pullin’ at my fingers and I got spooked real good.
Well, situation was real fucked up with that. Had the missin’ horses and now I wasn’t real sure what to do ‘bout Svengali. I s’pose most horse men woulda just put him down after seein’ some shit like that, but I ain’t most horse men. Don’t mean that in a good way, s’pose I already explained my whole thing with puttin’ a horse down. Ended up flippin’ a coin on it, heads I let him live in peace, tails I put him out of his misery. Well, got tails. Figured I’d have Jeb do it, have him build himself some character. Set things up in the stable all nice and funeral-like, figure if I show some respect fer Svengali maybe God’ll forgive me fer killin’ one of his most beautiful creatures. So what I do is I hand Jeb the shotgun and tell him to aim it right between Svengali’s eyes. The two that’re s’posed to be there, at least.
And then he pulls the trigger and Svengali’s head explodes into a mess of brains and blood and all that other shit. One of the teeth hits me square in the jaw, swore it knocked a couple of my own loose but who knows. Jeb just drops the shotgun and starts cryin’ his eyes out, the tears carvin’ out a path in his face that’s all covered in horse blood. I give him a pat on the head and tell him he did a damn good job and I’m proud of him, but I notice somethin’ ain’t quite right. The horse’s body’s still standin’ there like he didn’t just get his head blown off. Then there’s this weird sound like grapes gettin’ stomped and somethin’ starts to emerge outta where Svengali’s head used to be. First there’s a mouth, then I see the nose-holes, then there’s a long snout, eyes, and finally some ears. The numbers of some of those things weren’t quite what they shoulda been, but it was close enough to a horse’s head that a fool who’d never seen a horse in person woulda still recognized it as belongin’ to a horse. Well, Jeb up and faints when he sees that so I gotta worry ‘bout gettin’ him somewhere safe before I can even think about what in the hell’s goin’ on. So I take Jeb into the house and have my wife look after him, but when I go back out to the stable there’s no trace of Svengali anywhere.
By that point I figured, well, fuck it, if that horse wants to run away I’ll let him run away. I got bigger problems to contend with, anyhow. Got a client livin’ in Japan, put in multiple orders, that right there was enough to snap me outta the weird state of mind I was in. So I gots to work, did some milkin’, then I flew on over there. Was my first time in Japan, terrain ain’t too good fer horses but some folk try to make do. Guess they mostly use the horses fer eatin’ over there, I’m sure it ain’t half bad but considering my deep emotional connection with the horses I just can’t do it, feels like I’m spittin’ in the face of God. Well, client weren’t like that, was more interested in the runnin’ type of horse than the eatin’. Maybe if he weren’t Japanese we coulda been good buddies. Did learn a coupla words of Japanese, though, real interestin’ language. Got a good laugh outta every feller when I greeted them with “Konnichiwa, dude!”
When I got back to the States, wife had some real bad news fer me. Rest of the horses’d gone missin’ the night before, just like that. Felt like I was ‘bout to shit myself right then and there but I held it in. Gotta maintain some semblance of dignity when yer the man of the house. Felt like a real fool, only way somethin’ like that happens is horsenappin’. Shoulda installed cameras or some shit all over the place, guess it just sorta slipped my mind. Well, I’d never had problems with anything of the sort ‘til Embrego went missin’ so I hope you can forgive me fer not handlin’ security properly. Folks ‘round these parts’re real kind, ain’t the types to kidnap a feller’s horses.
Well, I spent the next week thinkin’ ‘bout killin’ myself. Sure the studs I’d lost were worth a whole lot of money but more than that I felt like I’d lost my kid. Not Jeb, but a different kid, a horse kid. S’pose that’s the way most folk feel when somethin’ they love goes missin’. Spent a lotta time just walkin’ ‘round the pastures, starin’ at the prints in the dirt where the horses’d been steppin’ before. Jeb tried cheerin’ me up but he’s just a kid, he don’t know what real sufferin’ is. Anyhow, it was one of those days of pacin’ ‘round the pastures that I noticed somethin’ I hadn’t noticed before, a set of hoofprints leadin’ outside the fences. Well, more like three or four sets of hoofprints. Felt my heart jump up into a place where it ain’t s’posed to be, figured if I followed the trail I’d find somethin’ of some sort.
So I mosey along not tryin’ to get my hopes up but I’m a horse man at heart so I can’t really help but send a silent prayer up to God beggin’ him to put one of my studs at the end of that trail. Trail goes out through the fields, into the woods, out the woods, back into the woods, and then I find myself standin’ in front of somethin’ like a cave. I don’t got a flashlight on me so I head back to grab one, take the shotgun too just in case. Ain’t too keen around caves, bein’ the polar opposite of a pasture and all.
So then I’m standin’ in front of the cave again and I shine the flashlight inside. Don’t see nothin’ but the hoofprints clearly go into the cave, so I start steppin’ forward. It’s dark as hell in there but I can hear some kinda sound up ahead, some sorta heavy breathin’. Sounds to me like a horse deep in slumber, somethin’ I’ve heard many times in my life, and I start gettin’ all excited and whatnot. The closer I get, though, the less sure I am that I’m hearin’ what I think I’m hearin’. Somethin’s snorin’, but maybe it ain’t a horse. Then I hear it again and I think damn maybe it really is a horse. I just don’t know, so I keep walkin’.
Then I see it lyin’ there not too far ahead, still sleepin’ and snorin’ like a babe. ‘Cept it ain’t a babe and it sure as hell ain’t no horse, either. I lose my grip on the shotgun and it falls on the ground, blastin’ a hole in the wall of the cave and makin’ a real loud sound. Well, that wakes the damn thing up and as it stands I find it difficult to really get a good handle on what the hell I’m lookin’ at. It’s got the body parts of a horse but none of them’re arranged in the right order, one head’s in the right place but there’re three others stickin’ out the back and I swear I can see eight or nine legs just stickin’ out every which way. ‘Cept that ain’t all, there’re wings stickin’ out everywhere too, tiny little wings like the ones you’d see on a bat or some shit. There’s more, too, tails and legs and ears and eyes and mouths and none of it makes any God damn sense so I don’t try to think about it too much, just pick the shotgun back up and fire it off in the thing’s general direction. That don’t seem to do much ‘sides piss it off, and it starts makin’ these horrible sounds and scramblin’ towards me. I ain’t never shit my pants before but I reckon I was pretty damn close to doin’ it right there.
I start backin’ up and then shoot at its legs and that seems to knock the thing down. Thing is, I feel like a damn fool ‘cause I know I only got one shot left, didn’t think I was actually gonna use the shotgun so I didn’t care to bring any spare ammunition with me. Figure I gotta make my last shot count, so I step towards the thing while it’s wrigglin’ around on the ground. Assumin’ it’s Svengali I’m lookin’ at, I figure tryin’ to shoot the head off ain’t gonna work so I aim where I think the heart’s gonna be. Then I pull the trigger and there’s this huge explosion of horse and blood and after I wipe off the flashlight it looks like the thing ain’t movin’ no more. I just stand there fer a while and stare at it, but no amount of starin’ makes me feel no better. It’s still twitchin’ all over, all the eyes and wings and ears, but it sure as hell don’t got the strength to get up and chase after me no more. Sounds strange but I can’t help but tear up a little lookin’ at it, might not’ve been a horse no more but it used to be one. Maybe more than one. So, I decide I oughta give the thing a proper burial.
So, I head back home to grab the shovel. Dug a lot of horse graves in my time, it’s a personal thing. That’s why I don’t use no machinery fer it. Man and horse’ve been existin’ together longer than any damn machine has. S’pose you could call it a sign of respect. Only thing is, the body ain’t there when I go back to the cave. Whole place is covered in blood and pieces of horse but I can’t find no sign of the thing I’m lookin’ fer. Don’t see no sign of where it could’ve went, neither, but that don’t stop me from searchin’. Well, I don’t come up with shit so eventually I gotta call it a day. Give my wife a big kiss when I get back home and tell her I love her. Say the same thing to Jeb. Even a horse man’s gotta have room in his heart fer other fellers than himself.
-–
Sorry, the whole thing in the cave happened yesterday, and after I got home I thought I’d write something up since I figured maybe someone out there might be interested in hearing about it. I don’t actually talk like that in real life, I guess you could say I was playing that part up. I’m actually a 5’1” Chinese-American guy, not the usual type that runs a horse ranch. I suppose some part of me thought that nobody would want to hear a story from a horse rancher who wasn’t a cowboy. Well, that’s beside the point. I… don’t feel like it’s appropriate to keep up the cowboy act. I woke up this morning to get Jeb ready for school, but he wasn’t in his bedroom. He wasn’t anywhere in the house, as far as I could tell. I only noticed that the front door was hanging open after I’d basically turned the entire place upside-down.
So, I thought that maybe Jeb had wandered out onto the ranch. A little out of character, but a possibility. I called out to him a few times but didn’t get any kind of response. Then, I heard a scream off in the distance, but it wasn’t just a scream, there was an undertone to it, like the whinny of a frightened horse. There were other sounds, too, shrieks and caws and howls, all rolled together into that cry. Well, I think I know what’s out there waiting for me but I don’t know if I’m ready to face it. Guess that’s why I’m sitting here, writing this, instead of looking for my son. I’ve got the shotgun with me and I think I’m about to head out now but I don’t know if I’m going to be returning. Depends on what I find, I guess. When all’s said and done, I might end up being more horse than man.