Champs Big Day

Champs big day

How was I ever going to turn this place into an organic farm all by myself? The divorce was final, and my son wanted to live with his dad, so here I was, a stranger in my hometown. And a long way from sunny San Diego. A chill May breeze ruffled my shirt, and I turned away from the fallow five-acre field. Wrapping my arms tightly around myself, I jogged to the old Morton building, chased by clouds. With a squeal, the metal door surrendered, rolling open. It seemed so much smaller than I remembered. Back then it had held a wall of hay, straw bale pens for the sheep, and worm-eaten fencing separating the cows from the ponies. A mustard-colored column of light shone through a yellowed square of plastic. Dust motes rose, turning this way and that. I looked up and tears prickled.

I missed them. I missed them all.

“Go get him, then,” Grandpa commanded from inside this building, where he busied himself with a tangle of leather straps laying on the worn table where Esmeralda ate out of a pie tin. He’d also laid the rails of the ancient pony cart on the dirt. I shot him a concerned glance, but knew better than to question.

I jumped to snatch his halter off the wall and ran barefoot to the pasture. In the big field beside the pasture, lambs frolicked while the ewes baa’ed orders.

“Champ?”

His mohawk mane bounced up. He nickered.

I shimmied under the lifeless electric wire, scratched his neck, and kissed him. He wrapped his head and neck around me while I inhaled his sun-baked horsey smell, manure with essence of grass.

“Here.” Lifting the halter over his nose, I stood on tiptoe to pull it over his ears before he escaped. But Champ only lowered his head and tossed his nose as I buckled it. His mother, Duchess, whinnied as we pranced away. According to Grandpa, it hurt her feet to walk.

“Back him in, Juli.” Champ tossed his nose up and down as Grandpa laid leather straps over his back and pulled one tight under his belly. I was dying to know how it all worked.

“Get in, you’re driving!”

“But-”

“Juli, go put some shoes on,” Grandma scolded. My shoulders jumped. She rarely came to the barn, but there she was, standing in the big open bay. While I retrieved my sneakers, Grandpa walked Champ, hitched to the cart, in front of the house.

“Get out of the way, Cricket,” Grandpa teased as he climbed into the seat beside me. The cart tilted sharply and squeaked as he settled.

“Where?” I gathered up the reins he’d tossed in my lap, feeling exposed on the narrow bench, under a saffron sun.

Grandpa motioned to the driveway. Champ trotted between the cart rails, pulling us toward the two-lane highway. Secretly, I felt pleased at his calm demeanor. Way to go, pony! I pulled on the reins to turn him into the grass and go back up the front yard, the way we’d come. Grandpa grabbed the reins and urged him forward. The pony stopped as a hoof tapped the tarmac.

The hard road’s dangerous. My stomach fluttered.

A car passed in the opposite lane. He skitter stepped, pushing us back into the gravel.

But we couldn’t refuse. Grandpa was in charge.

Telepathically, I wished him courage.

“Steady now,” Grandpa called. Another car whizzed by, showering us with exhaust.

Please, no more cars. A breeze blew away the gasoline stink, bringing with it the smell of fresh-cut hay. Champ stepped onto the road, tossing his nose up and turning his head to keep one eye on me.

His unshod hooves clopped rhythmically. Cricket song pulsed from the fields under hazy cirrus clouds.

If it stays quiet, he could be OK.

In the distance, a throaty roar rumbled.

Champ swerved, ricocheting between the rails. He whinnied, sharp and high-pitched.

“Straighten him out, tell him whoa,” Grandpa urged. But the growling grew. A silver carapace glistened as the monster sped toward us, belching smoke.

His body leapt toward the midline. The cart skidded wide, catching a tire in the loose gravel of the shoulder. As the wheel bumped back up onto the road, the whole contraption recoiled with a thwack. Launched into mid-air, I held on. Tension on the reins was the only thing keeping me attached.

“Whuwhuhwhuwhueeeee-ee-ee-ee!” Champ called, twisting away from the center line, bucking, hindquarters cow-hopping. Jolting back and forth at terrified pony speed, I gaped at Grandpa. We were heading straight for the truck. His large white teeth were bared, and the wind rippled his stubbly cheeks.

“Gran - pa!” I shouted at his profile over the hot wind gusting from the pickup, desperate for him to take over. Up ahead, at a T in the road, a flatbed laden ten feet high with newly baled hay lumbered onto the highway, the load swaying heavily into the turn. Champ screamed, lowered his head. and kicked back with both barrels. The buckboard shattered under my feet. A cloud of splinters and wood burned my nostrils.

I leaned back with all my weight to stop him, calling “Chaaaaaamp -”.

We floated: reins slack in my clenched fists. Despite the flatbed’s whining gears, silence fell, like when Wile E Coyote looks into the camera before he falls off the cliff. Champ, butt muscles bunched, angry as hornets, ran on.

Rocks showered my face. “Champ!” I sobbed, my face in the dirt, finally stopped. Rails askew, like a windshield-mangled grasshopper, the cart lay beached on the shoulder. “What happened? Where?” Words spoken against my will, revealing that I loved. Only Champ was worth the risk. I wasn’t supposed to, love, I mean. Or cry, ever. If they knew...

“The reins, they’re rotten.” A lobster claw hand grasped my arm, hauling me to my feet. He scooped up leather fragments from the dust, letting them fall.

“Let’s go.” He turned, squinting into the east. Maybe a half mile away among the cornfields stood the house. But the hay truck, Champ, and both vehicles had vanished. Insects buzzed on a picture-perfect summer day. Nailed to the spot, I watched him shuffle off, his green pants bagged in the seat.

“But -, what about? How?” I heaved between sobs.

“Awww, Juli. I don’t -. We’ll see,” He studied his feet, as though he might lose his footing. Perhaps he already had. I longed to hold his hand but feared he’d stiffen.

My head swung right and left, searching the fields and road for a flicker of Champs’ white coat. But at the rate he was hauling ass, he could be in Green Valley by now, or at the train tracks. I gulped down a sob. At the head of the driveway, Grandma’s dress billowed. Had she seen the whole thing? I swiped at my nose, coming away with a smear of blood.

“You lose your pony, Juli?” She drew me in, smashing me against her chest, without disapproving of my raw hands and knees. Although my breath was stopped by snot and her breasts, a hug felt pleasant, albeit unfamiliar.

“Depperts' called. They spotted him over on the blacktop behind the subdivision. They’ve gone to fetch him with the trailer,” she said to Grandpa, clicking her dentures the way she did when she felt her words were of utmost importance, and she was in no danger of interruption.

I lifted my head. “They found?” My throat clamped shut as though my heart rushed to escape through my mouth.

“Let’s get you a bath.” Her blue eyes shot Grandpa a look that could’ve turned him into a pillar of salt.

In the pale pink bathtub, surrounded by rose square tiles, I picked gravel out of my left knee, then peeled a ragged fingernail off, releasing a swirl of red into the warm water. I stilled, goosebumps pimpling my shoulders, imagining the water all red. The phone rang. I strained to hear, but her voice was muffled, like adults on Charlie Brown cartoons.

“I’m finished! Is Champ here? Can I see him?”

“Oh, Juli -. They couldn’t catch him,” she said, opening the bathroom door a crack.

Rumbling vibrated from the driveway. A truck, a big one! I pulled on my dirty clothes and pushed past her. Dried grass prickled my feet as I ran.

Champ nickered from inside the trailer. My heart surged, propelling me through the wooden slats without asking permission. I buried my face in his neck, his hair stiff with dried sweat. His muzzle bumped my side as he circled, tossing his nose up and down, grunting. He looked full of himself. Had it been an adventure racing across Green Valley; free to follow his nose, galloping across desert sands like an Arabian? But had he felt relief when the trailer pulled alongside, a thing he’d never seen before?

His trusting, simple soul looked to us for comfort and direction, as I looked to my grandparents for wisdom. What was my Grandpa thinking when he drove us onto a highway in a harness that was, how old? Twenty years or more?

Night fell on Champ’s big day. The next morning dawned, humid and ordinary. Out the door before Grandma was up, I rushed to the pasture. Cool grass cradled my shoulders. His velvet muzzle tickled my forehead.

I swiped away the few tears, inhaling the mustard-colored motes. Head down, I broke into bright sunlight and leaned into the wind to reach the house. My hands shook as I tried to fit the silver key into the metal door. What was I doing here?

I couldn’t afford it. The loan for the forty acres was more than the ‘dream house’ Ryan and I had bought together in San Diego. Padding up the old linoleum-clad steps, I swept through the pile of flyers and cards on the kitchen counter.

I punched a local number into my phone.

“Yeah, um, Juli here. Yeah! My grandparents' old farm. Yep, the one on 29. Hey, do you know anyone who sells ponies?”