Page 72 - WTP Vol. XIII #3

Resonance (continued from preceding page) wooded corridors along the streams.
The animals regard us with no suspicion on the horses. Giraffes look at us over the tops of trees from fewer than twenty yards away, and we ride through herds of eland and blesbok that give us no more than cursory snorts. A black impala springs along the edge of a tree line to rejoin his herd, looking like a patch of disconnected shadow.
Fidget floats around us, Leanne perched just above his back—a picture of balance and contentment, her face glowing and ruddy in the mid-day sun. She makes me think suddenly of my mom and the countless hours she’s ridden with me in much the same way.
~
I remember a conversation with my mom, sometime last fall right before or after the break-up in question that left me coming to South Africa by myself.
She had asked me on the phone if I thought I was a sweet person. I don’t know how it came up. I was probably complaining to her that I’m too nice, and that’s why I’m always getting taken advantage of by the wrong men. Just too sweet.
“Do you think you’re sweet though?” She asked in the blunt way my mom has.
“Do you think I’m not?” I was, yes, somewhat put out. I have always defined myself partly by my niceness.
“Nice and sweet aren’t the same thing.”
“I know.”
“You have a lot of opinions—when you share them.”
I ignored the slight mom-jab. “Okay, but what does that mean?”
“You’re too strong-willed, girl. If you are yourself, you aren’t going to come across as sweet a lot. People will call you difficult.”
“I am still nice.”
She had made a non-committal sound. “Don’t try too hard.”
As we talked, I could picture the unapologetic brash- ness to the remaining stands of maple and golden birch trees in late October, as if they know they are the last hints of color the upper Midwest will see until
next April. Some alfalfa fields would have managed to spring back with late growth after the final Sep- tember cutting, standing out like emerald against the drab tans of the harvested corn and soybean fields. The air would be clean in a way I’ve always
a hard time describing. No thickness of pollen or humidity, no dank tang of turned soil. Even just talking on the phone with my mom, I could picture it so clearly—taste the clearness of the air. Feel it on my skin. And I wanted to be there with an equal and vicious purity. To step out of the car and breathe in the scent of home.
~
On my fifth day at Horizon I am still going out every day, usually for morning and evening rides. Waiting for my scheduled flight back to Dallas. And after all, when in a new country half-way around the world, why not spend the majority of your time doing some- thing you are infinitely familiar with.
But I already know I’ll never regret watching the horse herd being brought up to the lodge in the early morning light. The slanting red light that washes the grass with a ruddy orange and turns the billowing dust cloud from the thirty plus horses into a plume of pink fire. Or the sunsets I’ve watched from tiny lakes where the hippos graze, their backs like placid rocks in water that glows with silver and amethyst in the fading light.
This morning Brought comes into the tacking shed with Fidget in one hand, and in the other a roan I think is called Otis. The Botswanan is tall—maybe 6’3” and rangy, but he’s gentle with the horses and light in the saddle.
In my time here I have decided Brought is one of my favorite people. We talk as we saddle horses and ride. I’ve told him about Texas and West Virginia and Min- nesota. I’ve told him about Iowa. He’s told me about his family in Botswana, and how he’ll go back to them when he has set them all set up well enough.
Just this morning he’s been telling me about his pre- vious job at a hunting operation where he was one of the skinners.
He pats Otis’ rump and sends him towards his feed bucket. “Being skinner was good work. This is better. It makes me happy. The horses, mostly.”
As I saddle the Arabian, I ask Brought what it was like to be a skinner.
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