Page 73 - WTP Vol. XIII #3

“We hang them in sheds—chains around the back feet.” He talks a lot with his hands, making a small circular motion like he is looping a chain above two back ankle joints. “Usually pulleys to get them up,” he says. “African animals are solid—heavier than you think. And they have tough skin.”
I place a finger on Fidget’s back and he twitches and sends me a suspicious side eye. “Tough skin you say?”
Brought gives a deep chuckle and slaps the roan’s shoulder. Otis ignores him, making contended slob- bering sounds into his food tub. “Fidget not native to here.”
“How much time is enough to
fully appreciate a landscape? How long would it take to feel at home in somewhere so completely new?”
“Did you hear that?” I ask the Arabian. “You would be easy to skin.”
“Like peeling skin off a sausage,” Brought says with a nod.
I lean towards Fidget’s ear, “Don’t listen to him. But you better be a good horse.”
“It is not too bad,” Brought continues, as he picks out all of Otis’ hooves. “I cut around the legs and head— when I know how the client wants it mounted. What kind of blanket. Then split down the middle,” he indi- cates the base of Otis’ jaw and draws a finger down to under his chest. “Peel back.” He makes a motion like pulling open a suit jacket. “Some skin not as easy.”
He says that the skin of a sable is over half an inch think on the shoulders—where the males fight and scar each other during mating season.
And I can picture the sable I’ve seen out on the bush- veld, the towering black antelope cousin, with its immense horns arching elegantly towards its back. The massiveness of it. I try to imagine the split skin pealing back like a mat over the shoulders. Think of the times I’ve wished to peel back my own skin. To see the pink and white fascia banding underneath— to figure out what piece of shrapnel from all the lives I’ve lived is responsible for where I am—which is certainly not where I’d expected to be in my mid- thirties. I would hunt it down like a surgeon, pluck it out, drop it in a sterile bowl. Clink. My life suddenly debris free.
“Can I ride Fidget?” I ask. I can recognize a spiral when it’s about to start.
“Leanne say you would ask,” Brought says with a sly
grin.
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