Notice: All the places mentioned herein are real places. All the events described happened. As to the flow of narrative and specific details, all I can say is: This is how I remember it. If the story’s improved in the telling, I can’t help that. Or, as the Irish say, never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Hello. My name is Ted, and I think horses are OK.
They’re big handsome animals, more personality than cows, less slobbery than dogs, and since they don’t come in the house much, you don’t have to worry about fur all over everything.
Yes, I’m the other half of the human race, a duly-appointed representative of People Who Don’t Get Horses, the PWDGH, Local 12 (AFL). We’re the ones whose eyes glaze over as you start comparing bridles or when you receive the bill for re-shoeing the bay for the third time this year. (I’m not really sure what a “bay” is, to tell the truth—I’m almost certain it has to do with color, but I’m not at all sure which color.)
You may not realize just how challenging it is when an outsider like me gets involved—unintentionally, innocently, through no fault of my own—with a horse-riding, horse-loving, horse-living-and-breathing person such as yourself, dear reader.
I meet Emily at a party in the city—not a stirrup in sight to tip me off. She is stunning. Little black dress, athletic figure, bright, funny, opinionated, exciting. BAM! I’m involved. After a couple blissful weeks, I’m confident I know all the really important details. One night, she says, “I have a friend in Ireland. I’m going over next month. Want to come?”
Of course I want to come. I’ve seen the ads all my life—rolling hills, sea shanties and Guinness, leprechauns and U2. And Guinness. And they speak English or pretty close.
Most importantly, it’s two uninterrupted weeks with Emily. Or so I assume at the time.
Our first sight of Ireland is magnificent, the impossibly green coast low on the horizon, creeping towards us with the sunrise. Clouds like cotton balls drift past as we bank over the rolling hills. So much green! So much empty space! Not a strip mall in sight! Looking out the porthole, Shannon Airport seems no bigger than one of JFK’s terminals.
The First Sign
Emily’s friend Laura meets us at the gate. She’s a broad-shouldered brunette in a buff-colored blouse and those pants that flair out at the thighs. This is a sign, but not one which I notice.
Laura grew up in Delaware and moved to Ireland 10 years ago. She and Em went to college together, so there are five minutes of hugs and “Did you hear about Brad and Carol?” before we head for the exit. We roll our bags out to Laura’s car, a Suzuki SUV that looks like an HO scale version of the American ones I’m used to. It’s parked about 100 feet from the terminal exit. Long term parking is maybe 200 feet further on. Home in Brooklyn, I’d rejoice at a parking space that close to my house.
When Laura cracks the rear hatch of her car, however, there are signs galore and, this time, I don’t miss them. We hoist our suitcases onto a bed of rain slickers, containers of motor oil, half-opened bags of carrots and a couple of nasty-looking syringes the size of liquor bottles. The back seat is covered with folded cardboard boxes; the floor contains knee-high rubber boots and more syringes. I lift one carefully and hold it aloft. “Should I stash this somewhere in particular? In case we’re stopped by the cops?”
“They’re for the horses, silly,” Em says. Of course—they’re for the horses. What horses?
“The cops’ll know they’re for the horses?” I ask.
“Everybody has horses here,” Laura answers.
In short order, we’re 10 miles from the airport, and it’s already the countryside. In the United States, we’d be hip-deep in cloverleafs, topless bars and gas stations warning “Last Gas Before Takeoff.” Here, the sheep are grazing and the clouds look just the way they did from the plane, except overhead and leaving little shadows as they glide across the fields. There are ruins everywhere—shattered stone walls, shells of mansions and hulks of farmhouses older than America. The whole landscape is green—dimpling fields ribboned with hedges and symmetric groves of trees waving in the wind.
As we go, the roads keep getting smaller and smaller. Ireland’s main highways are the size of our small town main streets, and things shrink from there. Their cars and trucks are smaller to suit, and that is a definite blessing. The people in the country towns we pass through seem easy-going, languid, no one moving with any great urgency—but that’s all forgotten once they hit the highway. The country roads are a car-and-a-half wide with hedges 6 feet tall lining both sides, ditches threatening stray tires, and the cars rushing at you like the proverbial oncoming train. More than once we find twigs from the hedge lining the road in our laps, cut off by the slit-open windows as we crowd the verge to get a near miss. And then we’re off onto an even smaller road, half-paved and half dirt, cows lowing over stone walls to each side.
Laura’s house is a cottage, really—a concrete shell painted bright yellow with a black tile roof, a stone wall (naturally) in front and acres of land. What strikes me as odd right away is the schizo condition of the place—everything out front along the road is immaculately tended grass in that gaudy green we’d passed all along the way; everything behind the house is trampled mud, half-crumbled stone walls and stunted trees cutting across cubes of field. A line of low buildings points the way along a dirt path from the house to the mud. Two tractors, an ancient trailer with vestigial fenders, an old Rover sedan and an archaic horse-drawn cart stand haphazardly among piles of old brick and stone, mismatched tires and wheels, hoes, picks, sickles and mallets, an upended wheelbarrow and a three-story scaffolding standing at a distance from everything else, as though waiting for construction to begin spontaneously on the spot.
The whole scene throws me for almost a minute, until Laura chirps, “Come and meet the boys!” and starts pulling at a door to reveal the Prime Movers, the purpose behind all this tumult.
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Meeting The Boys
I see a look dawn on Emily’s face I’d thought only I could produce. She and Laura walk briskly along the row of low buildings, throwing open the top half of the Dutch doors and greeting the inhabitants, who snort and whinny and bang with their hooves at the still-closed bottom doors and the sides of their stalls.
I have a college degree and half a lifetime of travel behind me. I know horses when I see them, and these are horses. There’s a big brown one with a white patch on his face, a dappled gray one and a whitish one, like a ghost white really. Laura has carrots in her bag and more in her pocket, explaining the half-opened bag in the back of the car. The horses seem to know where the carrots are before she produces them. Em gets to feed some too and gets some nuzzling in return. This is all very pleasant—they seem like nice animals, and now that they’ve been fed, we can get some sleep or maybe eat and drive into town to see what that’s like.
Except, the horses haven’t been fed. I guess it was a silly thought—if I was the size of a dumpster and all muscle, I wouldn’t be satisfied with a couple of carrots either. Our bags are still in the back of the car; we grab them and duck into the house for a moment. I watch Emily undress only to see her pull on a slightly overwashed tacky workshirt and jeans a moment later. She then stares at me until I realize I’m expected to do the same. When I comply, she pulls on a pair of knee high boots and leads me back outside. “Isn’t this great!” she says, taking a great draught of air.
We follow Laura out to a wide open-ended shed with hay bales piled 20 feet high. “I need five bales,” Laura tells me. I stare at the tightly-stacked columns.
“How do I get them out of there?” I ask. I ask a lot of questions on this trip that make me feel like an idiot in the retelling.
“It’s usually easier taking them off the top,” Laura replies drily, shuffling away in the direction of the stables. Em remains, taking in my discomfort with a comical look on her face.
I’m not in bad shape overall, but I remember the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, and my daily routine generally involves nothing more strenuous than typing or yelling at people on the telephone (sometimes yelling while pacing, however—that’s heavy exercise). Twenty-foot stacks of hay bales are not my normal environment. Em’s a few years younger than me, just enough that I wonder if she’s tweaking me a bit with this, waiting politely to see if I kill myself bounding up onto the pile or pull some muscle I didn’t know I had. The look on my face must be quizzical, because she grins and throws in, “If this isn’t for you, we can switch jobs.”
“What’re you doing?” I ask, fool of the month.
“Cleaning the stalls,” she says, producing a mop and pail. Once I get the gist of this, she takes off, whistling smugly, while I step up onto the first run of hay.
My feet sink in but the bales hold together, and soon I’ve reached the top without even gasping. Now who’s smug? I pull four solid-looking squares to the front of the stack and toss them to the ground.
I hear clip-clopping in the background as I carefully climb down again. No one’s in sight for a moment and then Laura emerges from behind one of the sheds and says, “Break up one bale in each of the stalls, OK?” OK.
Wisps of hay drift off the stacks as I carry them over. I split apart what’s left on top of the pre-existing hay bed that’s already there. A warm, pleasant surge moves through me as I work—it occurs to me that this is something that probably can’t be done wrong. Laura returns a few moments later and nods her approval. Before I finish basking, she asks, “Think you can throw the other two bales on the hood of the car?”
Of course I can—but where’s Em? At very least she should witness this sudden outburst of virility. Laura points me into the passenger seat and guns the Suzuki between two of the narrow garages and up into the muddy field beyond.
In Her Element
And there is Emily, finally in her element. She told me to bring my work boots, though she didn’t explain why. Now I know. In New York, boots are an affectation; here, they’re a survival mechanism. They make an awkward sucking noise as I struggle to catch up to her, carrying the hay bale—or what’s left of it, as bits keep shedding with every step. Em’s legs don’t waver in the mud like mine; her boots aren’t in danger of coming off every 3 feet.
The horses see Laura and Em coming and are upon us in an instant. It’s one thing to appreciate them politely with a gate or a fence between; it’s quite another to be stumbling around the middle of a field with them. Up close, you can’t miss just how massive and powerful they are. If two converge at the wrong moment, they’ll crush me like a tank rolling over a tomato. And they could easily converge—their attention is all on the girls with the carrots. They grab the carrots from their outstretched hands and dance about on display, manes bobbing and bouncing, hind legs kicking high in the air to keep the others at a distance, vying for attention.
At twice my size, they somehow skim the surface of the muck while I sink with every step. I pull off sections of hay bale and scatter them about me as a peace offering and hopefully some kind of a buffer. When they get too close to Em, however, she just reaches out and shoves them away.
“How do you do that?” I yelp as one bounces across right in front of me, feet flying.
“You just have to show them you’re the bigger horse,” she replies.
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Since I first met her, Em has never been less than competent and sometimes far more than that. She is scattered, though only in the most lovable way possible. But here, in the field with Laura’s horses, Em is the boss. She is earthy, grounded, calling them names and shoving them around when they crowd her. If she has been, previously, ethereal and maybe a tiny bit too proper, now she is finally at home, knee-deep in mud and full of grace in the same instant.
“I think a Western saddle would suit you better—there’s more support if you haven’t been up in a while,” Em says, and I realize slowly that she’s talking to me!
“The last time I rode a horse, I was pretending to be Roy Rogers,” I reply. “Why don’t I just admire you two for now?”
She’s skeptical.
“You’ll still want me to be able to walk tomorrow, yes?”
She arches an eyebrow. “Maybe…”
“You want me able to crawl,” I clarify, and she smiles.
“I’ll work you into shape,” she promises and drags me off to get saddles for her and Laura.
To be continued…
Follow Ted’s adventures in Ireland every Wednesday through Dec. 8.
Ted Krever went to Woodstock (the GOOD one), spent 20 years in television documentary production, is happily divorced, purports to be a good kisser and knows nothing about horses except you should check the teeth. He was once falsely accused of attempting to blow up Ethel Kennedy with a Super-8 projector.
