The Conclusion: The Foxhunt
If you’ve kept up with this little saga, you’ve heard me tell people over and over that the last time I rode a horse, I was pretending to be Roy Rogers.
That isn’t a joke; it’s a statement of fact. My grandfather bought me a pony when I was 6. He built a corral for it behind his store on Rte. 46 in Parsippany, N.J. The pony used to get out a couple times a week and graze between the east and westbound lanes until the police suggested he sell it back to the guy from whom he bought it.
I’ve gone up in a glider because flying fascinates me. I drove onto a mountain in Colorado in the midst of a thunderstorm because my best friend, nuts to this day, assured me a car was a perfectly safe place (“Four rubber contact patches—nothing to it!”). I’ve driven fast cars on a racetrack.
So why am I timid about horses? My best excuse is that machines are (supposedly) fixed and dependable—at least, they have no mind of their own. A horse, on the other hand, is a horse of a different color, as Emily’s gray proved just yesterday. So now it’s the morning of the hunt, and I’m harvesting excuses but not finding any takers.
“I’ve left your clothes in the closet.”
“Clothes?”
“You don’t have anything proper to ride in.”
“I’m a Democrat. The PETA contingent will skin me.”
“Don’t be such a snob. You don’t know any animal lovers but me. You’re lucky if you know someone who owns a dog.”
“You win.”
“So ride the horse, will you? Just to make me happy? I picked a nice safe one for you. You hold the reins, and he’ll follow the pack. OK?”
“And grab the neck strap when the horse jumps, right?”
“What?”
“That’s what Moira said last night. The thing’s going to jump with me on it?”
“It’s the easiest way around obstacles,” she says and wanders away like that’s all there is to it.
Dressing The Part
The getup is hanging on my closet door. I pull it on, just for laughs. Black riding jacket, tan breeches and helmet, knee boots gleaming like a midnight ocean—as spectacular a suit of clothing as I’ve ever seen, much less put on.
The arms and legs are a little short, and there’s a patch on the seat—it’s rented gear—but I still look like Errol Flynn except not as good. I admire myself for long minutes in the mirror, until Malcolm arrives with the trailer. “Roy Rogers, I presume,” he snipes, and I ignore him. I’m a gentleman in tails now.
No sign marks the hunting grounds, but they’re impossible to miss—follow the other trailers through the gap in the stone wall surrounded by chanting, screaming protestors waving placards and specific fingers at you as you pass.
We hop out as four or five men appear out of nowhere to open the trailer and pull down the ramp. I expected everyone to be dressed as formally as we are. I’m surprised (and not happy) to find us the fashion plates. The man next to me wears what were surely—20 years ago—expensive riding breeches now overrun with patches, a dusky-colored moth-eaten undershirt and suspenders falling loosely off his shoulders. On his hat nestles a wonderful-looking cap with earflaps pinned along the sides like unfurled wings.
I wag a finger at the crowd. Their chants are increasing in volume. “What’d we do?”
“Cruelty to animals, of course,” Emily sniffs. “They’ve banned hunts in England already.”
Just Show Him You’re The Bigger Horse
She leads a big chestnut off the lorry and hands me the reins, like I know what to do with them. “Just show him you’re the bigger horse,” she says and starts up the ramp again.
The thing throws me a look—without moving, just the eyeball screwing over for a peek—and then begins to crowd me, clopping sideways right into my chest. I stumble a foot or two before gathering myself and shoving back hard, putting both shoulders into it, the way I saw Em do in the field the first day. The eyeball swivels toward me again, and the horse stands still.
Em leads a buttermilk of Laura’s down the ramp, cradling its huge head in her arms. Malcolm follows with his horse, and the helpers push the ramp back into the lorry.
Malcolm pops onto his mount. Em follows. I grip the reins, look hard into my horse’s eye and send him a telepathic message that I’ll punch him dead if he so much as twitches. Then I hoist myself up and into the saddle. Apparently he’s a mind reader.
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The riders assemble in front of another Irish stone wall. Looking over and beyond, I can see Malcolm wasn’t kidding last night: There is no course. A wide collection of broken fields stands ahead of us, mud and grass and tangled bushes, streams cutting behind stone walls at all sorts of heights and odd angles.
“The hounds’ll go first;” Em says. “We take off after them. Hang back if you like. Roddy’ll follow the pack all by himself.”
“Roddy?”
“Your horse.”
“Roddy? Hi Ho Roddy? You’ve slipped me an effeminate horse!”
She laughs and begins threading through the pack, sidling into a better position up front. A moment later, I hear the yapping of hounds and suddenly we’re all galloping.
If I clicked the reins, it’s news to me, but we’re moving fast. The crowd in front sucks through the gate like water through a spigot and then we’re into an open field. The pack spreads out, and the horses start hitting their stride.
It’s all I can do to stay in the saddle. The wind gets knocked out of me just from the bouncing. The sound is overwhelming, pounding converging from all directions. Two kids who can’t be more than 13 go flying by me on horses as big as mine. I collect myself just enough to watch them and try to imitate. I lean forward and let my butt bounce up and down. It’s not work—all I do is relax and it happens.
The field is a complex mess. One hoof strikes rock while the other sinks into moss that gives like there’s an air pocket beneath. The horses ahead are tearing up the ground, sod and dirt flying everywhere. It’s barely controlled chaos, just like Malcolm said, and pretty thrilling once I stop worrying about going airborne.
The riders at the front ripple upward now and drop out of sight. A four-foot-high stone wall appears, ancient and unyielding and coming on at an alarming speed. The riders just in front of us tense and jump, and now it’s our turn.
It isn’t as though I can’t think—it’s as though I don’t know how. That might seem like a petty distinction to you, but I spend several crucial moments on it instead of the fact that I’m about to become a pile of meat thrown against a stone wall.
Like Being Strapped To A 747
And then Roddy (a ridiculous name for something the size of my kitchen) heaves mightily and launches himself into the air. All the ferocious churning and pounding and the barrage of sound turns to eerie silence and stillness—and a moment later, we’re on the other side, pounding up the hill again and I’m still on the son-of-a-gun. It’s a petty miracle, but I give myself credit like I had something to do with it.
After that, I let the scene run away with me: the air rushing past my ears, the thrumming hooves, the cries of the riders and yelping of the hounds, the pounding and bouncing and careening from side to side as the pack turns one direction and then another. I lean over Roddy’s neck and flick the reins, making clucking noises, insistent and urgent. Suddenly, I’m ambitious—I want to move up, but even more, I want to go. Everything suddenly is about going—faster, more speed, more wind in the face, more power to the ground, the power of movement itself.
Roddy quickens, hunkers down, strides lengthening. We jump a huge ditch onto a muddy bank and then immediately—barely time to put the hooves down—jump another. We actually gain ground in the process, picking up space on the pack ahead. Some of the younger riders are covered in mud while I’m still on my horse. I can see Em darting towards the front. I have no idea where Malcolm is, nor do I care. Everything now is about going.
The pack turns wildly to the right, up and down a gulley cutting through thick bushes. The hounds have gained the next field—like Malcolm said, the fox doesn’t know from property lines. It’s strange even thinking about the fox now—the fox is just an excuse.
The next wall is higher and even more formidable than the others. The riders in front jump to the side, pulling away from some unseen hazard. My plan is to follow them, but suddenly Roddy isn’t listening to me. Or maybe he is, just not the way I intend. Or maybe my attempts to control him are throwing us out of whack. I’ve lost the rhythm; I’m banging against the saddle again, out of sync, hands clammy, no time to think and no way to stop.
I’m the tone-deaf passenger of an instinctively-reacting horse chasing brainless hounds after a symbolic fox. That’s way too many layers removed from reality. All at once, all I can think of is getting out of the field alive and in one piece. The front pack hurtles over the wall and disappears down the opposite bank. I clutch the reins, bang against the saddle and hold my breath.
Roddy’s jump is awkward, off-stride. I feel us wobble in the air and hear stones flying behind—he must have clipped the wall with his rear legs going over. He stumbles a bit on one leg as we land, and I’m leaning over the wrong side of him for an endless moment. Then he regains the downhill bank, and we burst across the stream bed upright and at a gallop, flashing past another horse trying to scramble, frantically, to its feet in the riverbed. A riderless horse. A buttermilk-colored horse, stirrups flailing. We’re halfway up the hill in half a second before I realize what I’ve seen. I pull the reins over harder than I probably should, but we burst out of the pack. Where is Emily?
She’s already in Malcolm’s arms. He’s bent over her in the water, cradling her head and carrying her out of the path of the next pack of riders. The buttermilk stands idly a few feet away, drinking stupidly from the stream. I don’t remember riding down the hill or getting off my horse.
“Hopefully it’s just a concussion,” Malcolm says when I reach them. Within minutes, she’s in someone’s SUV. “Go with her,” Malcolm says. “I’ll meet you at hospital.”
Em comes to halfway there. I swear she wants ice cream but she’s so quiet that no one is sure. The people driving us arrange a plastic-bag cushion under her leg, which is injured from the buttermilk rolling over it. They keep talking to Em and encourage me to do the same to keep her awake. I read every label in the car, the cleaning labels on the clothes, jacket copy of books off the floor, you name it. She actually listens, which only shows how off she is.
And then we arrive at the hospital, and the hours blur together. There are several consultations and a CAT-scan after two doctors examine her for concussion. I tell them I’m her nearest and dearest and after that, they report to me—and to Major Lowell, of course. No one seems to question why he’s here—he’s Major Lowell.
Her leg is broken but favorably, they say. They’ve set it, and she’ll heal on her own, though she’ll be on crutches for several weeks. There’s no indication of permanent damage from the concussion. The rest is Sanskrit, and who cares anyhow?
“Well, now I guess we’re going home,” she says the next day when she comes around. I’m truly sorry to nod agreement.
“I know this wasn’t much fun for you.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “It was pretty amazing, riding—when that thing took off, it was like being strapped to a 747.”
Turns Out Horses Are OK Afterall
Her eyes light up—in response, I guess, to mine. “I just didn’t like Malcolm using the horse to muscle in on you.”
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She smiles her Oh God you’re so stupid smile—I’ve seen it often enough already that I can see it coming.
“Darling, why do you think I was so anxious to bring you? Malcolm’s a pompous ass—he doesn’t understand ‘no,’ and he’s heard it plenty from me. So you’re my protection.”
“He was really good when you got hurt,” I say with dutiful generosity. “He told me he hung back in the pack in case one of us went down.”
“He was very good about that,” she says. Then she smiles at my anxious look and adds, “We’ll buy him a bottle of wine. In the meantime, I’ll promise you another vacation—no horses this time?”
“I don’t know,” I hear myself saying. “Horses are OK.”
This concludes the tale of Ted’s adventures in Ireland. Be sure to check out the first three parts in the series.
Read Part 1
Read Part 2
Read Part 3
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.
