Orbison was a horse on the Crowder family farm in the northwestern tip of Ladoga, North Carolina. The farm raised horses; a few had run the Preakness, one, a steed named Carolina in my Mind, was currently out to stud in Kentucky. Orbison was the son of a horse that was called Lucky because the owner, Mr. Edward Crowder, had intended to kill him.
When Lucky was a young mare, he seemed beyond taming. Crowder had broken many horses in his time, the Crowder farm has been a staple of Ladoga since the town’s inception and they passed down secrets to corral horses that they had learned from the Catawba Indians as their population was eventually diminished. Families of Indians lived in the in a densely packed forest in the corner of west Ladoga that no longer exists, safe because the Crowders and many of the other families that lived in the proximity of the forest spread tales of horrors that lurked there, monsters and flesh eating plants, diseases that ate a man faster than any monster could that the mosquitoes passed with their bites. Some Ladoga inhabitants think of the forest as the physical location of hell on Earth.
Crowder thought Lucky must have been born in that forest. He jumped up onto his hind legs and rolled his hooves in the air. He liked to bite people who came too close and Crowder even swore in stories he told his friends that Lucky could spit a good ten feet and hit someone square on the cheek if he wanted. After a few weeks, Crowder had decided to kill the horse, he was a waste of feed and his daughter, Sharon, who loved the mean look in his eyes and the muscles that bulged his legs, had broken both her arms when she had tried to ride Lucky. Crowder would shoot him, sell him for glue.
But Sharon pleaded, “You can’t just kill him, he’s so fast Daddy, and he loves me.”
Crowder softened seeing his beautiful daughter, whom he loved more than himself, cry so freely for the animal that had left her bedridden for weeks. She seemed to understand why Lucky was so frustrated. So Crowder relented and Lucky was spared as a special project for Sharon who raised him into a prize horse.
Lucky begat Orbison, who was sold to a lotto winner two years later. Sharon only had eyes for her Lucky and the Crowder farm was feeling the pinch of money seizing all around the country in 2007. Orbison was similar to his father, though his protest was so subtle that it was mistaken for skittishness. He did not trust anything that advanced toward his face, but rather than bite like his father, Orbison whinnied and retreated.
Orbison’s new owner knew nothing about horses. Kyle Bazemore just liked the way horses looked in movies. Kyle’s first purchase with his lottery winnings was a mansion in West Ladoga in the northwestern corner furthest from the home Orbison knew, complete with stables and an attendant who Kyle dismissively called attendant. Kyle was 35 and single and he could hardly wait for installments of his winnings. He received a check of 150,000 dollars minus taxes every March and barely made it to October before he was broke and hiding out in his mansion. Kyle liked weed, women, and his Nintendo Wii, though he did not really enjoy his Wii all that much. He chose the Wii over the Playstation 3 because the Three W’s sounded sage when he bragged about his choices to people who saw him for what he was, cursed by his fortune.
Kyle only saw Orbison twice in the time that he owned him. The first time was the day that he was unloaded from the truck that brought him to the mansion. Orbison was allowed to run the field that was enclosed by the wooden fence but he mostly trotted to the furthest reach of the fence from his stable and rested his head on the top. The second time Kyle saw Orbison, the horse was gazing into the grassy horizon, head rested gingerly on the fence. Kyle was drunk and happened to be wandering his property with some friends he had made at a bar. They were rowdy and much younger than Kyle, in their mid-twenties, and of course they used Kyle for his pockets that was stocked full until October. The rowdy boys had weapons that they found in Kyle’s garage. Orbison saw them as the boy with the axe and the boy with the machete, though to him an axe and a machete were boring compared to the distance he perceived between himself and the line of the horizon. He wanted to go to it, but somehow understood that if he tried he’d be met with resistance. The fence had more than served its purpose. Kyle saw his horse through the drunken haze that made his words sticky like peanut butter and he hobbled toward it.
He wanted to touch it, and the axe and machete boy wanted to do the same when they noticed Orbison, who was aware of them but wholly disinterested. Kyle put a hand on Orbison’s cheek that surprised the horse who had grown to enjoy his solitude with attendant. Attendant was respectful and did nothing with his hands that Orbison found offensive. So Orbison’s reaction to Kyle, though drastic, is understandable. He jerked and bit Kyle’s hand to bleeding. Kyle fell away on the ground and cried mostly out of humiliation that he had been bitten by his own horse. They were silent tears but obvious enough that axe and machete boy both pointed and laughed.
When Kyle jumped to his feet and swung his beer bottle at Orbison’s face, hitting him square in the eye, there was no Sharon to cry out in protest and Orbison ran back for the stable. In Sharon’s place were the axe and machete who whooped and screamed, waving metal in the air as they ran after Kyle in the direction of the stable.
They reached Orbison, standing in the doorway, looking exactly like his father, and the boys were startled to a stop. Kyle grabbed a rock and launched it at Orbison who dodged it easily by jerking his head. Orbison could spit like his father, he discovered on an afternoon when he was bored at the fence and noticed dragonflies whizzing through a flurry of nats that circled the air like a tornado. He launched spit at Kyle that smacked him in both eyes and even the tip of his nose. Kyle was livid and he threw another rock that connected and dizzied the horse until he fell hard on his side.
Axe and machete learned that the sound of ribs cracking was funny to them and they would brag to anyone who was not immediately disgusted that they knew what a horse looked like when it fainted.
Orbison could never describe the scenes behind his eyelids after fainting to anyone, but they must have been hellish. He must have been hoofing in snow until his legs froze to ice and shattered like glass. Or he must have been running in lava that melted his hooves.
Axe thought out loud for Orbison as machete and Kyle hacked away at his hooves. Machete convinced Kyle to torture the horse, he was a menacing boy who caused alarm for many inhabitants of Ladoga, and they decided to cut off Orbison’s hooves at the place where they met his hairy legs because machete had always wondered what it would look like and how long the horse could live that way. Kyle was red with revenge, he didn’t care as long as the horse suffered.
“I bet he can feel it, he knocked the fuck out, but he can feel every second of.” Axe said out loud. He had sat in passive objection. He had no intentions of stopping either of them, but he would not take part. “I know a horse can have a nightmare now.” he said, even though he had never wondered before.
Orbison was left to die, his legs bloody and ivory white where the bone was exposed, ragged with the rough chops and scrapes of machete. attendant found Orbison after the horse had regained consciousness a few times before succumbing to shock. attendant wrapped Orbison’s legs and wondered if he had any option other than the obvious one; put Orbison out of his misery. But attendant wondered if Orbison might appreciate a life without standing, at least he could enjoy his horizon. A horse is meant to move, though, attendant knew, and life would just be punishment if he was rendered immobile. But before attendant could move to do the duty that fell helplessly in his lap, Orbison’s entire body shook with a sound that made the attendant startle. Orbison’s eyes opened briefly and attendant was stunned by the eyes that were sad and wounded and mad all at once. And then Orbison was out again and attendant wept like he had never before in his life. attendant had some training in treating wounded horses but of course he was unprepared to do for Orbison what he needed in that moment. attendant saw the detached hooves on the floor and he wondered if the horse could be saved. He called the police and asked for animal control who helped with transport to a nearby veterinarian; they had to drive a town over because Ladoga does not have a vet. The vet’s plan was the one that attendant dreaded but he could not protest too loudly. As the vet prepped medicines that would kill the horse in his sleep, attendant stared at Orbison wondering if he was OK with what was about to happen to him.
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