Read Online The $60,000 Dog: My Life With Animals by Lauren Slater - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Lauren Slater
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to the sky, whereupon he atomized into a spray of stars that bear his name as an immortal constellation. Thus, on any clear night, you can look up and find him, his sequined eyes staring at you from a vast blackness in which he is either trapped or forever free, depending upon your view of infinity.
I find it ironic that the horse of all horses does not gallop on the ground but rather lives his life amongst celestials, in a dark field of silver florals. Because to me, in my mind, and for my body, horses were the one, if not the
only
, way to tether my broken being to the earth, from which it always seemed I was drifting, disassociated, radically severed from self and soil.
Surely I was not born this way. I arrived on March 21, 1963. Of my very early childhood I recall little, or little I wish to mention here, for in this story of horses and history, my life, it seems, started one spring evening. I don’t remember the date, but let’s call it May 28, 1973, ten years after my actual birth and just at the cusp of the sweetest season—June—when the gardens drop their modesty and begin their driven bloomings.
I know on that evening I smelled summer coming right around the corner. At ten, I was cradled in the stage called latency, a peaceful time well past the throes of infancy and long enough before the next leap into adolescence.
And I was playing that evening in the church’s empty parking lot, as I often did, with the children from a few streets over, let me call them the Callahans, a Catholic family and thus an oddity in the Golden Ghetto.
The Callahan kids were six in all, ranging in age from Mary, fifteen, who smoked and sulked in a corner of the lot, watching us younger ones with the slight sneer that teenagers perfect, to Joey, aged three, his face a splatter of Irish freckles, slurry always running from his nose.
We had a red wagon. It must have been the Callahans, and they must have left it behind in a hurry that evening because days later, after what happened had happened, the police found the wagon with Mary’s bracelet inside it, her name inscribed on the silver plate.
The wagon had a long, black pull handle, and the body was rusted here and there. One wheel was loose on its axis, so it clattered crazily on the church’s bumpy asphalt. Each kid took his or her turn pulling while the rest of us crammed into the cart and screamed with delight as we ricocheted around and around the empty church lot, the split-level houses across the street so silent, so stubbornly suburban, with their little lawns and little windows and dark doors. The world, it seemed, was emptied of everyone except the Callahan children and me, one kid pulling the rest, stuffed into the rusted red wagon circling the asphalt beneath a fiery sky, the streaked clouds painted pink and welt.
We had no notion that anything was or might soon be askew. Presiding over us was the gothic church with its windows of gorgeous glass that soared to the uppermost story, windows everyone in the Golden Ghetto, regardless of their religion, admired for their artistry and size, windows we all presumed were fixed because they seemed far too big to open and close, and much too special for such prosaic purposes.
It was a Thursday. It could not have been much past 6 p.m., because I recall the setting sun, the svelte shadows on the cracked concrete of the lot. Soon, we knew, our mothers would call us in and so—would it be fair to say—we sensed our time was short? We were, all of us—minus Mary blowing smoke O’s into the cooling air—crammed into this rusted wagon, the loose wheel making such a very loud sound, the person pulling (was it Andrea’s turn?) making a show of our enormous weight and her enormous strength, groaning and spitting as she used all of her horsepower to propel this mass of youth and laughter over the wrecked asphalt of the empty lot.
And thus it was that we did not immediately hear the strange sound, nor notice that one of those
I find it ironic that the horse of all horses does not gallop on the ground but rather lives his life amongst celestials, in a dark field of silver florals. Because to me, in my mind, and for my body, horses were the one, if not the
only
, way to tether my broken being to the earth, from which it always seemed I was drifting, disassociated, radically severed from self and soil.
Surely I was not born this way. I arrived on March 21, 1963. Of my very early childhood I recall little, or little I wish to mention here, for in this story of horses and history, my life, it seems, started one spring evening. I don’t remember the date, but let’s call it May 28, 1973, ten years after my actual birth and just at the cusp of the sweetest season—June—when the gardens drop their modesty and begin their driven bloomings.
I know on that evening I smelled summer coming right around the corner. At ten, I was cradled in the stage called latency, a peaceful time well past the throes of infancy and long enough before the next leap into adolescence.
And I was playing that evening in the church’s empty parking lot, as I often did, with the children from a few streets over, let me call them the Callahans, a Catholic family and thus an oddity in the Golden Ghetto.
The Callahan kids were six in all, ranging in age from Mary, fifteen, who smoked and sulked in a corner of the lot, watching us younger ones with the slight sneer that teenagers perfect, to Joey, aged three, his face a splatter of Irish freckles, slurry always running from his nose.
We had a red wagon. It must have been the Callahans, and they must have left it behind in a hurry that evening because days later, after what happened had happened, the police found the wagon with Mary’s bracelet inside it, her name inscribed on the silver plate.
The wagon had a long, black pull handle, and the body was rusted here and there. One wheel was loose on its axis, so it clattered crazily on the church’s bumpy asphalt. Each kid took his or her turn pulling while the rest of us crammed into the cart and screamed with delight as we ricocheted around and around the empty church lot, the split-level houses across the street so silent, so stubbornly suburban, with their little lawns and little windows and dark doors. The world, it seemed, was emptied of everyone except the Callahan children and me, one kid pulling the rest, stuffed into the rusted red wagon circling the asphalt beneath a fiery sky, the streaked clouds painted pink and welt.
We had no notion that anything was or might soon be askew. Presiding over us was the gothic church with its windows of gorgeous glass that soared to the uppermost story, windows everyone in the Golden Ghetto, regardless of their religion, admired for their artistry and size, windows we all presumed were fixed because they seemed far too big to open and close, and much too special for such prosaic purposes.
It was a Thursday. It could not have been much past 6 p.m., because I recall the setting sun, the svelte shadows on the cracked concrete of the lot. Soon, we knew, our mothers would call us in and so—would it be fair to say—we sensed our time was short? We were, all of us—minus Mary blowing smoke O’s into the cooling air—crammed into this rusted wagon, the loose wheel making such a very loud sound, the person pulling (was it Andrea’s turn?) making a show of our enormous weight and her enormous strength, groaning and spitting as she used all of her horsepower to propel this mass of youth and laughter over the wrecked asphalt of the empty lot.
And thus it was that we did not immediately hear the strange sound, nor notice that one of those
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