2.

In the morning Nate’s mom had made us breakfast. I was never introduced to her, but the four of us sat together and ate scrambled eggs and the thickest bacon I’ve ever had. There were rolls too, as large as my fist, served with apple butter and raspberry preserves. Over breakfast Jon and Nate’s mother discussed horses.

Nate’s family lives on a horse farm. They raise Morgan horses, and I learned more about horses at that meal than I ever knew before. Nate’s mother and father want to donate a horse to the campground that Jon’s dad manages, but there are complications.

“You couldn’t donate it directly to the campground,” Jon explained. “There are still people on the board that don’t think having horses is the best thing for Adrian Christian Camp. You would be donating it to my parents, because the horses we have there now technically belong to them. They take care of them and feed them and everything with their own money until the board changes its mind. Actually, it’s just a few people, so they’ll probably be taking care of the horses themselves until those people die.”

I couldn’t figure out why they want to give the horse away. Maybe it was an old male that’s been gelded or a brood mare that’s too old to get pregnant. (These are terms that I learned that very morning.)

“She’s completely broke,” Nate was explaining. “You could walk right up and smack her on the nose and she’ll just stare at you. That’s why we think she’ll be so good around the kids or whatever at camp.”

Nate’s mom described the cart the horse can pull, and I tried to imagine people riding horse-drawn carriages to the tabernacle at campmeeting. It gives it a country, sawdusty feel. Jon wondered about the cost of something like that, the way to transport the horse down to Georgia, and asked about up-coming auctions in the area. I gave up following it and concentrated on my food.

Eventually the talk about horses ended, and Jon, Nate, and I finally went outside to see them. A cat and a Dalmatian appeared as we walked from the house to the first barn. The cat was completely black and aptly named Sinister. Nate got him at school to be a barn cat and brought him home. Sinister was incredibly friendly. When I picked him up he immediately clambered for a perch on my shoulder. The Dalmatian was Duke. He was just as friendly. If you stood still too long he sat on your feet, waiting for his neck to be scratched.

In the barn there were stalls on either side for horses. Nate went to the first and brought out Clipper, his favorite horse. Clipper was brown with enormous bug-eyes. I don’t know much about horses, so I don’t know whether all horses have eyes that large, but I’ve never noticed it before. I stroked its neck hesitantly as Nate led it out to brush. A barn cat watched us sleepily from a bale of hay in the loft.

Nate handed me the lead rope and told me to take Clipper outside. “Just walk next to him, take him wherever you want.” I knew he was doing it because he could tell I’m nervous around large animals, so I obliged him. I took the rope and led Clipper out of the barn door, around the yard beside the barn, and down the pasture fence.

“Don’t let him push you around,” Nate instructed. “If he starts to crowd you, just give him a push back.”

It was strange leading something so large. It felt as though an animal that could easily crush me or kick my skull in should not be so docile. I asked Nate and Jon about it.

“They’re scared of people,” Jon said, and I glanced at Clipper’s bug-eyes. He did seem to be giving me a stare verging on terrified. “They don’t know they’re bigger than you. They’re scared of everything, and they want you to tell them what to do.”

I led Clipper for a while longer and finally gave the rope back to Nate. There were other horses out here to be impressed and a little frightened by, and we walked along the fence as Nate pointed them out to us and explained how they are related. They have about fifteen horses on their farm, almost all of them Morgans.

“That’s Firefly.” He pointed. “She’s this one’s daughter. That’s Starfire.”

I don’t know much about horses, so I asked quite a few questions.

“We keep them all separated in different pastures because there’s always a dominant horse. Those ones way back there are old, and that one with them is gelded, so they’re all kind of passive. If they were up here with these, the younger ones would kind of pick on them.”

When we stepped outside the day had fooled us into thinking it was warm. Now I pulled the hood up around my face as we talked and kept my hands pushed deep into my pockets. At least it wasn’t snowing here. There was mud, but it didn’t seem much like spring mud.

We stopped at the last fenced pasture and watched a small horse running strangely with its head held to one side. “This one’s blind,” Jon explained to me. “Her name is Faith. She was born that way.”

Watching a blind foal run is probably one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen. Maybe watching any foal or colt (I still don’t know the difference) run is kind of heart-wrenching, because they seem so spindly and fragile. I’m not really sure, because I haven’t seen many young horses run. But watching a blind foal run will break your heart, because you see how young and restless and hesitant it is, and then it’s even more scared and helpless than that and yet graceful too. Faith would run in circles, weaving back and forth across the mud.

Her ears perked up as Nate called to her, and he opened the gate and walked out into mud up to his ankles. That was something to see too, watching him get close to her and calm her with his voice until he could soothe her with touch. It didn’t last long though, and soon she was out running again, circling her dark little world.

I learned a lot about horses from Nate’s house, especially when I went back into the house to use the bathroom and found a magazine all about Morgans. It was a monthly magazine (I’m always amazed at how many things can have monthly magazines published about them), and it seemed to me to mainly be a dating service for horses. You could pay thousands of dollars to let your horse mate with another horse with names like Futurity French Commander or Blood Rose Promise III. The magazine would describe the kind of bloodlines the horses had and which of their offspring had won awards so you would know your horse was going to make some outstanding babies.

When we left Jon set up his old camera on a tripod. We had Nate’s mom take a picture of the three of us standing in front of my car, and we decided that would be our morning tradition for the road trip. It seemed a little old fashioned having a camera that wasn’t digital set up on a tripod and posing in front of it. We probably should have been on horses riding from town to town, not in my Firebird.