Horsekeeping Read online

  One night in our first house I awoke to a strange keening. The dark and the night had both enticed and terrified me for many years. Night noises are fearsome in the “quiet” of the country, not conducive to sleep for the neurotic. I had often awoken those early years, convinced that some animal or an escaped maniac was about to get us. It is unnerving at first to be so exposed. I was accustomed to living in a high rise apartment inaccessible to intruders, the building entrance policed by vigilant doormen, and my own front door satisfyingly bolted with steel. In a country house, locking doors seems silly with ground floor windows in abundance and no near neighbors to attend my screaming SOS. Ditto security systems: by the time the lone state trooper patrolling sixty square miles arrives, my assailant could have me carved up, roasted on a spit, the dinner dishes done, and be well on his way to Foxwoods casino.

  So I avoided staying by myself in Salisbury, and the few times I braved it, breathless panic courtesy of my overly keen attention to what was not in every shadowed corner I investigated spared me little sleep. It wasn’t until my forty-fifth year that I stopped being afraid alone at night. It took two kids and a husband to convince me that any “alone time” was too precious to waste a second of it worrying about some backwoods Joad trying to kill me. Kids helped me get over a lot of things in life, if not exactly grow up, and I replaced my irrational fear for my own safety with more rational ones regarding my kids. Now when I am alone in the country, I lie in bed worrying about Jane or Elliot in a taxi accident or an apartment fire, the homicidal lunatic on my own tail be damned.

  Well, back to the strange noise. It was the wail of a lone child in the woods.

  “Scott, wake up,” I whispered, propped on my elbows with ears tuned.

  “What? What’s the matter?”

  “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “A scream or a screech.”

  “I don’t hear anything. Just go back to sleep,” he yawned. “It’s probably just some animal.”

  “SHHH,” I cupped my ear. “Listen.”

  We turned our heads toward the open window. The cry echoed again, clear and eerie.

  “That. It sounds like a baby,” I said, certain.

  “Why would a baby be out in the woods?”

  “I don’t know. Lost, maybe?”

  We heard it again, loud and clear. It had to be human.

  “Let’s go find it.” I was wide awake, heart pounding toward a rescue mission.

  “You’ve got to be kidding.” Scott locked my eyes to check my mental health.

  “Well, I’m going,” I said, petulant.

  I fumbled on my robe, slipped into Scott’s Docksiders and plodded out into the dewy night. Billions of crickets and frogs chirped and bellowed. The night is loud around here. What do they mean “dead of night”? Everything is not just living, but partying. A misnomer equivalent to “sleep like a baby”: if you’ve had one, rocking and singing to it for hours before stealthing back to your own forgotten bed, you know the truth. “Sleep like a teenager”—try waking one up in time for school—would be the more appropriate saying.

  I didn’t think to pack a flashlight, but no matter, I was pumped. I strained my ears toward the desperate call. Come on, I urged, Where are you? I jumped off the deck into the brush. Snakes? I high stepped to perch on a rock. It was very dark. That’s why I needed Scott—power in numbers. I’m big on ideas, but cowardly in follow-through.

  I strained with listening.

  Nothing.

  The sound ended as mysteriously as it began. Foolish once again, I swatted at the mosquitoes planting bites on my ankles and temples that would plague me for days. I crept back into bed, inching so as not to wake my husband who, with a little luck, would forget all of this by morning. My expectation of tending to some ethereal changeling or injured, grateful animal lay fallow. Some years later a radio program informed me that certain nocturnal animals sound just like babies crying, and many people just like me have gone a’hunting for to save them.

  One autumn night several years later, Scott and I joined a group of Nature Conservancy-led hikers to call for owls. Only a few hardy souls signed up, but this smacked of adventure—dark and wild, yet with a protector who knew the territory. I had read Owl Moon to my son, a lovely children’s book about a boy and his father summoning owls, and I have always wanted to communicate with any animal on its own terms. Frank led us across protected land to a fen, swampy with dead, leafless trees. Their bleached trunks silhouetted starkly, even against the moonless sky. On the way, Frank gamely suggested we douse our flashlights. Blind in the black dark, we intuited the verge of the trail with the edges of our shoes. It was slow-going, and I instinctively looked downward to spy the trail.

  My eye caught something aglow.

  “Frank, what is that?” I asked, uselessly pointing to the verge.

  “Where?”

  Feeling for his arm, I led him to a white, irregular rectangle, motionless but brightening under our gaze. Frank squatted to better identify.

  “Wow, that’s cool. It’s a fungus that makes phosphorus. It’s quite unusual to see one so large.”

  I glowed with pride at my find.

  Of course we didn’t disturb the glowing fungus of our nature hike, but we all had a good look, and it proved the highlight of the night. For all our expert and inexpert calling, no unwise owls flew over to astonish us with their graceful beauty. Again, I would have to wait to see one of my favorite creatures. To this day I have only seen a few in the wild, swooping across the road at night, too quick for me to see their big eyes and charming head swivel. Occasionally I hear their nightly hoots in the woods behind our house though, and I reply my own toward conversation.

  All in all, Salisbury was not as exciting as I had imagined with nonstop adventure, action, stunning beauty, animals in abundance, creepy woodsmen and peasanty women. Isn’t that what we’ve been fed through wilderness epics, pioneer stories, and fairy tales, not to mention notions of romantic environments and the sublime still filtering into us through literature, paintings and the movies: raw nature, red in tooth and claw, and beautiful like the candy-colored Land of Oz? Instead, my new country life, lived only on the weekends (part of the problem), flowed awkwardly. Flashes of brilliance only intermittently punctuated long periods of ho-hum that I strove to gussy up into my literary-romantic, Wild Kingdom wardrobe of “the country.”

  Only after years of slow understanding, when I stopped working so hard, relaxed and let it happen, did I begin to find the under-layer of wonder in the ever changing, far from perfect, often smallish miracles that make up New England country life. Individually these moments may seem paltry—like that first hummingbird that arrives at my feeder the same week each May. But over time and with patience they added up, and I sensitized to them. That ruby-throated flutterer became spectacular when I figured him possibly the very same individual from last year, counting on my reliable refreshment after an arduous migration from the Yucatan Peninsula. And this year he lingered by my ear, drinking from the hanging petunia blooms as I read and dozed in the shade of the porch. Or the Monarch butterfly that enjoyed a long rest on Jane’s knee; or the chipmunks that play hide and seek with our dog along the tunnels of the stone wall.

  Such encounters filled the freed-up space my departing dullness availed, and nature and I inched toward each other. Eventually I reached a level of fullness, an accumulation of experiences, ordinary and exceptional, such that I was often overwhelmed by all I increasingly witnessed. When I waited, this environment offered up simple and complex high notes to my more sensitive and receptive self. Never diminishing or growing tedious, every new and repeated experience elicited more satisfaction and deeper happiness. I was taught to read this particular place: the exquisite nature I sought in the beginning was there all along—mine now, not because I muscled it, but rather received it as a gift to my now humbler self.

  With my adjusted powers of awareness, Salisbury’s genteel profusion of
renewable beauty often hits me with exceptional clarity. Especially in the summer I experience an almost chemical happiness when I drive along the many familiar scenic routes, both main and back roads. These emollient days—the sun blares but not in my eyes, warming my skin. The trees’ highest leaves, encouraged by the west wind, tickle the expanse of blue sky, their rustle a lively chorus. The road is smooth, clear and clean from yesterday’s thunderstorm. Feeling light and perfectly content, even dying might be acceptable. I’m in the now, the moment, not bothered by the past or anticipating the future—so exquisite, it’s enough for one lifetime. It lasts about a minute or two if I am lucky. Ahhhhh . . . but hold on.

  What’s that?

  Oh no.

  Please don’t let it be....

  But there it is.

  Road kill.

  A once robust, happy-go-lucky raccoon, now freshly dead, its back half smeared along the macadam, red and raw, an extended intestine, a petite black paw curled in; or, a week old carcass, bloated beyond belief, arms sticking out like the fingers of an inflated surgical glove; or the flattened, soggy fur of one such balloon recently exploded.

  I will never harden to road kill, and could shed tears for each and every one if I let myself. I had read about the naturalist poet Barry Lopez, who pulled over to retrieve every flattened critter he came across, make-shifting a grave and whispering a prayer. I feel the urge to be so noble, but am usually time-deprived, or not dressed properly, or afraid of disease, or I tell myself I’ll get it on the way back, or, or, or.... Instead, I well up from helplessness and try to save the overflow of emotion for the damaged-but-not-yet-dead, about-to-be-road kill: the ultimate bane of country life. With so much driving amongst copious wildlife, murder happens from the best of us. While it is amazing how many chipmunks and squirrels manage to race themselves around the obstacle course of four tires on the move, the raccoons, opossum and deer aren’t quite so gymnastic.

  BAM!

  One minute we were heading contentedly home from a summer stock play at the Sharon Playhouse, late afternoon, refraining My Fair Lady—All I want is a room somewhere, far away from the cold night air . . .—the next we faced death. A large deer tore out of the tall corn stalks lining the road on our right. Only a fraction of a second’s glimpse of brown fur in motion out of the corner of my eye preceded our plowing into it with the front end of our small Honda.

  “Oh my God, oh my God!”

  The impact pushed us left into the oncoming traffic lane, mercifully clear of vehicles. My friend Paula gripped the steering wheel and wrestled us back into our lane, all the while shoveling that poor animal about half a mile down the road. It fell away fifty yards before we managed to stop.

  “Oh my God, oh my God!” Paula repeated.

  “Paula! It’s okay. You did great. We’re all okay. Are you okay Elliot?” I’m pretty good in a crisis.

  “Yeah. What happened?” he asked, wide-eyed.

  “We hit a deer. Did you fall forward or hit your head or anything?”

  “No. I mean I came forward but didn’t hit anything.”

  “He came out of nowhere,” Paula moaned.

  “I know, I know. There’s no way you could have avoided him.”

  I looked out the back window. The deer lay still. I again checked that we were all intact and shakily exited the car. The driver behind us had already stopped where the deer was sprawled out. Please let it be dead, I silently begged, knowing a bad scene could be exponentially worse if we had to deal with a slowly dying, panicked animal. I didn’t want myself, but especially not my son to witness anything so dreadful, not yet. I instructed Paula to wait with Elliot. I jogged back meeting a man from the house across the street who had heard the collision and ran out to help.

  “Is it dead?”

  “Yes. Are you all alright?” the neighbor asked.

  “Thankfully, yes. It was pretty scary.”

  “This happens all the time here. At least twice a month we hear tires squealing. I’ll call the police so they can get it picked up.”

  I took a last glance at the largish doe, trunk scraped up and legs tangled, her strong neck and head gracefully arched. I wondered why their long tongues always loll out, a last indignity. With nothing left to do, we retreated home.

  Paula and I tucked Elliot into bed and bemoaned our fate and raised a glass of tranquilizing whiskey to any and all guardian angels. The car sustained a broken headlight but otherwise seemed unscathed. Yet two days later, as Paula gassed up, the traumatized Honda refused to start, debilitated by a slow leak of fluids. Now when I travel that stretch of road, I remember that deer. Still tender to that spot, I beg Scott to slow down, as if our chances of a run-in are higher there than anywhere else in town.

  The next time, Scott was behind the wheel. Elliot and Jane slept peacefully in the back of the Suburban, but Elliot’s friend Max, an inner city kid with little country experience, was too excited to sleep. He sat in the middle of the back seat with big eyes staring out the front windshield as we plowed over a fawn following behind his running mother who we had just barely missed. The creature rumbled gingerly under the chassis, front to back, and sick gathered in my stomach. A baby! Our high beams torch-lit the entire scene—a ghastly movie set. My distress grew realizing that Max was alert to every second of his country adventure. Worrying that it might not be dead, I persuaded Scott to turn around to check, and also to make sure that the doe did not hang around endangering herself, and, if necessary, warn other drivers. An image of a mother nosing around her dead fawn had me on the brink of tears, held back only for Max’s sake.

  “Did you see what happened, Max?” I asked, keeping my cool.

  “Yeah. We ran over that animal.”

  “It was a deer, Max. Unfortunately it happens in these parts because there are so many. I’m sorry you had to see it.”

  He remained silent as we circled and saw the fawn dead-still with the mother nowhere in sight, though I imagined her big doe eyes accusing from the dark woods. As Bambi’s mother whispered: “Man was in the forest.” I wish Walt had spared us that film.

  Being a fairly young fawn made it more like hitting a raccoon than a deer, but we sustained some front-end damage nevertheless. Unfairly, I took my helplessness out on Scott.

  “You shouldn’t have been driving so fast. You always drive too fast.”

  “I wasn’t driving too fast. They just came out of nowhere. Anybody would have hit them. Don’t make me feel worse than I do already.”

  He was right, and we had Max to consider.

  “Are you alright, Max?”

  “Yeah.”

  DEER ACCIDENTS cement in your mind forever. It’s like remembering where you were when Kennedy was shot or when the Twin Towers crashed down. Like the one we helped get euthanized on New Year’s Eve; and another time, on our return to the city, when I spied a downed deer just short of the village.

  “Oh no,” I cried. “Scott, did you see that?”

  “What?” Elliot asked.

  “An injured deer.”

  “Yeah, I saw it,” said Scott wearily, knowing what he was in for.

  The young deer sat oddly collapsed, upright on its torso, head up and alert and eyes perplexed, in no obvious distress. But all four legs were splayed outward in a double split. My eyes welled.

  “Pull into The White Hart so I can ask Larry to call a trooper.”

  Exiting the inn I passed a man striding in with purpose.

  “Did you see that deer, too?” he asked.

  “Yes, I just asked the desk manager to call it in.”

  “That’s good,” he said, turning back to his own potential assassin of a vehicle. “He’s paralyzed for sure, and there’s no sense in his panicking for very long.”

  “It’s so horribly sad,” I couldn’t help saying, hoping for a humane trooper. I had heard many don’t like to discharge their weapons because of the paperwork.

  “Yeah, but it happens. They come out of nowhere,” he said, repeating
the common refrain from anyone who has hit a deer.

  WE HAVE ALSO RESCUED SOME ANIMALS or tried to anyway. We returned a baby bluebird to the house from which it tumbled, relieved to see the mama still bringing food. A few weeks later we watched the youngsters’ first flights, taught incrementally by their parents until one day they vanished. An empty nest: what will it be like when my kids leave? Another summer the four of us were playing baseball in the back yard. The sunny day revved our endorphins, and even Elliot was kind about Jane’s swinging misses with the bat. As Scott pitched and I played outfield we noticed a hawk circling low and lower over our heads. Its crazy pattern chased us together and set us thinking Alfred Hitchcock. With our eight eyes staring, it crashed straight into the side of the house, just alongside the window of a gable, bounced off and fell to the roof motionless; two thumps.

  “What the heck?” Elliot asked, his hands shielding his eyes from the glare.

  “I don’t know,” replied Scott. “Maybe he planned on going through the window.”

  “What’s the matter with that birdie?” Jane asked.

  “I don’t know, sweetie. Maybe it saw the sky’s reflection on the glass and got confused,” I said.

  Many small birds have crashed into our paned windows over the years, even though we’ve made window art to deflect them. Usually, after a bewildered rest they autopilot away. But I was already anticipating the damage control Scott and I could deploy about this large dead flyer that had not aimed for the window.

  To our surprise, the hawk resurrected. It flew off and returned, circling haphazardly and, with all our eyes glued, it dove straight into the side of the same dormer, knocking itself again into stillness on the slanted roof.

  “Oh no,” cried Elliot. “Not again.”

  “There is definitely something wrong with that bird,” I said.

  We watched for a long time, fully expecting Lazarus to fly again.

  “Will he be alright again, Daddy?” Jane asked.