Maude’s Promise
They’d been my husband Jake’s dream since I can’t remember when. Jake had been my dream, so somewhere along the way they became my dream, too. When he finally found them, a Belgian team of draft mares, we spent an afternoon as a family watching them harnessed, the kids and I laughing joyfully as Maude and Minnie drug my man around behind them. I felt a part of him come alive. I understood that part, for I’d known it within myself.
We had no harness of our own, no collars, and no sled to pull hay across frozen ground. It was something, however, to witness neighbors come forward and offer bits and pieces, like a commissary wagon belonging to someone’s grandfather, a collar here or there. “Though I doubt it will fit Minnie, she’s such a big girl, but try it, Jake.”
Slowly, it evolved. As the necessaries came together, I felt the excitement of friends and family as a man grasped at the straws offered him. Conversations during brandings, while shipping calves, and between two beat-up ranch pickups was always brimming with the urgency of the very frequently asked question: have you hitched your team yet?
Passersby drove along the highway slower, rolling down the window in the biting cold just to admire them, a certain satisfaction coming from the sight of such massive creatures, though neither mare ever did much by way of acrobatics meant to impress. All they had to do was be alive, to breathe, to exist. The importance of such an action was not lost on anyone who knew Jake, anyone who saw the flash of smile, the brilliance of excitement in his eye each time he spoke of them.
It can’t be likened to a first pickup. No, for as any farm or ranch kids knows, those are necessary tools, and they help the general good. It isn’t like roping off your first custom made saddle, for those who’ve dreamt of one knows they soon wear and weary. This was something found in the spark of the soul. It looks different for everyone, the one thing, essential, you might say, to the fulfillment of a particular life. A calling known only to those who hear it.
A stone-boat was purchased from noticing an advertisement. The saddle barn was slowly over-taken and commandeered by harness, and now saddles took roost in trailers and on the floor of the family room. Bridles hung from the hat rack in the house. All a wife could do was laugh, smell the barn within the house, and think of that flash of smile.
Winter faded and spring came. Jake struggled to find harrowing equipment, a draw bar and harrows that weren’t more than his girls could handle. Now, a fine, bright red fore-cart sported a draw bar ready for work, and Maude, the older of the pair, sported her own surprise for the world to see. She was going to be a mama, though not for the first time. There was no disappointment there, for who could resist the expansion of their dream?
Minnie chose not to contribute to the workforce a little one of her own, though no one knew why. She’d been exposed, but for reasons of her own, she chose not to take. So, she pranced jovially, completely un-hindered by the weight and heaviness of promise, of a future within her. Maudie, however, lacked that jovial prance, but she carried a twinkle in her eye that could out-shine the sun. Breathless we all waited; the swather passing the pasture always had an observant operator, or a stock-truck driver ready to carry the happy news to the wife at home.
I noticed a change one afternoon when I’d stopped to check water. It wasn’t at all what I’d expected, and having once expected myself, I thought I could expect what was coming. Maude was her beautiful self, so patient, so gentle despite her view from so high above me. She waited like a mother would, ever mindful of where I was, where I would be, and where she would place herself. But Minnie, it would seem, had no control of her right-front shoulder. I rubbed her shoulder, no rookie to equine injury, but I found no obvious culprit. I made a mental note to keep Minnie closer in my rounds, make more check-ins. The kids did, too.
I always have found hope in the dawn, so many of my troubles solved before the day truly begun, so I hoped she’d be better with the sun. Minnie looked it. Her eye was bright her body strong. However, as she stepped forward, I found what grasped at her body had only tightened its grip. Now, her right hip was refusing to answer the command given by her brain. Minnie, though, was undisturbed. She grazed, she stood happily to have her itches scratched. I broached the subject with Jake, and he immediately made calls. The vet determined as long as Minnie could stand, she’d weather whatever storm she battled. The sun set, and my last glimpse of her as the light faded was a happy Minnie, grazing peacefully beside Maude.
Jake had to haul cattle early the next morning, off and going before the sun. The place and all that was on it was left to me and our three kids, ranging in age from 9 to 14. We fed the saddle horses, chickens, and entertained the dogs with both. Then we headed to check Minnie.
No panic can seize the heart the way seeing a failing soul can. To see the worst, to acknowledge it has come to exist before you, cannot be expressed in the form of adequate words. Minnie spoke to me in a way only a soul can, and I knew. She had, sometime during the night, gone down. For now, she was her bright and wonderful self. I, and my trio, tried to coax her to rise. We prayed, brought her grain, and bathed her with buckets of cool water. Minnie had to hang on, just so Jake could see her one last time, so he could let her go in his own way.
All day, the neighbors stopped, offering words of hope and help. By late afternoon, the sun was hot, and Minnie was tired of the struggle. Jake went out into the field alone to see her one last time and help her find peace. As he stood trying to accept the end of a dream, Maude interjected her own thoughts on the subject.
Maude presented him on his wobbling legs, slowly coaxing him along. So much turmoil had marred the day of his birth he’d come into the world quietly, unnoticed. He then stood after unknown attempts and worked to his mother’s side and warmth. As Jake gazed over what had passed, he held in his sight the future, what Maude promised of a new and better day. Maybe it’s not for us to ask why, just to trust in something better ahead.