Looking out his front door that cold winter afternoon he found himself lost in the fields just across the road. They must belong to someone, he thought, but to whom? He hadn't a clue. There were times he'd taken a fancy to calling them his own, seeing as how his family had shared the house for most of his 55 years. But the livestock that grazed the dry Oklahoma "cold-weather grass" didn't belong to him, nor did the wild animals and feral cats which lived nocturnally in those woods.
He wished he owned horses. Equine beasts would make good companions for the cows and a particularly large bull penned in behind cheap farmer's wire line. Barbed wire kept them from escaping their universe...his universe...the one where his father raised a beautiful black mare and a shetland pony someone had named Trigger.
It dawned on him, perhaps for the first time, that he never knew who had named the small horse. It didn't seem like the kind of name that would come from the imagination of the same person behind Tootsie (the well groomed female) and Penny (the foal, only recently born and still a tad wobbly in the legs). "Trigger" had to have been from the mind of a child.
Who knows? he thought. It could have been me that named her.
It may well have been, or more likely from his father's favorite, his brother that the moniker had been fitted for the animal, although it must be noted that Trigger's overall sluggish demeanor never merited the kind of vigorous nature you'd expect from Roy Rogers' steed. Heavy odds would pay off for any gambler who made a bet on Mr. Rogers being the sole inspiration...the only triggers he and his brother had ever known of were clutched between the fingers of heroes like Marshall Dillon, the Rifleman, the Cartwright family on the Ponderosa (and just what does the word "Bonanza" even mean???)...Have gun will travel, it was a strange saying to their pacifist ears, unfamiliar with violence.
Though he preferred the Sunday afternoon Monster Movie on Mystery Theater he would sometimes hold back pestering his old man long enough so that the part-time cowboy could finish watching a western. Somewhere along the line he'd picked up a taste for them, though he could not recall when it had happened or over which overwrought melodrama the conversion was experienced. He came to relish the time spent with his father and grew to love the look that came over the bearded face when the bad guy hit the ground.
And the horses. Of course. All the cowboys seemed to have been assigned a horse to convey them across desserts and plains, like indestructable automobiles that seemed awfully fun to ride. In those younger days he couldn't conceive of the downside, the saddle soreness, the need to be groomed, not to mention fed and watered...those responsibilities did not come across well on the cheap black and white television his mother had bought at an OTASCO store.
Fact is he may not have loved horses so much if he'd paid attention to his father's burden in caring for them and less about Hollywood cowboys. Like Dracula and Frankenstein those horses were nothing like real life. Real horses can cause heartbreak and despair just as easily as they can win events in races and rodeos.
The "pacifist cowboy" had grown up. He continued staring at the pasture land. Even now, knowing full well the investment of a good, healthy beast, he persisted in his self-inflicted ennui.
He must have a horse!
I could take care of at least a couple now, his train of thought obsessed with the idea. At last he caved in to a memory that reminded him why it had taken most of his life to even consider owning one.
He was perhaps seven or eight years old. He measured the age by how long his family lived in the Morgan road house subtracted from how many years since the move to the west side of town. He knew that anything that happened before that migration would place him at no older than nine at the very most. The horses had to be sacrificed in that move because the house his parents had bought shared no adjacent pasture land. It surely broke his dad's heart to lose those animals...knowing him, he probably cried...
He knew he was awfully young and this was one of his oldest recollections...
A black and white photo of him astride the pony was further evidence that it took place "at the old house". Apparently Trigger had been tamed when that picture was taken...
Or perhaps it was taken just before...
On that hot summer afternoon he spooked the horse. Maybe he accidentally kicked him, he never knew what enraged the Shetland but most definitely something had.
Bucking like the most fierce bronco in the Pro Rodeo circuit he took off running as if ponies were somehow capable of winning the Kentucky Derby and the Remington Park Annual race in one fell swoop. His rear end rose from the saddle involuntarily.
He screamed but held on to the reins for as long as he could. Now that the memory had lost much of it's sheen he would not be able to tell you just how far he'd flown before being rescued by gravity. Lucky, however, that he didn't break his neck, it was an extremely young age to have cheated the Reaper but only now did he think of it in those macabre terms.
How his father must have worried. How his mother must have yelled at him for letting "the kids" get on those horses in the first place, obviously they were too young. But his father wouldn't hear of it. He'd been forced at a very young age, by a death in the family, to work the Arkansas farm land from whence his family migrated to Oklahoma. He had a lot of expectations for his own offspring but lacked the education to understand what his mother saw so clearly...they had not raised cowboys. They were bringing up rock stars and you know what that means: a latent inability to recognize responsibility in favor of the dream that never comes true.
Trigger had his revenge, that was for sure, and he continued daydreaming about the scene, playing it backwards and forwards in his mind. He chopped it into a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle and relished each piece he found that fit into what he'd been able to retain...
His father, calling out his name, leaving his brother and the horses free to escape the pasture to run towards the inert body. The fear that would have been inescapable and easy to detect in his face...one of those bad TV westerns turned all too real... The sense of relief he must have felt like a wave when it was obvious there was no serious damage here, only a few bruises and a miracle.
Father was gone now and he came to one last realization. It wasn't the horses he'd wanted to roam in those woods across the old highway. It was the memory of the times shared with the rough handed full-time cowboy who gave it up to raise his children.
The dream wasn't even his, it belonged to dad who had already proven he could more than hold his own with the best equine breeds in local rodeos and in parades through town on Festival day... A man who made a name for himself not just as a working man, which is exactly what he was, but as a friend to many and well beloved. To be respected like that, yes, that's what he hoped he'd inherited from the man.
He turned away from the fogged pane of glass which had become a time machine and looked at his wife sitting in his favorite chair quietly darning her worn socks. He felt a wave of love rush over him so much like a tsunami that he was compelled to walk across the room and surprise her with a kiss. No particular reason.
She accepted it with a smile and a look in her eyes he recognized as true love. Closing his eyes he said a silent prayer for guidance and strength. Before he reached the Amen one last image of his own father broke through and he couldn't help but interrupt the communion with a sincere, heartfelt sentiment...
"Thank you, dad".
