Six Belgians Shod by Noon

Nine straw hats in a row. Menno’s younger boys, sixteen or so, had climbed up on the top rail to see over their elders.

Nobody spoke to me. Nobody called out. That is not their way.

But every time I set a hind foot down, I heard the fence go quiet and then go easy again, like a whole row of men letting out a breath at once.

Around ten, Menno’s wife, Ivah, came out of the house with a plate covered in a dish towel.

She set it on my tailgate without a word. It was four sandwiches, thick bread, ham and cheese, and two big molasses cookies.

Paisley ate one sandwich between horses. I ate half of one standing up, with my apron still on, and then I went back to work.

My dad used to say you eat when the horse lets you.

The fifth horse was the hardest. He was the oldest, near eighteen, and he had arthritis in his right hock.

He didn’t want that leg held up. It wasn’t meanness. It hurt him. You could see it in his eye.

So I didn’t hold it the regular way. I held it lower and closer to the ground and let him rest it on a hoof stand while I worked.

It’s slower. It’s harder on your back. But a horse that’s hurting deserves a little patience, and so does a person.

My back was burning by then. My shoulders were burning. My hands had started to shake a little between nails.

I didn’t let anyone see it but Paisley. She saw it. She started handing me the nails a little slower, so I’d have a breath between.

The fifth horse took fifty-six minutes. I looked at the watch. It was eleven by then.

One horse left, the biggest, a gelding named after a president. Menno’s oldest boy led him out, and the fence went very quiet.

He was enormous. Close to two thousand pounds, Menno said, and eighteen hands.

His front feet went easy. His first hind went easy. Then I picked up the last hind, and he leaned.

He leaned like the first one, but harder, and for longer. I felt my knees start to go. I thought, this is it, this is the one they’ll talk about.

I set my teeth and leaned back and prayed the same prayer I’d prayed at the kitchen table. Please.

He shifted off me. I don’t know how long it took. Paisley told me later it was half a minute. It felt like the whole winter.

I heard the fence let out its breath, louder this time, and somebody said something in Dutch, low, and somebody else said “Ja.”

I trimmed. I fit the shoe hot. I took it to the anvil and back to the foot twice.

I cooled it. I held out my hand, and Paisley put a nail in it. Eight times.

At eleven fifty-two by my father’s watch, I set the last clinch on the last hind foot of the sixth horse. Twenty-four feet.

I rasped it smooth and set the foot down and stood up, and for a second I didn’t trust my legs to hold me.

Paisley climbed down off the tailgate. She had two nails left over in her palm.

She came over and opened my hand, put the two nails in it, and closed my fingers around them, one at a time, the way you’d fold a letter.

“You didn’t need these,” she said. “You only bent one all morning.”