The Horse That Came Home for the Ride

The nicker

We pulled into Dad’s yard a little after ten. It was a bright, cool morning, the kind that comes at the end of September in the hills, when the sumac along the fence row has just started to turn.

Dad was on the porch with his coffee. He saw the truck and the trailer and he stood up, slow, with one hand on the porch post. He did not come down the steps. I think he was afraid to.

Loren had not even shut the engine off when we heard it from inside the trailer. A nicker. Low and deep and long, the sound a horse makes to his own people.

Dad heard it. He set his coffee cup on the porch rail. He came down those steps faster than I had seen him move in a year, and his cane stayed leaning against the post where he left it.

I opened the trailer gate. Biscuit backed out careful, the way Dad taught him, one foot at a time. Then he turned his head and saw Dad, and he nickered again, and he walked straight to him on that loose lead like there was nobody else in the yard.

Dad put both hands on that horse’s neck and leaned his forehead against him. He stood like that a long time. I could see his shoulders moving. Biscuit stood perfectly still and blew warm air into the front of Dad’s jacket.

Loren looked off toward the pasture and found something wrong with the trailer hitch that needed his attention for a good while.

When Dad finally lifted his head, his face was wet, and he did not wipe it.

“How,” he said.

“Two heifers,” I said. “Vernon was fair about it.”

“Two.” He shook his head. “Lynnie, that’s too much for an old horse.”

“It’s not for the horse, Dad.”

He looked at me then, really looked at me, and he did not say anything. He did not have to. He reached out and squeezed my shoulder the way he did when I was twelve and had just roped my first calf.

Then he turned back to Biscuit and said, “Well, come on, you old fool. Let’s get you home,” and led him back to the pen with the halter still hanging on the gate post, right where it belonged.