Farrier’s Daughter

Two days before what would be a snowless Vermont Thanksgiving, Chet hitched a ride to the old neighbors’ barn by his former start time, 6:10 A.M. He scraped mold from a forsaken Western saddle with his good hand, let the wiry stable boy help him tack up a retired brood mare, and set out on the four-mile ride to his daughter Kerry’s house. The charm on the necklace in his pocket, a gold blob of his own doing, jabbed his leg. His good hand held the reins. The other, useless since the second stroke that put him in the Ward, flopped at his side. He’d chosen the saddle with this in mind—the deep seat, leather with less give but more creak to keep him focused, a horn that could be gripped for balance. Novelty to most in the valley, though he knew a few ropers who’d appreciate how the saddle better suited his one-hand position. Early light warmed Chet’s steely hair. Ahead, the pine hills seemed to have parted for his convenience.

The mare hadn’t changed since Chet hacked her last year (with permission he figured still held). She stretched her neck, grateful for the loose rein, and ignored the birds’ dawn-calling above the logging road. In actual fact, it wasn’t a logging road. Kerry had called it that as a kid when he’d pulled her on a tractor inner tube behind the Oldenburg gelding he stabled there for a while. In the woods he’d stop to move trees felled by age or ice or, near the pond, beaver. “See, Daddy-O,” Kerry would say, “loggers.” He hadn’t corrected her. Kerry’s imaginings were more benevolent than Chet’s reality back then. As a single dad in the seventies, he wasn’t the only one raising brows. Nixon had been reelected thanks to a committee called CREEP, whose antics even Quebecers talked about incessantly. Peace was at one hand, then another. To Chet, truth became precarious. His little daughter wasted no time getting to the heart of it. Their only puppy, never fully housebroken, she’d named Watergate. An unruly pup. Ran off after a few months.