The Night the Horses Screamed

Do you ever have a night
when you just can't sleep?

When you spin around and around in bed 
tangled in twisted sheets 

long into the dark hours?

When things unwanted bubble up
from the depths of your past,
and you just can't stop 
the images, the sounds, 
the flood of feelings?

That happened to me the night before last.
Twist and turn.
Twist and turn.
Between many, many, long, long minutes 
staring into the black night.

Sword of Orion in the Night Sky

Source:  Wikimedia/NASA

Then, when you finally 
fall asleep in exhaustion, 

you wake up again,
and you watch the clock and the sky thinking
"Please God!  Will morning ever come?"

That happened to me the night before last too.
I woke and watched a slow hour

crawl from black toward the red dawn.

I finally gave up on sleep,

and my feet were on the floor

just as the first meadowlark 

sent its gorgeous song into the

brightening red sky.

I had been worrying about Boomer.

Not just Boomer, 

but Paj, and Ben, and even Reggie

(whom I've heard 
from a reliable source can be a pistol!)

Boomer is a gorgeous brown Clydesdale 

with a white face and nose, 

and four big white feathery feet.

  

He lives on Moondance Ranch 

somewhere south of me.

I've never met Boomer, 

but I took his picture in a parade last December.

Boomer

I’ve never met Boomer, 

but I’d love to sometime.  

I’d like to pat his pretty nose 

and feed him some carrots or apples ~ 

even though I am frightened of horses.

I could tell my life story in horses!

Horses and I have not had an easy time of it

when our paths have crossed in the past.

Horses can size me up in a nanosecond.

Horses like to mess with my head.

Horses have laughed at me.

I swear I've heard one horse say 

to another with a wink,

"Watch the fun I have 
when This One gets in the saddle!"

This One would be Moi.

And yes, that horse had a great time 

and no doubt shared Big Horse Laughs

with his Bud when the fun was over.

If you don't believe that,

then you don't know horses!

So why would I be losing sleep 
over a horse I've never met 
who lives somewhere south of me?

Why would I be out on our deck

in the dark of night

checking the horizons

and sniffing in the air in deep, slow breaths?

Good question.

That night had been a typical evening 
for the E-P and me ~

well, except for that awesome fourth game 

in the Stanley Cup Finals

between Chicago and Boston.

I love watching the boys on their skates

battling it out with their sticks ~ 
especially in overtime.

          

  

Logo Source:
    Wikimedia



Action Source:
   Zimbo/Brookbank
     

The only things 
that would have made the game better 
would have been a few rowdy Canadians 

tossing an octopus or two out onto the ice

or more frequent and harder body checks
and pounding among the players.

After the game was over the E-P went to bed, 

and I went into my study 

to wrestle with a poem I was writing.

Me!  A poem!

I rarely read them.

I never write them.

An utterly unexpected flow of words

had hopped out my fingers the day before

and had landed in my computer.

I worked on the meter of the poem,

trying to match it to the beat
in a favorite blues song.

Bing! ~ Zing!  Bam! Bam! and Slam!
Words to go with the compelling beat
of hard drums and blaring tenor sax.
Bing! ~ Zing!  Bam! Bam! and Slam!
  

I found myself getting increasingly anxious.
As I wrestled with other parts of the poem
that required a different meter/beat,
that Bing! ~ Zing!  Bam! Bam! and Slam!
kept pounding in my head.

But this is what I was hearing:
Bing! ~ Zing!  Boom! Boom! and Slam!

Then:
Bing! ~ Zing!  Boom! Boom! and Boomer! 

OMG!  Bam!  Slam!  Boomer!

Boomer!

I took a deep breathe,
I suddenly smelled something NOT GOOD!

I smelled smoke.

Not Smoke-That-Is-Okay,

but smoke that is definitely Bad.

I smelled smoke from burning trees.

Boomer!  Boomer and his buds!

I was on our deck in a heartbeat 

scanning and smelling the dark night.
I thought the Black Forest Fire
was no longer a danger.
All that smoke had cleared out earlier.
Why were there shadows of fire smoke
whispering along Piney Creek?

Do you think 
I could find anything on the TV ~ NOT!!!

Out on the deck again I scanned and smelled.
Just thin smoke drifting.
Safe enough to go to bed,
but not to sleep.

Words from my poem ran through my head:

          I can't think.
          But I can feel.
          Don't want to feel,
          but to forget.

I wanted to sleep
and not remember
the sounds of horses screaming in the night.

Put horses and fire together

and I get very, very anxious.

Horses and fires together 

have crossed my path twice in life.  

NOT GOOD!

Mostly I think of my second real memory.

I think of 

The Night the Horses Screamed.

Horses plagued my earliest nightmares,

and they have haunted my waking dreams.

That long ago night with smoke on the wind

was in Charlottelown, Prince Edward Island, Canada.

I was really small, maybe 2 ½ or 3 years old:

Small enough to stand with my feet on the window sill;

Small enough to have to hold my hands 
just above my head 

to grip the wooden rail 
on either side of the catch

on the lower part 
of the double-hung window;

Small enough to be wearing one piece PJs, 

pink-footed and fuzzy.

I may have been really small, 

but I was big enough and smart enough 

to know that I had to hang on really tight 

because I was two stories up 

and I was afraid of heights. 

I was big enough and smart enough 
to know that those screaming sirens 
and flashing lights

slicing through the dark

and racing down Fitzroy Street 

toward the racetrack and the stables were 

BAD NEWS!

I was big enough and smart enough

to know my Great Uncle Chester had race horses,

and one or more of them might be in those stables.

Ha!  They didn't call me Big Ears for nothing!

I knew many things 
that might surprise the adults around me.

Uncle Chester and Aunt Olive

with children Barbara and Halbert and family pet

Photo possibly taken in St. Peter's Bay, P.E.I. around 1920

The horse is likely one of my Great Uncle Chester's race horses.

Photo:  "This is my driver held by ???"

(confusing notation of UC's  because the driver is the "jockey" in sulky racing)

The horse would race in harness pulling a light-weight cart or sulky.

A driver sits in the cart and guides the horse in sulky racing.

I was big enough and smart enough 

to know horses were trapped.

I could hear the horses screaming in the night.

I knew the horses were terrified 

in the smoky, flame-licked dark. 

I knew that they were trapped in their stalls

and very, very afraid!

I heard their screams, 

and I knew that some of them would die.

I clung between the rail and the sill,

and I cried into the dark too,

because I could hear them, the panicked horses.

And then I screamed into the night too.

My mom burst into my bedroom,

grabbed me from the window frame,

and held me tight,

rocking me in her lap on the bed,

shushing me and telling me 

that the horses would be fine.

I told her I could hear their screams.

She told me it was my imagination.

That I couldn't possibly hear horses screaming.

That they were too far away.

Besides, even she and Daddy 

didn't know yet where the fire was.

She told me Uncle Chester's horses would be fine,

and she held me in the dark 
until I fell into a fitful sleep.

My grandmother Ella MacDonald 

with my mother Sara MacBeath

and me (Weesie, holding a razor clam)

at Stanhope Beach, Prince Edward Island

The next morning I asked 
about the horses and the fire.

Mom said that, yes, 
there had been a fire at the stables

but that all the horses were fine.

"But Mommy, I heard their screams!"

"You were just imagining things, Weesie," 
she said.

Well, I was big enough and smart enough already

to know that sometimes parents 

told you things that weren't true.

So you wouldn't feel bad or worry.

So Big Ears listened and learned.

Learned that some panicked horses 

had died in the fire.

But not Uncle Chester's.

Learned and wondered why it is that parents

don't believe you when you tell them

you hear horses screaming in the dark.

Big-peeps should listen 
to Little-peeps more carefully.

The dawn was red red yesterday
stained by a thin veil of smoke.

On the morning news I learned
that the Lime Gulch Fire was burning
in Jefferson County, 
and I realized that the smoke had come 
from this new fire and that
Jeffco and Moondance Ranch
were probably far enough apart
for Boomer and buds to be A-OK.

This morning 
(which thankfully had a soft pink dawn)
with sweaty palms, 
I started googling Charlottetown,
the intersection of Fitzroy and Edward
where our house was,
and the location of the racetrack.

A straight line from my window to the racetrack
was a distance of about 3,000 feet.

I also googled horses screaming
and discovered that 
their high-pitched, ear-piercing screams
can travel surprising distances, 
well over 3,000 feet.

Big-peeps should listen 
to Little-peeps more carefully.

This-peep won't ever forget 

The Night the Horses Screamed and Died.

It was not This Peep's imagination!


Here is a link to where
Boomer and buds hang out:
Moondance Ranch