Dark Hores
I got off the school bus with sixteen others at the top of the half-mile unpaved road to my home. Twelve of us were first cousins, all raised on the farms that my Grandma Lilly had given her children. Ours was the farthest from the main road beside the Bluestone River. The river hugged our farm on two of its four sides. Across the road was a mill built by my grandfather where we took corn and wheat to be ground. A steep mountain came down on the other side and it was often mirrored in the mill pond.
As I started down that country road that particular day in early spring in 1944, it suddenly dawned on me that I was the oldest of my family of five kids who were still in school and that this spring and summer would be different from any I had ever experienced. I would have to take over many jobs that my father and two older brothers had done.
The next day I rushed home from school to begin the spring plowing on our farm. For a skinny sixteen year old, plowing with a team of large work horses was a real job. I would be lucky on Saturdays to plow two acres.
My dad had been asked to work in the coal mines since the demand for coal for the war was so great. My two older brothers were already in service. My mother, younger sister and brother and I ran the farm that year with dad’s help on Sundays. It was my last full season on the farm as I joined the navy the next spring.
The row crops that we planted required cultivating and hoeing. A large black horse named Tiny had to be harnessed to the cultivator. Tiny was very nervous, and shy and had to be watched very closely as she would kick and bite. She was very skittish. When a horse fly came near, she would go wild and the row crop might disappear under the cultivator. When that happened, I would put my entire weight on the cultivator and sink it into the soil so deep that she couldn’t go forward.
It was always a challenge to catch Tiny in the early morning when she was running loose in the pasture field. Sometimes an ear of corn might do the trick. At other times, I could hem her in in the fence corner, grab her mane and put a halter on her and then lead her to the barn for harnessing.
One June morning, I found her in the far pasture field about a half-mile from the barn. I managed to get the halter on her and decided to ride her to the barn. I backed her up beside a tree stump so I could climb on her back She galloped towards the barn, her hooves thundering, and I hung on to the halter and her mane for dear life. As we approached the barn, I decided that we were moving too fast to stop, so I planned to go on past, turn around and come back and get off at the barn. However, Tiny had another idea. She charged into the barn with me still on her back. There was no room for me at the door and so I was slammed off her high back quarters and landed with a jolt on my rump. After I recovered my pride and found I was able to walk, I harnessed her and cultivated the staked tomatoes. A recent X-ray of my spine shows a damaged vertebrae that may have been caused from that incident with Tiny, a dark horse.
Several years later in a different situation, I was slammed against a wall by another dark horse and knocked unconscious. A friend who owned the stable saved me from further harm, and there was no apparent lasting effect.
Still later, while walking in the pasture field of my friend, the same horse or a similar one came toward me and forced me back into a corner of the fence near the stable. I thought, ‘’Oh, not again!’’ The horse kept coming. I decided that I was not going to submit and bow down but would try to do battle. Naturally the horse won and hit me so hard that again I was knocked unconscious.
How much time passed I don’t know, but I became partly aware of things around me. I seemed to be seated on a high flat-bed truck surrounded by several men and women. I appeared to be the focus of all their care and attention. Suddenly I became aware of each person’s eyes, their irises were blue, brown and green, and their pupils were boring into me.
The energy received from those caring eyes restored my being and my senses. To this day, I don’t know whether I shouted the words or only thought them. ‘’I’m back again, I’m really back, I’m normal.’’ With joy, relief and a comforted spirit, I wept and wept. And yet there were no tears!
– Percy