The Caretaker

The years had not been especially kind to the man who cared for the horses.

He was called Dusty and lived in a tiny room attached to the stable on a farm owned by the banker's son. He was tall and dangerously thin, always in need of a shower and shave, dressed in threadbare clothes and old work boots. The veins on his hands seemed about to break through the skin as he mucked out stalls and pitched hay or worked leather cleaner into the harnesses and saddles from a three legged stool in the stall doorway. Cigarette smoke drifted around him in a blue haze and there was always a whiskey bottle in his back pocket. When he spoke at all it was only to the children or the horses - my daddy said he had been in the war and was naturally economic of speech so if you wanted to know what he thought, you had to learn to read his eyes and his expressions. Watch his face when he works with the horses, my daddy told me, See the way he handles them, pay attention to his eyes.And so I watched. Dusty rarely as much as acknowleged my presence but he never sent me away and sometimes would produce a sugar cube or carrot from his overalls and slip them into my hand then nod towards one of the horses. I sat beside him as he repaired and cleaned the old leather reins and came to love the sweet smell of saddle soap. I watched him shoe the horses and massage away lameness, saw him treat their cuts and bruises with liniment and warm bandages. I learned that they knew him and would whinney at his scent and nuzzle toward his chest in seach of a treat.

I watched his eyes and their's and saw the reflections of love and trust in both. There were no bad horses in Dusty's world - he cared for them, trained them, treated them, even brought some into the world and he believed that each had a place and a purpose and a reason to be. He walked with them through the pastures and the woods and the fields, even led them across the cove at low tide, leaving twin trails of foot prints and hoof prints, side by side in the soft mud. He fed them and watched over them while they slept and when one died, he alone dug the grave and managed the burial. When the rendering plant on the mainland sent an agent to see him, Dusty heard him out and then struck him and broke his jaw before ordering him off the farm.

No one ever knew what started the stable fire - the old timers said it was a freak lightning strike,

the banker's son suspected arson, my daddy thought it had been an accident - but what we did all know was that Dusty had sent each and every horse into the safety of the corral before the stable went up in flames. Not a single one was lost or even harmed. Dusty's body was found face down in the ashes and debris, the remains of a bridle in one hand and a whiskey bottle in the other. He was buried next to the graves of the animals he had loved and cared for his entire adult life with only children and horses as mourners.

The years had not been kind to the man who cared for the horses but when the stables were rebuilt, the bankers son had a plaque placed over the stalls that read simply For Dusty and those he loved.

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