{"id":68,"date":"2015-05-04T19:53:58","date_gmt":"2015-05-04T19:53:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/?p=68"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:58:47","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T21:58:47","slug":"up-hill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/?p=68","title":{"rendered":"Story of the Month: Up Hill"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"image<\/a>It was old Dade driving.\u00a0 We picked him \u2019cause he was the soberest, or so it looked to us, who felt, most of us, that we were too un-sober to drive.\u00a0 I could have, I suppose, in a pinch, but it was a moonless night, and the road was solid dark as only a country road can be.\u00a0 Plus, there were the horses, six of \u2019em lined up side by side, head next to rump, head next to rump, and so on\u2014with a pony thrown in for good measure\u2014crowded into an open stock trailer meant for hauling cattle to slaughter.\u00a0 It was a little crampy for them, but the slats let in the breeze and the trip wasn\u2019t all that long, plus horses generally aren\u2019t going to like any kind of ride anyway, no matter what they\u2019re in.\u00a0 None of us had a real horse trailer, though we all had horses.\u00a0 None of us knew anyone would lend us a good trailer, either.<\/p>\n

We were headed for the horse camp on Mount Ashton.\u00a0 In the lead was me and Dade and Lizzie, pulling the six horses and the pony, and behind us was Gaylord and Trent with four more horses in another, smaller open stock trailer, and behind them Edna and Rob in the van with the food and a lot, but not all, of the gear.\u00a0 No one wanted to ride with Edna and Rob because they were always sniping at each other or else wouldn\u2019t talk to each other at all.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know which is worse to have to sit through.\u00a0 Edna usually got the short end of the stick in any argument.\u00a0 She wasn\u2019t as quick as Rob with words, which is maybe why, later that night, she did what she did.<\/p>\n

My sleeping bag and my duffel bag of clothes were in the van, and some of my beer.\u00a0 We had a couple of six packs on the floor of the truck cab, between my and Lizzie\u2019s feet.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t want more than that \u2019cause they would\u2019ve got warm, plus Dade was not a beer drinker.\u00a0 We were pretty well stoked with wine by the time we left anyway.<\/p>\n

We\u2019d set out well after midnight, wanting to hit the last stretch of road by two o\u2019clock or so.\u00a0 Mt. Ashton is a popular camp, and the only way in is a steep, twisting road so narrow that if someone\u2019s coming down and meets someone else going up, the car going up has to back down until they reach a turn-out where they can pull over and let the down-hiller pass.\u00a0 On a busy weekend during the daytime, it could take forever to get up that mountain.\u00a0 Plus, backing up a horse trailer on a curving road with steep drop-offs is no fun.<\/p>\n

Old Dade wasn\u2019t really that old, thinking of it now.\u00a0 In his forties, I guess.\u00a0 But we all were in our twenties, so he seemed old, plus he\u2019d worked outdoors all his life and had that look of a brown paper bag that\u2019s been used and re-used \u2019til it\u2019s soft and creased all over with deep lines and finer, spidery ones in between, too.\u00a0 Both Lizzie and I had slept with Dade a time or two, like when it was raining or snowing too hard to want to drive home in, or when he\u2019d been especially sweet, which usually meant he\u2019d paid for something.\u00a0 He was a good dancer, too, plus he\u2019d actually dance, whereas the other guys would mostly sit slouched in their chairs watching if we were at a bar, or turn on the game on t-v if we were at someone\u2019s house, or only want to dance the slow ones and then only if they had a plan for you for later.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t think it was the chance of maybe sleeping with somebody that kept Dade around.\u00a0 He genuinely liked us, the unit of us and the spirit of us, a sort of perpetual traveling party.\u00a0 And on our side, it was like having a big brother or maybe even a father or uncle who understood us and appreciated us, or at least forgave us.<\/p>\n

But after that night on the road to Mount Ashton, the ease went out of it, and Dade came to seem like a sorry, broke-down drunk we wished would leave us alone.\u00a0 And maybe we came to seem like something similar to him.\u00a0 Anyway, after that night, there weren\u2019t as many parties where he was there, and though we\u2019d talk and laugh some when we ran up against each other at the Wigwam Inn or The Shamrock, and maybe play air hockey with him or watch him work the pinball\u2014he was great at pinball, he danced those machines\u2014it wasn\u2019t the same, and he never came home with us afterwards or invited us to his place, either.\u00a0 It\u2019s not that we held him responsible.\u00a0 Blame wasn\u2019t something any of us wanted to get started.\u00a0 Blame has a way of spreading, like poison ivy rash.\u00a0 It\u2019s just that he was a reminder, and we didn\u2019t want to be reminded, because to be reminded might lead to thinking things over, things about our own selves, and who would take the chance of where that might lead?\u00a0 Not me.\u00a0 Not Dade, either, I suspect, because he never protested the change.\u00a0 We had that Friday night on the mountain, and we all went through that weekend pretty much as we would have anyway, but after, we were done with each other.<\/p>\n

Dade was maybe driving faster than he should have, though to be fair, neither Lizzie or I noticed it at the time, and the others behind us were keeping up just fine, so I suspect they didn\u2019t think it was too fast, either.\u00a0 The way Dade took some of the curves did make us lean, though, and Lizzie, who was next to him, accused him of just wanting to get her up against him, but she laughed when she said it, and even I, who knew about the trick latch on the door that had let it fly open a time or two in the past, didn\u2019t worry when my shoulder got pushed up against it, with Lizzie pressing against me, too.\u00a0 Worry wasn\u2019t something I did much of in those days.\u00a0 Cops didn\u2019t worry me, nor bill collectors, nor bosses, nor bartenders who kicked us out if we were getting too rowdy.\u00a0 I could get scared, though I didn\u2019t often, and I sure as hell could get angry and mean, and I could go all sentimental at the flip of a coin, but worry just slipped on by me.<\/p>\n

Once, on a sticky hot August night, me and Gaylord climbed over the fence at the County Zoo and went skinny-dipping in the seal pool.\u00a0 The seals were inside somewhere, asleep I guess, and though the water smelled a little fishy, it was cool and silky and perfect, and we swam and floated for what seemed like hours and didn\u2019t even speak, it was so magical.\u00a0 Then, somehow, there was a seal in the water with us.\u00a0 It swam by me incredibly fast, and as it passed, I felt the water move like a stream\u2019s current along the whole length of my body.\u00a0 I scrambled out and called to Gaylord, but he didn\u2019t believe me and only hissed at me to keep my voice down, until the seal lifted its sleek, dark head out of the still, dark water and stared right at him with its eyes shining like huge black marbles.\u00a0 He got out of that pool pretty quick then.\u00a0 Worry, for me, was like that seal.\u00a0 It might get close, but it didn\u2019t touch me, and it never seemed quite real, nor worth sticking around to get to know better.<\/p>\n

We were almost to the camp when we got to the worst curve.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t see it coming, as I was bending down to get a beer.\u00a0 At first, it didn\u2019t seem any different from the curves before it, and maybe, in fact, it wasn\u2019t.\u00a0 The entire road is cut into the side of the mountain, like the spiral of an apple peel taken off in one piece, so all the way up, we\u2019d had rock or dirt wall on one side, Dade\u2019s side, and a steep drop-off on the other, with no guard rails, of course.\u00a0 The pick-up truck took the curve as tight as it had the others, though trying to recall later, I did think Lizzie was thrown against me a bit harder than she\u2019d been on other curves, plus I think the beers on the floor slid, which they hadn\u2019t earlier.\u00a0 I definitely remember that for the first time, I seriously wondered about that trick latch and if it was gonna hold, and I put my free hand on the dash to steady myself, though that certainly wouldn\u2019t have kept me in had that door opened.\u00a0 But whether the curve was worse or not, whether Dade\u2019s turn was sharper or not, whether Dade should have been driving at all or not, didn\u2019t really matter.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t matter in the way that it doesn\u2019t matter whether you take your umbrella or not, or if you\u2019re wearing new shoes or old kick-arounds, if it\u2019s going to storm, it\u2019s going to storm, and what you\u2019ve got to do is get through it with what you\u2019ve got\u2014or haven\u2019t got\u2014and not nit pick or second guess or wish things otherwise.\u00a0 At least, not right at the time.<\/p>\n

The front end of the truck made the curve okay, but the rear end spun out towards the drop-off side of the road, turning us so we were crossways astride the road.\u00a0 The long stock trailer spun out behind, hit the soft shoulder, and went over the edge, its weight dragging the truck backwards towards the drop-off.\u00a0 Lizzie and I were wailing, Dade was gunning the engine, even though the truck was aimed straight at a rock wall, and he was holding the steering wheel jerked to the right like we were skidding on ice.\u00a0 Then suddenly, the truck stopped.\u00a0 But it wasn\u2019t anything Dade had done that saved us, which we saw as soon as we jumped out.\u00a0 The hitch connecting the trailer to the truck had caught on a tree at the very lip of the drop.\u00a0 The truck was held fast on the road, and the trailer was dangling in the air over the side of the cliff like a plumb line marking the straightest route to hell.<\/p>\n

It was then I heard the horses.\u00a0 Of course, they must have been screaming before, but I was so scared myself, and it was all so lightning quick, and Lizzie and me and the truck engine and the brakes were all making such a racket, I hadn\u2019t heard them, or I hadn\u2019t known I was hearing them.\u00a0 But now that it was quiet\u2014except for Gaylord and Trent and Rob and Edna running towards us and calling out if we were all right, and Lizzie next to me sobbing\u2014the shrill voices of the terrified horses filled my ears like they were the only sound in the world and always would be.<\/p>\n

Because there were no separating stalls in the trailer, all the horses had slid down to the back end, where they were writhing and squealing in a horrible pile.\u00a0 Of course, we\u2019d tethered them to trailer slats by reins attached to their bridles, and our knots had all held, so now the horses who were at the top end of the trailer, the end closest to the pick-up truck and the road and the tree, were hanging by their heads.\u00a0 The bridle straps distributed the strain some, going as they do around a horse\u2019s crown and brow and nose with the cheek pieces along the sides of the head, but still it must have felt awful.\u00a0 Later, we debated a long time which animals had it worse, the ones on the bottom with other horses laying on top of them and lunging to try to get up, or the ones at the top, strung as if for slaughter, necks stretched unnaturally upward, legs free but useless.\u00a0 All of them kicking and screaming.\u00a0 Plus, the loose pony, who no one had bothered to tether, scrambling frantically over all of them, pounding his hooves any which where, biting haunches, getting up a ways, then falling back, then twisting up to climb again.\u00a0 And, of course, none of them could really see, what with the pitch black night and the flailing bodies of one another.\u00a0 Us up on the road could hardly see, which was sort of a blessing.\u00a0 Hearing those horses was bad enough, and imagining what it was like inside that trailer.\u00a0 Plus the fear of whether that tree would hold or if the whole crated pack of them was about to fall to their broken deaths.<\/p>\n

What we could see, once our night vision kicked in, was lots of legs and hooves pushing through slats, wildly pawing the air like they might actually be able to get somewhere.\u00a0 Then all at once, there was Gaylord climbing down on top of the trailer with a sheathed hunting knife in his teeth like some kind of Indian commando.\u00a0 Gaylord, God bless him, shot and killed himself a year later, but that night he was a hero, clambering over that trailer of screaming horses hanging over a bottomless pit, cutting reins to free the horses\u2019 heads, pushing legs back inside as best he could.<\/p>\n

I paced up and down the road the whole time he was out on that trailer, tears and snot running down my face.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t keep still.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t want to see him go over the side, but I couldn\u2019t look away, either, and as dangerous as it was, I was glad he was doing what he was doing, for the sake of the horses, who didn\u2019t deserve this, who tolerated us stuffing them in a box and hauling them up a mountain in the middle of the night, who tolerated us on their backs, who galloped when we were in the mood for a thundering fast ride or loped or walked when we were feeling more dreamy or wanted to watch the scenery or to talk to each other while we rode, no matter how they themselves might\u2019ve wanted to be going.<\/p>\n

Dade must\u2019ve seen I was sneaking up on getting hysterical watching Gaylord, because he came up and told me I should run ahead to the campground and see if anyone had a blow torch so we could cut into the trailer at the end nearest the road and maybe get the horses out that way.\u00a0 Edna and Rob had already taken off in the van down the hill to call for help, but we didn\u2019t know how long they\u2019d be or who they\u2019d bring back.\u00a0 I set out right away for the campground, without a moment\u2019s doubt that some camper had brought along a blow torch.\u00a0 I was relieved to be in action and to escape the noise of the horses.\u00a0 Now the four in Gaylord and Trent\u2019s trailer had started in, too, spurred by the screams of their fellows in the accident trailer.\u00a0 Horses do know worry.\u00a0 Comes from living so close to humans so long, I guess.<\/p>\n

It was all up hill, but I ran the entire distance to the campground, almost a mile, with only a few stretches of walking when the stitch in my side got too bad.\u00a0 I was sweating and gulping air and cursing my cigarette habit, and it seemed like I\u2019d never arrive, but finally I did.\u00a0 And I hadn\u2019t thought once about cougars.\u00a0 Of course, everyone was asleep, all the tents zipped up and unlit.\u00a0 Not even the glow of campfire embers anywhere.\u00a0 I heard soft snuffles from the corral.\u00a0 I wondered if the horses there could smell anything on the wind about what was happening down the road.\u00a0 If they could, they hadn\u2019t yet, or else they\u2019d have been acting spooked and restless, and probably someone would\u2019ve wakened up to go check on them, making my job easier.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t really care if my job was easy or hard.\u00a0 I went tent-to-tent, shaking tent poles and shouting did anyone have a blow torch.\u00a0 I got some sleepy no\u2019s, some curses, plenty of shut-up-and-go-away\u2019s.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t say for sure, of course, but I think if I\u2019d been in a tent on top of a mountain and someone came shouting way past midnight wanting a blow torch, I think I\u2019d\u2019ve got up to see what was what.\u00a0 But nobody there had enough curiosity, I guess, and I had to head down hill again empty-handed, going slower this time and peering hard into the patches of underbrush, having begun, at last, to wonder about cougars.<\/p>\n

The tortured cries of the horses reached me before I was in sight of the accident, and they erased all thoughts of cougars from my mind.\u00a0 As before, the voices filled my head until there wasn\u2019t room for anything else.\u00a0 I could have turned back to the campground and waited there in peace and quiet for whatever solution or finish was going to come, but somehow I felt I had to stay at the scene.\u00a0 I wanted to be with my friends, and I wanted to see with my own eyes what would happen and be there to help if I could.\u00a0 But mostly, I felt like I had to listen to those trapped horses, as terrible as it was.\u00a0 That I owed them that.\u00a0 That maybe they\u2019d even know somehow I was there, that we were all there.\u00a0 That we wouldn\u2019t leave them, no matter how much we wished to be somewhere, anywhere, else.<\/p>\n

When the accident did come into view, I spotted the flashing red lights of two State Police cars, and that hurried me along to discover what they were doing to fix things.\u00a0 But when I got close, I saw the cops were just standing at the edge of the cliff with their hands on their hips looking down at the trailer in its dicey situation as if they\u2019d never seen anything like it before, which probably they hadn\u2019t.\u00a0 Gaylord, who was back on solid ground and drinking a beer to steady his nerves, told me that the cops had radioed for a tow truck, but it was likely to take a while because it would have to be a special one and not your ordinary kind that tows cars with crushed fenders, and that the nearest heavy-duty one was some 30 miles away and the owner had been asleep.<\/p>\n

I took a beer and went and sat down where I could watch the trailer if it fell.\u00a0 The horses never stopped screaming, but there were some lulls in their struggles to get untangled from one another.\u00a0 They must\u2019ve been wearing out.\u00a0 The cops wouldn\u2019t let Gaylord out on the trailer to try to push legs inside again, and I was grateful to them for that.\u00a0 I must have been crying, because all of a sudden, I found I was breathing in big shuddering gasps and couldn\u2019t slow down.\u00a0 A cop came and told me to go wait in his car with the doors and windows shut.\u00a0 I guess, like Dade when he sent me to the campground, the cop saw I was near the end of my rope, and he didn\u2019t need any more complications to manage.\u00a0 He kept saying, \u201cMa\u2019am, just go to the car.\u201d\u00a0 And I kept saying no, I had to stay where I was.\u00a0 I got control of my breaths and pulled myself together so he\u2019d give up and let me be, which he finally did.<\/p>\n

When the tow truck arrived, a hulking monster machine like something you\u2019d expect the Army to have, the driver took one look and refused to hook up.\u00a0 He said that pulling the trailer up was going to jolt it and tilt it, and he didn\u2019t want to be responsible for any injuries the horses might get from that or from their own kicking and thrashing, which the movement of the trailer was sure to rev up.\u00a0 So a vet had to be sent for to tranquilize the horses first, and we had to wait some more.<\/p>\n

It was still very dark.\u00a0 The cops had turned off their red lights because Trent said the flashes might be making the horses even more nervous.\u00a0 But I was seeing pretty well anyway.\u00a0 I scanned around to check where everyone was.\u00a0 Gaylord and Trent were lifting a cooler out of the bed of the pick-up.\u00a0 Dade was standing by the cab watching them.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t seem any of them were talking.\u00a0 Lizzie was lying down in the back of a police car, her bare feet sticking out the open door.\u00a0 The tow truck guy was pouring coffee from a thermos into cups for the two cops.\u00a0 The van was parked next to the cliff\u2019s edge on the other side of the trailer from where I was sitting.\u00a0 Edna and Rob were standing in front of the van, and though nothing could be heard over the horses\u2019 bleating and whinnying, I could tell by how Edna was lifting her arms and waving her hands around that they were arguing and that she was losing again.<\/p>\n

At last, the vet came.\u00a0 He climbed out onto the trailer like Gaylord had done, except he was armed with hypodermics, and the cops had tied ropes on him for safety, which somehow none of us had thought to do for Gaylord.\u00a0 In the dark, and with the horses riled up anew from his banging around overhead, the vet couldn\u2019t see which horse was which.\u00a0 He had to lean over the edge and stab blindly, hoping he hit them all, plus hadn\u2019t given any one horse more than a double dose.\u00a0 The cops hauled the vet up to the road, and the ruckus in the trailer, which had been a constant assault on our nerves for so many hours, gradually drained away.<\/p>\n

By the time the trailer was on the road, and the horses had come to, and we were leading them up to the campground, birds were singing and the sky was beginning to lighten.\u00a0 Dade and Gaylord, as the drivers, somehow had passed the breathalyzer, so the cops were long gone.\u00a0 Miraculously, except for some scrapes, none of the animals was hurt.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t ride any of them next day, to give them a rest, though Dade did get on that poor pony and trot around the campground, as if to cement our growing harsh opinion of him.<\/p>\n

Once we had the horses settled in the corral, with their scrapes doctored and some oats and water, I was more than ready to crawl into my sleeping bag and put my pillow over my head until at least lunch time.\u00a0 That\u2019s when I found out that Edna, in a fit of fury and frustration with Rob, had pushed the van over the very cliff we\u2019d saved the horses from, taking my stuff and all our food with it.\u00a0 Trent had made a run down the mountain to get more food.\u00a0 Edna was sound asleep and snoring on the bare dirt under a pine tree.\u00a0 Meanwhile, as a lead-in for the breakfast Trent would be bringing, Rob built a fire and Lizzie opened some wine coolers, and we all lit cigarettes and hunkered down to wait.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was old Dade driving.\u00a0 We picked him \u2019cause he was the soberest, or so it looked to us, who […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"Layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-noellesickelswp","post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-allposts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions\/88"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}