Rose

My body is very tired. I think because all I’ve eaten today was a small bowl of cereal.

Today. Today.

A lot, today. Today I got hit in the head with a horse. Well, with a horse head, but it was enough. I was stupidly picking something up off the ground, so that my head was right above the lowered head of a horse. And, of course, Champ (because it was him, ironically), flung his head up and threw me into a wall. Man. It hurt. The face side that got hit hurt, and the back-of-the-head side where I hit the wall hurt. I was fuzzy and disconnected for a while, and then when I finally cleared up, I kept trying to think of analogies for how I felt, and failing. Because basically I felt like I’d just been hit with a horse. My head feels okay now, I think. Yep, I guess so. Didn’t lose any teeth. Must be fine.

I took two rides out in a row, one of them in a bit of a storm. Definitely rain, enough to make the puddles bubble. I wore my slicker that looks like an old western duster (trench coat), but it was a bit long, so my coolness was interrupted occasionally by the indignity of tripping.

I also helped feed, and was ridiculously inept. Well, not totally, I guess, since I got it done. But I’m sure it was a sad, sad sight. Turro told me next time they fed I needed to watch and learn.

Today was also a mix of contradicting orders, which is always pleasant. For instant, “Whenever a horse takes a piss, clean it up right away.” Then later, when I go to do just that: “Will,” — and this is said with ominous, deadly quiet– “Will you please come help me saddle the horses.” Pretend Voldemort is angrily muttering this to you, and you have a brief sense of what that moment was like.

Turro was really, really crabby today. Lots of yelling (some of it real yelling; some of it Voldemort quiet… rife with contempt of my stupidity). I think the word isn’t “crabby.” It’s “pissed off.”

It started (for those of you who tuned in last week… er, last night) with Turro reaming out Ben. Of course. But not really. He was calmer and trying to be kinder. He told Ben that Josh had gotten complaints about Ben and some of his unsanitarities at the grill (chewing and spitting, dropping his hat in the food), and some other things. This led to a critique of how much pot Ben uses. Ben argued he hadn’t had any for three weeks (the empty cranberry juice containers make a nice pocket in the trash can), and then Ben said he might as well just pack. Turro told him leaving wouldn’t help. There was tension.

But, essentially, I don’t think the drug tests happened, and Ben is still here. And I think he did better today. I think Turro yelled at me more than he did at Ben.

After all the trouble (and I woke up feeling really sick this morning, so it started off as a rough day) I kept getting in, it was a total surprise that Turro said, “Good work” at the end of the day. But it also made me want to keep striving for that moment of praise.

It’s interesting to observe his leadership style. There was one moment my second day where he really screamed at me not to keep the horses tied while loading guests. He went off. I think his blood sugar was low. But I didn’t even really feel it, because it was so stupid of him. The thing was, there were guests there. And I could have been embarrassed for myself (maybe I should have been), but I was just so embarrassed for him, that it didn’t matter. By yelling at me in front of them, he made the whole operation look bad. He made it obvious one of the wranglers didn’t know what she was doing. He just sounded like an asshole too.

So I was all ready to just write him off as an asshole.

But then he went and had a soul.

He is vulgar (they all are: when they asked me what I thought, I described them as “an interesting mix of vulgarity and honor”), he is kind of a jerk. He is a major, major hard-ass.

But he loves horses. And he is damn good with them. I found out that five years ago he had never even been on a horse. Now he walks among them and they follow him. They love him. He knows how to be alpha. I’m still not sure if I agree with how he leads his wranglers. I think we make more mistakes because we’re anxious about messing up in front of him.

But.

This morning, I walk up the stairs. (Remember I feel really shitty.)

Turro is there, says good morning. He asks if he kept me up. He plays some loud video game at night, but usually he puts his headphones on. Last night, though, he fell asleep with the game on, and the sound was still on. No, I told him, I wear headphones at night. He nods. He does too.

And then, fueled by a lot of coffee maybe, or just the sunlight streaming outside, he launches into this story.

I don’t know if I can accurately relate… But oh well. I’ll try.

When Turro was younger, he knew this girl. She was a child prodigy, a musical genius. He used to play music with her. She was a violinist. He tried to describe this music to me. He told me how they would compose together (he identifies as an artist: a photographer, a painter, a writer, a musician), but how she was so amazing that she said she could “wake the dead.” She called her violin the necromizer, or something.

He said, she is the girl I would have married.

“Why didn’t you?”

“She was killed in 9/11. I had two friends who were killed that day.”

The two of them had made a demo tape together– this is what he would listen to each night– and she gave it to the New York Symposiam, or Symphony, or something, and they hired her. Immediately. That day, she was just walking around near the towers.

So when he made me listen to the music, this was there underneath it. That he loved her, that they had made this together, that every time listening was missing her. That when he was feeling bad, she would bring him over, sit him down, and just play. Just… play.

I still wasn’t expecting.

I don’t.

It ripped through me. It tore things. It made me remember that I, too, have a soul, and it is broken and it is healed. This music. I started crying. I couldn’t help it. Something about it.

He got really excited about it. The only version of this music in the world is on the little tape cassette he is slowly wearing out. He wanted to figure out how to get it to play over his big speakers.

Around lunch time, he did.

I was just immobile. He talked, and talked about her. The music screamed and danced and trickled everywhere. Red hair, two different colored eyes, beautiful. And I kept thinking of her walking around New York, and him missing her, and listening to this incredible soaring beautiful creation. He had to put his sun glasses on. I think he was crying a bit too.

Maybe that’s why he was moody today. Maybe that’s why I don’t give a damn that he yells, screams, manipulates, and is a bastard. This strange, abrasive human has a deep, deep soul.

People are amazing.

That’s really all I have to say.