Orion's Voice

         I knew something was wrong the moment I stepped into the barn. Outside, it was one of those perfect summer days. The sun was warm but not too warm; there was a gentle breeze blowing and the sky was clear; the trees and grass glowed with the bright greens of summer. But the hair on the back of my neck was standing on end and I just couldn't ignore the overwhelming sense that something was terribly wrong.

         I stood quietly trying to figure out what the problem was to no avail. Moving further into the barn I waited for my eyes to adjust tot he sudden change in light. I did my best to listen past my pounding heart. The barn was a large structure and it took me several minutes to reach the area where the horses were housed. Most of them ignored my entrance but several of them poked their heads up over their stalls.

         Hold it!! Why were the horses inside on such a beautiful day?

         On either side of me were 12 stalls. Only 6 were occupied at the moment. Bill, the owner and my boss, boarded horses for various friends and business partners as a favor, but his primary business was breeding. The breeders were kept on the other side of the property, which was fine with me. I wanted nothing to do with the high strung beasts.

         As I walked I stopped to put out some grain and fresh water for Bunny and Donal, who occupied the first two stalls. Bunny was pregnant and due within the next 2 weeks; poor thing was not happy. Donal nickered at me and nodded his head when I gave him his share. I was convinced that if horses could talk he was saying "thank you". Trixie was next and one of my favorites. She was a very dainty buckskin-colored mare, with a beautiful face and markings. She probably would have been one of those ladies' horses in the old days.

         Then there was Aristotle. Bill and I both agreed he was part draft horse, part something else and part a little bit of we don't know what. He was an extremely intelligent animal and usually managed to escape his stall at least once every couple of weeks. He never went very far, just liked to let us know that he can leave anytime he wanted. The worst part about him, though, was that riding him was pure torture. It was like traveling down a road in badly need of repair - he could rattle your teeth lose if you weren't careful.

         In the last stall was Dancer, another one of my other favorites. He was a beautiful long-legged jumper with a great disposition. I loved to ride him in the backfield with all of the downed trees. He didn't so much jump over the fallen trees as much as flew over them -- maybe he was a bird in a previous life.

         And last, but certainly not least, in the very last stall, far away from the other horses was a huge black fiend that I was convinced had to be the devil in animal form. I used to call him Satan, but Bill didn't like that name. Although beautiful and sleek.Orion was ill-tempered and mean. His sire was one of the breeders but born of a common stock mother (don't even get me started on how that came about). Sadly, his mother died during his birth and he had to nurse from one of the other mares who had just given birth. I wondered what a psychiatrist would make of that. He spent most of his time trying to kick the door down and had actually succeeded several times. Bill finally installed a reinforced metal door. Orion didn't mind. He continued to try to kick the door down and got to make even more noise.

         Normally, Bill turned the horses out to graze in the morning, although Orion was kept separately in another pen because he was so aggressive. One time, about a year after I started working for Bill, I found Orion hung up on one of the fences. We think he may have tried to jump the fence and missed. The only way to get him off the fence was to either bring in one of the horse lifts or cut down the part of the fence on which he was stuck. We decided it would be easier to cut down the fence and repair it. Bill was certain that as soon as he was free he'd be off and running for the hills. Much to our surprise, however, Orion simply tossed his head and gave us both a very pointed look as if to say this predicament was our fault.

         I tried to sneak past his stall so he didn't start kicking the door but the other horses had already alerted him to my presence. Damn, I thought, so close. Right on cue! BANG! BANG! BANG! I climbed up onto the rail of the adjoining stall and gave him a disgusted look. "Really? What is your problem? It's too nice out to be so grumpy." He snorted at me. I snorted back. Childish, but there it was.

         Even though he was a nasty SOB I will say he had this inner glow as if his spirit was trying to break out of his body. It could be really unnerving.

         Did I mentioned he was huge....absolutely towered over me. My head barely came up to his shoulder. He also had this uncanny way of looking at me as though he knew what I was thinking, almost as if he were sizing me up. It was beyond creepy.

         Born just about 3 years ago right before I started working for Bill, I remember clearly thinking just how magnificent he was and that he was going to be an amazing animal. I had expected Bill to keep him and was surprised when he sold him to a friend of a business associate two years ago, whose ten year old son wanted to learn how to ride. Orion was a lot mellower in those days with a relatively calm demeanor..

         Then out of nowhere, Bill brought him back about two weeks ago. I had no idea why and Bill wasn't offering any explanations. I was shocked at the condition he Orion was in. He was covered with cuts and scrapes and smelled disgusting as if he had been rolling around in garbage. His right rear leg was swollen with an infection and he had weeping soar on his rump. But the thing that struck me most was how mad he was. Not mad like insane; he was pissed off and angry. Nothing we did would calm him. I can't begin to imagine how Bill got him loaded onto the trailer to even bring him back here.

         I suggested that we tranquilize him before we tried to treat the wounds but Bill looked at me with his puppy-dog blue eyes on me and I knew he would never go for it.. "Give him some time,

he said. "He'll calm down."

         It took 2 handlers, 3 helpers, 2 broken bones, multiple bruises and 1 black eye (although that was from someone's elbow) to get him settled. Bill wanted to put him in the main part of the barn, but I put my foot down and had him put in a rear stall where he wouldn't be able to do to too much damage. I also didn't want him too close to the other horses.

         "So...who gets the honor of trying to clean him up?"

         Once again, Bill turned his puppy-dog blue eyes on me. I thought no way! Not happening. "Bill, you have got to be kidding me."

         The look on Bill's face nearly ripped my heart out. I growled and went to gather the first aid gear. I had no idea how I was going to pull this off and still come out alive. I finally decided to put the maniac's feed into the adjoining empty stall, which was considerably smaller than the one he was in, figuring it would be a lot harder for him to get away from me. I ended up typing a cloth soaked in antiseptic onto a long poll and cleansing his rump while hanging over the wall. This went on 3 times a day for 2 weeks. A couple of the cuts probably could have used some stitches but Bill knew the vet wouldn't do it unless he was tranquilized and we knew that wasn't going to happen.

         It was quite the production just to get him out of the stall so I could clean up the manure. Sometimes I felt like he was baiting me, as if he was trying to see just how far he could push me. Had I known then what I knew now.....well they say hindsight is always 20/20.

         After a couple of more weeks of badgering Bill he finally told me what happened. The man who purchased Orion had treated him deplorably. From what Bill was able to find out, the guy ended up being a vicious and cruel jerk who cared more about his next drink than about anyone or anything else. Bill wasn't aware of any of this when he agreed to the sale.

         The man's son fell in love with Orion at first sight. Bill said the man couldn't have been happier. Supposedly, everything was fine at first but, then the man's wife left him, taking the son with her. The business associate who had suggested the sale was over the man's house one day when he saw the condition of the horse. The man said he didn't even want the animal anymore and said he was going to send him off to the glue factory. Immediately, the guy told Bill about the situation. Bill decided to pay a call on the man to see if he would be willing to sell Orion back to him.

         "Please, come in. May I offer you something to drink?" Bill got a whiff of the guy's breath and knew he had started without him.

         "No, thank you," he replied, taking off his cowboy hat and making sure to wipe his boots on the outside dirt mat before going inside. Bill stared in amazement at the interior of the house. The house looked like a palace.

         When Bill explained why he was there, the guy blew a fuse and went after Bill with the vodka bottle. Bill has been in his share of scraps before but he was completely unprepared. I thought his eye was swollen because of Orion....turns out the guy had decked him.

         The next day, Bill called his friend, Dale, who just happened to be the local sheriff and told him what happened. Together, with several deputies, they told the man he would be brought up on charges of assault but the charges could be dropped if Orion was returned to Bill. The guy wasn't happy about it but he didn't also didn't want to get arrested. Orion came home that night.

         Bill came trotting into the barn calling out to each of the horses as he passed by. He received answering snorts and whiffles and I smiled. Bill really was such a sweetheart. He was a short little man with a bristly mustache badly in need of a trim; his grey hair was in the same shape as his mustache with hay and bits of sticks hanging off him. His pants were held up by a pair of brown suspenders. I couldn't tell you what color the pants because they were covered in dirt, but I was definitely sure about the suspenders. I bought them for Bill last Christmas, when I got tired of him hiking up his pants because his belt was too big for him and he didn't want to cut another notch. Since then, he never went anywhere without those suspenders.

Somewhere along the way, I think I remember my mother telling me he was a distant relative but she wasn't quite sure and I never really cared. I thought of him as family from the first day I started working for him. When Bill finally reached me, his big, blue watery eyes looked at me with hope.

         "Bill," I asked as gently as possible, "what are the horses still doing inside?

         Bill ignored my question dropping his eyes. After shuffling his feet for a few seconds, he looked back up. "How is he?" he asked.

         I felt like I had sucker-punched. Seeing Bill's expression reminded me why I bothered taking care of Orion; it was for Bill's sake.

         I took a deep breath before I answered. "About the same," I said.

         Bill looked down at the floor and scratched his head -- whether it was in thought or there was something moving around up there, I couldn't really say. I held my tongue while Bill pulled his thoughts together. I am fairly sure he had been kicked in the head more than once. If I interrupted him now, I might not find out what was going on. He would forget what he was saying in the middle of a sentence and it could take several minutes before he would remember what he was talking about.

         He looked up at me, mustache twitching, gray hair flying all over the place and said, "What do we do?"

         I froze for a moment, not sure if Bill was serious, and then saw the deadly grave look on his face. What was going on? Orion was healing well on the outside, but it was the inside that concerned him more. It had been several weeks and Orion was still intractable. He took up a lot of time and effort. I understood what Bill was asking me. I could give the word right then and there and be done with the miserable brute.

         And then I made the mistake of looking at Bill and my heart broke. I saw pure despair. I turned to catch Orion looking at us as if he was listening. For the first time, the devil was calm and he looked me right in the eye. I felt like my soul had just been laid bare. I nearly choked. I took a deep breath before I replied and couldn't believe what came out of my mouth next.

         "Oh, now Bill, it's only been a couple of weeks." I said. "Let's give it some more time. Why don't we move him to an outside stall so he can come and go as he pleases? Maybe not being so confined will help." I glanced at Orion while I spoke and saw his head bob up and down in agreement. I thought, "I have finally lost my mind." Orion chose to snort at that very moment.

         I finished feeding the rest of the animals and walked over to the adjoining stall next to Orion's and stood on an overturned bucket. I felt silly knowing what I was about to do but I wanted to look him in the eye, which was not easy to do since he still towered over me. "Okay, my friend, you seem to like this idea. Would you like to come with me to a new home?" Again, I got a head bob. Oh, this was just too weird.

         I started to pull a halter rope down from the nail and Orion backed away. This happened every single time I went near him with the rope. He started shaking his head vigorously, mane flying in every direction. I replaced the halter rope back on its nail, nervously opened the stall door, and said, "Well, come on then. It's a beautiful day outside. No reason to stay inside." If Bill knew what was going on, he would have carted me away to a padded cell. Hell, I would probably have let him.

         Once we got to the new stall, I closed the inside stall gate and opened up the back. Orion hadn't been outside for several weeks and was skittish at first. I tried to get him to follow me outside. He wouldn't budge. I turned around and damned horse was looking right at me. "You have got to be kidding me. This is what you wanted and now you don't want to go outside?"

         "Thank you." Startled, my head whipped around thinking someone had come in behind me. I looked around but no one was there. My heart was pounding and I felt a sharp tingling inside of my head which then turned into a raging noise. My head became this gigantic lead weight on my shoulders and I thought I was going to puke. At some point I fell to the ground. I was totally flipped out.

         "No, you don't need some time off," he said. "You can hear me. And, I can hear you." Well, didn't that just leave me on my hands and knees completely dumbfounded! I raised myself up and slowly rose to my feet. The pain in my head was gone, although my heart was still racing. I don't know how to describe what I felt other than it was if someone had just uncorked a champagne bottle. POP!

         Jaw agape, I tried to say something ended up stammering out "Bbbut...hhhow?" How could this possibly be. And then it hit me; tears came to my eyes and my hand flew to my mouth. "Oh, my God! I can really hear you."

         "You have no idea how good it feels to have someone finally hear me after all this time." His head was down and ears were slumped.For the first time I walked up to him and tried to put my arms around him. I settled for stroking the side of his neck.

         "It's okay, Orion. It's okay. I'm here for you."