The Midwife of Hope River

“Anyway, as usual, they called me when it was almost too late. A lot of stockmen do, trying to save money, hoping whatever is wrong with their animal will miraculously disappear. They were in a surly mood. Drink does that to some men, and they were worried about their animal.”

He struggles to turn on his side so he can see me better, but tears come to his eyes and he gives up, staring helplessly at the ceiling.

“When did this happen?”

“Two days ago. I was summoned because their favorite horse, Devil—”

“Devil? You’re kidding, right? The Bishop brothers have a horse named Devil?” I think this is funny, but he doesn’t laugh.

“Yeah. I was called because Devil had colic.”

“Just a minute.” I trot down the stairs, light his gas stove, pump some water into a big pan, and put it on to heat.

“What were you doing?” he asks when I get back. For the first time I notice the framed paintings and prints on the white plaster walls: race horses, farm horses, and hunting horses, some original, some reproductions. There’s even a faded photograph of Hester as a young man in an army uniform, standing with a wagon and two horses. The horses are wearing gas masks. I flick my eyes away from the gallery.

“Warming water for a bath.”

The vet smiles his first smile of the day, his half-crooked one. “I smell pretty bad, huh?”

I nod. “You reek.”

The only time I smelled something similar was when Ruben came back in the spring of 1920 from organizing the miners at Matewan. He hadn’t bathed for a week and had had only one set of clothes with him. He cried when he told me how things had fallen apart at Tug Fork.

“Three thousand men signed the union’s roster at the community church, though they knew it could cost them,” he told me after I’d washed his back and hair and made him put on a clean nightshirt. “If we failed in negotiating an agreement with the mine owners, they’d lose their jobs.

“And that’s what happened. The Stone Mountain Coal Company fought back with mass firings. Women and children were actually thrown out of their company cabins into the rain. The mine boss brought in the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, those goons from down near Bluefield, to do the dirty work with machine guns, but the miners had rifles and pistols and were ready for them. We weren’t even striking yet, just trying to get organized. A gunfight erupted on Main Street. It wasn’t clear who fired the first shot, Sheriff Hatfield or one of the Felts brothers, but ten men died. It was senseless.”

It’s funny how just a smell can evoke such a strong recollection. I remember all that as I straighten the room. It was the first time Ruben had been involved in armed fighting, and it changed him. After that he carried a Colt revolver.

The vet groans again and goes on with his story. “Anyway, the horse, Devil, is already in bad shape when I get there. Bad. He’s their favorite mount, the one that always leads the Fourth of July parade in Liberty with red, white, and blue ribbons in its tail . . . They’d been walking him around a pen in the yard. He was pretty far gone, covered in lather and foaming at the mouth, buckling at his knees, trying to lie down. A bad sign.

“You never want to let a horse with colic roll,” he goes on. “It can cause torsion of the bowel and end in death. I knew Devil wasn’t long for this world when I counted his respirations and saw how his eyes were white with fear . . . I was pissed as hell but tried not to show it.

“ ‘How many hours has this been going on?’ I asked.

“ ‘Since this morning,’ the youngest one, Beef, answered. He’s a guy about five-six and two hundred pounds, all muscles, no brains, carrying a plank about four feet long, and now and then he whacked the horse on his backside to keep him moving. I was shocked.

“ ‘We called you three times.’ A gallon of moonshine sat by the barn door, and they all smelled like whiskey.

“I didn’t believe them. I’d been home all day, in the house, reading the new issue of The Breeder’s Gazette. I only got the one phone call and I went right away, but I just went on with my examination.

“The horse’s temp was a hundred and four and the pulse was weak, never a good sign. Horses can’t take as much stress as other big animals. I asked the usual questions about the progression of the illness, when it had started, and what they’d done. The brothers had tried castor oil, but the horse was still impacted. I had to be honest with them.

“ ‘This horse has been blocked for longer than a day. Look at him, he’s in dire pain. I can give him a sedative and try to pass a stomach tube, but I can’t promise you anything. His bowel is already inflamed. He may not make it.’

“ ‘So do we have to pay if he kicks the bucket?’ smirked Beef, the one with the plank.”

The vet shakes his head. “I never even got to do anything. While the brothers were giving me grief about my fee, the horse started to go down. We all put our weight on him, but he’s a big one, crashed to the barn floor, and that was the end. I pulled out a syringe and tried a shot of adrenaline . . . but the stallion’s heart had already stopped beating.

“Then Beef started hitting the poor animal with the plank. That really got to me. I know he felt bad. Tears were streaming down his face, but he kept whacking the horse. ‘Get up, you black beast!’ he yelled over and over, ‘Get up!,’ spraying his words and swiping his eyes. ‘Get up, I say!’

“One of the men was laughing, busting his sides open. No one made Beef stop—and I lost it. Just lost it. I grabbed the plank, threw it across the pen, and slipped in the castor oil. That’s when I twisted my ankle.”

He indicates his blue-and-purple foot and I wince, wondering what I would have done . . . I can’t imagine watching a man beat his dead horse. It would make me furious too. The noble animal laying there . . . an animal that could have been saved.

“Well, things got ugly then . . . Beef came at me, and I pulled him down. We were wallowing around in the straw and castor oil, both upset, seeing the horse die right in front of us, and I started beating the man in the face with my fist, straddling his thick belly. That’s when one of the others picked up the plank and hit me in the back . . . hit me over and over until Aran, the oldest brother, showed up. That’s the old guy I’ve bought moonshine from. He’s pretty normal.