Maybe only a fool takes a pile of manure personally. But it was hard not to read into it, considering the way that the horse responsible—my charge—left one for me every morning. Admittedly, the horse might be excused for feeling sulky. His former caretakers had abruptly abandoned him the winter before. His owners then boarded him a few miles away—but at the stable, he kicked the other horses if they crowded him at mealtime; before long, he was expelled.
Next his owners asked their young landscaper to tend horse as well as lawn, but the kid neglected the creature instead, leaving him regularly covered in burrs and so underfed that his bones began to show. I had every intention of doing right by this horse. As I saw it, we had a lot in common, both of us on our own, trying to survive without much assistance. But his open disdain for me made it hard to be nice. Could he be using them as a form of protest?
I asked. Shary laughed. Yeah, well, I had strong opinions too. Before I became the caretaker for a bourbon-haired stallion, I had no experience with horses.
I had no special interest in them either. What I had was a problem—no place to live—which had grown out of another, much bigger problem. I could no longer sleep long enough or well enough to feel refreshed, not since the suicide of my best friend years ago—a hallucinogenic trip gone terribly wrong. I got over my guilt, but I never got back to sleeping through the night. I tried everything my doctor suggested and then some—melatonin, acupuncture, antidepressants; quitting caffeine; attempting meditation; and so on.
But nothing helped much, and the relentless exhaustion was corrosive. Other people would tell me they were tired too, like they understood. My tiredness changed everything. Everything was so exhausting that I did nothing anymore. Anyone trapped so long in that state—crawling through the days, spending half the night awake—would dream about escape.
