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Clearing Trail
Each mile matters when you’ve never been on the back of a horse
before and now there are thirty ahead of you and it’s day three
of seven and you’ve just started your new job and when Rex decides
to make you ride in front, you try to adjust yourself in the saddle
every few minutes without making it look obvious and you can hear him
chuckling to himself as you become more uncomfortable and awkward
under the relentless pummeling as the miles slowly pass and it seems
like the trees are about to fall over or maybe they’re shaking their heads
at you—small tops spinning in circles like Sufis in green skirts,
thousands of branches laughing like Buddhas at your rag doll riding
posture —and when you see hikers they’re always saying, I wish
I had your job, and you want to kick them and the horse you’re on
is big, old, named Asshole and you swear he’s shaking his head too
and in order to distract yourself from the stabbing pain in your knees
you ask about the weather, and Rex, who hasn’t said a word in hours,
suddenly becomes philosophical, saying, People that predict the weather
are either ignorant or just assholes, so you shut up, afraid that you’ve
proven yourself to be both and you recall the story about the guy
who wanted Rex to train his dog because Rex’s dogs run cattle and
they’re so well behaved, what with the shock collars and all, but
when you sit on the porch after work and he calls them, you see
nervous eyes and frantic tail-stubs trying to wave off some doom,
and you can’t stop seeing little white flags tied to the ends of them, and
when the guy with the dog returns after a few weeks to ask about
the training, about how the dog is doing, and Rex says, I shot him,
you laugh every time, not because the dog gets killed but because
weeks go by and Rex never says anything and because when he does
it’s as if he’s been speaking to Krishna on the nature of action and
he tells the guy his dog is worthless and when he drops the dog off
the guy says, Treat him like he’s one of your own and all you can see
is the next tree ahead, fallen across the trail and all you can think is
that you’ve never used a chainsaw before but you will have to and
as you’re pushing the teeth all the way through the dead and dying
wood and putting the chain into the dirt, he’s barking, Goddammit!
You ignorant cocksucker, and you’re flinching a little, and years later
when you’re telling the story you know this means he respects you
enough to cuss at you and every year, in the midst of falling trees you’re still
riding into the wilderness and cutting them out of the way, only now
you’re paying a bit more attention to where the trees end and
the dirt begins and you’re wondering, with each cut, about the difference.
Return to Volume 7.3
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