A horse-crazy preteen was dancing circles around the pudgy paint pony Daddy had forked over too much hard-earned cash for. Screaming during non-emergencies ought to be a federal offense. I’m serious. If I was the kind of person that rolled her eyes and shook her head in disgust, that’s what I would have done. Instead I tighten my grip on the stable-owned reins and lead my rented horse down to the crossties. There’s a tall, lanky man cleaning stalls by the tack rooms. He looks like he belongs here but I’ve never seen him before. Newly hired help, I’m assuming. I show some Southern hospitality and wave. He waves back. Life goes on.

Jake’s oversized horse lips flap as I let him drink from the hose as if it was a water fountain. The runoff pools at the wash stall’s drain like salty sea foam. It’s a good thing I wasn’t wearing anything less than steel-toed boots when Jake decided to dig his heel into them. I direct a few muttered obscenities at him as I punch his shoulder hard. No sheepish grin. No head hung in shame. Nothing to argue against the intentionality of the unjust act. None of it. This is war. It’s a war I’m too tired to fight. We sigh together as I turn off the water. Then I clip on the lead rope and Jake follows me like an obedient dog on a leash to his pasture far, far away.

I arrive for work the next morning to find the stable in the process moving out. The casual onlooker might think he was watching a gypsy camp preparing to relocate or a circus loading up its trailers. People jog back and forth with buckets of water, hay, and cat-sized dogs in hand. I interrogate a young woman rolling out a monogrammed tack box. “Haven’t you heard?” she asks in almost disbelief that I would be so uninformed. Decidedly not. “The barn owner’s husband, John, was here last night. Drunk. He got into a fight with Paul and started going on about how he didn’t want him teaching his daughter anymore. And that he wasn’t paying for Paul’s partner, Mike, to work here and wanted him off the property. So Paul threatened to leave. About that time John’s wife showed up and tried to restore some peace. But by the way things have been going lately I don’t think there will ever be hope for a compromise. We’ve made arrangements and the decision to move everything over to Still Brook Stables before the owners are due to arrive later this morning.” That mysteriously omniscient, omnipresent being otherwise known as “They” was right. You really do learn something new every day. Sometimes it seems like most of life happens during the commercial breaks.

I was faced with the decision of the century: I could run away with the circus, I could stay here and tough out the aftermath of this reality TV show gone sour, or I could go the easy route and get a less drama-filled job at the local coffee shop. Meanwhile I kept expecting to see John’s pickup appear on the horizon. Being the rational, let’s-talk-about-this person I am, the people who know me best would be the last ones to call me a risk-taker. Still, you’ve got to mix it up a bit sometimes. Live a little. (Another one of “They’s” famous sayings, no less.) So my mind was made up. I joined the circus.

I might go on to talk about our grand reception at Still Brook Stables, or the stable owners’ reaction to our spontaneous disappearing act back there (witnessed by the barn cats and next-door neighbor), or the affair that began between…well, you see where this is going. It pains me to say that I never learned how that poor moldy refrigerator fared. Its fate was lost to history forevermore.

Well, that’s not quite the way the deck dealt out. Though, it wouldn’t have surprised me much if it had. It takes a lot to surprise me nowadays. No, I held to my true self and stuck it out at the disintegrating stable like any loyal employee and customer. In time those rebels would realize their nearly-fatally treasonous mistake and come sniveling and groveling back to kiss the beloved, most-likely manure-covered boots of the stable owners. Or something of that nature. Yet there is no such happy ending to this story, and I’m sorry to say that I still can’t tell you what became of that refrigerator.