“Yves,” she asked, “what’s wrong?”
“I dreamed the devil was choking me. I dreamed I couldn’t breathe.”
Adelaïda settled back into the bedclothes. “It’ll be a bad season for goldenrod, then. We’ll have to keep Elizaveta indoors.”
But I knew in my aching heart that the dream had been a prophecy of a different kind, though none of my deceased kin had come to herald it in the usual fashion. Of a sudden it seemed quite natural that a rope should choke a horse’s throat, just as the devil’s hands choked mine. But, like me, the horse had a hard place above her heart, a shell to protect the most sacred part of her, and if I could bind her to the cart across that place, it would make use of that strength instead of aggravating a weakness.
The next morning, after briefly watering the near pasture and dumping the night’s slops out besides, I brought my horse—nameless still—out into the yard, tethered her to the stake, and took strips of cured leather and pieces of flaxen rope from the barn. The chickens clucked in the yard, and my dog, Yoshu, bit fleas off her yellow backside, annoyed that I should pay more attention to the horse than to her. Elizaveta, a year-old infant then whose eyes had but recently gone brown, rolled into the yard behind me. Adelaïda had tied the child’s left ankle to the kitchen bench with a length of twine, so that she could roll only a short distance from the door. My wife stood in the doorway with her distaff, spinning and watching the child play with her doll. They were the picture of beauty in the early-morning light, both fair-haired and sturdy, Adelaïda’s round face ruddy with health around her gap-toothed grin. Her long braid shone, and she rocked her round hips slightly as she spun; Elizaveta fixed her gaze on her doll with a grown woman’s intensity. Thus to observe their morning activities—so different, yet so intimately tied—brought me great pleasure and renewed dedication to my project.
I watched the horse as I worked, wondering if she would give me a sign how my invention should progress. I had acquired her from the dealer three years since, and she was the best, most intelligent horse I had yet owned—not the most delicately featured, but a solid work beast, bay of hue, with a silky black mane, beautiful white feathering over her hooves, and a white star between her brown eyes that gave her a thoughtful air. She switched her tail, and wagged her head expectantly, but she could give me no advice.
With all the combined efforts of my intellect and soul, I could imagine no way to secure a strap around the horse’s breastplate. Every position, it seemed, caused the thong to slip back up to her windpipe. In any position she would choke.
Adelaïda spun her flax into a long thread as fair as her heavy plait. “That doesn’t seem to be working,” she offered.
“I can see that.”
“It’s too bad the horse doesn’t wear an apron, because you could tie the ends of the straps to it and that’d be that.”
“A fine point, but one which I must qualify,” I said, mindful that my wife’s tutelage was among my duties upon this earth, “by reminding you that horses, who do no women’s work, require no aprons.”
“I was only remarking how much easier for you it would be if they did,” she replied. “I’ve more wit about me than a suckling child.”
I was chastened by her saying, for, either by accident or by God’s grace, Adelaïda had solved the problem as she spun. The horse had no need for an apron, true, but if I provided her a tight-fitting girdle, then I could attach a strap to it across the breastbone; from this, in turn, would emanate the traces that bound it to the cart, thus distributing the weight of the load over a more solid area of the horse’s body. I measured the horse’s girth with a length of twine, and with another the distance about her breastplate, and retired to the barn to cut leather to those lengths. This leather I sewed to its own edge, so that it made a long, hollow shape, like entrails; and this I stuffed with straw, so that the straps could cushion the horse even further against the blow of labor. Elizaveta continued to roll about the front garden, gurgling her native song of praise. Although I shut the barn door to ensure the stillness necessary for work, I could faintly hear Adelaïda singing a song she oft sings as she works:
Well, I love Yves Gundron,
Tell you, Lord, I do.
Yes, I love my old man Yves,
Yes, indeed, it’s true.
But the fact that he don’t listen,
Lord, it makes this woman sad and blue.
Yves, he leaves me ’lone
And plows his fields all day.
Yes, he leaves me ’lone
While he plows all day.
But I wouldn’t feel so lonesome
If he’d just listen to what I say.2
Though she intended her music as a reproach, it reminded me of my mother, who had ever a song upon her lips; it aided me in my thinking, and spurred me to complete my work. I stitched the breast strap firmly to the girding strap, so it would hold tight, and furnished the girding piece with an old iron buckle and multiple holes, so I could adjust it. The two ends of the breast strap I left long, that I might tie them to the cart. Fashioning the device, a labor of love unlike any I had yet known, took the better part of the day, but the sun sped past in what seemed an hour.
He had not yet reached the western edge of the horizon when I brought my work out and showed it to the puzzled horse, who was nibbling the scant grass of the near pasture. The shyness of her usually forthright gaze told me that she knew her life was about to change irrevocably. When I slipped the strap around her breastbone she hung her head, anticipating the drudgery of all the many workdays that had come before. She kicked when I fastened the belt about her midsection, and again when I tightened it and adjusted the breast strap. The fit, even on that first attempt, was nearly perfect—evidence, it seemed, of God’s desire for man to have this invention. Sophronia, the cow, kept chewing nonchalantly on her cud, but I knew she was watching with something more than her ordinary interest. I fitted the horse’s lead about her head, and she burred in annoyance.
“Adelaïda!” I called. She appeared in the doorway, now in shadow, with the child on one hip and her distaff in the other hand. “Look at the horse!”
“What in Heaven’s name have you done to her?”
“I’ve made an invention.”
“It doesn’t look kindly.”
“Never mind its outward form—will you help me bring the cart?” It was not so heavy that I could not have moved it alone, but I wanted her nigh when the great event took place. She tied the child back up to the bench and rested her spindle against the door frame. Together we maneuvered the awkward cart out of the barn, and pulled it up behind the bewildered horse. I fastened the ends of the contraption to the cart, and tested their hold. The horse hung her head and looked at me askance, but when I clicked my tongue and urged her to follow me by tugging gently upon her lead, she knew the moment of reckoning had arrived, and began, hesitantly, to walk. For what seemed an eternity the traces pulled taut, and then the cart began to roll at a stately pace behind her. The horse, who still believed disaster was imminent, continued to regard me. But nothing went amiss. The cart’s solid iron-clad wheel whined, bumped, and turned as it always had, but nothing pulled at the horse’s throat. I put my hand upon the horse’s neck to stop her.
“Adelaïda,” I said.