Abediah Thornton

Chapter 17 - Monday

Abediah was grooming Edwin. She found grooming to be quite a good meditation, the rhythmic, repetitive movements. And as Edwin was such a big horse it tended to be a bit more of a time consuming job. As she brushed she thought about the call she'd received from Louise that morning. Louise had called to ask after Edwin. Of course she'd known they had been going out because Abediah had asked for her advice before going. But before she had considered whether it was a good idea she'd found herself telling the vet what she'd discovered.

Louise had listened kindly making all the right sounds, until she got to the part about taking the pictures. She remembered back to Louise's shocked voice as she had retold how she'd stood up on Edwin's back.

'What were you thinking!' the vet had said with what sounded more like exasperation than anger. 'Nevermind that Edwin is supposed to be retired, but what about you! What did you think you were up to climbing up like that! Didn't you think about how dangerous it was?'

And she hadn't. She really hadn't. Thinking back now no part of her had registered that climbing up like that on the back of her big friendly elderly giant of a horse might be a dangerous idea. She'd just done it without a second thought, seeing inside the barn seemed far more important than how she got up there.

'But he stood perfectly still!' she had told Louise, feeling like she needed to protect her horse. 'I'm sure he did!' was Louise's retort. 'He was probably terrified he might drop you, poor thing!'And that had hit her. Louise wasn't thinking about her being a bad owner or Edwin being a potentially dangerous horse. She was thinking about how upset Edwin would have been if something had gone wrong. She was thinking about how indifferent Abediah had been with her own health and life, but Abediah hadn't considered those things at all. And yet now, looking back, she knew Edwin would have been scared if something had happened. Thinking about her lovely old horse, she suddenly felt very stupid and very very guilty.

As she moved the brush slowly down a leg she thought back to the one time she'd had a really bad fall from Edwin. She'd been riding for so many years, for so much of her life. She understood horses and their movements so well and she was confident in her ability. As her experience had grown, falling off had become a rarity. The kind of work she and Edwin did together wasn't hard, not exactly competitive! So there weren't many opportunities to fall off. But that one day, she had.

They'd been out fixing fences that day too. It had been a cold wet day. They'd fixed a hole in the field next to the wood and were heading towards home for lunch. She had been feeling tired that day, and later she realised she'd been brewing a cold. She'd leaned over to get the gate and as her head tipped forward she'd got dizzy. It was so stupid! She wasn't doing anything she hadn't done a million times before. But it was just a perfect storm. The wet hair on Edwin's back, she had been wet through by that point, the metal on the gate slippery, the dizzy head; one second of missed judgement and she'd slipped off. Her back had hit the gate as she fell and she'd fallen head first into the mud, crunching her neck. In fact, she was lucky it had been a wet muddy day. The damage would have been far, far worse if it wasn't for the squashy muddy landing. As it was though, she had lay unconscious in the mud for some time before Frank had found her.

It had been Edwin who'd saved the day. Frank had told her that the noises from the horse were like something unworldly. It wasn't simple neighing, he'd said, more like a scream. Frank had come out wondering where the noise was coming from and had followed it to the gate. Edwin had been nudging Abediah between each cry for help.

It had taken a long time for him to build trust in her again after that. Whenever they went anywhere he had walked slowly and carefully. She would nudge him to go faster and he'd stubbornly refuse and continue at a walk. Whenever they reached a gate he moved slowly and carefully, sticking out his neck over the gate, making the manoeuvre much harder, but clearly trying to protect her should she fall.

Once she'd thought back on that day she started to feel even worse. It would have been so easy for her to fall. She could have taken a misstep, got dizzy, her knee could have given out (something it did often and unpredictably these days). So many things could have gone wrong and she would have ended up on the hard ground a long way down, probably skull cracked open by the fall, leaving poor Edwin all alone and panicking.

OK, she thought, for Edwin's sake if nothing else, I need to be more careful. I need to be here to take care of him. I need to not do anything that's going to stress him out.

'I'm sorry buddy,' she said to the big horse beside her. 'I promise I won't do anything silly like that again, OK? Let's live nice peaceful, quiet, safe lives from now on, OK old man?' she said. The horse moved his head around, wrapping her into the crook of his neck and nuzzling at her as if he'd understood every word and every thought.

'I'll take care of you, and you take care of me. OK?' she whispered, right into his big greying ear. Edwin nickered, perhaps just from the tickle of air over his ear.