Stations of the Cross (an extract)

PART 1

My horse's feet are as swift as rolling thunder
He carries me away from all my fears
and when the world threatens to fall asunder
His mane is there to wipe away my tears.

~Bonnie Lewis

The silver Palomino pranced in the early morning light.

It’s mane illuminated by the rising sun, as it tumbled down the horses’ neck.The soil of the old corral danced around the palomino’s hooves, plumes of dust cascading back to earth only to be tossed back aloft by the next heavy footfall of the horse as it threw its head back gaily in the halo of light.Her coat appeared as frosted diamonds in the sallow yellowish glow of the sun, different to the breed’s standard color of newly minted gold. Her Skin and eyes where dark, though as a foal she had been born with light-colored eyes not uncommon in palomino’s who had the champagne gene. But they had darkened as she had aged.

The boy, Miguel his face spread wide in a grin of pure unadulterated joy, gazed on devotedly. His eyes sparkled with glee and love for his beautiful friend.

He had sneaked out of the house early, and made his way across the dusty barren patch of grass to the corral where the horse was already frolicking back and forth. Its canter increased as it saw him sprinting towards it across the ground.

The corral itself was old and worn like the earth around it, built long ago when the boy’s grandfather had been a vaquero, and a breeder of horses. The corral and the house beyond it had fallen into disrepair many years ago now; time had not been kind to Miguel and his mother. He had grown up hungry and poor. The life of the rancher had taken its toll on his mother but never worn her down as she struggled to maintain the stables and the farm.

Many a ranch hand had come and gone in the early years of Miguel’s life. None had stayed.

He had never known his father; he had died, murdered in a knife fight before Miguel was born, so the village rumor mill had said, a passing drifter who had stayed at the ranch and helped his Father tend the horses. A drunken brawl some said over a horse, some said over his Mother. His Mother, would neither confirm nor deny it, instead she placated Miguel by telling him his father was among the angels. “Everything that is carried out between heaven and earth are carried out through angels” She would tell him. He had heard all of the talk from the villagers. Some women he had once over heard whispered about “Adelita’s free and easy ways”, he didn’t understand what they had meant, he had always accepted his mother to be “free”.

Free in the way she danced, so graceful light, the way she sang, free in her movements, and her attitude to others. Free in the choices she made both for him and for herself. Miguel believed his Mother would simply flow away like the wind or the river; she to him seemed more like a force of nature than a person. It was only when she gathered him up in her arms, and held him when he was hurt or lonely or sad that her sheer physical presence and warmth told him that she was real. Free in nearly every sense of the word. Only the ranch and Miguel himself bound her.
Miguel turned his thoughts from his mother and the ranch around him back to the silver palomino that now stood still, its long face looking at him with deep chocolate coloured eyes, its tail gently swaying in the cooling summer morning breeze.

He wrapped his arms around her long neck as she nuzzled at his face, felt the pulse of blood, the heat and the force of her against him.

“Be still Irma” Miguel whispered as he hugged the horse tightly, the smile never leaving his lips.

Friends true Friends.

Inside Adelita lay still in the arms of her lover.

She had found Virgil one night; it was the height of summer. Miguel had been asleep in the house; she had taken a walk into the corral. Checking on the horses.
Then when satisfied all was calm and still, she had headed back to the house and sat awhile on the veranda outside.
She had headed his moans. Initially she thought it was the wind, a small cool breeze had picked up as she sat looking at the night sky.

Rising slowly she had crossed over the barren track of earth between the house and the small barn over on the far side of her property.

She stopped and listened trying to pick up the direction the noise emanated from.

Adelita had spent what seem several lifetimes dealing with the harsh realities of the world, and the cruel desires of men, and although deep down she knew that the soft inaudible noises came from a man, she was unafraid.

The man who she would come to love lay face down in the dust and earth. A pool of thick dark blood spreading out underneath him. His hands grasping at the earth trying to push himself up, to rise, not giving in even though the very life was ebbing out of him.

She had hurried to his side, and turned his head so he might breath easier. His heavy eye lids opened just a little so she could see the iridescent green of his eyes. A soft gentle smile cracked his otherwise hard and unforgiving face.

When he recovered enough to talk several days later, the first thing he had told her was his name, Virgil, and the second was that he thought he had died and gone to heaven when he saw her face.The face of an angel he had said.Adelita rose from the bed, her black tussled hair fell down her naked back, long and shinning like a raven’s wing.