Collection offers horse stories of a different color

Author: By Jo-Ann Mapson

Date: SUNDAY, August 9, 1998

Page: C2

Section: Books

Her unforgettable "Blue Horse" opens the book. Twelve-year-old Evvie Fenn is kidnapped by a man who holds her captive for five years, during which time she is repeatedly assaulted. "That place down there, sore and throbbing like a heartbeat," Evvie says in describing her ordeal, in the haunting vocabulary of a child who has not yet learned adult anatomical terminology. With unflinching clarity, Maristed walks the reader through Evvie's becoming inured to victimization. Much of the strength that enables her to survive arises from her animal-like ability to remain separate from and unknowable to her kidnapper, a creature for whom empathy and obedience is clearly a survival tactic. When he dies, instead of heading to the nearest policeman, Evvie frees a horse that's been penned up next door to where she has been held. A "huge, blue animal, blue and shapeless as a cloud, moving closer," Evvie describes the horse that has adapted to live entirely on fruit trees growing within his enclosure. She fetches a rope and observes in a moment that illustrates her bond with the horse, "It understood the rope"; she opens his gate, guides him to the grasses that had been so long out of his reach, and stays with him, "guarding the quietness there" so he can eat in peace. The horse enters the story late, providing a subtle, shimmering emblem of hope, but oh, what an intense journey, encompassing a novel's worth of material.

Maristed structures her collection with similar finesse. Horses are integral to each story, yet play the leading roles in seemingly ordinary ways: requiring dangerous veterinary work, growing old to become liabilities not so easily disposed of, vulnerable to abuse in their domestic roles, fiercely imagined as solutions to the deepest human longing. In "Rain," for instance, Russ, a man in his 30s, loses his prestigious appointment as a lawyer just after New Year's. He spends his days in bars, playing the lottery, lying to his wife, who suspects something is amiss. His young daughter wishes for a pony, which he dismisses: "Tara thinks she wants a pony." Russ attempts to gain guidance from his father, who says: "Marriage is like a team of driving horses...There's never an equal pair, there's always your wheel horse -- he dominates, he's the leader, his job is to sense what's coming, set the direction." It's no coincidence that Russ chooses his wedding anniversary to brutalize his wife. When she leaves, taking their daughter, he begins to clear their property, revealing the old walls of a former barn. He decides to build an enclosure for his daughter's pony, thus taking the first steps to repair his disassembled life.

Horse people will appreciate the realistic, gritty edge of the stories that deal directly with the racing industry or the breeding end of the business, including "How to Float," in which teenage Stevie feels threatened by the gay man hired to file down the teeth of an unpredictable horse named Magick. This horse so intimidates Stevie that he deliberately injures himself to avoid having to handle him. In the process he learns the "things that men can do and get away with" and how to enter a "world without consequences." The horselike nature of people is continually hinted at in these stories, and Maristed generously gives equal time to men and women in this not always flattering association.

In "The Teaser," a female horse trainer risks her own safety to save a band of old and infirm horses on their way to auction. The sexual thread in the story initially presents itself with the explanation of a horse term. A "teaser' is a male horse used to test mares' receptivity to a stallion, to determine if they are coming into season, but the teaser is never allowed to mate himself. Luce, the horse rescuer, adopts the teaser role herself when she strips for the driver who has been paid to take the doomed horses (under less than satisfactory conditions) to auction. The effort ought to elevate the story to a level where horses and humans are equal, but it's less successful than other such devices in the collection. Luce's striptease comes off more comical than desperate, and releasing the horses might be an outcome ultimately as cruel as the auction. Her actions cause us to question what constitutes kindness, but seem a trifle forced.

The human characters in Maristed's stories are not always purified through their redemptive experiences but are often left chagrined by the consequences of their actions. Whatever wisdom they accumulate is hard-earned and hollow, like the skin-tight boots the show rider wears in "Barn Swallows." He can feel the holes in the toes, but they're not yet visible to the outside world. These stories leave the reader aching for the rope Evvie throws in "Blue Horse," wishing to be led in a direction that supports the belief that hope is inherent in every human act, and that the presence of horses in our world makes us better individuals. With their stoicism, mortality, and ability to survive the deeds perpetrated upon them by humans, the horses in these stories suggest they are no longer willing to exist as romantic symbols, and that humans need to examine their actions in order to become better animals. Kai Maristed has crafted a thought-provoking, unique "horse" story collection that offers a new way to look at one of humankind's oldest obsessions.