One Native Life by Richard Wagamese Read Free Book Online Page A

called me a great writer because I could make him feel things. He praised me and told me to keep going. I did.
    I am a writer today because of Leo Rozema. He was the first adult in my adopted life who actually saw me, heard me, got me. From my words he gleaned the ache I carried, and he offered the salve of praise and recognition. He was wise enough to separate the kid from the report card.
    We live with pieces of the sky inside us. In our cells is the very stuff of space. The arc of our travel is wonderful to see, the trail of it incandescent, joined to an impossible blue.

A Kindred Spirit
    . . .
    THERE ARE FOALS on the range land. Against the high-sky heat of midday they are flopped on their sides, tails twitching, soaking up sun on their flanks. It’s a reminder, I suppose, of mother heat not so long past.
    Driving by later, in early evening, I watch them cavort. They race about in bursts of speed that end abruptly, as though they’re suddenly puzzled at the glee that drives them to kick up their heels and run. They pause and look outwards at the road with their heads held high and still. There’s pride in them, nobility, and a staunch sense of identity that’s fractured by yet another crazed dash.
    My people were bush people, and they never cultivated a horse culture. But there is something about the animals that has always appealed to me. Horses are called Spirit Dogs in some native cultures, and maybe it’s their loyalty and good-heartedness that makes them special to me.
    I was thirteen when I learned to ride. My adopted family had left for a summer vacation, and I was dropped off to stay with relatives for three weeks. Uncle Wilf and Aunt Peg had a small farm outside of a southwestern Ontario town called Teeswater. I’d only been there a handful of times, and I felt out of place and alone.
    But they had animals. It wasn’t a large farm, but there was stock, some chickens, a few dogs and a knot of barn cats. Uncle Wilf assigned me barn chores to do every day. Every morning I gathered eggs from the henhouse. I shovelled stalls in the afternoon and helped hay and feed the cattle in the evening. It never felt like work to me. The presence of the animals was comforting, and even the huge Hereford bull in the back stall didn’t faze me.
    It was the pony that fascinated me most. She was a small Shetland cross. The first time I saw her she was dirty, with a knotted tail and mane. She started when I approached her, shrank to the back of the stall and eyed me nervously. Still, I felt drawn to her.
    Aunt Peg told me that the pony’s name was Dimples. They’d bought her from a neighbour for their daughter Kathy to ride, but the neighbour hadn’t told them that Dimples had been beaten as a colt and so was unrideable. She was bareback broke and halter broke, but the heavy-handedness of her training had made her distrustful of people. They told me not to go near her, except to let her out into the big pen every now and then.
    “She’ll bite you,” Aunt Peg told me, “and she’ll kick.”
    But there was something about Dimples that drew me. I knew nothing of horses or ponies, but at thirteen I understood the feeling of being displaced and lost and frightened. I saw that in her, and I started to visit her.
    At first I just stood by the rail of the stall and talked to her. She didn’t move, but after a few days of this she seemed to calm. Then I opened the gate and stood there, talking soft and low and gentle. It took another few days for her to get used to this. Eventually I moved a yard or so closer.
    The day I touched her for the first time was magical. She shivered, twitched. I kept my voice low, moved slowly and rubbed her flank. I could feel her anxiety, but the more I stroked her the more she calmed and settled. Within days she let me curry comb her mane and tail, all the while talking soft and low.
    Uncle Wilf showed me how to put the halter on. He had to demonstrate on a pillow, because Dimples wouldn’t