She Had Some Horses

A story from the Schrödinger's Cat series

Photo by Fairy Pines on Unsplash

Links to part 1, Schrödinger's Cat and part 2 , The Lady Of Valance, in this series can be found at the bottom of this page.

Audio of this part for those who prefer to listen :)

1.

My brother’s long body colonised the entire sofa, his face in resting scowl as he lay transfixed by The News with its immaculately-tailored presenter priests beaming into our dusty living room from their futuristic spacey studios.

They sat behind enormous desks narrating from carefully scripted sheets, drenching the nation in unfettered power erotica. My brother lay there deeply aroused by these compelling images and violent missives, whilst I was made furious by the cultist T.V. heads and their fuck-you ideology.

I wanted to hide from them but he couldn’t get enough as they reported on wars or corporate takeovers or the growing demonisation of whoever was next in line, like priests delivering biblical sermons. They preached that winners clawed each other’s eyes out in vicious fights to maximise and accumulate, and that losers stank of outdated conceits like compassion and solidarity. They preached that resistance was suspicious and dangerous and resisters should be crushed. And they made it crystal clear that there was no alternative to this incomprehensible abolition of Love.

The News with its nihilistic fantasies of purity, power and control was aggrandised and worshipped, yet all I felt was a gnawing dread at the incomprehensible stupidity of it all.

But not my brother. He soaked it up like a sponge at a murder scene.

Our family, so naked and so vulnerable was being ruthlessly bullied by this ideological hurricane and my bones boiled and my anger whistled, but my brother leaned into the gospels like a disciple. There was so much that united us, so much we shared, and yet he still leaned into the bully mentality.

But despite all this I still yearned for his attention, to be seen, to be liked, to be loved.

I stood in the doorway looking down at him as he lay there mesmerised, “What are you doing?” I said.

He flicked his eyes at me and pulled a what the fuck do you think I’m doing face, then turned back to the television.

“Monkey’s on soon,” I said.

He ignored me and kept his eyes glued to the screen.

“Where’s whatsisname?” I said.

He threw me a curious glance, “Just make the tea and hurry the fuck up will ya.”

Even though The News sluiced me toward the striking miners while my brother sat on a police horse swinging his truncheon, even though I walked in the boots of some Argentinian boy soldier while my brother armed a Harrier Jump Jet with sidewinder missiles, even though we seemed like different species, nonetheless, once a week a strange spell was cast upon us when we found ourselves united under the bewitching power of Monkey, Pigsy, Sandy and Tripitaka.

Once a week for twenty-eight precious minutes a truce was called as a Japanese T.V. show magicked up a moment of camaraderie in the agony of our crumbling lives as we forgot all the cruelness and remembered just for that moment, how to be brothers.

In the Worlds before Monkey, Primal chaos reigned and Heaven sought order and the Father Buddha said, ‘With our thoughts we make the world” and the nature of Monkey was irrepressible!

And that was that. Our mugs of tea remained untouched and we rolled about punching each other and wrestling and laughing and performing magnificent impressions of Monkey, and we called each other Pigsy and FishFace and threw Kung-Fu kicks and bowed at Tripitaka with our praying hands as if we too were spiritual Buddhist Monks on a journey to enlightenment.

And then it ended. And life got back to normal.

2.

“I don’t want to go,” she said at breakfast, a panicky side eye evaluating my resolve.

I smiled a tight lipped smile and offered no escape. She looked at her untouched toast and then at the door and then at me. I smiled again and shook my head slowly, Nope, that ain’t gonna work.

“You’re beautiful and deadly and you’ll fit right in,” I said, “Let’s go.”

The bus stop was already heavy with Lady Of Valencia uniforms. The Tea Man was nowhere to be seen. My little sister glanced at the gaggles of uniformed girls.

“I’ll go on my own,” she said.

“I can wait with you.”

She looked away, “Nah, it’s OK.”

I gnawed my lip and glanced up the road.

She looked me in the eye and said, “I promise.”

“Don’t fuck around,” I said.

“I promise,” she said.

“Do you want me to…”

“No,” she said and turned slowly toward the bus stop. I watched her for a moment, then I turned slowly back toward home.

3.

I crept into my brother’s room and closed the door.

I stood dead still. Long gentle breaths.

It wouldn’t be anywhere near the bed, that would be too obvious. He’d have tried to be clever, tried to outsmart me. Not the chest of drawers and not behind the books on his shelf. I closed my eyes and listened to my heart pounding. Take it easy. My eyes travelled over his clothes strewn about the floor and the half-full tea mugs on the bedside table and the MAD magazines covering his desk. Then I saw the window latch. Maybe. Could be. Probably. I gently pushed up the wooden frame and leaned out and there in a plastic bag resting in the guttering was a small wooden box carved in elephant motifs. I reached for his stash box and smiled as the pungent smell of grass wafted out. Bingo.

I walked down the hill through our town with the sun blazing down and the day stretching before me and I sparked up a spliff and I thought about my sister and The Lady of Valencia School. It was a whole other world for privileged people who lived strangely tedious lives with all their wealth and opportunity dedicated to making sure they lived exactly like each other. A world behind closed gates along closed roads with big dark houses with closed front doors and immaculate gardens, all replicating the exact same dream. A world where everyone made choices and took chances that brought them to exactly the same place. A self-policed monotonous world where peculiarly copycatting people slavishly followed rules to protect their privilege. They called it The Class System, but really it was a class war, and only one side was winning. These Home County Tribes all glued to The News were willing to do absolutely anything to preserve their status quo. The Lady Of Valencia school was the training camp for this vicious class war and my family were the enemy.

And now my sister was being recruited.

I didn’t know whether this was a victory or a defeat.

I blew purple haze smoke rings toward the sun as I walked past the law courts and imagined the things I would do, oh the things I would do, with all that abundance and all that privilege. The gates I would kick down and the doors I would open and the walls I would smash to pieces to reveal all this craziness. I’d climb to the top of this rickety man-made social structure and I’d scream at the top of my lungs “it’s all a fucking charade you fools, it’s all a fucking theatre!”

By the time I got to the park at the top of the town and sat on a bench I’d dreamt up a world where Lady Of Valencia schools were nothing but a corruption, a pestilence, a warning for we virtuous people of the lurking danger within us all, and in my head the good people would laugh like Tripitaka and his Buddhist monks at the very idea of segregation and entitlement and caste and instead we would all make space for each and every one of us

I sat on the bench in the sun and looked out over our town and wallowed in my dream of what this world might be, could be, should be, and I felt good.

And then I saw my brother and Whathisname coming at me from left and right as I sat there with a pocket full of their stash.

“Well, well, well, look what we have here, the little fucking weed thief,” my brother shouted across the flower bed.

Funny how quickly life will sneak up and bite you when you let your guard down.

“Alright boys.” I shouted back as I bolted and ran like an Olympic sprinter through the shallow duck pond and across bowling green and through the playground and eventually away. I was fast. Faster than them anyway. But eventually I’d still have to face the music. I’d still have to go home. There’s no escape from my own world. There was no Lady of Valencia School for me.

4

My sister climbed down from the bus and saw me sitting on a wall on the far side of the road, still damp from the duck pond, my eyes still swimming about in weed. I kept my distance. She spoke to a couple of uniformed girls and they smiled and she smiled, then she turned and walked along the opposite pavement. I smiled and she smiled and I hopped down from the wall and kept to my side of the road as we both headed toward the river. We didn’t need to say, we just knew.

Lying beneath the foxglove we stared toward the sky as the late afternoon swallows were feasting on insects like swirling fairies joyously playing.

“Most of those kids have tennis courts,” she said.

“Course they do.”

“And swimming pools.”

“Yeah well, we’ve got a river” I said.

“And houses in France.”

“They’re probably arms dealers,” I said.

“One kid said his dad was an arms dealer.”

“Oooh got a dad has he? Quite the posh git,” I said.

We lay quietly for a while listening to the fat bees zooming by and the rise and fall of distant traffic carried on the warm breeze in the wild grass. I couldn’t ask yet so I didn’t. Swallows jinked and dinked upon the river and the trees on the far bank stood in gracious beauty. The smell of river water and sun drenched soil wafted about as deeply satisfying as baking bread. As it should be. I breathed in the summer and the sky gave me courage.

“Did they know?” I asked.

She side eyed me quizzically and then looked back toward the heavens and after a time she said.

“Not yet, they asked lots of stuff but they didn’t really pay attention.”

“They’re gonna find out,” I said.

We said nothing for a while, then she said, “She had some horses,” and at first I thought she meant the other kids, with their pools and tennis courts, but then I remembered the poem and I said, “She had horses who thought they were the sun and their bodies shone and burned like stars,” and she said, “She had horses who waltzed nightly on the moon,” and I said, “She had horses who were much too shy, and kept quiet in stalls of their own making,” and she said, “And we’re not going to keep quiet are we?” and I said “No, we’re going to burn like the sun and the stars.”

And then we lay quiet again by the riverside, scared that we could not burn like the sun and stars, scared that we did not have the courage to be seen and to shine against all these odds. And under the blazing sun I felt so small and so insignificant like an insect hovering above the waterline waiting to be gobbled up and gone forever.

And then she said “Fuck ‘em.”

And I smiled and sighed and I said “Yeah, fuck ‘em,” and we then both stood up and headed home to face the music.

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The poem She Had Some Horses was written in 1983 and is by Joy Harjo

Link to part 1:

Link to part 2: