Pony Tale

                                                                        

          

                        'Pony Tale'

                                                                  

                                     by

                                        

                     Doug Donnan      

                     (Skeeterville, Texas)

     “Oh look Darrel, there’s a pony!” the blonde woman popped from her spot in the

back of the dusty white Jeep Wagoneer. Mrs. Henneypeck preferred to ride in the rear

seat on rural rides like these. She believed that a serious observer was afforded a better

perspective of the ‘quaint country surroundings’ from a remote position. “He looks lost

don’t you think?”

     “Probably just got loose from the corral somehow Sylvia dear. The rancher just left

the gate open I recon’,” Henneypeck replied matter-of-factly with his best Texas twang

as he slowed the car down to try and assess the leisurely trotting situation. “It looks like

a spotted Appaloosa yearling, not a pony” he offered into the rear-view mirror feeling

quite proud of himself for knowing something about horses. “They are quite beautiful

animals,” he added and then somehow wished that he hadn’t.

      “Oh do pull over dear,” she chided. “We simply must try and help the poor creature.”

      “I really don’t think we should get involved in something like this dear,” he replied

hoping against hope that she would, just this once, see things his way. “Besides we have

to be at Auntie Mame’s house in Austin by—    

     “Puhleeez can’t we try?”

     “Okay Sylvia, but you just mark my words if something hap—

     “Don’t get your blood pressure risin’,” she snapped him off with a resolute slap of her

scrawny bejeweled hand on the top of the front seat just behind his reddening ear, “You

just remember what young Doctor Boyle said.” 

     “Okay…okay,” he sighed in surrender as he pulled up a ways ahead of the sauntering

horse. Darrel steered the Jeep well over the grassy shoulder and slanted it up against the 

long wormwood covered post and wire fence that followed the road. The Henneypecks

got out and almost tiptoed over to wait at the point where car met fence. Eventually the

slightly snorting yearling came to this wedge-like impasse and halted in place. It was an

odd confrontation as they all stood there still as stone for a few seconds… waiting.

     “He seems docile enough wouldn’t you say?” asked Sylvia as she attempted a kind of

slow, sand crab-like maneuver around the side of the car. “I bet he likes sugar. I have some

Sweet and Low packets in my purse in the back seat.” She stopped at the vehicle’s rear

window and reached inside for her impossibly large straw bag. In fact it was so large that

to try and hoist it out the window might somehow damage the multi-colored ribbons and

seashells that festooned it. Instead she opted to roll up the sleeves of her spotless yellow

cardigan and bend inside, her rear to the tops of the elm trees on the other side of the road.

     “Syl,” Darrel tried as he leaned over with a look and a tap or two on the windshield. “I

don’t think that this is such a good—

     “Here we are then,” she chirped as she maneuvered her skeletal frame back out and

held high a fistful of pink packets. She carefully tore them open and filled her leathery

palm with a little mound of the sweet sugar substitute. Then, after turning to give her

frowning husband an impish wink, she slowly stepped towards the wide-eyed alabaster

Appaloosa, her arm stretched out before her as if she were Noah himself offering chaff

to some would be four-legged passenger. 

     It didn’t take a great deal of time for Mrs. Henneypeck and the horse to form some

type of symbiotic relationship there on the side of the road. With each tongue-lapping of

her sweet palm he did bow and snort, bow and snort as if in total agreement with what

was happening between them. The smiling woman soon began to imitate the animal’s

pleasured posture with her own series of ridiculous dipping and rising head gestures.

     “Let’s tie him to the trailer hitch and escort him back to the rancher,” she declared

as he came around to observe the pink packet picnic. “It’ll be our good deed for the day.

We have some of that light rope in the back we can use. Puleeeze?”

     Darrel removed his black and gold New Orlean’s Saints football cap and scratched at

the curly crop of salt and pepper thatch atop his bulbous head. He unzipped his tan suede

jacket and sighed in submission. He knew from years of past experience that it would be

an exercise in futility to argue with her now.

     “Okay, but I still think we had better mind our own business around here and—

     She needed only to peer up at him with that Doctor Boyle look and he was off in search

of the aforementioned rope. “We’ll just turn the car around and see if we might be able to

find his rightful owner back there somewhere. Surely someone is looking for him by now.”

***

     “Not too fast dear,” she said from behind him in her now completely turned-about

position in the almost idling vehicle. “We don’t want him to get winded.”

     “If I go any slower he might just pass us,” Darrel replied as he stared at the back of

her small, yellow stained head in the rear view mirror. The two now unraveling crimson

ribbons pinned to the sides of her bleached skull offered him the reflective illusion that

her unusually elongated ears might somehow be spurting blood. They rolled along at this

less than break neck speed for the better part of a mile before he noticed in his side rear-

view mirror what appeared to be two speeding pick-up trucks rapidly approaching.

     “Somebody’s comin’ up on us back here Darrel,” Sylvia called out excitedly. “I hope

they don’t frighten the pony. Maybe it’s the rancher with some friends lookin’ for the

Apoloosa!”

     “Yeh, maybe,” Darrel replied with a quick, nervous look at the dashboard’s gas gauge.

Before he could even decide what his options were one of the trucks had swept past them

on the extreme left splattering streams of rocks and dirt in its wake. The other one hung

back vigilantly following the Henneypeck’s horse and Wagoneer. They were now, for all

intents and purposes, boxed in. Eventually the lead driver held his arm out the truck’s

window and gestured with a pumping finger for Darrel to pull over to the grass and mud

shoulder of the road.  “Looks like we’re gonna’ find out I’m afraid.”

     “Such drama dear,” she responded as she turned back facing him. “I’m certain your

anxiety would be frowned upon by—       

     “Doctor Boyle…I know,” he sighed as he pulled over and depressed the parking break.

     “Well,” she huffed. “We’ll just see what we’ll see then!”

***

     “Where’d ya’ find that spotted pony yer pullin’ along behind ya’ mister?” the big man

asked as he leaned atop the open driver’s window of the Wagoneer. A little raven-haired

girl with a sagging ponytail clung to his blue Levi leg. She glared into the back seat at the

stupidly smiling Sylvia. The girl’s face was as pale as schoolhouse chalk. Her oval obsidian

eyes might just as easily have been those of some prowling deep-sea shark. 

     “We came up on him as he was sauntering down this road,” Darrel tried with a wry

smile. “We befriended him and thought we’d try to get him back to his owner. So we got

out our rope there and—

     “Saunterin’ huh?” the man cut him off as he rubbed at his bristly lantern jaw. He re-

moved his time worn khaki Stetson hat and drew the top of that same corded sun burnt

forearm across his deeply fissured forehead. He squeezed the blue-black barrel of a pump

action shotgun in his other meaty hand. “You hear that Evangeline,” he said as he looked

down at the top of the girl’s head with a squinting eye. “They found yer’ pony saunterin’

down our road here.”

     Sylvia buttoned the rear window all the way down and framed her painted face in the

opening. “Oh hello,” she chirped. “Is it your horsey then back there little missy?”

     The girl looked up at her father and tugged lightly on his faded red checked gingham

sleeve. “That there one looks jist like our ol’ skeercrow daddy.” She didn’t whisper this

observation by any means.

      “Listen here mister…I don’t believe I caught your name sir,” Darrel tried.

     “My name is Slagg and this here is my daughter Evangeline,” he declared as if he might

be in a court of law. “We come to collect up her missin’ pony. Isn’t that right boys?”

     The men from the trailing truck had walked up to the rear of the car. They had rifles.

They didn’t speak, but it was readily apparent that they had a purpose. There was a

patent moment of silence, then…

     “So you suppose it’s a pony too,” Sylvia peeped from the window as she massaged the

pipe-stem of her throat with several bony fingers.

      “Lady,” the man began with a studied look across the pale sky, “I done gave up on

supposin’ anythin’ since my missus up n’ left me. But I can tell ya’ this, horse stealin’ is

serious bizness around these parts.”

     “Stealing?” Darrel exclaimed as he craned a look up from his driver’s seat at the

towering man-girl. “I can assure you Mr. ...Slagg, that we had no intention of—                 

     “Maybe you all had just better follow me in my truck there,” he rudely cut in again.

“We can git all this straightened out back up ahead in the direcshun’ you all was headin’.

Go on back there n’ git yer horse princess. You jist ride him right on back ta the house.

 I’ll be along direckly.”

     The girl did only look back and forth at the now wide-eyed Henneypecks. She studied

them with her black eyes as though she was fully aware of what was about to happen to

them. “Don’t be too long daddy…you know I git sceered bein’ left all by my lonesome.”

***

     Within time the odd little motorcade pulled up and then into an open glen. The proud

elm and abundant spreading oak trees painted the valley a lush billowing green and ocher.

With the redoubtable Mr. Slagg as the self-appointed parade marshal the unlikely quintet

soon found themselves outside their separate vehicles and beneath the impossibly thick

reaching arms of a mammoth oak. A light breeze wafted through these gnarly branches 

like some translucent cloud or nebulous drifting spirit. It was as silent as death itself.

   

     “You all jist wait here a bit. Me n’ the boys here gotta’ confer,” Slagg more or less

ordered. The Henneypecks stood there, mouths agape in bewilderment, like two depart-

tment store mannequins somehow frozen in time. Every now and again a carefree leaf

would flutter down, its life now finished.

     “We’ll jist have to make do with that one rope then John Henry. Just draw your loop

out enough to ‘commodate two that’s all. There shouldn’t be no problem that I can see.

That ol’ branch has held up some pretty big ones in its time.”

     “Should we use the duct tape?” Bartlett joined in as he looked over his fat shoulder at

the two thieves and then back at Slagg. “You know how they can git.”

     “Yeh, ya' better had, cuz them two is gonna’ be a couple of screamers... that’s fer sure.”

           

                                                   _____ The End _____