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(2024) A large black horse with a white inverted heart marking between her eyes, she came to this place from the Bureau of Land Management where she was systematically abused. Who does that, and how can Society allow it? Perhaps that is when this all began… when very bad people were allowed to do evil things and get away with it…. Perhaps that was when Society began to change…..

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An old lady stands next to a now skittish horse at the front of the corral in a field where a home once stood but now every remnant of that home is gone. Its familiarity is haunting. What secrets do we hold inside? Secrets that shape our lives, secrets that change us in some fundamental way and that forever alter our view of other people and of our World. Sometimes it’s not safe to tell these secrets to anyone. Those who shared one secret are all gone now. (Many died mysteriously shortly after it happened. But the FBI never noticed that… or so the story goes . . … ) And so a half a century passed and that old lady never breathed a word about it. And then Betty passed away. Alas, some secrets are destined to remain hidden - and they do. Sometimes for an entire lifetime. . …

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. . … and the painting is bathed in red like the fire all consuming;
. . …. and one eye peers out through the night through the darkness because it is late and nearly everyone is sound asleep. And the only thing visible in the darkness is that huge dark eye of his. And the only thing one hears all around are the crickets. And the sound of a forklift unexpectedly pierces the silence. And the floodlights suddenly light up the darkness. And Betty whispers, “shhhhh!”


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(the field). A woman told me a story about that field… a house once stood there… and a man and his wife and their son and daughter lived there… and the man went into the “Big city” with his son … and there was a car jacking and the man’s son was still in the car so the man - he fought like hell with the carjacker to protect his son - but the carjacker pulled a gun and shot the man in the chest - and the man died. And The Temple loomed large in the background. And the wife mikes away heard His voice to come for the son to take him home. For, somehow or other, the young boy was saved and reunited with his family… but he never got over the trauma he had suffered . . . and one day the mother returned home to find her son had killed himself in that home … and months later as the mother and daughter tried desperately to rebuild their shattered lives, the home - it caught fire-and it burned to the ground… so that land was never sold to build another home because nobody wanted to live in that place . . . that place was no longer a place of hope or joy or healing the woman telling the story explained. And so the grass grew taller and the lot remained vacant…. Until one day a rescue came along and was able to make good use of that land that nobody else had wanted following the tragedy . . and it became a refuge for those who creatures who also needed a home . . . It thus finally became a place of tremendous power, . . .. a place of healing

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Yes, I have been thinking a lot about Athena lately. She is a large black horse - but not as big as him. She has a white marking between her eyes. It is shaped like a heart - a heart that has been turned inside out and upside down. So, no. Not exactly like his and no, she is “not a ringer.”

That same old lady - the one with the cane - she brings her a treat every day… sometimes a Granny or Red Delicious apple - or maybe two, sometimes a handful of sweet carrots, and most often those little Neigh Nibbler Oats and molasses treats which are Athena’s favorite. The old tractor store downtown on Main Street sells the Nibblers in huge bags too big for her to handle without assistance from the store clerk. So she stocks up four times a year.

When Athena hears her drive up in that old truck, the one with the running board made of wood, she recognizes the sound of an engine now sputtering, and Athena -she comes racing across the field of grass, her head held high in anticipation. Sometimes she’ll call out to the old woman. And the old woman tries to rub her muzzle when she gets to the fence - and sometimes Athena allows it and sometimes she doesn’t. Sometimes she starts when the woman stretches out her hand and reaches out to her. Sometimes she’ll take a little nip of the old woman’s hand and even though she doesn’t draw blood, that nip with those big old munchers is not nothing. It’s something. But Athena is all forgiven that, for the old woman knows that that’s what happens when you’ve been abused. (I wonder how she knows?) Nonetheless, a day does not go by without a drive out to the ranch, because in some small way these visits (with Athena the big dark horse with the white upside down heart on her nose), they may not erase a painful memory but they do bring her full circle and allow a degree of closure . . …

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When she looked into Athena’s eyes, she drifted back ~ back over half a century to that multimillion dollar old Spanish home with the long driveway framed by tall trees on either side and the arch through which the driveway passed into the inner courtyard - and the stables opening into that courtyard - and the stalls on the right side where a short time (an eternity) ago another horse lived. He was bought for next to nothing - not because she saw his heart but because she saw his resemblance and so she brought him there - yes, brought there by the Ice Queen ~ that’s what all the neighborhood kids called her! (Young children often see what others can’t!)

Well as it turns out, the Ice Queen was part of a scheme which involved fraud, greed and lastly - murder - though the NY field office of the FBI never did quite make the connection and so The Ice Queen got away without serving a single moment behind bars for her role in what was done to him. . . how the whole thing began with HER trip to South America. (Why couldn’t the FBI figure that much out? Or did they!) . . … And then there was The Ice Queen’s role in the murder itself. It was a half a century ago, but some things are not easily forgotten. . …the Ice Queen’s petite frame sporting her khaki-colored jodhpurs and a whip, her short cropped blonde locks, the forklift, the good doctor, the broken up cement in the inner courtyard, the floodlights in the middle of the night piercing the darkness ~

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There’s something about Athena, perhaps it’s the look in her eyes, or the inverted white heart marking on her nose which in some small way reminds me of him. Of Lebon. But what could a little girl have done to stop it? It was a lifetime ago, and too, all the players have gone. And even if any are still alive, nobody cares anymore. Nobody even remembers him. The one who was murdered. He had a heart too. And then, that look in his eye. Calling out to her through the darkness. No one remembers, except of course, for that one little girl.

Copyright JanaiAmi. All Rights Reserved.

About the painting BREAKAWAY,  Part 4

~  by Janai-Ami 

Copyright 2021 Janai-Ami.  All Rights Reserved.

 

Donnegal Shamrock was leashed, and we were heading back down the road.  Betty was several paces in front of me, and she turned her eyes briefly inward towards the bustle of activity in the inner courtyard.  Her pace suddenly quickened and she signaled me and whispered for me to keep quiet and move quickly along towards home.  So I did and never asked why.  Betty told me years later what she had seen.  I didn't believe her at first. I didn't want to believe her.  But she was very clear about what she saw.  Something very large was being moved on a forklift and placed into a hole in the inner courtyard. In the middle of the night.  She saw it.  It was a horse.  It was our horse, the one that a little girl had loved.  And that is why he was gone.  The following day when I walked by with my dog, concrete had already been laid. The BIG SHOT DOC and his flat chested wife with the little boy haircut and stern face that never smiled now had a brand new inner courtyard, surrounded by the horses stalls.  But just as Betty had said,  one of the stalls now stood empty.  

 

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Years later Betty moved back to Fayetteville, but she talked often about what she had seen that night so many years ago. She still has a vivid recollection of it -- all of it - including the five year old chestnut with the white markings on his nose.   She said the BIG SHOT DOC was involved with some very bad people.  She said that the claim that his body was dumped under a pile of garbage in some landfill somewhere in New York was hogwash. (I've always believed that she said that just to make me feel a little bit better about his death. I could not think about him dumped like garbage into a landfill because it upset me so).   Betty reassured me that he wasn't left in a landfill, and she knew this for a fact, because she saw him being killed and then laid in a hole dug in the courtyard of a $2-3 million estate right there off of Muttontown Road. 

 

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The venerable Los Angeles Times talked about how much good this man had done.  He was a veterinarian. An esteemed one.  (Unfortunately I know a thing or two about esteemed veterinarians, Dear Reader.   The Cornell School of Veterinary Medicine has trained more than one of them.  But more about the VETERINARIAN TO THE STARS later. . . ) The obit was all about his incredible generosity. He died a very wealthy man,  just over a decade ago. But The Times devoted barely a paragraph to the real story, apparently they never interviewed Betty,  or the DRUG STORE TYCOON or any others  - for they glossed over the real story as if it were a mere footnote to this man's storied existence.  The story New Yorkers talked about for years.  The Times merely stated that there was a fixed race, an amazing long shot, huge winnings among a small group of people closely affiliated with the track, and investigators who were unable to figure out (at least at first) whether or not "the fix had been in."  Betty always talked about the young man from South America who worked as a stable hand, raising and caring for horses -- including two nearly identical ones, from the time they were very young.  Notably, two photos were sent to the States by a young flat chested woman - photos that showed how very alike they were.  Why was she so interested in the similarity of their appearance?  Why was the older one even purchased (she knew he wasn't a racer)?  The stable hand could identify which horse actually ran and actually won the race. The News Media in South America confirmed what the young man suspected and was claiming. And it definitely was not the long shot who ran and won that race.  The authorities at the race track were notified. Then came the arrests. There were many arrests.  Those who placed bets on a long shot and won big went to jail.  The flat chested lady was never a suspect.  They said she went crazy.  Unlikely.  But the only real crime,  the only meaningful one,  nobody ever answered for that.   And one mystery remained. To this day nobody ever did find out what really happened to the "other horse."  The horse that was a real long shot but actually never did run at the racetrack; the one that never lived a charmed life at all -  racking up win after win - for real. The one that in a pack of horses would be the least likely to breakaway.  The one that a young man from South America had cared for and loved. He was not the only one that loved that horse.  A young man somewhere in South America became an old man and never forgot Lebon.  But others remembered him too.  The little girl never forgot that horse that ran through the Muttontown neighborhood on a warm Spring morning and lost his lucky shoe.  The shoe a little girl had returned to the stern-faced lady who did not love that horse. The horse that Betty told her had, one night in June, been killed. That horse, that eluded investigators and had seemingly just vanished, disappeared entirely. Disappeared into a dark night, lit up for a brief moment by floodlights.  And in that moment,  the fleeting light of a five year old living breathing thinking feeling sentient being - who couldn't run fast enough for a track - but who was loved nonetheless by a small child just off of Muttontown Road - that bright light - was extinguished.

 

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FEDEX just arrived.  It is a package for me.  I hold it for a second, before I open it.  And then I start to cry.  It is a painting.  But it is much more.   I've been waiting for it for a very long time.  For years really.  Decades.  And now it has finally arrived.  

 

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I've thought about him often.  His memory has haunted me for what seems like forever.  My memory has always been of him alone, in his stall, or in that courtyard, his head bowed, afraid and alone.  Every time I've seen him in my mind my broken heart breaks a little bit more.

 

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But then unexpectedly I saw him again all these years later, this time in a field.  A beautiful pastel painting shows a horse.  He is not alone. He is accompanied by friends.  He is not on a racetrack.   He is in a beautiful field that looks and feels a lot like Heaven.  He is free and he is at peace.  That painting now hangs in the home of a little girl.  The little girl who loved him and lost him one June night so many years ago. 

 

 

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Copyright 2021 Janai-Ami.  All Rights Reserved.