I should have known when my boyfriend, Danny, said I had
“an ass like a saddle horse” and meant it as a compliment, that my husband,
Danny, might have a perverse love of the equine species. Kate was my husband’s
ugly, brown saddle mule, a higher class of animal than a non-saddle mule, as
any mule aficionado would know. For some reason Jack, our beautiful Tennessee
Walking Horse, did not hold the same attraction for Danny, I think Jack was too
tall. Kate was short—just the right height; his feet could drag the ground like
brakes or he could just stand up and let her walk right out from under him,
saving that strenuous step of having to throw his leg over her. Kate and Danny
had a suspicious relationship from the beginning. She was demanding, like a
spoiled mistress. At first, it was a new saddle, then a new trailer. She went
through more shoes than I did. I guess I was jealous, she had a standing date
every Saturday night for coon hunting, a misnomer for sitting around a campfire
getting drunk. A mule is a necessary piece of equipment on a coon hunt. They
are sure-footed and sturdy for carrying the cases of beer.
Danny had the
bright idea he needed to train Kate to stand still while he shot from her back.
She needed to become accustomed to the noise of a bullet whizzing past her
ears. One Saturday morning while the kids and I were getting ready to go to the
mall, Danny rode Kate across the pasture to target practice. What happened next
I had to piece together, because both Kate and Danny were notorious liars.
Luckily, I could tell when they were lying; she resembled a bad ventriloquist
with her dummy. Danny had pulled the six-shooter from his holster, steadied himself
and fired a shot. Kate barely moved. He patted her on her neck and holstered
the gun. Then with a flourish Danny did a quick-draw; spun the pistol around
his index finger; bumped the gun on his love handle; and shot himself in the butt. Danny, like a whirling dervish in the saddle, startled Kate, who then
walked out from under him and trotted on home. Lucky for her, the bullet lodged
in Danny’s rear and didn’t pierce her saddle. Danny hobbled home behind her. We
dropped him off at the hospital on our way to the mall. I got a lot of mileage
from that accident. He was the butt of jokes for months, years actually.
Kate was an
innocent bystander with that accident, but she had a more active role in
others. Whenever Kate and Danny got together, he usually got in trouble. One
such Saturday, Danny stepped on a rusty nail. It didn’t cross his mind to take
off his dirty boot or his nasty sock and clean the wound, because Kate was
pressing him to go hunting and he couldn’t let her down. That night Danny and
his buddies with their jennies went to the river to “hunt.” Danny guided Kate
down a steep embankment and led her through a swift creek that made her
nervous. (he walked) He sat around the fire, his foot beginning to swell and throb despite
the beer and whiskey. If he only had a brain. Later, he pulled her through the creek and drug her up
the hill to the horse trailer to head home. Danny hobbled in the house, in the
wee hours of the morning, moaning and groaning. When the kids and I went to
church, Danny called his dad to take him to the hospital. Staph, Strep,
Gangrene, oh my. Twenty-nine days later, they let him out of the hospital.
Danny liked to
pass Kate off as an integral part of our farm, because occasionally he would
plow a crooked row with her. If the cows or horses were out of the pasture as
they were much of the time, he had a good excuse to saddle Kate and herd them
up. One day, Kate decided to go to the creek on the back of the property. When
Danny couldn’t run her down on foot, he jumped into my F-150 and sped across
the field. Kate thought they were playing chase. She kicked up her heels and
just like the cartoon of a jackass with both back legs in the air; Kate kicked
and dented the front panel of the truck, my truck. It’s a good thing the
freezer was about full, Kate nor Danny would fit in and I couldn’t see wasting his
sorry a@@!
Years later, Kate was mentioned in the divorce petition. Not as a contributing factor or Danny claiming her as his - he was going to leave the vile creature with me. No, one of my demands was that they ride off into the sunset together. Only fitting. 🤣
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