Trust Me

When I was six, I moved to the County with my father. My memory proves fuzzy as to why this occured. There was no formal agreements between my mom and my dad. No visitation rights, no child support. Sometimes he would come get me, and take me to visit his mother but it was not often. I know that my mom moved to New Hamphsire at the time to live with my Nana. She took my two brothers. For some reason, whether by choice or not, I stayed with my grandmother, her mother, in Maine. After living there for a short happy period, I ended up in the North with my dad. This was not necessairly a bad thing.

My dad owned a large farm but I didn't stay at the farmhouse during the week. My stepmother would have had to take care of me and for some unspoken reason that couldn't happen. Instead I lived with my dad's aunt Louise whom I came to adore. She had two teenage sons who were in my eyes about as cool as you could get. They listend to The Who, Pink Floyd and KISS. The youngest had a drum set in his bedroom and he would sometimes let me lay on his bed and listen to music with him. If he was feeling very generous he would paint a star over my eye, and let me drum away.

At my dad's big white farmhouse, I had a canopy bed and my own room. But I hated sleeping there. There were ghosts who came in and whispered to me in the early hours of morning. Night terrors andd sleeping walking drove me to wander the house which was just filled with more ghosts. I prefered my little corner at Aunt Louise's house. She had given a daybed tucked into an alcove of the living room. She piled it hight with warm handmade afgans, and throw pillows. She kept a little box of dolls for me under it. She would tuck me in at night, and there, listening to the muffled sounds of my cousins' music, I felt very safe.

But my dad's farm had some compensations. It had the animals. Two cows, a huge pig, several chickens, a dumb black lab, and a few cats. In the mornings, I would follow my dad (anything to not be around my stepmother who hit me whenever she got a chance) through the morning chores. I hated the chickens because the rooster would attack me. But the cows smelled soft in the early morning, and the pig was my friend. In addition to the animals, there were several acres of land to roam. If my friends were over, Dad would allow us to explore in the woods. There was a little creek that cut my dad's land in the North from Canada. We loved jumping over it and yelling "Now we're in Canada!" We saw bears and moose.

My dad worked horses in the woods for a big cow and potate farmer. The big farm was directly across the road from Aunt Louise's house. Often my dad ate and spent the night at Aunt Louise's house (now that I'm writing this, I remember that my stepmother had a third shift job but there were other darker reasons for me not staying there). I loved to watch my dad come in from the woods behind the huge Shire horses. Their black coats sweaty. Behind them huge logs dragged over the ground, digging ruts. The horses were truely enermous. My dad's head only came to the whithers of Bob, the biggest, a gelding. The creature's head was nearly as large as my whole body. They were magnificent, strong and fearless. They never shied at the blowing leaves but stood solidly. I loved them but was a bit scared of them as well.

One day, a Saturday, my friend, Jimmy was riding his pony, a mean little Shetland. My dad brought out Bob.

--Do you want to ride him?

I looked up and up at into the horse's calm eyes. He was so high up there, and I was afraid.

--Don't worry. I won't let anything happen to you. You can trust your dad.

And I held up my arms to my father. He lifted me and put me up onto the horse. My legs couldn't even straddle the broad back. He lead the horse around on a long lead line, his hand resting against my leg. I felt as if I could conquer anything being up that high. The horse's muscle moved and contracted beneath my little legs. I could feel the termors that moved flies off his skin, Sometimes he'd swing his head back and nuzzled my leg until my dad snapped his head back around. But mostly I remember not being scared because my dad was there with his hand on my leg.