The Horse's Grave - Part One

The Horse's Grave

Part One

            The circumstances that lead to the escapade began well before I understood antiquarian directives.  A footpath crossed the back of an overgrown garden between a dilapidated Federal home, a Victorian mansion in grievous decay and the rear of an 1870’s tenement building that once housed mill workers and their families but then was approaching the public designation of “CONDEMNED”.  Before my very young eyes, the rear of my grandmother’s dress clung to the viperous reach of the tangled weeds that not only overhung the footpath but also my head.

            As we walked, these grasses grew taller, the surrounding roof tops smaller and the truculent sun, held directly above in its blue sea, more dazzling.  With these dizzy effects, I, upon reaching The Horse’s Grave, was already in need of protective grandmothering.

            But no comforting noise could I hear.  What I did hear was always the same:  A sudden silence created by my grandmother’s cease in movement along the path.  Then the back filling of this empty sound by the static murmur of insects that had not ceased their oratory in the grass beside me and:  The return of sound as a grassy swish as my grandmother parted these tall grasses to her left and sidestepped into this forest of illegal meadow plants.

            The growth was illegal only to my grandmother who vividly recounted perpetually what a “Fine garden” this field “was once”.  With her motion off the path, a movement whereupon she vanished before my eyes for the tall grass closed behind her, I stood alone while she, very knowingly, stepped to the only proof of the once grand and controlled landscape she “remembered”.  I followed; parting the grass and searching the ground for her “stepping place”.

            We did not wade in the grass very far.  Following her dress that was now pulled up and back so that it was in my face, I arrived blind behind her within the shade of a growth of very old Lilac bushes.  Beneath the border of this shade and one further and fatal step forward, should one be so ill prepared as to travel here without foreknowledge, one would “fall in” The Horse’s Grave.  To “fall in” The Horse’s Grave was, and remains to this day, one of the greatest of fates that could happen to me.  To “fall in” The Horse’s Grave I understood to mean prompt termination of my, to then, short life.  I give notice here that I... never fell in... The Horse’s Grave.

            Other things did though and the first action of my grandmother was to review what had happen at The Grave since she last visited.  Comment, usually accompanied with woodcraft gesture toward a spot or two on the edge of The Grave, affirmed her notices that such & such had “gone in”.  The most particular of these poor creatures, a personal designation on my part for... they were nothing but victims of a sure demise, were usually “a raccoon” or “a skunk”.  The raccoons left a bigger notice of their visit for... they were “eating frogs”.  Sometimes... there was a piece of a dead and eaten frog as positive proof that this had happened.  I would follow the detection of this body part with a long and complete scan of The Horse’s Grave for any surviving frogs.

            That is why we had come to The Horse’s Grave:  To see the frogs.  Where else could I see frogs but at The Horse’s Grave?  This was the only source of frogs that I knew of; this hole of water called The Horse’s Grave.

            What The Horse’s Grave is (for it be still today... in this same reclusion that I have described for you)... is a modest Victorian era kidney shaped pool of ice cold water welling up from beneath the muck of it’s bottom within a precisely defined fitted stone border that is completely covered with moss to rustic perfection.  At the far side of this sculpted hole of dark, shaded water, between the clumps of Lilacs, a single lower stone allows perpetual escape of water.  This water, from this hidden source, forms a trickle, then a stream that, by the time it reached “the street”, formed a boundary then known to me only as “way” “over there”.  This stream at this street was never approached from The Horse’s Grave, but only pointed out to me when walking along this “the street” where this stream was there shown to me as “is the water from The Horse’s Grave”.  This last was always rolled in my small mind by an extended gaze at the tall grass before me that, I had asked for affirmation of many times, “is the same field?”  The repeating query always was answered “Over there; in that clump of trees (the Lilacs): You can see them can’t you?” was where it was; The Horse’s Grave.  I could see them, I said, but... actually... it all didn’t seem possible for, as I understood the cartography of the world... The Horse’s Grave was “not near here”.

            At the edge of The Horse’s Grave, in the tall grass, beneath the shade of the Lilacs, I stood, with my grandmother, motionless.  One did not move without extreme designation for, otherwise, one would “fall in”.  My eyes moved though.  They looked for “the frogs”.  And there they were; on the far side, in the dark, wet, shade; sitting and looking at ...me.

            We would count the frogs, particularly if a body part had been noticed.  We... would long to touch a frog, an obsessive interest, I am sure, of only one member of this duo of visitors.  We would, with no self assuredness on my part, want to catch a frog, something that happened only when my grandmother’s hand flashed downward with a suddenness that spattered water across the pond thereby causing a general popping and splattering around all edges of The Horse’s Grave.  We (in fact only I) would want very much to throw something at the frogs to make them jump, an action that was once demonstrated as possible by my grandmother but thereafter discouraged.  This urge was never acted upon up until... I was old enough to... “go to” The Horse’s Grave... alone.  It is from that moment; the era of solo travel to “The Horse’s Grave”, that my tale twists to a more haunted blackness then that cold, clear water ever knew of.