Angel of Death

Things weren’t supposed to happen the way they happened. I had that much figured out by the time I was seven. I learned not to ask Why? more than one time because, as it turns out, answers were as thin as trying to remember a day-old dream.

My dad got us a new house… well there was nothing new about it really except for the coat of fresh red paint on the front door. When I asked about the red paint, my dad said it was to keep the angel of death away. At this point in my life, I didn’t have much to visually draw on when it came to monsters and beasts from down below, other than those with grins and horns or robed skeletons and their beckoning fingers.

My mind opted for the skeleton, a likelier choice for the Pacific Northwest where we lived, than a demon that lived in fire. I was convinced that the angel of death lived in the thick woods around our new place– a spot where it was damp and misty, where daylight was squashed, floating out to visit our neighbours and their death-welcoming brown doors.

Behind our house, there was an overgrown yard pocked with mole holes. A sagging apple tree stood right in the middle. The yard was separated from the hayfield by a fence made of wire so loose that it was like standing on a swing when you climbed over. In the far beyond, the field ended at a straight country road.

Soon after we moved into that house, I met a boy. I called him Oh Henry because his name was Henry – and it was exciting that he pretty much had the same name as a chocolate bar. Well one day, his mom, and his younger brother in a stroller were run over by a truck driver right on the side of road behind our house. I bet my mom, who was home at the time, could have seen it all happen if she had been looking out the living room window right then and there.

Our school principal came to the library where Oh Henry and the rest of our Grade 2 class were sitting watching a video on a TV that was wheeled in for special occasions, us kids resting our chins on our skinny arms, sitting cross-legged in the dark. She singled out Oh Henry, keeling beside him and then they both left in silence, her arm draped across his back, a steadying and pushing presence. That was the last time I saw Oh Henry; he may as well have been a ghost because nobody ever mentioned him again.

I thought about him a lot, especially when I looked out the living room window at that line of pavement cutting across the horizon. I asked my dad about the accident, and he said the driver sneezed, lost control of his truck, and that I shouldn’t ask any more questions. So, I didn’t, but I still wondered about Oh Henry and his dad, about the death skeleton, and if Henry’s family had forgotten to paint their door red.

Our house came with a horse. It was a girl-horse, and her name was Lady. She was the same patchy dull grey colour as the rotting stable on the property that we found her in. Lady had a belly that was far too big for her body, and my mom found some money to have a vet come over because nobody had cared about her. My mom reminded me that Lady was a pony and not a horse, but I figured she could still grow if we looked after her right, like I would grow from a child into an adult one day.

Even though Lady wasn’t healthy, I pinned a big future on her because she was the closest thing in my orbit that connected me to my beloved books about lonely boys and their fiery horses with names that shouted grand adventures. I learned to ride Lady. There was no saddle, and I held on by digging my hands into her mane that always felt like chalky dust. There was no canter or a gallop as Lady just spent her time hungrily grazing, only moving to shift to the next patch of grass.

During an early afternoon that following summer, I was lolling about in a tree fort my dad had built out of scrap wood. I liked to survey the entire property from high up, the backyard and the field where Lady was grazing near the fence. Her belly was smaller by this time, but the rest of her was still pony-sized. By now I understood she would never grow into a mighty Black Stallion or the loyal horse friend Flicka; she just wanted to eat.

But death still happens when the sun is shining and the birds are singing. As if struck by an invisible lightning bolt, Lady suddenly reared up for probably the first time in her life, jerked and twisted with such force in the air that she rolled right through the wobbly fence, and landed with a thunk in the weeds by the old apple tree. She lay there on her side in a mound of mottled grey stillness.

A man in a backhoe drove over and dug a giant hole by the tree. The yellow machine scooped Lady up and plunked her floppy body into the hole. Dark dirt from deep down covered her body until it was level with the backyard. By the fall, it was as if nothing had ever happened. Dandelions and grass camouflaged the pony-sized patch. But I still thought about Lady, too, when I looked out the living room window.

Things weren’t supposed to happen the way they happened, I was sure of it.

Rebecca Blissett is a Canadian writer and photographer. You should buy her forthcoming book Fused.