Terrified for my life, I was flung to the floor and
against the walls so many times by the movement of this box I was trapped in. I
was afraid to try standing again, so I cowered in the corner. On the floor of
the trailer was a bed of soiled straw. I lay there watching the sunlight crawl across
the dirty brown walls. The shadows from the sun hitting the bars in the window looked
like enormous fingers coming to get me as they crept across the walls of the
trailer.
No longer was I able to see the grass, the sky, or Mother.
I lay there trembling and alone with no one to love or cuddle me—just this large
space all around me that smelled of old manure, urine, fear, and death. Some of
the smell was my own fright. The stench was so strong it made me sick. Where were
they taking me? Without Mother to protect, nuzzle, and teach me, how would I
survive? I felt so helpless.
My misery and my deep need to belong and feel loved were
so strong, the solitude of my mind wandered back to the same questions. What would
happen to me? Who would teach me? Would I get a chance to live as she promised?
“Remember her words,” I told myself.
“Hold your head up, son, you must be strong.”
With every fiber of my being, I held on to her voice
in my mind. It helped to ease the apprehension, the hunger, and the throbbing
from my bruises.
The movement of this box stopped. When they opened the
door, I was crouching in the back corner of the trailer like a weakling. One of
the men held a bucket in his hand and the other a rope. The smell coming from
the bucket made my stomach rumble. Even through my fright and the fury I smelled
on these men, my stomach growled. There was no place to escape from even the
dirtiest of these men.
Both of them were dirty, unshaven, and wearing blue
jeans and sweat stained t-shirts. Joe’s whole face was covered in hair. I could
barely see his eyes through all the hair as he crouched down beside me. The
other man once again put the rope around my neck and held my head in a forceful
grip. Without so much as a kind word, the man called Joe stuck his fingers into
the pail and forced them into my mouth. Not even the nasty taste of his grubby fingers
stopped me from tasting the flavor of the milky stuff.
Hungrily I found myself sucking his dirty fingers.
Several times the exercise was repeated. I sensed the resentment in these men
even as they pushed my head down into the bucket. Famished, I drank greedily.
Impatiently the men pulled the bucket away from me and
carried it out the door. Still hungry, I whimpered.
The man who put the rope around my neck complained as
he slammed the door, “Stupid junk foal. I don’t know why we always get stuck
with this job, do you, Joe?”
The way he said junk foal made me cringe. It sounded as if he was
talking about a piece of garbage. Holding my head up even in my dread, I let my
mother’s words again run through my mind. “Remember, do not pay any attention
if you hear the words junk foal. These are words used by ignorant humans.” For
a little while, letting her voice play in my mind helped ease my panic.
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