Horse Trailer, Ash, Pumpjack

HORSE TRAILER, ASH, PUMPJACK

by EC Dorgan

(Content warnings: fire, grief, environmental collapse)

Jamie does a double-take when the olive green SUV pulls in front of her on Highway 2—it’s been years since she’s seen another car on the road. This one’s a Nissan with a bucking bronco decal stuck to the window. Jamie steps on the gas to get closer. She’s been doing the three-hour drive from Edmonton to Calgary every week for two years now and so far, she’s only seen horse trailers. Since the fires started, it seems like all people do is haul horses without purpose. If the world weren’t ending, the sight of that SUV would give her hope. 

Jamie works Monday to Friday and drives back and forth to Calgary on weekends. It’s a waste of gas and pointless, but she doesn’t have kids or a partner. She’s remodelled her kitchen twice and she’s sick of online shopping. Besides, the world’s on fire, what else should she do?

Years ago the road was ringed by rolling prairie, cattle, and horses. She’d see cars, pick-up trucks, and massive oil haulers on the highway. Jamie would roll down the window and let the wind take her hair while she drove. Life was easier then, she had dreams and imagination. She’d lean out of the window and pretend it was like she was on a buffalo hunt two hundred years ago, riding her horse to the edge of the blue sky. Her grandpa told her the stories—how they were organized twice a year and fed families and entire communities. How nothing was wasted, unlike the state-sanctioned slaughter that almost brought buffalo to extinction. He heard about the hunts from les vieux, they still remembered them. 

Now when Jamie drives, she doesn’t see horses. The cattle are long gone too. There’s only RV storage parking lots and pumpjacks. Herds of them, where in les vieux’s time, there would have been buffalo. 

She follows the SUV into Calgary. Instead of turning downtown to her hotel, she trails the car into the labyrinth of suburbs, identical streets and bland new construction on land that was once prairie. The SUV turns into a driveway and Jamie pulls over on the street. A woman steps out of the SUV as a man holding a horseshoe comes out of the house to greet her. 

Jamie tells herself she should drive away. After all, this is practically stalking. She pulls up her phone to get her bearings. She’s putting her coordinates into the map function when there’s a knock on the window. When she looks up, it’s the woman from the SUV, smiling and asking if she needs help with directions.

•••

They sit in the woman’s kitchen drinking coffee. Her name is Kelly, her chin has a dimple, and her glasses give her bug eyes. Jamie tells her the truth—that she followed her Nissan from the highway. She knows it’s weird, but it’s been so long since she’s seen anything but a horse trailer. 

Kelly laughs and says, “I know what you mean.” 

It turns out they have a lot in common. They’re both 46 and Kelly’s from the same town as Jamie’s mom in Saskatchewan. Both their grandpas fished and drove hatchbacks. They both learned to pick berries and play cards from their grandmas. For all they know, they’re related. Jamie says she hasn’t been back to Saskatchewan for years, and Kelly answers, “Same here.” She’s easy to talk to, it’s like they’ve always known each other.

Jamie tells Kelly about her work designing kitchens in a hardware store. How her business cards say she makes dreams come alive and how once she even believed it. How now she studies her clients’ faces and wants to ask, have you looked outside? Do you remember the season called summer, when you could breathe the air and not choke on it? When the world wasn’t ash? 

Kelly says she knows. She heard on the radio the fires are so deep and hot they’ll never be extinguished, they’ll only grow. It’s strange how people are in denial, driving horse trailers for no reason, shopping as though their life depends on it. Updating their kitchens while the world burns.

Jamie invites Kelly for a custom consult next time she’s in Edmonton. Kelly laughs and says she’d love that, though there’s no way she’s buying anything. When Jamie drives home, there’s a kernel of something she hasn’t felt in years, not quite hope, but close. 

Back at home, she puts on fuzzy socks and stands on her deck. A moose watches her from the aspens, and Jamie breathes in smoke and listens to horse trailers passing on the highway. Normally, she hates these evenings alone, but tonight she thinks of Kelly and feels alive for the first time since the fires started.

•••

Kelly shows up the next week for her custom consult. They giggle and go over designs, though Kelly flat out declares she’s not redoing her kitchen. Jamie can’t stop smiling. She’d given up on friendship. Even when she was young and still had potential, she’d never really connected with people. She’d moved east after school. Her grades were good, but she wasn’t competent in the real world. She spent years, isolated, away from the prairie. When she moved back, her grandparents and their whole generation had passed. The rest of her family had scattered to the coast and elsewhere. She didn’t think she’d ever have another friend until she met Kelly. 

She cancels her afternoon consultations and spends the rest of the day with her. Kelly’s husband, Randy, is a farrier and they live in Calgary to be close to the Stampede. They have three thoroughbreds that race and a horse trailer to transport them.

Jamie asks Kelly if she races. Kelly shakes her head. She’s a receptionist at a dental office, her husband’s the horse lover. He’s from a horse family going back years. He was an outrider up until his back injury. Kelly met him at the Stampede but she was terrified of horses at the time. Now she has her own horse, Misty. 

“I love her. She likes to rest her muzzle against the crook of my shoulder.” 

Jamie can’t help herself. “Is she a buffalo-runner?” 

Kelly laughs. “You really don’t know horses, do you?” 

Jamie admits she doesn’t have a clue. But when she mentions the buffalo-runners from her grandpa’s stories, Kelly smiles and says her great-great-great-grandparents went on the old buffalo hunts too.

Kelly says Randy loves horses. Though sometimes he has to give them up when they get claimed, he still lets them race. Once Kelly almost lost Misty that way. 

“Randy says that’s how it is on the track. Nothing lasts. The world’s like that too.” 

Jamie nods, pretending she understands. When she gets home, she googles “claiming” and learns some races can result in ownership changes.

There’s so little Jamie knows. She’s never even been on a horse, her closest comparison is a rollercoaster. She rode the Mindbender in the mall in the eighties. The Mindbender’s decommissioned now, but she remembers the thrill, how her hair flew in the air, and the earth rushed up at her.

•••

Jamie and Kelly start driving between cities together. It feels like they’ve been friends for years. One week they’re in Jamie’s CRV, the next in Kelly’s green Nissan. Jamie packs two thermoses of coffee, Kelly picks up Timbits. They listen to eighties metal and rock their heads like headbangers. Kelly knows all the lyrics, but they can’t lip-synch long without giggling. 

The first time Jamie laughs, her voice sounds funny. She doesn’t recognize the sound of her own laughter. Now when she gets home from driving, she stands on her deck in fuzzy socks and thinks about Kelly. It’s been so long since she’s connected with anyone. Funny for it to happen now, when the world’s ending. She imagines herself and Kelly riding horses on rolling prairie teeming with buffalo. Shakes her head, silly. 

•••

One weekend Kelly texts to say she can’t drive because there’s a race. Jamie replies with a thumbs-up. She tells herself it’s no big deal. But the drive to Calgary is lonely and the heavy metal gives her a headache. She has a sore throat from the smoke and she’s wedged the whole way between horse trailers. 

She’s halfway to Calgary when she glimpses flames at the edge of the sky. They disappear when she blinks but it’s no relief because it’s November and there’s no snow and everything is on fire. 

She considers turning on the radio but decides it’s pointless. There are hourly reports on the fires between advertisements and sales announcements, but no one comes out and acknowledges the world is ending.

She checks into her hotel and her room has no kettle. She discovers she forgot cocoa and only packed one fuzzy sock. She calls down to the front desk but they can’t help. Smoke wafts into her room through the ventilation system. She checks the news and sees Cochrane is burning. She stands at the window and looks out to the city. Flames lap at Calgary’s western suburbs, but even with their illumination, Jamie can’t find Kelly’s house in the city’s expanse.

She wakes in the night sick to her stomach. Somehow she knows there’s been some calamity. She closes her eyes and wills it away but it’s futile. The vents rattle and in the hallway the elevator chimes. She pulls up her phone, it’s not even midnight. There are no missed calls or messages but she knows what she feels. She doesn’t go back to sleep.

In the morning she drives home with dread weighing down her belly. She’s outside Red Deer when Kelly texts. She opens the message and it pummels her. Oh poor Kelly. Misty raced and won two heats. Before the start of the third heat, she was claimed.

•••

Jamie turns around in Red Deer and hightails it back down to Calgary. She parks illegally and rushes into the downtown dental office where Kelly works as a receptionist. Her friend is behind a desk, trying not to cry into her headset. Jamie holds out her arms. Kelly drops her phone and her head fits in the crook of Jamie’s shoulder.

They sit in Jamie’s car, crying while the sky darkens. Jamie doesn’t move when a bylaw officer taps her window, or when the officer slips a ticket under her windshield wiper. She barely notices when the same officer lifts her other wiper for a second ticket an hour and a half later. 

She strokes Kelly’s hair. “I’ll get Misty back.”

Kelly lifts her head. “That’s impossible.” 

She explains she knows the new owner, he never sells his horses or enters them into races where they could be claimed. 

Jamie tries to cheer her up. “I promise I’ll return her for you.”

She doesn’t know what makes her say it—it’s an empty promise, and both she and Kelly know it. 

She takes Kelly to the hotel and they get adjoining rooms. Jamie orders two cocoas and two pairs of fuzzy socks for same-day delivery. They sit in Kelly’s room watching a rom-com and when it finishes, they sit there staring at the blank screen.

Jamie’s in the shower the next morning when the idea comes to her—it’s unhinged, utterly crazy. She tells herself the smoke must be addling her brains, but it torments her. She wants to tell Kelly when she drops her off at the dental office. She clears her throat then loses her courage. Better not to raise Kelly’s hopes.

•••

When she returns to Edmonton, she starts on the project with gusto. Her first thought is to use her work cupboard design program. She arrives at work early and guesses the dimensions, but they’re too big for the software. She plays with the settings and messes up the system—she has to call her manager for an override. It’s not a promising start and the design is the smallest of her problems. 

Materials are a bigger challenge. She has no idea what to use, she’s not exactly technical. Even if she finds the pieces, how will she connect them? She bought a lawnmower two years ago and couldn’t figure that out—it’s still in the box, in her garage. 

She goes on drives for inspiration but only sees pumpjacks and RV storage lots. They’re not what she wants but what alternative does she have? She rents a U-Haul and waits until dark. Sneaks into an RV storage lot and slices her hand trying to pull off metal siding.

Her palm bleeds all over the steering wheel and she has to go to the hospital to get stitches. She drives home after four hours of waiting, her hand stitched up and aching, and finds the moose waiting in her yard. She pauses on the deck to watch and the moose turns to face her, eyes disapproving, are you crazy?

The moose is right, the idea’s ridiculous. But she can’t get Kelly’s sobs out of her mind or that vision of a horse resting its muzzle on Kelly’s shoulder. Besides, this friendship with Kelly means something. It’s been years since Jamie’s had someone to talk to, and Kelly’s more than that. She feels like kin, like family. Jamie doesn’t feel so alone at the end of the world. She has something beyond designing cupboards, shopping, and pointless drives between cities.

She goes out the next night with mittens to protect her hands and comes back with a U-Haul full of siding. The pumpjack is a bigger challenge. She only needs one but they’re massive and weighty. She spends hours online researching, then driving looking for one that’s small enough to fit in the U-Haul. It’s even harder than she expects to extract one. It takes multiple tries and planning. She almost loses a foot on her first attempt. Nearly dies on the second when the counterweight moves, barely missing her temple. But it’s for Kelly, so she perseveres.

She spends her work breaks browsing in hardware. She uses her employee discount to buy safety goggles, leather gloves, and metal-plated boots. She stands in her garage and takes in the pile of RV siding and pumpjack parts beside her unboxed lawnmower. It’s beyond daunting. Who is she to build a horse?

•••

She discovers she can use her design program if she inputs the metal pieces as cupboard latches and divides the dimensions by 200. She asks Wade in hardware about epoxies and fasteners. He introduces her to the benefits of riveting, polyurethane glue, and adhesives. They pick out a drill. When she gets home, she puts a nail through her pinky finger.

She works on the horse every night after the store. She’s never done anything so physical. The metal pieces are twice her size. She drops the pumpjack crank on her toe then glues her thumb to the belt guard. The counterweight smashes her shin and she almost faints.

Three weeks later, she knows more about adhesives and riveting than Wade in hardware. Every part of her body is sore. She stands in the garage and takes in her progress. The metal pieces tower overhead, they could be abstract art or something industrial. But when she relaxes and lets her eyes unfocus, she sees something else—the horsehead muzzle at the end of the long walking beam spine. The tall Samson post legs, itching to run, and the Pitman arm, powering them. If she looks long enough, she sees the shape of hooves and muscled haunches. 

One night, when she’s working on her horse, there’s a haze in the air. But when she looks up through the open garage doors, there’s no sign of smoke—only stars. It’s the first night in months she hasn’t been choked by the fires. The plumes she’s seeing in her garage are from the buffalo-runner breathing. 

•••

Then the day comes. The horse is done, she’s perfect. Jamie turns onto Highway 2 and pushes down the unease in her belly. The growing distance from her racer tugs at her and her fears grow with each kilometre. What if someone breaks into her garage? What if the horse escapes? But she has to drive to Calgary to pick up Kelly. Today’s the day she’s giving her friend a new racer.

There are even more horse trailers than usual on the highway. But for once the sky is clear and the foothills are dusted with snow. RVs and pumpjacks reflect the muffled sun but they have none of her horse’s elegance or power. Hard to believe her horse is made of metal.

She picks up Kelly and the drive north takes forever. Jamie’s all nerves—she spills her coffee on her seat and almost misses her exit. Kelly doesn’t notice, she talks non-stop. She doesn’t mention her lost horse, but she’s not fooling Jamie. Her eyes have shadows, and when she talks about races, her fingernails dig into her palms, drawing blood.

Kelly’s still talking when they reach Jamie’s driveway. Jamie doesn’t know what to say. She’s been imagining this moment for days—Kelly throwing her head back, laughing with surprise, joy in her eyes again. Misty putting her muzzle in the crook of Kelly’s shoulder. 

Jamie’s hand is shaking. She fumbles with the garage door opener. Finally presses the button and the door groans and opens. The feeling in her gut is close to bursting. Jamie waits, then just like every time, the sight of the horse in her garage takes her breath.

Kelly follows her gaze and Jamie hears her friend gasp. For the first time in three hours, Kelly doesn’t speak. She’s out of the car the next instant. The pumpjack heaves and the horse rears up. The horsehead brushes the ceiling. A moment later, its hooves crash down and shatter the floor, making cement spiderweb fissures.

Jamie joins Kelly under the horse’s shadow. She takes a deep breath. “It’s a buffalo-runner.”

Kelly shakes her head but doesn’t speak. A moment later, she’s backing up. Jamie turns to her but she’s too late. Kelly’s eyes are frantic. She reaches for the car door but it’s locked. She rattles the handle, her voice breaks and she pleads, take me home now.

They drive in silence. Kelly gets out of the car in Calgary and doesn’t say goodbye. Jamie watches while she disappears into her house. Jamie doesn’t even make it out of the city. She can’t see to drive, she’s too busy crying.

•••

Jamie doesn’t hear from Kelly for two weeks. The smoke returns. She stands in her garage under the shadow of the towering metal. It looms like some industrial monster. How did she think it could be a horse? This isn’t Misty. It’s worse than a bad gift. After all these lonely years she finally made a friend only to lose everything.

At night she lies in bed listening to the heaving metal in her garage. She buys fuzzy socks and cocoa and they’re delivered the same day—the world’s ending but online shopping options are only getting better. She shoves the package, unopened, into her kitchen’s custom cupboards. 

•••

She’s not tracking days, she only knows the fires are getting hotter. She goes through the motions, going to and from work, driving to Calgary, buying random things for same-day delivery. Her eyes are permanently red from smoke. One morning she gets in her car and starts down her driveway—and stops.

There’s a horse trailer coming up the gravel. Jamie rubs her eyes, is she dreaming? She reverses to get out of its way. It stops at her house, then the cab of the truck opens and Kelly emerges. Two men come out after her. Jamie recognizes one of them. He’s still holding a horseshoe. 

The other man points to the garage. Jamie’s puzzled but she thinks, what the hell. She presses the garage door opener and the metal horse roars at them. The men light their cigarettes, unfazed. 

Kelly’s smiling. “Meet Randy and Hubert.” 

Jamie still can’t speak. Randy unhooks the trailer while Hubert reaches into the cab for ropes. The horse rears while they try and fail to get a lasso around it. 

Jamie turns to Kelly. “I didn’t know what to think.”

Kelly raises her eyebrows. “You didn’t know what to think?” 

They laugh at the same time. Kelly gives her a hug. There’s a crash in the garage and the sound of more cracking concrete. Jamie can’t see through the gravel dust, the only sound is Randy cursing. When the dust settles, Randy’s bleeding and Hubert’s lighting another cigarette. 

“Are they okay?”

Kelly laughs. “They do this every day.”

There are more curses, crashes, and cigarettes. The cement floor of the garage cleaves in two and Jamie can’t see through the dust.

Then Randy and Hubert are lighting celebratory cigarettes. The horse strains against the ropes and the sun’s so bright against the metal that Jamie can’t look at it. She turns to the trees and sees the moose, staring at the beast, horrified.

Randy and Hubert lead the beast to the trailer. They’ve already reattached it to Jamie’s SUV. Randy kisses Kelly’s cheek. “Good luck.”

Kelly looks at Jamie and lifts an eyebrow. “Shall we?”

Jamie’s breath catches. If she were alone, she’d never dare drive a horse trailer. But she’s with Kelly, she can do anything. Besides, Kelly could have gone with Randy and Hubert, but instead chose to drive the horse back to Calgary with her. 

They have to stop for gas twice on the road. Jamie has two near misses before adjusting her braking distance. Driving into the city limits, Kelly grips her hand and says she’s naming the horse Misty.

•••

Now every week they drive between cities, hauling Misty. They forget to lip-synch, they’re so busy talking about her. Kelly says the horse is perfect and Jamie agrees. 

It feels good to be on the highway with other horse trailers. Jamie feels like she’s a part of something, like she finally belongs. It occurs to her to ask Kelly what it is about horse trailers and all the purposeless hauling, but the more she thinks about it, the less she wants to know the answer. She turns off the radio so they won’t hear the news and averts her eyes from the horizon, pretending it’s not burning. 

One day, Jamie musters the courage to say maybe they could try riding Misty. It would be like those old time hunts. Kelly doesn’t reply, and Jamie’s heart sinks. But later when she looks at Kelly through the mirror, her friend’s eyes are dreamy, and Jamie knows she’s thinking about it.

•••

They drive to Calgary on the first week of December. Randy greets them, holding a horseshoe. 

He whistles through his teeth. “Now that’s a horse.”

Hubert, with a cigarette, steps out of the house behind him. 

Kelly’s eyes crinkle and she turns to Jamie. “You said you wanted to ride.” 

Randy and Hubert pull Misty from the trailer. Her muscles ripple under the bright sun, blinding. 

It takes Randy, Hubert, and Kelly to help Jamie up. She doesn’t know where to put her feet. The metal saddle bearing is cold under her thighs.

Kelly steadies the horse. “You’re doing great.”

Jamie can barely breathe. Her legs are shaking and not just from the temperature. She’s never been on anything so high. Her stomach lurches when she looks down to the driveway. The horse neighs and the sound reverberates up and down her spine.

Kelly and her husband keep Misty still. Jamie breathes, while the neighbourhood unfurls in front of her. She sees her hotel, the highway, the foothills and distant pumpjacks. She looks away from the flames on the horizon, where the earth meets the sky.

Misty moves and Jamie’s hair flies. She closes her eyes. Buffalo-runners were the fastest horses on the prairie. She imagines herself galloping. But in that moment, she starts to slip. She tries to stop herself but it’s futile. Some buffalo-hunter she is, she can’t even ride. When she opens her eyes, the earth is rushing at her face like a rollercoaster. Randy and Kelly catch her before she hits the asphalt. 

Kelly climbs on the horse like she was born for it. Misty stomps and a fissure opens in the driveway. Kelly doesn’t need the reins, she was a born horse-rider. Jamie looks up and Kelly’s eyes are on the edge of the sky. Misty rears up on her back legs and Kelly throws her head back, laughing. 

Kelly slides off without help and Misty rests her head in the crook of her shoulder. 

When it’s time to return her to the trailer, she snorts and huffs. It takes all four of them to get her back inside and lock the door. 

Randy shakes his head. “That horse wants to run.”

•••

They drive north without speaking. It’s early afternoon but already the sun’s low. Jamie’s body aches, but her spirit is soaring. She already decided she’ll order a saddle and proper gloves when she gets home. She can probably get same-day delivery, maybe same-hour, at the rate online shopping options are improving.

They’re an hour out of Calgary when it occurs to her that all these weeks driving, she’s never seen Kelly’s thoroughbreds. Randy’s always holding horseshoes, but Jamie’s never seen him with a horse. She gets a thought and pushes it away. But it comes back, and by Red Deer, she can’t ignore it. 

The words are out of her mouth before she can stop herself.

“Do you even have real horses?”

Kelly sucks in her breath and turns away. Jamie sneaks a glance through the mirror and sees her friend wiping a tear away. Something moves in Jamie’s gut and she blinks at the rows of horse trailers on both sides of her. The answer’s right there, she should have known. 

How naive could she be to think the world could still sustain horses? That there’s anything left but metal monsters? 

Outside Leduc, the snow changes to ash. Jamie has to use windshield wipers. There are even more RV parking lots and pumpjacks on the side of the highway than on the drive south a few hours ago. The smoke’s so thick she can’t see through it. 

Kelly’s husband calls to say the fires have reached their neighbourhood. He’s taking their metal beasts in a trailer and heading for Saskatchewan. Jamie’s and Kelly’s eyes meet. 

Jamie’s phone buzzes with texts from the store. They want her in for extra shifts, there’s a surge of customers like they’ve never seen, people wanting new kitchens as though that can change anything. Jamie turns off her phone. 

On the outskirts of Edmonton, pumpjacks and RV parking lots are aflame. The sky’s black with dirty smoke. Misty clangs in the trailer. She’s livid at the world ending when she’s only just come alive. 

Jamie reaches for Kelly’s hand. They put on heavy metal but don’t have it in them to rock their heads or lip-synch. When they pull into Jamie’s driveway, the aspens are burning. Jamie pauses before going up the gravel. She looks at the trees for meaning but there’s not one whit. The moose left a long time ago.

She reverses and they turn back toward Highway 2. There are horse trailers in every direction. Jamie wonders if they have a destination or if they’re like her, driving aimlessly with trailers full of metal because they’re sick of online shopping and they’ve already done their kitchens.

Heat cracks her windshield and the smoke makes it hard to see. Misty’s clanging gets louder. Jamie looks at Kelly—there are tears on her cheeks. 

It makes Jamie think. She puts her foot on the pedal to go faster. Flames whoosh against the trailer and let out sparks like a rollercoaster. Kelly sucks in her breath. She doesn’t say anything, but they’re both thinking the same thing. Wishing this was a different time, that they could be buffalo-hunters, racing to the edge of a blue sky. 

But who are they kidding? The buffalo have been gone for a long time. Pumpjacks are the only herds now. Les vieux wouldn’t recognize this prairie.

And yet somehow, this land’s still spectacular. The wheel smokes under Jamie’s fingers and she tries to go faster. Kelly’s hand clenches and Jamie glances at her. What Kelly said about how it is on the track, how nothing lasts, comes back to her.

The sky flashes orange, and in the back, Misty screams.