Birdie Jaworski

I carried the local Grand Canarian newspaper home with me one evening. I wanted to take it home as a memento, translate it a sentence at a time. I opened it in bed, stared at the photographs of world events through Spanish political eyes.

I don’t feel American anymore, I thought. I feel global. Cosmopolitan.

I tried to read the captions, managed to bungle my way through a description of the upcoming funeral mass for the Pope, and then an advertisement caught my eye. Caballo, the bold print read. I know that word. Horse. I concentrated on the tiny print, pieced together a description of a horseback riding tour one could take into the volcanic wilds of the island, down to a secluded beach. A picnic, too! Plus swimming. Four hours total. I copied the telephone number on a piece of notepaper and walked to the nearest pay phone.

A man answered my call. He didn’t speak English, so I used my best fractured Spanish and told him I wanted to book a horseback ride just like the one in the newspaper. Four hours, I said. Picnic. Swim. Four hours, I repeated. Horses. The man answered simply, said Si, ten o’clock tomorrow, hung up the phone. I poured over my island map that night, traced a route from my resort villa to the outskirts of an ancient town several miles inland. I dreamed of horses that night, white horses on white sands, a dust storm, a camel, a collage of African Spanish life just out of my reach.

I found the horses the next morning, tall Arabians in straight wooden stalls next to a simple stucco home at the end of a winding mountain road. A man tended the horses. I watched him lean into a stall and lift out a bucket. I rolled down my window and tossed a rich Hola outside, asked if this were the right place for the horse ride at ten o’clock. At least I think that’s what I said, but the man laughed and laughed, nodded his head, and I wondered what my combination of poor Spanish words really meant.

I expected to see others driving up the winding road, perhaps a Brit or two, maybe a German family or a group of Spaniards on holiday, but I realized as I glanced at my watch that I must be the only person signed on for a ride. I stood at the entrance to the stalls, and a bit of fear knotted my stomach. Those horses were big. Big. Taller than any animals I’d ever seen, much bigger than the pinto one of my neighbors rides. The man didn’t introduce himself. He didn’t speak at all. He lifted a saddle onto a huge brown stallion, pulled the reins tight, and led him to me, motioned me to hoist myself into position. I panicked.

“I never rode a horse before.” I think that’s what I said, but it probably came out more like “never horse past” and the man laughed again, shook his head. He motioned again for me to jump on, and as I stuck my left foot in the stirrup he lunged forward and helped lift me into the saddle. He mounted a white horse with a black mane, and without words showed me by miming how to get my horse to move forward, to turn, to stop. My horse ignored the instruction, and I felt my hands begin to cramp from holding the reins too tight. He dug his heels into his animal and they moved out of the barn. My horse followed, almost trotted as if afraid of being left behind. I held on for dear life.

“The horse’s name is Terry.” The man turned his head to the side as we ambled down the drive toward the side of the mountain. “Terry.”

I pet Terry’s neck, tried to say the name with the same roll of the Rs that the man made, and Terry shifted his neck like a snake, gave a snort of disgust.

“Geeze, you’re a fussy one.” I spoke in English, knew neither horse nor man understood me, but the man laughed and laughed again. I rolled my eyes.

We climbed up the mountain to the rim of a silent volcano, both horses striding to the edge, looking down as if mesmerized by the inverse cone. We followed a switchback trail down the other side, past a papaya field and a one-room Catholic church made of clay and stone where a bulldog lay in the shade cast by a statue of the Blessed Mother. Terry knew the routine. He must have made this route a million times, I mused, as he anticipated turns and stops. I liked riding this horse, liked being so much closer to the Sahara sun, liked watching the back of the man’s head – the way his curls moved in rhythm to his horse’s gait, the straightness of his back, the thin and muscular arms so brown from a life of outdoor work.

“Hey!” I called out to get his attention. “What’s your name? ”http://beautydish.typepad.com/“>My name is Birdie.”

He turned and laughed, but gave me his name, told me the name of his horse, began to point out small things in our line of sight. A field of maize. Prickly pear cactus. The camel farm. He spoke slowly, carefully, moved his head to see me with one eye like a bird to be sure I understood. He told me he had a teenage son who also rode horses. He worked with horses his whole life. He was waiting to see who the new pope would be. He had no wife.

I shared small Spanish bits of my life, too. I have children. No husband. I live in California. I didn’t vote for Bush. He laughed at that last bit, and I tried to tell the story of the police officer who derided me for my American status, but I didn’t know enough words to get it across. I shrugged my shoulders. Sorry. The new pope will be old. He laughed again.

The long ride lulled me to sitting sleep. We crept near the ocean, finally stopping at a rocky ledge of old lava where the water lapped against cave-like indents, and we dismounted the horses and led them under the shade of a jacaranda tree. The man opened a saddle bag and spread out a blanket on the rocks. He reached in again and pulled out some sliced hard bread and pieces of a soft white cheese and a bag of cut mango. He reached in one last time and removed two bottles of beer, popped open the tops, handed one to me. We drank and ate and watched the horses and the ocean, the sun move from east to west above us.

“Swim.” The man stood and began unbuttoning his shirt. He removed all his clothes, left them in a heap on the blanket, dove into the water, popped to the surface and treaded water. “Water is cool. You’ll like it. Come in.” I didn’t stop to think of the appropriateness of it all, was lost in the experience, left my clothes in a heap and dove in, too. We swam for twenty minutes, maybe half and hour, then climbed out and lay on the lava rocks in the sun, let the heat beat down and dry our bodies, dry my mind.

I don’t know how it happened. I know I didn’t make the first move. He didn’t either. I think it was the ancient volcano beneath us that forced fire around us, drove us into each other. Our fingers met, then legs and arms, mouths, eyes, a tangle of sweat and fury on the edge of an unrelenting ocean. It was wondrous.

We rode back to the ranch, didn’t talk, didn’t need to say anything, just felt the sun on our backs, the motion of the road beneath our horses’ hooves. As I climbed down from Terry, the man looked at me with haunted eyes.

“Please stay with me. You are beautiful. And funny. Please stay. I am riding tonight at the Mercado. Five o’clock. Please come. Please stay.”

I found myself at the Mercado, a circus tent of a building in the biggest tourist area on the island. I watched the man and his son ride horses in a circle, jump over objects, ask their animals to do unusual things. They were beautiful together, two parts of a painting, old and young, and I hid behind the bleachers so I wouldn’t be seen. After the performance, I saw the man head for the bleachers. He scanned the audience, looked row after row, searching for someone, searching for me. I scribbled a note on a piece of paper I pulled from my purse, and I folded it into a tiny square. I ran to the boy before the man had a chance to see me, handed it to him, asked him to give it to his father.

And this is what my note said, in the best Spanish I could create:

Thank you for your kindness, and the time by the ocean. I can not stay because my heart beats too fast. The horses are very good.