The Pooka
By Ken Ely

Julie was not unconscious; but she soon would be if she did not get her breath. It came suddenly, in a fit of great wracking sobs. I carried her to the bench outside the tack room. After sitting for a minute or two, she was breathing fine - but crying uncontrollably.

Why on earth does your father insist you keep that wretched horse when there are so many good horses to be had?' I asked, not really expecting an answer from Julie, who now was puling in genuine anger rather than pain. When, at last, she spoke, it was more out of concern for the broken fence rail rather than her possibly broken ribs.

Collecting herself, she limped up to the house to phone her father for a ride home. I caught up the unpredictable Joker and led him back to his stall.

Joker had brought his name with him. Julie and her dad had gone to a horse auction where she had been captivated by Joker's stature and appearance. He was tall, which Julie desired for her equitation work; and he was gunmetal gray brushed with white, especially over his face, which gave him a ghostly aspect. Winning the bid, Julie's dad had hired the auction house to transport Joker home to our stable, where he was off-loaded and lodged in a box-stall. I was at work when he arrived and was not aware he was even coming until my partner phoned me.

'Ken, it's Mart. Julie bought a horse. It's here, now.'

'Good,' I rejoined, anticipating the needed revenue.

'Well, heh, I dunno about good. He's wrecked the box stall I put him in. Smashed the manger and kicked out part of a wall.'

'Why?'

'Can't say. He was no trouble until about an hour after I put him in the stall. He just kinda exploded.'

'Where's he now?'

'Still in what's left of the stall. I shut the top half of the door so he wouldn't try to jump out. He seems to be quiet again. Eating grain from a pan.'

When I returned at the end of the day, Martin walked me to the ruined stall as soon as I got out of my car. I cracked the top door cautiously and peeked into the gloom. The horse was back lit by the summer evening filtering through smashed wall planking. The luminescence produced by the light dancing upon the ambient dust gave the scene a Spielburg quality.

'God! I exclaimed softly. 'He looks like a death's head!' Shutting the door, I locked Mart's eyes with my own. 'Maybe he's a pooka.'

'I expect he is,' Martin grinned. 'What is a pooka?'

'It's an Irish thing. A spirit. It takes the form of animals, usually. Horses, mostly. Men sometimes, but mostly horses - probably because the Irish are so fond of horses.'

Martin pushed his hat back. 'Well, he might be a pooka; but, if he is, I think he was a drugged pooka until about an hour after he got here. And now, he's sober and we don't know how he's going to behave. And his name's Joker.' At this, we both grinned.

'Good name for a pooka.'

We couldn't leave the aptly named Joker standing among broken boards and protruding nails or he'd eventually be a lame pooka; so, we elected to walk him out on a lunge line for a bit to see what he would do. As he behaved like a gentleman, we put him in a tie stall for the night.

'I dunno about the name "Joker" for this pooka, after all,' I said, surveying with Martin the wreckage of the tie stall the next morning. 'I think he should have two names: Jeckyll & Hyde.' Joker regarded us placidly from the feed alley, which bore all the scars of his having flipped himself out of the stall and upside down into it, smashing another manger in the process. His rope tie dangled benignly beneath his chin with a remnant of the manger attached to the end of it. 'I gotta get to work. Put this blighter in the pen outside and call Julie's dad to have him taken away. We don't have enough vacant stalls left to keep him more than two more days!'

By the time I returned that evening, Martin had repaired all Joker's damage; but I found the horse standing in the outside pen, where Martin had put him earlier. 'Why is the pooka still here?' I demanded.

'Well, Julie's dad thought he'd probably be okay from here on,' the easygoing Martin assuaged. 'He spent the morning here watching the horse. Nothing happened.'

'Of course not!'

And so Joker remained with us for a while; but it was not an interval without incident; and although it was a full month before Joker's unpredictability manifested itself, I was not at all surprised when it did. During that month, Julie rode him everyday, at first, in the arena; and then out on the road in the company of other horses and riders, her particular friends who also stabled with us. Neither dogs, rabbits, nor traffic interrupted Joker's composure. His serenity matched the Dalai Lama's - until one Sunday afternoon. That day, the little posse came back almost as soon as it had started out. Everyone was mounted except Julie, who led Joker by one rein, the other being broken. She limped. Both horse and rider were muddy and littered with twigs and leaves.

'Now what?' I asked, taking the rein from her.

'Did you see that old car that passed by here a few minutes ago?' she fumed.

'Yes. Model A roadster.'

'Well, after he passed us, he honked his "oogah" horn. I mean, he was way up the road from us! And this stupid, stupid, stupid horse reared up, went over backward, and we both fell into the ditch!'

I looked her up and down. 'Obviously, he didn't fall on top of you, or you wouldn't be standing here. Look, why don't you ask your dad to get you a different horse? There are plenty of good ones out there.'

Julie gave the reins a series of angry jerks, causing Joker to toss his head. 'No, he didn't fall on me, but he hit me with his foot trying to get out of the ditch!' And flexing her thigh, she indicated a patch of mud more or less in the shape of a horse's hoof. 'And I have asked my dad for a different horse - again and again; but he just says it's this horse or no horse.'

Julie would ride no more that day. She called her dad to come get her and her friends trotted back out onto the road.

The pooka remained innocuous through to fall worming. I thought being tubed would send him into a fit of violence but it did not. The twitch I put on his nose did, however, and he fought it with determination; but not with any barn-destroying frenzy. As it did not benefit the effort, I laid the twitch by; and, no sooner had I done so than Joker stood like he'd been killed and stuffed. We pushed the tube up his nostril without so much as a blink from him and he swallowed the worm medicine as if it were his own spit.

December came, and the Pony Club began to gear up for their Christmas competition. Julie asked me to help her train Joker to drag a Christmas tree. I acceded to this and we commenced upon a variation of the routine for persuading a horse to pull a cart. First, we led him around dragging a rope. Then, we led him around dragging the rope while one of us put tension on it. Next, we led him around while one of us dragged a Christmas tree behind him, quite a distance behind. When he grew bored with this, we shortened the distance. Eventually, we put the tree a long way behind on a rope dallied to his saddle horn and, gradually, drew the tree up to where it was barely clear of his heels as he walked. When he became indifferent to its being there, we repeated the tree portion of the exercise with Julie in the saddle.

Or, at least, we began to do so. When the tree was halfway up to the mark, Julie dismounted and said, 'You ride him.'

I regarded her blankly. 'Why?'

'He's gonna buck.'

'He is?'

'If we pull the tree any closer, yes.'

I walked round to where I could appraise Joker's soul through his eyes. He looked like he was sedated. 'Okay,' I shrugged. 'I'll ride.'

Swinging up into the saddle, I cast off the dally and gave the rope a tug to bring the tree closer. As if the rope had been the trigger lanyard of a catapult, I was shot into the air; and, not having any of the assets of a cat, I came down on my head, burying it in the sawdust of the arena. It took me a minute or two, lying on my belly, to regain my senses and remove the sawdust from my ears, eyes, nose, and mouth. I sat up, emptied my hat, plumped out its crown, and placed it on my head.

'I told you he'd buck,' Julie said, without discernable sympathy.

I stood up and gazed into Joker's eyes. They were as somnolent as ever. Walking a somewhat ambivalent course out of the arena, I called back to Julie, 'Pulling Christmas trees ain't in him. Enter another event.'

We gave springtime vaccinations by hypodermic, in the great muscles of the horses' necks. It was the least ardent of our veterinary exercises. The needles were small gauged ones. None of the horses required the twitch or offered the slightest objection. Martin stood by each horse's off shoulder, holding the lead; I stood by the near shoulder. My left hand gave the patient a palmful of grain followed by an immediate prick and plunge with the hypodermic in my right hand. The delight in the grain was always enough to close the neurological gates on whatever sting the small needle produced. But I did not trust Joker's neurology. After all, he was a pooka, and my neck still bothered me, more than four months after the Christmas tree incident.

Our first attempt to inoculate Joker ended in the grain being spit out, the needle bent and pulled off the syringe, and the medicine squirted onto Martin. On the second attempt, Joker reared and struck out with his front feet. Happily, he was barefoot, for Martin took a blow on the thigh and I took one on the back of my hand. For the third attempt, we tied in him the box stall Martin had rebuilt (and reinforced). Joker tore the halter from his head and reared so high, he struck his poll on the underside of the shed's roof, catching one of the shingle nails and cutting himself enough to bleed noticeably.

Disgusted, I went up to the house and called Julie's father. 'You get the vet out here, Wally. And from now on, you can summon the vet for everything that crazy horse needs. I'm tired of fooling with him.'

Well, Wally would have none of it. He told me we just didn't know our business. He'd be out Saturday morning to give us a hand.

And so he was. Now, Wally was a 'used' jock: he'd been a football hero of some sort during the green years of his life, which made him, in his own estimation, an expert in everything for the brown years. As a middle aged man, he was admittedly fit. In stature, he was not so big as Paul Bunyan, but he was bigger than I - and not at all on a par with Joker. When Mart led the horse out, Wally stood defiantly in their path, forcing Joker to come to a halt in front of him. He reached out for the lead, which Marting passed to his waiting hand.

'Go ahead,' Wally said confidently, shifting the balls of his feet as if he expected to be tackled.

I was beside Joker's left shoulder and, at this piece of bravado, I glanced across the horse's withers. Martin's eyes shot me a look of amused disbelief, with just a little horror admixed.

I thrust with the needle. Joker vaulted upward, pawing viciously. Wally rocketed backward in two summersaults, fetching up on his broad shoulders with his feet over his head and his butt in the air. And in that heroic pose he hung.

'I've killed him, I expect.' I said to Martin.

'I expect,' Martin agreed, gathering up Joker's lead rope.

As I walked toward Wally, he unrolled himself with a groan and sat slumped upon the grass. His balding forehead bore the red and dirty imprint of one of Joker's hooves; his cream colored shirt sported a green and brown smear from the other.

I helped him to his feet. 'About that vet...'

Wally held up a hand. 'I'll have him out Monday morning.' He staggered to his convertible and drove off, barely missing one of the gate posts as he passed between them.

One might have supposed that Joker's assault would have persuaded Wally to buy Julie a different horse; but it did not. Joker remained with us until I decided to quit the horse boarding line. Wally was as good as his word and had the vet out - for everything, except to feed and water the brute. Julie's other interests eventually cut more and more into her riding time until we saw her not at all - which implied in her a strong desire to stay alive or, at least, to grow up without being crippled. Wally kept Joker with us until well after checkout time for all the boarders. Unlike most of the other horses, I had no occasional news of him after his departure. He vanished, as it were; but then, what else might one anticipate: he was a pooka.

The Pooka, by Ken Ely
First Rights Reserved Copyright Aug 2, 2004

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