Faraway Horses Read Online Free
Author: Buck Brannaman, William Reynolds
things I’ll never know, and if she were still alive, there are a lot of questions I would love to ask her.
There was an afternoon that we came home from school when Mom was at work, and Dad was moving around, walking around the place, going in and out of the barn. Iknew he was mad. It was only about a hundred yards from the county road to the house, and I wished we could take all night to get there. When he saw us, he immediately started hollering and swearing. One of us had left a gate open when we were doing chores in the morning. You know young boys, you know how forgetful they can be. They don’t mean to do anything wrong—a lot of times they just forget, or something makes their brains turn off.
Anyhow, we’d left a gate open. Nothing really had gone wrong. One of our horses got into a pen with another horse, but they were geldings and they got along fine. It was really no big deal, just a matter of catching the horse and putting him back in his own pen. But Dad was so angry that we had forgotten to close the gate that he went into the barn and came out with his stock whip. The whip was eight feet long. I knew what was coming, and my little legs were just shaking.
He told us to put our books down on the front steps. We were on the east side of the house in the backyard near Mom’s clothesline. I was wearing a short-sleeve shirt and a pair of lightweight pants. I remember looking at those clothes on the clothesline and wishing I had them all on at the same time to protect me from what was about to happen.
Dad made us go over to a rail fence that ran around the house. He told us to hang on to one of the rails and stand there, and then he started whipping us with that stock whip. Once in a while the lash would wrap around my arm up by my shoulder, and it’d crack just like a .22 rifle. It hurtas if I had been shot, too. There were even places where it cut through my shirt. Granted, it probably wasn’t much of a shirt, but still, whipping a kid hard enough to cut his shirt meant you were hitting him pretty hard.
Dad was whipping us over our backs and down our legs when I saw a neighbor looking out of his ranch house at us. He didn’t know what to do, but I remember looking at him and wishing he was man enough to come over and stop what was happening.
My dad was still hollering, cussing, and whipping us when the phone rang. He told us to stay where we were and ran into the house to answer it. When he came back out, his mood had changed. The phone call was from someone who wanted Smokie and me to do a TV commercial for Kellogg’s Sugar Pops. Dad was excited now. This was another chance for him to vicariously share the spotlight with us. He went from whipping us to being as happy as could be. At the time, we didn’t give a damn about a TV commercial, but we sure were glad the phone rang when it did.
I’ve often thought it was by the grace of God that the phone rang that day and cut our whipping short, or we’d have gotten it a lot worse than we did. We went ahead and made the Sugar Pops commercial. The funny thing was they shot it in a town called Grace, Idaho. You know, there are so many little coincidences in life that make you wonder how God or your guardian angel or whoever it is protecting you can keep it all straight. You start putting all those pieces together years later, and it’s kind of surreal.
* * *
When I was eleven and we were living in Whitehall, Mom had a bad bout of the flu. She’d been in bed for two or three days, and Dad was trying to take care of her. When he gave her some soup, it never occurred to any of us that the soup would change her blood sugar level. During the night, she went into a diabetic coma, although nobody knew it. The next morning, Dad was worried. He came in, woke us up, and said, “We have to take your mother to the hospital in Ennis.”
Mom was a big lady, all of six feet tall, and it took all three of us to get her into the truck. She was in
There was an afternoon that we came home from school when Mom was at work, and Dad was moving around, walking around the place, going in and out of the barn. Iknew he was mad. It was only about a hundred yards from the county road to the house, and I wished we could take all night to get there. When he saw us, he immediately started hollering and swearing. One of us had left a gate open when we were doing chores in the morning. You know young boys, you know how forgetful they can be. They don’t mean to do anything wrong—a lot of times they just forget, or something makes their brains turn off.
Anyhow, we’d left a gate open. Nothing really had gone wrong. One of our horses got into a pen with another horse, but they were geldings and they got along fine. It was really no big deal, just a matter of catching the horse and putting him back in his own pen. But Dad was so angry that we had forgotten to close the gate that he went into the barn and came out with his stock whip. The whip was eight feet long. I knew what was coming, and my little legs were just shaking.
He told us to put our books down on the front steps. We were on the east side of the house in the backyard near Mom’s clothesline. I was wearing a short-sleeve shirt and a pair of lightweight pants. I remember looking at those clothes on the clothesline and wishing I had them all on at the same time to protect me from what was about to happen.
Dad made us go over to a rail fence that ran around the house. He told us to hang on to one of the rails and stand there, and then he started whipping us with that stock whip. Once in a while the lash would wrap around my arm up by my shoulder, and it’d crack just like a .22 rifle. It hurtas if I had been shot, too. There were even places where it cut through my shirt. Granted, it probably wasn’t much of a shirt, but still, whipping a kid hard enough to cut his shirt meant you were hitting him pretty hard.
Dad was whipping us over our backs and down our legs when I saw a neighbor looking out of his ranch house at us. He didn’t know what to do, but I remember looking at him and wishing he was man enough to come over and stop what was happening.
My dad was still hollering, cussing, and whipping us when the phone rang. He told us to stay where we were and ran into the house to answer it. When he came back out, his mood had changed. The phone call was from someone who wanted Smokie and me to do a TV commercial for Kellogg’s Sugar Pops. Dad was excited now. This was another chance for him to vicariously share the spotlight with us. He went from whipping us to being as happy as could be. At the time, we didn’t give a damn about a TV commercial, but we sure were glad the phone rang when it did.
I’ve often thought it was by the grace of God that the phone rang that day and cut our whipping short, or we’d have gotten it a lot worse than we did. We went ahead and made the Sugar Pops commercial. The funny thing was they shot it in a town called Grace, Idaho. You know, there are so many little coincidences in life that make you wonder how God or your guardian angel or whoever it is protecting you can keep it all straight. You start putting all those pieces together years later, and it’s kind of surreal.
* * *
When I was eleven and we were living in Whitehall, Mom had a bad bout of the flu. She’d been in bed for two or three days, and Dad was trying to take care of her. When he gave her some soup, it never occurred to any of us that the soup would change her blood sugar level. During the night, she went into a diabetic coma, although nobody knew it. The next morning, Dad was worried. He came in, woke us up, and said, “We have to take your mother to the hospital in Ennis.”
Mom was a big lady, all of six feet tall, and it took all three of us to get her into the truck. She was in
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