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This Was Going to Be . . .November 13, 2006 This was going to be a blog about my busy weekend, about how I had an interminable and snarly copyediting job that had to be shipped off Monday, and a Friday-through-Sunday horse-sit, and on top of that a winter's worth of hay was arriving Saturday at my home barn from upstate New York. Well, it's sort of about that. It's about how Saturday morning I was doing chores at Joan McGurren's barn and I did one of those things you know is stupid as soon as you do it. The water trough in the paddock is big and shallow. It fits under the bottom rail of the post-and-rail fence. It was nearly empty, so before filling it I figured I'd dump the old water and scrub it out. Dumping the trough involves pulling it out from under the fence, which I bent down to do. That's the stupid part. Water, even the water in a nearly empty trough, is heavy. You don't bend down to pull, push, or lift it; you bend your knees. Pulling, pushing, or lifting is a great way to throw your back out. Which is what I did. Not too badly, because it's almost all better now, but I did it. Ginny called just before 10 to say Steve the Hay Guy would be arriving on an earlier boat than expected, so Rhodry and I finished our respective breakfasts and headed down to our barn. I picked paddocks, made up evening and morning grain, did a little last push-and-pulling in the hayloft so unloading would be easier. The wild card was the tight corner at the end of the driveway. In previous years, Steve the Hay Guy had been able to come up the parallel road to the farm next door, turn wide, and come straight down the Malabar Farm driveway. This year the guy who owns the farm across the road (I won't name any names; if you live on M.V. you probably know both the guy and the farm) said we couldn't do it. So Ginny and Fred went down to where the driveway intersects the dirt road to widen the turn by removing some brush and a couple of dead trees. Fred had a chain saw. Ginny had the tractor. The job was nearly done when Ginny stepped wrong getting off the tractor. She sprained it doozily and didn't get back from the hospital till a couple hours later, by which time the hay was all in the loft. Before her brother-in-law drove her to the hospital, she wrote out a check for Steve the Hay Guy. All I had to do was fill in the amount. Steve maneuvered his rig -- monster cab towing half a double trailer -- in the road and around the corner almost without incident. Doug, the contractor from up the road, came with some of his crew. They ran the bales up the conveyor belt from truck to loft. Nina from next door and Cassidy, Steve's seven-year-old daughter, kept the tally. By the time Ginny got back, with crutches, the job was nearly done. "Some people will do anything to get out of work," we said. We laughed and caught up and told stories. By the time I fed and closed at Joan's barn then came back and did the same at Malabar Farm, I was on the fade. Didn't get a whole lot of editing done. Sunday I made up some of the lost time. Today I couldn't remember when Veterans Day was being celebrated -- Friday? Saturday? today? I thought maybe the banks were closed today so I didn't call Joan to arrange to pick up my check. That could wait till tomorrow. I did e-mail the production editor in New York to get a one-day extension on the snarly and interminable copyedit. I did midday chores at my barn, then a bit after 2 p.m. I got a call from Tracey, who manages a horse barn not far from Joan's. There'd been a bad accident, my name and number were on the chalkboard, she didn't know the horses or Joan or who Joan's friends were, could I help out? Rhodry and I headed up-island. What had happened was unclear. Joan was driving one of her mares in the fenced-in pasture. Her husband, Jay, was riding on the navigator's platform behind her. There had been a wreck. Jay called 911. The EMTs called Tracey because a horse was involved. Tracey and two other horse people were attending to the mare's minor injuries. Joan's injuries, they said, were very bad. Joanie, the West Tisbury animal control officer, was there. She took charge of Jezebel, the McGurrens' Doberman. Other horse people showed up: they'd heard the news on the scanner or been called by friends. They wanted to know what they could do. We made a plan to make sure the three ponies were looked after. Joan didn't make it. By the time I finished feeding and cleaning up and leaving notes for the a.m. feeder, it was 5 p.m. Word was that Jay would be released from the hospital by the end of the afternoon, but I hadn't heard anything certain. Several names and numbers had been added to the chalkboard. I wrote them all down in a notebook. Ginny had evening chores under control; her crutches were leaning up against a wall. She'd heard the report of a horse-related accident, but with no names, places, or other details attached. I said Joan was dead. Ginny hadn't met Joan, who'd only moved to the island last winter, but she'd heard a lot about her from me. I stayed for supper. When I got home there were six messages on my answering machine. Usually I don't get six messages in a week. Two were work-related; the other four were offers of help with the ponies. I spent most of the next couple of hours on the phone. I did get a fair amount of work done. The snarly copyedit will go back to New York tomorrow. All evening I've been listening to two CDs: James Keelaghan's Road, mainly because of "Captain Torres," and Bob Franke's In This Night, because of "Thanksgiving Eve" and "After the Fall" and "A Healing in This Night" and "Predictions." One year when part of the AIDS Quilt came to the Old Whaling Church I wrote some lines from "Predictions" on the blank cloth provided for the purpose:
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