Saving Simon (5 page)

What might Simon and I do together? Where might we go? What might our story be? I wondered, what could I offer him beyond food and medicine? What might we share?

As it happened, I had the first part of my answer waiting on my bookshelf, right on the farm.

Considered a masterpiece,
Platero and I
is a lyrical, even
magical, portrait of life in a remote Andalusian village in Spain. Its author, the Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez, was awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Jiménez and Platero, his gentle donkey, travel through the tiny Andalusian town of Moguer and the beautiful country lanes beyond, Jiménez speaking of the sights and sounds that touch and inspire him—white butterflies, sparrows, an old building, ripe pomegranates—and of human emotions of love, fear, nostalgia, and longing.

Platero is a small downy donkey who loves mandarin oranges, grapes, and “purple figs tipped with crystalline drops of honey.” He is, writes Jiménez, as loving and tender as a child, as strong and sturdy as a rock.

Someone gave me
Platero and I
as a gift after Carol died, and it seemed that Jiménez captured more gracefully and sweetly than anyone I had read before the great duality of donkeys—they are the most gentle and loving of creatures, and also the hardiest and most determined and willful. In my own life with animals, I have encountered none who embody that contradiction as powerfully as donkeys. There is no end to the amount of work we ask them to do, and their great hearts seem to forgive us the most unimaginable insults and cruelty.

To the people of Moguer, Platero is “like steel,” but the poet corrects them. “Steel, yes,” he tells them, “steel and moon silver.” This, it struck me, was Simon. Only a creature of steel would have still been alive, yet the moon silver was already shining through in him.

I took my dog-eared copy of
Platero and I
and some carrots and I headed out into the back pasture where Simon was sitting up, gazing out at the valley below. He seemed to be paying particular attention to the huge full moon hovering out over the valley.

He turned to look at me, as he always did when I came near, and I thought I heard a soft bray coming from him as I got closer. Donkeys have a sixth sense about treats, and I guessed he smelled the carrots in my pocket or perhaps saw one sticking out. I had brought a blanket, and I laid it down beside him. I changed his dressings, applied his ointments, gave him his pills, and squirted syringes full of medicine through an opening in his jaw. I brought him fresh hay and water, checked for lice and maggots, and squirted medicine into his eyes.

Simon was almost shockingly gracious about all of this. I knew Carol would have butted me all over the barnyard by now, sick or not. Miraculously, something in Simon loved and trusted people. Animals don’t do self-pity or revenge, certainly not donkeys, who have endured the harshest treatment and retain their genial and affectionate nature. If you study the brutal history of donkeys and their lives serving people, you wonder why any donkey would go near any human being, but that is, of course, a projection. They are not like us.

They don’t have expectations and do not flirt with disappointment.

When the ministrations were over and Simon had eaten his hay and cookies, chewed his carrot, and taken his medicine, I took out a reading light and clamped it to
Platero and I
.

“Look, Simon,” I recall telling him. “This is a story about a man and his donkey. Every night, I’m going to come out here and read you a different story from this book. I hope you’ll like it.”

Simon and I looked out over the valley for a minute, and I wondered what was going through the mind of this battered creature. Many people think they know what is in the minds of animals, but the longer I live with them, the less certain I am of what they are thinking. Simon was not, I am sure, aware of the drama of his life.

Yesterday he was suffering and starving; today he was not. He seemed to relish his view over the valley. The shade of the feeder gave him some protection from the flies and gnats. We covered the barn floor with straw, and as soon as he was strong enough, we hoped to get him inside, but for now, the softer ground outside seemed more comfortable than the concrete of the barn.

He seemed at ease in my presence. This was somebody’s donkey, I thought. He was used to people—trusted them still.

A soft breeze came up from the valley. We paused to drink it in, both of us at ease. I brought a bottle of water to sip, and I saw my border collie Rose come cautiously into the barn and sit to watch us.

Rose had been living with donkeys for a couple of years, and she had a great deal of respect for the distance she wanted to keep from them. Up on the hill, I saw Lulu and Fanny standing by the gate, staring at us. Donkeys are alert creatures. They miss nothing, and Lulu and Fanny had become Simon scholars, studying every minute of his life and treatment. It would be many weeks before the three would get together, and then only after a slow and deliberate process of acclimation.

How curious life is, I thought, that I would be sitting out in a pasture getting ready to read to a donkey I barely knew.

When we had all settled, and the sun was sinking below the mountains, I read Simon the opening paragraphs of
Platero and I:
“Platero is a small donkey, a soft, hairy donkey: so soft to the touch that he might be said to be made of cotton, with no bones. Only the jet mirrors of his eyes are hard like two black crystal scarabs.”

When he called to Platero softly, wrote Jiménez, he came “at a gay little trot that is like laughter of a vague, idyllic, tinkling sound.”

Jiménez and Platero had begun their journey through beautiful Andalusia, and Simon and I had begun our own.

We had just had our first real conversation, our first moment together. If Simon did not know what the story’s words meant, I have no doubt he was reading my tone of voice. He understood, I am sure, that I was offering him an invitation into my life, my journey.

As I read him the first pages of
Platero
, I noticed that Simon never took his eyes off me. His blackened ears swiveled to catch the words, but, more important, the intonations and the feeling behind them.

I had heard, and then learned, that you cannot fool a donkey: He will see right into your heart and right through deceit and prevarication. He knows where you are going before you do.

I felt that night that Simon accepted my invitation. I was excited to join the glorious fraternity of strange men who roamed the world observing it and sharing it with their donkeys.

“Simon,” I told him, “your name comes from the Bible, and the girl who gave you your name chose it because she hoped you would be blessed and would never be harmed again.”

I leaned over and stroked the side of his neck, one of the few places on his body that was not scarred or infected or covered in sores. “I promise you that you will not be harmed again.”

THREE
 

It became clear that
Simon would survive his wounds and troubles. For one thing, he was eating everything that wasn’t nailed to the ground and many things that were. Within a few weeks of Simon’s arrival on the farm, his coat began to grow back. He stood a bit more on his feet each day. He took his medicine and drank his water and ate his cookies and apples and was always watching the barn door, waiting for me to come through it with my treats and copy of
Platero and I
.

Simon loved life—I could see it in his eyes. He wanted to live, and I knew donkeys are hardy, among the most durable animals in the world. Under the proper care, he would recover unless there was something terribly wrong with him that we could not see.

He was almost instantly more comfortable. The lice were dead and the flies stayed out of the shadows of the hay feeder and the barn. His infected jaw healed; the swelling reduced. He was taking painkillers for his twisted feet, and he figured out how to chew without the teeth that had been removed.

His eyes were bright and clear, and always focused on me. I saw right away that Simon loved attention, and that he needed it. It was like breath to him; he just closed his eyes and purred when his soft nose and ears were rubbed.

Simon and I wandered through the beautiful town of Moguer. We stopped to visit the shy female burro Platero loved, and the little shepherd playing his pipe under the twinkling light of Venus. We sniffed the flowers in the church garden and watched the sparrows fly out of the vestry trees. We tasted the peaches Platero helped himself to from a neighbor’s grove. We witnessed his encounters with children playing on the farms he trotted past.

Donkeys are known to love children, and they seemed to bring life to Simon, to stir his soul in a special way. I saw this with McKenzie Barrett, who named him. It was even more powerfully evident in his new friendship with Bryan, a twelve-year-old boy who lived up the hill.

When Maria and I first spotted the small trailer about a quarter mile up the hill from the farm, we just assumed no one was living there. Some of the windows were boarded up with plywood, much of the asbestos siding on the side of the house was cracked or broken, there were shingles missing on the roof, and brush grew over the front door. The mailbox had no lettering, and the hinge to the mailbox door was broken, so it dangled down toward the road. We never saw any lights on, nor was there smoke from the chimney. People often associate the country with beauty and industry, and cities with poverty, but there is a kind of grinding, soul-shattering poverty you see off the main roads in upstate New York and other rural areas that is heartbreaking.

In the country, poor people and families are up against the elements in a very direct way, and it is never more wrenching
than in the middle of a brutal winter when they struggle to stay warm. A neighbor shocked us by telling us that five people lived in that trailer: a mother and her four children. The husband had been taken out by the state police and ordered by a judge not to come within a thousand yards of their home.

Shirley was struggling, and everyone on the road contributed some firewood and soup and clothes if they could. We signed up. The oldest boy, Bryan, we were told, went up and down the road looking for work. He was a nice kid, a bright kid, and people found odd jobs for him. Our neighbors told us to look out for him.

We didn’t have too long to wait to meet Bryan. One bitter cold afternoon, I went outside to feed the animals. A freezing rain was falling; the road was slick and the wind merciless. My eyes were tearing up just from being outside. I was heading out to feed Simon in the barn when my dog Rose froze, turned, and growled. The hair on her back went up and she moved toward the bottom of the driveway. She was focused on the big maple tree, where a number of rabid skunks had emerged previously. I was about to turn back to the farmhouse to get my .22—they had to be shot quickly—when I saw a pair of sneakers and skinny bare white legs sticking out from the base of the tree.

I was alarmed, as I couldn’t imagine any good scenario where a pair of exposed young legs would be lying still by the road. I ran toward the tree and as I did, I saw a young boy—dressed in a nylon windbreaker, shorts, and sneakers—jump up, wave, and run off up the road.

I yelled after him to stop and that I wanted to talk to him, but he just kept going, up the hill and out of sight.

What was he doing dressed for summer on such a cold day? What was he doing lying in the shadow of my maple tree?

I saw him several times in the next few days. I knew he lived
in the trailer up the hill; I couldn’t imagine where else he might have come from.

One afternoon, I looked out of my study window and I saw him at the rear pasture gate. Simon had walked over to him, and the two were standing head-to-head across the pasture fence. I ran outside, and when the boy saw me he started to move away.

“Wait,” I said. “You don’t have to run off. I’ve seen you around the farmhouse. Tell me what you’re doing here. Can you tell me your name?”

The boy seemed to size me up. He was good-looking, thin, tall with a shock of brown hair. His eyes met mine and he held the gaze. “I’m Bryan,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I’ve been here for your Wi-Fi.” Bryan reached into his pocket and took out an iPod. His grandfather had given it to him for Christmas, he said. His grandfather lived in North Carolina, and Bryan had not met him yet, but he sent a present every Christmas. This year it was an iPod, and Bryan loved it, it was cool, but his grandfather didn’t know that they didn’t have Internet and he couldn’t download any music. He saw my satellite dish, he said, and so he had been hiding across the street and behind the tree.

Why, I asked, was he hiding?

“My mom says taking somebody else’s Wi-Fi is like stealing,” he said. “I’m sorry. I haven’t been able to listen to any music, it’s making me crazy.” Bryan apologized again, and offered to do some chores in exchange for the Wi-Fi.

I said he was welcome to use the Wi-Fi anytime; it didn’t cost me anything extra to share it with him. I had enough, I said. Would he be interested in coming into the house where it was warmer? He could call his mother and ask permission. I knew his mother; she came by often when she couldn’t find her dog. I knew the dog as well. He was tethered to a tree behind the trailer all day and many nights, even in rain and snow.
Sometimes he would break away or chew his way through the tether and run down the road. Maria and I would often bring him back.