Marcy, Martin, and the Mustang

It was the dream that woke Marcy up, a dream unlike any she'd ever had before. Unlike most dreams, this one didn't immediately fade away.

She was walking out of the department store in Laramie that March, and looked up to see a car driving through the parking lot and directly at the big glass doors. She kept waiting for the car to slow down and turn, but it looked like it was speeding up. Marcy had started to turn around to run when the car crashed through the door. She was far enough to the side the car only dealt her a glancing blow that threw her onto the floor.

Marcy was trying to get up when another person pushed her back down. The woman's voice sounded worried.

"Honey, don't move. I'm a nurse, and you're bleeding really bad. Try to lay still until the EMT's get here."

As the dream continued, Marcy lay on the floor and questioned what the woman had said. If there's no pain, I can't be hurt that bad, she thought. I just got knocked down, that's all. She tried moving her arms and legs and they seemed to work just fine. It wasn't until she touched her left cheek that she realized the woman was right. Marcy's hand came away red with blood.

By the time the EMT's arrived, Marcy was starting to feel weak and woozy. She barely heard the woman's voice.

"I couldn't stop the flow of blood because of all the glass embedded in her face. The only cut I could get a compress on was the one above her eye. She's lost a lot of blood. I hope she's going to be alright."

Everything went black then until the dream woke her.

The first thing Marcy did was open her eyes only to realize she couldn't see very well. She could see straight ahead, but when she moved her eyes to the side, something was blocking her vision. She lifted her hand to her face and felt something on her finger. She pulled a little more and whatever it was came off. When she tried to bring her hand all the way to her face she felt a pulling sensation in her arm and then a little stab of pain.

A second later a nurse in blue scrubs ran into the room, looked a Marcy, and then breathed a sigh of relief.

"Honey, you have to leave the clip on your finger so we'll know you're OK, and if you move your arm, you'll pull out your IV.

She put a small clip on Marcy's right index finger, then pressed something into Marcy's hand.

"There we go. Now, if you need anything, just push this little button and one of us will be right with you. The doctor will be in to see you in a little while."

Doctor Patel was an older man in a white lab coat with kind eyes. He had a stethoscope hung around his neck. He shined a little flashlight in Marcy's eyes, then checked her pulse. When he was done, he looked at her and smiled.

"Miss Baldwin, you had us worried there for a while. Do you remember what happened?"

Marcy said she remembered a car crashing through the doors of the department store and then a woman telling her to not move, but that was about all. Doctor Patel smiled.

"You're a very lucky young woman. The driver of the car apparently had a heart attack and pushed the gas pedal instead of the brake pedal. The car rammed into the store and hit you and the glass display case you were standing beside. You were knocked down but the impact didn't cause any damage other than a bruise to your left hip."

His smile turned to a frown then.

"What did cause some damage was the glass from the display case. It evidently wasn't safety glass and it shattered in a bunch of pieces with sharp edges that rained down all over you. Your clothing protected you except for your face, but you were cut pretty badly on your face and scalp. When the EMT's got there, you were unconscious.

"It took two hundred stitches to stitch everything back together, but it looks like you're doing well otherwise. You don't show any signs of a concussion and your pulse is steady now. We'll keep you until we're sure you're healing and then you can go home.

After he left, a nurse brought in a paper cup with a pill and a paper cup with water and a straw.

"Honey, this is some medicine to help with the pain. Take the pill and then drink the water."

Marcy said she wasn't feeling any pain, and the nurse smiled.

"That's because what they gave you during surgery hasn't worn off yet. It will in about an hour."

A little while after she swallowed the pill, Marcy felt sleepy. She closed her eyes and everything went black again.

Marcy woke up enough to eat a little dinner that night, and was glad the same nurse brought her another pill. It had only been soft food, but after she'd opened her mouth a dozen times, it hurt.

The next day, a nurse took Marcy's blood pressure, listened to her heart, and then pulled the IV needle from her arm.

"You're doing great, Marcy. I'll change your dressings now and then we'll bring your lunch."

For the next two days, Marcy woke up in the morning, ate breakfast, was bored stiff until just before noon, and the bored until dinner that night. The only time she felt any pain was when the nurse changed her dressings. Other than that, she felt fine except that she'd not yet seen her face. The nurses wouldn't let her use the bathroom until they'd changed her dressings.

On her last day in the hospital, Doctor Patel came to see her again.

"Marcy, we're going to let you go home today after we remove your dressings. There are some things you need to do to keep the healing process going. Don't use hot water on your face for another week, and even though you will experience some itching, don't scratch your injuries. That will only make your scars more visible."

When he left, Marcy felt her eyes fill with tears. What did Doctor Patel mean when he talked about scars? She'd always been proud of her face. From the time she was ten, she'd washed her face twice a day, once when she got up for school and once before she went to bed. The result had been that by the time she started college, her smooth skin accented her small nose, full lips, and arched eyebrows. Most women she knew told her they were jealous. Most men she knew told her she was pretty. Now she was going to have scars?

Just before lunchtime, a nurse came in to remove the dressings from Marcy's face. When she finished, she looked at Marcy.

"Marcy, when you look in the mirror, what you're going to see is your face is still puffy from the injuries and the surgery. It'll look worse than it really is, but don't start feeling sorry for yourself. In a week or so, the swelling will go down and you'll see that it isn't as bad as you thought. Once the swelling goes down, you can use silicone gel sheets to help make the scars less noticeable, and when you go out, some makeup will help too."

Marcy got dressed but resisted the temptation to go to the bathroom and look in the mirror. That would wait until she got back to her parent's house.

Because her college and her parent's house were both in Laramie and because she wanted to save money, Marcy still lived in her parent's house. Her mother enjoyed having her there because she helped out with the household chores on the weekends. Her father liked having her at home too. He'd been worried about his daughter since she began to mature into a woman. The curves she developed by the time she was eighteen were all too womanly for his liking. Those curves and her pretty face brought a steady stream of boys to the house asking for Marcy to go out with them. He was thankful that Marcy never seemed to get serious with any of them. He wanted her to get an education before she thought about a husband and a family.

When Marcy walked out of the elevator and into the hospital lobby, her mother and father were there waiting. As soon as she saw Marcy, her mother quickly walked to Marcy and embraced her. Marcy's mother was crying. Marcy started crying too. The look on her mother's face when she saw Marcy told Marcy everything she needed to know.

Marcy cried again that night when she washed her face before bed. When she looked in the mirror, what she saw was the left side of her face was a spiderweb of suture lines that were pink and swollen. Most of the suture lines were small, but there were a lot of them. There was one long line that ran from her scalp above her left ear down over her cheek and then almost to her chin. Another went from just above her left eyebrow half way across her forehead. Those two were the worst, but all the others had turned the left side of her face into a jigsaw puzzle of suture lines.

Marcy knew she couldn't go back to school looking like this. People who saw her would think she was an ugly freak. She'd have to drop out of her classes in elementary education at the University of Wyoming and go back in the fall, assuming she looked at least a little better by then.

After a week of living with her parents Marcy knew she couldn't stay there either. When they were alone, her mother would hug Marcy and tell her everything was going to be all right. Her father rarely looked directly at her. He'd look to the side when he talked to her.

By the end of the week, Marcy had somewhat come to terms with her face. She didn't like it, but there was nothing she could do about it other than wait for it to heal. The swelling had gone down, and the silicone gel sheets her mother brought her helped, but the suture lines were still pink enough they plainly showed her injuries.

The fact that her mother and father hadn't accepted what had happened to her influenced her decision. She thought her father's brother, Uncle Ed, might understand better than her mother and father. He'd been wounded in Iraq and according to Marcy's father, still bore the scars the IED had left on his body. Those scars were why he'd never married. He didn't think any woman would want a man who had scars on his chest. Instead, he'd bought six hundred acres between Laramie and Cheyenne and started raising beef cattle and horses. He also baled hay on about a hundred acres to feed the livestock through the winter.

He'd also always liked her and she'd always felt as if he was a second father to her. She called her Uncle Ed, explained her situation, and asked him if she could spend the time between now and the fall semester on his ranch. She said she was perfectly capable of helping out on the ranch and would do anything he wanted her to do.

Marcy breathed a sigh of relief when Uncle Ed said he'd be happy to have her.

"Marcy, you couldn't have called at a better time. I have six calves that need to be bottle fed three times a day. Rex and I are running our butts off trying to get that done with everything else we have to do. You come on out, Honey. You can have the spare bedroom all to yourself."

March explained to her mother and father what she was doing. She told them she just had to get away for a while so she could think, but in reality, she just couldn't take the constant sympathy. The next day, she packed her clothes and everything else she thought she might need, tossed the suitcase into her car, and drove to Uncle Ed's ranch.

Uncle Ed was happy to see her again, and unlike Marcy's father, he looked her square in the face for a few seconds and then smiled.

"Marcy Honey, you got cut up pretty bad, didn't you?"

Marcy nodded.

"Yes. The doctor said I almost bled to death."

Uncle Ed put his hand on Marty's shoulder.

"Well, those calves aren't going to care how you look as long as you poke a bottle in their faces morning, noon, and night. I don't care either, Honey. You're still Marcy, and that's all that counts to me. Let's get your stuff inside and then I'll show you around. You need to meet Rex. Hired him last year because I was getting behind in everything. He's a good man and I think you'll like him."

The ranch was about like Marcy remembered, though there were a lot more cattle and horses. Uncle Ed explained that he was keeping his heifer calves and breeding them to his three bulls when they were old enough in order to increase his herd.

"I'm about where I want to be now. I have about a hundred calves every spring that I send to a feed lot over in Torrington as soon as they can eat on their own. They pay the bills right now, but I'm working on my horses too. There's a market for good trail horses for working stock as well as for people who just like riding through the country for a day.

"I started with two registered quarter horse mares and bred them to a registered quarter horse stallion over in Cheyenne. The foals were nice, but they were too tall for a good trail horse. People have bred quarter horses with thoroughbreds to up the size and speed over the years. They got size and speed, but they lost some of the qualities that made them great range horses.

I wanted smaller horses with good hooves for riding over rocky ground and horses that can live on grass if they have to, so I bought another four quarter horse mares that were the smallest mares I could find. Their foals sold OK, but they were still too tall.

"What I decided to do was cross my mares with a mustang stallion. Mustangs have hard hooves and they can tackle about any terrain and they can live off the land. They're also smaller than my mares, so I hoped the foals would get the mustang's size and hooves and the mother's temperament. That's what Rex says -- the body comes from the stud, the temper comes from the mare.

Took me two years to find the stud I was looking for, but I got him last week. He's a two-year-old from the BLM Sulphur Springs herd. He'll be ready to breed this spring. Wanna see him?"

When they walked up to the pen beside the stable, there was a man wearing jeans, a chambray shirt, cowboy boots, and a battered looking cowboy hat standing there with his right foot resting on a rail of the pen. Uncle Ed yelled, "Hey Rex. I want you to meet somebody".

When they walked up to Rex, he touched the brim of his hat and said "Ma'am".

Uncle Ed patted Marcy on the shoulder.

"Rex, this is my niece from Laramie, Marcy Jackson. She's gonna stay with us for a while and take care of those calves for us. Marcy, this is Rex Bourne. He's my horse guy. Been around horses all his life and knows 'em inside and out."

Uncle Ed looked at Rex then.

"You have any luck yet?"

Rex shook his head.

"Nope. He's wild as a bull elk and not afraid of anything. Tried to get in there with him and had to climb back over the fence to keep from getting' bit."

Uncle Ed sighed.

"Well, leave him be. He's only been here a few days. He'll settle down after a while I expect. He eatin' OK?"

Rex smiled.

"Yeah. Ain't nothin' wrong with him except he hates people. I suppose he'll breed your mares but I wouldn't count on much else. Some of these mustangs never take to bein' tamed."

Marcy looked at the stallion standing at the far end of the pen. He was as black as the night, his heavy mane draped almost to his knees, and his tail brushed the ground when he walked. She could see the cords of muscles ripple under his sleek, shining coat. Marcy didn't know anything about horses, but she thought this horse was beautiful. She asked Uncle Ed what the horse's name was. He chuckled.

"He doesn't have one yet. I thought I'd wait to see what he's like before I named him. Looks like he'll just be a black horse for a while longer. Pretty though, isn't he?"

Marcy went to bed that night knowing she'd made the right decision. Her uncle hadn't tried to console her about her face. He'd just accepted what had happened and told her she was still the same Marcy. She wasn't sure what Rex thought of her. He didn't seem to talk much, but at least when he'd looked at her, his face wasn't a face of pity.

The next morning, Uncle Ed knocked on Marcy's door.

"Marcy, it's five. Time to rise and shine. Breakfast is in about half an hour."

Marcy was already up, had washed her face, and then dressed in jeans and a snug top. She walked into the kitchen just as Uncle Ed was dropping bacon into a frying pan. He turned when he heard her.

"Ah, didn't figure you'd be up yet. I'll have bacon and eggs and potatoes in a little bit. Cups are in the cabinet over the sink and coffee's in the pot."

Rex joined them a little later and they ate breakfast around the kitchen table. There wasn't much talk. There was a lot of work to do so it was important to get started as soon as there was enough daylight to see by.

Uncle Ed pushed back his chair when Marcy finished eating.

"Let's go to the barn and I'll show you how to feed the calves. They'll need feeding every morning about seven, again right after noon, and then about six every night."

Marcy said she'd wash the dishes first, but Uncle Ed laughed.

"Don't worry about the dishes. I just put 'em in the sink and let 'em soak 'til lunch. Then we use 'em again. Let's go get to those calves."

Uncle Ed took Marcy to a room inside the barn with a double sink and picked up a bucket. While both sinks filled with water, he explained what he was doing.

"Marcy, I leave the dishes to soak in the sink, but calves are different than people. The first thing you do before you feed them is wash everything with anti-bacterial soap and water and then rinse it twice. Calves as young as these get scours pretty easy if they get the wrong bacteria. If they get scours -- that's like diarrhea in people - they can go down really fast, so everything has to be clean."

Uncle Ed shut off the water, measured out a cup of anti-bacterial soap, and poured it into the first sink. Then, he used a brush to carefully wash a large, stainless steel bucket, a large measuring cup, and a small plastic scoop, and used a round brush to scrub the inside of a funnel, six big plastic bottles and six large rubber nipples. As he washed each item, he dropped it into the second sink. When everything had been scrubbed, he drained the first sink and refilled it with clean water, then rinsed everything again and set them on the counter beside the sink to drain.

"Now, we mix the milk replacer", he said. "This is just like cow's milk except it has a little medication in it to prevent coccidiosis. That a disease caused by a little bug, and it'll take down a calf as quick as the scours."

He filled the big measuring pitcher with water and poured the water into the bucket six times, then added twelve scoops of a white powder from a big bag sitting on the counter.

"This'll make twelve quarts of milk, two quarts for each calf. That's what they get three times a day. Now, we pour it into the bottles, screw on the nipples, and we're ready to feed them."

Uncle Ed put the six bottles into a wire basket with a handle and Marcy followed him as he walked out of the room and to a pen on the side of the barn. Hanging from the side of the pen were six wire racks, one for each bottle. As Uncle Ed put a bottle in a rack, the calves in the pen would all run to that bottle. One would get the nipple in his mouth while the others tried to push him away.

Uncle Ed laughed.

"They're all hungry. Help me get the rest of the bottles in the racks."

When each of the six calves was sucking at a bottle, Uncle Ed said Marcy should stay there until they finished and then take the bottles back to the feed room and wash everything with water.

"They'll eat what they want so some might not finish a bottle, but don't try to save it. Just dump it down the sink. That way one bottle won't contaminate all the others. You'll know when they get done because they'll go outside. The rest of the cows and calves are in a pen beside the calf pen. That's so they can stay with the herd. They grow faster if they can be with other cattle."

He left Marcy alone with the calves then. She sat down on a hay bale next to the calf pen and watched them suckle on the bottles.

She wondered why their mothers weren't feeding them. They were so cute with their gangly legs, big, brown eyes and little tails.