I had a friend who could talk to animals, and one day he came out to the stable to see me. I was sitting in the pasture with Rowdy while he grazed. My friend told me to walk away, then he said something in Rowdy’s ear. After that, Rowdy started following me like a dog.

He never does that, I said. What did you say to him?

I asked him if he loves you, my friend said.

A few months after Rowdy passed, Bruce Wexford brought home a little mustang he’d bought from a rodeo sale in Minnesota. Chico was in such bad shape we had to have a petition about whether he could live at the stable. He’d just gotten out of quarantine in Mexico, and then he got the strangles. He was skin and bones and really scarred up — tattooed all over.

I ended up buying him from Bruce. I worked with him when I wasn’t at the factory. I got some weight on him, some calm.

ELEVEN

MISTER BAKER

Pretty soon I met a guy and he seemed all right. I thought he was great because he liked to camp, he liked the outdoors. I moved out of my folks’ house and rented a little apartment with him. But then he started acting weirder and weirder, and when I’d had enough I told him I was leaving. It’s not over until I say it’s over, he told me, and the next day he tried to kill me in the tack room at Bruce’s stable.

He came up behind me while I was cleaning Chico’s bridle. He knocked me down, sat on my chest, put a rope around my neck. He squeezed it tighter and tighter and when I’d almost blacked out, he loosened up and let me breathe a little. He was always talking about how much he missed his mother — she died when he was a kid. I was gurgling blood but I said, Your mom, what would she think? That snapped him out of it. He dropped the rope, jumped on his bike, took off.

I was still lying on the ground when Bruce came wheeling in. My eyes were red and I had rope marks on my neck, bruises starting. Bruce said, What in the hell?

At the police station they took pictures of my injuries. I gave them the guy’s name, his description. They found him that afternoon and put him in jail. But at the factory the next day, a woman from the police department called on my lunch hour. This is just to let you know that Mr. Baker — Mister Baker — has been released, she said.