II. A little help from a friend
The Stoned Horse Gives Hodegetria a Call
He had retired to a ranch just outside of Amarillo, Texas. There was still a working payphone by a ramshackle but active kind of general store at the cross roads of two Texas farm roads. They sold everything from animal feed to spicy pickles, toilet paper to lined spiral-bound notebooks, propane, fertilizer, cigarettes, malt liquor, and on Saturdays, smoked brisket made by Uncle Jim in an old barrel smoker outside the shop. The popcorn was fresh-ish, and free. The Stoned Horse was not the strangest customer. He rattled a velvet bag full of quarters and dialed up his young protégé on the East Coast. He did this at night, so no curious looks. When the moon was full, he would clip-clop over there and ring that number he had learned by heart to a payphone by the train station in West Concord, MA, which is where his protégé would answer the call. She didn’t get there every month, but he did. A small fidelity after a fairly degenerate career.3
The moonlight rejoiced in the sleek muscled form of the bright-eyed young horse making her easy-going way through the sleeping town. Hodegetria picked up on the first ring, the sound outrageously strident in the silent night. They always paused just a bit before speaking. They liked to feel a spreading mix of anticipation, warmth, a sense of love, the miracle of the other on the line.