The Cruelty Case

Parish

Chapter 13: The Cruelty Case

The call comes from Arceneaux at 7:30 on a Tuesday morning. Arceneaux does not announce himself because Arceneaux does not need to announce himself, the voice being the announcement, the voice that Clem has known for fourteen years, the voice of a man who shares the parish's darknesses the way two men share a jurisdiction, the sharing being the bond, the bond forged not in friendship but in the mutual witnessing of the things that the parish produces when the producing goes wrong.

"I need you to come look at a horse," Arceneaux said. "Out past Monterey. The Daigle property. We got a complaint."

The complaint. The word that Arceneaux uses for the calls that are not about traffic stops or domestic disturbances or the ordinary violations that a deputy handles in the course of a shift, but about animals, the calls that come from neighbors who have seen something, who have looked over a fence or driven past a property and seen an animal that does not look right, the not-right being visible even to the untrained eye when the not-right has progressed far enough, when the ribs are visible and the coat is dull and the animal stands in a posture that is not the posture of health but the posture of endurance, the animal enduring what should not need to be endured.

Clem knows the Daigle property. He knows Leon Daigle. He treated Leon's horses five years ago — two quarter horses, a mare and a gelding, both in good condition, both maintained by a man who knew what he was doing, a man who had kept horses for twenty years and who understood the daily requirements, the feed and the water and the hoof care and the deworming and the dentistry and the vaccinations, the requirements being the care that the animal depends on and that the owner provides and the providing is the contract, the unspoken contract between a man and the animals in his charge, the contract that says: I will give you what you need because you cannot get it for yourself, and the giving is the ownership, and the ownership is the responsibility.

Leon Daigle's wife left him three years ago. Clem knows this the way the parish knows everything, through the network of knowledge that is not gossip but information, the information circulating through the feed store and the co-op and the church parking lot and the library, the circulation being the parish's nervous system, the system that transmits the news of who has left whom and who has lost what and who is struggling and who is not, the transmission being constant, the parish knowing itself the way a body knows itself, through the signals, through the pain.

Leon's wife left and Leon lost his job at the paper mill in Jonesville six months later, the two losses arriving in the sequence that losses arrive, one producing the conditions for the next, the leaving producing the drinking and the drinking producing the absence and the absence producing the termination, the termination letter arriving at the house that was already empty of the wife and that became, with the termination, empty of the purpose, the purpose being the work, the work being the thing that organized Leon's days, and the days without work became the days without structure, and the days without structure became the days without care, and the days without care became the days that produced the complaint, the complaint being the visible end of the invisible process, the process being: a man loses the things that held him together and the things that depended on the man for holding begin to fall apart, and the falling-apart is visible in the body of the horse that stands in the pasture behind the house that the wife left and the job could not pay for and the man cannot maintain.

Clem drives out to the Daigle property. Arceneaux is already there, his cruiser parked on the shoulder of the parish road, the cruiser being the law's presence, the presence that is necessary because the complaint is a legal matter, the legal matter being: Louisiana Revised Statute 14:102.1, cruelty to animals, the statute that criminalizes the intentional or criminally negligent mistreatment of animals, the statute that Clem has testified under a dozen times in his career, his testimony being the veterinary assessment that the court requires, the assessment that translates the animal's condition into the language that the law understands, the language of numbers and measurements and clinical terms, the language that is not the language of grief but that is, in this case, describing the products of grief.

They walk to the fence. The property is ten acres, fenced with barbed wire that is sagging in places, the sagging being another sign, the fence that a man who is functioning maintains and that a man who is not functioning does not, the fence's condition being the man's condition made visible in the infrastructure, the way the roads' condition is the parish's condition made visible, the maintenance or the absence of maintenance being the signal, the signal that Arceneaux read when he drove past the property and that the neighbor read when the neighbor called, the signal being: Something is wrong here, and the something is not just the fence.

The horse is in the far corner of the pasture. The gelding. The quarter horse that Clem treated five years ago when the gelding was in good condition, when the body score was 5 or 6 on a scale of 9, the middle range, the healthy range, the range that says: This horse is fed and maintained and cared for. The horse that stands in the far corner now is not in the middle range.

Clem can see the ribs from the fence. This is the first assessment, the visual assessment that does not require proximity or instruments or clinical training, the assessment that anyone can make, which is: That horse is thin. The ribs are visible. The hip bones are prominent. The spine is visible along the topline. The horse is thin in the way that a horse is thin when the horse has not been fed adequately for weeks or months, the thinness being the accumulation of the deficit, the daily deficit of calories that the body needed and did not receive and that the body made up for by consuming itself, the body eating its own fat and then its own muscle, the auto-consumption being the body's last resort, the body surviving on itself when the outside world does not provide.

They enter the pasture. Arceneaux opens the gate. The gate's hinge is broken, the gate held in place by baling wire, the baling wire again, the parish's universal fastener, the temporary repair that has become the permanent condition.

The horse does not move when they approach. This is another sign. A healthy horse, a horse with energy and alertness, would move, would raise its head, would watch the approaching humans with the vigilance that is the horse's nature, the prey animal's nature, the nature that says: Something is coming, assess the threat, prepare to flee. This horse does not raise its head. This horse stands with its head low, the head at knee level, the low head being the posture of exhaustion or depression or the combination of the two that is the neglected animal's emotional state, the state that is not just physical but psychological, the animal's psyche damaged by the absence of care the way a person's psyche is damaged by the absence of love, the absence producing the withdrawal, the low head, the not-moving.

Clem approaches slowly. He speaks to the horse. The low voice. The steady tone. The voice that he uses for all animals, the voice that says: I am not a threat, I am the opposite of a threat, I am the man who comes when things are wrong, and the coming is not the wrong, the coming is the beginning of the fixing.

He reaches the horse. He places his hand on the horse's neck. The neck is thin. The muscles that should be there — the muscles that give a horse's neck its shape, the brachiocephalicus and the splenius and the trapezius, the muscles that Clem learned in anatomy and that he knows by touch, by the feel of them under the skin — the muscles are diminished, reduced, the reduction visible and palpable, the hand finding less than it should find, the less-than being the deficit made tangible.

He assesses. Body condition score: 2 out of 9. The scale runs from 1 (emaciated, no body fat, skeletal structure fully visible) to 9 (obese). A score of 2 is one step above the bottom. A score of 2 means: The ribs are visible and easily felt. The spine is prominent. The hip bones protrude. There is no palpable fat over the ribs or along the back. The horse's body has consumed its reserves and is beginning to consume its structure, the structure being the muscle, the muscle being the body's last resource before the body begins to fail, and the failing is the next step, the step that the intervention is meant to prevent.

He documents. He takes photographs with his phone, the photographs that will become exhibits if the case goes to court, the photographs that translate the horse's condition into the visual language that a judge or a jury can understand, the language that does not require veterinary training, that requires only eyes, the eyes seeing what Clem's hands have felt, the ribs and the spine and the hip bones and the rain rot on the back, the rain rot being the fungal infection that occurs when a horse's coat remains wet, the coat remaining wet because the horse has no shelter, no barn, no shed, no structure to stand under when the rain comes, and the rain comes frequently in Louisiana, the rain being one of the things the parish has in abundance, the abundance being the problem when the abundance meets the absence, the absence of shelter, the absence of care.

The hooves are overgrown. Clem lifts the right front. The hoof has not been trimmed in months, maybe six months, the wall grown long and curling at the toe, the sole packed with mud and manure, the frog soft and rotting, the thrush — the bacterial infection of the frog — producing the characteristic smell, the smell of decay, the smell that Clem knows the way he knows all the smells of veterinary medicine, each smell being a diagnosis, the nose being the instrument that detects what the eye cannot see.

He documents the hooves. Photographs. Measurements. He measures the toe length with the tape measure from his bag: four and a half inches. Normal toe length for a quarter horse is three to three and a half inches. The extra inch is the growth that the trimming would have removed, the growth that the absence of the farrier allowed, the absence being the neglect, the neglect being the charge, the charge that Arceneaux will file if Clem's assessment supports it.

Clem checks the water. There is a trough in the corner of the pasture. The trough is empty. Not low — empty. Dry. The bottom of the trough shows the sediment of evaporated water, the mineral deposits that mark the water level's decline, the decline being the history, the history of the water supply that was not maintained, the supply that the horse depended on and that the man did not provide, and the not-providing is the neglect, and the neglect is the cruelty, and the cruelty is the law's word for the thing that grief produces when grief is not treated, when grief is left to grow the way the hooves were left to grow, unchecked, un-trimmed, the growth becoming the distortion, the distortion becoming the damage.

He checks the hay. There is a round bale in the pasture, or what was a round bale. The bale has been there for weeks, maybe months. It is black with mold, the mold being the decay of the hay that was once nutrition and that is now waste, the transformation from food to not-food happening through the exposure to the rain and the heat and the time, the time being the enemy of all organic material, the enemy that Clem understands because his work is the fighting of time's effects on living bodies, and the fighting is sometimes successful and sometimes not, and the hay is a case of not, the hay beyond recovery, the nutrition gone, the bale a monument to the feeding that did not happen.

"Body score two," Clem said to Arceneaux. "Rain rot. Overgrown hooves with thrush. No water in the trough. No viable hay. This horse has been neglected for a significant period. Weeks at minimum. Probably longer."

Arceneaux writes it in his notebook. Arceneaux's notebook is like Earl's notebook, spiral-bound, but Arceneaux's notebook is the law's record, the record that will become the evidence, the evidence that will support the charge, the charge that will bring Leon Daigle before the judge, the judge who will hear Clem's testimony and see Clem's photographs and read Clem's written assessment and will decide what the law decides, which is: guilty or not guilty, and the guilty is the consequence and the not-guilty is the absence of consequence and the consequence or its absence is the system's answer to the question that the horse's body poses, which is: Was this wrong?

"I know Leon," Clem said.

Arceneaux looked at him. The look was the look of a man who also knows Leon, who knows most of the people in the parish, who has dealt with most of them in the professional capacity that brings a deputy into contact with the parish's darknesses, the darknesses that are the domestic disturbances and the DUIs and the drug cases and the property crimes and the animal cases, the cases that are the parish's shadow life, the life that happens behind the surface, behind the flat green fields and the gravel roads and the churches and the library, the shadow life that Arceneaux polices and that Clem witnesses and that the policing and the witnessing are the two forms of the parish's response to its own shadow.

"I know," Arceneaux said.

The knowing was not a plan. The knowing was the acknowledgment. The acknowledgment that Leon Daigle is not a bad man. The acknowledgment that Leon Daigle once kept good horses and fed them well and trimmed their hooves and maintained his fences and worked at the paper mill and was married and was, by the parish's measure, a man who was doing what a man does, which is: maintaining the things in his care, the wife and the horses and the property and the job, the maintaining being the life.

And the maintaining stopped. The maintaining stopped when the wife left, or when the job ended, or when the drinking started, or at the intersection of all three, the intersection being the place where the maintaining becomes the not-maintaining and the not-maintaining becomes the neglect and the neglect becomes the cruelty, and the cruelty is not the intention, the cruelty is the result, the result of a man who lost the thread that held his life together and the losing of the thread produced the losing of everything the thread held, including the care of the horse that stands in the far corner of the pasture with its head low and its ribs showing and its hooves curling and its water trough empty.

Neglect is not cruelty in its origin. Neglect is grief made visible.

Clem writes his assessment. He sits in the truck and writes it on the clipboard, on the form that the parish provides for veterinary assessments in animal cruelty cases, the form that has blanks for the animal's species and breed and age and sex and body condition score and the observed conditions and the veterinarian's opinion regarding the animal's welfare, the blanks that Clem fills in with the handwriting that is the handwriting of a man who has filled in a thousand forms and whose handwriting has been shaped by the filling-in, the letters compact and clear and practical, the handwriting of a man who writes not for beauty but for the record.

Species: Equine. Breed: Quarter Horse. Age: Approximately 15 years. Sex: Gelding. Body Condition Score: 2/9. Observed Conditions: Emaciation. Rain rot (dermatophilosis), dorsal surface. Overgrown hooves, all four, with thrush. No water available. No viable feed available. No shelter available.

Veterinary Opinion: This animal has been subjected to prolonged neglect resulting in emaciation, dermatological disease, and hoof pathology. The absence of water, feed, and shelter constitutes a failure to provide the basic necessities of animal care. The animal's condition is consistent with weeks to months of inadequate care. Immediate intervention is recommended, including removal of the animal from the current situation, nutritional rehabilitation, veterinary treatment for the observed conditions, and hoof care.

He signs the form. He dates it. He gives it to Arceneaux. The giving of the form is the giving of the evidence, the evidence that will become the case, the case that will become the charge, the charge that will become the hearing or the trial, and Clem will testify, will sit in the witness chair in the Concordia Parish courthouse and will state, under oath, what he observed and what he assessed and what his professional opinion is regarding the welfare of the horse, and the stating will be clear and factual and without emotion, because the emotion is not the testimony's purpose, the testimony's purpose is the fact, and the fact is: This horse was neglected, and the neglecting caused suffering.

The emotion is separate. The emotion is what Clem carries in the space that is not the witness chair, the space that is the truck, the roads, the evening on the porch, the space where the professional assessment becomes the personal response, and the personal response is: I know this man. I treated his horses when his horses were healthy. I saw the horses when the horses reflected the man's care, the care that the man provided when the man was whole, and the man is not whole now, and the not-whole produced the not-care, and the not-care produced the suffering, and the suffering is in the horse's body the way the grief is in the man's body, and the two bodies are connected, the man's grief and the horse's suffering being the same thing expressed in two different bodies, the expression being the damage.

Arceneaux drives to the Daigle house. Clem follows. The house is a single-wide trailer on a concrete slab, the trailer showing the same signs as the pasture, the same neglect, the same withdrawal of care, the yard unmowed, the porch cluttered, the screen door hanging by one hinge, the hinge being the detail that Clem notices, the detail that is the metaphor if you want a metaphor but that is also just a hinge, a broken hinge on a screen door on a trailer on a property where a man lives alone and does not fix things because the fixing requires the will and the will requires the hope and the hope is the thing that grief consumes first.

Leon is home. He comes to the door. He is fifty-two but looks older, the looking-older being the grief's aging, the face showing the years that the grief has added, the years that are not calendar years but damage years, the years measured in loss. He is wearing a t-shirt and jeans and no shoes and he looks at Arceneaux and then at Clem and the looking at Clem produces the recognition, the recognition that the veterinarian is here, the veterinarian who treated his horses when his horses were treated, and the recognition produces the knowing, and the knowing is: This is about the horse.

Arceneaux tells him about the complaint. Arceneaux tells him what Clem found. Arceneaux tells him the options, which are: Surrender the horse voluntarily to the parish for rehabilitation, or face charges under the statute, the options being the fork in the road, the choice that the law provides and that the man must make.

Leon does not argue. Leon does not protest. Leon does not say: The horse is fine, or: I was going to feed it, or: It's none of your business. Leon says nothing for a long moment, the nothing being the space where the defense would go if there were a defense, and there is no defense because Leon knows what Clem found because Leon has seen what Clem found, has seen the ribs and the hooves and the empty trough, has seen them every day that he has been able to look, which is not every day, because some days the looking is too much, some days the seeing of what you have done by not-doing is the seeing you cannot do, and on those days Leon stays inside and does not look and the not-looking is another form of the neglect, the neglect of the seeing that would produce the caring that would produce the feeding that would produce the health, the chain of care broken at the first link, which is the seeing, which is the looking, which is the thing that grief takes away.

"I'll sign her over," Leon said.

The her. The gelding is a gelding but Leon said her and the her is not the horse, the her is the wife, or the her is the confusion that grief produces, the confusion of the things lost, the wife and the horse and the job and the life blurring in the grief's lens until the pronouns merge and the lost things become one thing and the one thing is the loss.

Clem does not correct the pronoun. Arceneaux does not correct the pronoun. The pronoun stands. The pronoun is the document. The pronoun is the evidence that the court will not see, the evidence that is not in Clem's assessment or in Arceneaux's report, the evidence that is in the man's voice, in the confusion of the her and the him, in the grief that has become so large that it has consumed the language, the language failing the way the care failed, the way the fence sags and the gate hinge breaks and the trough empties, the language one more thing that the grief has neglected.

Clem arranges the horse's transport. He calls the Concordia Parish animal rescue, which is a woman named Cecile Broussard who operates a horse rescue on forty acres outside Vidalia, the rescue being a one-woman operation funded by donations and by Cecile's retirement pension from the post office, the funding being insufficient in the way that all rescue funding is insufficient, the insufficiency being the condition of the work that catches the things that fall through the other systems, the rescue being the net beneath the net, the last net.

Cecile will come with a trailer. She will load the gelding. She will take him to her property. She will feed him — slowly, carefully, the refeeding being a medical process that cannot be rushed, the emaciated body unable to process the full nutrition that it needs, the body's systems diminished by the fasting, the diminishment requiring the gradual rebuilding, the rebuilding being the treatment, the treatment that takes weeks, sometimes months, the time being the cost and the cost being paid by Cecile and by the donations and by the horse's body, the body recovering the way all bodies recover from the damage of neglect, slowly, incrementally, the healing being the reversal of the harm, the reversal requiring the patience that is the opposite of the neglect, the patience being the care.

Clem will treat the rain rot. He will trim the hooves. He will deworm the horse and vaccinate the horse and float the horse's teeth and do the things that should have been done and were not done and that the not-doing produced the condition and the condition is the case and the case is the law's response to the damage that grief does when grief is not treated, when grief is left alone in a single-wide trailer on a property where a horse stands in a pasture with no water and no feed and no shelter and no one coming to provide what the horse cannot provide for itself.

Clem drives away from the Daigle property. Arceneaux drives away. The property is quiet behind them, the trailer and the pasture and the sagging fence and the broken gate hinge, the property being the portrait of the man who lives on it, the portrait that the parish sees and that the parish reads and that the reading produces the complaint and the complaint produces the visit and the visit produces the assessment and the assessment produces the charge and the charge produces the hearing and the hearing produces the sentence, and the sentence is the law's answer, but the law's answer is not the answer, the answer is the thing that should have happened before the complaint, before the assessment, before the ribs were visible and the trough was empty, the thing that should have happened is: someone should have come, someone should have knocked on the trailer's door and said: Leon, are you all right? Leon, do you need help? Leon, the horse is thin and the fence is sagging and the gate hinge is broken and these things are the signs and the signs are saying something and the something is: You are not all right, and the not-all-right is the thing that someone should have seen, should have responded to, should have treated the way Clem treats the pneumonia in Pearl, with the antibiotic and the anti-inflammatory and the holding, the holding of the animal while the medicine goes in.

But no one came. No one knocked. The parish saw the signs and the parish did what the parish does with the signs of a man's decline, which is: wait, which is: respect the privacy, which is: he'll come around, which is the parish's avoidance, the avoidance that is not cruelty but is the parish's version of neglect, the neglect of the neighbor, the neglect of the man behind the sagging fence, the neglect that produced the neglect of the horse, the chain of neglect extending from the parish to the man to the animal, the chain being the system and the system being the failure and the failure being the case that Arceneaux will file and Clem will testify in and the judge will decide.

Clem drives. The parish roads pass beneath the truck. The heat presses down. The heat that is July, that is the condition, that is the force that reveals. The heat revealed Leon Daigle's horse the way it reveals everything, by pressing, by compressing, by making the hidden visible, the visible being the ribs and the hooves and the empty trough, the visible being the evidence, the evidence being the grief.

The grief that is not cruelty. The grief that is not intention. The grief that is the absence of the care that the presence of love provided, the love being the wife and the job and the life that organized the caring, and the love left, and the caring stopped, and the stopping is the neglect, and the neglect is the cruelty, and the cruelty is the law's word for the thing that grief does when no one holds the griever while the grief does its work.

Hold the thing you love while someone else does what needs to be done.

No one held Leon.

Clem drives home. The assessment is on the clipboard. The photographs are on the phone. The evidence is assembled. The case will proceed. The horse will be rescued and rehabilitated and rehomed, probably, the probably being the rescue's hope, and Leon will face the charge, probably, the probably being the law's process, and the judge will decide, and the decision will be the law's answer, and the law's answer will not heal the grief, and the grief will continue, and the continuing of the grief is the thing that the law does not address, because the law addresses the horse's body and not the man's heart, and the horse's body is the evidence and the man's heart is the cause, and the cause is not in the statute, and the statute is what Clem will testify under.

The truck pulls into the driveway. The boots come off on the porch. The evening begins. Renee is in the kitchen. The rice and gravy. The sweet tea. The porch chairs. The ceiling fan. The evening that holds the day's weight, the weight that today includes the image of a horse with its head low and its ribs showing and a man in a trailer who said her when he meant him.

Clem sits on the porch. He does not tell Renee. He carries it. He carries it the way he carries everything the parish gives him, in the space that is his body, in the hands that touched the horse's neck and felt the muscle that should have been there and was not, in the absence of the muscle being the presence of the grief, and the grief is carried, and the carrying is the practice, and the practice is the evening, and the evening deepens, and the parish settles, and the horse is in Cecile's trailer now, on the way to the rescue, on the way to the feed and the water and the care that the horse should have had, and the should-have-had is the past, and the past is not fixable, and the not-fixable is the weight, and the weight is July.