The Confession

Parish

Chapter 4: The Confession

The horse's name is Dex. Short for Dexter, which is the name Marie-Claire's daughter, Lily, gave him when Lily was four and the naming was the child's first act of ownership, the first time she pointed at a thing and called it hers, and the thing she called hers was a quarter horse gelding, bay, fifteen hands, with a white blaze that runs from his forehead to his nose in a line that is not straight but slightly crooked, the crookedness being the thing Lily noticed first, the thing that made her laugh, the thing that made her say: He's like me, Mama, he goes sideways, and the going-sideways was truer than the child knew, because Dex does go sideways, he drifts to the left under saddle, a habit that no amount of training has corrected and that Marie-Claire has stopped trying to correct because the correction would require removing the thing that makes Dex Dex, and Marie-Claire does not remove the things that make things what they are. She has learned this. She has learned this the hard way, which is the only way the parish teaches.

Clem parks the truck on the grass beside Marie-Claire's barn, which is not a barn but a three-sided shed with a tin roof and a dirt floor, the structure sufficient for the purpose, which is shelter for Dex and the three goats and the miscellaneous equipment of a five-acre operation that is not a ranch and not a farm but something between, something the parish produces in abundance, the small property where animals are kept not for profit but for purpose, the purpose being brush clearing in the case of the goats and transportation and companionship in the case of the horse and the daily labor of care in the case of Marie-Claire, who keeps these animals because the keeping is the structure of her days, the feeding and the watering and the mucking and the mending being the skeleton on which she hangs the hours, the hours that would otherwise hang on nothing, the hours of a single mother in a parish where the job market is thin and the support is thinner and the days must be built from the materials at hand, which are: five acres, three goats, one horse, one daughter, and the will to keep going.

She is waiting for Clem when he arrives. She is standing by the shed, holding Dex's lead rope, the horse standing beside her with the patience of a horse that has been held and handled since he was two, the patience that is not natural to horses but is trained into them by the repetition of the holding, the daily contact, the hands on the body, the voice in the ear, the horse learning that the human's touch is not a threat but a fact, a daily fact, like grass and water and the sun.

Lily is at school. Marie-Claire mentions this the way she mentions things that structure her day, not as information but as placement, locating herself in the day's geography, telling Clem where she is in the sequence of the hours: Lily is at school, the goats are in the back pasture, the horse needs his hooves trimmed, the morning is here and the afternoon is coming and the trimming will fill the space between.

Clem gets his hoof tools from the box. The nippers, the rasp, the hoof knife, each in its leather roll, the leather dark with oil and use, the tools worn to the shape of his hands by twenty-eight years of holding them, the handles smooth where his fingers grip and rough where they don't, the tools being the physical record of the work, the way a pen is the record of the writing and a shovel is the record of the digging, the instrument shaped by the use it has been put to.

He starts with the left front. He lifts the hoof. Dex shifts his weight to the other three legs and stands, the standing being the cooperation, the horse's decision to allow the man to hold his foot, the decision being the trust, the trust being the thing that makes the work possible, the horse trusting that the man who holds the hoof will not hurt the hoof, and the man honoring the trust by not hurting the hoof, by trimming carefully, by reading the hoof the way he reads all the bodies he touches, with his fingers, with his eyes, with the knowledge that the body is the text and the text tells the truth.

The hoof is overgrown. Eight weeks since the last trim. The wall has grown past the sole, the toe has lengthened, the heel has contracted slightly, the hoof doing what hooves do when left to themselves, which is to grow, endlessly, the keratin production that does not stop because the horse is not walking on the surfaces that would wear it down, the rocks and the hard ground that wild horses walk on and that domestic horses do not, the domestication producing the dependency, the horse dependent on the man to trim what the horse's body produces, the production being the horse's nature and the trimming being the man's intervention and the intervention being the care.

Clem trims. The nippers bite through the wall. The excess falls in crescents on the dirt floor. He shapes the hoof with the rasp, long strokes, the steel on the keratin making the sound that is the farrier's music, the rhythmic scraping that is the sound of maintenance, of upkeep, of the regular attention that living things require and that the giving of the attention is the definition of care.

Marie-Claire holds the lead rope. She does not need to hold the rope; Dex would stand without being held, would stand on three legs while Clem works on the fourth with the patience that is his nature, or his training, or the place where nature and training have merged into something indistinguishable. But Marie-Claire holds the rope because the holding gives her hands something to do while her mouth does the other thing, the thing that happens when Clem comes, the thing that she does not plan and does not intend and that happens anyway, the way weather happens, the way the river rises, the way the words come out when the space is right and the listener is present and the work provides the cover.

She begins with Lily.

"She's reading now," Marie-Claire said. "Really reading. Not just the words but the stories. She comes home from school and she reads on the porch. Chapter books. She's seven and she's reading chapter books. The librarian — your wife — she gave Lily a library card. Lily carries it in her pocket like it's a credit card. Like it's money. Like it's the most important thing she owns."

Clem files the hoof. He does not look up. The not-looking-up is the practice.

"She asked me about her daddy," Marie-Claire said.

The sentence sits in the air of the shed the way a sentence sits when it is heavy, which is to say it does not float, it does not drift, it lands, and the landing is felt by the man holding the hoof and the woman holding the rope and the horse standing between them, the horse who does not understand the sentence but who understands the shift in the woman's body, the tightening of the rope, the change in the breathing, the horse reading the woman the way the woman reads the child, through the body, through the involuntary signals that the body sends when the heart is working hard.

"She asked me where he is," Marie-Claire said. "And I told her. I told her: He's in Angola. I told her: He's in prison. She asked me why and I told her: Because he hurt people. She asked me: Did he hurt you? And I said: Yes. And she said: Did he hurt me? And I said: No, baby, he didn't hurt you. He was gone before you were born."

Clem sets the left front down. He moves to the right front. He lifts the hoof. The horse shifts. The work continues.

"The gone-before-you-were-born is true," Marie-Claire said. "He went in when I was five months pregnant. The sentencing was in November. Lily was born in February. He's never held her. He's seen pictures. I send pictures. I don't know why I send pictures. I know why I send pictures. I send them because she's his daughter and the being-his-daughter is a fact and the fact doesn't change because the fact is ugly and the ugliness doesn't erase the biology and the biology is Lily, and Lily is beautiful, and the beauty doesn't come from him, or maybe it does, maybe the beauty is the thing the ugliness produced, the way the parish produces beauty, out of the mud and the heat and the history, the beauty that shouldn't be there but is."

The rasp moves along the hoof wall. The sound fills the shed. The sound is the permission, the ambient noise that makes the silence between sentences bearable, the silence that is not empty but full, full of the things Marie-Claire is not saying yet, the things that are gathering behind the things she is saying, the way water gathers behind a levee, building, pressing, waiting for the opening.

"I drive to Angola every third Sunday," she said. "Three hours each way. I take Lily. I take her to visit her father. I've been doing this since she was two months old. I put her in the car seat and I drove three hours and I walked into that visiting room and I put his daughter in front of him and he looked at her and he cried. He cried like I've never seen a man cry. He cried like the crying was the only honest thing he had ever done. And maybe it was. Maybe the crying was the first true thing."

She paused. Clem worked. The hoof took shape under his hands, the excess removed, the balance restored, the hoof becoming what it should be, which is a structure that supports a thousand pounds of horse on an area the size of a coffee cup, the engineering of the hoof being one of the things that convinces Clem, when he allows himself to be convinced, that there is an intelligence in the design of living things that exceeds the intelligence of the beings who study them.

"His name is Terrence," Marie-Claire said. "Terrence Doucet. He's from Jonesville. He was a welder. He was good at it. He built things. He built that," she said, and she pointed at the hay rack on the wall of the shed, a steel rack welded from angle iron, painted black, bolted to the studs, the rack holding a bale of coastal Bermuda in its frame the way a hand holds a book, and the rack was the man's work, the man who built things before he broke things, the man who could weld steel into useful shapes and who could also hit the woman he lived with, the building and the breaking coming from the same hands, the same body, the same man who is now in Angola serving twelve years for aggravated battery and who has served eight of those years and who will be eligible for parole in two more and whose eligibility is the thing that Marie-Claire carries the way Earl carries the grief and Clem carries the confessions, which is to say silently, internally, the weight of the thing pressing on the structure of the days.

"He hit me three times," Marie-Claire said. "Three times. That's what I tell myself. Three times. As if the number matters. As if fewer times is better than more times. As if the measurement of violence is a quantity. It's not. It's a quality. It's the quality of your life after. It's the quality of the fear. It's lying in bed at night and hearing a sound and the sound is nothing, the sound is the house settling or the dog moving or the wind, but the sound is also the footsteps and the voice and the impact, the sound is also the thing that happened, because the thing that happened is always happening, it doesn't stop happening, it just stops being the present tense and becomes the continuous tense, the happening-that-is-always-happening."

Clem set the right front down. He moved around the horse. He placed his hand on the horse's flank, the gesture that tells the horse he is moving to the back, the hand on the body being the communication, the touch that says: I am here, I am behind you, do not kick, the touch that the horse understands the way all animals understand touch, which is as information, pure information, the body's language.

He lifted the left hind. The hoof was dry. He applied the knife first, cleaning out the cleft of the frog, the triangular structure on the bottom of the hoof that acts as a shock absorber, the frog made of softer tissue than the wall, the tissue that needs to be cleaned but not cut, trimmed but not thinned, the balance of the hoof being a balance between structures, the wall and the sole and the frog and the bars, each serving a purpose, each dependent on the others, the hoof being a community of structures the way the parish is a community of people, each necessary, each supporting the others, the failure of any one threatening the whole.

"I go to Angola because Lily needs to know her father," Marie-Claire said. "Not the hitting. Not the thing he did. But the man. The man who welded that hay rack. The man who could fix anything mechanical. The man who taught himself to play guitar from YouTube videos and who played Lily a song the last time we visited, played her something on the guitar they let him have in his cell, played her 'You Are My Sunshine' and Lily sat on my lap and listened and the listening was the purest thing I've seen in that place, the purest thing in a place that is not built for purity."

She stopped. She let the sentence stand. She did not explain the stopping or the standing. She held the rope and the horse stood and Clem worked on the hoof and the shed was quiet except for the rasp and the breathing of the horse and the sound of the goats in the back pasture, the goats doing what goats do, which is exist loudly, the bells on their collars ringing as they moved through the brush, the bells being the sound of the goats' work, the brush clearing that is Marie-Claire's contract with the parish, the parish paying her to clear brush from the right-of-way and the drainage ditches, the goats eating what the parish cannot mow, the goats being the solution to a problem that the parish solved, as Louisiana parishes solve most problems, with the tools available, which in this case are three Boer-cross does with appetites that do not discriminate between the useful and the unwanted, the goats eating it all, the eating being their purpose and their nature and their gift.

"The drive is three hours," Marie-Claire said. "Three hours through central Louisiana. Through the parishes. Concordia to Catahoula to LaSalle to Avoyelles to West Feliciana. I've made the drive so many times I know every curve. I know where the potholes are on Highway 15 north of Jonesville. I know where the speed trap is in Jena. I know where the gas is cheapest, which is the Texaco in Harrisonburg. I know the road the way you know your roads, Dr. Boudreaux. The way you know the parish roads. The way you know where the farms are and where the gates open and where the cattle are. I know the road to Angola the way I know the road to Lily's school. It's a road I drive because the driving is necessary and the necessary is what I do."

Clem trimmed. The hoof-wall crescent fell. The rasp followed. The hoof took its shape.

"He'll be up for parole in two years," Marie-Claire said. "And I don't know what I'll say. I don't know what I'll say to the board. They'll ask me: Do you support his release? And the answer is: I don't know. The answer is: He is my daughter's father and he hit me three times and the hitting changed the shape of my life and the shape of my life is this, this five acres and this horse and these goats and this daughter who reads chapter books and carries a library card in her pocket like it's gold, and the shape is good, the shape is mine, I made this shape, I built it the way he built that hay rack, with my hands, with the materials I had, and the shape does not include him, the shape was built in his absence, the shape requires his absence the way the hoof requires the trimming, the removal of the excess, the cutting away of what does not serve the structure."

She paused again. Clem moved to the last hoof, the right hind. He lifted it. Dex shifted. Marie-Claire steadied him with the rope and her voice, the voice that was the same voice she used for the confession and for the horse, low and even and carrying the particular authority of a woman who has learned to hold things steady, to hold the rope and the child and the life and the fear and the driving and the visiting and the not-forgiving and the not-forgetting and the going-forward, the holding being the skill she has developed, the skill that is not taught but learned, learned in the hours between the hitting and the healing, the hours that are the longest hours, the hours that do not end but only transform, the present tense becoming the continuous tense, the happening becoming the having-happened-and-still-happening.

"I haven't forgiven him," Marie-Claire said. "People tell me I should forgive. The pastor at First Baptist told me that forgiveness is God's instruction. And I said: Pastor, with all due respect, God was not in that kitchen. God was not on that floor. God did not feel what I felt. And if God instructs me to forgive, then God can come to my house and sit at my table and look me in the eye and explain to me what forgiveness means when the man who hit you is the man whose face your daughter wears, and the face is beautiful, and the beauty is the cruelty, because the beauty is his and the beauty is hers and the beauty does not know the difference."

Clem finished the hoof. He set it down. He straightened. His back ached from the bending, the ache that has been building for ten years, the ache that is the cost of the work, the body's invoice for the bending and the lifting and the reaching that the practice requires, and the invoice comes due every evening, in the lower back, in the knees, in the shoulders, the body accounting for its expenditures the way the practice accounts for its, honestly, without negotiation, the body saying: This is what you owe for what you did today, and the payment is pain, and the pain is acceptable, and the acceptability is the vocation.

He walked around Dex. He checked all four hooves. He checked the balance, the way the horse stood, the distribution of weight, the way the legs aligned, the trimming producing a horse that stood square and level, the hooves supporting the body the way the body should be supported, evenly, each hoof carrying its quarter of the weight, the weight being the horse's thousand pounds and also the horse's purpose, which is to carry Marie-Claire and Lily across the five acres and down the parish roads and through the days that the horse does not understand but participates in, the horse's participation being its presence, its willingness to be saddled and ridden and trimmed and held, the willingness that is the horse's gift to the humans who keep it.

"He looks good," Clem said. "Eight weeks is about right. I'll come back in July."

Marie-Claire nodded. She loosened the rope. Dex dropped his head and sniffed the ground, the horse returning to his own concerns, the concerns that are simple and immediate and that do not include the drive to Angola or the parole board or the forgiveness that has not been given, the horse's concerns being grass and water and shade and the presence of the goats whose bells he can hear in the back pasture, the bells being the sound of the place, the place being the five acres that Marie-Claire has made into a life.

She tied Dex to the rail. She walked with Clem to the truck. This was the custom, the same custom as Earl's, the walking of the vet to the truck, the walk that is the transition from the confession to the ordinary, the path between the shed where the words were spoken and the truck that will carry the listener away, the listener who will carry the words the way the truck carries the tools, in a compartment, organized, accessible, carried but not displayed.

Clem wrote the invoice. Hoof trim, one horse, four hooves. The price was what the price was: fifty dollars. The price had not changed in three years because Clem knew what Marie-Claire could pay and the knowing was part of the practice, the adjustment of the fee to the client, the sliding scale that is not listed on the invoice but that exists in the space between what the work costs and what the client can afford and the space is where the veterinarian's compassion lives, in the gap between the value and the price.

Marie-Claire took the invoice. She would pay it at the end of the month, when the parish paid her for the brush clearing, the payment cycle being: the parish pays Marie-Claire, Marie-Claire pays Clem, Clem pays the drug suppliers, the suppliers pay the manufacturers, the money cycling through the economy the way the water cycles through the parish, through the river and the rain and the ground and the wells, the cycling being the system, and the system works because each part of the system does its part, and Marie-Claire's part is the goats and the brush and the five acres and the daughter and the drive to Angola and the holding of the rope while the vet trims the hooves.

"Dr. Boudreaux," she said.

Clem looked at her. He looked at her directly, which he had not done during the trimming, the looking-directly being the thing that happens after the confession, the thing that the listener does to tell the speaker: I heard you, I hold what you said, the holding is safe.

"I don't tell people these things," she said. "I don't tell people about the drive. About Angola. About what he did. People know. This is Concordia Parish. People know everything. But knowing and being told are different things. Being told is — I don't know what being told is. It's something I need to do. While you're here. While you're working. While the horse is standing and you're holding the hoof. It's the only time I can say it. I don't know why. I think it's because you're holding something. You're holding the hoof and the holding is — it makes it safe. The holding makes it safe to say the thing."

Clem nodded. He did not speak. He did not say: I understand. He did not say: You can tell me anything. He did not say the things that a therapist would say or a pastor would say or a friend would say, because Clem was not a therapist or a pastor or a friend. Clem was the veterinarian. Clem was the man who came every eight weeks to trim the horse's hooves and who held the hoof while the woman held the rope and the horse held still and the words came out, and the coming-out of the words was the release, and the release was the service, and the service was not listed on the invoice but it was the reason the invoice existed, the reason Marie-Claire called the vet and the vet came and the hooves were trimmed and the words were spoken and the speaking was the unburdening that the parish does not provide through any other mechanism, because the parish does not have therapists (the nearest one is in Natchez, across the river, and the crossing of the river is a barrier that is not physical but psychological, the river being the boundary between the parish and the outside, and the outside is where you go for things the parish cannot provide, and therapy is one of those things, and the not-providing is the gap that Clem fills, not with therapy but with presence, with the holding of the hoof, with the space that the work creates).

He got in the truck. He started the engine. The refrigerated unit hummed. Marie-Claire stood by the shed with the rope in her hand and the horse beside her and the goats ringing their bells in the back pasture and the five acres spread around her in the May light, the five acres that were hers, that she had made into a life, that she maintained with the goats and the horse and the brush clearing and the child and the drive and the not-forgiving and the getting-up-every-morning, the maintenance being the life, the life being the practice, her practice, as specific and as necessary as Clem's.

He drove out. He turned south on the parish road. Ferriday was ahead. Ferriday and its small-town accumulation of need: the dogs that needed their shots, the cats that needed their fixing, the small animals that the small-animal vet handled but that sometimes came to Clem because the small-animal vet was in Natchez and the bridge was the barrier and Clem was here, in the parish, on the roads, in the truck with the box and the tools and the medications and the space for the words, the space that was as necessary as the medications, the space that the parish needed the way it needed the levee and the roads and the church and the library and the school, the space where the things that could not be said elsewhere could be said, and the saying was the medicine, and the medicine was the practice, and the practice was the truck on the road in the May heat, moving through the parish, carrying the confessions.

Clem drove. The words rode with him. Marie-Claire's words. Earl's words. The words of every farmer and rancher and animal-keeper who had ever stood beside a sick or hurting or aging animal and told the veterinarian the thing they could not tell anyone else, the words accumulating in Clem the way sediment accumulates in the river, layer by layer, year by year, the words settling into him, becoming part of him, the way the river's sediment becomes the land, the words becoming Clem's interior landscape, the flat green floodplain of other people's confessions that Clem carries because carrying is what he does, carrying the tools and the medications and the words, carrying them all with the same care, in the truck that is the practice, on the roads that are the parish, through the days that are the life.

He does not tell Renee the words. He does not tell anyone the words. The words are held in the same place the veterinary knowledge is held, in the hands, in the body, in the accumulated weight of twenty-eight years of listening while working, and the listening is the weight, and the weight is the cost, and the cost is what the practice charges Clem, not in dollars but in the carrying, the daily carrying of the parish's confessions in the body of a man who was trained to heal animals and who has learned, through twenty-eight years of practice, that the healing of the animal and the hearing of the confession are the same act, performed simultaneously, with the same hands, in the same space, the space of the chute or the shed or the barn or the backyard, the space where the animal's vulnerability opens the human's vulnerability and the opening is the confession and the confession is the practice and the practice is the parish and the parish is home.