Ole Sally and the
High-Dollar Hog

It was Sunday morning when it happened. I sat playing at the end of the barn hallway while Reek, our neighbor, done the feeding. He turned the horses out of their stalls. They milled around as always at the far end of the hallway. I was picking up my wooden cars when I heard a noise.

In place of wandering out into the pasture, like they all ways had, the horses charged down the hallway straight toward me! The hard clay shook under me as their big feet hit the ground. My skin crawled, but I couldn’t get the rest of me to move.

"Lay low, Little Bit!" Reek hollered, once he saw what was about to take place.

Reek lives a quarter mile up the road from our house and works with Dad when he not hunting or fishing. He spends a part of every day at our house. Mama says it’s because he lives alone. I figure the fact that he’s a hardy eater and she is a great cook is why he takes at least one meal with us every day.

I can tell that Reek is somewhat older than Dad but nobody knows just how old he is. He don’t know when his birthday is. Fire burned their family Bible before the war. He gives what every date comes to his mind when someone asks him. Sometimes they are as much as ten years apart. This bothers Mama some from time to time. I figured out, Reek, he don’t know and he could care less about the whole matter.

"When and where was Reek born?" I said to Dad while he sharpened the mowing blade one morning.

"There ain’t no telling," was the only answer I ever got.

I fell on my face and started to cry. At first I tried to crawl out of the way, but my legs trembled so, seemed like they wouldn’t move me. The horses’ feet hammered; the ground shook and the noise grew until it sounded like rolling thunder. Clay dirt clods stung my back as the horses kicked it ahead of them, I knew I was going to get hurt.

I covered up my head with my hands and waited; my sides heaved. They looked big as circus elephants coming down the hallway toward me. A big gray mare led the way. About five feet before her feet hit me, she jumped and sailed out into the barnyard. The others jumped when they reached the same spot, like sheep over a fence. I watched out of the corner of my eye. Being so close together they couldn’t see me. They only jumped as they came to the place where the gray mare had.

"Shaw, shaw. Boy!" Reek jerked me to my feet seconds after the last horse sailed out into the barnyard. "Glory be, glory be."

I was still crying, not able to catch my breath. Reek brushed the dirt and dust off me. The veins on his bald-head stood out like half grown grape-vines.

He grabbed his hat off the ground and fanned my face. "Shaw; that first horse, what saved you, jumped like she did."

I saw the ease come in Reek’s face as I got to my feet. He nor I ever brought up what happened again.