Dad was greeting visitors in the front yard when Kawliga came flying up the gravel road with Ricky aboard yelling,“Whoa! Whoa! Stop, horse!” but Kawliga had the bit in his teeth and hit the wet grass at full speed. From there, it looked like a combination of ice skating and plowing as Kawliga slipped this way and that, hooves cutting deep furrows in the yard. After throwing up a significant amount of turf, Kawliga slid to a stop and snorted.
(Over my objections, my sister Ronda got to ride him once and Kawliga came back without her, the saddle dangling under his belly. I took quite a whipping for that one because Daddy had it in his mind that I had purposely cinched the saddle too loosely. He was wrong, but that’s another story.)
Jim Fitzgerald, the church member who sold us the horse, claimed Kawliga was scrawny because all “Choctaw” ponies were like that, and I bragged in Ag class at Lee Road School about having a horse from that unique breed. Keith Sharp and his buddies laughed and said there was no such thing.
“Not only is he a Choctaw pony, but he’s faster than any horse y’all have!”
“Then how ‘bout a race?” said Keith.
I never shrank from a challenge. “Any time,” I said. “And let’s do it for money. How about fifty cents to enter and the winner takes all?”
I had tried the fifty-cent routine before: after practicing with a fiberglass bow from Christmas ‘til midsummer, I organized an archery tournament on the first day of Youth Camp—fifty cents to enter, winner-take-all. I felt a little guilty for being such an expert, knowing I was about to take the money of my Shepherd’s Fold friends as well as from other preacher’s sons from around the state; but, hey, fifty cents was all I had to spend for the week at camp and I needed to supplement those funds if I was going to buy a girl a coke or a snow-cone every day.
Alas, I got off a bad shot and lost my money, so I spent the week with zero funds and bought zero refreshments for the girls.
I rode bareback the day I took Kawliga to race the quarter horses, thinking the less weight the better our chances. Keith and his posse met me on Lee Road and we decided to race on the grassy shoulder between a pasture fence and the ditch. The other boys said disrespectful things about my wiry “Choctaw” pony and, truth be known, he did look puny beside their hefty quarter horses. We appointed one boy to hold the money and soon enough we had our race… which was over in about the time it took me to lean forward and kick Kawliga in the ribs. I never saw anything on four legs move as fast as those real quarter horses! This put my friends from Ag in a great mood and lots of laughter and jawing ensued.
The only excuse I could think of was that I was bareback and the other boys had saddles. One jump and they were up to speed, but bareback, a leap like that would have put me in the dirt. Yeah, that must have been the reason.
The next time I raced, everything was equal. Richie Maklary was bareback on his cousin’s mare Lucky and I was bareback on Kawliga. All I remember about that one was: A. My daddy told me not to run the horse on the blacktop. B. Richie said, “Let’s race on the blacktop!” C. I could have paid attention to my daddy or to Richie, but –Lord, help me!—I chose Richie.
The next thing I remember, I was lying on Lee Road and I must have been there a while because traffic was backed up in both directions. A stranger was kneeling beside me asking if I was all right. Another man was holding Kawliga’s reins and the horse was bleeding from scratches on the side that he had slid on after falling. One of my shoes was twenty feet down the road, a layer of skin from my face was apparently embedded in the pavement between where I’d hit face-first and where I stopped sliding. There was a knot on my head the size of an egg. And my right knee was busted, (which later kept me from being drafted.)
That evening, before limping in for supper, I put on a stocking cap and pulled it down to cover the part of my face where the skin was missing. Dad took one look and said, “Boy, what’s wrong with you? Take off that cap!”
I said, “I’m cold.”
Mother said, “In this heat? Good Lord!”
Daddy snatched the cap off my head. “Great day in the morning! What happened to you?”
I looked him right in the eyes and said, “I bumped my head on a cabinet in the church kitchen.”
He tried to get the truth out of me, but that was never easy.
Later, when he saw where the hide had been skinned off Kawliga’s shoulder and flank, he said, “What happened to the horse?”
I had to think fast. “Well, when I was in the church kitchen where I hit my head, I left Kawliga tied out back and he scratched himself in the bushes.”
I could always come up with logical excuses like that.
