Thad DeVassie

In my melancholy, I brushed the hair of an orphaned horse with a horsehair brush, getting melodically lost in the monotonous rhythm, the repetition. She looked at me and said, Mother? I said No, my name is Gordon, but I knew what she meant, and I think she knew I knew, too. When I was through, her long top-hairs were shiny and straight, the equine version of country icon Crystal Gayle’s waterfalling mane. I wondered if Crystal had a mother, or a Gordon, who brushed her mane until it sparkled. The horse told me that my horsehair brush was meant for a shoe-shine kit, and would I shine her shoes. Who was I to deprive a girl of a glow-up with her kicks? I held her hoof and untied her Chuck Taylor high tops. I assumed, like most girls I once knew, she was ticklish and was careful to avoid stimulating a swift and unannounced kicking. I cleaned the canvas, bedazzled those beauties with sequins along Chuck’s signature, which also made that Converse star—pop! She kept looking down at her bedazzling. When I finished and laced up each shoe, she whinnied with a partially deflated basketball in her mouth. Naturally, we played horse by her unspoken rules, and I assumed a posture of defeat. Oh, but how the sun glistened about her flowing mane, and twinkled on the looping consonants on Taylor’s manufactured signature, as she stood there, a tad bit taller than before, chomping on what remained of the basketball.