1001 Nights Cast

When Karen rang I knew I had to go into action. I was with my sister at the beach but I kept it to myself. I knew what I had to do. I had known since the first lumps came. As they multiplied I hoped he might be immortal. I called Karen back and asked her to give me a week. This was good. I could sleep on it. Work out what to do and how to do it.

Was my unknowing cowardice, or decision emerging from waves of emotion, relentless as tides? Facing certain death draws on our being. Dealing with unexpected death has a kind of catapult effect. But planning a death has a whole other movement. So I think now. Back then I was thinking about logistics. Where to do it? Who would help? How would I deal with such a large body?

I rang my father. He had known it was coming, he was kind but on the phone he was gruff.

‘Take him to the knackers’.

I gave that short shrift.

Boxer was 17, the same age as my son, Charlie. When they were both six months old my father, Bill, laughed as he swung my precious baby onto the back of the thoroughbred colt. I was half horse, why did I fear? Charlie had already been on the old mare. Flea-bitten, magnificently ugly, rangy, bony, and lumpy, a kind old horse she was. Her colt was bred to win the Cup. Every year there are thousands of them, all bred to win. Only one a year ever does, even less while Makyby Diva races. No punter’s uncertainty there; just staying power and the most effortless, relaxed run I have ever seen.

The dirty roan colt my baby sat on grew. He ran under saddle like a wild horse. So my mother said, and she was right. Both of us rode him and we all loved to gallop: she was the first. She backed and trained him. She was only 59.

I took him on when their Cup dream died. But dreams are faster than horses, fluid fantasies that bypass aging…

He fed those dreams. As a three year old gelding he was a dappled blue roan, muscled like a stallion. Dad went to see him one day and took old Des, the newsagent. When Bill let out a whistle Boxer threw up his head and stared. He took off down the hill bucking and twisting for the sheer joy of it. He whirled through a mob of sheep, scattered them, then herded them before sprinting for his feed. As he came close, for the only known time in his life, he stood on his hind legs and boxed. Bill called him and he slipped his head into the halter, calm, quiet. Des was impressed.

‘Want a share in the horse?’, asked Bill.

‘Not into horses’ said Des.

Three days later Bill went down for his paper. Des says, ‘I’ve been thinking about that horse.’

Des was always the first to pay his monthly share. Straight out of the till. When Des passed away, Boxer was in training for his first race. Des went knowing his horse was set to win the Cup.

And he might have if his vocal cords had been normal, but his were floppy. Boxer was a roarer. He was uncatchable until distance and stress collapsed his airways and he couldn’t breathe. Surgery didn’t help. It would never help.

He came to live with me and had nine years on the most beautiful paddocks in the Southern Highlands. His blue dapples faded each year and the first rusty fleabites appeared. I ignored the lumps in his neck, and hoped his jet black skin might save him from what I knew was happening. Melanoma.

But the black skin was part of it, cells that could not stop producing inky black goo. By the time he was 14 the paddock near me was prime real estate and no home for a horse. He needed daily care—the lumps had to be watched—and I was struggling to find the time. He was filling up with lumps and I was full of shame and guilt. I couldn’t give him those final careful years.

There is no time to tell how I found Karen, so all I will say is that I trusted my instinct that this woman would be a good home. She was. The best. So when she called to say his end was coming, I believed her.

Sue and Stephen said my request to take him to their farm for his final rest was an honour. Stewart the vet had cared for all my animals and he knew the farm. Stephen suggested cremation rather than burial and applied for a fire permit.

I drove down the dirt track, Karen following behind with the float and a bony flea-bitten horse distorted by lumps. I was stabbed by uncertainty. I hadn’t gone to check him after Karen called. We call it euthanasia, mercy killing. But was putting him down just the easy way out?

Creating death is a fearful thing.

The bush out there is beautiful, the farm on the edge of that wild country before the Nattai gorge.

Last rite of passage.

He has two hours of clover, we groom him till his winter coat is pillow stuffing in the yard, and his thoroughbred silky coat returns. His winner’s wreath is in the car, but while he breathes it will only mock him and I will not remember him a fool. His big heart beats slowly and death takes time. Stephen takes his head, helping him down to lie on the logs, a foal again, but paler now. His blue-streaked mane had gone white.

He had a warrior’s send off, deep in a pile of dry eucalypt logs, wreathed for a wedding, a cup winner.

I doused the pile and threw the flame.