Melinda Roth - Mestengo: A Wild Mustang, a Writer on the Run, and the Power of the Unexpected

M ESTENGO

A Wild Mustang, a Writer on the Run, and the Power of the Unexpected

M ELINDA R OTH

Copyright 2013 by Melinda Roth

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed to Globe Pequot Press, Attn: Rights and Permissions Department, PO Box 480, Guilford, CT 06437.

Lyons Press is an imprint of Globe Pequot Press.

All photographs from the personal collection of the author.

Project editor: Tracee Williams

Layout artist: Melissa Evarts

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Roth, Melinda.

Mestengo : a wild mustang, a writer on the run, and the power of the unexpected / Melinda Roth.

pages cm

Summary: Exhausted by her job as a political press secretary, Melinda Roth found the courage to escape. Her goal: a simpler life in rural Illinois that would let her pursue her passion for writing. But then real life intervened. A fire at a neighboring farm and a misinterpreted gesture of kindness transformed her into the reluctant caretaker of a homeless menagerie of animals. Roth, coauthor of the New York Times-bestseller From Baghdad with Love, writes vividly, movingly, and often humorously of the chaos that descended into her life. One of her new tenants was a wild mustang, broken but not bowed, his restless spirit propelling him to escape the fences and pens that enclosed hima far different life than before he was violently captured by a government-sponsored round-up. Ultimately these two fiercely independent characters each provide the catalyst for the others life-changing and life-affirming decisions. Mestengo is a captivating, emotional account that taps into readers love of animals: Marley and Me meets The Horse Whisperer. An entertaining and delightful read, it is a cinematic, sometimes tense, but always beautiful story of the power of healing Provided by publisher.

E-ISBN 978-1-4930-0070-8

1. MustangIllinois. 2. Roth, Melinda. 3. Human-animal relationshipsIllinois. 4. Farm lifeIllinois. 5. Mental healingCase studies. 6. Life change eventsCase studies. 7. Career changesCase studies. I. Title.

SF293.M9R68 2013

636.1'309773dc23

2013016669

Dedicated to Alicia, Jacob, Sarah, Adam, and Vivien, who may very well inherit all of the animals some day.

Prologue

The stallion paced through the snow in the front yard and snorted threats that jetted sulfuric clouds from his nostrils. At the end of each lap, which spanned the length of the front porch, he pawed the ground, arched his neck, and shook his head with the apparent intent of extracting revenge for every injustice done to any wild horse that ever roamed the plains and ended up stuck on a farm in the northern Midwest with a middle-aged woman who didnt like horses and was late for work.

I peered around the edge of the living room curtain and pulled it up to just below my eyes so he couldnt see my face. As the stallion carved his warpath through the snow, a gust of wind lifted his mane and exposed the government tattoo on his neck, which legally branded him my captive, and his eyes, which expressed independent notions to the contrary. On many occasions over the past several months I told him he was free to leave, Take our road south to the next road, turn west, and keep going until you reach Montana. But for some reason, perhaps as part of his grand plan of vengeance against the Bureau of Land Managements Wild Mustang Relocation Program, or because thered be no one to feed him along the way, the Mustang stayed.

I have nothing to do with the Bureau of Land Management, I whispered to him after reading a book about horse whisperers. I am innocent. But the Mustang curled his upper lip in disgust, and when he realized I had no peppermints, took a swipe at my scalp as well.

I lowered the curtain away from my eyes as another blast of wind roared in from across the northern fields and bullied an old metal bell once used to call in men for dinner that now clanged like a helpless idiot.

In the few short months Id lived on the farm, Id grown to hate the bell, which every visitor felt compelled to pull and, which when pulled sent sledgehammer-against-oil-drum clangs across the entire county. Just the week before, when the FedEx driver delivered two books, Horses for Dummies and Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, and pulled the bells chain to announce his presence, I yanked a piece of paper out of the computer printer, grabbed a tube of lipstick, and scratched do not touch in big red letters followed by a gruesome smiley face with an upside-down, zigzagged smile. I duct-taped the sign to the bells chain.

That might have solved at least one of my problems had not that mornings windthe one that now blew cyclones of snow dust up and around the Mustangs pacing legsripped the sign off the chain, duct tape and all, and flung it straight onto the stallions side rump, where it stuck: do not touch followed by a lurid smiley face. I didnt need Secrets of the Horse Whisperers to interpret his point.

Had I the luxury, Id just wait it out, wait for a cat or a snowmobiler or a lost driver looking for directions upon whom he could vent his rage, but Id clocked in late to my new job five of the twelve days Id worked there and had no coherent excuses left. I was out of time.

I tiptoed to the front door window to scope things out from a different perspective, but when the Mustang saw my face through the glass, he trotted to the foot of the porch steps, where he stood and stared back up at me. Slowly, methodically, never taking his eyes from the door and apparently oblivious to the smiley face stuck to his butt, he pawed a hole in the snow with his hoof.

What did he want from me anyway?

Maybe he was just after Dustin, whom Id turn over gladly. But my sons best friendan aeronautical engineering studentwas cocooned upstairs in a world of logarithms, correlations, and exponential probabilities (video poker) and wouldnt hear me if I called. Besides, even though he took thirty-minute showers, spent precious workable hours on the phone with his girlfriend, and had no apparent aptitude for shoveling snow, repairing fences, or hauling horse manure to the ever-growing muck pile, which he referred to as the equine excrement mass, I couldnt very well sacrifice him to the animal on the lawn without guilt of the heavy scale-tipping type plaguing me for the rest of my life.

Through the frost on the glass I saw the garage where my car sat and the fifty yards of unplowed snow between it and me. Even if Dustin had cleared a path with the ergonomic, cushioned-grip snow shovel I bought at Farm & Fleet instead of sprinkling salt pellets (which he claimed worked just as well as shoveling, because they helped the snow reach its freezing point depression more quickly by changing its colligative properties but which in reality sank in the twelve inches of snow like lead bombs and did nothing), I still couldnt outrun the stallion to the garage.

I couldnt outrun him. I could, however, outthink him. At least thats what the complex and growing thickets of horse whispering, horse training, and horse management booksstrewn across the kitchen table and living room floor like self-help books after a bad breakupsaid. Horses have hooves, but people have brains. Thats what they said. So all I had to do was... think of something.