A Recalcitrant Mule

As night advanced, we turned on the porch lights, inside lights, security lights, everything. We wanted the mule to be able to see the ground, in case he decided to leap. He now clattered in skittering circles, agitated at the lead rope. We told our neighbors they should go on home, maybe we could talk about smoothies another time. When things quieted down the mule might step off. That, unfortunately, seemed like a long shot.

As stillness descended the mule’s panic grew. Nothing distracted him now from his predicament. He was hankering for solid ground, sweet grass, pasture-mates.

We had an idea. On the other side of the kitchen was a deck, slightly lower than the breezeway, and perhaps the mule would be better able to navigate those stairs. All we had to do was get him through the kitchen. We thought about that for a long time. Then Raven opened the glass door to the kitchen.

In extreme weather we allow our large hairy dogs inside. We bring in the drooling barn cat. We keep chicks in there in early spring, under a heat lamp, until their stench is unbearable. We warm lambs in the kitchen, feed motherless calves. We bring in kid goats, showing them off to guests.

Never has a full-grown mule been there.

I took the lead now, firmly, and started toward the door. If the mule freaked, I could hang like a dead weight on his rope. But I didn’t need him to freak. We stepped through the glass door, me at mean old Tecumseh’s head, him finally, for once, trusting me, or so it seemed. He put his hooves gingerly onto the pine floor and we started our journey.

Then we were through the door and fully into the kitchen. All we had to do was cross the room and get out one more set of glass doors.

My breathing was shallow. Tecumseh and I crept past a line of stools at a counter. We eased past a spice cabinet, packed with glass vials of cinnamon and cardamom. We lurched past a hand-hewn trestle table, past a woodstove’s glass inset. We tottered past a pottery vase full of thin-stemmed flowers, a shelf of knick-knacks, a line of antique crocks and churns. We eased alongside shelves of Mason jars filled with canned tomatoes and pickles. We tiptoed past a thin-legged buffet, past baby pictures of our children, past the glass-fronted china cabinet with its wine goblets, fluted bowls, salt cellars, gold-edged teacups, butter dishes, and my grandmother’s cow-shaped milk pitcher. The mule and I teetered past crystal so thin it rang like music.

As he followed me, the mule began to tiptoe, as if he could understand that his wasn’t the only trouble. I was in a mess too. He began to hold his breath. He looked at all the delicate and ornate objects around him, things he’d never seen, and he changed. For the first time in his life with me, he abandoned his meanness and his muleness, until I could tell by the way he stayed at my shoulder and the way that he placed each foot precisely and prudently that he too thought that maybe this wasn’t the place for tomfoolery.

We exited the kitchen via two French doors paired on each side with a full-length window of solid glass. I took in a big lungful of air and so did Tecumseh. Together we paused and looked off toward the marsh, where great egrets and wood storks will flower after heavy rains, where the spring choruses of frogs would soon deafen the woods. A leatherwing flapped past, zigzagging for insects. Somewhere in the woods across the dirt road a Chuck-will’s-widow would soon crank up its lonely, incessant call.

Who needs television? I thought.

For some reason I thought then of a recent traffic jam between Atlanta and Macon, miles of vehicles, six lanes of them, stalled, idling, each windshield a screen like a single blind eye and inside the vehicles more screens – a screen for a map, a screen for a phone, a screen for a camera, a screen for a book. Tecumseh and I stood breathing the wild perfume of Carolina jessamine, which blooms in late winter, each yellow blossom a throat, a yellow bugle, a vial, medicinal and omniscient.

But the mule had been misled. He thought that through the doors he’d been free. He was on the deck now, open to the indigo sky but still over two feet off the ground. He began to paw at the decking. He turned and stared inside the kitchen, then started kicking at the windows.

He doesn’t understand glass, Raven said. He thinks he can go through it.

I thought he could too. Cut the inside lights, I yelled to my kid.

Keep him still, Raven said. So I did.

Raven sprinted to the barn and came back on the tractor with full sheets of plywood, which he used to barricade the French doors and windows. Now we could try again to get Tecumseh down. I led him to the stairs. He strained backward against my pressure on his halter. Then he slipped. Miraculously he regained his footing. I pulled harder. The mule heaved and slid, then he went down to the deck with a terrible crash. He struggled back to his feet. He stood wide-eyed, ribs pumping, trapped.

He’s gonna get hurt, like this, Raven said. He swirled off on the tractor and came back with hay and scattered it over the deck. We’d done all we could do. We stood awhile as dusk came on, waiting for some other idea to come to us. None did. Finally, Raven said he was going to bring a bucket of water, which meant that our back deck was going to be Tecumseh’s pen for a while. We’ve done all we can do for tonight, Raven said. The three of us fumbled through chores in the dark, and when we returned from the barnyard, the mule was where we’d left him. He had pooped some.

Afraid to turn on lights, we ate a quick supper and went to bed.

Sleep did not come easily. Next morning when I woke, I didn’t feel my usual gratitude at being alive another day. I remembered instantly what loomed ahead. We could spend hours getting a mule out of our house.

Raven set to work, ignoring breakfast. An idea had come to him in the night. He constructed a ramp from the deck to the lawn, lined it with hay, and went off to the barn. He came back with a pail of sweet feed and placed it at the bottom of the ramp. Now the mule perked up. Molasses was one of his favorite smells. He could hear grains of corn and oats rattling against the galvanized sides of the pail. Raven’s plan was going to succeed, we could see right away. The mule was too interested in sweet feed for it not to work.

I wish I could say Tecumseh walked right down. He didn’t. He gracelessly slid with me at the bottom leaning my entire weight into a lead, Raven curving another rope around his hindquarters, pulling at his butt end. With a big clatter and a grunt, the mule dove for the pail. Finally, after a night in the slammer, he was free, back on solid ground, back in charge.

The kid had to clean the deck, which, in her words, was totally full of poop.

Since this happened to us, I have heard similar stories. Some kids at Reinhardt College got a cow up a set of stairs once, and naturally couldn’t get her down, at least not the normal way. That happened before an elevator was installed in the building. I heard about another kid who brought her pony into the house.

I learned a few things with this incident. You can bring a mule home but that may be all you can do with him. You can lead one to water but you can’t make him drink it from a saucer. Therefore, I have a piece of advice. If you want to add some pizzazz to a day, if you need a little dose of fun and adventure, if you don’t have enough challenge in your life, if things are too virtual, find yourself a mule. Find yourself a set of stairs.