by Jack Boettcher
This is how I like to imagine it: all day through the thicket, then the road forked before a sourgum. Each frontiersman carved his aliases and affections into the soft bark. Then the men took the leftward path, which bottomed out at a lake rimmed with piney hills. They bivouacked on the shore. They wrote letters to their wives, which they signed with only their given names. The letters would have bored you; they invoked the clarity of the stars in the wilderness, the constant attacks of the marauders. The men combed the thicket’s burrs from their scalps with blistered hands. They drank a lot and swam in the lake at night. They were going to hang this horse that had deserted its rider during the attacks by the marauders. They were going to hang this horse, but just as they finished tying the noose a man walked into camp, hand on his holster, cartooned scowl on his face. “Got a message from the governor,” the man said. “Better not touch that horse.”
However it really happened, we know that an outraged frontiersman wrote to the governor. The governor hadn’t sent the messenger, but he must have loved the guy’s bluster. We townies all knew that it was J.R. Herrin who’d defended the missing horse, and that our tax dollars had not been allocated to increased security at the state asylum. But the frontiersmen were of another generation. They didn’t know J.R or his many delusions. They’d been at the frontier for years now, hunting for a people to subjugate.
The governor was likewise out of touch, though still with us. The governor officially pardoned the horse with a stamp and a golden seal. State media reported that J.R. and the horse would now lead the expedition for a people to subjugate. I bet the governor felt great sending that message to the frontier of the known world. I bet the governor liked to say “better not touch that horse” in front of his bathroom mirror while shaping his hands into pistols, because then he decided to use this phrase as the official slogan for his reelection campaign.
He received fourteen percent of the vote. This was not unexpected. He had bullied his way into the first term. There had been a bloodless coup.
But a year or two later he continued to make frequent public appearances, ranting for hours about the horse, at stagecoaches and way stations, at town halls and saloons, before the church and the legislature - he became this cult celebrity – always punctuating every few minutes of his impassioned rhetoric with “better – not – touch – that – horse!” Huge crowds chanted along with him. The meaning broadened. Every horse was safe now. We even dismantled the gallows and stopped shooting each other in the street over minor squabbles.
Nowadays you hear people say that J.R., the governor, or maybe even the horse transformed our republic. That we became a gentler, more forgiving people. But I’m not sure. We’re still looking for a people to subjugate. And I should know: that horse was my horse. Nobody believes it, but it’s true – I sent him out there either to die or save us all.
