Broken Dreams and Pony Screams

It was Sunday and raining.

It was April, 1822.

My father was teaching me how to ride a horse through the mud.

He said it was dangerous in New York for a young lady such as myself, being both beautiful and wealthy, not to know how to ride a horse. I might need to escape aggressive, or worse, peasant suitors.

“Father, why does it matter if they have money?” I asked.

“All the working class wants is to steal our money. They just want revenge on us for owning everything,” father grunted.

I disagreed with his sentiment, but to tell him this would get me slapped.

I was riding Winnie and holding Winnie’s reigns to tight from fear of falling off.

We had to turn left, and my father told me to losen up on the reigns so I could tug on them in the direction I wanted to go.

I couldn’t. Fear had a strong grip.

I jerked left with a grip too tight which choked the horse and cause it to jump. When it landed, it knocked my father off his horse.

He died instantly.

From that moment on, I hated horses. I refused to ride one, and when I needed to travel far, I hired a stage coach to take me.

My father left me his hotel business with clear instructions to give it to my husband if and when I was able to find a proper ‘wealthy’ suitor. He wanted to make sure it was ‘managed’ properly.

Men thought they knew everything.

That wasn’t going to happen. If I got married, my husband would never see my fathers will. The hotels would be mine until I left them to my daughter.

He also left the his house to me.

As judgmental of women as he was, I still loved him enough not to want to see him dead. I still hated horses.

I converted the property to a horse and cow meat processing plant, but labeled everything beef. People didn’t need to know what kind of beef.

The horse that kicked my father to death was the first I slaughtered and sold.

This continued until I ran out of horses. I felt better and decided just to run the hotel business for a while.

I went inside and read until I was tired.

I fell asleep and had a nightmare about my father falling off his horse and dying.

I woke up in the morning still angry. I needed to kill another horse. A horse with a pony. I needed to make the pony watch as its father is killed, just like I had to.

I bought a horse and pony.

I bought a sire and it’s child. I brought them to the slaughter house.

I didn’t think to tie the pony up before killing the sire.

Right before I had the chance to kill the sire, the pony pushed me into the meat grinder.

I’d be in the next burger served at my own hotel.