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Goodbye, Horace Peanut
Dream: I ride horses. My horse is dark brown and so fast. I pause at a small house and go inside. Two girls light a candle that makes me and my horse sleep forever. Somehow in my dream, I make a loop that makes them sleep forever instead.
“To Whom it May Concern”
Our horse’s name was Horace Peanut. I didn’t pick the name, though I concede that I am accountable for suggesting that we pick a name for him during the second refrain of the aforementioned Horace Silver song. I said that “Peanut” was misleading, our horse was chestnut colored after all, but you said that it would be far too ordinary to call him that. Besides, “Peanut” felt like a more proper surname, you said. It was a surname that told others that our horse was a horse from Georgia, and besides, it mitigated the pretentious severity of the name Horace. Our horse wasn’t much of a jazzman, despite his inspired namesake, as he was much too rigid in his gait to leave any room for swing.
“Melancholy Mood”
I resent you, you should know, for my only being able to ride Horace Peanut when you are away. In spite of my lack of hand in his ridiculous sobriquet, he is my horse, at least more mine than yours. If I was writing this all over again, I would cross out anywhere that I wrote “our horse” and change it to read, more accurately, “my horse”. My Horace Peanut.
“Lovely’s Daughter”
Horace Peanut is exceptionally fast for a horse. Perhaps it's a drastic and unfounded proclamation, like mothers at the market talking about how their five year old is much smarter than all others of the same age, all without having another five year old yardstick by which to gauge the truth. I don’t even know another horse, truth be told, but if I met one, I would surely insist that my Horace Peanut is faster.
“How did it Happen”
It was a Tuesday, and you must have been out, or I wouldn’t have been able to be riding Horace Peanut. If you consider that notion, we may have shared fault in the fact that I lost our horse.
Horace was always particularly maudlin on Tuesdays, in large part due to his unfortunate Monday whiskey habit, and it was only out of obligation that I went to visit him on that day at all. His disposition was always better on Wednesdays, and I worried that it was only by the balance of a Tuesday lamentation that we were able to attain levity on a tomorrow.
I braced myself that Tuesday morning for Horace Peanut’s pessimism, the way I felt his eyes roll and how he dropped his head so low that almost every strand of hair in his dark mane puddled on the ground. Looking at my reflection in the window of Horace’s living room upon my arrival, I assured myself that his dramatics were worth the kindred alignment we would surely feel in the day following.
“A Prescription for the Blues”
Horace was already looking quite miserable when I walked in, blatantly refusing my tacit offerings of molasses and grits, though he allowed me without reproach to put his saddle on. His stiff demeanor did not stop him from being wildly fast; that was one thing I can say for Horace Peanut, even when he was at his worst.
Here is the point that you should have come back home, remembering that you had left your favorite book of matches or something else, and kept me from taking Horace out that day. I am steadfast in your responsibility in this, and I think you know it too. It is best and most kind to acknowledge your hand in his fate rather than letting it all be left to me.
We started off along the creek behind your tasteless yard sculptures, and Horace, true to form, paced for two measures of 4/4 before stopping to investigate the blooms of underwater moss beside us. I have long wondered what he sees in the moss, for he has such little curiosity about much else, and I find the blooms quite ordinary. Maybe he likes that it breathes underwater in a way that he and I cannot. If I could move like him, however, I certainly wouldn’t stop for something that common.
“Walk On”
I hadn’t ever seen the cottage that I lost Horace Peanut in before, and when I remember it all now, I am unsure why I let us venture inside. It was not a particularly beautiful or desirable structure by any measure, with rotten beams and a coat of retired pollen. The beams reminded me of the bones of someone very lonely, ones that no one cared enough to bury all the way, ungraciously protruding from the ground.
Horace Peanut paused mid step, with the same absurd curiosity that I saw when he encountered the moss in our creek, and fumbled his way inside with the gracelessness of his Tuesday iteration. A candle, the only ornamentation in the loose interpretation of a room, rested modestly on the ground, with wax the color of stale bread, and barely lit. The flame held onto the aged wick with the same papery faithlessness and desperation stray dogs have in the winter. It has only occurred to me in this very moment that Horace Peanut had probably never seen fire before. He certainly would not have been able to make one on his own, and the days of our love where you filled our kitchen with candles every night and played “Lonely Woman” for me had been long buried, perhaps for longer than Horace himself had been around. It makes perfect sense then, that Horace, in his confusion over the alchemy of fire, jumped over that pathetically starved flame.
“The Back Beat”
The next thing I remember was waking up without my horse. The candle was silent, so humble that it was inconceivable that it had been burning in the first place. I looked around frantically, hoping that my Horace was asleep nearby, as I knew that I would not have been able to catch him if he had taken off. In quick surrender of a lack of Horace, I trudged back along the creek, pausing to look to the submerged moss for secret maps that could tell me where my dear horse had gone off to. They yielded nothing, I was angered by their apathy towards my predicament, and regretful for labeling them as ordinary.
“My One and Only Love”
I never found Horace Peanut, and now you must understand why I have left, to find my horse and maybe someday find my way home to you. I left your matchbook on the counter next to the cinnamon, the one you used to light our candles with. It would be lovely, I think, to be back before next Wednesday, with our Horace Peanut, and listen to the harmonic paraphrase of Mr. Silver again with you.