On August 20, 1969, Cindy and I awoke at 2 a.m. to a roar­ing, pound­ing din on the tin roof of our house in White Hall, Vir­ginia. We jumped out of bed and ran to the window.

Light­ning streaked across the sky. Thun­der crashed. Through a sil­ver sheet of water, we could bare­ly see the big oak beside the house, its thick branch­es bowed down­ward, a lake swirling around the base of its trunk.

“Hard­est rain I’ve ever seen,” Cindy said.

“Must be that hur­ri­cane they were talk­ing about on the news,” I said.

“You think we’ll be okay?”

“We’ll be fine. It’s just a big storm. It’ll pass.”

I was right about the storm where we lived. Hur­ri­cane Camille blew through Albe­mar­le Coun­ty with­out caus­ing much dam­age, but if we had lived in neigh­bor­ing Nel­son Coun­ty, my con­fi­dence might have cost us our lives.

At 2 a.m. when Cindy and I were star­ing out our bed­room win­dow at the storm, John Fitzger­ald rolled over in his sleep in Tyro, Vir­ginia, just 30 miles south of us, and dropped his hand off the edge of his bed into cold water. Jarred awake, he bolt­ed upright and peered into the dark­ness at the sur­re­al scene of three feet of stand­ing water in his bedroom.

His first thought was fear for the life of his infant son. When John and his wife, Frances, went to bed that night, they left their two-month-old baby in a bassinet in an adjoin­ing room. John jumped up, sloshed into the oth­er room, and switched on the light. In the midst of float­ing fur­ni­ture, the bassinet bobbed gen­tly like a lit­tle canoe on a rip­pling pond with the baby sleep­ing peace­ful­ly in its hull.

Frances splashed into the room. “Where’s the baby?” she screamed. John picked him up and hand­ed him to her just as the elec­tric­i­ty died and the light went out.

“Let’s get out of here,” Frances yelled.

John looked out the win­dow. The Tye Riv­er, nor­mal­ly a hun­dred yards from their porch, had over­flowed its banks and engulfed their home. Mud, rocks, and uproot­ed trees sped by the house on the back of rag­ing flood­wa­ters. “We can’t go out there,” he shouted.

Out­side, the riv­er would kill them. Inside the house, the water rose steadi­ly. The attic was their only hope, John thought, but there was no access to it.

He wad­ed back into the bed­room, retrieved a penknife from his pants pock­et, climbed on top of a wardrobe, and cut a hole in the sheetrock ceil­ing. He helped Frances up into the attic, hand­ed her the baby, and climbed up behind them. For the rest of the night, the Fitzger­alds rode out the flood astride the attic’s wood­en rafters.

At dawn, the storm moved on and the riv­er reced­ed. John and Frances climbed down and went out­side to find a land­scape of death and destruc­tion Camille had left in its wake. One cor­ner of their house had been smashed away. A neighbor’s car had float­ed onto their porch and was wedged against the front door. The dead bod­ies of two women lay along the river­bank. A man’s cadav­er was hung up in a fence below the house. A lit­tle girl’s hand reached sky­ward from a thick lay­er of mud cak­ing the slope down to the Tye, the rest of her body buried beneath it.

Like John, most of Camille’s Nel­son Coun­ty vic­tims were caught unaware of its approach. Back then, there was no sophis­ti­cat­ed storm-alert ser­vice to warn them about the storm’s mag­ni­tude or when it would arrive. It struck in the mid­dle of the night while they slept, and with Nel­son County’s steep moun­tain­sides, nar­row hol­lows, and deep ravines form­ing a per­fect catch basin for the tor­ren­tial rain, flood­wa­ters swept many homes off their foun­da­tions before their res­i­dents could escape.

Camille’s dead­liest aspect was the sheer vol­ume of its rain­fall, in some loca­tions as much as 25 inch­es in 5 hours, which mete­o­rol­o­gists com­put­ed to be the max­i­mum amount of water the atmos­phere could hold. Birds sit­ting in trees drowned. Creeks flash-flood­ed in mere min­utes. Two thou­sand years of ero­sion took place in a sin­gle night, sweep­ing away miles of roads, 100 bridges, and 900 build­ings. Prop­er­ty dam­age topped $100,000,000.

The toll in human lives was hor­rif­ic. Camille killed 126 peo­ple in Nel­son Coun­ty; 184 statewide. Entire fam­i­lies per­ished. In Huff­man Hol­low, the flood wiped out whole branch­es of the Huff­man fam­i­ly tree, killing 18 fam­i­ly mem­bers, rang­ing in age from 1 to 60.

I didn’t know any­one who died in the flood, but I had friends who lived through it, and they told me sto­ries I’ll nev­er forget.

One of my friends lived in a farm­house perched on a hill over­look­ing a val­ley and a riv­er. His fam­i­ly awoke that night to screams and ran out on their front porch. Through a gray tor­rent they saw the dim out­line of hous­es float­ing on a churn­ing lake that hadn’t been there when they went to bed.

Peo­ple shout­ed from rooftops. “Help! Please help us!”

My friend ran down to the water’s edge. It was rain­ing so hard he could bare­ly see, and he had to cov­er his face to breathe. There was no way he could reach the peo­ple strand­ed on the water. He returned to the porch and stood there help­less­ly while his neigh­bors cried out to him.

There was an explo­sion. The lake whooshed away. A last burst of screams. Then silence.

Before the storm, a rail­road over­pass bridged the val­ley.  The flood car­ried debris down­stream that got hung up on the overpass’s struts, damming up the riv­er and cre­at­ing a huge reser­voir. Upstream, the water rose so fast people’s hous­es were unmoored and afloat before they woke up. Cling­ing to rooftops, bro­ken boards, and tree trunks, they rode the flood into the new­ly formed reser­voir. It rose steadi­ly until its weight broke the dam and tore down the over­pass, crush­ing or drown­ing every­one trapped in the flush of water.

Camille hit Nel­son Coun­ty 56 years ago. My mem­o­ries of it lay dor­mant until last fall when my broth­er-in-law made sev­er­al trips from Char­lottesville to Durham, North Car­oli­na, to watch my grand­daugh­ter (his great niece) play soc­cer for Duke. He sent me a text mes­sage. “I dri­ve by this sign a lot recent­ly.” He attached a pho­to­graph of a Vir­ginia his­tor­i­cal road mark­er that com­mem­o­rates Camille’s ram­page through Nel­son County.

That mark­er brought back my mem­o­ries of the storm, but it wasn’t the Fitzger­ald family’s ordeal, Huff­man Hol­low, or the col­lapsed rail­road bridge that first came to mind. It was a tan­gen­tial per­son­al connection.

In 1965, when I was 18, my high school class went on a school trip to Wash­ing­ton, D.C. A class­mate, Chris Schur, asked me to have lunch with him that day. I don’t know why he picked me. I bare­ly knew him, and when we sat down at the lunch counter, he didn’t say much despite my attempts to draw him out.

A few min­utes into lunch, anoth­er class­mate joined us, and he and I struck up a live­ly con­ver­sa­tion. We tried to include Chris, but painful­ly shy, he could bare­ly talk. His face red­dened, and beads of sweat popped out on his fore­head. After lunch, he wan­dered off by himself.

As far as I can recall, that was my last con­tact with Chris.

Four years lat­er, a friend and I talked about the Nel­son Coun­ty flood. “You remem­ber Chris Schur?” he said.

“Yeah. From high school.”

“His wife was killed in the flood.”

I didn’t know Chris’s wife and my only con­nec­tion to him was that awk­ward lunch, but the news of his wife’s death hit me hard.

I searched for her obit­u­ary and found a brief entry in The Dai­ly Progress. Mary Cather­ine Mar­tin Schur died on August 20, 1969, of “mul­ti­ple injuries and drown­ing.” She was a sec­re­tary for Vep­co and a mem­ber of the Holy Com­forter Church. Chris was an appren­tice at a machine shop. They lived in Faber, Vir­ginia. They’d been mar­ried eigh­teen months. Mary was 25 when she died. Chris was 24.

It took me a while to fig­ure out why Mary’s death affect­ed me so deeply. I remem­bered the intro­vert­ed young man at the lunch counter, strug­gling to make con­ver­sa­tion. I saw his tense face and those beads of sweat. Some­how, he had bro­ken out of his shell and found some­one to love, only to have her tak­en away from him. So trag­ic. So unfair.

I felt the need to reach out to Chris, but giv­en that we bare­ly knew each oth­er, I could think of noth­ing that seemed appro­pri­ate. In the end, all I did was send flow­ers to the chapel hold­ing Mary’s memo­r­i­al ser­vice. “I am so sor­ry for your loss,” my note said. Hol­low words from some­one Chris prob­a­bly didn’t remember.

Time passed. My con­cern for Chris fad­ed away. Occa­sion­al­ly over the years, some­thing would remind me of his loss, and the vague sense that I should have done more would nag at me, but for only a few moments.

Then came the Vir­ginia road mark­er fifty-six years after the flood.

For rea­sons I don’t under­stand, this time thoughts about Chris wouldn’t go away. Won­der­ing if he’d man­aged to put his life back togeth­er after Mary’s death, I searched for infor­ma­tion on the inter­net. I couldn’t find much. Born in 1946, in Queens Coun­ty, New York, Chris was a year old­er than my high school class­mates, and he didn’t grad­u­ate with us. On my high school alum­ni web­site, he’s list­ed as a mem­ber of the class of 1966, so appar­ent­ly, he was held back a year. An ances­try site indi­cates he nev­er remar­ried after Mary’s death and he died in Palm Beach, Flori­da, in 2010 at age 64. That’s all I know.

If any of my high school friends know any­thing more about Chris, I’d be inter­est­ed in what­ev­er you could tell me.

I’ve accu­mu­lat­ed a few regrets over my long life. Most of them involve big screw-ups, but strange­ly, some of the small stuff that didn’t seem impor­tant when it went down still caus­es me minor dis­com­fort, like lit­tle splin­ters under the skin of my thumb. They don’t hurt until I think about them, and even then, they don’t hurt much.

This lit­tle splin­ter won’t go away. I regret not reach­ing out to Chris. I wish I’d gone to his wife’s memo­r­i­al ser­vice and spo­ken to him. I wish I’d been smart enough in 1969 to know that an expres­sion of sym­pa­thy is nev­er inap­pro­pri­ate in the face of over­whelm­ing grief. I prob­a­bly couldn’t have done any­thing for Chris, but I wish I’d tried. I just hope those close to him helped him find a path for­ward and his life turned out well.

Post Script:

In Patrick Ryan’s nov­el, Buck­eye, speak­ing about his state of mind in old age, Cal Jenk­ins says, “(Old peo­ple) aren’t liv­ing in the past; the past is liv­ing in us. And it’s talk­ing. We get old to recal­i­brate every­thing we thought was going to be impor­tant. We get old just to hear it. It says, the days, the days, the days.”

Ste­fan Bechtel’s Roar of the Heav­ens tells Camille’s many trag­ic sto­ries. John Grisham, who now lives in Char­lottesville, called the book riv­et­ing. I agree.

My train­er and good friend Janet called me one after­noon in July. “Mari­no says Lily is bleed­ing.” Her voice was tight, strained. “He says there’s a lot of blood.” Lily is a gray Azteca mare. Mari­no is the man who feeds my hors­es and mucks out the stalls.

“I’ll go over there now,” I said.

“Call me when you get there. I’ll come in if it’s as bad as he says.”

When I arrived at the barn, Lily stood at her stall door. She looked alert, her ears pricked up, her eyes clear.

Inside her stall, I found blood smeared on the wall and crim­son stains in the wood shav­ings of her bed­ding. Lily’s lush white tail was soaked red, and blood stained her back legs.

I lift­ed her tail. On its under­side near the top, a black tumor the size of a crab-apple had burst and gushed blood.

Look­ing at the blood in the stall and on Lily, I pieced togeth­er what hap­pened. The huge tumor caused Lily dis­com­fort. She backed up against the wall and rubbed the tumor against it, push­ing so hard it ruptured.

Lily is 16. I bought her when she was 8. Her pre­vi­ous own­er abused her. When we brought her home, she was afraid of men – me, the vet, Mari­no. Janet was able to work with her, but when I approached, she ran to the oth­er side of her cor­ral and stared at me fearfully.

I vis­it­ed her every day, talked soft­ly to her, and plied her with treats. About two weeks into it, she final­ly allowed me to touch her. See Lily’s Song for the full story.

Short­ly after that, I found two small hard knots on her shoul­der. Years ear­li­er I’d seen growths like that on my dog. I knew what they were.

I called the vet. In addi­tion to the knots, he found a string of mar­ble-sized black lumps on the under­side of Lily’s tail. He con­firmed my fears. “Lily has melanoma,” he said.

Equine melanoma is com­mon among gray hors­es. About 80 per­cent of them become afflict­ed with it at some point in their lives. The can­cer­ous tumors are usu­al­ly locat­ed on the lips, around the eyes, along the neck, or on the under­side of the tail. Over time, the tumors often mul­ti­ply and grow larger.

There is no cure, but if the tumors don’t attack vital organs or impede bod­i­ly func­tions, a horse with melanoma may live to old age with­out sig­nif­i­cant adverse effects.

“Is there any­thing we can do to improve Lily’s chances?” I asked the vet.

“There’s a vac­cine for dogs,” he said. “Some dog vets will pre­scribe it off-label for hors­es. It doesn’t elim­i­nate the tumors in hors­es, but it some­times slows their growth. It’s expen­sive, and it often doesn’t work. Most own­ers let the can­cer take its course and hope it doesn’t kill the horse.”

At my vet’s request, a dog vet pre­scribed the vac­cine for Lily. We gave her shots every six months for the next six years. It seemed to work. The tumors didn’t grow much and remained con­fined to the under­side of her tail.

Two years ago, pro­duc­tion prob­lems severe­ly cur­tailed the sup­ply of the drug. All off-label pre­scrip­tions for hors­es were ter­mi­nat­ed. The dog vet cut Lily off. We couldn’t get the drug anywhere.

With­out the vac­cine, Lily’s tumors grew rapid­ly, bal­loon­ing to the size of ping-pong balls, and spread over the entire under­side of her tail in one con­joined mass.

In July, sev­er­al large tumors erupt­ed, ooz­ing a brown pus that ran down Lily’s tail. The vet said there was noth­ing we could do oth­er than clean her wounds, try to con­trol the infec­tions, and hope they heal.

They did not. Foul-smelling pus drained from them almost con­tin­u­ous­ly. Wear­ing plas­tic gloves and face­masks, Janet and I washed and dis­in­fect­ed them every day. Then, the biggest tumor rup­tured and bled.

She stood per­fect­ly still at the wash rack while I bathed the bloody tumor in warm water. It stopped bleed­ing, and I coat­ed the wound with an anti­sep­tic cream. Although the sores on her tumors had to be painful to the touch, Lily hadn’t flinched through all our efforts to treat them, and she didn’t flinch that day. She seemed to know we were try­ing to help her.

In bed that night try­ing to find sleep, I couldn’t stop think­ing about Lily. Life dealt her a cru­el hand. Her pre­vi­ous owner’s abuse caused injuries to her shoul­ders and legs that nev­er ful­ly healed and con­tributed to the ear­ly onset of arthri­tis. Her gait is irreg­u­lar, and she strug­gles on down­hill grades. We give her med­ica­tion dai­ly to ease the pain.

Her psy­cho­log­i­cal dam­age runs even deep­er. We can’t erase entire­ly her mem­o­ries of the abuse, but Janet and I have earned her trust. We groom her and pet her every day. I spend extra time with her when­ev­er I can, stroking her gen­tly and speak­ing to her soft­ly. “Good girl. Pret­ty girl. I’m so proud of you.”

Per­haps because of her dark his­to­ry, Lily responds to affec­tion with more sen­si­tiv­i­ty and love than oth­er hors­es. Janet says she’s the most soul­ful horse she’s ever worked with. I feel that, too.

I felt it most last sum­mer. The doc­tors found an extreme­ly aggres­sive form of der­mal melanoma in my shoul­der beneath the skin. They were wor­ried it had spread to oth­er parts of my body. I was scared. I went to Lily’s stall the morn­ing after my diag­no­sis. I stood beside her, my arm over her back, my fore­head pressed against her neck. I don’t know if she under­stood, but it felt like she knew. I vis­it­ed her sev­er­al times dur­ing the tests and treat­ment. Although I don’t under­stand how or why, those vis­its gave me courage and hope. See The Can­cer Club for that story.

As I lay awake the night after Lily’s tumor burst, I couldn’t shake the feel­ing I was let­ting her down. I was can­cer-free, but she was still trapped in its con­strict­ing grip.

In the morn­ing, I called the vet and asked him to pull out all the stops to find the vac­cine. I told him I didn’t care where he had to go or what he had to do. I’d pay to fly it in from any­where in the world; I’d buy it on the black mar­ket; I’d do any­thing to get that drug. My emo­tions over­whelmed me, and I broke down.

The vet’s a good guy. He called the dog vet and begged her for the drug. Maybe he cried, too. I don’t know, but what­ev­er he did, it worked.

The dog vet gave us the vac­cine, and we resumed the shots in July. My vet also added an antibi­ot­ic to Lily’s dai­ly feed, hop­ing it might heal the drain­ing sores, and Janet tried a new dis­in­fec­tant spray on the wounds.

The infec­tions cleared. Lily’s con­di­tion sta­bi­lized. Her ener­gy lev­el returned to nor­mal. Things looked good.

For a lit­tle while.

In August, Janet called me over to Lily’s stall. “Something’s wrong,” she said.

Lily loves car­rots. Janet had giv­en her one. It lay at her feet. She picked it up gin­ger­ly with her lips, dropped it, retrieved it, and dropped it again. She couldn’t chew it.

Most hors­es won’t let you probe inside their mouths and Lily is less trust­ing than oth­ers, but I was able to sep­a­rate her lips long enough to glimpse a small black lump. My heart sank.

I called the vet. After giv­ing her a tran­quil­iz­er, he exam­ined her mouth. “She has tumors inside her jaws on both sides,” he said. “They’re small but there are a lot of them.”

This is the end of the line, I thought. The tumors only imped­ed her chew­ing of hard food so far, but I assumed it was just a mat­ter of time until they metas­ta­sized and pre­vent­ed her from eat­ing any­thing. She would slow­ly starve, and I would have to con­front a heart­break­ing deci­sion to end her suffering.

While I strug­gled to hold my emo­tions togeth­er, the vet con­tin­ued to probe inside Lily’s mouth.

“Her low­er molars are long and sharp,” he said, sound­ing excit­ed. “Remind me, have we ever float­ed her teeth?”

“No.”

“How old is she?”

“16.”

We stared at each oth­er hopefully.

As hors­es age, their molars grow and some­times devel­op sharp points that make chew­ing uncom­fort­able. This usu­al­ly occurs at about age 15. “Float­ing” is a den­tal pro­ce­dure where the vet uses a pow­er tool, a spin­ning wafer-sized rasp mount­ed on the end of a long met­al col­umn, to file down the sharp points. Lily was 16, and we had nev­er float­ed her teeth.

The vet got his rasp, and I held Lily’s head while he float­ed her back molars.

When the tran­quil­iz­er wore off, Lily attacked a batch of car­rots with her usu­al enthusiasm.

“It wasn’t the tumors,” the vet said. “It was her teeth. If we’re lucky and the vac­cine works, the tumors in her mouth won’t grow large enough to become a problem.”

So, Lily lives on. But I’m a real­ist. Her room in the Can­cer Hotel grows dark­er every day. We’re fight­ing hard – Lily, Janet, the vet, and I – but can­cer is relent­less. That dark day I dread so much still lurks out there somewhere.

Mean­while, I’m try­ing hard to fol­low Janet’s advice to live in the present, like Lily does. Lily’s hap­py and con­tent. She’s eat­ing well and hold­ing her weight. We pony her off Jack­son, her favorite bud­dy, and lunge her in the cor­ral. I groom her every day, stroke her neck and face gen­tly, and speak soft­ly to her. “Good girl. Pret­ty girl. I’m so proud of you.”

And I tell myself we still have time. We still have time.

I was rid­ing Marge on the old Ahman­son Ranch on a cloudy morn­ing in May when a swarm of bees attacked us. A few bees buzzed around me, but most of them went after Marge, swirling around her head, dive-bomb­ing her face and neck. Shak­ing her head so vio­lent­ly it became a red blur, she backed up with short stomp­ing steps and hopped side­ways off the trail into tall grass.

The prospect of being thrown from a horse con­cen­trates the mind, espe­cial­ly if you’re 77 with dou­ble knee replace­ments. Janet, my rid­ing train­er, had schooled me well. I tight­ened my legs around Marge’s bar­rel, pressed my boots down firm­ly so I wouldn’t lose my stir­rups, gave Marge more reins to shake off the bees, and focused on stay­ing cen­tered and balanced.

Des­per­ate­ly try­ing to free her­self from the bees, Marge spun in a cir­cle, stopped, jumped for­ward, backed up again, shook her head, and danced around fran­ti­cal­ly, but the bees stayed with her. Scared and stung, Marge began to buck, not big bucks, but a series of short lit­tle hip-hops.

I’d held my seat up to that point, but I expect­ed her lit­tle bucks to esca­late at any moment. I’d seen Marge buck­ing just for fun in her cor­ral, kick­ing her back hooves in the air high­er than her head, twist­ing to one side and then the oth­er. No way I could stay on her back through those rodeo-bron­co bucks. I braced for a bone-break­ing fall.

But the big kicks nev­er came. Instead, Marge lunged for­ward and broke into a full-on gal­lop across an open field.

Marge is an Amer­i­can Quar­ter Horse, a breed known for quar­ter-mile bursts of speed up to 45 mph. She can fly, and we did. I didn’t even try to rein her in. She was in run­away mode, and there was noth­ing I could have done to slow her down. I just held on as best I could.

About fifty yards into it, the wind from Marge’s bul­let-speed peeled the bees away. They streamed by our sides like twin dark cir­rus clouds. She ran until the bees were far behind us, then slowed down, and pulled up in a clear­ing near the ranch’s gate into Hid­den Hills.

Janet was rid­ing Jack­son about twen­ty yards ahead of Marge and me when the bees attacked. The trail dipped into a lit­tle swale lined with Cal­i­for­nia live oaks. There must have been a bee­hive in those trees that Janet and Jack­son stirred up when they went through. Com­ing along right after them, Marge and I bore the brunt of the attack.

After Marge out­ran the bees, Janet and Jack­son came up behind us at the gate. “Good rid­ing,” Janet said.

“Thanks. You get stung?”

“No,” she said as she dis­mount­ed. “The bees went after you and Marge. Jack­son and I got off easy.”

Marge was still great­ly dis­tressed, shak­ing her head and pranc­ing ner­vous­ly. I jumped off and held her head while Janet pulled two stingers from her neck. There had to be more, but we couldn’t find them.

Marge was too upset for me to ride her, so we led the hors­es down Long Val­ley Road to the barn. The whole way, Marge leaned against me, rub­bing her face and neck against my shoul­der. She was try­ing to ease the pain of the stings, but it also felt like she want­ed my reas­sur­ance that we were safe. “Easy, girl,” I said again and again. “We’re okay now.”

I stayed with Marge at the barn longer than usu­al that day, pet­ting her, hug­ging her, and giv­ing her cook­ies and car­rots. I didn’t leave until I was sure she’d calmed down.

That night as I lay in bed, I thought about the bee attack. Hors­es are prey ani­mals. Their instinc­tive reac­tion to dan­ger is to run. The flight reac­tion is imprint­ed in their genes, passed down over mil­len­nia through thou­sands of gen­er­a­tions of wild hors­es. When the bees attacked, Marge car­ried 165 pounds of dead weight on her back. Scared and in pain, she should have thrown me so she could run away faster. It should have been an instinc­tive compulsion.

But she didn’t throw me. I thought about Marge for a long time that night.

I took up horse­back rid­ing at the age of 70. (See For The Love of Hors­es.) Sev­en years ago, four months after my sec­ond knee replace­ment, I climbed on a horse while Janet held her in place. That horse was Marge, a sor­rel (red­dish brown) mare, small, 14 ½ hands (4 feet 2 inch­es tall at her with­ers), strong, with a wide chest and round­ed, well-mus­cled hindquarters.

Janet pur­chased her from a barn in Stock­ton. She had a horse named But­ter back then, so she named her new horse Margarine.

I learned the basics of horse­back rid­ing on Marge’s back. After that first ride, I rode Marge and no oth­er horse almost every day for three months. I bought her from Janet that spring.

I have five hors­es now. I don’t play favorites, but if forced to choose one, I’d lean toward Marge. She’s mis­chie­vous, play­ful, and perky. She loves kids and dotes on my grand­chil­dren, espe­cial­ly the lit­tle ones. And she loves Car­rot Man.

She won’t allow me to be in her pres­ence with­out giv­ing her my full atten­tion, for­ev­er nudg­ing and bump­ing my back and shoul­der and rip­pling her lips over my arm. Some­times, she even tries to groom my hair.

She’s jeal­ous when I pet anoth­er horse, kick­ing her stall door and paw­ing the ground until I give up and come back to her.

I ride five or six days a week. Of all my hors­es, I’ve clocked the most time on Marge, 700 rides over the last sev­en years being a con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mate. You devel­op a part­ner­ship with a horse over so many rides. Marge and I know each oth­er well. I can tell what she’s think­ing, and I feel like she knows what’s going on in my head. I talk to her some­times, espe­cial­ly when I’m trou­bled. And for some mag­i­cal rea­son, stress melts away when I’m with her.

Don’t tell any­one this because it’s kind of embar­rass­ing, but some­times on solo rides I sing to her. “Margie, Margie, pump­kin pie/Kiss the boys and make em cry.” I think she likes it. I mean she pricks up her ears and all. That’s a sign she likes it, right?

Twice I thought I might lose Marge. The first time was a few months after I bought her from Janet. A horse has lit­er­al­ly 100 feet of intestines. A lot can go wrong inside her bel­ly. Kinks, block­ages, and obstruc­tions can cause col­ic, a painful and some­times fatal con­di­tion. Marge got it bad. She laid down in her cor­ral and wouldn’t get up.

The vet was tend­ing to anoth­er emer­gency and couldn’t come till lat­er in the day, so Janet took charge, keep­ing in touch with the vet by phone. We made Marge get up, walked her around, gave her a water-hose ene­ma (believe me, you don’t want to know the details), and fed her soupy bran. By the end of the day, the log­jam broke, and Marge recov­ered ful­ly. We caught it ear­ly and she was prob­a­bly nev­er in seri­ous jeop­ardy, but I was an equine neo­phyte at the time, and I was afraid she wouldn’t make it. Even that ear­ly in our rela­tion­ship, she had a firm grip on my heart.

A more seri­ous health threat occurred one morn­ing three years ago. When I arrived at the barn and opened the stall door, Marge lift­ed her right front hoof and extend­ed it toward me. There was a deep slic­ing gash across her fet­lock (sim­i­lar to the human ankle). In the crevice of the cut, I could see bone. Blood had drained down over her hoof, and she couldn’t bear her full weight on that leg.

I knew more about hors­es by then. I knew that leg injuries are often fatal and that she prob­a­bly wouldn’t sur­vive a sev­ered ten­don or dis­abled fet­lock joint.

With my heart in my throat, I texted a pho­to of the wound to the vet. He dropped every­thing and raced to my barn. Look­ing grim, he exam­ined the wound and test­ed the fet­lock. It only took a few min­utes, but it seemed like hours to me.

“We can treat this,” he said, let­ting out a long breath. “She’ll be all right.”

I turned away from him and wiped my eyes.

As I lay in bed the night after the bee attack, I could still see the look in Marge’s eyes three years ago when she lift­ed her hoof to show me the wound to her leg. I saw pain and fear in her eyes, but there was some­thing more, too. There was trust. She knew she was in trou­ble, and she was count­ing on me.

The day after the bee attack, I met Janet at the barn. “I’ve been think­ing about yes­ter­day,” Janet said. “Marge could have thrown you if she’d want­ed to, you know. She let you stay on her back to pro­tect you.”

“I think you’re right,” I said. “It seemed like she did the best she could not to hurt me.”

“I know I’m right. Any oth­er horse would have thrown you off.”

My bond with Marge did not come cheap. Tons of car­rots and cook­ies, tens of thou­sands of pets and hugs, putting up with count­less demand­ing bumps with her muz­zle and buck­ets of horse spit on my shirt and in my hair, inces­sant­ly wor­ry­ing about every hic­cup that might sig­nal anoth­er bout with col­ic, and open­ing her stall door every morn­ing scared to death of what she might have done to her­self this time. And there’s the singing. Don’t for­get the singing.

It paid off, though. In pain and fac­ing a threat she didn’t under­stand, Marge fought off the over­whelm­ing equine instinct for self-preser­va­tion and sac­ri­ficed flight speed to car­ry me away from the danger.

“That horse loves you, Ken,” Janet said.

This is true; it’s a great gift; and it goes both ways.

Post Script: Rid­ing pal, Annabel, solved the mys­tery of Marge’s leg wound. She found dried blood on the wall below a piece of tin under a barn win­dow in Marge’s stall. In an inex­plic­a­ble acro­bat­ic maneu­ver, Marge must have reared up against the win­dow and slashed her leg on the tin’s sharp edge. It was a fluke acci­dent, but I ripped out every piece of met­al in my stalls.

Adren­a­line and fear for your life are effec­tive anti­dotes to bee ven­om, I guess. Although I felt no pain dur­ing the attack, I found sting-welts on my arms, neck, and back after I left Marge at the barn.