I seem to be writing a lot of children’s stories these days, or my idea of children’s stories, stories I would have liked as a child, or childlike stories I wish someone would read to me now as I fall asleep. This is a mid-story passage about a dog who loses his tail in a bar fight, a neglected horse who befriends him, and the elusive good human they find.
In the morning it still drizzled. The dog opened its eyes. It wondered where it was. It heard a sound and turned to see the other animal eating dead grass in a small field. It was a horse. It saw the dog wake up. It walked over to the shelter and looked at him.
“You’re a raggedy dog,” said the horse.
The dog didn’t know what to say.
“What happened to your tail?” the horse asked.
The dog looked at his tail. Half of it was gone. It must have broken off in the big fight.
“I’m going to call you Raggedy Dog,” said the horse.
The dog didn’t like this. He said, “I’m going to call you Skin Horse.”
The horse had many bare places where its coat had worn away. It was not a very nice thing to say. They were not being very nice to each other yet.
The dog stayed all day. It rained. His tail hurt. Skin Horse just munched at dead grass and didn’t tell him to go away.
Raggedy Dog asked, “Is that all you eat?”
Skin Horse said, “There isn’t anything else.” She munched at the brown grass. “Once someone gave me an apple. That was good.”
“Don’t you go looking for food?” asked Raggedy Dog.
Skin Horse said, “I can’t get past the fence.”
Raggedy Dog looked and noticed for the first time that the field was surrounded by a broken down wire fence. He had slunk beneath it during the night. Now he went and slunk through it again and searched for food.
He found scraps behind the houses. They were not as good as the food behind the restaurant or the food the man at the bar gave him. But it filled his belly. When he was done he walked back to the field and lay down beneath the shelter.
“You can stay here,” Skin Horse said.
Raggedy Dog didn’t say anything. He was asleep.
The Works of SD Williams 