The Horses of Santo Domingo

THE HORSES OF SANTO DOMINGO / Greg Pape Two horses, a pinto and a bay, face each other in the fresco on the wall of the mission at Santo Domingo. On the white space of the wall the horses stand on nothing and seem to float above the door that opens, between them, onto the balcony of the church built in 1605. To lovers, maybe, they represent lovers. Or they are you and I changed into horses for this moment of understanding what it's like to stand guard over a door we are too large to enter. Perhaps to the people who gather here they stand for the constant assistance of the animals. And children love them because they are big and silent. We sit with others along the bank of a ditch running with snowmelt watching from the rustling shade of cottonwoods as the men and boys of the pueblo gather on their horses to play the old games. A drum starts up. A man on the roof of the mission rings the black bell. An old man with a gray braid bouncing on his shoulders rides out on a black gelding and turns and stops to face the assembled riders. Though we know little of the history of what we see we understand when the elder, holding a live rooster in his right hand, nods to one of the riders, that this is a signal to come forth and receive the ritual blows. As the two horses ignore them the elder strikes the head and shoulders of the man again and again with the rooster until the man wrests it from him and gallops off swinging it like a war club into the crowd of riders and rearing horses, blood and feathers falling in the dust. On the mountains in the distance there's snow, and the long white contrail of a jet dissolving above them. One rider breaks free of the dust 58 ¦ The Missouri Review with what's left of the rooster, which isn't much. He rides off shouting through the dirt streets of the pueblo of Santo Domingo and returns to offer his prize to his wife. Dust feathers the light as we witness this and begin to understand, in our way, the woman's smile, the affirmation of the bloody rooster in her hands, and the singular beauty of the two horses, the pinto and the bay. Greg Pape The Missouri Review · 59 ...