In Christopher Chilton’s “At Mr. Ed’s Grave, Outside Tahlequah, Oklahoma,” our final publication of 2024, visitors frequently appear outside the protagonist’s house, on a pilgrimage to pay respects at the grave of Mr. Ed, the famous talking horse from TV. Except, as it turns out, our protagonist is keeping a few secrets to himself—some unwanted, but others dearly protected. “Both the grave and the knowledge came with the house, and he couldn’t get rid of the knowledge any more than he could dig up the grave.”
Two more of them when he got home, wanting to see the grave. A girl and a guy this time, parked on the service road like always, hanging around looking unsure of themselves. He wouldn’t call out to them. He never did. If they wanted his permission they’d have to ask. He was a generous person and he would give whatever he had to give, if the grave could really be said to be his in the first place, but you couldn’t go giving yourself away before you were asked, not if you wanted respect. So he unloaded the groceries.
He was bringing in the last couple of bags when the girl came up. Jif jar in hand. Maybe she’d been down at the Price Plus at the same time: little unknowing appointments the future made for you. Or maybe she’d brought it all the way from wherever it was she came from, her and the guy, her boyfriend probably. He gestured toward the backyard with this head. It was all right, they could go ahead on back.
He watched them from the window in the den, walking through the yellowing grass, his grass, to the grave. He watched them set the peanut butter down by the stone. There were two jars there already—and who would have to throw them away in the end?
It wasn’t even the real Mr. Ed in the grave. Not the one on TV anyway. It was the horse that traveled the country as Mr. Ed after the show was over. He hadn’t wanted that knowledge any more than he’d wanted the grave. Both the grave and the knowledge came with the house, and he couldn’t get rid of the knowledge any more than he could dig up the grave.
* * *
Because when you had a horse’s grave in your backyard it became part of who you were. He hadn’t known it was there until he’d closed on the house, and the agent took him back there to the shady patch beneath the Osage apple tree. It had seemed funny at first. You’ll never guess what’s in my backyard, he’d said to his Aunt Mariah, over the phone. It’s a grave. And you’ll never guess whose.
When he told her, she said: Mr. Ed? The talking horse, from the television?
But of course it was the other one.
It was Maria who bought him the DVDs, the boxset. He watched a few episodes but it was no good. It just didn’t look real, the horse flapping its lips over the peanut butter and pretending to talk. It was undignified. Horses didn’t need to move their mouths to talk—not to other horses at least. But what would a horse and a man have to talk about anyhow? When he’d been a horse talking with a man had never crossed his mind. It was enough, to talk with the other horses.
So the boxset was the beginning of it. For his birthday he received Mr. Ed books and Mr. Ed figurines and vintage Mr. Ed lunchboxes. He received a ceramic Mr. Ed bank where you slipped a quarter through the rippling lips. For Christmas it was Mr. Ed tea towels and Mr. Ed potholders and The Music of Mr. Ed on CD. His sister’s husband gave him a signed picture of Mr. Ed—the signature, being, he supposed, the parenthetical inkstain in the shape of a hoof. It was insulting, really. But how could you tell them? How could you explain that horses had names that couldn’t be signed?
Their names filled the air. They heard the world calling them and they knew who they were because they didn’t pen the names up in words. His own name had been The Sound Water Makes When it Passes Over Rocks into a Shallow Pool.
But not the words—the sounds, the sounds.
Sometimes when he was fishing he heard the world calling him again. He heard his name in the creek. He liked to imagine it was his wife calling to him. Her name had been The Call of the Lark to Her Child.
The girl in his backyard had soft-looking long hair the color of sunbleached hay. Her mane had been that color—The Call of the Lark to Her Child. His wife, the wife of his former life, the life where he’d been a horse. The girl’s hair dappled by the apple tree. Hands on her hips. She’d laid the peanut butter down and she’d read the stone and now she wasn’t sure what to do. They never were. It was a joke to them, those who came, and they came not knowing what the punchline was supposed to be.
The horse who played Mr. Ed on TV was named Bamboo Harvester. It said so, in the credits. Bamboo Harvester—what a name! Only a human could think up a name like that. What the horse’s real name was he’d never know. Not any more than he knew the name of the horse buried in his yard, who was neither Mr. Ed nor Bamboo Harvester but a different horse.
Sometimes he imagined the buried horse was The Call of the Lark to Her Child. Sometimes he sat in the lawnchair in the yellow Oklahoma dusk and drank wine from the box and imagined it was her and he felt less alone. But she had no grave; she went into the incinerator like the rest of them. He saw it happen and he could not forget, not even in this life. Others got to forget, but not him.
Other times he imagined the grave belonged to one of her foals. His favorite had been Drone of the Summer Mayfly. Drone of the Summer Mayfly, who liked green apples best. He had been fast and strong but he’d gotten an infection from a nail and they shot him in the dust.
The horse in the yard was not his wife or foal. The horse in the yard was no one. The horse in the yard was a stranger. Others got to forget but whatever force there was in the world that made a man of him had buried a strange horse in his yard so he would never forget and whether it was a kind force or a cruel one he could not decide.
Others got to forget! They forgot their other lives as easily as dreams. But he could not forget. He could not forget bitter iron of bit and strain of bridle. Or scratching itch on flank against rough wood of fence that kept you from lovely grass. He could not forget lying down in cool clouds of red dust. He could not forget burst of muscle rippling over bone and every limb a crack of thunder on path and green cold shadows flashing. Blood in nose and blood in teeth but so much more blood within, heavy heart churning strong like nest of wasps, driving you on. Flies that probed under eyelids and incinerator’s red mouth and smoke that was wife or foal dissipating into blue air.
* * *
A knocking at the door. In his remembering he’d not noticed the couple were no longer in the yard. He crossed through the dark den and the kitchen where the grocery sacks sat still unemptied. He opened the door and she was there. Ten-dollar bill in hand. He could see she meant to give it to him. The website said it was on someone’s property, she said. But they didn’t say it was in somebody’s backyard.
Hair like hay in sun. Brown deep eyes and long lashes for keeping away flies. And wasn’t there the palest of diamonds, there, across her forehead? He knew how foolish it was but the dream was too strong and he could not stop himself. He stamped twice at the concrete step.
She stood there holding the bill. The silence was filled with the rustle of a crow landing somewhere in the orchard, a word from another time, spoken to the dead by the living or the living to the dead. Until she opened her mouth again he could live in the moment of his dreaming. The moment in which she might lift her leg and stamp upon the ground in return. One, two. Her boyfriend was standing out by the car, looking at his phone. You could see he’d never been a horse.
Christopher Chilton lives and teaches in New York. His work has appeared in A Public Space, Bayou Magazine, The Milo Review, and elsewhere.