It Happened To Me: I Watched With My Own Two Eyes While My Brother Tried To Kill My Family's Beloved Horses

And years later, he asked me for money!

Hello Thursday afternoon!

Remember the other day when I told you that submissions come in themes?

Here's a classic case right here. I promise you we will not always be a site about asshole brothers, but I do hope you enjoy this particular crazed-sibling story (with an equine twist!), and let's talk with Andy about it when we are done. He's very accessible, which I love. (I can check comments at 3:47 AM – which is my own issue – and Andy will be right there to respond at 3:48.)

I love you and I really thank you for being here.

-Jane

PS More, much more, from me here tomorrow. Maybe more than you’d ever want.

Before I was old enough to compete I would ride this pony, Judy, who was boarded at our farm and needed regular exercise. She was old, but holy shit did she love to run. Whenever I rode her in open country we would fly across the fields.

By Andy Finley

My brother is an asshole.

There are countless ways in which I can illustrate this point—Rob’s assholery is fertile ground—but right now I’m going to focus on just one. He always knows better. Always. So don’t try to tell him how to do something, because he will absolutely do it wrong out of spite.

I grew up on a horse farm. We raised and showed Arabians. There was no money in it. Well, that’s not really true. There was a ton of money in it—but it was all going into other people’s pockets. Trainers, veterinarians, farriers (the people who shoe horses’ feet), feed suppliers, horse show fees. The list goes on. I think my father’s decision to start a tack shop—where people buy saddles and boots and all manner of horse stuff—was rooted in his desire to make at least some money in the horse show world. Dad named the shop The Horse Emporium, because everything is better with a dose of grandiosity.

Anyway, horse shows in Southeastern Wisconsin seemed to take place all the time. Most of them were held at the Waukesha County Expo Center, about thirty minutes away from our farm in Muskego.

I don't have any photos of my idiot brother, so you get stuck with me instead. This is Ban-War, who had been handed down to me a few years after The Incident. He doesn't have a saddle because I was about to go into a showmanship competition, where you have to make the horse perform a certain pattern without touching them. However, the pattern was the same at every show, and Ban-War had memorized it. So I just got to hold the lead and look like I knew what I was doing. I won every showmanship competition thanks to that horse.

We had a banged-up Dodge pickup hauling a used two-horse trailer. There was no muscling a 900-pound animal into a small space on wheels. If they didn’t want to go, they weren’t going. So, it was important to help them get used to being around the trailer, acclimated to the squeaky door hinges, the step up, the tight fit, and generally feeling comfortable and safe.

After they were trailer trained, then it was usually a simple process: walk them to the entrance, toss the lead over their back, and they stepped right in. Then we latched a safety bar behind them and closed the doors. They had a little trough at head level where they could eat hay, and there were small doors at the trough which allowed us to check on them.

My mother and brother were the primary competitors at these shows. At twelve years old, I was too young to participate. Mom’s horse was named Desert Star, but we always called him “Mirage” because of a mix-up in the pedigree naming process. Mirage was a sleek, chestnut colored gelding with a bit of an attitude. He liked to bite people. If someone was bent over, cleaning Mirage’s feet with a hoof pick, he would grab that ass.

Rob’s gelding was a mixed breed, intermediate pony named Ban-War—but it was pronounced “Ban-Wahr.” He was a cross between an Arabian and a Welsh Pony. Dark brown with four white socks, a black mane and tail, and a moon eye. His left eye had a swirly blue and white pattern, like a Van Gogh painting, and it was blind.

Anyway, getting back to Rob the Asshole. Hooking the trailer to the truck also involved connecting the tail light adapters and the use of a heavy safety chain with hooks on each end. The chain wound through the frame of the trailer hitch, and then hooked into holes on both sides of the hitching ball on the truck. Trailer hitch locks are not foolproof.

Mom—like most mothers, I suspect—had a habit of repeating herself when telling us to do something we’d been told before. “Wash your hands. Tie your shoes. Put the cat down.” We hated it when she told us something we already knew. But the difference between me and Rob is that I would make a point of trying to do the thing before she reminded me. That way, when I’d hear, “Andy, put the milk away,” I could smugly respond, “God, Mom, I did it already!”

Mom in a showmanship competition with a mare that she bought a few years after The Incident. When she got this mare, Rob took Mirage and I got Ban-War.

That was not Rob’s modus operandi. If she told him to do something, he would lie and say he already did it. Plus, he thought certain things were stupid, which presented a moral imperative to refuse to do it. Safety chains were solidly in the “stupid” category for Rob.

When not hooked up, the trailer was held level by a vertical post, behind the hitch, that had a small metal wheel at the bottom. The wheel sat on a cinder block for elevation. I always wondered why a wheel was there instead of a metal foot. A crank would move the post up and down. Rob, at sixteen years old, had already learned how to back the truck to the trailer and connect them. That was his job whenever it wasn’t Dad’s. On this particular day, Dad was minding The Horse Emporium, so it was just Mom, Rob and me getting ready for another show.

All of the tack was in the truck bed, the horses were loaded and we were ready to go. Mom slid behind the wheel, and as she turned the key, she looked at Rob. “Did you hook up the safety chains?”

“Of course I did. Do you think I’m an idiot?”

“Jesus Christ, calm down. I’m just checking.”

She put the truck in gear and got rolling. Mom and Dad had acquired a Country music habit. But as soon as “When We Make Love” by Alabama hit our ears, Rob changed the station. “I Can’t Drive 55” by Sammy Hagar blared out of the speakers and I stopped squirming. It was the one thing he did right that day.

Twenty minutes later, we turned right onto Highway 18 from Racine Avenue, heading north. It’s a busy, four-lane road just on the outskirts of Waukesha, with a forty-five mph speed limit. Mom used her blinker to get into the left-center lane and eased over as she sped up.

One mile later, we approached railroad tracks. Usually, Mom would slow way down for these, but this time she just barreled right over them. That’s when it happened.

We heard—and felt—a loud, metallic bang as the truck bounced up and down.

Mom screamed.

Rob yelled, “Holy shit!”

I turned my head just in time to see the trailer zipping across two lanes of oncoming traffic, carrying 1,800 pounds of destruction.