SIM

an excerpt from the book, Country Lawyer by Bellamy Partridge ©1939

Recommended by Robert C. Yoder

Another old vagabond came into my father’s life through his affection for a little gray mare my father bought for a carriage horse. That is, she was gray when we got her, though she turned to a snowy white within the next year or two. Her name was Daisy, and the name of her gentleman admirer was Sim Cranford.

Sim was a lump of an old man left over from the days of Victor Hugo. He was bent and grizzled. His huge head was set squarely on the front of his chest, and his misshapen hands hung sprawling almost to his knees. A bulbous nose spread out like an awning above an impenetrable jungle of beard. His eyes were at the same time bleary and disdainful, and one had a drooping lid. Sim may have had a gay youth, but he was well along in years before he came to town, and I don’t know of anyone who ever saw him smile. His huge, protruding jaw and pendulous lower lip were never made for mirth, and though Sim was guilty of an occasional witticism, it was always the kind that bites.

It was about two weeks after we bought Daisy that my father chanced to meet Charley Scott, the man from whom he had bought her. Charley asked how my father liked the horse, and my father said she was very satisfactory.

“Has old Sim shown up yet?” asked Charley.

“Who is Sim?”

“Sim Cranford – he sorta goes with the horse.”

My father shook his head. “Haven’t seen anything of him yet.”

Charley grinned knowingly. “Well, you will. He got to my house about three days after the horse did. Found him in the barn one morning cleaning her off.

“’What you doing here?’ I says to him.

“’Can’t you see?’ he says.

“’Why yes, but that don’t seem to help much.’

“’Don’t, hey?’ he says, and went right on cleaning her.

“I’d been in town the night before and had a few drinks. I remembered seeing old Sim somewhere, but I still didn’t think I was tight enough to hire him and not know it. So I says to him, ‘Who said an’thing to you about going to work here?’

“’Nobody,’ he says. ‘Guess I can clean the mare if I want to, can’t I? Don’t look to me as if she’s been cleaned since you got her.’

“’Go ahead and clean her, if you get any fun out of it,’ I says, ‘because that’s all the pay you’ll ever get.’

“’Who said an’thing about pay?’ he says. ‘I’ve took care of this mare ever since she dropped, and if I wanta put a little elbow grease on her coat I guess you ain’t gonna care, be you?’

“’Suit yourself,’ I says, ‘so long as you understand they’s no pay in it.’

“’Lookit the stain on her flank,’ he says. ‘Ain’t you got no straw?’

“’She gets as much beddin’ as the rest of ‘em,’ I says.

“’Oughta have threes times as much,’ he says. ‘Where’s the soap?’

“I let a yell out of me. ‘Soap for a horse!’ I says. I took a team and went out in the field to work. When I come in at noon he was hoeing in the garden. I told my wife to set a place for him at the table, and he stayed right there with us until I sold the horse.”

“How long was that?” asked my father.

“Oh, coupla years. I used to buy a little tobacco for him every week, and I’d take him into town with me about twice a month. If I gave him a dollar he’d get drunk and be outa commission for a day or two, though no matter how bad he was he never failed to take care of Daisy. Well, I got so I’d give him about a quarter. That would buy him a few beers, and still he couldn’t get drunk on it. Lived in the barn. And you never saw such a garden as we had when he was around. He was contented there as long as I had Daisy – but two days after I sold her he was gone. Ain’t seen him since. I run across Howard Gerow one day – you know I bought Daisy from Howard. I asked him if he’d seen an’thing of Sim lately, and he said no, not since he sold the horse to me. Sim come to Howard with the horse, just as he did to me. Showed up when he bought her – disappeared when he sold her.”

“Where did Howard get her?” asked my father.

“Got her from Dan Chase. Same thing there. Old Dan was a hard nut to crack. He ordered Sim off the place every day for about two weeks, and then he give up and let him stay. He was there when Dan died. The women folks would have been glad to have him stay, and he did until they sold Daisy, and then he left without a word.”

“Where did Dan get Daisy?”

“From Clarence Jones. Sim was workin’ for Clarence when Daisy was foaled – and the old feller’s been with her ever since.”

“Except the last two weeks,” said my father.

“And I wouldn’t be too damn sure about that last two weeks if I was you,” said Charley with a laugh, “I don’t believe the two of ‘em was ever separated that long.”

When my father came home that night he strolled out and looked around the garden. Then he inspected the interior of the barn carefully. After that he came into the house and called me into the library, where he was already detaining one of my brothers, who, with my aid, was supposed to take care of the place. I was suspicious the minute he began to tell us how well the garden looked. I don’t think my brother was suspicious until my father began to compliment un on the appearance of the barn. We were taking this with what we thought was fitting modesty when he suddenly asked how we came to was the carriage without being told. We stammered and said we thought it needed washing, but by this time we must have looked like a pair of condemned felons.

“There’s something I want to ask you,” my father said slowly. “Did you boys do all this work yourselves?”

My brother looked helplessly at me. He knew that I didn’t think him a very accomplished liar, and this was his way of telling me that I’d have to carry on.

“Wh-what do you mean by that?” I asked.

“Did you do the work alone – or has somebody been helping you?”

I was swallowing hard. “Well, I–I guess we did have a little help.”

“Sim Cranford?”

We nodded.

“Where have you kept him?”

“In the barn. He sleeps in the hay.”

“What do you pay him?”

“Nothing – just buy him a plug of tobacco once in a while.”

“But what does he eat?”

“Oh, we take a few leftovers out to him.”

“Then Ann knows about it?”

We hastened to exonerate our friend, the cook. “It wasn’t her fault, we made her promise not to tell.”

“I’ve learned an awful lot from old Sim, Dad,” said my brother. “He knows more about horses than anybody you ever saw. He knows just how a horse thinks.”

“He’s a good gardener, too,” I put in.

My father shook his head. “He’ll have to go. We can’t keep him around here.”

“Then you’ll hafta sell Daisy,” pleaded my brother. “Sim belongs with her.”

“He’ll have to go,” my father said sternly.

“You’ll hafta tell Sim,” I said. “He’ll never believe us.”

“Well, he’ll believe me.”

My father went stalking out to the barn. He was not stalking when he came back half an hour later. His own love of horses gave him a complete understanding of Sim’s affection for Daisy. He did not need Sim. He much preferred to have us do the work – but he did not send Sim away. Instead he had a coachman’s room finished off in a corner of the carriage barn. There was a stove to keep the place warm in winter, and there was a comfortable bed – though I was never sure whether Sim slept in it or not. But in any event that is where he lived out his span. Daisy survived him. She was well along in the twenties when my father pensioned her for life and sent her out to a farm where there were green pastures, plenty of shade trees, and a brook of running water. Nor did Daisy’s carcass go to the bone man when she died, to be ground up for fertilizer. She was decently buried, and her grave was marked with a stone.

IN MEMORY OF
DAISY
A HORSE THAT WAS KIND AND TRUE
AND OF
SIMEON CRANFORD
HER FAITHFUL FRIEND

---

IRA

by Lynn R. Miller

In 1977-78, when the Journal was brand new, Ray Drongesen and Herman Daniel were helping me get the farming done on my Junction City operation. I was purchasing a small abandoned dairy farm that included a large cattle loafing shed full of old dried manure. I had seven head of work horses at the time and I, Ray and Herman were keeping up to six animals working steady. There were two extras standing around. One of my first mares, Queenie, hadn’t fit in. She was flighty and needed special care. Unfortunately she just took too much attention. I say unfortunate because she was a grand mare.

I had been gone to a farming conference that weekend and when I went to the barn monday morning Herman had already brought draft horses into the tie stalls. Standing in the single stall with Queenie was a man I hadn’t seen before. Herman introduced him. His name was Ira Brown. He had mediterranean-dark skin, short black curly hair and was shorter than average height with a slight frame.

He didn’t want to look at me, instead he stood at her hip and stroked it. I said hello, and he said the mare needed brushing. I turned to my dear friend and volunteer helper Herman and reminded him that I could not afford to hire anyone.

“Ira isn’t looking for a paid job, he would just like to help with the horses. He’s real good around them. Knows what he’s doing. Yesterday Ray and I were here and helped him to hook Goldie and Queenie to the manure spreader. He knows his stuff. Ira, tell Mr. Miller what you would like to do.”

“Clean out that shed and work these two old mares. Don’t need no money.”

I looked through the barn gate and saw the manure spreader parked in the center of the adjoining building. The shed was 40’ x 80’ with a concrete floor but you wouldn’t know it for all the manure. I looked at Herman who was nodding his head yes to me. Next thing I knew Ira set to work prepping and harnessing the two mares, while Herman and I got the other horses ready for field work. I watched over my shoulder as the mares were hitched to the spreader that Ira had filled with a pitchfork.

All day long Ira took loads out to the pasture. Once, I watched as he parked the spreader in the loafing shed, unhooked the traces, checked to see if the neckyoke ring could slide off the end of the pole, then tucked the gathered lines up under Goldie’s brichen. Next he set to pitching manure into the machine. He’d do it for a while then he would walk to each standing mare and stroke them as he whispered something.

Every morning that summer he showed up. He wore the same clothes. Carried no lunch box. Refused food. Never said anything to me. Talked softly all the time to the horses. Carefully, safely, he completely cleaned out that loafing shed. Then one day he didn’t show up. And we never learned what happened to him. Queenie watched for him every day.