“Ellington,” Sabine said, snapping her fingers. “That’s the jack’s name.”
He was an obvious extrovert, as affectionate as a lapdog, and very vocal, though his bray sounded like a deaf man bellowing. The jennet was the opposite: quiet, deerlike, and demure, with lustrous, false-looking eyelashes. She had an Amish quality, seemed both sober and humble, but with an irrepressible glamour.
“What about her?” Greta said.
“Pantaloon,” Sabine said.
Ellington and Pantaloon kept stomping their feet as if to test how solid the ground was, or to make sure they weren’t dreaming. Compared with the donkey farm, which Greta imagined as bleak and smelly, their new home was heaven. Plenty to browse in the yard and field, all the peonies in bloom, butterflies everywhere, two laughing women feeding them apples and carrots. They were probably pinching themselves.
“Do you deliver donkeys all over New York?” Greta asked the driver, who stood nearby.
“Not around here, usually,” he said. “But I have three myself and I live thirty minutes from here, in Tivoli.”
“Is it true they can’t be alone? I mean, if the jack died, god forbid, would the jennet kill herself?”
“Mini-donkeys need each other,” he said. “They prefer to be among their own kind—other mini-donkeys, that is, not just goats or sheep or whatever. If they’re alone for too long, they get sick and die.”
He seemed reluctant to leave. At first Greta thought he was waiting for a tip, but when Sabine offered him money, he waved it away. He was somewhere in his thirties, and also looked Amish, or maybe it was just his collarless, off-white linen shirt. His shorts were that shade of brown everyone was so hard for—clay, it might have been called, or terra-cotta. He was tall, blue eyed, looked like a Gunter or Hans, and was clearly more than just a donkey chauffeur. It occurred to her that he genuinely cared about the donkeys, wanted to make sure he wasn’t leaving them with a couple of rejects.
“What’s your name?” Greta asked him.
“Dave,” he said.
“Are you a farmer?” Greta asked.
“Farrier,” he said.
Greta looked away. What the hell was a farrier?
“So you work with ferrets,” Greta said confidently.
Sabine laughed and lit a cigarette.
“I specialize in hoof care,” he said. “So when they start standing like ballerinas, with their feet in first position, call me and I’ll come trim their hooves.”
“With what, hedge clippers?” Greta asked.
“A rasp,” he said. “Mini-donkeys were bred for the desert. The earth around here is too soft for them, so their hooves need to be filed down.”
Greta wondered what the farrier’s feet looked like. She looked down at her own feet. Pi?on was currently sitting on her toes. He blinked up at her. Remember me?
Dave wanted to know what the water situation was. They all wandered over to the paddock. Sabine pointed out the faucet, the trough, the salt lick, the haystacks and bags of grain. The shed was clean and cozy and had windows. Sabine had spent hours making it perfect. Greta was surprised she hadn’t hung curtains or installed bunk beds with pillows and percale sheets.
“Don’t get mad if they shit up the shed,” Dave said.
Sabine blinked. “They shit where they sleep?”
“Sure,” he said. “Jacks are territorial. He might get upset when you muck out the shed, but you have to do it, anyway, at least once a day.”
Sabine nodded. “Oh, I know. I’ve done my research.”
“Hope you don’t mind my asking, but why donkeys?” he asked Sabine. “Why not some other pet?”
“Someone told me mini-donkeys could mend a broken heart,” Sabine said. “Which—I mean, I realize my heart seems like it’s in one piece, but, well, it’s not. It’s all smashed up.”
Jesus. Was Sabine on mushrooms? Her eyes were watery, but she seemed more present than usual, and more put together. Her hair was freshly dyed, her overalls freshly bleached, her eyebrows penciled in. Had she snuck something glossy onto her lips?
Dave rubbed the back of his neck. “Will it take thirty years to mend? Because that’s how long donkeys live.”
“It might,” Sabine said, and shrugged.
“I got my donks after my divorce,” he said. “They kept me pretty grounded.”
They both blushed.
Greta looked at the sky. Why did the light look so honeyed? Why did the word “gauzy” keep popping into her head? Why did her limbs feel bubble-wrapped?
“That granola you made last night,” she whispered to Sabine. “Did you bake it on those sheet pans? The ones you use to make edibles?”
Sabine’s eyes widened. “No wonder I feel a warm hand on my brain.”
Of course she hadn’t washed the pans, which had likely been coated with residue. They’d both eaten the granola for breakfast, shoveling it into their mouths by the fistful. Greta felt only half-baked, but Sabine seemed twice-baked and casseroled.
“We accidentally ate weed,” Sabine announced to Dave, “but would you care for a blender drink? I have fresh strawberries.”
“Sure,” Dave said.
“I’ll make us a pitcher of daiquiris,” Sabine said, giving away her age. “And you can tell me everything you know about donkeys. I want every detail.”
They went inside. Greta remained in the yard, where the donks were still munching, ears and tails twitching. It seemed criminal that such adorable creatures would be living in Sabine’s backyard for the next thirty years. Greta grew more enamored by the minute, even though she’d always preferred pets you could pick up. She rarely looked twice at anything with hooves, but she felt thoroughly seduced by their various noises and imagined herself recording them, labeling it “Donkey ASMR,” putting it on the internet, maybe making a million dollars. Greta would pay money to listen to them chew every day and imagined other people would, too. Pi?on, on the other hand, would probably pay to have them kidnapped. She’d never seen him this jealous. He kept yawning and fake sneezing. Presently he was glued to Greta’s side, limping dramatically even though his leg had fully healed. When she stopped to pet Pantaloon, he threw himself on the ground and played dead.
In the kitchen, it was daiquiris and donkey talk.
“They’re a bunch of different animals rolled into one,” Dave was telling Sabine. “Cow, dog, elephant, human.”
“How are they like elephants?” Sabine asked.
“Mini-donkeys never forget anything,” Dave said. “They’re capable of intense grief. They’re affectionate, but they also have an intuitive respect for your personal space.”
Donkey love was real, apparently, and very deep, because Dave continued gushing for thirty minutes. He said that mini-donks had not been bred down from standard donks. They weren’t like teacup poodles. Mini-donks were their own thing, had been around for six thousand years, were first discovered on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia. Some rich guy imported them to the US in the 1920s. Their reputation for obstinacy was really just cautiousness, an interest in self-preservation. When they don’t want to do something, it’s because they don’t think it’s safe. You can see it in their eyes, this kind of pulling back.