This story starts on a Friday in June, 1942. I was thirteen. It was the last day of school and we had to go in only to get our report cards and to make sure we were being promoted to the next grade, that to being a high school freshman. To celebrate the occasion and to exercise our interest in Boy Scout activities, we planned an afternoon at Abram's Rock to include a camp fire and cook out. My best friend was ( and still is as boyhood friendships go) Sherrill Smith, interchangeable with the more informal, "Smitty". He and I had decided to spend the night there, as we had on other occasions. The other five Boy Scouts were not interested and had been warned by their parents that we were in for some heavy thunderstorms that night. As we did in those days, we wore our Boy Scout summer uniforms: khaki shorts, knee socks, short sleeve shirts and our Yogi Bear hats. With a knapsack containing our mess gear and our dinner of venison, potatoes, a hard roll, a little bundle of carrots and celery (that mothers were famous for providing although not solicited) and a Coke in the original hour glass shaped bottle, we started off. In addition, Sherrill and I had packed a couple of eggs, bread and doughnut for breakfast. We were the only two with sleeping bags.
Arriving at the rock, we stowed our gear in the first of the two of Abram's bedroom, which was the largest one in both area and height. We then set about doing some work on a bridge we were building for a Pioneer Merit badge. It was a bridge made of relatively small trees and held together with wild grape vines. These vines were used as rope and when tied properly they held the structure securely together. Next, we decided on a game of "kick the can" which was really fun but when I think back on running around all sides of that huge uneven rock, I think of the hazardous things that young boys do, things often lacking in "good sense". Finally, it was supper time; the camp fires were started inside the rock cave. The potatoes were thrown into the fire knowing full well they would explode and cause unexpected laughter. After our meal (the venison always tasted like shoe leather) we went out to the pond just a few feet away from the cave opening to clean our mess gear. This shallow body of water, about fifty feet wide, was the result of an underground spring. In the spring time, it was filled with poly-wogs; later, as they grew, they would become a symphony of frogs croaking along with countless crickets chirping at twilight time... In the winter time, this pond was the first place we went go to run "bendies" on new thin ice. This was the act of another unexplained boyhood adventure and, frequently and sheepishly, we went home quite wet, but only up to our hips.
Just before dark our friends left and as they did so we could hear the far away sound of thunder. Sherrill and I went to the top of the rock and sat there just a few feet where Abram jumped. We were facing east toward the Town of Somerset and the thunder heads were clearly visible, but the sight was beyond description. The sun was going down in the west but the rays were bounding off the incoming boiling clouds.
They were a rainbow of colors... with lightning flashing like shooting stars making the inside of the clouds seem to explode with the color of various shades of white and yellow.
It was almost dark when we started back down to the cave, but not by taking the safest of routes! There was a tall thin tree that grew up along side of the rock which we used as "fireman's" pole. We would leap out and shimmy down the tree to the ground. This was not a particularly wise move, but clearly within the realm of our daredevil minds at that age. Inside the cave we stoked the fire with some large pieces of wood, opened up our sleeping bags and went promptly and comfortably to sleep.
I don't know how long we had been asleep when one clap of thunder got the attention of both of us. From then on it was incessant. Lightning was everywhere and continuous. There was also an unusual feature to this cave; the rain water that was now torrential, ran down from the top of the rock to form a waterfall inside the cave. I am not writing about some kind of dribble; this was a lot of water, channeled together and roaring harmlessly through our bedroom. In spite of this, there was nothing for us to be alarmed about, nor were we; but this euphoric moment was about to end.
Feeling the call of nature and curious about the magnitude of the storm outside, I crawled out of my sleeping bag and made my way to the cave entrance a few feet to my left. Half way through this uneventful task of relieving myself, something caught my eye, something very strange and disturbing! The lightning flashed again; it struck close by and the thunder shook the ground: but there was no mistaking what I saw! Across the small pond, I saw a large black horse! He was looking right at me, not moving, just staring! The raindrops flashing in the streaks of lightning resembled beads of diamonds dancing off his back and falling to the ground around him. He was standing motionless on the edge near the edge of the pond with his head and very shiny black eyes looking straight at me.
"Smitty, Smitty, " I called out. No answer. Much louder. "Sherrill, Sherrill.! I could see he was now sitting up but the din of the thunder and our indoor waterfall was too much. Finally, with frantic arm and hand signals, I got his attention and he crawled over to me.
"What's the matter?" he almost had to shout.
"Look over there, on the other side of the pond, I said pointing.
"I don't see anything, what do you see?" he said. He was right.....where the horse had been, there was nothing.
Then scaring me half to death he grabbed me and said, "Look down the path. It's!... it's a horse!" Then he shouted into my ear, "It's a black horse...he's looking right at us."
"That's him," I said. "He was over there on the other side of the pond just a second ago!" All of a sudden it was very dark and the thunder continued. When the lightning returned seconds later, the horse had moved forward and was only about twenty feet from where we were standing. He moved not a muscle but his black eyes were on us.
"I'm getting my ax," Sherrill shouted.
"Forget it! You can't kill a horse with a hatchet and besides he can't get in here." It was quiet and dark again. When the next bolt of lightning made like daylight again, the horse was gone! Disappeared! No sound of his hoofs. Just gone.
The rest of the night passed uneasily. "Did you ever see him move at all?"
"No, he was perfectly still," I said softly.
"He seemed to jump from place to place! What would a horse like that be doing out here?...looked like a race horse...a thoroughbred. Where could he have come from? There aren't any horses like that around here!
"And did you see those black eyes! Jees!"
When we finally feel asleep, well inside our sleeping bags. I woke up with Sherrill poking me.
"Do you want to have breakfast?" he asked. The memory of the night before came quickly back to me.
"Do you?" I asked.
"Naa, not hungry."
We packed up our things, hurriedly, not according to our Boy Scout standards. The sun was just creeping over the rock as we made our way out of the cave.
"Just down the path, Sherrill turned and said, "Look at this!" He was pointing to four piles of fresh horse buns. Our curiosity was not sufficiently aroused to ponder over what would normally be an insignificant event of nature but we broke into a pretty fast run back into the village.
I didn't see Sherrill the rest of that day (Saturday) and we conveniently stayed away from each other. My father took my brother and me for haircuts and the rest of the time, I was catching up on my sleep. My dad asked about the storm and he remarked on how long it had lasted and how bad it had been. I made no comment. My mother didn't like the way I dropped all my clothes on the kitchen floor but nothing else was said until she found the broken eggs in the knapsack. Then there was a discussion about the war effort and conservation of food, followed by a routine statement about children starving in China!
Sunday morning around nine o'clock Sherrill was at my back door. I lived right next to Christ Church so he always stopped by on his way to church. We had been selected to count the offering collected at Sunday School. With almost no exchange of words, we jumped over the stone wall into the church yard and made our way to the Vestry Room. The Offertory Hymn was being sung so we knew we where right on time.
Counting the Sunday School collection was relatively simple. Lots of pennies! The envelopes were divided into two parts: money that would go to the Diocese and that which would stay for Christ Church. As we were nearing our silent accounting task, my Uncle Alston arrived. My uncle was very involved with the usual jobs of a person who lived only two houses from the church. On this occasion, he was the Church Treasurer since he was the President of the Little Red Savings Bank in Fall River. He would make the Sunday deposits on Monday when he went to work.
"Did you hear what happened to Bobby Baker last night?" he said without addressing either one of us.
I looked up and said, "What happened to Bobby Baker?"
"It was about twelve-thirty and he was coming home from bowling. He was a little late but the thunderstorm was pretty bad." My uncle paused as he used two fingers to count the money. "He was going down Hortonville Road when all of a sudden, right in front of him was a beautiful black horse, a horse that looked like a race horse. He was going about 35 mph, he thinks, but was unable to stop and he slammed into the horse's left side. Bobby said the horse was looking right at him with shiny black eyes. It must have been some jolt! He broke his steering wheel, the front headlights and he got a leak in the radiator."
He cupped his hands and pushed all the money into a little gray bag.
"Anyway, he was pretty shook up and finally got out of the truck expecting to see a dead horse. There was no horse! It was gone! About this time another driver stopped behind him and after telling the other driver what had happened, the two of them walked around looking for the horse. No horse!"
"How do you know about this?" I asked.
"I ran into the Chief of Police at the Post Office and he's been up all night looking for this horse, which must be severely injured."
Sherrill and I left the church and walked over to sit on the stone wall next to my house.
"What'da ya mean, wha'da I think?" I replied.
"The horse! We saw that horse!"
"I know, but that horse was at Abram's Rock and that's quite a way from Hortonville Road!"
"But, did you ever see that horse move? I mean that's a little scary when he went from one place to another and we didn't see him move!"
"I suppose we could tell the Chief," I muttered.
"We could take him out there and show him those fresh buns," Sherrill suggested.
"I don't know if taking the Chief of Police out to Abram's Rock to look at four piles of horse manure is going to prove anything."
Anyway the horse was never discovered. We never talked to Bobby Baker or the Chief of Police. Once in a while on Halloween I told my children of "The Night of the Black Horse" which was quite effective as ghost stories go. To me, it remains a vivid memory.
As for Sherrill and me, we never slept at Abram's Rock again.
Note by the author of "The Night of the Black Horse".
As the years have gone by, my fondest memories are those growing up in Swansea Village. With the confines of those memories are those that involve the carefree days of playing on Abram's Rock. It remains one of the wonders of nature, but for those growing up in their teens, it provided a never ending time to exercise our imaginations (of Indians) and to let our enthusiasm explode as we made hair raising games on the summit.
Frank C Chace Jr.
Colonel, US Marine Corps (Ret)
2800 North Flagler Dr.
West Palm Beach, Fl.
