THE MOON HORSE
A Novel
The Moon Horse
Based on the novel by Tanya Kern
Copyright 2022 Tanya Kern
Contact: James Clois Smith Jr., Sunstone Press/ (505) 988-4418
LOGLINE: Toni is a young woman looking for love and happiness during the drug and alcohol infested era of the 1990s. Her passion is caring for her rescued animals on her small ranch outside an artistic and unconventional city in northern New Mexico. Suddenly, her life is threatened and her beautiful horse has a serious accident.
ACT 1
July 4th. Toni, a young, exotic belly dancer wants to buy another Arabian horse but her jazz musician boyfriend, Pearce, discourages her. Toni doubts that Pearce loves her even though Pearce has asked her to marry him. She loves Pearce and she has helped him give up his alcohol and nicotine addiction but Pearce does not approve of her passion for animals.
Toni has a drug addict x-boyfriend named JJ who is addicted to cocaine. She has been trying to get JJ into rehab for years but he refuses. When JJ is sober, he has a good heart and he cares for Toni and her many animals. When he is high, he is violent and abusive to her.
Toni’s mother, Helena, goes with her to a Hispanic village to find Sisco, the Hispanic owner of an Arabian horse for sale. Toni falls in love with Kamar who is a beautiful, gray, four-year-old horse and Helena buys him for Toni. Helena knows that Khahlifah, the old stallion that Toni has been riding since she was a young girl, is getting old. She believes that Toni needs a new horse to buffer the grief when Khahlifah dies of old age.
Sisco brings Kamar to Toni’s ranch. Toni realizes that Kamar is untrained. Toni calls JJ to tell him about her new horse but JJ insults her. Toni remembers when she was a child that she witnessed people having bad acid trips. Her sister Annie ran away to San Francisco and got involved with heroin. Helena rescued Annie and brought her back to Santo but then Annie beat up Toni, regularly. Drugs have been a part of Toni’s life and it has harmed her. Toni will never try drugs.
JJ wants Toni to break up with Pearce. JJ doesn’t want to live in the country or quit his drug addiction but he wants to control Toni. She gets on Kamar for the first time and he rears up and falls over backwards. She falls into a tree and the branches protect her from hitting the ground. Her stepbrother, Brant, suffers from a mental breakdown and Toni tries to help him recover. Brant tells her that men reject sexy women.
Pearce has a rich girlfriend, Sheila, who buys him expensive presents. Pearce constantly says ‘I love you’ to Toni but she doesn’t believe him. She knows that Pearce’s passion is his music. Toni loves Pearce’s body and his long hair. They have wonderful sex.
JJ visits Toni at her ranch and promises to give her a truck to pull her horse trailer. He tells her he wants to marry her. She reminds him that he has been a junkie since they met in San Francisco when she was nineteen-years-old. She tells him that she will never marry a junkie. She goes to a bar to listen to Pearce’s band. Pearce gets angry at Toni when other men look at her. He demands that she leave his gig.
Toni tries to load Kamar into the horse trailer. She realizes that she needs a horse trainer for Kamar. She rides Kamar and Pearce rides Silvano, Toni’s white Arabian horse. Pearce wants her to sell the horse trailer and complains during the entire ride. She hires a horse trainer, Mike. He comes over to the ranch and flirts with Toni. Pearce gets enraged. He strangles her in her bathroom. She is shocked and asks him to move out. He agrees to move out in three months.
Toni decides to board Kamar at Encantada so Mike can work with him. Mike teaches her how to ride Kamar and how to load a horse into a trailer. JJ arrives with a teacup Chihuahua that he gives Toni. He takes her for a drive in his car. He rapes her.
Toni tells Pearce that JJ raped her. Pearce blames her. He is furious with her and refuses to touch her. He demands that she get a restraining order against JJ and tells her that it is over between them. He calls her a murderer. JJ offers to give Toni money and demands that she takes a cell phone from him. He calls her retarded and expects her to marry him. Toni goes to see a doctor. She also sees a judge to ask about a restraining order.
She visits Kamar and Mike advises Toni to sell Kamar. Toni’s horses and animals are the only source of joy in her life. She sees her therapist, Mrs. Yender, who asks Toni, ‘Do you love Pearce or JJ?’ She advises Toni to wear a helmet when she rides Kamar. Pearce moves out. JJ wants to move in but Toni tells him that he is evil.
ACT 2
July 14th.Toni is riding Kamar on a road near her ranch and he slips on the chipped gravel recently dumped on the road by the County of Santo. Kamar falls and cannot get up. He is bleeding to death on the side of the road. Toni desperately tries to get help. Annie refuses to help her. Toni gets help from an American Indian and other men in the neighborhood. She gets Kamar to Villa Vet. Trent, the vet, tells her to euthanize Kamar as he will never walk again.
Helena reminds Toni that Mother Nature will heal Kamar. With her help, Toni decides to save her horse’s life. Her neighbor, Joy, brings her a plaque of the Virgin Mary to put in Kamar’s barn. Toni tells Joy that she isn’t dating anyone and that dating men feels superficial compared to healing Kamar. Trent gives Toni a long list of things to do morning and evening to try to heal Kamar. Toni also tries alternative healing methods. She hires Jim Apples, a lawyer, to sue the Santo County. Jim Apples believes that animals have rights. She sees Mrs. Yender who tells her that Toni is trying to heal the damaged male. Toni has a session with Rosa, a psychic, who predicts good things for her and Kamar in a year.
Trent wants Toni to give Kamar two more weeks and if Kamar doesn’t improve, then he must be euthanized. Helena wants Toni to give Kamar six months. Toni hires Dr. May to do acupuncture on Kamar. He teaches Toni how to insert the needles. Kamar is lame and cannot walk. Toni will not give up faith.
Toni says good-bye to her old stallion, Khahlifah. She hires Bob to help her train Kamar who is starting to walk again, after nine months of healing. Trent at Villa Vet is telling people with injured horses to contact Toni. For each person who calls her, she has five questions. Toni describes the meaning of the moon and Kamar.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Opening credits, Visual: 1990’s northern New Mexico brightly lit bar stage with an older gypsy woman in an emerald green Flamenco dress standing and singing to the front, a tall, handsome man with long hair playing an electric guitar standing to the left, an older man with white hair sitting in a chair playing an Arabic oud to the right, and a blonde man sitting on a bench playing an Egyptian doumbek to the back of the stage. An exotic, young, slender belly dancer wearing a ruby red beaded bra, belt and full skirt sways at the front of the stage in beat with the band. A large audience sitting in chairs in the dark yell and clap enthusiastically as the band performs loud Arabic-Flamenco fusion music for the beautiful belly dancer.
END