In Paul Moshimer’s last message to me before he took  his own life two weeks ago, he told me he wanted to come to New York and bring Joshua Rockwood’s horses back to him from the rescue farm where they had been taken. Paul said he would drive his trailer from Massachusetts and there would be no charge.

I was not surprised by the gesture, it was typical of Paul to reach out to people in trouble, he was a master of the grand gesture. He did it without fanfare or hesitation, and expected nothing in return. Paul and I both shared an identification with Joshua, what happened to him seemed so wrong to both of us. Like me, Paul was greatly troubled by the animal abuse hysteria that seems to be engulfing so many innocent people, destroying so many lives, removing so many animals from our sight and our world. It was painful for him to see the cruel, often vicious assaults against the people in the New York Carriage Trade. Like Joshua, they were innocent victims of a new kind of Inquisition.

Paul had read my posts about Joshua and he called me up right a way and said he wanted to help. I believe the turmoil roiling the animal world upset him deeply, I believe it was wearing him down, he talked about it often, he was worried that it would affect me and my work.

I didn’t know Paul that long, maybe a year, but that was how it was with him. I haven’t spoken to my real brother in years, I cannot imagine calling him for help, although I always wished that I could. Paul was my brother from the first, I always knew I could call him for help. But I never had to, he always offered help without being asked,

Joshua’s persecution was not a remote threat, Paul was living it. Blue Star Equiculture, which he ran with his wife Pamela Moshimer Rickenbach, has been targeted for years by people who claim to speak for the rights of animals and who are outraged at anyone who supports the work of animals.

Interns and students who work at the farm have been threatened and harassed and told to hide their involvement with the horses, their contacts have been hacked and published on the Internet, vandals came to Blue Star in the night and opened the pasture gates, Paul and Pamela were frequently accused of animal abuse and torture because they believe in the right of draft horses to work, and the rights of people to work with the horses. And the right of horses to remain us, to keep the bond alive. Every time one of their beloved horses die, enraged people in far away places call the police and demand they be investigated.

It is an awful thing for someone who loves animals to be constantly accused of harming them. Just ask Joshua Rockwood or the New York Carriage Drivers. Or Paul or Pamela.

I can tell you that no horses on this planet live a better life than the animals at Blue Star, that was a passion of Paul and Pamela both. The great irony is that they deserve medals and awards for the work they have done, with people and the horses, the assaults on them seemed almost tragically unjust. I guess they were.

This hatred and tension and suffering of the carriage drivers and people like Joshua weighed heavily on Paul. And all the more so because he felt his distant arrest for assault –  he served 30 days in jail in Maine – meant that he felt could not defend Blue Star or the  horses, that the farm might be damaged by any association with them. That his past might be used against others, against the animals. He was probably right about that in a way, it would almost surely have been used against him, but I told him the power of the horses is greater than the hatred of small people. I never had the sense he believed me, he knew well what hateful people can do.

So many people, including me, told him that he needed to shed that shame. But he could never bring himself to believe it, or to do it, shame ran deep in him.  And then, his legs and hips started to hurt so badly he could hardly walk. A lot for a proud man to swallow.

Yesterday, I went through my final messages from Paul, there were a dozen or so on my Iphone voicemail queue and some more on Facebook Messenger. I will be honest, I suppose I was looking for a clue or some message that might explain why he hung himself, when he had found a world he loved so much. Like everyone else who knew him, I had a hard time believing he wouldn’t have said goodbye when he had spent so much time saying hello.

It’s time for me to move forward now, I will surely be at the memorial services for Paul in July, but I also need to accept that there is no letter for me either, nothing to help explain this, or to help me understand it. I think he trusted me to do that for myself. So I will celebrate his friendship and move on, I will let the people closest to  him deal with  his loss in their own way, there is no more story, really, for me to tell. I will remember him by telling the great story of Blue Star whenever I can and for as long as they let me and anyone listens.

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One of the messages from Paul was about someone who hated me. Paul called me up one day to tell me that he was very upset that a good friend of his hated me with a vengeance, this man was convinced I was writing about the New York Carriage Horses for personal gain. I told Paul that I could not imagine what that personal gain might be, as I stopped doing paid work for a year to write about the carriage horses, and it did my heart good but not my  bank account.

I said he had to let go of his friend’s anger, I learned a long time ago – and he needed to learn it also – that every time anyone speaks from the heart or says any worthwhile thing, someone will hate them for it. That is the way our world works, that is the way the human mind works. A human heart can be big, like his, or small, like his friend. He said he wanted to argue with him, talk to him, explain what he felt was the truth.

Forget it, I said. You don’t need to do that. It will do no good. You don’t need to speak for me.  I didn’t know his friend, I said, had never spoken with him, he had no reason to know me, love me or hate me. It did not hurt me, it ought not to hurt him. Let it go.

But it did hurt him, he mentioned it many times. I understood for the first time in that long and difficult telephone call how harmful all of the anger and rage that swirls around the  world and the world of animals was to him. I had the sense he could not escape it, could not find a place so safe it could not reach him.  There may have been a dozen other things on Paul’s mind that I do not know about , I am neither a psychic or a seer. To go further is the province of  Pamela and his many sons and daughters, not of me.I t does haunt me, though.

Can cruelty kill? I suppose so, I don’t know if it killed Paul. It didn’t do him any good.

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The horses Paul referred to in  his last message were taken from Joshua in a raid on his farm from him by the police and some people who said they were animal rescuers. A judge has since ruled he didn’t need to pay one dollar for their care, but they are still being kept from him by the district attorney. He may never get them back.

Rockwood is a young farmer selling grass-fed meat to local people. His farm was raided by the police in March, he is awaiting trial on 13 counts of animal cruelty.  He is accused of having frozen water receptacles in sub-zero temperatures and of having unheated barns, among other things.  Ken Norman, our farrier and a long-time horse rescuer said the charges were all “Bullshit Misdemeanors.”

Paul believed, as I did, that Joshua was innocent and the charges against him were outrageous. He wanted to support him, as he supported me and so many others. He wanted to attend all of the hearings with me, I know he planned to. The last time he came, we had dinner at Panera’s. We each had a turkey sandwich. We were planning the next meal at a local Thai restaurant. Neither of us drank liquor any longer, each for different reasons.

At the court hearing, Paul towered over every one else. The motorcycle riders from the Oathkeepers saw him as a brother and shook his hand and invited him to stand with them. The reporters ignored the scores of people waiting outside and rushed up to interview Paul, so striking in his large frame, white hair and beard. It seems that once you are a Fire Chief, you are always a Fire Chief.

This morning, around 3 a.m., I had a dream, I think. I heard the sheep calling out and the sensor light came on in the yard. I got up, put my robe on and went outside to check, Red came with me. I heard a voice calling to me from the two Adirondack Chairs by the garden. It was where Paul and I sat and talked on his last visit to our farm, I got up early and found him out there taking pictures with his new Sony camera.

“Hey,” he said, “I hope you don’t mind, I have to come this way to pick up a horse.” I turned around and saw  his big blue Ford truck and the giant Blue Star Equiculture trailer parked out in the driveway. He had, he said, been driving all night.  I didn’t mind. We sat down and talked.

It was very easy to talk to Paul, he was a good listener.

I was so looking forward to going with Paul when he brought those horses back to Joshua, that would have been a triumphant ride. In our distracted and conflicted world, justice is a beacon, compassion a shining light. I read and listened to Paul’s message and it was clear to me now that he was not done with shame. One of his last messages urged me to read a book by Ron Johnson called “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed,” a book about the mob destruction of lives and reputations on Twitter and other social media.

Paul knew what it was like to be shamed, he felt shame every day of  his life for his one great  mistake. It cast a shadow over his new life.

This morning, I had this vision in the gray time between darkness and light.  I heard a noise outside, I went out in my robe, Paul was sitting in one of the Adirondack Chairs where we sat out and talked at sunrise the night he stayed with us at the farm.

“Hey,” I said, “man, it is so good to see you? Is this a dream? I thought you were gone.”

Paul laughed a hearty laugh, sometimes he looked like Santa Claus, sometimes he looked like a King of England.

“No, Man,” he said, puffing on what looked like a think brown cigar, “that was the dream, my friend.”

Of course, I think, my heart lightening, my soul rising. That explains everything.