Horse Heaven (12 page)

“Some shots here, some teeth there. Nothing urgent. Would you like to talk?”

Krista knew his beeper could go off at any moment—colic, choke, laceration, skull fracture, subluxation of the stifle joint, abortion, pierced cornea—so there wasn’t much time. She said, “Yeah. Yeah, I would.” She had been doing this for three years now, letting Sam’s large, practical presence calm her. It was almost worth all the vet bills, just to have him come over.

They went back into the tackroom, which was now even a bit too warm, and fragrant with well-soaped and much-used leather. Krista sat on a trunk. Sam sat in the desk chair. Right there on the desk were the bills she was already ten days late sending out. Krista sighed and turned her gaze into Sam’s face, just so she didn’t have to be reminded of that, but everything reminded her. She said, “We can’t last much longer here, Sam. If we get through this foaling
season—Well, I don’t see how we are going to get through this foaling season.” But then she sighed. “Okay. Well, I guess we are going to get through this foaling season. But I know that everyone around here just looks at us and thinks, Haven’t they let that place go, don’t the horses look dirty, surely she’s neglecting that child. I almost don’t dare go out anymore. My grandfather had this place spotless. It was like he knew how to solve every problem before he got up in the morning and knew what the problems were. And he got up at four a.m. I’ve tried that, but Pete doesn’t want to go to bed at eight o’clock, so I don’t get up until six and then I’m ashamed at not getting things done until midmorning—”

Sam opened his mouth.

“I know we have to hire someone, but we can’t afford anyone. I mean, some junior-high-school girl would come out here and clean stalls until she dropped and be grateful for the opportunity to be worked to death, but I can’t do that.”

Sam coughed. What was he, Krista thought, about fifty? Kind of paunchy, but big-shouldered and quiet, the way men who spent their lives stemming the tide of equine disaster often were.

“And you know what my mother said? She said, ‘Don’t do it, Krista, don’t move there. Sell the damned place and the damned horse and do something more fun than horse-breeding, like working as a data processor at the Pentagon in a stuffy little cubicle for fifty years at ten thousand dollars a year.’ She was sure when told her I was pregnant that the next thing out of my mouth was going to be that I was selling the farm.”

Sam smiled. Maybe, she thought, she should have married a much older man. Her best friend from college had done that.

“And a guy from Texas did approach me right after they ran that article in
The Blood-Horse
about me taking over the operation, and he offered me, well, a lot of money, and I didn’t take it, and I haven’t dared to tell my mother about that, but—”

“If you didn’t take it, you didn’t take it.” His voice was very soothing, deep, and certain.

“My grandfather made it all look very easy.”

“Your grandfather never seemed to worry, I’ll say that for him. It was very reassuring to work for him when I was just starting out. Take a deep breath.”

She took a deep breath, thinking that it was nice to be instructed once in a while.

“You know, one time your grandfather had me out to help him with a maiden stallion. I don’t remember his breeding. Anyway, we were the only two around, and I was just starting out, and your grandfather was very breezy
about the whole thing. You know, at the big studfarms, they’ve got six or seven hands helping with every breeding. But he always said that, if worse came to worst, you could just turn the two out together and they would do it by themselves, so why worry if there were only two of you? But he never stopped whistling, never got in a twist, never communicated any sense that there was anything wrong to the horses. That was the thing he knew. Whatever might seem to be going wrong, everything is a whole lot easier if the horses don’t know about it.”

“Yeah,” said Krista. She sighed. Then she said, “Well, he looked okay when he left, didn’t he?”

“He looked fine. How’s Maia?”

Sam’s beeper went off.

Krista said, “Perfect.” She sighed.

“That’s all you need, then, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

They came out of the tackroom, and Krista looked down the aisle of the barn, eleven clean and empty stalls on either side, awaiting the mares that would begin arriving in a few days. Sam said, “He’s the last one?”

“Himself is all I have here for a couple of days. Someday, maybe we’ll have our own mares.”

“I’m sure you will, honey,” he said. “Start slow.”

She followed him to his truck. Himself was standing in the doorway to his stall in the downpour, his ears pricked in their direction, and she could see Pete through the kitchen window, Maia in his arms. “What do I do now?” she said. “There’s nothing to do.”

“Take a nap,” he said.

O
FTEN
D
EIRDRE
could not decide what it was she liked least about training racehorses, there were so many candidates for the honor, but always when she was at the sales, she became freshly convinced that it was sales. The two-year-olds in training sales bothered her for obvious reasons—you had to wince at the sight of those babies flying around the track, their tender legs pounding the hard ground. And the yearling sales bothered her for other obvious reasons—all those even younger babies, fat and shiny, bearing too much weight on their tender joints, overfed, overgrown. You didn’t even have to look at the X-rays of their knees to know they were already compromised. But going to sales, and guiding her owners toward some simulacrum of responsible selection, was an inescapable part of her job, especially if (as Helen had pointed out to her only three days ago, when she was complaining about this trip with what she considered to be remarkable eloquence) she expected to prosper in 1998. Actually, the main thing she didn’t like about breeding sales, or at least this one, the first of the year, was that the weather was so damn cold. In September, at least it was warm and pleasant to visit all the barns and ask to see the horses. In November, at least inside the big golden amphitheater where the horses were led onto the stage and the bids were taken, there was some respite from the outer chill. In July, at least there was plenty of iced tea.

She had come to Keeneland with George and Skippy and Mary Lynn for the January Mixed Sale of breeding stock and horses in training. Skippy and Mary Lynn had about five hundred thousand dollars to spend, and they intended to buy more than five and fewer than ten mares in foal to particular stallions. Since Skippy was single-mindedly focused on the Kentucky Derby, the mares’ own sires, Deirdre advised, should be classic ones—Secretariat, Caro, Hoist the Flag, Vaguely Noble, Stage Door Johnny, Northfields, Key to the Mint—while the mares should be in foal to young, unproven stallions whose stud fees were not as high as Deirdre thought they could be, and would be. And though, on the way to Keeneland, Skippy had seemed to have a perfect
understanding of the essential concept of buy low, sell high, as soon as they got here he seemed to have lost all conceptual reasoning whatsoever. He kept coming to Deirdre and showing her the catalogue copy of mares who were in foal to A.P. Indy, Storm Cat, Seattle Slew, and Nureyev, and in whose eyes Skippy saw grand destiny. Deirdre found herself scattering bad language around like sawdust, but she got no relief from it. She dutifully marched around the barns in the cold and stared at all these mares, but the only thing she could see in their eyes was a general desire to be away from this place and in a nice pasture somewhere with other mares they could boss around, or be bossed around by.

Deirdre was not sure where he was getting this attitude. Usually, between the three of them, she, Mary Lynn, and George could manipulate, cajole, or contain him. Now Deirdre showed him a trim little brown mare by Hoist the Flag out of the dam of the great Canadian sire Vice Regent. She was correct and healthy, but she was eighteen years old. She was in foal to Manila. Deirdre liked everything about her, including the fact that Manila was something of a bargain, given his steadiness and lack of fashionability. She and Skippy were discussing this mare (Mary Lynn was trying to keep warm somewhere else), and she almost had Skippy paying attention, when a large fellow whose picture Deirdre had seen in
The Blood-Horse
sauntered over for a look. Skippy, who had been turned toward Deirdre in a posture attentive enough not to require a smack on the knuckles from the nuns, had they been present, went suspiciously rigid. The man said, “You looking at this
mare
?”

Skippy, the Judas, said, “Deirdre here likes her.”

“Huh,” said the man, Snell, his name was, Max Snell, and that was all it took. A minute later, Skippy followed the guy as if on a string to the circle gathered around another mare, a six-year-old winner of one and a half million dollars, by Seattle Slew, in foal to Seeking the Gold. As if herself on a string, Deirdre followed Skippy. No doubt about it, this was a nice mare, gold-plated. She had a great look about her—full of self-confidence, with an intelligent eye and a pleasant demeanor. But there was no way Skippy could afford this mare. The trouble was that, after looking at this mare and the few others like her, Skippy would be dissatisfied with what he could afford, and no matter what they managed to buy, he would think he hadn’t bought up to his potential.

“Now,” said the wee fella, “this is a mare! Look at that shoulder! Look at those pasterns! Look at that engine! This is your foundation mare right here, Hollister. And she’s in foal to a great stallion. That’s what you’ve got to look at. Seeking the Gold is a great stallion.”

Deirdre said, “You aren’t needing a fucking foundation mare, sir. You’re planning to breed a few racehorses, that’s all. Remember?”

“Is this your trainer?” And then, “Huh,” as if perfect respect were the most essential quality in a trainer, far outshining horse sense or intelligence or even masculinity. “You know, I tried to buy a mare once, and my trainer talked me out of it. She didn’t have the record this mare has, either. I went along with him, because he said she was overpriced, though, frankly, nothing is really overpriced for a guy like me, you know what I mean?” He eyed them both, and, yes, they knew exactly what he meant. “Anyway, you know what that mare’s name was?”

How could they, Deirdre thought, fucking possibly know what that mare’s name was?

“Gana Facil. She was in foal with Cahill Road. My trainer thought she was overpriced, and I didn’t have the sense to go with my own instincts. I
saw
something in that mare. In her eyes. Frankly, I see the same thing in this mare’s eyes, clear as day.”

Deirdre said, “She has a nice eye, for sure, sir. A lovely eye.” Then, “Are you going to be bidding on this mare, sir?”

“Well—” Snell chuckled a mighty chuckle. Skippy stiffened again. Then the other man spotted someone else he knew, hailed him, and walked away, leaving Deirdre and Skippy with their common sense of displeasure. After a moment, Skippy said, “I’m tired of looking at horses. They’re starting to all look the same to me. I want to go back to the hotel and take a nap. Where’s George?”

George was doing the driving.

The trouble with even this small sale was that the strata were so clearly defined. Skippy, who was used to being plenty rich and plenty important, didn’t quite know who he was here. He didn’t have a tenth the money that Snell had, or I percent of the experience that some of these lifelong racing people had. Nor was he the best-dressed in the crowd, which was always a help to an owner in a difficult social situation. And he was a lawyer. That meant that he worked for a living. Many here did not. But, then again, he did have George, and George was so charming, so Irish, so handsome, and so glowing with vitality that people stood around when George and Skippy walked by, and said to themselves, as they would say if Skippy dumped Mary Lynn and took up with a movie star, who’s that with
that guy
? And then, when Skippy got into the back seat of the car and George got into the driver’s seat, they were impressed. Oh my, how George loved the social power of Irishmen in America. All you had to do was open your mouth and say something anyone back home could say, and they fell at your feet. Deirdre thought George was getting a little overconfident. But here he came. Skippy brightened significantly, Deirdre passed
the lawyer off to her cousin, and they left her in peace to pursue her plan for Skippy’s benefit. The saving grace was that there were plenty of horses to look at, and she loved looking at horses.

A
T THE DINNER TABLE
, Deirdre noticed that Skippy was unusually quiet, as if he had been taken into custody for his own good. Beside her, George said, “Mary Lynn, darlin’, are you feeling a touch ill, then?”

“Oh my God,” said Mary Lynn, and staggered from the table to the bathroom. Deirdre forgot to follow her until George kicked her under the table, and then she said “Ouch! What?” before she realized what she was required to do.