Horse Heaven (75 page)

“Herman,” said Dick. “Mr. Newman—”

“He stomped him,” said Frankie. “A colt or a stallion, that’s something they do. He stomped him and he was not intending to stop. He was stomping him good—”

Dick gave Frankie a look. Frankie said, “Well, he was.”

Dick said, “Entire male horses can be quite aggressive, sir.”

“Entire?”

“Horses with their testicles.”

“Oh, that. So it’s a sexual thing.”

“Yes.” Dick felt a moment of clearing.

“So let’s remove his testicles and fix that.”

“But he’s been ruled off, sir. Even if we geld him, they won’t let him come back.”

“But if we know what the problem is and fix it, I don’t understand—”

“Maybe, sir, we should have done that before. But now it’s too late. He savaged an assistant starter. That’s black and white as far as the track officials are concerned.”

At last, Herman Newman’s face fell. The three of them sat there quietly.

Herman Newman said, “Let me see. Now, Dick, was there something that you weren’t telling me about this horse, I mean, about his state of mind?”

Dick looked up quickly, then away, then back. All those things he had said about the horse leapt to the tip of his tongue. Unpredictable, talented, quirky, not friendly, don’t try to pet him, don’t give him any carrots or treats. He could defend himself like that, and for a moment he was aching to do so. But he said, “You know, I don’t think, sir, that I communicated clearly the scope of the horse’s temperament problem—”

“He is one son of a bitch,” said Frankie.

“We did think, for a while, that we had him under control,” said Dick.

“I’m disappointed,” said Herman Newman. And Dick knew that he was,
and that his disappointment had nothing to do with the Derby or the Triple Crown or the money, but that it was a personal disappointment having to do with Dick himself. His shame at this was sharp and painful, but, then, at least it wasn’t ambiguous. Then he told him the really bad news. He said, “It’s likely that the horse won’t be allowed to train or run at any other good track, either. There was an incident at Hollywood Park last summer.”

“Tell me again—”

“I don’t believe I told you the first time, sir.”

“Was anyone hurt in that incident?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s a relief.”

“At any rate, the thing is, Epic Steam is a famous horse. He’s won several races, including the Paumonok, he was a good Derby prospect”—amazing how he could put this in the past tense and still say it so calmly—“and so other tracks are going to not want him to run or train there, either.”

“Not want him to? Like they don’t want him to but he can?”

“No. Like, they don’t want him to, and he can’t.”

“That seems harsh, not to give him a chance.”

“Oh,” said Frankie, “that horse has had plenty of chances. He is one son of a bitch, that horse.”

“You said that,” said Dick.

“I’ll say it again,” said Frankie. “However, it don’t mean I don’t like him. I do like him.”

“It’s so black and white,” said Herman. “Surely there’s some sort of appeals process.”

“There isn’t,” said Dick. He looked Herman Newman right in the face. In fact, he almost took his face between his two hands. He said, loud and clear, “The horse is finished, sir.”

“It’s so hard to believe,” said Herman Newman.

Ah, thought Dick. Ah.

“What do we do now?”

“Normally, an owner would sell him. He’s got good breeding, and he’s won some good races. Studfarms are used to dealing with these sorts of animals. You could realize most if not all of your investment—”

Herman Newman stared at him. This, thought Dick, this is a man who’s never sold a bad toy to a little child. What could he possibly be doing in the horse business?

B
ACK IN
C
HICAGO
, his horses pleasantly installed in the new stabling at Hawthorne, with spring just around a corner or two, the Skip Trial colt healing nicely, and his horses making money, William Vance couldn’t quite recall the state of mind he had been in down in Louisiana. It nagged at him, the way he lost Justa Bob like that, a horse everyone in Chicago asked him about as soon as he got back. The thing that nagged at him the most was how off the horse had been after the race. Had his guilty conscience magnified the horse’s lameness? Had it minimized his degree of lameness? Had the horse been bobbing his head or not? Had the coffin-bone fracture his new horse came up with given him the idea? The more he thought about it, the less reliably he could remember. His new state of mind convinced him that, whereas not so long ago he had found himself unable to keep hold of a horse he already owned, now he would be able to find a horse that had disappeared.

The horse was no longer at Fair Grounds. A week’s phone tag with the racing secretary there told him that. Nor was he at another track in Louisiana—not Louisiana Downs, or Delta Downs, or Evangeline Downs, where horses might be training even though there were no meets. And William couldn’t remember the name of the trainer who had claimed the horse—something French maybe, a Louisiana name like Delahoussaye or Desormeaux, but not one of those. A “D” name? He woke up at night trying to remember.

In this project, his own success was no help. He had thirty-two horses in his barn now, and they were running well and winning. He had owners to talk to and riders to direct and jockeys to hire, and it was exactly the sort of busy, enjoyable flurry that distracted you from that nagging worry that only returned when it was quiet, and everyone you might call or contact was away from the office. He put small ads in
The Blood-Horse
and the
Thoroughbred Times:
information wanted, brown gelding, seven years old, named Justa Bob,
by Bob’s Dusty, out of Justa Gal, by Rough Justice. Five hundred dollars reward.

F
IVE HUNDRED DOLLARS
was something that Justa Bob’s new owner, R. T. Favor, né Robert Biddle, would have taken a genuine interest in, but he was not a reading man, or a subscribing man, and though he thought of himself as a horse-trainer, and claimed a horse from time to time when he had some money, he was not at the moment associated with any particular track. He had the horse at a run-down stable outside of Houston, and the best that could be said for him was that he was not actively abusing the horse right at this time. He was feeding him, watering him, housing him, and cleaning his stall whenever he remembered to do so. R. T. Favor was a man of many aliases (for example, he had claimed the horse under his Louisiana owner’s-license name, Ronald de Montriere), and a rap sheet as long as a short novel, but under every one of them he had displayed a hot temper and a penchant for drink. He was, therefore, not of an investigative turn of mind, and Justa Bob’s lameness, which was a slab fracture of the right knee, did not present itself to him as an occasion for veterinary attention—for example, X-rays, which, like all investigations, tended to reveal more than R.T. cared to know. So from time to time he buted the horse, but most of all he espoused the efficacy of stall rest, which was just as well, since the stable where Justa Bob lived had no turnout. Justa Bob’s lameness was just typical, R.T. often said, of what was always happening to him—bad luck with horses, wives, girlfriends, parents, bosses, partners in crime, even though he himself always did the best he could. And how could he train the horse, anyway, when he had these deals he was trying to put together?

Justa Bob himself was not displeased with his circumstances. The stall was confining and the provisions were suspect (he ate what seemed wholesome and left the rest) but every broken slat and missing board allowed him to impove his acquaintance with R.T.’s other horse, Doc’s Big Juan, a five-year-old quarter-horse gelding, a burly chestnut with a bald face, a blue eye, and considerable joint deterioration in his ankles and knees (Wouldn’t you know it? remarked R.T, philosophically). The two horses often stood nose to nose or nose to withers, nibbling each other here and there, avoiding the nailheads, wire ends, and broken boards all around them. They dozed. They kept an eye on the goings-on, such as they were, around the barn, they avoided, as much as possible, the unquiet presence of R. T Favor (“God-damned horses don’t even like me,” observed R.T, without taking it personally). Would Justa Bob happily give up
Doc’s Big Juan in order to return to better circumstances in Chicago? Hard to say. The depth of attachment between horses is hard to gauge, as is its worth in relation to other forms of equine well-being. But it could not be said that Justa Bob felt unhappy. He was only a horse, after all, but he could understand a trade-off just as well as the next guy.

A
LL OF
R. T. F
AVOR’S
deals fell through. He couldn’t believe it. Some stuff he was getting from a guy turned out to be completely the wrong thing, and he had to eat it. Then a guy who had some money of his and said he was going to pay him back didn’t show up, and when R.T. went to the motel where he was, the guy had checked out. Then his girlfriend said she was going back with her old boyfriend, and she was keeping his mattress and box spring, a perfectly good set from Sears, until he gave her back some stuff of hers that he had sold to a friend of his without telling her two months before. It was time, R.T. thought, to get back to training horses. He appeared at the stable early one morning—suspiciously early, as far as Justa Bob was concerned—and he had tack in his arms. He looked over the stall door, said, “Hey, you guys, time to earn a living,” and threw the tack down on the ground and went looking for a cup of coffee.

He came back two hours later. It was now broad daylight, and R.T. was a little irritated because he had gotten into this thing with a waitress. That sometimes happened when you were just looking for a cup of coffee and minding your own business. You got to flirting with the waitress, and she was kind of a bitch, and that egged you on, and you tried teasing her a little bit, just harmless, and then it turned out that you couldn’t get out of there until you got a smile out of the bitch, and sometimes that took a while.

So it was hot. R.T. kicked the tack to one side and haltered the red horse and pulled him out of the stall. He was fat. R.T. couldn’t remember how long it had been since he had gotten the horse. Wasn’t that sometime in January, when he had that money from that deal? Well, nothing like two, three months of stall rest. The horse moved away from R.T.’s unquiet presence and R.T. gave the horse a jerk. Justa Bob was watching them. R.T. tied up the red horse and brushed him down, then he picked out his feet and tacked him up. Then he went over to the other side of the barn and found this guy named Lex, who was an exercise rider, horse behavioral consultant, and experienced cowboy, as it said on some cards he’d had printed up, and he brought Lex over. There was no reason on earth why they shouldn’t team up, thought R.T. It was meant to be.

As Lex trotted Doc’s Big Juan out to the arena they had at this place (when
he got some money, he would move the horses to a regular training center), Justa Bob whinnied after him. R.T., who wasn’t especially annoyed with Justa Bob in particular, picked up a brush, threw it at the stall door, and snarled, “Pipe down!”

The abuse had begun.

S
AM PULLED
on a long vinyl sleeve, moved the mare’s tail out of the way, and buried his arm almost to the shoulder in the mare’s anus. She took a little step to the side, but was otherwise patient. Krista couldn’t help looking away.

“Nice follicle,” said Sam. “My guess is she’s ready.”

“Okay, then,” said Krista.

Now Pete came out with Himself on a shank. Maia, thank goodness, was with Krista’s mother at the grocery store. Krista’s mother had agreed to help them by babysitting during all the breedings, and sometimes she also helped them by buying a few groceries.

What a nice mare, Himself seemed to be thinking. His ears were up, his tail was up, his neck was arched. He seemed to spring off the ground in elastic little steps. The mare was winking like crazy, flopping her tail over to the side, dropping her haunches, and so, when he bumped her with his nose, she seemed to say, Oh, yes, indeed. Ready ready ready.

Still perfectly gracious and well mannered, Himself stretched his nose and wrinkled his upper lip. “I saw a giraffe do that once,” said Sam. “At the St. Louis Zoo.” The mare lowered her haunches another centimeter, and Himself began to quiver all over. Krista thought he looked splendidly beautiful. “This fellow does give new meaning to the word ‘stud,’ ” Sam muttered, and then the stallion leapt, needing no handlers or penis man, doing it all himself. The mare stood receptively, but Krista couldn’t help looking at her back pasterns. She jerked and held with the thrusting. In Kentucky, she knew, three or four guys would be pushing up against her chest, helping her stabilize herself. Krista counted three and then four thrusts and stepped toward the mare’s head, expecting Himself to dismount, but the thrusting continued, five, six, seven. Pete and Sam shared a glance. Eight, nine. Pete said, “I’ve never—”

Sam went up behind Himself and put his hand between the horse’s back legs. Ten, eleven. Twelve. Twelve thrusts was a lot. The stallion’s thighs were
shaking now, not an eager quiver, but with fatigue. What if he fell? Krista checked Himself’s eyes to see if they were rolling back in his head, but he was looking straight forward, staring, as if to encourage himself. He was grunting and thrusting, grunting and thrusting.

“No thrill,” said Sam.

“I would say not,” said Pete.

“That’s a technical term. No ejaculatory thrill. Here.” And he put Pete’s hand between the horse’s legs. “It’s a pulsing of the urethra.”

No kidding, thought Krista. On Himself’s back, the skin corrugated into a pattern, and she couldn’t help thinking of large structures, like bridges and roads, fatiguing, breaking apart. She closed her eyes.

But the horse simply dismounted, though awkwardly, his erection shooting forward from his back legs to his front, pale and smooth. He looked disturbed and confused. The mare groaned with relief and Krista stroked her neck.