Horse Heaven (89 page)

What a silly thing to do, she thought, looking at the others, to bring four people and a horse who had won a few minor stakes races to a place like this. What in the world were they doing? She could tell by looking at the others that they didn’t know, and they could no doubt tell the same thing by looking at her. All of this was based on the idea that they had nothing to lose, but it felt like they did have something to lose, even if it was only pride.

And then Farley went to get the horse, and this Elizabeth person showed up with Kyle Tompkins, who owned the ranch Limitless vacationed at after every race. Kyle was wearing a beautifully cut seal-gray English suit with a pink tie, and on his feet, equally beautifully cut cordovan cowboy boots, burnished to the color of an Irish setter, like classic oxfords, but as pointy-toed as a pair of boots with feet inside them could be. The very sight plumped up her confidence. “Pleased to meet you,” he said. “That’s quite a horse you’ve got there.” Rosalind noticed that she wasn’t the only person breathing a sigh of relief now that Kyle Tompkins was here. The feeling was general. He was a gust of dry, sun-bright, Central Valley, California, air blowing right through the Bois de Boulogne.

And then the horse came out, one of fifteen, and then the jockeys came down. Roberto looked enameled in his bright-blue-and-gold silk shirt with his incandescent white pants. He said to Joy as they followed the horse, “These jockeys are pretty big here. Taller than me.” Joy put her arm around him and squeezed him, and then Farley hoisted him on. No ponies came out. Roberto had to ride the horse out to the starting gate. By the time Rosalind and the others had placed their bets and made their way to their box, horses were already cantering down there. She saw that Farley had Joy by the hand, and he was squeezing tight. But he sounded calm, saying, “You know, it’s easy enough. A wide, long run. The turf isn’t as deep as I thought it would be, since the rain’s held off. The trouble will come if they start too slowly and he forgets this is a race and his mind wanders. But I told Roberto only to get on the lead if he has to; it’s a long long way home.” And then Rosalind took his other hand, and he gave her a squeeze. Rosalind said, “Maybe we should just look upon this as a good field trip for Roberto and a way of furthering his education.”

Farley looked at her, then kissed her on the cheek and said, “Maybe we
should just look upon this as the chance of a lifetime, given to us by a woman of great kindness and wisdom, for which we will always be thankful.”

Rosalind blushed.

G
ETTING FIFTEEN HORSES
into the gate was even harder than it looked. Limitless stood, calm but alert. It was Roberto who was beginning to feel himself space off. This one backed out, that one wouldn’t go in, three or four gate officials closed in on the hindquarters of this other one. And then they said something to him in French and Limitless walked in happy, and Roberto was just feeling the pleasure of that when the gates clanged open and there they were. It was a little sunny now, and every horse was pouring toward the rail, but slowly, ever so slowly. Limitless’s long stride took him to the front, and Roberto woke up and pushed his hands into mane up the horse’s neck, forbidding himself even to think about the unthinkable, touching the horse’s mouth. He felt the horse flinch under him as another horse got very close, and then Limitless stretched a bit and pulled ahead. The herd of animals oozed around the turn. Limitless’s ears were flicking forward and back as he looked for a comfortable and familiar place to be. Roberto crouched even more tightly into his neck. All around him, the European jockeys were almost standing in their stirrups, going up and down, yo ho heave ho, it was rather disconcerting. You know, thought Roberto, I am only eighteen years old. I have only been doing this for two years. How much new input is too much new input?

The straightaway extended before them, the longest, widest, greenest straightaway Roberto had ever seen. The traffic to his immediate left thinned, and then, three strides later, disappeared. Roberto shifted his weight to the outside and gripped the horse’s mane a little tighter. Limitless, ever sensitive, moved left. The bunch to his right, on the rail, began to accelerate, and there appeared another bunch to his left, way over, some group of horses that were so far from the right-hand group, they seemed to be running in a different race. And they pulled ahead, too. Roberto saw Limitless glance at them, then glance at the group to the right. Roberto knew he was a good jockey now. Two years’ experience had given him strategy as well as horsemanship, ideas as well as tact. Now he had an idea, a very small idea. His idea was to stop thinking about the bunch of horses to his left and to stop thinking about the bunch of horses to his right, but only to raise his head slightly and focus his own eyes on the middle tier of seats in the distant grandstand.

———

E
VEN WITH HER BINOCULARS
, Rosalind could see next to nothing. Since the course was a long J-shape, the start was something like a mile away, and the turf muffled the sound of the hooves. For a minute or two, there was nothing exciting about it—only a turbulence of equine shapes in the dim distance. And then, suddenly, they were visible, two groups, one rather to the outside rail beside the grandstand, and one rather to the inside rail, away from the grandstand. The announcer was shouting in rapid French, not helpful, and Rosalind had a head-on view. She could not even see her horse, or feel the excitement of watching him run. She knew nothing of this sort of racing, not even how to feel.

That is, until a solitary animal shot through the parting between the two groups, and the shirt curled at his neck was blue and gold and the cap on his head was blue and gold, and Rosalind saw. He was running hard and straight, by himself, not part of a group or hooked onto anyone, just the way he liked to run. His ears were pinned and his nostrils wide as trombones and his front hooves up by his nose. Where was he? She could not tell. His position bore no relationship to either of the groups. And then there were about three seconds just before they crossed the finish line when it looked for all the world as though he was in front by half a length, and then his number went up on the tote board, and what she did not feel that she had seen happen even though she was right there, was true.

Pandemonium shook the grandstand, that an obscure horse from California who had gone off at twenty-to-one odds should win the Arc! Rosalind smiled. Of course, Limitless had not known of his own obscurity. The inability of horses to read the sports pages, Al had always said, was one of their advantages as a sports investment.

F
ARLEY’S MIND
went blank as the horse crossed the finish line. He was yelling, of course, throwing his arms around, hugging Joy and kissing her all over her face, saying things like, “Oh, no! Oh my God! Look at that! Wow! Wow!” But the thing that happened was so much bigger than his preparation for it that he balked at taking it in, at seeing it, hearing it, knowing what came next. He was beyond incoherent. It was more like he was disassembled. His body stood there, laughing, hugging Joy and listening to her, but what was really the case was that he was waiting to be put back together. The herd of horses and jockeys was still cascading across the finish line, and continued to do so, a thousand horses making a storm of noise, and he stood there. After a century, he turned his head, just a little to the left, and there were some horses coming back toward him, this time at the trot, and, just as in the race, how
Strange was that, déjà vu all over again, the horses parted, and here came Limitless, head up, reins flapping, his chest as wide as a barn door, his legs as long as sapling trees. Farley ran for him. Roberto was shouting for everyone to hear, “Boss, look at him, he could do it all over again, look at him, look at him! He’s a running machine, boss! He’s a monster! He only tried for a moment there!” Farley reached for the horse’s bridle, but the horse wasn’t looking at him, he was looking at a hundred thousand screaming faces, his neck turned elegantly, his gaze attentive, his ears pricked, and Farley was struck, he told Joy afterwards, not by his speed or his grace or his beauty—those qualities in him they appreciated every day—but by his dignity. And then the horse noticed him, and lowered his head, and Farley stroked him on his neck and said, “What a fine young fellow you are!”

A
FTER HE WATCHED
the race from the rail with a hundred thousand other nobodies, Al gave up trying to get to Rosalind or his horse or anyone else he knew. He couldn’t speak French, and he couldn’t get anyone to listen to him, and his temper was rising, which was the wrong way to celebrate a win of this magnitude by a horse he himself had bred (though admittedly on a whim, not out of any advanced knowledge of pedigree). So he did what Harold the Proctologist, whose instructions were ever and always in his mind, would have told him to do, he vacated the situation, knowing that he would just fuck it up somehow if he stuck around. For the last twenty-four hours, it had been one thing after another, and all of it crowded, jostling, anonymous. Plane delays, train delays, a strike of some kind and a sympathy strike, and then at the hotel they had lost Rosalind’s note, and Longchamp itself, a place he had only been to before as an honored and wealthy guest, was considerably different when you were just a guy and had no access, and whether they understood who you were or not, they could always stonewall you for not speaking French. And the contrast between this and, say, trackless forested waste, where he had been just sixty hours before, was more than a little unnerving.

And then, by the time he had ridden a bus (two guys got into a fistfight in the front), hailed a cab, tried to communicate in German and English, and made his way back to the hotel, only to discover (Rosalind had telephoned in another message) that he had to go back out to Longchamp to find the restaurant, all he wanted to do was take off all his clothes and get into the shower for the rest of the night. Really, he was kind of pissed off. He had told them over and over that he wanted to go to the Breeders’ Cup. How many times did he have to say it? Were they deaf or something? What was up with Rosalind, anyway?

The horse was a runner, though. He had seen the horse as he came through the other horses with that look on his face. He was the best runner Al had ever bred. This thought made Al stand stock-still in the shower, and blasted away all his other complaints. Somehow, he had failed to think this thought until right now. Maybe he was a better runner than a lot of guys had ever bred. That was a new thought, too. Wow, thought Al. I did that. I sent that mare to that stallion. If I had not done that, it would never have been done. You couldn’t really say that about anything else he’d done in his life except fathering his children and marrying Rosalind and, okay, breeding those other horses who had been nothing much in the larger scale of Thoroughbred breeding. Al shivered and turned off the water. When he came out into the bathroom, there was Rosalind’s message on the counter. He stepped over and picked it up. The address of the restaurant, the phone number, the time they were to meet, and then, “Love, Rosalind.” She had told the hotel operator to put that there, “Love, Rosalind.” Fact was, he didn’t have to be without her for that short life sentence. He could be with her as much as he chose. Al hiccupped and began to dry himself very quickly. Something was happening in his body. As fast as he rubbed, this sensation came on, a tingly but melty sensation, not unknown, but no everyday deal with him. He rubbed faster, and then began to rub his head and face. The sensation came on all the more strongly. Then he recognized it. It was gratitude. Al began to laugh, or something like that, something convulsive and big.

A
T THE RESTAURANT
, Al could see them at their table from the entrance to the dining room. Farley, his girl, a tall woman, a hairy guy, the little jock talking like mad to a pretty woman with a French look about her, and a man of about his own age who was ordering wine. And Eileen, sitting on a chair. She was the one who saw him, but she didn’t bark. She just noticed him and looked away. No Rozzy. Her chair was pushed back and her napkin folded upon it. No food as yet—they hadn’t started to eat. He turned around, disappointed not to have seen her at the moment when he expected to see her, needed to see her. He walked to the top of the stairs and looked down.

Here she came. She was dropping something into her purse and closing it. She was wearing a peach-colored suit and her hair was coiled at the nape of her neck. She was looking over the railing of the staircase. She was sighing. She was not looking where she was going. She was sighing again, and looking at her feet. Up she came. Al was placing himself. Al was holding out his arms. She was turning her head, but not quickly enough to recognize him. And then she
was walking into his arms, and he was embracing her, and she was saying, “Oh, AI, I was just calling the hotel again,” and he was saying, “I love you, I love you, I love you,” and he was kissing her and lifting her up and feeling her arms tighten around him as if she really meant it, really was glad to see him, really did love him still and again after all these years, whether he deserved it or not.

L
OOKING AT
those two horses dozing in the shade of the overhang reminded Angel Smith of how hot it was in South Texas, even in the middle of October. But these days he was feeling so bad that it didn’t take much to remind him. He could barely drag the hay around to his own animals, and he for sure couldn’t watch out for any of the boarders, so he’d told ’em all. This was the last month. Everybody had to go by the first of November. He was retiring and closing the place up. His own horses, seven of them, were going to the auction yard, that included Amigo and Frank. It was funny, he thought, that, of all the horses he had had in his day, these were the ones he would end up with, none of whom he had chosen, seven hard-knockers for whom this was the end of the line.

But he had to sit down. It was pretty amazing when you thought about it, one day you could get up at 5:00 a.m., muck out twenty pipe corrals, eat breakfast, ride your cutting horses till the weather got hot, then go into town and make a couple of deals, come back out, and there was still time before dark to work another couple of cows, then you ate supper, got drunk, went to bed, and when you got up twenty years later, you could barely walk across the parking lot, you were so weak and sick. So he sat down. The chair creaked, and he saw the horses turn their heads to look at him, one brown, one chestnut, and then he closed his eyes.