The Sport of Kings (13 page)

Today, he made his scrupulous notes on mare stamping, the intractable tendency of the female to raft her features over the weaker male and mold her get in her image. It was a tenuous and risky task to breed when male strength was infinitely subject to the savvier, prepotent female. Henry was just now learning how to linebreed and inbreed a horse to a desired constitution, delving back to the same female ancestor on both sides, so that the lines rhymed and the foals showed a dam's taproot strengths without being dominated by her. A large heart came through the dam; one could trace its passage from foal to granddam and beyond; it stoked the chests of all descendants, it fueled limbs across finish lines and into winner's circles. The heart was the thing—and how to get it.

Henry cycled back to the house in the amber afternoon with borrowed books crammed into his rucksack, a cap tilted across his brow. He'd nearly run over his youngest cousin in diapers before he remembered that the family had arrived today, that he'd been expected back well before the supper hour. He dropped his bike in the gravel, so the wheels spun with a useless rattle, and lifted the first child he saw to his chest, a small human shield against the remonstration sure to come. But his father was engrossed in conversation with his brother, a man with dark red hair just beginning to gray and the easy, open face of a younger brother. Never close, they were as different as spring and autumn. Beyond them, the girls played croquet—

Henry detected his cousin Loretta among them.

When the new cook, Paulette, called for supper, the girls all dropped their mallets and sprang across the lawn, calling “Henry! Henry! Henry!” as they angled past him toward the house, waving and sparking white and all redheaded in their bowtied dresses. Lavinia, on a step of the el porch, ushered them inside, touching each on the shoulder as they went by in a bright wash, blessing them as they went, but her eyes were on her son, on whom Loretta was advancing like a gay shadow. Henry turned to her, reinforcing his face against her prettiness, which he couldn't remember having seen before. It changed the temperature of his skin.

“Oh my gosh,” Loretta said, “what happened to you?” It was a statement, not a question, but Henry looked down at himself as if his shirt were fouled or his zipper undone. His face returned to hers, wary.

She was watching him as if she knew something he didn't, smiling from one side of her pretty mouth as an older person might smile at a child, and propping her white, heart-shaped glasses on the crown of her head. Her eyes were green, disarming, bold. Like his, but more adult, even he could see that.

“You're gorgeous,” Loretta said.

If he didn't move, his eyes started somewhat in their sockets, and he fought the urge to turn his head away from the soft blow of her compliment. Instead, he blushed so badly his face burned. Then he did allow his eyes to escape from hers, but they only turned awkwardly down toward the mother-of-pearl buttons on her blouse.

She laughed then, but the sound was young, and so much sweeter and less sophisticated than her speaking voice that he was able to look into her eyes again.

“God, how did you get to be so good-looking?” she said, and she grabbed his elbow, guiding him toward the house. Henry snuck a peek in the direction of his mother, but she was gone, watching them now from a window in the dining room that he couldn't see. Henry and Loretta advanced on the house slowly; she owned him by the time they had walked ten paces.

“You could be in movies, I'm not kidding,” she said. “Aunt Lavinia is pretty, but your dad, not so much. So what happened to you?”

He was still blushing as he eyed the exquisite slope of her coral-colored lips. His mind was fumbling for something to say when she said, “Do you have a girlfriend?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Do you still have horses?”

She laughed. “Liar.”

“No,” he said, “I have a girlfriend. I was just curious if you still have horses.”

Arm in arm they went and she rolled her eyes and sighed, but said, “A couple.”

“Yeah, but real horses.”

“Yes, real horses,” she said. “I still compete.”

Now it was his turn to roll his eyes. “I meant Thoroughbred horses.”

Loretta withdrew her hand suddenly from his elbow. “Yes, we have horses. Real horses. Yes, some of them are Thoroughbreds. Mother and I do dressage. You know that. What's your point?”

Henry's laugh was a foil for a secret, and for a moment their ages seesawed.

“What's that laugh supposed to mean?” she said.

“Nothing.” He shrugged, turned up his shoulders a bit, allowing a small insouciant smile to play around the corners of his mouth.

Loretta stopped walking altogether. He stopped to look back at her.

“When did you get so high and mighty?” she snapped. “You don't even have a girlfriend. I don't think you have a foot to stand on.” Her tone was acid, her face hard, and now she marched past him, all slicing shoulders and high chin, angling for the side door.

“Hey!” he called after her. “I was kidding!” A moment later: “Hey, I don't think dressage is stupid.”

Loretta paused with her hand on the screen door and turned toward him, so he had a proper glimpse of her bright copper hair and newgrown breasts, her legs white and gleaming. Through eyes turned to slits, she regarded him without saying a word.

“Don't be mad at me,” Henry said softly.

For a moment it seemed as if she was going to turn her back on him again, but then she laughed that childish laugh, and she made a kissing motion at him before she skipped on into the house.

He followed after her like a dog.

*   *   *

John Henry and Uncle Mason sat deep in discussion of the farm and its plantation, their heads tilted together at the breakfast table, their plates pushed hastily aside, so their fingers could make maps of the linens. The girls were a messy, squabbling flock, while their mother, Melissa Jeane, hovered over them, ever the harried hen, too overwhelmed by the task of feeding her brood to eat anything herself. Lavinia sat in the cocoon of her silence as Paulette moved unnoticed at their outskirts, replacing dishes, filling glasses, covering eggs and potatoes in their silver servers. Henry had no interest in any of it; he abandoned the room, grabbing a piece of toast and escaping through the kitchen's swinging door.

He was standing on the porch, surveying the farm drenched in morning's brisk light—his crucible, where a new world would be forged—when Loretta appeared behind him, tapping a smart rhythm with the toe of her shoe. “I'm bored to death,” she whispered, and her breath whispered too against the skin of his neck.

“Yup,” he said, chewing his toast, and when he made no further response, she stepped in front of him, her robust figure interrupting the light.

“Show me the Walkers,” she said.

“I thought you were already bored.” He wiped his fingers on his khakis.

“Come on,” she said, and reached out to tug at his arm. She was surprisingly strong, but then she was no small girl. She grinned at him, her lipstick nearly worn away by her breakfast.

“I have no interest in the Walkers,” he said.

“But,” she said slowly, “don't you want to go for a ride?” And to his utter surprise, she swiveled her hips once in a carnal, circumscribed dance for him, which instantly made his insides lurch. Caught in the warm vice of alarm and arousal, he stood there, saying nothing at all.

“Listen, if you don't want to come, that's fine.” Loretta sighed and moued, her hands on her hips. “I'll just go find Jimmy then.” She marched down onto the grass.

“What?” Henry snapped, flinging aside what was left of his toast and starting after her across the lawn. Jimmy was a teenager from Louisville who'd been passed relative to relative in Claysville for over two years. He'd been an occasional employee on their farm, a handsome and raucous boy, whose laughter was always cut short when Henry came around. Then he would stand mute with dark, bruised eyes, his smile withering on his lips. Henry was startled that Loretta even remembered him.

“Why would you even say that?” Henry pressed, whispering as if someone was close by and listening. “That's disgusting.”

“What's disgusting?” Loretta said innocently.

“I know what you meant,” he whispered.

“Oh, your mind is in the gutter,” she mocked.

“You're the one who said it!” He felt the rising heat of fury on his cheeks.

“I never said coloreds have big cocks,” she said, and Henry reared back, shock eclipsing his anger, but she only grabbed at his elbow, that easy female gesture again, and he remained at her side, that easy male acquiescence.

“My gosh, I'm just trying to rile you up,” Loretta said, rolling her eyes. “You're such a bumpkin! Who knew you were so … sensitive.”

“I have standards,” Henry said, and snatched his arm back, but they kept on until the syncopated rhythms of their feet formed a unison.

“Father won't let you ride the Walkers,” Henry warned when they reached the barn door.

“Oh, I'm not afraid of Uncle John,” Loretta tossed back. “Are you?”

Henry paused where he stood, feeling the great, reassuring warmth of the morning pressing against his back, and a prickly sense of discomfort arising. He watched, circumspect, as Loretta sashayed down the row. Then he followed his cousin into the barn, because her hips and lips were warmer than even the bedazzling light of morning.

The horses were immediately aware of their presence. They stirred, collecting one after the other at their stall doors, dark heads swinging over crib doors, drafts of air quivering down the channels of their nostrils.

“Oh,” Loretta sighed, “they smell like sunshine and earth.” She slid the palms of her hand along one filly's jaw—the yearling foal of Martha White—and stared into her eyes, that dark, confounding space. Then she traced the jagged line of her brilliant blaze, but the other horses blew and stamped, so she moved to each in turn.

“Don't you just love them?” she said.

Henry made a face. What use were the Walkers to him? They were predictable and unsurprising as time, heavy on their bones with their absurdly long underlines. And, too, they were the province of Filip, a man he could not think of without his stomach turning to a hard plum pit.

“Let's ride,” said Loretta, whirling around suddenly.

“No way,” Henry said.

“Where's the tack room?”

“No, Loretta,” he said again, more sternly, he hoped.

“I'll find it myself then.” She started off down the row with fresh purpose, horse heads pointing the way, their tails tossing as they blew for want of affection or a ride. One Walker whickered and traced a needy circle in his stall as she passed.

Henry jogged along after Loretta, but just as her hand lifted the latch of the tack room door, and just as he was trying to draw her back, their hands wrestling briefly, the door swung open, and Loretta dragged him inward, slamming the door shut again. Before their eyes could adjust to the swamping dark, her mouth missed his for his cheek, then latched onto his lips. Her hands plied at his shoulders and his bottom.

“Lie down,” she said. He felt about with his foot, his heart beating madly, until he nudged the edge of a hayrack. He scooted back onto the bed of scratching hay, and she joined him there and began to work on the buttons of his fly. She half lay over him then, her pliant tongue reaching into unexplored regions of his mouth. The pressure of her breasts was strange and insistent as she rooted around in his shorts. His breath came in ragged draws. Then she schooled him with her hand.

Even before his breathing had slowed, he was shoving himself still half-hard into his khakis and fumbling with the buttons. Loretta lay beside him, wiping her hands on the hay, but only found that it clung to her palms.

“Do you think I was good at that?” she said.

He nodded, but inside him he discovered an awkward twinge of disappointment. Was this some kind of farewell address to childhood? It felt less than spectacular.

“Guess where I learned to do that,” she said.

“I don't know,” he said.

“One of my teachers; he's my boyfriend.” She waited for his response, which didn't come. It was all he could do to get his pants buttoned in the half dark. His hands were leeched of strength, the buttons downright disobedient.

Suddenly, a small sound caused his blood to leap like a lasso, and he started up from the hay. “Relax,” Loretta hissed, “no one's coming.”

She was right. They waited, but the only thing Henry could hear was the untaxed rhythm of her breath. There was nothing out there; even the horses were silent.

“I have to say,” Loretta said, staring at his face in the dark, “you really don't look like you get enough sleep.”

Henry sighed. “Well, I read a lot,” he said. “I have plans.”

“Plans for what?”

Henry was silent for a moment, finding his cousin lacking in seriousness and unworthy of his private, curated thoughts, but under the spell of this new relaxation, he went on. “Nobody knows this, so you need to keep it a secret, but someday I'm going to turn Forge Run Farm into a Thoroughbred operation.” He tried to ape the calm of an adult, but his eagerness pressed through. “All this corn farming is ridiculous,” he said. “It's a waste of this farm's potential, a waste of this family's legacy! Do you know how long we've been here? I mean, you're in Florida now, it's almost like you're not part of the family anymore—”

“Hey,” Loretta said, but listlessly, and he barreled on. “This is what happens when you get complacent, when you don't have the courage to dream big or grab the opportunities that are right before you. I mean, Tennessee Walkers? Give me a break. This is Kentucky—this land is destined for Thoroughbreds.”

“Thoroughbreds again,” Loretta sighed, and rolled her eyes.