The Sport of Kings (50 page)

“Happy Valentine's Day, gentlemen, and welcome to the first day of Thoroughbred boot camp. If you've made it into this program, that means your correctional officers, as well as the committee of the Groom Program, believe you've shown potential and enthusiasm for this line of work. You're one of the chosen. Let me be very clear: We don't care what you did to get incarcerated. We only care how you've conducted yourself inside thus far. You will be released from Blackburn in about six months, and, in order to prepare you, the next half year of your lives will be devoted to everything equus—their history, grooming, and feeding, their care on and off the track, basic vet science.

“Gentlemen, the hundred horses in this program come from all over the country; we have claimers who've put on two hundred pounds since they arrived, we have your second-tier racers that were made to run on broken knees and bowed tendons, we have some graded stakes winners, whose names you'll be familiar with if you read the
Racing Form
. The one thing they all have in common is they were purchased out of the auction bin, headed for slaughter. About a hundred thousand horses are slaughtered in this country every year. They breed Thoroughbreds to the tune of thirty thousand a year, so for every stakes winner there might be two hundred draggers who get shipped off to the meat house when they can't earn their keep on the track. What happens is they slam a four-inch nail into their foreheads to knock them out, then they hoist them up by a rear leg and cut their throats, bleed them out. I want you to keep that in mind while you work with these horses—you're here in a life-saving capacity. Being a groom is a special vocation. The breeders are breeding bigger horses on weaker legs, the owners rarely live around the horses and most are in it for the money or the bragging rights, the trainers and the vets are shooting them up with drugs and running them injured, and the jockeys are making big bucks on their backs. You'll hear all of them say they love horses, but as far as I'm concerned, the only ones who earn the right to say that are the grooms. You feed a horse, you brush a horse, you pet a horse, then you can say you love it. We have an old saying in this sport: Treat your horse as your friend, not as your slave. That's what I'm talking about. Now come on up here and meet your first horse.”

Allmon, when you walked up to that gelding, your heart was banging in your ear, sweat streamed into your eye, your hands were shaking in front of God (the great nothing) and everybody when you grazed the horse on his muzzle, just barely. Then, digging deep for whatever boldness you possessed—the thing that got you through—you placed both palms on the flats of that long face. The horse jerked smally, as if startled, then released a long, ruffled breath and lowered its head like it was bowing to you.

And the trainer said, “Well, hey, kid. That's a nice touch you got there.”

Inch by inch, day by day, you learned to master your fear of the animal. First you took up the currycomb and rubbed the horse from the massive shoulder around, tracing circles and trying not to leap out of your skin the first time you passed the rump of the horse with its jackhammer legs. You used the dandy brush to raise whirlings of dust and swipe the fields from its hide. Then you took a girl's brush to the mane and tail, a dollop of ShowSheen, and a braid. You learned to scrape deep into the hooves with a question pick and to bathe the horses with a soapless wash to preserve the skin's oils, to dab balm on hock scratches and check teeth between dental exams. You wrapped swollen fetlocks in blue bandage and disinfected tools in antiseptic. Then, finally, they were hoisting you up on the animals; you, a city kid from a forgotten life, now a horseman. More than that, they were calling you a groom, even calling you gifted, telling you what you could have if only you wanted it bad enough. Which you did. You were a man apart, not like these others, who were just looking for the simple and steady. The future came and wrenched open your eyes when you were just a kid, and once your broken eyes healed, the only thing you could see was: horse.

On the last day, three weeks before your release, that trainer—the one who'd been watching you for six months, took you aside and said, “Allmon, you continue to impress me. You've got good hands, some real talent. What do you intend to use it for?”

You say, “Do my thing.” It's nobody's fucking business how you intend yourself.

But he says, “I've got a feeling you're looking for more than that. You feel like you've got something to prove?”

Quiet and steely a moment. Then you turn on him, on that white man who doesn't know you, doesn't know who you are, what you're capable of. Whatever's in your eyes must burn too bright, because the man rears back a little. “Yeah, I got something to prove. I ain't asked to be here, but here I am. And now I aim to play the man's game better than he can play it. I aim to make something of myself.”

The trainer doesn't say anything for a moment, just looks at you, very quiet and evaluating. Then: “So I'm going to offer you some advice. As someone who was inside.”

This time it's you who rears back, open surprise written on your face.

The man lowers his chin, eyes unblinking. When he speaks, his voice is harsh but low and not unkind. “Allmon, whatever you had to do to get by inside—leave it inside. Don't ever breathe a word of it to anyone. Accept that you have to be a devil to fight the devil in hell. But you're not in hell anymore, kid. You're in Kentucky. They're already going to call you nigger; don't give them a reason to call you devil too.”

You're still trying to comprehend how this slight man survived inside, then you comprehend his words, let them sink like a rock into your stomach. You nod finally. “Yeah.” And exhale audibly. “Yeah.”

The air clears, the man smiles almost ruefully. “So, you've got real talent. I take it you want to be on a good farm under someone with real ambition, not just some dilettante.”

“That's right.” Gladiator words, but shame enflames your cheek; you have no idea what dilettante means.

“Well, I know just the place. Forge Run Farm is hiring. Their star is on the rise.”

Now that—
that—
is what you wanted to hear.

*   *   *

Because Memory is a faculty of Mind, and Mind is what most consider the man.

Which is why the wandering radical said, Die unto yourself. Love me more than your father, mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters—even more than your own life.

And why the acolyte went to the master and said, my mind is troubling me, and the master said, I can fix it if you will just hand me your mind, but when the acolyte went to give him his mind, he couldn't find it and was enlightened. But that night, when he lay down to sleep, the acolyte felt a great love for his mother, and he lost his enlightenment, and said good riddance, got up the next morning and went to market.

Because the path—well, it's as difficult to find the words as it is the path.

*   *   *

The foal knew nothing but milk and play. It lolled and scratched its new ear with the soft bundle of its leaf-layered foot, it flung itself through timothy grass in fits of exuberance, darting beside its dam and nipping at her long tail and forelegs. It knickered its fresh song at everything.

But it wouldn't let Henry come near.

When he approached, the foal first stood warily apart, its ears pert and sharp as two attenuated thorns, and when he reached out his hand in the gesture of every man who ever offered an animal food and then tamed it, it sprung loose from its trance, spindly spider legs carrying it away. Then, as if aware of a new game, it would slow and turn at the center of the paddock and watch Henry with a kind of evil delight. It stood there, so fine and full of itself, it robbed Henry of his breath.

So: “Henrietta!”

That seemed to be the refrain of his living these days. It's what made the world go round—men chasing women. He was always chasing his.

He stalked the shed row, empty now, the broodmare band all turned out in the southern paddock, tracing maternal circles around their foals. The stalls were redolent with the musk of horseflesh and sunlight heating once-living grasses and old, oiled leather. The place was quiet, no grooms, no business, no daughter.

“Henri—”

They came face-to-face, he and the man who'd been haunting his barn these four months. They'd never spoken; he was the cause of a row such as there'd never been before in the Forge house. Henry would be the first to say he was no longer imprisoned by the hotblood hate he'd felt in his youth, but he objected to this new world of unequal opportunity, a man hired being a man unfireable. In his father's time, under the old dominion …

“Where's my daughter?”

“I'm Allmon Shaughnessy.”

Henry simply turned from that tough face, all overhanging brow and unblinking eye, and hollered “Henrietta!” under the open blue sky. Allmon used the moment to size him up. The rich tan, feathery copper brows, box jaw. A blue linen shirt casually wrinkled, a brown leather jacket, belted khakis. Wearing good clothes around animals. Like money was water and there was an unlimited supply.

“What do you need?” Allmon said, an edge in his voice that scraped at Henry's patience.

“I don't need your help,” was the acid response. “I've got a jumpy foal I need haltered—I'm looking for my daughter.”

He stalked off in the direction of the broodmare barn, but his heart was galling his throat. He couldn't stand the man's city voice. It was as though his daughter had taken a marker and drawn a black line down the center of his farm.

He didn't find her, and when he came rounding back along the side of the broodmare barn again, his tongue curling her name in his mouth, he stopped abruptly. At first, he thought that the man was hurting his foal, cinching her in a stranglehold. But then his disconcerted mind knocked right, and he realized Allmon was cradling her in his arms as if just waiting for the bridler. Textbook.

“I got your foal,” Allmon said needlessly. Slowly, Henry slipped back into the paddock, the bridle dangling at his side. His eyes were on the man's enormous hands, which caged the gangly foal without any gentling whatsoever, just even pressure, so the foal was easy, quiescent.

Henry's eyes narrowed. “Have you ever worked with foals?”

Allmon shook his head.

“Well, they're infants, not just tiny horses.” Now Henry stepped in, so there ensued a small contest of bodies and their shadows tangled, but Allmon did not retreat, maintaining his hold on the horse and taking the bridle right out of Henry's hand. “I got this.”

“You need two sets of hands.”

“I got this.”

And he did. He let loose the foal, but instead of running it stood still, a soft, volitionless statue. Allmon slipped the nylon straps over the long, narrow bones of the nose, under the velvetine jaw, and secured the buckle behind the skull. The filly stood, curious, and after the cinch was checked with the width of one finger, it shook its head as if to test the permanence of its new restraint, and then sprang off, its mane snapping like a flag in the breeze.

Allmon straightened up, his face unmistakably triumphant, almost smug. Henry crossed his own shaking arms over his chest and said, his voice slung low with anger, “I want you to look at that horse, young man.”

He turned slowly, casually with a kind of cool disregard in his body, but he turned nonetheless.

“That horse you're looking at is two hundred and fifty years old.”

Allmon's brow contracted, and Henry went on. “That horse came over the Wilderness Road when it was a death trail, it broke the ground you're standing on, it built that house I live in, and it bred itself. It's entitled—do you understand me—
entitled
to exist in its own flesh, because of its history. And if you ever so much as look at my two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old horse again without my permission, you can kiss this job goodbye. Do you understand me?”

If he was looking for fear, for a cowed spirit, Henry didn't find it. There was only a deepening concentration, as though the man was memorizing his words for some purpose invisible to Henry.

That made his voice pitch up with irritation. “Do you understand me?”

“Yeah, sure.” Insouciant.

Henry's voice was steely. “Let me be very clear. My daughter hired you. I would not have. I'm not interested in having convicts on my property.”

No change on that stoic face.

Now Henry smiled a hard smile. His words were clipped, surly. “Why are you even here anyway? What do you want?”

With an almost imperceptible tilt of the head, as if he was honestly surprised by the question, Allmon said, “I want what you got.”

Henry's scornful smile died. He drew himself up to his full height and said, “All my life, I've made my name. It's the most valuable thing I have.”

“And I got the rest of my life to make mine.”

Without a pause: “You can't make a name from nothing.”

And just like that Henry was walking away on his money legs in his money shoes, and Allmon just stood there watching him go. Behind them, the filly shook her head again and again, trying to ascertain the nature of a halter.

*   *   *

He damn near lost his head in a rookie grooming accident, but it got him exactly where he needed to be. He'd been picking Acheron's left rear hoof when the bay gelding—usually calm to the point of soporific—stamped his hoof free and swung his belly weight into Allmon, knocking him so hard against the stall wall, he saw stars for the first time since he was a kid. He didn't even register the cry that erupted from him as his own until he felt the unmistakable swill of blood tracing down his temple, seeping warm and wet into the neck of his polo.

In the next instant he was crabbing instinctively out of harm's way, scrambling into the aisle, when he felt hands at the neck of his shirt, and Henrietta was hauling him up as if he were nothing more than a plank board she was raising. He wasn't a lightweight; she had crazy strength for a slim woman.