The Sport of Kings (53 page)

Two minutes later, they were idling on the far side of the training center, eyeing culverts converted to streambeds choked with hairy grasses and leaves. A heavy mist moved slowly forward and back as if the air itself were breathing. Light escaped the clouds and found the wet on everything and sparked off each blade of grass. Just as Allmon was beginning to shift around impatiently in the silence, the man appeared, his face flush with color, his pant legs soaked from running across the acreage. He stood there huffing while Henrietta cut her engine and Allmon slipped from the passenger seat with his brows raised.

Tony popped his ball cap once and wiped his forehead. “I got to show y'all a horse.”

Henrietta made a face. “A horse?”

“A beat horse.”

“Do what?” said Allmon. The hair prickled at the back of his neck.

The man nodded. “You know that new trainer under Mack? That dude they brought out from California with the horn-rimmed glasses? Well, he beat the shit out of a horse yesterday. Tiny Tim. We couldn't get him to work the gate and he was biting all the handlers. Well, this dude fucking took this bat thing and beat the everloving shit out of him. Cracked him over his head, right between his eyes. I saw it myself, I mean I was standing right there, just standing there. I guess I was in shock, you know?”

Incredulous, Henrietta said nothing, so the man gestured toward Allmon, who started forward immediately, and the three of them moved toward the outbuildings on the rear of the property.

“It was nuts,” the man continued. “The dude bit his ears when he went down.”

“What?” Henrietta laughed an awkward, disembodied laugh, and Allmon cut her a hard look. The laugh made him sick to his stomach.

“You don't know that old trick? To get a colicky horse to stand up? You tug on their ears. Well, he bit him.”

Now they were standing at the side of a small white stone stable Henrietta and Allmon had never seen before, far beyond the concentric dirt tracks of the training center, past the hay and grain storage. It was clearly never used, with ragged sheets of old white paint peeling from the grimy stone walls and soggy, blackened hay scattered down the aisle. Tony made an abrupt, rotating turn on his heel, glancing furtively in all directions, then led them into the dank and shadowy barn. It smelled of old, wet wood and housed four stalls, three unoccupied. The fourth contained the horse. Quietly, carefully, they approached. At the sound of their feet, the massive creature whined and struggled to press his enormous, quivering bulk into the far corner of the stall. His rear legs bent as if he were trying to force himself into a box half his size. He appeared ready to sink down into the straw.

The man beside them pointed at him needlessly, uselessly.

Henrietta couldn't see the front of the horse, only the trembling croup, the trembling legs, the trembling sides. Later, in memory, even his hooves would tremble, chattering like teeth. It seemed like something other than an animal, a wretched, discordant orchestra of fear.

Allmon leaped back, stricken, his forearm horizontal to his face, so his mouth was contained in the crook of his elbow. “Oh shit,” he whispered. He'd seen worse, he'd seen … No, no, no, no—

Henrietta remained rooted where she stood. “Hey,” she said very gently, low on the breath, so for a moment the horse stilled and drew his head round from the corner, seeking after the soft, womanish sound. But when he saw their figures, he rejolted and cowered with such force that his nose struck the wall. In the brief moment he was turned, the bleak wreckage of his face was revealed—the torn ears, broken lips, the lids of his eyes swollen like old black fruit with bright broken blood vessels around fathomless pupils. Everywhere his flesh was covered by a patchwork of black stitches.

“Oh my fucking God,” said Allmon.

Henrietta just stood still, rooted.

“Yeah,” the man said, exhaling. “Yeah. I just stood there and watched, you know? I can't get it out of my head.”

Allmon was recovering from the surprise of the animal, slowly lowering the shield of his arm and pointing at the crude crazy-quilt stitching. “Some vet did this shit?”

The man just shook his head ruefully. “On-site vet did that. They brought him back here, 'cause this part of the center doesn't ever get inspected. Three hundred and seven stitches.”

“That horse ain't gonna live,” said Allmon.

“He won't.”

“This is someone's investment,” Henrietta hissed. “Does Mack know about this?”

“Nah, he's barely here during racing season.” The man pressed his lips together, as if he wanted to keep further words from escaping his own mouth. They had not been standing there even a full minute in pained, horrified silence, staring at the croup of the ruined horse, when they suddenly heard the sound of men's voices approaching. Allmon instinctively grasped Henrietta's arm, and they sprinted out the opening of the barn through which they'd come. To escape from sight, they ducked behind a holly windbreak and, nearly snow-blinded by the light, ran half-stooped back in the direction of the Chevy.

When they achieved the far side of the truck, the man said, “Hold up,” and sank down on his haunches, fumbling for a cigarette out of his rear pocket. It was smashed and flat, but it lit. For a moment he said nothing while Henrietta stood over him hauling air. But there was electricity in Allmon's limbs; he couldn't keep still. You stand still, you remember things you can't afford to remember. He paced back and forth in front of the truck, muttering, “Shit, shit, shit.” Don't forget to forget.

Tony remained crouched by their truck, gnomelike, one hand ferrying the shaking cigarette and the other shielding his eyes from the light.

“Man,” he said finally, “it's a fucked-up situation.”

Henrietta had no response.

Tony looked up at her: “I knew I had to show someone who could do something about it.”

She looked at him sharply. “What can I do? I don't have any power.”

Allmon abruptly stopped his pacing by the truck and turned to look at her.

Tony stood up, openly surprised. “People like you are the
only
ones with any power around here. I'm worth less than a fucking boy Friday. So is he.” He gestured at Allmon.

“You were the witness to this,” Henrietta said, “not me.”

“Me? Listen, lady, I don't have the freedom to risk my job. This is all I know how to do. I got kids to think about.”

She shook her head, obstinate. “You're the one here with a story to tell.”

The man just stared at her in wonderment. Then the wonderment turned to disgust, and he looked at Allmon, raising his arms in a hopeless, disbelieving gesture.

“Listen—” said Henrietta, but he interrupted her.

“I've done what I can fucking do.” He spoke with such open scorn that she had to fight the urge to shrink. Then he walked away from them both, kicking at the ground as he went; birds were aloft in a flurry. He didn't bother to duck his head now, stalking along the holly back in the direction of the training center and moving his head with expostulations that she couldn't hear. Not knowing what to say or do, Henrietta just got in the truck and reached numbly for the gas. She realized then that she was utterly chilled from the mist; the only heat she could feel was the spot on her arm he had touched. Allmon.

He had stopped pacing but was still outside the truck, his back to her, staring out at the pastureland without seeing it at all. What had started as a kind of panic at the sight of the horse had become a hard, dark bud in his chest. What he knew beyond any doubt: people like the Forges deserved whatever the fuck was coming to them. No mercy. The world would go up in flames before it cracked their white shell. That knowledge was akin to hate. So he was thoroughly surprised when he turned around to yank open the truck door and—maybe it was the light shining on her red hair or the way she looked at him, suddenly quizzical and unsure of her own decision—he felt something inside him lean precipitously toward her. It made no sense. He was so taken aback, he stood there motionless for a moment. Then he met her eyes for the first time in a long time, and when he climbed into the truck, he did so with the sinking sensation of someone moving slowly into deeper water.

*   *   *

For a while—he could admit it—he'd been worried. Every time he turned around the man was there, standing too close to his daughter as they leaned against a barn, swinging fifty-pound bags of feed together, riding side by side when Henrietta drove him back to the Osbourne end of the property, his golden eyes always on the house. The temptation to speak up had been great, but he curbed the desire. He was circumspect, smart; he knew his daughter well. He was working out how to newly reframe an old law when … it stopped. Sure and sudden as a summer storm; one minute she was glued to the man's side and the next she was back in the house, writing in her notebooks, driving off to Lexington or God knows where, but nowhere near the man with the hungry eyes.

And like a barn cat, Allmon was everywhere. Even here—brown like a bay, Henry thought—at the yearling sale in the Keeneland pavilion. There were occasional glimpses of him in the parade of horses brought to the auction block, where the auctioneer presided ten feet high on his dais, flanked by his relay men, whispering and pointing, their eyes trained on the proceedings below. The auctionable flesh emerged stage right, passed to the black ringman in his coat and tie, the yearling striding to the center with a hip number trembling on its quarter, eyes bobbling with fear; there was occasionally some churlish rearing and shitting, then stage left, leaving the black sweep—black like roofing cement—to his job with a broom and pan. Henry and Mack sat in their place in the amphitheater, wedged between a sheik and a drunk County Kildare man whose brogue was so thick as to be unintelligible. The rabble and much of the press were sequestered in the rear atrium, peering in through the glass at the money.

Henry sat up as his yearling Deep Spring emerged onto the plank boards of the auction block, passed by Allmon to the jacketed handler, the bidding set to begin.

A flash of annoyance: there was that age-old black man's stance, something he never could abide. Physiognomy is truth! The form was avoidant and resentful, shoulders rolled in as if to shield a secret, but the secret was insouciance and unceasing rebuff. Allmon had an ability unique to his kind: to affront without saying a word.

Mack leaned over. “Who's your groom?”

Henry crossed his arms on his chest. “Allmon Shaughnessy.”

“Well, there's your black Irish. Any good?”

And there precisely was the rub: “Better than good. Great with my stallions.” He couldn't say otherwise.

“Where'd you get him?”

“From wherever they grow America's criminals.”

Henry laughed but Mack didn't smile. His eye twitched.

“Blackburn, apparently,” Henry continued. “Henrietta hired him.”

“Well,” said Mack, shrugging, “I got nothing against a man with a past. I don't give a damn what you've done in your life, I don't care what color you are—black or brown or illegal or whatever. I've had a few kids from over there.”

Henry raised a brow. “From where? Blackburn?”

“Yeah. They train up good grooms,” Mack said with another shrug. “How's your filly?”

Henry broke into a radiant grin. “Amazing. Better and better by the day.”

“Well, if this kid is as good as you say, assign him to her. Send him to me when Hellsmouth is ready. I don't mind the prison kids. They know how to fucking work.”

The light of new thought roosted in Henry's eyes.

“You're up,” Mack said with a nod in the direction of the dais.

The bidspotters paced slowly here and there, eyes sweeping over the sea of trainers, bloodstock agents, sheiks, and local hands. Henry stared hard across the lot of them. A flap here, a wave there and the bids rose, the spotters' heads swiveling like the heads of owls, the patter of the auctioneer rising until the last umpish “Hiyah!” when Deep Spring sold for $200,000. The ringman led the jittery yearling away to the left, one gloved hand on the lead shank, the other on the deep neck of the colt. When the left door opened, Henry leaned forward, actually passing a hand before his eyes with some irritation as if shooing away gadflies and barely cognizant of the sale—yes, yes, there he was, grasping the lead shank, the man. Allmon Shaughnessy. Interloper, user, everywhere at once, brown as river mud.

*   *   *

She couldn't stop thinking about the beaten colt. A phantasm, a shivering grotesque cramped in the corner of her eye, he vanished every time she turned to confront him. Again and again it happened, stoking her pulse, but each time it was some other dark horse from the sea of endless horseflesh: ripe but untested, ungainly but salable and all fresh for the auction—somewhere among them a sales topper, an avatar of free forward motion. Vets darted from one exam to the next, trainers stood like lighthouses in a fog of tobacco smoke at the glass doors, their watches flashing as they scratched out hip numbers. Henrietta put her own free hand to her forehead, feeling slightly unbalanced. The way that horse had turned to her voice in its stall with its black, burst-fruit eyes. Slashes across the atlas bone. She knew the velvet of a horse's muzzle was as tender as the flesh of a woman's inner thigh.

Allmon emerged as a solitary figure in the crowd, Deep Spring at his heels. Henrietta slowed. She was having trouble remembering how she had once spat at him from the catbird seat and put him in his place. What she remembered was the way he had grasped her arm at the training center, the surety and heat of that hold. Now she stopped altogether, staring: My God, his body was perfection. She had been avoiding it, but there was no escape. He was a mathematical proof of hard beauty, symmetrical and proportioned for perpetuation. The expressive organs of the face—the full lips and golden eyes—occupied an even third of his face between the smooth forehead, the wide expanse of jaw. The height of his head equaled the size of his hands, which now grasped the lead shank of Deep Spring. The strong length of his chest to the top of that head, the hair of which he now kept shaved to show the smart, round lineaments of the well-turned skull, was a quarter of his body, exactly the width of his chest to the crook of his arm and so also the diameter of his head. His body abounded in architectural relationships: From the knee to the ground equaled his forearms to the tips of his fingers. He stood eight heads high. His foot too was as long as his forearm, articulated now by the effort of managing an irritated horse, and, she knew, nestled in these symmetries, the foci of perfection: the cock and navel, the old compass points.