The Sport of Kings (74 page)

The assistant said, “Wonderful. Well, an interview on the morning of the Derby would be perfect, if that's not too much to ask. I'm sure that will be a crazy day for you, but we figured there's no harm in asking.”

“The morning of the Derby?” It was an odd, even improbable request. He hesitated. But this wasn't a journalist from a local paper or even the
Times
; this was something more intriguing, potentially more durable. A book featuring the Forge name. It stirred him. “Yes,” he said slowly, “that might be possible.”

“Will you be in Louisville or in Paris that morning, sir?”

He was startled to discover that he had no ready answer. Of course, he should be in Louisville—for the parties, the glad-handing, the carousing that would precede the running of the race. And yet … he gazed out the window, his heart a tuning fork tuned to Samuel. He watched his tiny grandchild on his fat belly, grasping again at bunches of grass; he was like a foundling who had arrived with a message for change from the deep underworld, a note passed to him from his daughter. So she was not silent after all. A knowing pressed up into the space where his heart had been knocking about uselessly for so long. It was both a blessing and an affliction. Relaxation flooded his body as if his old, worn organs were being replaced with an emptiness that was not terrifying but delicious. Into the emptiness wended a pride—yes, he was proud of everything he had accomplished, his farm and his horse, his new feelings for his grandchild, how he was transforming the family name. His smile was broad when he said, “Yes, I will be right here at Forge Run Farm on the morning of the Derby.”

*   *   *

Ever the good doer, Hellsmouth downed three quarts of oats and snatched at two proffered carrots on the morning of the Wood Memorial. She traced her rounds and lay heavily down in the stall to rise knuckering four times—nothing out of the ordinary, her usual race-day routine. But as Allmon stood there at the stall door watching her rise like a black wave for the fourth time to level him with the watery burn of her lucent eyes, what he found was only a flat, uninviting darkness, interminable night sky between stars that had flamed out; in the place of her personality, there was nothing.

His own body was on fire in every joint, his hands woolly and too warm as he slipped into the stall, patted from the bunched shoulder to the coronet of the hoof. He was nearly disabled by fatigue but could tell the leg seemed good and cold; they'd drawn out the heat with an old-time poultice of bran, Epsom salts, and clay. Now painkillers coursed along her ropy veins, pulsing through each chamber of her overlarge heart, sloping down her gaskins, softening the tips of her ears.

Though something was rubbing her soul against the grain, all he said as he stared into those altered eyes was a dull, blunt, “You'll be fine.”

When Mack turned down the row, Allmon made a sharp, beckoning gesture and said under his breath, as though the filly could hear and understand, “She's not happy.”

“Who the hell is?” Mack snapped, but he squatted and turned his own hands down the length of the leg. “She's cold,” he said from his stoop. “I'm getting nothing here.” He leaned back on his haunches then, braced on one ruddy hand in the hay and peering up along the steep, sloped band of her nose. He sighed. “Give her some scotch. That'll turn her up.”

Tucked behind posts draped with saddle blankets and a row of black velvety riding helmets, a smoky bottle of Caol Ila was kept on a shelf for just such a purpose. But when Allmon poured the scotch into the trembling scoop of his palm, which seemed so hot it would boil the liquor away, Hell just swung her head wide, and the tinkling of her stall bridle, very faint, was like Christmas sleigh bells without cheer.

“You'll be fine,” he said again, but he didn't know whether he was talking to himself or the horse. All he knew was he didn't believe it.

Then Reuben; he sensed it in the saddling paddock when he was hoisted onto her gleaming back. Slipping his boots into the irons, he stopped suddenly as though listening for the faint beating of his own heart, then stooped in the irons, gazing bug-eyed down both sides of Hell's long face as she stared straight ahead, blinking sedately and swishing her tail once. He detected the pulse in her articulated runner's veins, then turned to Mack, his eyes narrowed. “What ails my black beauty?”

“She's cold,” said Mack, but his brow was puckered. “She walked easy. You saw her.”

Fraction by fraction, Reuben eased down, reassuming his wary spot on the saddle. “Oh girl, this ain't the time,” he whispered. The diaphragm of his eyes constricted, so the nervous colts and that worser animal—the ungovernable crowd—faded to a blur. He said nary a mischievous word as Allmon led them away. Reuben looked nowhere but down, his eyes bending pencils of light as they emerged from the tunnel, so he took in only the shortest field—Hell's tented ears, and the gathering and releasing of her shoulders with each step. She came along sure, she came steady, but she wasn't a horse who was born to just come along.

Reuben's mouth was dry with determination, his hands clamped on the reins, his heart slowing: visions of paralysis, of death on the track under half-ton horses, his spalled flesh ground into the very fibers of the racing world. But then he straightened up. Whatever. His horse wasn't right, that was for sure, but one minute on a half-well Hell was worth ten years on these other hacks. His grin bared his teeth.

The bell clanged, and for a moment, fresh out of the gate, all concern seemed unfounded: Hellsmouth rocketed from post position, instantly strong and upright; she broke with stomach-flipping loft in her three-year-old stride, her newly elongated signature. Inside of four strides, she separated herself from the field just as the bettors had banked on, as the oddsmakers had predicted. She was the fulfillment of every Saturday promise—inevitability itself—so the stands didn't wait for her to roll into that first turn; they rose headily, drunkenly in advance of their sure thing, their cries rolling out across the infield like thunder before the storm. At the sound of their jubilation, Reuben, already tight with the hope of victory and plastered over her withers, twitched the crop back and delivered a perfunctory tap to Hell's flanks just as they angled into the turn. Now the rude truth reasserted itself. Hell took the crop with a gathering of her muscle and a straining of the head, but her body delivered no burst of speed. She didn't advance through the turn as she always did, the filly braggart who could walk on water as lesser horses slipped under the waves, the filly who rolled effortlessly around a curve on the strength of personality alone. And not only did she take the crop without a surge, but when she switched leads on her bruiser's legs, she faltered. The tectonics shifted.

Stop the Music pressed past Angelshare and Loop de Loop, crabbing out of the curve so his bulky ass moved up on Hell's right shoulder. Another second into the straight, and there commenced a violent bumping and jolting as the other colts circled their wagons, boxing in Hellsmouth, so Reuben was forced to wield the whip again to spur her into any possible pocket, real or imagined. He snapped her flanks, then he bashed her flanks, calling out encouragement and demand, the crop suddenly electric as any cattle prod, but though she tried and tried, she couldn't advance. Neither left nor right, the colts left her no avenue. Now her effort became an ugly thing to see; blood spurted from her nostrils despite the Lasix, the proud flesh on her chest pulsed white against her black.

“Haw, little bitch! Bring it home!”

How she strained and lunged under Reuben on the straightaway, slinging saliva back onto his shoulders and face, digging deeper than deep, but her pace was a sickening diminuendo, a single discordant instrument in the orchestra. When the wire approached, despite the desperation in her limbs and the agonized shearing of her lungs, there was nothing left to muster. She came in third after Stop the Music, her archrival, and Possum, a fat-nosed allowance horse born on a Tuscaloosa farm with a plastic spoon in his mouth, a colt with no fashion in his pedigree whatsoever, not a single placer in his line.

*   *   *

Jeff Burrow: Well, the 2006 season is no longer a done deal, a fixed race between perfection and a middling field. The almighty Hellsmouth, a filly all but guaranteed to wrap up the Derby in a rose-red ribbon, is no longer a sure thing. Horses lose every day in this sport, but there was something different in the air after Hell's defeat on Saturday. Her loss seems to have peeled back the layers to reveal an unspoken truth just under the surface of this testosterone-fueled industry. Hellsmouth has never been just another equine athlete. In a sport overrun with huge colts and powerhouse geldings, she's a filly, and a tremendous one at that, and that makes her unique. If, despite this loss, she manages to conquer the Derby's mile and a quarter, it won't just be a win for Hellsmouth, but a testament to the power and potential of her sex in the sport. In a world that downplays the accomplishments of women at every possible turn, a great female athlete is representative, whether she likes it or not. They change their sport and public opinion. So when May sixth rolls around, let's not forget the much larger truth at play on the dirt track at Churchill Downs: this big filly runs for all fillies, and the distinction still matters.

*   *   *

Henry jabbed at the remote control in a daze. He rewound the DVR again and again, Samuel gnawing sloppily on a teething toy at his side, oblivious to what had just occurred. The last time Henry had felt such stupefaction, they had heaped dirt on his daughter's casket. With this race, he'd been so close to the maximal, he'd felt victory was already accomplished. Now the vagaries of chance circled round him once again, chirping and pecking at the pebbles under his feet, their musty wings unsettling the dust and leaving him to shift with apprehension. Hell's perfect record was broken. Someone help Henry: If Hellsmouth is not his perfect thing, then what exactly is she? What if she isn't his at all, or worse, not a thing at all? What if she—

*   *   *

Did you see her body tumbling from orbit, all out of order? Call it a loss if you want, but did you notice how, like something breaking apart upon reentry, she grew even brighter as she came apart?

This many times my heartbeat
16¾ 16 74 28 37½ 46 40 24 40 53½ 68 8¼ 25

an ungoverned thing,

when I end circles,

there is a remove like sleep but

I am still the center

I am worse

I am undivided

*   *   *

I'm sorry, I know you want more and there
is
more and you deserve it, but this is all I have. I'm a beggar. I was pitched out of my mother onto a dirt floor, and all I was given at birth was two fistfuls of language.

*   *   *

HawHaw! cries the half-cocked jock. Y'all think I'm down for the count, this little coyote? Why, my filly's tricky, there's gunpowder on her breath! Your story's a bore, your limits my delight! You set out your words like the farmer sets out his traps! But my eye is keen and my sense is uncommon; I watch the other kits get snatched up in your traps. They wail and moan and gnash their foxy teeth. They chew off their own limbs for freedom, the fools! But me? I'm mind, I'm wind! I'm wise, little girl, you can't fathom me! I turn tables, debunk, redefine, and rout. I slip your constraints and shit on your traps! While you tipple your applejack and tap out your tale, I feign, fib, fabulate— How now, I climax revenge! Contradict, appall, instruct, assassinate! I rise like a raven from the black of your page. I'll strip the very meat off your aching hands, little scribbler!

*   *   *

Mack: Okay, everybody calm the fuck down. I never wasted a minute of my life on worry and neither has that goddamn horse. Buy your burgoo, place your bets, and watch her do what she does. Jesus Christ almighty— Enough.

*   *   *

The tall-case clock announced noon.

The writer didn't come to the kitchen door as Henry had instructed, but parked at the front entrance of the house and knocked on the front door shining with spar varnish and crested by high mullion glass, cut to fit perfectly two hundred years before. Through the rilled sidelights, Henry detected a figure. When he drew open the door, a black woman stood there.

She was short as a child but held herself with a military erectness. Her face was plain, severe, falsified neither by smile nor makeup. Perhaps seventy, perhaps more, she cut an unforgiving figure—gray hair scraped back into a tight bun, cheekbones made for cutting glass. Her shapeless gray silk blouse was buttoned to the neck and tucked into an equally shapeless black skirt that fell without a hint of sensuality to her calves. On her feet: black orthopedic shoes with fat soles. She looked like a nun.

“You are M. J. Deane?” Henry said, a soft suspicion that looked very much like humor wrinkling his brow.

“I am.” Two little words, but all of the South.

“I'm Henry Forge.”

She looked steadily at Henry with eyes so dark it was impossible to determine where the pupil ended and the iris began. When they shook hands, the woman's hand was cool, dry, and weathered as an old cornhusk—but firm, almost too strong. The intensity of her gaze bordered on the familiar.

“I'm afraid I have only one hour,” said Henry. “I'll need to get to Louisville as I believe I mentioned to your assistant.”

“Hellsmouth,” the woman said slowly, her voice low and throaty with age. “I have followed your little horse very closely.”

“It's been a good racing season. Two good racing years.” Even as Henry smiled, sweat sprung prickly across his back and under his arms. Outside, there was an urgent, early heat. His May dams drowsed with foals in thick shade, the tack already sprouted mold, the pawpaws were coming on. Kentucky was overripe and it was only the sixth of May.