The Sport of Kings (22 page)

There was a heavy, hateful silence in the barn. Henrietta sensed rather than saw the other two men look at each other for a very, very long moment, speaking to each other with their eyes in the manner of the long married. Jonathan continued to stare at Henry with such force that Henrietta thought she could detect the spidery red veins brightening on the sclera of his eye. Then he took a single step backward without once breaking his stare, peeled off his old gloves, rough as gunny, and tossed them onto the wood chips at Henry's feet. Then he snatched the Forge Run cap off his head and flung it at the barn wall behind Henry's head with such ferocity that her father flinched, and Henrietta stepped aside, her heart banging. Then he stalked out of the barn in the direction of the equipment shed without another word.

“Jonathan!” Sandy called after him, “Jonathan! Hey!” and the mare tried to turn again.

But Jonathan was gone, and as Henry walked in their direction, Sandy shook his head and said in a voice barely audible, “Oh, man.” The other groom just continued to stare at the floor, mute as the mare.

“Forget about him,” Henry said. “I expect you boys to do your job and that's all. If I want your opinion, I'll ask for it.” Sandy nodded twice, three times, but the other groom said nothing at all and just stood there with his lower lip sucked in and his brow wrinkled.

Henry took up the lead shank out of the man's hand, saying, “I've got her. Now, Henrietta, I want you up against the barn wall, and be ready to run out of here if something goes wrong.”

“What goes wrong?” she said quickly.

“Nothing, nothing,” he said. “But Magic Man has never done this before. It's a test run. Just be ready to run back to the house if he gets rough. He'll be here any second.”

And he was. The enormous bay stallion rounded the wall of the breeding shed between his two handlers, his tremendous bulk eclipsing much of the early sunlight and casting the shed into abrupt shadow. As soon as the pliant musk of estrus reached his nostrils, he sank into his quarters, the muscles of his flanks trembling spasmodically, the phallus beginning to protrude from its sheath. His dished head traced small circles in the air as he eyed the mare. She, in turn, twisted away from the trammel of the lead shank to find him, her nostrils widening as her hooves danced on the tanbark floor. Henrietta pressed herself against the yellow padded wall. This is when the stallion handlers spotted her.

“What the fuck!” one of them said, and no apology followed on the curse.

The man nearest her turned now, craning his neck awkwardly, never unaware of the thirteen-hundred-pound hormonal creature barely managed at his side. He was a short, black-haired Irishman, maybe thirty. He rarely spoke, never smiled. He looked at her and his lips parted. “Jaysis,” he said softly. And then he did something she'd never seen him do before; he laughed. And his eyes glittered over her from top to toe with the brevity of a lightning strike before Magic Man cried and Henry said, “Don't mind my daughter. Let's get this done.”

“I can't do this in front of a girl!” the other man said in an echo of Jonathan's words, but when no response came and the horse moved forward between them, the matter was settled by necessity. Henry and the other men situated the mare before Magic Man as she began to chomp and jerk for the shank. But even as a handler tightened the twitch about her lips to wrench them up, forcing her into a churlish cry, her legs moved apart and her bright vulva pulsed like two clapping hands, as if she panged, despite rough handling, for the sire. Magic Man simply stood behind her, dancing in confusion. He crouched involuntarily again and again, but couldn't manage the lurch, and he went nowhere.

Sandy laughed awkwardly, his red brows ridden up. “This fool”—a dismissive gesture at the awkward stallion—“he don't know what end is … up.” His eyes cut briefly to Henrietta, who was staring directly at him, so he blushed with painful ferocity to the roots of his bright hair, and the other mare groom, the one who had not spoken at all, turned away completely now, so that all she could see was the blank wall of his back.

The black-haired Irishman said, “Come on, my boy, let's get cracking—nowish,” and he smacked Magic Man once on the rear so the stallion reared high over the whinnying mare and took two steps, and because the Irishman guided his phallus with one hand, he managed to penetrate her. The underlying mare immediately stilled her irritations. The stallion thrust once, then again, but seemed to carom off her rear the second time, so he fell out on all four feet, shaking his head, his tongue protruding stupidly, his head wobbling at her side.

“Watch she doesn't kick!” someone cried.

“She ain't never kicked,” said Sandy in reply, though he'd made certain her ankles were padded heavily with blue tape.

“Ah, no, ah, no,” said the Irishman with another smack, and Magic Man stood again and remounted, and the men steadied him square on her back so he was rafted up over her properly, his neck bowed like a dark sea creature over a smaller boat. This time, the Irishman circled to the stallion's rear and pushed heavily on his flanks with each massive thrust, so that the horse pressed boldly into her and bit savagely at her ears, while she accepted him placidly, braced on her sturdy legs. Then in a moment it was done. The stallion convulsed and his tail spun once. The mare hung her head and he rested his terrible, crushing weight on her back. He wound his neck against hers, rubbing and sniffing. He licked her half-drawn eyelid.

There was an embarrassed silence in the shed. Without a word, the handlers pulled on Magic Man, so he fell back from the mare onto firm ground again but stumbled awkwardly there, the handlers dancing back a pace to steady him. A great tremble reversed, like water flowing backward, from his shanks up the ridge of his back along the bow of the neck to his head. Even his lips shook as his head swung in an arc of surprise in the direction of the mare's broad flanks. But she didn't even look back. Henrietta saw how she shifted her weight, her body slow and easy, the stallion's presence useless to her now—as good as forgotten. Sandy slipped the padding from her delicate ankles, and she tossed the hank of bang out of her eyes. Magic Man took a single step toward her, but his legs shook visibly, and his handlers again rushed in to cradle both sides of his wide belly in the event of a faint. When he settled, the lead shank drew him forcibly from the mare, and though he cried out once with a plaintive, bewildered whine, he went. The whole thing took three, maybe four minutes.

The silent mare groom checked the shank's attachment, then managed to turn her toward the exit.

“That went nicely,” said Henry as he crossed to his daughter and wrapped a damp arm around her shoulder. “See what I told you? Nothing but mechanics.”

Sandy eyed the two of them, then sidewound to the wall and gathered up Jonathan's gloves and cap, which still lay there. “If it goes all right…,” he said softly, as if to no one. Then he pressed his lips together.

Henry turned to him. “Tell Jonathan I don't want to see him around here anymore. And that's final.”

Sandy shrugged. “Okay.” He twisted the ball cap in his hand.

The other man, the one who had not yet spoken and was now leading the mare out, made a chuffing sound just shy of a laugh. They all looked at him. His words were said directly to Sandy but aimed elsewhere. “That boy won't be around to tell it to twice. Trust me. He's got three daughters.” Then he cleared his throat, stepped out of the shed, and led the mare into the unimpeded daylight of the early afternoon.

*   *   *

In her notebook Henrietta wrote:

Living bodies are machines programmed by genes that have survived. R. Dawkins

Life is synthetic. It gathers its raw materials from everything that has already existed.

There are maybe 8 million species. Homo sapiens have found and classified 1 percent.

can't classify chaos

*   *   *

Just as the sexless card of girlhood was trumped by budding breasts and widening hips, just as the organism was to be overburdened by the arrival of the future and all its implications (menarche, coition, gravidity, parturition), Judith, in a moment of intuition, perhaps charged by memories of her own development and the bittersweet advance of adolescence, called for her daughter. It was time to go to Germany.

Henrietta would leave with Henry's demands ringing in her ears—don't become tiresome like your mother; remember that excellence is a habit of action—and ten pounds of books in her suitcase. She selected with care from the old library; there were two pamphlets from the Geological Survey, the dog-eared Bartram,
Beagle
, as well as the oldest copy of Seneca they possessed. When she held this last crumbling tome in her hand, marveling over the ragged sheer of its cut pages, her gaze fell upon the long black line of bound books. The ledgers. They extended from the Long Knives to the present day; her father still made notes in them. She drew one away from its neighbors, looking inside for evidence of a previous time etched in loping words on vellum. She glanced back at the library door as if caught in the act of … she didn't know what, some venal thing. The ledgers contained mostly lists and mathematical figurings, and yet something about the names and figures, the uniformity of the books—their titleless secrecy—drew her private mind close round. She discovered on one page the draft of what looked like a will scrawled in a curly, filigreed script.

The page read:

Forge Will: 23 September, 1827

Appraisal of Estate of Edward Cooper Forge, aged 54 years

One negro Man named Yearlye, $900

One negro Boy named Denis, $600

One negro Man named Benjohn, $1000

One negro Man named Scipio, $1000

One negro woman named Prissey, $500

One negro girl named Senna, $350

One negro woman named Phebe, $300

One negro Boy named Adam, $700

One negro Boy named Akin, $700

One negro Boy named Corey, $700

One negro Man named Prince Sr., $400

One crippled negro girl named Tilla, $100

In event of wife Lessandra Dear Dixon's good health, the negro woman Prissey shall be returned to Stowne Farm of Fayette County, Kentucky, site of birth, along with son, Scipio, and his increase.

In event of wife Lessandra Dear Dixon's decease, the negro woman Prissey shall bequeath to Richmond Cooper Forge with son, Scipio, and his increase shall remain at Forge Farm.

Beneath the names on the page, the ledger listed furniture: a walnut secretary purchased in Lexington, as well as a Hepplewhite cherry cupboard from Nashville. Then the page ended midappraisal, and there was nothing on the back of the page when she turned it, only the shadowy stamp of the words in reverse. She made a hasty copy of the page in her notebook.

By then the heat of the thing was threatening to scorch her fingers. What to do with this remnant of another century still hot enough to burn? Put it away. Which is exactly what she did. The names, whispering repeatedly out of the flames, were dampered by the closing book and then the black ledger was returned to the shelf, where she would soon forget about it entirely, this page from the history her family had made.

*   *   *

The whole thing had cast Jamie Barlow into a blue mood of remembrance—close kin to melancholy, but not exactly the same thing. Good grooms leaving the farm, Big Red being put down, the girl off in some foreign place for almost three weeks like she was finally grown and gone away for good. Then Mr. Forge's foul mood while she was away. But especially the horse's death. It sank his boat a bit, poked a hole in it at least. And being in the airport too, that turned up things he'd not thought of in a long while, of all those times he flew with the horses, though he'd always preferred to drive them. Those turboprops made him kind of uneasy, he wanted a little more plane between him and the ground. And, anyhow, he liked staying up all night with a thermos of coffee and a road map, the trailer thumping along behind the dually, the horses swaying in their sleep, off to Saratoga or Churchill Downs or back to the farm or wherever. But today was his last day—who would have thought Big Red would sign off on the very same day? He didn't know whether that was an omen or what. He hitched his jeans, sat in one of the plastic airport seats, eyed the arrivals from Cincinnati. He took his hat from his head but neglected to run his fingers through his hair, so it suckered to his skull except for a gray ring that sprung up in a wave all the way around. He sighed. When a horse like that passes on … when you see all the best things go before you do … well, there's a selfish part of you that wants to go first. He thought of Deena and then those old eyes sought out a flock of young girls prancing by with their high behinds and their ponytails swinging. It was a good enough day to retire, but it was odd. Off the farm, fetching the girl and all, not even rubbing the horses, not stomping the dirt. Deena was going to pass before him. In a million years, he would not have thought that would be so. He had smoked a lot of years, also drank quite a bit when he was young. He shifted, rolled his eyes around once like they were sore in their sockets, moved his hat from the empty seat on his right to the empty seat on his left. Ovarian cancer wrapped around the colon, stage IV with six months to live, the doctor said, and she'd reached out, hand on the doctor's forearm the way Jamie had seen her do a thousand times with the boys to keep them peaceable, and saying, “It must be very hard for you to have to tell people these things.” Well. All in all, he'd been lucky, really lucky. And luck was all it ever was. Of the four girls, he'd asked the one with the biggest tits to dance, and it just so happened she was plucky and smart—always had been smarter than him. Helped bring his reading up to speed, so he could take the high school equivalency test, which, actually, he never bothered to do. But that was no matter at all. You rub horses, what do you need tests for? He nodded his gray head in unwitting pantomime of conversation. He didn't even particularly like horses, he was just good with them. When the McCourys took him in, they'd always said, Send the Barlow boy, he's able with a hoss, he don't need no saddle nor string, the hosses is sweet on him. And all that. But you didn't have to like a horse, just be good to it. Same with people. Here he'd been working for Mr. Forge for twenty years and he couldn't say he cared for him, he just worked for him, and if there was one thing a person could say about Barlow, he was true. Loyal like no coon dog you ever had. With a will to work and the strength of a wheel hoss. He didn't need good pay and didn't ask for it when he deserved it, nobody got it anyway. All he needed was some old routine he was good at. You liked it or you didn't, sometimes it rained, sometimes it poured—either way, you worked. You went on home for the things you liked. He liked Deena. He'd been a rough boy, he'd put sin to shame, and that was the truth. His parents had made him that way and that wasn't an excuse the way young people always liked to make excuses nowadays, that was just the God's honest truth. But Deena had changed him. He would have been ashamed to cuss or act big in front of her, the way he'd done before. At first he could barely say a word in her presence, just trying to refigure how to be, like learning to toddle and walk all over again, so he let her take the lead. Because he knew this: a good woman was sure to rub her goodness off on you if you let her, but there wasn't enough angels in heaven to protect you if you rubbed your badness off on her. She'd turn it on you, she'd take up what was left of your own life and beat you with it, and an angry woman could do a sight more damage than any angry man he'd ever met. They used psychology on you. Deena had also brought him to Jesus, or at least in the vicinity, and made him want to learn and to be better and kind of chipper in his way. It got so he sometimes thought he'd always been good, always looked on the bright side, but no, that was her. And tough enough too. Here was a woman that got thrown from a horse onto her side and all she said was, “No, no, I'm all right, just let me soak in Epsom salts!” She'd refused to go to the doctor. She walked into the house on his arm and got all sunk down in the tub and it wasn't until she passed out in the water that he finally took her to the hospital, where they said her leg was broken in two places. She wasn't a crier, not really, not the sentimental type, though she was warm. It was Barlow who was the crier. Except when Deena went through the change, when she skipped her first month, she'd cried then. Four boys survived to be good men, religious men—except for one hellraiser just now in the process of coming around—and here she was crying, because she never got a girl of her own to raise up. She'd said some hard things that day, things that he would probably never forget. But she was a good person. He laced his sunspotted hands over his belly, closed his eyes. He thought of her on that long-ago day at the dance in her blue skirt and white blouse. Deena in the blue skirt and the white blouse was pretty much the chorus of his life. He recalled the little sweat stains he saw when he twirled her, how hard that had turned his dial. Someone had said once that you wanted a girl who could get good and wet and he'd had no idea what that meant at the time, he'd been so ignorant, but when he saw those stains under her arms, he went a little crazy on the inside. They sparked off each other the whole night at that dance. She wouldn't let him do it to her until they were engaged, but when she'd finally let him, Lord, he'd taken no prisoners that night. Like a dog on a bone, he worked every angle he could think of. At one point, there had been so many arms and legs and whatnots pointing in so many different directions, it seemed like there were more than two people in that bed. “What are you trying to do to me?” she'd said, and she had laughed at him, and though a woman's laugh could wreck a man, it wasn't like that. Deena laughing was a good thing. It meant you were on your way, and sure enough, they were.