Raising the Bar

by Leigh Dillon

  “So why isn’t he finishing the course?”

  “I don’t know. Because he doesn’t want to, I guess.”

  “Why not?”

  Tonio spread his arms in a wide shrug. “Dunno. If he liked, he could run through a course like all the obstacles were one foot high and his tail was on fire. He just isn’t feeling it.”

  “Oh, great. So you’re telling me the best jumper Bellmeade ever owned is a total head case who won’t jump fences because he doesn’t feel like it.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “And basically I’m paying you to be a horse psychiatrist.”

  “If you wanna put it that way, yeah. Exactly.”

  Destin pressed his lips together and didn’t reply. The terrain began to slope upward as they rode, not sharply but steadily, and he concentrated on his riding. The tree line of the wooded part of the trail loomed up ahead, the frost-kissed reds and oranges of sumac and sassafras leaves glowing like a nest of embers beneath the yellow of the forest canopy. The trail skirted the trees and brought them to a creek, which they splashed through. Spot stopped in the middle to drink before he moved on, and Tonio made no move to hurry him.

  “Are we actually going up that mountain?” Tonio asked as they moved into a long-abandoned meadow choked with brush and thorny tangles of dewberry.

  Destin looked up at the slopes of Lost Mountain. “It’s not as steep as it looks,” he said. “When you reach the top, there’s a view over Crooked Run Valley that’s worth the trip. I thought we could eat our lunch there.”

  “Cool. I never get to ride in the mountains.”

  Where do you ride?

  Destin wished he could ask him. For a short minute, Destin imagined them talking together. Really talking, not just business talk. Would he like what he heard? Maybe or maybe not, but whatever came out of Tonio’s mouth was sure to be colorful. And honest. Tonio might have flaws, but lying wasn’t one of them. Destin found he appreciated that quality—once the sting wore off, anyway.

  “We’re going right,” Destin said, indicating a yellow-striped post beside the trail. “The trail turns into a narrow track once we get into the trees, so we’ll have to go single file. You want to lead or follow?”

  “You’ve done this before, so you better lead.” Tonio pulled Spot’s reins and fell back. Destin and Butternut passed under the first branches and dove into the tunnel of yellow and orange arching over the thin ribbon of trail, with Tonio and Spot right behind them.

  The trail continued to climb once they entered the trees. Spot tended to be a bit of a plodder, while Butternut, with his long legs, liked to push ahead. He didn’t like the forest track, though, and it slowed him down to a pace Spot was more comfortable with. Instead of disappearing in Destin’s figurative dust, Tonio stayed right on his tail.

  “This is a gorgeous park,” Tonio said as they rounded a curve and stepped under an arcade of golden beeches.

  “I know,” Destin replied. “We used to come here a lot when I was a kid. To hike too, not just ride. Once you get up there on the ridge, the view is spectacular. It makes a great day trip, and at the end, we used to cook out. Burned hot dogs, mm-mmm.”

  “Sounds cool.” Tonio’s enthusiasm sounded oddly flat. “I went to Weeki Wachee Springs once to see the mermaids, but we never went hiking. You’re lucky. You’re so fucking lucky to have all this. Not just the park, but Bellmeade too.”

  Destin frowned, though he was careful to keep it aimed forward between Butternut’s ears. “Lucky? I don’t know about that. It was nice growing up around here, but people expect so much. They expect you to keep everything going just the way it has been for the last couple of centuries, even when things have changed so much.”

  “Yeah, that is a lot to handle.”

  “Bellmeade’s not that big. We never kept more than three stallions and maybe twenty mares, even back when we bred hunters instead of show jumpers.”

  “I didn’t mean ‘a lot’ as in acreage or herd numbers,” Tonio said. “I meant in reputation. Quality.”

  Destin sighed. “You’re right. Bellmeade used to mean something, in the show ring and the sales arena too.”

  “It still does. And if you push a little and don’t let things fall apart, Bellmeade could stay big.”

  Destin coughed out a humorless laugh.

  “No, seriously.” Tonio urged Spot right up on Butternut’s flank. Butternut flattened his ears and showed the whites of his eyes, but Spot, who, like Destin’s father, never recognized personal boundaries, kept crowding. “You’ve really got something here. You got tradition. You got roots.”

  Destin sighed. “I wish I had your business smarts. And your optimism. Maybe I should have grown up your way. All I got growing up Bellingham was book smarts.”

  “No. Seriously. You did not want to grow up my way.”

  “Why? What was so terrible about it?” Destin wished they could ride side by side. Tonio sounded vehement. Destin wondered if he looked that way as well.

  “Nothing terrible. It was just, I dunno, the way you grow up around racetracks. My dad was a small-time trainer. You know the kind. Never got anywhere near the Kentucky Derby. The best he ever did was a few low-level stakes races. Mostly it was just allowance races and claimers. Low-money stuff. That meant Dad hustled 24-7. He put off the feed guy to pay the vet and put off the farrier to pay the feed guy. Hired the old washed-up jockeys with drinking problems to exercise the horses because he couldn’t afford the good riders, and they wouldn’t ride his crap horses anyway. Then we had to pack up and move when the track season ended and another one started somewhere else. Live in an apartment, live in a trailer park, live in the car sometimes if things got really bad. Hustle and deal, man, all the time.”

  “Is your dad still alive?” Destin asked.

  “Yeah, and still workin’ the tracks.”

  “At least you didn’t have to inherit his training business.”

  Tonio gave a bitter snort. “You think he didn’t try? He had me working as his exercise boy at eight years old. I was his future. He was gonna deal his way up, horse by horse, and build his training stable into something great. He might not live long enough to run a horse in the Derby, but he was gonna make me the next Bob Baffert.”

  “So why aren’t you the next Bob Baffert?” Destin asked. “Why are you riding jumpers?”

  “Short answer, ’cause I’m gay.”

  “What?” Destin longed to turn around in his saddle and look back, but on such a narrow trail he didn’t dare.

  “You can’t build a dynasty if your son isn’t going to get married and give you grandkids, so why bother?” Tonio didn’t sound rancorous. “Lucky for me my sister stepped up. She’s a better trainer than Dad ever was anyway, and she just had her first baby last year. A son. Dad’s over the moon.

  “Me, I wasn’t born with stars in my eyes. You can’t deal your way up from twenty-five-hundred-dollar claimers to the Kentucky Derby. You gotta have talent and an eye for rough horses with potential. Dad couldn’t see potential if it slugged him in the face. All he could see was what was already there, so nothing he trained ever got better. It was like being trapped in a fucking hamster wheel, so I started making things more interesting for myself. I used to ride one of Dad’s horses that couldn’t run for shit, but she didn’t mind jumping. I’d take her out away from the track and put her over this cobbled-up jump course I made out of old fencing. That was great till Dad found out.”

  “Your dad got upset, I take it,” Destin said. He tried to keep his tone light, hoping Tonio would laugh off the memory as a joke.

  Tonio laughed, all right, but there was nothing humorous about it.

  “Livid. Furious. I got busted by one of the shedrow snitches. It was all over the track before my dad could do damage control, and nobody wanted me anywhere near their racehorses after that. It took Dad a few days to come down off the ceiling, but when he did, that’s when he called his friend with the jumpers.”

  “So it wor
ked out after all.”

  “Yeah. I hated flat racing, but it’s hard to tell your dad you don’t want to work at the family trade, you know?”

  “No, I don’t know.” Destin reached down and smoothed a lock of Butternut’s mane from the left side of his neck to the right. “My dad died before I ever had the chance.”

  “You don’t miss him much, do you?” Tonio asked. It wasn’t really a question.

  Destin wished again he could see Tonio’s face. “I do. I mean….” Destin stopped and sifted the tumble of thoughts in his head. “I loved my dad. He was a great dad, especially when I was younger. It was hard not to love my father because he was that kind of guy.”

  “Yeah. I love my dad too. He’s proud of me. He comes to watch me ride when I’m in Florida and he can get away from the track.” Tonio paused, and in that silence, Destin could sense both pride and sorrow. “So when did you come out to your dad?”

  Destin grimaced. “I didn’t. He walked in on me and my boyfriend. I don’t think what we were doing required much explanation.”

  “Ouch. That’s the bad way. How long did it take for him to get over it?”

  “I don’t know. We didn’t really talk about it, and a few weeks later I left for college anyway.”

  “Huh.” Tonio rode in silence for a little while. “I’m sorry your dad is gone,” he said at last. “I didn’t know him personally, and I know he had problems, but people liked him. Yeah, he gave away the farm, but he blew your inheritance on a lot of good causes along with the Maseratis and Swedish hookers.”

  “Well, I guess that’s good to know,” Destin said with an inward, bitter laugh.

  “Get a sense of humor, and you could be the better version of your old man.”

  “Is that a good thing?”

  “From where I’m standing, you’re a pretty decent guy.” Tonio sounded matter-of-fact, but Destin’s cheeks grew warm. “People on the circuit don’t know you yet. Nobody’s really met you. They’re gonna like you when they do, though.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Tonio laughed, a free and honest sound. “Hell yeah. You’re smart, you got class, and you dress like James Bond. And even with the mess your dad left, you didn’t give up and stick a For Sale sign on Bellmeade. That says a lot. Your dad would be proud of you.”

  Chapter 12

  DESTIN SPENT the next few minutes floating in the saddle, hardly aware of the jolting and swaying underneath him as Butternut navigated the uphill trudge.

  Pretty decent guy. He thinks I’m a pretty decent guy. Not a jerk. Not a bore. Maybe not wonderful, but coming from Tonio, “pretty decent” meant a lot.

  Behind him, perhaps inspired by the white pines rearing here and there among the hardwoods, Tonio began singing “The Trail of the Lonesome Pine.” His voice rang loud and sure among the tree trunks, and he delivered the corny old lyrics with such gusto that Destin smiled.

  “You have a good voice,” Destin said, twisting around in his saddle to face Tonio.

  Tonio, who had been riding with his eyes closed and his head tipped back, looked down. “That would be my classical opera training.”

  “Your…? I didn’t know you went to music school.”

  The woods rang again, this time with Tonio’s laughter.

  “What?” Destin asked, nettled.

  “That was a joke. Oh man, we’ve really gotta work on your sense of humor.”

  Destin fell silent, ears burning. He had a sense of humor. Why did Tonio keep telling him he didn’t? He and Albert told jokes all the time. Well, maybe not all the time. And Albert would never be caught dead singing at the top of his lungs on the trail. Albert had better manners than that.

  Albert is a stuffed shirt.

  No, Albert was his friend. His oldest friend. Albert was….

  No fun. Just like me.

  Destin tried to shake off the rebellious thought, but it stuck. He caught himself humming the part about “hearts entwined” and cut off in midverse. How did the rest of the song go? Something about being lonesome like the pine….

  Lonesome.

  The word grabbed his heart and squeezed. It was just a silly old song he’d learned from a Laurel and Hardy film. How did it suddenly have the power to prickle his eyes with tears?

  You find truth in weird places, his heart whispered back. So why not here?

  Chapter 13

  ABOUT A quarter mile farther up the trail, Destin pulled up.

  “Something wrong?” Tonio asked, reining Spot in behind him.

  “No. It’s just getting steep, and I thought the horses could use a breather. Do you mind walking for a little bit?”

  “No problem.” Tonio swung down from Spot’s saddle, and Destin dismounted from Butternut.

  They set off hiking, leading the horses. Every now and then a tantalizing glimpse of open country and blue rolling hills appeared between the trees, but for the most part, they walked in muffled silence broken only by the harsh quarreling of jays, the occasional clack of a shod hoof hitting a stone, and the rustle of fleeing squirrels in the underbrush.

  Eventually the trail leveled out, and Destin stopped. “Well, we’re here,” he announced.

  Tonio pulled up beside him and looked around. “Here where?”

  “Top of the first peak.”

  “First peak! There’s a second one?”

  “Yes, about a half mile north. We’ve done most of the hard climbing, though, and there’s a view once we get there.”

  “Good, because if we’re on top of anything here, you sure can’t tell it.”

  “There’s a bench at the overlook. That’s where the view is. It’s the traditional place to rest before you come back down, and a good place to eat.”

  They mounted their horses and pushed on, still enveloped in forest. After a short while, the trail once again leveled off, and this time nothing rose before them. They had reached the true peak of Lost Mountain, and they pulled up to savor their victory.

  The lookout stood just below the peak, an open space with a sturdy bench on one side and a view over patchwork fields and pastures and woodlands on the other. Destin and Tonio tied their horses to a tree and walked to the edge of the overlook, soaking in the God’s-eye perspective.

  Bellmeade would look so small from here. Destin drew a breath, inhaling the damp, clean, bitter-leaf fragrance of the mountainside. Insignificant—that was the word. All his problems shrunk down to the size of the Christmas village his mother had set up every year.

  If only it could be that easy.

  A nudge on his arm broke Destin’s reverie.

  “Whatcha thinking about?” Tonio asked.

  “I’m wondering what you’ll do if Sam doesn’t jump and Bellmeade goes under,” Destin said. Blurted, rather. The thought had been gnawing away at the back of his brain all the way up the mountain. He hadn’t intended to give voice to it, but he needed an answer.

  Tonio shrugged. “Same thing I always do when I lose a gig. Go down to Florida, check out the winter action, see who I can butter up for a ride. Believe it or not, people forgive, even fuckups like mine.”

  Another question had also been nagging, and Destin chewed the inside of his cheek, willing his heart not to pound. “And if this thing works?” he said, trying to keep his tone casual. “If it turns out you can stay?”

  Tonio tipped Destin a sidelong look. “I’d still be your main rider. Right?”

  “Yes.” The word came out a little croaky, and Destin cleared his throat. “Do you think you would also consider a, uh, managing partnership in the farm?”

  Tonio glanced away, then looked back at Destin, a peculiar gleam dancing in his eyes. “I dunno,” he said. “Is the farm owner part of the package?”

  Is the farm owner….

  Destin turned his head and stared at Tonio, struggling with the words that had just left his mouth.

  Part of the package?

  “What did you say?”

  Tonio’s sly smile turned into a full-on
grin. “You want a written proposal? I meant it when I kissed you in the parking lot that time. You’re hiding behind the curtains all coy, playing it cool, but I’m pretty sure you’re interested in me, too. Am I in the ballpark?”

  “Yes,” Destin said, the word coming out in in a laughing gust. “Yes. If you want him, the farm owner is absolutely part of the deal, and why in God’s name didn’t you say something earlier?”

  “Because this time it mattered,” Tonio said, moving closer to Destin. “I needed to be sure, ’cause for once in my life, I didn’t want to fuck it up.”

  Chapter 14

  TONIO’S LIPS were a shock of heat against Destin’s chilly skin. Destin closed his eyes and leaned in to the kiss, shaping his mouth to Tonio’s, probing his tongue into Tonio’s hot, inviting wetness. Tonio raked his fingers through Destin’s hair, smoothing it back, then combing it into tangles as he drew Destin’s head forward for a big send-off.

  “I’ve been wanting to do that so bad,” Tonio murmured, breaking off the kiss. “Being around you was like looking at the best T-bone steak in the world through a sheet of bulletproof glass.” He leaned back a little. “You coulda said something, you know.”

  “It mattered this time,” Destin said, smiling at the thought of using Tonio’s words against him. “I didn’t want to fuck it up.”

  “Am I hallucinating, or did the F-word just leave your lips?”

  “If it did, it’s your fault. You put it there.”

  Tonio laughed. Then they kissed some more because it felt so good, and the early afternoon sun shone warm on their skin, and the world had turned into an incomparably dazzling paradise of autumn color.

  Finally Destin broke away to go put nosebags on the horses, and Tonio pulled the sandwiches and drinks out of his saddle sack. They sat on the bench like crushy schoolkids, too close together, stealing kisses between bites of sandwich.

  It’s true. For once my wish actually came true. Destin slid his hand down Tonio’s back, feeling the curve of his body under the insulated vest as Tonio, with his strong and delicate hands, explored the lines of Destin’s thighs. Desire surged, and Destin imagined bearing Tonio down into the leaves and shucking those fleece breeches down around his skinny hips, coupling like animals on the crisp autumn carpet. A vision of himself unrolled, smiling into Tonio’s eyes when they passed in the barn, fixing dinner with him in the kitchen of the formerly lonely farmhouse, rolling together on the vast expanse of the Colonial-era four-poster bed that had held the masters of Bellmeade for ten generations.