by C. E. Morgan
Henry stared down at his plate piled high with beet salad and venison casserole, buttered sweet potatoes and rosemary bread still steaming from the oven. Ginnie had filled his glass with sweet tea. It occurred to him that he had not been hungry in a long, long time. Then hunger moved him, and he fell on his food like an animal, even though he felt it as a betrayal. His heart was broken, yet his body was ravenous. He ate and ate and ate. After some time, he sat swaying over the remains of stew and bread, his eyes glazing with tears that pricked like a thousand needles. He wanted to say something, but he could not release the clamp on his throat.
Roger stood to offer privacy and moved to the rear door, both dogs at his heels, and slipped a pack of American Spirits from his breast pocket. He wavered on the top step, about to move down onto the grass, but when his wife appeared not to notice, he remained where he stood and lit a cigarette.
Ginnie, who was planting kiss after kiss on the child’s sleepy forehead, said, “Why, I believe he has your nose. Yes, if I’m not mistaken, I believe so. Roger, I can see you standing right there. Don’t think I can’t.” Then she looked up at Henry with unvarnished delight. “You always did have a proud nose like the horses we used to have, those Walkers you sold Daddy back in the day.” She hefted up the child, who swooned with his lips pouted out. The sloped nose was indeed a miniature replica of Henry’s.
Ginnie gazed with unblinking eyes at Henry. “I do wish I had known Henrietta better. Perhaps I could have been … a better neighbor.”
Under her bright, direct gaze, Henry was silent. How miraculous that Henrietta could be spoken of and yet not exist. Remorse had become more real than she.
“I didn’t see her very often, but I always found her to be”—Ginnie seemed to be rooting about for the right word—“very interesting. And just look at her baby. What a treasure.” Flicking his half-smoked cigarette into a Folger’s can, Roger returned to the kitchen, gazing steeply over his wife’s shoulder at the child in her arms.
Ginnie waved one hand irritatedly. “Roger, you smell like cigarettes. Good Lord.” Then, turning to Henry, she said, “If you ever have some trouble with him, you just bring him over. Roger has a way with colicky babies.”
With a glint in his eye, Roger said, “I know when to be quiet.”
Ginnie made a dubious sound in her throat.
“Well,” Roger said, “I’m glad we had this … supper together. Neighbors should break bread together.”
Ginnie nodded firmly, while Roger settled himself back into his creaking Windsor. Stroking a Corgi on its head and gazing curiously at Henry, he said gently, “So, how’s that fine horse of yours doing, Mr. Forge?”
Henry, who had been absorbed in the mysterious face of his grandson, could only look up at Roger in astonishment, as if he couldn’t remember his own name or how he had come to be here. When he spoke, his words were rusty like the hinges on an old door. He whispered, “My horse?”
* * *
One little jockey in the hot tub; one little jockey on the phone.
One little jockey in the kitchen; one little jockey still at home.
One little jockey with his agent; one little jockey in the box.
One little jockey puking salad; and one little jockey—imp, raconteur, pissant, tricky truculent slick, Reuben Bedford Walker III of provenance unknown and character indeterminate, five feet three inches tall, 3 percent body fat, and 118 pounds—barreling out of the jockey room, his valet hollering at his back, in search of the animal only seen from a distance under other jocks, but what an animal!: sixteen exquisite hands at the withers, a deep barrel chest with iron shoulders, and a head of black chiseled marble cracked by a white chine blaze; black satin tail and legs that screamed RUN MOTHERFUCKER. She was a black, cresty-necked filly who bit handlers, broke jocks, and rammed in fractions like a new Secretariat, what Mack Snyder called his perfect thing, the kind of filly that got hotter and hotter until she burned up the Triple Crown and retired to the mommy track; wife, mother, and one-night stand all in one.
Reuben careened along the back stretch, that theater of quarrel and striving and hungover work, of labor white and brown and poor all over, of motormouth agents and trainers chewing out assistants, of milkshaking vets hauling gear bags—
“Heya, Reuben!”
“Why you back here? Ain’t you got a race?”
“Your valet’s looking for you!”
He acknowledged them with not so much as a flick of a hand, or a cock of a brow, but slipped the corner of Barn 23, the first of Mack Snyder’s four. Along the sun-dappled shed row above all the pillow talk muttered into equine ears, he could hear the big filly knickering her pleasure as she was combed.
“Hail, fine Ethiope!” cried the tiny man, and Allmon spun where he stood at the rear of the filly. In that most reliable of stage moves, he looked forward before looking down, and in the delay the jock had slipped under his arm like an otter in silks, crying, “What a balm for the old cryballs you are! A noble Ebon tires of these Caucasians with their corpsy skin and tea-stained hair, their awshucks and awdangs, their pallid faces—fucking tallow! Don’t get me started on the wetbacks. Oooooh…” His words whistled up the flue of awe: “Hellsmouth, as I live and breathe.”
Pure instinct caused Allmon to grab the man by his wiry arm and haul him hard round. Hellsmouth stirred sidewise as Allmon took stock of the man’s face: hard as a train with a tough jutting jaw like a grille. Lips curled churlish and coy under deep-set eyes with mini-Hells spangling in their depths. All muscle and barely more, he was eight feet packed into four, his sharp body sinewed by starvation and the sweat box.
“So intimate?” the jock snarled. “You don’t even know my name, soldier.”
“Get out,” said Allmon.
The man jerked back his arm. “Oh, you don’t get to tell Jimmy Winkfield to get out, no sirree. You don’t tell Isaac or Oliver to skedaddle!”
Someone tossed over a stall: “Don’t listen to that fucker, Allmon!”
The jock tossed right back: “Hush, vile and greasy interloper! You stink of river water and queso!”
From over the stall: “Listen, asshole—”
“Coital sludge! Slander not this ancient tongue! I am presently engaged in the business of horseflesh and perhaps other flesh, and your intrusion is an unforgivable offense!”
The little man whirled back to Allmon, his hard eyes aflirt as he thrust out rough rider’s hands. “Reuben Bedford Walker,” he said. “The Third, mind you. Not the first, a pederast, nor the second, a wife beater, in fact none of the priors, but in all likelihood the last. Until men grow pussies. Which, Lord have mercy, they might! It’s a fabulous new age. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Allmon Shaughnessy.”
Without a clear course of action, because the man’s voice was a wily wend of place and time, threading old centuries up through the chinks and fissures of newer ones, his words swift in one ear and then tangling in the disordered avenues of the other, Allmon took the hand up automatically, but it turned soft as a silk scarf caressing his inner wrist even as he was saying, “Where’d you get my name?”
Reuben grinned. “Don’t be so modest, little Almond. Everyone knows the prison kid with the good hands and the sorrowful face. Carrying a burden of mysterious origins! Nigh on a horse whisperer, they say, an old island conjurer, got the Nawlins voodoo touch, one of those old ’tation niggras—a natural! Where do you come from, and where have you been? We all want to know. You’re a curiosity, my man!”
As he pattered, the jock, dressed only in his silk breeches and a white tank, was squeezing past Allmon toward Hellsmouth, inspecting, mean dreaming, and counting coins.
“The fuck you think you’re doing?” said Allmon.
In his finest Tom, Reuben drawled, “Me and dis hoss here, we gone cut us a fine caper, Lawdy yes! I jess been beggin’ ole Massah Snyder, lemme leg up dis pony! And now I gone do it! So liff a poor niggra, son.”
Shapes were shifting in the man’s mouth. Allmon
could only stare at him in alarm and distaste.
“Did you hear me, young man?” said the jock with a voice fresh, level, and boss. “Offer your superior a lift.”
“You fucking kidding me?” said Allmon, incredulous. “She broke the leg on her last jock in the gate at—”
“I am perfectly aware of Señor Alano’s miscalculations, believe you me.” Reuben’s voice devolved to hiss, “Now toss, Hoss.”
If he’d looked a grown man, Allmon would have bristled. If there’d been actual physical threat behind the words, he would have fought. But as it was, he knew this was the jock who’d missed the morning breeze because of a delay at the Los Angeles aiport. Not sure what else to do, he lifted the man onto Hellsmouth as if he were no more than a sack of cornmeal.
Now it was Hellsmouth’s turn to object. The two-year-old was already expert at shedding riders with a lightning-strike hump and dump. Now, true to form, she bristled and jumped like a goat, but the jock went nowhere at all, stuck like glue. When she went to rear, Allmon’s hands were quick at her mouth and her neck at the withers. Bracing the wide brain pan, he caught and calmed her, though her mouth continued to work suspiciously, snarling.
The jock leaned into those pinned-back ears. “Hush, my sweet little horseypie,” he whispered in a voice like chiffon, “you’re gonna win big for this here jock, or I’ll cut your throat cheek to jowl.”
Allmon reached up and dragged off the man who weighed no more than a girl, delivered him hard to his feet in the straw. “Get the fuck off my horse.”
“Your horse?” Reuben flickered his spiky lashes in astonishment, his hands on his bony hips. “Your horse? Don’t forget, Almond Joy, that three people make the money around here—Henry Forge, Mack Snyder … and Yours Truly. Your horse, my ass.” He reached out and pointed at Allmon’s face. “Mind your tongue, young man, saddle up in an hour, and let old Reuben show you how the doing gets done.”
* * *
Champagne Stakes, Belmont, October 2005, cloud-churning sky over an Indian summer, Mack marching at Allmon’s side, his lips blanched white with game-day strain, his cheeks ruddled as ever. The will to win rendered the man a permanent blustercuss, and Allmon had learned quickly to wrap himself back up in a shroud of silence. It was easy. He was cold, permanently cold since the day he left Forge Run Farm. He marveled at how easy it was to look like a statue again, one that didn’t look left or right. Except this statue had a mind, and it poked at him, whispering, She must be having that baby any minute. Your baby.
The day, the race, the horse. Hellsmouth was dancing up on her hoof tips, cresting her neck into a fulminating wave as she approached the other mounts in the emerald-green saddling paddock. “You got nothing,” Allmon muttered at them under his breath, knocking his mind into place. It was easy; the horses were an astonishment. Among the antic fillies and nerve-addled colts, there was charm and brio, founting talent and flaming speed. Skulls carved neat by nature, legs bred bold by owners, hides like autumn leaves. Here was the bay Wagnerian bass, the Carl Lewis sprinter, Sarah Bernhardt so divine, Solomon’s gold, and Tesio’s dream. But, listen, as sure as I write this, with Hell’s perfect limbs and her big motor, they were just whistling in the dark.
Diminutive even among his coevals, Reuben was ready and waiting, turning this way and that with his crop in his hand, a tightly muscled bundle of expectation, bright and beady-eyed as any peacock. But he ceased all motion when Hellsmouth appeared, his gaze trained on his mount with an unearthly concentration, mean mirth all absent.
Allmon couldn’t help himself. He said with a terse, dismissive gesture, “This new jock, I don’t like him.”
Mack said, “If I had to like any of you sombitches, I wouldn’t be in this line of work.” He pointed at Reuben. “That’s the best rider you’ll ever see on the skin of a horse, and don’t you forget it.” He raised a hand to the paddock judge, then stepped to Reuben, over whom he towered at five-ten, and, with one hand to Hell’s withers and his other slicing the air like a tomahawk, said: “Now do exactly how I said. Let her flop around out of the gate, that’s how she goes. She likes to eyeball ass for a bit. You can hit her around the curve, but don’t crop till you’re solid. DO NOT CROP UNTIL YOU’RE SOLID, REUBEN. You got a rocket here, a classic deep closer, understand me? Not until you’re solid.”
Reuben nodded once, his lips a firm line. Allmon saw none of the mean mirth he’d detected there earlier.
“Riders up!” The marching stopped, followed by a flurry of activity around each mount. Mack cupped his hands and tossed the jock onto Hell’s back, where he landed with practiced ease, hands snapping up the reins and gleaming boots cocked acey-deucey. Mack said, “I wish to hell you’d got up here for a morning gallop. She’s a handful. Tricky.”
Reuben leaned into Hell, nostrils widening as if inhaling the very stall-born essence of the horse. He said, “Oh, I’m trickier by half.”
Mack just ignored him. “Post assignment to good advantage. Four.”
The jock’s carved face finally cracked a brittle grin of surprise. “Four! ’Twas ever thus!”
“No time for superstition, Reuben,” Mack muttered, but his brows drew tight as if to secure his eyes against the explosive pressure of his nerves. “Just keep your head in the game, and don’t bring her back here without the mile.”
With a mock salute, Reuben said, “Me and little gal, we’ll make a mockery of their bestest efforts,” and Allmon led off horse and rider under the ivied clubhouse into the shadowy tunnel. At the far end, the track loomed like a handicapper’s heaven, lit by a sun just now punching through rarefying clouds and turning the hoof-churned track to silver. Allmon’s blood quickened, his stomach a fist of fear. One wrong step on that track, one hard bump, and his whole life would break down with the horse. He swallowed hard to keep his lunch from flipping.
As the first mount emerged from the tunnel, a terrifying rumble rushed slowly through the grandstand, gathering force as it went—the sound of a thousand ships shattering at once, louder than God—so the horses danced in distress, pulling left and right or cantering forward, with only Hellsmouth displaying no signs of alarm. She raised her head and worked her capricious mouth, taking the crowd in round. Vox populi vox Dei.
Against the roar and against orders, Allmon suddenly blurted, “Look, this horse, she’s got a sensitive mouth. See her talking around her bit? She’s always been like that, even when there’s nothing stressing her. Lay off her mouth much as you can.”
His lashes fluttering, Reuben leaned down with a hard note of surprise. “And hark! I did hear the prattling of the American youth.”
Allmon ignored him. “No need to crop her. Every jock’ll tell you the same thing—she runs hard when she wants to run and if you hit her, you just piss her off. She don’t need pain to run hard.”
A grin, but Reuben’s eyes narrowed to slats. “Where exactly are you from, little catfish?”
Allmon looked straight at Hell’s billet strap, said quietly, “Cincinnati.”
“Of course!” the jock said. “I can hear the river in your mouth! It sounds just like the South.”
“Cincinnati ain’t the South,” Allmon said briskly.
Reuben returned upright on his slip of a saddle and cackled to the crowd. “Not the South, folks! Not the South!” A slicing glance: “It’s all the South, son.”
Then he winked and with a flick of his hand, he and Hell were parading to the gate on the far backstretch, a stolid palomino pony leading the way. It was only when Allmon and Mack stood aside so the next horses could pass that, suddenly released from the severe focus the Thoroughbred required, Allmon realized something was amiss.
“Where’s Forge at?” he said. But he didn’t really want to know. The sight of the man elicited a surge of feeling so complicated, it didn’t have a name. And the thought of Henrietta was a one-two combo: desire and repulsion.
Mack, his eyes trained on the post parade, waited for the bleating of the bugler to quit. Then he
placed his thick fists on his hips. He didn’t look back at Allmon when he said, “I track the man’s checks, not his whereabouts.”
Across the field, as mounts were slotted one by one into their stalls and while Reuben was drawing down his goggles, Hellsmouth skittered back with a violent shake of the head and a fractious cry. She wasn’t some bird content with its cage, some laboratory rat. She was one thousand pounds of propulsive muscle, suddenly shadowboxing the sky and scattering her handlers like pins. Reuben was quick, he poured himself across her neck and rode the bucker as ably as any ropey rodeo kid from Cody or Cheyenne. When the green-jacketed handlers regained their feet and dusted themselves off, they placed all hands on her ass and shoved her into the metal stall. The crewman held her head with both hands and smiled nervously at Reuben. “Now you’re in a tight spot,” he said.
Reuben ignored him, perched and ready for an emergency scramble to the side bars. The reins in a cross, he turned left and right, surveying the ranks: Peru, Guatemala, and Mexico; Colombia, Argentina, more Mexico. “Why, it’s a brown battle royale!” he muttered, then tucked his face against Hell’s neck, and the gate sprang.
Breaking from the four hole, Hell slopped and thrashed into the race like an overexcited dog, then settled straight away into a loopy, loping, embarrassing last. Even as the field began to jostle and strategize along the rail and the far outside, the filly couldn’t be bothered and expended no run at all. Hell was smoking in the ladies’ room and didn’t give a damn.
On the far side of the track, Mack placed a hand over his heart and muttered, “So help me Christ, this horse is gonna kill me.”
Heeding instruction, Reuben rode calm, rump high, head low, a silhouette of hardboiled patience. At the quarter-mile pole, Hell had overtaken only one contender—and that a mere matter of chance as a gray pulled up favoring a leg—and was just beginning to angle wide. Reuben clenched his crop, flipped his filthy goggles, and growled once, “Come on, sister woman.”