The Sport of Kings

by C. E. Morgan

  “Evolution is a ladder,” whispered Henry, “a ladder to a perfect thing.”

  “Actually, no, not really.” Lou shook her head quizzically, so her hair fell lopsided out of its graying bun. “It’s not a ladder. It’s more like … a bush.” She raised her hands to mold a fulsome round in the empty air. “Think of it as a branching bush. A great, endlessly diversifying bush that gets stronger with each new branch, each new variation.”

  Henry stared at her without moving a muscle. Samuel chirped near his ear, slowly waking from his sleep. Henry’s mind was filled with the memory of Henrietta, his child, his responsibility. His eyes filled with tears.

  Then Lou said suddenly, as if his gaze were a question to be answered, “Henry, you should know that it was not a—a heavy day. I mean, I remember Henrietta laughing. And she seemed very ready for birth.”

  “Henry!”

  Henry’s head snapped round in the direction of the voice, a man calling for him in the midst of the crowd. “Henry Forge!”

  “Where is he?” Henry said.

  “Who? Henry?” Lou reached for him with one hand.

  But Henry was already moving away, his body an automaton maneuvering his spirit through the crowd. Samuel wriggled, reaching up with one hand for Henry’s right ear. His grandfather’s ears were his favorite new toys.

  “Henry!” Yes, he knew that voice—knew it like he knew the inside of his own mouth. He was peering around all the Derby hats, their absurd heights and ostentation impeding his clear view.

  “Henry!” The voice was insistent, implacable, eternal.

  And there he was, a shadow in the crowd.

  Henry reared back suddenly, wanting to reverse course and disappear.

  No, Father, my lessons are over and done.

  Tell me, Henry, is man the measure of all things?

  Father, I don’t want to play this game anymore—I can’t!

  I am the pruner and you are the vine.

  No, you are the tyrant!

  Henry, you don’t understand—

  That’s where you’re wrong, Father! I do understand! Man may be the measure of all things, but no single man can be, because there’s no such thing as a single man. Now I know you cannot kill a tyrant—he wrapped his arms tightly around Samuel—because the man who kills a tyrant becomes a killer and a tyrant. And that, Father, is why they call it the wheel.

  * * *

  Henry stands in the crowd, utterly still and sure. He finally knows what he is going to do, what has been rising in him like water set to burst its dam; surety overflows. He will pull Hellsmouth from the Derby and end it right here, right now. There are no bodies, only beings. That truth is the child in his arms, whom he will reveal to Allmon. The truth will not roll back time, but it will make the future. He turns around and begins to run with Samuel in his arms. He finds no argument in his heart.

  * * *

  But it’s too late. Reuben has already swung up onto Hell’s saddle, his hands like money clips on the reins. The sky begins to churn and drum with approaching thunder.

  Henry cries, This is my Regret!

  Allmon’s stomach is in his throat as he leads the fearless filly through the tunnel and out onto the churned turf. When he lets go of the shank, the eyes of the crowd pass from him. As if he doesn’t exist.

  The Reverend says, Who shall uphold the cause of the needy? When shall the fatherless say Amen?

  By the time Henry reaches the grandstand, when he finds a sightline, it’s too late. Hellsmouth is nearly through the post parade with a palomino pony at her head and a vulture on her back.

  The horses are in the gate.

  The starting gun is cocked.

  Wait, wait, stop their mouths and still their minds. Unseat the jocks, unsaddle the mounts, loosen the shanks, rewind the walkers. Once again and with care: In the green paddock stand the glossy blacks, bays, grays, and roans. In the bright and bustling paddock, it’s May. Circling, the horses nod and pass, nod and pass. Listen closely and every sound is sovereign in its kingdom, the chains clinking, saddles creaking like winches, hooves knocking dully at the door of eternity, cries of hup!hup!hup!

  The bright silk jocks are cardinals, jays, purple martins, blackbirds. Process, progress, mercenary plumage along the gray brick walk. Firing hearts scatter buckshot beats to delicate wrists, behind emaciated knees, along bony insteps. The youngest jock leans over the embankment of his horse and vomits into the dirt as they pass through the tunnel. On its axis, the grandstand tilts and the bettors tumble to the fore of the house—gripping the rails and vying for a view of the beasts as they emerge.

  The horses pass along the gate like lanterns shining, lanterns that bathe the watcher as they pass one by one, dark lanterns swaying on their chains housing bold, interminable light; bright, brief lanterns in a round processing, swaying, passing one by one into the damping gate.

  Motionless and massive, they stand.

  Suddenly the bell rings, the gates are sprung, the sky hurls invective rain, and the horses unfurl their colors before the crowd. They move through the gray veil of rain, gathering speed, charging on brittle bones, swinging as a single body around the track, shod hooves spattering mud. The mud is inside of everywhere—mud slung under saddles, in the eyes of the horses, caking the goggles of the jocks, which are stripped again and again and again. The wind whips the group from behind, pressing them to greater speeds but in the downpour, so they run sloppily, jostling and bumping and sliding, crossing the track with their lungs bursting and their nostrils bloody. When one horse begins to pull away, it’s colorless from the mud, as if the earth itself has risen up and begun to run, and the crowd can’t tell which it is. With each amplifying stride, it drives free from the pack, first its nose, then its withers, its rippling quarters. The animal accelerates without seeming to labor, as if the agony of racing were nothing but a game. Now the crowd rises without knowing which horse it rises for, each indistinguishable from the other. One length becomes five becomes eleven becomes sixteen. The crowd is screaming in abandon with arms raised; their faces are glazed with rain, their hats are ruined. They’re roaring for the anonymous gladiator as it crosses under the wire at twenty lengths, all four hooves free from the ground, its tail streaming behind it like a muddy flag. Now the field follows in a brown bundle, and the first horse is hauled up to a gallop, the jock standing in the irons. It’s Reuben Bedford Walker III pummeling the sky with his fists, while under him Hellsmouth spins like a weathervane, wet earth fanning out from under her hooves like seeds from a sower’s hand.

  * * *

  Mack was screaming himself hoarse. He hated the Derby—hated all the hats and the cheesedick celebrities, hated the dilettantes, the brutal distance, the field thick with worthless runners, and he really hated that his most prominent owner—the increasingly witless and unreliable Henry Forge—had not shown up to the prerace press conference, nor the morning workouts on the most important day of his entire life as an owner, and was now refusing to pick up his fucking phone. He hated to an almost biblical degree that he had to call any owner twenty times—it made him feel like a lovesick straight chasing a skirt.

  The whole Derby rigamarole was a bullshit sham and a shitshow, except for this, this, THIS. And THIS is why he was screaming, his suit jacket threatening to rip at the seams as he reached his triumphant arms over his head, his mouth hollering gibberish, his Stetson behind him on the ground, band up and collecting rain. And now once again—still hollering like a bear—he was snatching the cell phone out of his jacket pocket and dialing Henry’s number, his eyes bugging. Turning hard right and then hard left, he spat, “Where in the everloving fuck is Henry Forge?!”

  Allmon was weeping openly, limping toward Hell on the dirt track as fast as his legs could carry him. She was victorious, unbroken, and covered head to toe in mud, but he would always know her amidst the field of pretenders. His scream sounded more like a war cry than delight. He caught her fast while Reuben was still standing in the irons,
pumping his fists and screaming for glory. Barely able to control his hands as the blood of victory flowed through him, Allmon drew her round in a fast circle to bank her fires, then haltered her on the saturated carpet of grass. He would live, he would live, he could feel himself growing into a new being as Hell’s eyes rolled with her unspent energy. Filthy and carved with proud flesh, she was an unholy mess, as battered as an old pot, but still shimmering with beauty when two men appeared with the leaden blanket of bloodred roses. She skittered once to the right as they approached, blowing air with bubbles of blood. Then Reuben sat down on the saddle and with his help, they draped the forty-pound garland of Freedom roses across her back. Instantly Hellsmouth stilled, then she bowed slightly as if surprised by the weight of the thing, then stamped her front hooves and hopped once to show that the weight was nothing—nothing at all. There are some animals that crumple under victory, but she wasn’t one of them. She trampled the geraniums when Allmon led her into the winner’s circle.

  The whole of this wet Saturday had spilled into the circle—Mack and his assistant trainers, old friends of the Forges, the mayor of Paris, the governor himself. They were flocked by blue vests, the press circling the circle, cameras perched at the wing blade. But there was a rumbling among them, some confusion, some pointing. Reuben clutched his bouquet of sixty roses and turned to them with a brilliant grin. “Wherefore the wait, y’all?” he said.

  They were waiting on Henry Forge.

  Mack, his dripping Stetson returned to his head, made a rolling gesture with his hands, snapping, “Take the picture, take the damn picture.” Allmon corralled what strength he had left in his body and stood tall. He could feel Hell’s explosive breath on his shoulder and droplets of her blood on his polo. He felt like he would never die. The circle exploded in artificial light.

  And then it was over, just like that. Allmon led the dancing filly away to the hermetic world of the backstretch, and everyone else trouped onto the pagoda and stood behind the rail, which, glossed with rain, shined like white ice under an emergent, hesitant sun.

  One last time, Mack checked his cell phone. “Motherfucker,” he snapped, and when Bob Costas shot a hard, inquiring glance in his direction, he just glowered and tucked his chin. Arms crossed to contain his bunched fists, Mack was fairly rippling with irritation. But was so blissed he could hardly stand up straight.

  The chairman of Churchill Downs was saying something Mack didn’t give a shit about—HE HAD WON HIS FILLY HAD WON—then the governor turned to Mack with the trophy in his hands and had damn near unrolled his entire speech before he blurted, “Where’s Mr. Forge?”

  Mack’s lips blanched against each other for a second, then: “Don’t believe I’ve seen him in the neighborhood.”

  “No winning owner has ever missed a Derby that I can recall,” said Costas. “This would be an unusual first in the history of the sport.”

  In front of the crowd, in front of God and a live television audience, Mack reached out and wrestled the cold, beringed trophy out of the governor’s startled hands and said, “Well, it’s hard as hell to find good help these days.”

  * * *

  They don’t even know who he is. He’s not leaping up as a victor on Millionaires Row or spilling a julep down his shirtfront, he’s not roaring beside an overpriced trainer like an Achaean in Troy. No one reaches out to pump his hand or clap his back. He’s nothing but a common spectator on the ground floor of the grandstand—behind all the celebrants, back where they sell burgoo and beer on tap. He’s standing on a bed of torn gambling stubs, and there’s gum on the bottom of his expensive shoe. He’s struggling to cover the ears of a smiling baby, but his eyes are trained on the horse, now being led back into the tunnel, the monster filly that has left the crowd delirious. Someday they will tell their grandchildren they were there the day the big girl won. They will say how they knew it was her, even though they all looked alike, how strong she was, how she danced at the finish and spun like a weathervane. They will make a legend of her simple runner’s life. They won’t understand that she was racing on a prayer of a leg. They won’t know that painkillers were coursing through her gladiator’s blood. And they won’t understand what happened next. They’ll think Henry was an idiot or a madman. But the madness had all come before.

  New knowledge is sunflower honey on the tongue.

  And so began the third and final movement of Henry Forge’s life.

  INTERLUDE V

  There were voices on the river, and one was his own. It was a pleasing baritone that chatted easily with the other picnickers and called out greetings to a few acquaintances, but Scipio heard it as if from a great distance, as if it had come rolling down a long corridor, startling him before he recognized it as his own. This happened to him often. He would walk into their home in Bucktown after a long day up at the Rankin house, where he was busy constructing a new carriage house, and suddenly see a woman standing there in what he knew to be his own little home, and think: Who is this gal with the brown calico eyes and the heavy bosom, who stands there so familiar-like? One time he had even said hello and embraced her before he remembered with the whole of his body, oh yes, this is my wife. The woman I have sworn to love.

  His family had brought him here today, but he hadn’t wanted to come—never ever wanted to return to the river’s edge, even though his house stood a mere half mile from its banks. Mercy had pleaded, as well as Joe, who had recently begun to apprentice with the blacksmith on Liberty, and then there was little Laney. Little Gal, Big Trouble, that’s what he called her. Such a bold child and only eight years old. It stalled his heart to think of her lack of fear—always beating up on boys, even those a few years older than herself, showing up afternoons at the Rankin doorstep, having dodged wagons and herds of swine and God knows what else to escape her mother and arrive there alone. Where on earth had she gotten such unvarnished force? From him, of course. Once upon a time, he too had been without fear. Back when he lived in the body he had been given at birth, back when he had belonged to himself even within the devil’s system of slavery, back when he did not wait for voices—his own and many others, all lost now—to roll down time’s corridors to confuse his ear.

  The voices on the river belonged to the church all gathered there for the Fourth of July celebration. Scipio did not believe in anything resembling a god. How could he? But Mercy was a good, obedient citizen of the Lord’s free city, and she believed. Scipio had met her the day after he stumbled wet and half-mad into the black district and found the safe haven of the A.M.E. church near Broadway and Sixth. The door was opened by Mercy’s sister and brother-in-law. They soon took him into their own home, where he recovered for a time, and a young Mercy had been waiting there for him with her beautiful name, which he didn’t deserve, and her loving arms, which he didn’t deserve, and in time, she had brought forth two babies—nature’s blessing, which he knew deep in his broken heart he could never deserve.

  “Laney, behave yourself!” Scipio cried out suddenly, almost before he realized he was crying out. He looked around guiltily. The anger in his voice frightened him. Laney, who’d been yanking a younger child along by a braid like a farmer pulling a mule’s reins, whipped around at the water’s edge, her linsey-woolsey pinafore swinging around her scabbed knees. She lowered her chin—more bull than child, he thought—hands to her hips, so that even from a distance, he could read the obstinance there. Scipio glanced about for Mercy, but she was deep in conversation with another woman and there was only a single elder close by, smiling and saying, “She got the Lord’s own fire, she do,” and Scipio muttered, “She ’bout to get the Lord’s own punishment.” But it was just talk. He couldn’t control his own child. And it troubled him. He looked past her at the river—the hateful, swollen, sickening river with its view of the Kentucky hills—and thought, Our children, they get spoiled by freedom. Laney don’t even understand they kill girls like her over there—high-spirited, bold. Dark.

  And that was his last cle
ar thought before the incident, though prior to her fall there was a hazy swinging time, through which he waded, confused and sweating under a sweltering July sun that melted his mind and what remained of his will. He drank lemonade; he remembered later how it puckered the edge of his lip. There was a mélange of berries and apple that he knew he should enjoy, but it just reminded him how fruit inevitably rots, and all the while he tried not to look at the river, which hastened any dead thing into its decay. Finally, he looked at his wife to make sure of the time and place, and counted back fifteen years to their marriage day, also in July. When he couldn’t remember where he was, he looked at her. And prayed he remembered her.

  Then Laney fell in. She fell from one of the three mighty old-growth oaks that had fallen over in a terrible lightning storm the previous spring and landed like partially collapsed bridges in the shallows of the river. Like a bandleader, Laney had been guiding a small line of children out onto the slick, bark-stripped trunk of one tree when, irritated by the whining of the younger and more hesitant, she had turned to scold them, lost her footing, and slipped from the tree, sending up a small rictus like a white crown when she struck the hard water.

  Scipio jolted forward instantaneously before the impulses of his body made any sense. He was running across the pebbly mud of the banks before he even realized it was his own daughter who had fallen in, his very own lifeblood subsumed by the waters. When he did realize it was Laney—his usually slow mind snapping puzzle pieces together with the speed of the lightning that had riven the trees—his only thought was: My baby can’t swim. Because he refused to let his children anywhere near water.

  Scipio flung himself into the river. His arms were an axe chopping it down, splintering it apart. Blood nearly burst the boundaries of his veins as it rushed through him, firing him through the shallows to the place where the cruel white crown had briefly appeared. With a madman’s strength, Scipio dove straight down at the spot, while above him the children clung to the fallen tree, weeping and shrieking and pointing down where Laney had disappeared. Down, down he dove, his work-hewn arms fanning wildly in all directions, searching blind in the thick river waters, where the catfish lazed and the eels sidled, where bits of the further north drifted past on their journey to the Deep South, where the dead watched with bemusement or—he wondered—vindication. He could feel the river in his mouth, threatening to fill him.