The Sport of Kings

by C. E. Morgan

  Then he found a snatch of wet linsey-woolsey. When he tugged, it threatened to tear, so he jetted forward, found Laney’s little waist, and while she struggled against him, her elbow finding his eye, he struggled mightily to rise, dragging her toward the surface. His little girl kicked and fought like a first-round prizefighter—radical strength and determination in such a small, wiry body—unable to understand her fighting was her dying. She jerked away and he pulled, she twisted and he wrestled her to him, and somehow against the odds of water’s gravity, they rose and rose until with a great angry burst like two fishes in a death struggle, they breached the surface of the river, Laney sputtering and flailing in all directions, and Scipio grappling for her arms and inching them toward the bank. He employed no gentleness, simply dragging her by any means, but Laney had found oxygen now and began to scream in her husky, distinctive voice, in offense or fear or both, she didn’t know and would not be able to reconstruct later. She only knew that she was dragged bodily toward the shore with her whole life rising up in her throat, echoing on both sides of the river.

  Once on the safety of the bank, Scipio began to beat her. He whipped her around, his face a foreign mask of rage, and yanked up the sopping pinafore and began to smack her behind, but sloppily, hitting like a brute, like a wild man, so Laney was twisting and howling, causing his blows to land on the small of her back and her hip. When his open hand abruptly found the side of her face, she went sprawling from the blow, landing like a bedraggled doll on the bank, and in an instant Scipio was grasped and pinned down by what seemed like a thousand hands, and then the voices rolled down the corridor Brother Scipio Brother Scipio Scipio Scipio Scipio She all right The Lord is good Scipio Scipio Scipio

  Scipio.

  The world began to return and pixelate around the edges of his vision, then the light creeped inward, and he saw his little girl raised up off the wet earth where he had flung her. I don’t deserve my own child, he thought, dazed. He watched as she was embraced and petted by two elders, watched her try to shrug them off, her dark, wounded, angry eyes turned on him. Mercy was behind him, he felt the distinctive touch of her hands even amidst the other hands, the voices now saying, We got you, Brother Scipio. Everybody all right. Quit your struggling. Quit now.

  Quit now? Someone began to pray even as he struggled to understand what quitting was, and he was reminded of that first prayer meeting he attended as a free man in Cincinnati, how he’d looked around at the worshippers gathered in the church, holding the borrowed Bible in his lap, thinking, You ain’t safe here, even in the North. If the Lord even exist, he can’t offer nobody safety nowhere. He knew that because the shore of Kentucky was always visible, a permanent reminder. A forever place.

  Then he grew confused as to the year, as to whether Miss Abby was alive, or whether he had killed her in the river yet.

  Again, he looked at Laney. No, he would never deserve any good thing. The devil didn’t need to do his work on earth so long as servant Scipio was alive. A keening sorrow rose up and filled him. He felt his bones collapse in the building of his body, his lungs empty of air. And in the moment before he sputtered for breath, he knew suddenly and with an unshakable certainty, a prescient knowing, that soon his worn-out soul would go to the Rankins’ house—a house he had built with his two hands—and he would say his final prayers to a God he did not believe in, a God who had abandoned him to a white world that extended far beyond the physical borders of slavery, and he would steal away to the attic where he had strung rope and placed a ladder. Then he would ascend the ladder of forgetting.

  Scipio began to cry, and the sound snuffed Laney’s tears in an instant. Her anger and self-pity evaporated as quickly as her clothes were drying in the July sun. She stared in open-mouthed astonishment as her great, gruff father, usually so still and stoic, a man in residence many miles behind his eyes, began to cry like a child in the arms of the elders as they prayed over him, their voices a gentle stream like the burbling of the river.

  “Daddy,” Laney said, struggling against some old woman who was holding her. “Daddy!”

  Scipio didn’t look at her, didn’t seem to hear her; his weeping eyes were trained on the far distance. Abruptly, confusedly, Laney turned to see what he was staring at. What she saw then she would never forget: It was not just the expanse of Kentucky with its fine gradations of summer green, the sloping rise of gorgeous hills that led to a graceful interior. This time she saw something inside of the prettiness, something that had captured her father’s gaze, or perhaps captured him. She saw the shadows between the trees, the grave-black spaces that could harbor secrets. Or people. They were natural hiding places. Your father is still hiding there, a voice inside her said—not her own voice but many voices, like the elders were speaking in the round of her heart. Your father never escaped, he couldn’t. White folks won’t give you nothing you don’t demand, and you got to demand your soul long after the body reaches freedom. Then, like a good soldier, you got to fight for the souls of others, and if necessary you offer up your most precious thing—your life—to do so.

  Laney whipped back around, facing the church crowd, full of new and sudden understanding. Then she took off running, stumbling briefly on the uneven ground of the riverbank, and slapping away the elderly hands that would hold her. She ran with arms outstretched, asking for what was not in her nature to need, something she would never again request, not even as a ploy when she was once captured guiding slaves out of Kentucky to the promised land. She asked forgiveness of her beloved father for the sin of ignorance, for wasting all the fight in her heart on foolishness, for not taking up arms in God’s great war. She would never make that mistake again.

  6

  THE INTERPRETATION OF HORSES

  For although God Gave unto Horses such excellent qualities at their Creation, now are they changed in their use and are become disobedient to man, and therefore must be subjected by Art.

  —MICHAEL BARET, An Hiponomie (1618)

  Moderator: Ladies and Gentlemen, I want to welcome you to the 2006 Kentucky Derby press conference featuring the connections to this year’s winning horse, the 2005 Eclipse American Champion Two-Year-Old Filly, Hellsmouth of Forge Run Farm. We’d like to introduce trainer Mack Snyder, owner Henry Forge, and jockey Reuben Bedford Walker III, a trio of horse racing’s finest. We’ll start with a few questions for Mack, a four-time Derby winner, two-time winner of the Breeder’s Cup, and all-around master of the three-year-old classics. Mack, can you say with confidence that Hellsmouth is the best horse you’ve ever brought to the Derby?

  Mack: I sure as hell can.

  Mod: She’s shown a lot of personality and quickly become a crowd favorite. Has she also become a Mack Snyder favorite?

  Mack: Well, the love of my life is always the one in my bed.

  Mod: Now, it’s a win but not a Derby record. Were you hoping for better speed today?

  Mack: Records are nice, but time only matters in jail.

  Mod: But can she take the Triple Crown? We’ve never seen a filly go all the way—Genuine Risk came closest—but then I think we can all agree we’ve never seen a filly quite like this one.

  Mack: I’m standing here today to tell you this filly can and will go all the way. You can take that to the bank.

  Mod: Now turning to the owner of Hellsmouth, a very familiar face in the racing world and one who’s been chasing a Derby win for more than two decades, Mr. Henry Forge. Henry, do you feel that despite last year’s injury, your filly can be ready for the Preakness in two weeks, then the grueling mile-and-a-half Belmont Stakes?

  There was no immediate reply. All eyes turned to Henry, sitting stiffly in his shirtsleeves before the black YumBrands!YumBrands!YumBrands! banner that rippled faintly in the breeze from a fan. That same breeze prickled the sweat on Henry’s forehead as he looked from one camera lens to the next, a sea of dark apertures narrowing on his face: age-freckled, quiet, haggard. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. Then he said, “As
of today I am pulling Hellsmouth from racing.”

  He wasn’t sure at first whether he had said the words aloud, because no one moved. The room pitched into a Quaker quiet. It was as though they were waiting for the joke to crack, but Henry didn’t even crack a smile. Beside him, Mack suddenly turned toward him, blooming pink, which turned to blustery red as his lips thinned. Then a single camera clicked, and the room came suddenly alive with the mad, syncopated clattering of a hundred cameras.

  Mod: I … are you … I’m sorry, I’m not sure I understood you properly. Are you intending to pull Hellsmouth from Thoroughbred racing altogether, or…?

  Mack: What? No, he’s— Hell no—he’s—

  “Yes.”

  The word was uttered and then another Yes followed on the first, but louder this time and more resolute. Yes and Yes. The flashes were blinding; Henry grimaced, unable to open his eyes against the onslaught. Yes, he was certain. When he earnestly tried to recall the force of the old passions and antipathies, he could not; he could barely remember them at all.

  He opened his eyes and sought out Lou in the crowd; she had lifted Samuel out of his arms just before they’d taken their seats. He detected her on the fringe of the news conference, watching the event as it unfolded, alarm visible in her eyes. She shifted Samuel higher on her hip and—Samuel, yes, that child was the length and breadth of it now, the new world, his future, the whole future. His choice wasn’t shame now, it wasn’t even regret, though he had too many regrets to count; it was life.

  It was rising in him—It—It could buoy him now, because it was no longer a chain. Henry came to his feet, knocking back his metal chair and pushing away the banquet table with a rough squawk, so that Mack and Reuben both scrambled backward, astonishment written in their every movement. Henry said, “I will contribute no more horses to this sport.”

  Belatedly, Mack’s sense knocked back into place on his tongue. “Henry! Have you lost your goddamn mind?” But he was just biting air. Henry didn’t acknowledge him—was either unwilling or unable to hear him—amidst the sudden pandemonium that erupted in the room. Mack grabbed out wildly for his arm, but Henry slipped from the table, a gray figure flashing briefly before the YumBrands!YumBrands!YumBrands! banner before stepping directly into the press that swarmed around him.

  Behind them all, abandoned, Reuben remained exactly where he sat, eyes unblinking with his fingers knotted at his anorectic chest as though the banquet table still remained beneath them. He blinked rapidly, trading the mask of victory for one of a different kind. “Don’t do it,” he said on the barest whisper of breath. “Don’t do it, old Paddy, or you’ll be sorry.”

  Henry pressed into the frenzied crowd.

  “Mr. Forge, what’s brought about this abrupt change of direction?”

  “Have your personal losses this year had any bearing on this turnabout?”

  “Mr. Forge, are you one hundred percent sure?”

  The feet were thunderous, the flashes a lightning storm. There were many voices in the storm calling out his name, but they didn’t matter at all now, because there was no chaos in him any longer. He simply shouldered his way through them with a steadfast impassivity, his face a cipher. He walked straight to Lou and touched her elbow, and together they moved toward the door. Though her eyes were full of unasked questions, she didn’t say a word, only switched Samuel to the opposite hip and kept pace as Henry began to hurry now with the sudden lightness of his release. His denial was an assent, and it was total. He was sure he was doing the right thing, though it was the hardest thing. The sensation was deliciously unfamiliar. Was this finally joy?

  They attained the cooler air of the outer hall and passed through the main double doors where the sky yawned empty of rain, where the soaked ground glittered, and the dusty smell of horseflesh was swamped by the damp breeze. In the distance, beyond the roiling press, straggling fans still walked the grounds, boisterous hats weaving through the parking lot, where drunks were draped like amorous ragdolls on tailgates. Henry knew somewhere, probably in the back of some van, the garland of red roses was beginning to brown. Time is a horse you never have to whip.

  As they pushed through the turnstiles, Lou finally gripped his arm, saying, “Henry, are you really doing this?”

  Henry’s mouth was empty as an urn. He kept walking in the direction of Barn 23.

  Hellsmouth sensed them through the ground before she saw them. She’d been hotwalked and cooled out and was now done with her photos, all her showing out. Something was over. Her body was loose-limbed, sleepy, yet she wasn’t exhausted, only resting. She was drifting in and out of fleet dreams under the hands that dried and curried her, that rubbed cream into her hide and made her shine.

  Suddenly, her ears straightened and swiveled. Her tail twitched minutely, then whipped, and in a single agitated movement, she swung her dark, articulate head across the chain at the gate of her stall, her lips risen fretfully over her teeth, her mouth working.

  Henry Forge and the horse stood eye to eye. For a long moment, they breathed each other’s breath. Henry fought the urge to draw back away from the reality of what he saw, the reality of this horse, what he had not let himself see before. Hellsmouth was bold as life, but her brittle bones were no match for her power. The creative vitality of her gait, the tremendous heat of her racing engine fueled by her competitor’s blood, that fierce physical ambition, which was wholly natural to her and as inextricable as her limbs, would come at the expense of her life. She would break. A competitor like Hellsmouth could never stop of her own accord. She was not just unwilling but actually unable to save herself.

  “Load her up,” Henry said.

  Allmon, standing at the filly’s head, made no immediate move. He’d also sensed Henry’s approach, watched his whiteness intrude on the private warmth of the stall. Now his eyes were locked on Henry’s, but he wasn’t watching the realizations coalesce moment to moment in the man’s eyes; he saw the darker shadow of a man dangling in his pitch-black pupils. Allmon flushed with hate that rose like a cold fire from his feet to the very follicles of his hair.

  “Load her up,” Henry said again. “I’m taking her home.”

  But Mack was there first. “No, no, no, no, hold on!” He was shouldering his way through the press, which had gathered, bearing down on their small circle of man and beast. “Nobody’s going nowhere! Just hold on one fucking minute!”

  “I said load her up!” The words erupted from Henry, startling Allmon from his hateful reverie. He realized quite suddenly what was being demanded of him and he stepped forward, his movements a rude assertion, eyes wide and lips parted for rebuttal, but Mack was on the warpath.

  “Don’t do this, Henry,” the trainer said, grappling for Henry’s elbow. “Just calm down—”

  Henry whirled on Mack, his face finally ablaze with all the passion absent ten minutes before. “I won’t race her anymore, Mack. You’ll break her!”

  If Mack was looking for acquiescence, he wasn’t going to find it. He stepped into Henry, his bewilderment wrapped in rising anger and his hands working wildly, uselessly between them as if gesturing for words out of the charged air. “Nobody’s breaking anybody!” he spat. “She’s a goddamned racehorse! Let her do what she does best!”

  “Not like this! Not this…!”

  “Yes, yes—actually, fucking just like this!” Mack rejoindered, his head hobbyhorsing on his ruddy neck, his arms wide so the press nearest him could smell his sweat. “Henry, this horse was born to run! What the fuck are you talking about?”

  Allmon looked from Mack to Henry, then back to Mack. Systolic waves of shock began to roll through his torso. It began to dawn on him what was happening here, what Forge was doing. This wasn’t the plan, this sure as hell wasn’t the deal, and if what seemed to be happening actually happened, then he had survived his fucking life, had scrambled and fought, for nothing. Nothing.

  “She runs because we made her to run,” blurted Henry, “not because—”


  “Made her to run…?” Mack snapped, sputtering like a jalopy. “Okay, Henry, okay, okay! Maybe because we”—he fumbled wildly, he couldn’t wrap his mind around the goddamned absurdity of the foreign words about to come out of his mouth—“because we made their nature, doesn’t make it any less their … what the fuck, Henry! What are you doing to me here?”

  But Henry had turned his back on Mack, stonewalling him better than any ex-boyfriend ever had, and now the damn baby was whimpering behind him, and the press, those jackals, didn’t know where to look any more than Allmon did, and Mack’s eyes were apocalyptic as he tried to discover the final word, the persuasive knife that would slice straight through the insanity to the common fucking sense. “Henry Forge! Listen to me now! A filly like this—she’s a bullet out of a gun! You pulled the trigger three years ago and you cannot—LISTEN TO ME, YOU CANNOT STOP THE BULLET NOW! All you’ve got to do is just stand back! Stand back and let her happen, Henry.”

  There was a long moment of silence as Allmon and the press leaned in, collective breath on hold.

  “I’m asking you to load my horse,” said Henry, very steely and very quietly in Allmon’s direction.

  Allmon, silent until this very moment, leveled Henry with a brute stare. “Over my dead body.” But the words were stronger than his hope and crumbled on his tongue like old tabby, because two things happened at once: he realized suddenly that his previous maneuvering was a farce, that his name on a dotted line was worth less than an afternoon’s dream, that it was always men like Forge who controlled everything in this world; then Lou stepped into his line of vision, baby in her arms. At first Allmon spared only a fleet glance for the way her right hand cradled the child’s head all sprung with plump curls that framed his wide-eyed face. But then he noted the soft darkness of the face. Blood stalled in Allmon’s veins. Instant recognition: loose curls and those eyes. He knew them from photographs of himself as a baby, photos that had disappeared along with everything else, thrown away by strangers when his mother died. His lips parted in shock, and his wide eyes slid back to Henry and locked in place like the old prison door.