Dante of the Maury River

by Gigi Amateau

  The three of us arrived at the Arkansas track two days ahead of the race in time to get right. By that, I mean get right with the race officials and with the new environment.

  Now, as we had seen, some tracks operate more lackadaisically than others. As attached as he was to his clipboard, paperwork was not Gary’s strength. There’d be no forgotten paperwork or lost birth certificate in Arkansas. This being our biggest race to date had everybody on edge. Gary’s gloomy outlook showed no signs of sunny days ahead. Filipia, all of a sudden, stayed pretty much out of sight. She and Gary were outright arguing, but, for once, not about me.

  I was as cool as a mule. Fired up and ready to go. My stall — more like a box, if you ask me — was a bit on the cramped side, but I had a good view of the track and the stands. Horses showed up from all over. Every one of us pretty certain that we’d win this race and get a bid to THE derby in my home state of Kentucky when we turned three. The first of the three great tests.

  Of course, my dear cousin, Covert Agent, surfaced in Arkansas, too.

  Turns out that with both Covert and me running, the Arkansas race was a big enough deal to draw the entire Eden family into the grandstands. Live and in person on the big day, there came Mrs. Eden, Doctor Tom, and Melody. And Red, right in there with them. They even got themselves a highfalutin viewing box. A real family reunion.

  Little Melody didn’t seem so small anymore; honestly, I would have recognized her anywhere, because what I most remembered was the way she waved whenever she first spotted me. And her shaggy red mane.

  “L.D., look at you, all grown up,” Melody said when she came to visit me before post time.

  I nickered the same back to her. Oh, sure, Melody stood a might taller. Because the Edens took racing seriously, Melody most certainly did not show up in her barn pants and dirty boots. Behind the flowery hat and lacy gloves, that girl was still Melody.

  I reached out toward Melody to search for the scent of Marey or anything familiar. The girl smelled brand spanking new. Not a trace of hay or grain or wet grass on her. No peppermint, either.

  Just then Gary came around the corner and tried to shoo her away. “Save the smooching on your colt till after he wins.”

  “Dante, I have to go back now. You’re even odds today, but I’ll be cheering for you. Here’s a secret. If you win this race, you’ll come back to Kentucky. You’ll train near home to run for the roses! We’re all counting on you.”

  About the time Melody disappeared from my sight, I heard quite a commotion starting up in the aisle, coming right toward me. One that would sweep me up, whirl me around, and drop me down a hole so far I might never get out.

  “Let me explain, sir, Gary. Wait, please.”

  I’d never heard Filipia sound so desperate. Never once detected tears hunkering down in her throat, blocking her voice.

  What I had heard aplenty was Gary blowing his top. But his tantrums hadn’t been directed at Filipia or me for some time.

  Till that meet in Arkansas.

  “You’re lucky you made it this far without having to prove your age. I’m not going to make a stink about this, nor am I going to tell anybody the real reason why we’re changing jockeys. I had a feeling from the get-go. Eighteen, my boots. So how old are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  Gary stomped his foot, shook his head, and stomped again. “I knew it. I knew it. I knew it.”

  Filipia stood outside my stall, hanging her head like a filly stuck out in a cold rain with no shelter, no blanket, and no friends. I didn’t understand what all had happened, but I sure got the gist.

  I nickered and tried to nuzzle her through the bars.

  “May I say good-bye to Dante?” she asked Gary.

  Whoa, hold it right there, I thought. Whose idea was good-bye? I started stomping and kicking up a fuss.

  Gary went right on ignoring me. He was angling to get rid of Filipia for good.

  “You’d best gather your things. Leave the silks folded in the locker room. I’ve got a new jockey who’ll take Dante today. And we no longer need your services elsewise.”

  So he was kicking her to dirt? The direct line between Gary and all that money in his pocket? If I hadn’t been contained in a so-called stall that was really a little box about half the size I was used to, I’d have bolted away from the track faster than a storm ripping over the mountains. And I’d have carried my friend Filipia away with me.

  I protested and rioted to no avail. Filipia finally gave up, and before she left she tried to tell Gary the secret to what made me run fast.

  “Please, at least listen to me about Dante. No way he’ll go right unless he can stop and look clear across the field before he goes into the gate. That’s important to remember. I don’t know what he sees; I just know you can’t rush him.”

  Gary turned to me, then pointed to her. “What do you see right there, Dante? I’ll tell you what I see behind those crocodile tears. I see the face of a liar.”

  Filipia dropped her shoulders and hung her head. True to her word, she did not leave without saying good-bye. “Pumpkin, pumpkin, each and every one to their home. Melon used to tell me that when the fun had been going on for too long. I love you like crazy, Monkey. Thank you.” She walked away and didn’t look back.

  I did some hard thinking about Gary’s question. What does a horse see?

  Two different sides of the same world. Particular to a horse’s way of seeing, I expect. These two eyes of mine are situated so that they can take in both sides of a whole.

  I think that’s a fair piece of what Filipia was trying to explain to Gary. But he wasn’t listening to her side.

  I suspect she had been trying to tell me all along to enjoy every minute and to learn what I could because she knew it was temporary. I figure she also tried more than once to tell me the truth about her age and about her lie. All that business of pressing her hand between my eyes, instructing me about the so-called knowing place. The true way of seeing.

  Maybe, in her own way, Filipia was already trying to explain everything. How she was lying about her age. Maybe she wanted me to know that it wasn’t her age that really mattered.

  She might have only been sixteen, but in a way, she was older and smarter than all the more experienced horsemen I had met up to that point in my two years of life, including Doctor Tom and Red. Though to be accurate, they were both chestnuts, not grays.

  Minutes before post time, there I stood at the Arkansas track waiting to meet a new jockey. Everything that had been right and good and harmonious yesterday was all wrong today. Needless to say, I did not win. Finished dead last. At least Covert won.

  Naturally, everyone, at first, pinned the Arkansas slide on jockey mismatch. And a mismatch it was, too.

  Every last person with an opinion insisted, one way or another, that the real problem was the girl. Some suspected that Filipia had been secretly drugging me. That insulting line of reasoning led exactly nowhere. I tested clean, of course, because I was.

  None of the horsemen could fathom why I plummeted so hard and fast the way I did. They looked to the clipboard for theories about my diet, training, rest, intake, and came up with zilch. Hard to believe that nobody — not the Edens, not Gary, nor any of my jockeys — could put up a good answer to the question.

  Why can’t he run? They wanted to know.

  Easy peasy. Filipia spoke the truth when she spoke her parting words, but not a one of them thought to follow her advice. Gary was too stubborn and proud to heed the words of a girl, even though she had told him exactly what to do: give me a few seconds to acclimate and look around before the race. Those few seconds would’ve made all the difference, but Gary just didn’t get it.

  Pretty simple stuff. Turns out, she was right. Horses are, well, we’re creatures of habit. People count on us equines for that. Heck, I counted on that. A slew of experts around me and not one realized that the habit of pausing to reflect had been started by Filipia and allowed to continue during every race up
till Arkansas.

  Take that away? Well, what exactly would they expect to happen?

  The bottom line: that gathering moment before each race was necessary. Filipia could see it because she’s the one who showed me.

  I needed a pause before racing in order to follow the knowing place back to the bluegrasses and temperate breeze of Kentucky. Back to where I knew Marey grazed at Edensway. And to where Grandfather Dante had welcomed me into the family on my first day. Real or not, that’s just how it was. I needed to walk with the bloodlines before each and every race. They took that away and filled the void with the whip.

  For a good piece of the next two seasons, I enjoyed the halo of my winning two-year-old season and, at least initially, didn’t bear the burden of the blame for my own downfall. Filipia and I had won some good races and big money back-to-back.

  Gary and company kept on sending me right back to the track. He’d been handed the magic to set me up for the win on Filipia’s way out the door, and he had promptly and persistently ignored her. Even with so much at stake, old Sourface was too proud, too stubborn, and too sure he could fix me himself to even consider that the girl might have been right.

  Every jockey I met after the Arkansas tumble went to the whip early and stayed there. While that tactic does work on some horses, I was not one of them. In true spite of the whip, I won what I needed to win to survive. Just survive.

  I had seen enough of what happens to Thoroughbreds who land at the bottom. Though I was but a baby, in many ways, I was wised up enough to the game to know that I needed to run well occasionally to kindle the hope.

  As a three-year-old, I raced five times. Gary himself took me all over. Maryland. West Virginia. Florida. We’d pick up jockeys at whatever track we were running.

  Despite Gary’s meddling with my blood and oxygen and nerves by dosing me up with any legal substance, and a few that maybe he’d agreed to look the other way on, despite all that fiddle-faddle, I won enough purses to buy my dam and Edensway the time they needed to reestablish their breeding program. Of course, my cousin stayed out there doing his part for Edensway. Covert had sealed his place in the bloodlines. In the meantime, my path was altered.

  There are reasons to alter a colt. More reasons to geld than not to, I suppose. Apparent to everyone was that I would never amount to the new-era champion that the racing world pined after. Mrs. Eden decided not to breed me. They had to sedate me to cut me, but cut me they did. Some other colt, maybe Covert, would keep the bloodlines winning.

  By then, Marey’s next colt, whom I had never met, was two and burning it up. My little half brother. Doctor Tom had bred Marey to a different stallion to clean up the pedigree. My record had at least helped to prove her a good dam.

  When I raced as a four-year-old, I remained in the gate for my first three races, never broke. Gary brought me back to Virginia. “We just need to regroup a little bit,” he told a reporter from Kentucky Bloodlines. “I feel like he’s setting on a good race, for sure. I know he can do it. The question is, does he want to?”

  As a five-year-old, I raced seven times. Five times I finished dead last. Twice I won. Seems like the older I got the worse I performed.

  The funny thing is, in those two races the circumstances of loading into the starting gate did, indeed, give me pause to find the bloodlines, but not a soul recognized the differentiator.

  I sure wasn’t reeling in a fortune, but winning on ninety-to-one odds, every now and again, kept me barely ahead of even money. Winning enough so that Marey and Edensway Farm would reap some benefits.

  Seven different jockeys, a new one for each race. I couldn’t tell one from the other. Never knew their names. I’m sure they knew mine.

  No doubt, I’d have raced all my life for Filipia.

  Almost worked out for both of us.

  On reflection, I know the girl lied because she loved me. Shoot, she loved horses. Had lived her entire life among us. And even more so, that child loved her family. Thanks to her, I gave my own family a fair chance at good lives.

  Because of the success that Filipia and I had found together, folks were reluctant to give up on me. They knew what I could do. As a result — and I attribute this saving grace to Filipia — nobody sent me to the claiming stakes to run me ragged and empty till my feet and legs and mind were shot. No sir, my jockey’s lie was told for my well-being as much as her own.

  So, how could I have ever been anything but grateful for Filipia? After Gary fired her, my whole life changed. And my future did, too. Whatever was on my horizon would not include winning Grandfather Dante’s Triple Crown. I had tumbled down so far that even a miracle couldn’t earn me half a chance at the three tests.

  In a last-ditch effort to salvage something of my career and her investment, Mrs. Eden wielded her influence and got me into a big race in Virginia. Not one reporter from Kentucky Bloodlines showed a whiff of interest in the odds or the outcome. We weren’t even sure a new jockey could be found to do the job.

  One blessed thing about my last race was the same as my first.

  Filipia came. And I guess it shocked her how much I had changed.

  “Monkey, remember me?”

  I whickered softly. I will never forget.

  She set her hand in between my eyes. I let out a defeated sigh. “Oh, my friend. Are you in there? You look so thin and tired. Like a bag of bones. Where is the fire in your eyes, Monkey?” She walked her fingers along my barrel, counting each of my ribs.

  I suppose I finally needed to accept my fate and to acknowledge that, in my case, the bloodlines didn’t work out. I wasn’t made to be a great racehorse or to face the three great tests. Grandfather Dante had made a mistake.

  If Filipia hadn’t been there on the day of my last race, I would’ve dug my hooves deep into the dirt and not budged out of the gate. Taken the whip, for the whip was surely coming my way, start or no start.

  But I wanted to run for Filipia. Just before we entered the gate, I saw her in the stands, and we locked gazes. For Filipia, I gave it my all and finished in the middle of the pack. Nothing to be proud of, but no shame, either.

  After the race, she came to tell me good-bye. “Dante,” she said, “you’re on the verge of a breakdown. I promise you will not race again. If I have anything to do with anything, you’re done.”

  Just then Mrs. Eden came around the corner with Gary. The two of them locked in a whisper. You’d best believe neither of them was happy to see the girl who was really to blame. According to them, anyway.

  Filipia pleaded my case. Neither Gary nor Mrs. Eden wanted to hear what she had to say. Nor did they want to face the truth. I had been worked to the ground, chasing for fortune.

  “I’ll make a call,” Mrs. Eden said. “No promises.”

  And so ended my career as a racehorse. The pedigree needed champions to win and stallions to breed. I was neither.

  The bloodlines granted me two last favors that day at the track. First, Filipia had showed up. She was still living in Virginia and had read I’d be racing. Second, she had succeeded in persuading Mrs. Eden to call up a nearby Thoroughbred retirement program. They had room to spare and were already on their way to the track for two fillies.

  Though it was tempting to get down in the jowls about being all used up at age five, I knew life could have turned down a much harder road.

  Why, just that very evening along the backside they’d had to put down the winner of the state derby. She was a horse in the wrong place at the wrong time. She’d hardly cooled down from her race when the fireworks finale went up and scared the lights out of that big bay filly. She reared, and it was a grotesque sight to witness her strike a pole with her head, then twist and turn and injure herself to the point of no return. Life quickly drained out of her, and though her trainer eased her suffering in the final moments, her ending was a sad and sorry shame. They say she was on her way to becoming a true champion. A gal that could run with the boys. A tragic ending, for sure. God love that filly. He
r racing career ended that day, and her life did, too.

  Somehow, though, I’d been spared. I had been blessed early and often, showed my backside to destiny, yet the second chance shifted my way because Filipia loved me.

  We had very little time for good-byes. Mrs. Eden and Gary were visibly relieved to let me go.

  With tears in her eyes, Filipia walked me to the trailer. “Melon always says that God’s greatest act was to make one day follow another. Tomorrow is a new day, Monkey.”

  Straight from the track in Virginia, three of us worn-down racehorses rode away together. The other two passengers, both fillies, were at least a hand smaller than I was and quieter, too. The bay one resembled Marey. The red was all red and not a spot of white. She took after Covert.

  Neither filly touched their hay. Not a bite. They couldn’t hardly lift their heads to look out the window, much less pull hay. There wasn’t much to see out on the road, anyway. Not a mountain in sight. Nor a hill that could make me think of home.

  As we didn’t have a terrible far distance to travel, I got to smelling their hay, and it seemed a shame to let it all go stale, especially since both the fillies’ nets were within my easy reach.

  Neither one put up a lick of fuss at sharing. That’s how I knew they were in a world of hurt. I could only hope that the place we were headed would look kindly upon all three of us.

  Long about dusk, the trailer stopped, and we unloaded. I was downright stunned to find that the entire farm was enclosed by a tall barbed-wire fence. Nobody would be breaking out of there.

  The handlers led us to a brick barn with cement floors. Our hooves struck the ground in alternating beats and set off a welcoming chain of whinnies and nickers down the lane. There must have been twenty Thoroughbreds, all former racers, already living in that big barn.