by Gigi Amateau
They led me to a stall at the very end on the corner, next to a chestnut about my size who had his nose to the wall and his rear toward the door. The bay filly was placed across the aisle. She was even dimmer in the eyes than at the start of our trip. As soon as she took her first couple of steps, I could see that she was off. Lame.
The night men tossed a flake of hay in each of our stalls and filled up two buckets each with water. “Welcome to Riverside Maximum Security Correctional Center,” said the man leading me. “Also known as prison.”
In the daylight, the new place was full of horses and men. The men they called offenders all wore the same type of denim britches, and they worked under the watchful eyes of other men called guards, who carried guns, so I tried hard to be good.
We retirees in the program had seen everything there was to see. Seen glory and agony. On the track, when a horse broke down a stride or two ahead of you, what choice was there but to go over, under, or around. I’d seen a whole lot worse, too. Things no man or horse should ever have to see.
And yet, there I was. Standing on four feet. Breathing in fresh air and trying to fathom finding a second chance and wondering what on earth I might do with my remaining years if not race. And wondering if I could ever learn to do anything else.
I saw plainly that Mrs. Eden had sent me to retire on a Virginia prison farm where, it seemed to me, fallen horses and fallen men landed with a thud. Everybody inside needed some kind of fixing or correcting or rehabilitating. Somewhere along the way, somebody had gotten the idea that we could help one another.
The purpose of bringing second-chance hopefuls like myself into the prison environment was to test out this idea that, maybe somehow, broken men could help broken horses, and vice versa. Take my situation. Pretty simple. I needed a place to live and someone to care for me. The men confined to the prison farm had time to learn and time to give.
Now, the main elements of the retirement program included (1) make a good match between a man and a Thoroughbred, (2) teach the man how to care for and understand horses, and (3) help the ex-racehorse just be a horse. I didn’t reckon the fourth goal would ever apply to me: adopt out the ex-racehorses into forever homes, where we could live out the last, oh, twenty-five or so years of our lives.
The success of this whole experiment turned on the idea that friendship and structure would put the horses and the men back together. Rebuild confidence and make us whole again.
Right away, I started learning and unlearning. The woman in charge, Miss Bet, said the main thing I needed to figure out was how to be a horse. She recommended that after all I’d been through, what I deserved was time off my toes, grazing in the sunshine. Experiencing what it felt like to nuzzle and nicker and stand and graze.
Don’t know that I deserved anything but what I had gotten, especially for not holding up my end of the bargain and being unable to keep my promise to Marey. My siblings were out there winning, doing their part, and, I supposed, Grandfather Dante was helping them along, the way he had tried to help me.
About every week somebody or another would come visit the prison program, shopping for a horse with good bloodlines to adopt. Folks came by seeking a mare that might make a fine hunter or even emerge into a good jumper. Other visitors were in the market for a Thoroughbred to make their pasture look more beautiful. I turned a few heads, but nobody called me in from the paddock.
Miss Bet had some preplanned messages that she liked to deliver to potential new owners. I liked listening to her lay down the law of the off-the-track Thoroughbred like only Miss Bet could do.
“I don’t need to tell you that these horses are highly specialized. Everything in their breeding, their upbringing, and their training is oriented to a life on the track. I know we’re at the dawn of the Thoroughbred revolution, but you can’t expect to throw a saddle on an OTTB and put them to work. That’s a risky venture for all involved, especially the horse.” She’d often start with something along those lines.
“I know,” visitors would typically say. “I’m ready for a more advanced horse.”
“Is that right? Stall number twenty literally bit off Ralph’s thumb last Friday. Well, almost took it off. He doesn’t like pitchforks. Care to imagine why?”
“Oh, I can imagine. That’s why I’m here.”
Then, if her guest flashed a glance toward me, and they often did, because what can I say, people like black horses, she’d warn them off. “You noticed the black gelding behind you? He’d as soon kick your ankles from under your knees as wait for you to set his grain bucket down.”
Oh, I knew my future read bleak as far as any hope for getting adopted from the program.
Now, Miss Bet and some nice volunteers from the community trained the men to work at a high level directly with us track retirees. Every horse had a man assigned, and they all received training, but something about my propensity to kick, charge, and threaten made Miss Bet think I needed a different type of handler. Lucky for me, such a man had made his own mistakes and landed himself at Riverside and right outside my stall door.
First time I met John the Farrier, he stood at my door just staring at me. Not talking up a blue streak. Not holding a feed bucket. Looking directly at me.
I found his overall demeanor on the threatening side. Lucky for him, he kept on his side of the stall door. Had he stepped into my personal space, staring me down as he was, my snaking head would have only been the start of his troubles.
I figured I’d best send a clear and swift signal to this fellow so if he ever did get a mind to enter my space, he’d think twice. I wasted no time. I spun on my haunches and kicked the holy Hades out of the door, with him standing right there. Bam-bam-bam. I just slammed my two back hooves up against that door till it rattled. Then I reloaded and fired off another quick round. John the Farrier jumped back like a grasshopper.
Enough said, I figured, so I gave him my backside and enjoyed myself some hay. Hardly any ways into my peace, here he came back again. Looking directly at me, again.
What he did next surprised the fierce right out of me. John cleared his throat and started up with a song. Crooning at the top of his lungs to me about walking on through wind and rain and all sorts of trouble.
His voice was terrible. In a sort of involuntary protest, my back leg raised up to kick out whenever his notes went sharp. Creaking and cracking and pitching up and down, he sang on. Loud. Sure. And right to me.
Every time his voice wavered I could feel the struggle in him. A kind of inside suffering that was familiar to me. The determined lyrics and his melancholy tone spoke to my heart. Maybe even woke up a part of my heart that I had stomped down. I recognized in John some of the same voices that lived deep in me.
Not good enough.
Not wanted.
A failure and a disappointment.
I recognized something else, too. There was a big difference between that broken man and this broken horse. John the Farrier was trying. I had already given up.
I nodded my head and, awful as those rancid notes sounded, I hoped he’d keep singing, because John revealing himself to me and not caring if he was perfect or even good enough sounded like an invitation and a promise. When he finished, the two of us stood still. Watching each other. I curled my nostrils toward him. Sure enough, from somewhere on his person wafted the aroma of peppermint.
I nickered.
“May I come in now?” he asked me.
I prided myself on having cultivated the habit of showing respect when it was first shown me, so I stepped back, and so began our good partnership.
Before he found trouble, John had worked around the region as a farrier, shoeing and trimming ponies and horses. In addition to working on our feet, one of his main jobs inside the prison was to reeducate us about being under saddle.
In racing, I had used one gait predominantly: fast. With a pocket full of peppermints and a repertoire packed with praise, John managed to get me tacked up and himself perched in the saddle. I
had my reservations about John. Being a good farrier does not a good rider make, necessarily. John could ride about as well as he could sing. The tension in his jaw let on that he had some reservations about me, too.
Miss Bet had tried to warn him. “He’ll have better focus if you longe him before work. To help him soften up,” she said, but he ignored her advice.
I tried to oblige him, but every time I’d pick up the pace, he’d lose his balance, pitch forward on my neck, and then pull back tight in my mouth.
He cooed soft sounds, trying to fend off impending disaster, which I believe he knew was coming. “Good boy, good boy. That’s it. Relax,” John said.
But when he pressed his bony ankle into my side, I bucked him right off. I’ve never liked pointy things. Not needles. Not ankles.
A whole year passed. Different Thoroughbreds arrived and others found homes. Some became jumpers. Some learned to hunt. One old gentleman adopted four OTTBs merely to decorate his hills.
John and I worked every day, helping each other toss out old habits and build up new ones. Much as I loved my friend the farrier, I knew that one day he would earn his way free, and I would be left at Riverside without him.
Until then, with nothing but time on his hands, John set himself to learning how to ride. Miss Bet instructed us almost every day. She also encouraged John to spend as much time with me on the ground as in the saddle.
“Try this,” Miss Bet suggested. “Get out in the field with Dante. Experiment in his world. Stand beside him as he grazes and do what he does. When he steps forward, you step with him. If he picks up his left foot, you pick up yours. Pretty soon you’ll start to feel his center of gravity shift. Awareness, John. Of your body and his. Of your mind and his.”
The farrier was a good student and did exactly as he was told. One day he waltzed into my pasture without a halter and without a single peppermint in his pocket that I could detect. I had come to expect my candy, no getting around that fact. At first, when I didn’t get what I wanted, I stomped my foot. Then I gave John a knock in the shoulder with my head.
“Buddy, I’m empty-handed today. All I’ve got is the gift of time and friendship. If you stop acting so spoiled, maybe a story or a song.”
He reached his hand up to pet my muzzle, and my lips tickled his fingers, still searching for something sweet that was not there. I was about to get real fussy with him when he lightly scratched between my ears at the top of my poll. The place I had the dangedest time reaching myself. At that instant, my overwhelming desire for peppermint surrendered to the good feeling of standing beside my friend in the broad sunshine, listening to him tell me about his family and his mistakes.
“I guess I’m more like you than I thought, Dante. My whole life I’ve lived at two speeds: fast and faster. The fact that I can now walk you around in circles without getting bored or bouncing off the sky, that’s a miracle. I’m talking about a miracle in me, not you. When my mama came to visit me last week, know what she said?”
I sure did want to hear that, and John was going to tell me either way, so I just nodded and kept right on grazing and flicking the flies away with my tail. I let him tell his story at his own pace.
“She told me I looked good and sounded better, calmer, and smarter than I had in all my life. ‘Prison agrees with you, son.’ ”
He laughed and shook his head. “I said, ‘Nah, Mama, working with that black Thoroughbred agrees with me. Seeing him try so darn hard to change his ways makes me try, too. Watching him start to trust me has changed my whole world.’ That’s what I told her, buddy.”
On such bright days, a sense of hope managed to survive in me, but sometimes, when it was cold or gray outside, a cloudy regret hunkered down over me, for no one had shown any real interest in giving me a forever home. It was that kind of a day when John came to the barn, all dressed up, clean smelling, and with his hair fixed up and no dirt under his fingernails. The only thing about him that smelled right was the peppermint in his pants pocket.
“Hey, buddy,” he said, and offered me the candy.
John very likely didn’t even realize how he made a habit of delivering bad news with his next two words.
“Sorry, boy,” he said. “I’m leaving today. One thing’s for sure. I’ll miss ya. I can’t thank you enough for all you done for me. You might not even know the whole of it.” He squinted his eyes even though the sun was hiding behind those dense, smoky clouds. “Never in a million years would I have thought that a horse would help me quit and start and be a better man. But you did. And I thank you.”
Naturally, a part of me wanted to pen him to the wall and keep him there. But I knew the deal. Prison wasn’t supposed to be a forever home for John. Not for me, either. Riverside was intended to be a place where, if we worked on all those parts of us that needed quitting and starting, if we opened our hearts to new possibilities, both of us might possibly get a second chance. If John was leaving for his, well, good for him.
“Chin up, boy. I’ll be around a few more hours. This isn’t our last good-bye. Miss Bet wants to interview me and close out my file.”
As it happened, on the very day of John’s graduation from the school of second chances, a Mrs. Isbell Maiden, from outside of Lexington, Virginia, not Kentucky, visited the retirement program with one of her students, a girl named Ashley.
“Always good to see you, Isbell.” Miss Bet extended her hand to the tall, slender woman. “A little surprised, though. You’ve come an awfully long way and, maybe, to the wrong place if you’re looking for a school horse.”
“Not exactly. Looking for more of a project horse that we can work with over time.”
Everybody that came there wanted a project horse, it seemed to me.
“I’ve got twenty projects for you to choose from. Anybody catch your eye on the way in?”
Miss Bet enlisted John to stick around and help show them three chestnuts — two geldings and a mare. I had raced and beat each of them. Pummeled the geldings. The mare gave me a chase, though. Now, here these three redheads were beating me to another chance.
Not a one of us would be racing again, that’s for sure. Oh, no. In fact, we were all busy undoing everything that we had paid so dearly to learn.
My knees were as straight as the wood planks in my stall. They’d been broken, scraped, and reset to perfection. I had one letter and five numbers tattooed to the inside of my upper lip. Tail to withers, my spine liked to hurt all day and all night. And for what?
For the opportunity to ride around in circles? To be some lady’s project? No, thank you.
Outside, the chestnut with a blaze down the front of his face and withers that sloped like mountains entered the round pen with Miss Bet. I turned one ear toward him. Whenever Miss Bet said “whoa,” he twitched his ears to show her he was listening, and he stopped on a dime.
He’s a good horse, I thought. Someone will want him.
Tacking up that guy didn’t require the same rigmarole as it did for me. When I raised my head again, the girl was in the saddle.
“Try a sitting trot,” Mrs. Maiden called out. The girl bumped along, and the chestnut never broke his stride.
She asked if she could try the chestnut at the canter. I don’t know if the two women saw him flinch, but I sure did. A little tremor ran the length of the red gelding’s back. Hesitation is its own sort of warning.
“You know what? That’s okay, Bet,” Mrs. Maiden said. “Don’t worry about it. We don’t need to see him canter today.” So she had noticed his engine switch on when he heard the word canter. One thing’s for sure, OTTBs like speed. We’re bred for nothing but.
Ashley dismounted, and as good as he was at attempting to ignore the itch to keep moving, the chestnut started prancing to the side before the girl could touch her feet to the ground. Miss Bet and Mrs. Maiden had to hold him for her to safely dismount.
“He’s nice,” Ashley said, smiling. “I like him.”
They walked back through the barn, and Miss
Bet turned up the sales pitch. She reeled off his statistics: wins, starts, and, of course, dollars.
I didn’t figure I had even earned a look, though my raven coat was showing signs of returning to its former gleam and my weight felt about right. The horse under discussion was not as flashy as I was, but he was better mannered. I lowered my head to find my hay, regretful I had let myself even get interested in this lady and her student.
While Miss Bet and Mrs. Maiden talked, Ashley, who appeared bright and bouncy like Filipia but younger, skipped down the aisle, visiting with each horse. Watching Ashley address each of us with such affection, and observing each horse try so hard, made me happy. For some reason, the old competitive spirit rose up. My ears stood at attention and my heart beat double time. Shoot, I wanted every fine one of us to make a good home. I surely did, but for some reason, I had taken a shine to the girl right away.
My stall was last on the row, and I estimated she’d never reach me. She cooed and kissed at each orphaned horse and read their names and their winnings from the plaques outside the stall doors. ’Course it’s not like the size of our purses mattered a whole heck of a lot anymore, but big winnings never failed to impress. That’s about the only way any of us really had of showing that we had ever been worth anything.
Some of the horses tried to nuzzle her through the bars. Others turned away and put their noses in the corner. Even though I was last on the end, I listened and waited.
“Look how long your ears are,” she said to the dark bay mare.
“Mrs. Maiden, this one has dainty little feet,” she said. “So small and sweet.” The brown gelding nickered.
Finally, she did approach my stall, but one of the guards warned her from coming any closer.
“Look but don’t touch,” he said. “Dante’s not ready for adoption. Might not ever be.” I saw him circle his finger around and around his temple. “Head case.”