The discontent of winter and the strange night in New York were fading from memory. I looked back at it from time to time with detachment and curiosity. How could I have been so silly? How could I have thought of anything but this life, here, with Alexander? And I admit, it was especially easy to be content as we vacationed through June, with quiet mornings watching the horses from the kitchen, relieved to be in the cool indoors and be excused for just a little while from the steamy air pressing down on us. It was especially easy to be content when we’d slip upstairs to sleep in the afternoon, letting the storms pound the house, happy not to be caught out in one of the barns, waiting the lightning out, as we so often had, in a feed room, slouched on a stack of sweet feed bags.
The rich Gulf coast sunsets became an evening ritual, when the thunderstorms were growling their way out to sea and the sunlight burst through just in time, coloring the sky in green and pink and purple, unexpected combinations which spread out over the vast Florida sky. Tired of pressing our noses against the window glass, we braved the mosquitoes and the steamy air to watch them from the porch, which looked out over the prospect of the farm, to the west. The front porch, like a lot of Florida porches, had been a neglected place, given over to the humidity and the creepy-crawlies, too strewn with leaves from the live oaks and a constantly perilous habitat for fire ants, black widow spiders, palmetto bugs, and all the other other charming denizens of Florida, which is basically a mini-version of Australia, the Land Where Everything Wants To Kill You, to ever appear inviting. After we spent two hours enthusiastically sweeping and scrubbing and killing everything that moved, Alexander declared it reclaimed from the wilds, and sat down on the unearthed porch swing, hauling me down with him.
And when we went back to work, then, it wasn’t so bad. We took it a little easier. Alexander hired a couple of new grooms, so less work fell directly onto my shoulders. We went out to dinner instead of presiding over evening feeding and then falling upon whatever strange concoction had been left in our freezer. “Manage more, do less,” he told me, and I did.
I rode tough horses less, too, cheerfully giving up the more dangerous and exhausting rides to the career exercise riders. In the morning he would tack up his pony, an aged Thoroughbred mare named Betsy, and I would tack up Parker (now called Parker the Pony), and we’d ride out to the track with the sets. From the vantage point of the ponies, we’d watch the horses train, and Alexander would point out everything I needed to look for as a trainer. I graduated, I was promoted. I made it from exercise rider to assistant trainer. I loved it.
“It’s common sense,” Alexander said to an acquaintance one night, as we sat at the Starbucks near the Ocala Breeders’ Sales pavilion, spreading across a table with magazines and coffees in a glamourous display of non-agrarian lifestyle. “You and Hilda should really try to get out more, too. Give the grooms a little more responsibility and stop doing it all yourself. Join us here in the evening. We thought we were being so responsible by working so hard, and all we were doing was killing ourselves and getting more and more miserable.”
The man had five hundred acres and a horse for every one of them. He nodded. “Hilda told me last week she felt like she was getting tired of horses. I didn’t know what to say, because I kind of agreed with her.”
I glanced up from my New Yorker and smiled at him. “Do it,” I said.
I wasn’t tired of horses anymore. And while I rode less, I still got on a few horses, to feel out someone’s silliness or odd steps, most of the time. And, nearly always, The Tiger Prince.
And so summer passed, and the yearlings were sold and went away to make someone else crazy, and fall came and yearlings started to arrive in the training barn to be started, and horses came and horses went, and Alexander and I went on running the farm together, content in each other’s company.
Through it all, through the June rest and the early morning works and the evenings and nights spent outdoors with his friend, The Tiger Prince thrived. We watched him and worried over him, but nothing happened. He didn’t buck a shin, he didn’t pop a splint. He never colicked and he ate all his food and looked for more. His dark coat gleamed and fat round dapples spread across his flanks. He was fit and handsome and ready to race.
And so here he was, on a cool winter’s afternoon, wheeling around the paddock. He nearly reared when the steward flipped up his upper lip to check the tattoo hidden there, confirming that he was the horse on the entry. I frowned, watching him act the fool with his groom. “He needs a lip chain,” I said tightly. “Didn’t you tell him to put in a lip chain?”
“Of course I did,” Alexander said. “When was the last time Roberto did something he didn’t feel was necessary? I suppose he thought the horse would be quiet because he was outside last night.” He shook his head. “Will you take him or shall I?”
“I’ll take him,” I said, and marched across the grass in my dress and oxfords. I was dressed up for the occasion, a touch of class that Alexander had always insisted on, but I didn’t wear heels to horse races, unlike some women I had seen. I never knew when I might have to take a horse and do some work.
“Get him in the stall,” I hissed at Roberto as I came close. “You should have a lip chain on him!”
Roberto silently took the horse into the number six stall, walking him in a tight circle to turn him around to face the activity. I snatched the lead shank and flipped up his upper lip again, sliding the chain that had been over his nose down and pulling it across his gum. I pulled the lead taut so that the chain was firmly against the gum, pinned there on his lip. He looked at me and stood still. It was all the warning he needed. Lip chains look terrible, but they’re really the ultimate positive reinforcement: if the horse leans back from it and feels pressure, all he has to do to relieve it is move back into the groom’s hand. The handler doesn’t have to do a thing; the horse figures it out for himself. Nose chains aren’t nearly as effective: you basically have to hurt a horse to get his attention. And while a horse has to be contained in an explosive atmosphere to keep him from hurting people, other horses, and himself, hurting him isn’t the right way to do it.
“You stand,” I said fiercely, and the horse eyeballed me and stood rigid.
The valet came up with the jockey’s saddle and girths, and Alexander came up in his suit and tie to do the honors of saddling. A man on each side, they fastened the girth and the overgirth together, and then I took the horse out to the walking ring, near the track, to do a few little circles. The jockey arrived, wearing our silks of green and white diamonds, and Alexander and he settled for a little chat on the grass in the center of the walking ring.
Suddenly Alexander was beside me, hand out for the jockey, and while we walked the jockey set his knee in Alexander’s hand and hopped into the saddle, taking up the reins, and nudging his feet into the tiny stirrups. Tiger put his head up and tried to trot sideways; I gave him a warning nudge with the chain. “Don’t,” I said in my deep, oh-son-you’re-in-trouble-now voice, and he settled down to a mincing, bouncing walk, hooves barely touching the mulch.
I had loosened the chain as we neared the track ponies, who were waiting in a little clump near the open gate from paddock to track, and as an outrider leaned down with his leather strap to slip it through Tiger’s bit-ring, I popped up the buckle on the halter and dropped it from his head. For a second, it was just the jockey and the racehorse, but the horse didn’t know it, and then the outrider was in control, taking them out for the post parade and a little pre-race warm-up.
Alexander was there beside me as they went dancing into the deep track, his hand on my shoulder. “He’ll be fine,” he said, and I could only nod. There went our boy. And I’d been so caught up in keeping him calm and together, I’d forgotten to give him his good-luck kiss.
Shrouded by oak trees, the chute at Tampa is nearly invisible from the grandstand. We stood by the rail at the finish line, watching on the screen as seven naughty two-year-olds were coaxed into the gate. The three hor
se reared and a collective oh came up from the little snowbird crowd as horseplayers fretted over their bets and spectators fretted over the horse. Then he was down, everyone was in, and then they were off.
The six hole was a tough spot for a speed horse like Tiger to make his first start; if he didn’t break first, and no one expected him to since he was new to it all, then he’d have to sit back behind horses around the backstretch and he’d get dirt in his face, something that he had never experienced before. It was to be an afternoon of firsts, then. He broke slowly and his jockey settled him at the back of the pack.
“His ears are pinned,” I said, worried, watching the feed on infield screen. “He’s angry about the dirt.”
“Or he’s ready to give chase,” Alexander said. “Watch. Jose will take him around the field at the turn and let him out at the top of the stretch. The track isn’t favoring speed today. Not a single front-runner has won here in two days. And no matter what, he’ll pick off a few, at least, and learn something.”
I held my tongue and watched. I was here to learn. I was an assistant trainer now.
But that was my baby out there. I leaned against the chain link fence as they hit the top of the stretch. The front-runner was stretching out now. He didn’t change leads and the jockey gave him a smack to remind him. Nothing. From behind the pack, Jose finally swung Tiger wide and showed him the empty track ahead.
“I want you to win!” I shouted, and Alexander clicked his tongue.
“It’s really unlikely that he wins his first start, dear, you know that,” he said, but he was a little breathless, and I knew neither of us were thinking with our heads now.
“Come on, come on, come on!” I shrieked, as Tiger’s ears pricked, and he started to make his run. Without the dirt in his eyes, he was having fun. He picked off two horses, then three. There were three ahead still, two running in tight tandem, eye to eye, unable or unwilling to pull ahead of the other, as some young horses will do, relying on each other for solace in this new scary world of afternoons and shouting people. The frontrunner, close to the rail, flattened out suddenly, his race over a furlong too soon, and the two horses swept past him as if he were standing still. Behind, the pack of also-rans were forced to check as they caught up to the exhausted pacemaker. Tiger stayed wide, alone, running down the pair that would not be separated. A lone furlong left! Just a few jumps behind! Alexander slapped his hand on the fence, over and over and over, in cadence with the bobbing head of the dark colt.
He was startlingly close to us as he ran under the wire; he’d run so wide he was in the center of the track, but he’d done it, he’d caught the twins, and I could have sworn that he flicked an ear in our direction, and rolled a dark eye our way, as he passed by within earshot of our screams and whoops.
I was still jumping up and down, careless of the very real possibility that I’d flash the crowd (I wasn’t really used to wearing skirts) when Alexander put a hand on my shoulder and said, “Now you save your celebration until he has walked soundly in the shedrow and you know he hasn’t hurt himself.” He peered down the track; the horses had pulled up and were jogging back to the finish line to be unsaddled and sponged off before their walk to the barns. “He looks good now, though.”
“They’re always work, aren’t they?” I said, half-angry. “I can’t just have a good time, and be happy with my horse, I always have to be watching and worrying. . .”
“The head and not the heart,” he sighed. “But I do love that horse.”
I smiled, watching him jog down in front the stands, shying at the bettors leaning over the fence, the children shouting for the jockey’s attention. “I love him too.”
THE END
Following is a short story by Natalie Keller Reinert, Horse-Famous.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Horse-Famous: A Short Story
The English are waiting, and I don’t know what to do.
I stand and stare at myself in the mirror. It’s cracked and dotted with flyspecks and turns my complexion green, but I feel like it speaks the truth. I must be all of those things right about now, greenish, fly-speckled, half-cracked—
There’s a knock—ratatatat! at the door—it trembles, rotten timbers betraying themselves. I haven’t gotten to the bathroom yet. The bathroom’s not important. It isn’t in the manual. If it’s not in the manual, I just don’t care.
“Yes?” I call, like I don’t know what is happening.
“The inspector is here, Holly,” Brigid calls through the flaking door. Her voice is shrill and shaky on the best of days; she speaks like she had an older brother who used to spend his days standing behind doors and leaping out at her, leaving her the legacy of a childhood spent in eternal breathless terror. You don’t get over things like that. Your childhood marks you, breaks you, tears you down, gives you phobias that last a lifetime.
Take me, for instance. Locked in the bathroom, shaking in my boots. Literally, in my custom Italian leather dress boots, which fit like a glove when I am calm, and hurt like hell, two sizes too small, when I am as now, sweating, hypertense, freaking out. In addition to everything else, my fucking feet hurt. I take another glance at my sea-green reflection. But skin care isn’t in the Manual. It doesn’t matter.
I wish I wasn’t doing this at all. I wish I wasn’t hiding from the English like the goddamn arbiters of all that is holy that they are. I wish I was back in my office, I wish it were five years ago, one year ago, six months ago. I wasn’t always doing this, you know. I reopened the old blisters, the cracked skin that had healed after I ran away from those British winters throwing straw bales without gloves, riding horses in the rain, hosing down the yard long after darkness had fallen. Six months ago, I had skin as smooth and soft as a baby’s.
Skin care isn’t in the Manual. I should know. And it doesn't need to be. Horses don’t care what you look like. They only care that they eat on time. The really picky ones demand to be brought inside when it rains. They’re stupid things to worship, but we do it anyway. We can’t get enough of them. Every horse is our false idol, every horse is our prayer, and every horse is an aching gaping wound in our heart when we try to run away from their demands.
Brigid rattles the loose door handle, threatening to dissolve the entire door if the damn handle doesn’t just come off in her hand, which will leave me no choice but to step through the dying wood, shoving my Italian boots and my aching bound feet through the rotted boards. And won’t that a grand bloody entrance for the inspectors. I’m sure to lose points for that. The door will soon be reduced to dust. From dust ye came and dust ye shall return – does that sort of thing count for trees? Are all things from dust or just humans, and God just sort of magicked the rest of the natural world into being from nothing? These are the sorts of things I ponder, when I’m not thinking about horses or the inspection or the Manual or being a child. Which are really all one and the same.
I shout at Brigid, “For God’s sake stop rattling the bloody door it’s locked—” all in one breath and thrust open the door, sweeping the weeping little redhead out of the way, and there I am, face to face with the displeased inspector.
Just one, just one inspector. They didn’t send two? All inspections are done with two. One catches what the other might overlook. A feedpan left unwashed, molasses left over for dirty flies, or a hoofpick carelessly left on the lip of a stall door.
“Mrs. Blakely,” the inspector states without inflection, taking in with one glance my polished boots, my spotless buff breeches, my quilted jacket and deerskin gloves. His eyes skip mine altogether and jump straight up to my velvet hard hat perched on my skull, and he nods once, summing me up: proper habit, proper safety equipment. A checkmark is quickly scratched onto the little clipboard he is carrying.
“Mr. Inspector,” I breathe, willing myself not to hyperventilate now that he’s actually here, now that I’ve gone and done it. “Thank you so much for coming. Are inspections done with just one person now?” That’s a change.
“Your certification process has been my top priority since opening the facility,” I reply stiffly. It’s rubbing off on me, the soulless precise words. I would normally have said, “Oh, well, I really hope you like my barn!” I’m not flowery. Or expansive. Or formal. I just keep horses, and I’m very good at it. As well I should be. And a certification from the English Equestrian Council would be very good for business. And possibly I’d sleep better at night. Possibly. If I just thought that I could do it on my own, without someone standing over me. If I just thought it could be done without the misery, for the pleasure of keeping horses rather than the pleasure of someone else.
The inspector is already eyeing me with that skeptical look reserved for the over-confident and the over-supplicant; I am a potential fail in his eyes. I’m embarrassed and take to examining the severe brown coat he’s wearing, buttoned to the neck like a Great War cavalry officer, his flared jodhpurs tucked into hunt top boots which look far more comfortable than mine. He gestures that we begin the tour, as the inspector’s manual has his visit scripted, and I lead the way, trying not to limp, feeling conspicuous in my Italian leather, as if I was implying to him that an English cobbler was good enough for the inspector but not for me.
***
Chapter One of the English Equestrian Council Inspection Manual is “Feed and Its Proper Storage and Dispensing,” and so the feed room is where I lead the inspector, his boot heels clipping a precise twenty-four inches behind mine, his clipboard and pen in hand. The feed room is located at the end of the twenty-stall barn, to “allow easy access for the delivery trucks” (section 1-C) and has a heavy steel sliding door, kept closed at all times “to discourage vermin and the possibility of loose horses” (section 1-D).
The Head and Not The Heart (Alex and Alexander Book 1) Page 11