Born to Trot

by Marguerite Henry

  Gibson grinned. Wherever his father sat he suddenly belonged. On a hilltop, on a fence rail, in a stable, in a hospital—he was like his old pork-pie hat. At home anywhere.

  “Maybe,” he was saying in his comfortable voice, “maybe your roommates would be interested in the news about your filly.”

  Beaver passed a plate of fruit to Mr. White. “We sure would,” he said. “We know her pretty well, too.”

  Mr. White selected a banana. “Rosalind,” he began, enjoying this moment to the full, “is entered in the Hambletonian.”

  The boys exchanged smiles.

  “I’ve told them, Dad. They’ve known it for days.”

  “That’s only half the news,” his father went on, emphasizing his words with the banana.

  Gibson didn’t see how the day could possibly hold any more news without bursting at the seams. He watched his father get up and put the banana on top of the luggage. “This’ll taste good on the train,” he said. “Always like to eat and look out the window. Ever since I was a boy, journeys and bananas have gone together.”

  “What’s the other half of the news, Dad?” Gibson asked anxiously.

  Mr. White took a deep breath. “Well,” he said, giving each boy a smile, “I was supposed to drive Ed Lasater for Mr. Reynolds in the Hambletonian, but do you know what he’s done?”

  “No. What?” asked Gibson, wondering whether his father meant the man or the horse.

  “Well, he’s released me.”

  “Released you!” Gibson’s heart began to pound. He had an inkling of what was coming, could see it ahead like a red warning in the dark. He tried to make his voice sound steady, but it went high like a girl’s. “Released you from what?”

  “From driving Ed Lasater. You see, Mr. Reynolds knew I’d bred and trained Rosalind and watched over her like a baby, and, well—that’s the kind of man Mr. Reynolds is.” He stood up now, grinning. “I’ve just bought some new racing silks so Rosalind’s owner will be proud of his driver as well as his filly. Brought ’em along,” he said to Gibson, “thinking your roommates’d like to see them, too. By George,” he laughed, “I’ll have to keep them folded in my trunk for months, like a girl with a hope chest.”

  Mr. White’s step had as much spring to it as a boy’s. He went over to the bed and took off his coat. Then he shook the folds out of the new jacket and slipped it on. He squared the cap on his head. “Some folks think,” he said as he buttoned the jacket and fastened the belt, “that black with white trimmings is too sober. But I’ve always felt the horse’s coat should take the eye first. Not the driver’s.”

  He looked at himself in the mirror over the empty dresser. “Maybe I’m getting old,” he chuckled, “but a right smart horse in front of me can make up for a lot of years.”

  He turned around, facing the boys. “Like it?” he asked, his eyes young and lively.

  Grubber and Beaver said, “It’s fine.”

  Mr. White sighed happily, as if the long years of worry were over and everything was shaping up at last.

  Mike said, “Gib, tell your dad what the doctor told you.”

  In the listening stillness Gibson suddenly felt very old. His voice, too, sounded old in his throat. “Dr. Mills said he was coming to see the Hambletonian.”

  “Say! That’s wonderful!” Mr. White took off his cap and laid it on the bed. “Dr. Mills and Mr. Reynolds are about as good friends as a man and boy could have.”

  Now Mike was urging. “Tell him the rest, Gib. Tell him you’re okay—tell him you can . . .”

  Gibson silenced Mike with his looking. “Oh, yes,” he spoke as if suddenly remembering, “Mike wants me to tell you Dr. Mills said I’m out for good—if I stay well within myself.”

  “We’ll see to that,” Mr. White said, folding the coat in its original creases. “No driving until next winter down in Florida. Then one day you’ll be in the Hambletonian yourself, clucking and crooning to a colt of Rosalind’s.”

  Gibson got to his feet. He wanted to run away where no one could see him. There was a limit to the good news a day could hold. All at once it exploded and splattered back at you. He heard his father’s voice.

  “Anything the matter, Son?”

  And his own voice answered, “No, Dad.”

  “You don’t seem pleased at all the good news.”

  “I am, Dad. It’s just that—”

  Beaver came to the rescue. “Just too much excitement for one day,” he suggested.

  “That’s it, Dad. Too much for one day.” He moved toward the door. “I’ll be right back,” he said, trying to make his voice sound light, “I just want to say good-by to Tante and some of the nurses.”

  He went out of the room. He wanted to hide away from everyone. He headed for the sunroom, but even before he saw a figure pacing in the oblong of light, he heard a drone of voices. Now a nurse with some visitors in tow was coming toward him. He turned and dove into the telephone booth, closing the door behind him. He sat down on the small stool, and there in the little encompassing place, his pent-up feelings burst. Dry sobs shook him, wrenching from deep within.

  How many times he had telephoned his father from this very booth! How many times he had picked up this receiver to hear the words, “Stay a little longer, Son. Everything’ll work out. You’ll see.” The voice had often been tired, not matching the cheer of the words. But today his father was excited as any boy. He wanted to drive the colt he had bred and trained.

  Gibson leaned his head against the hard mouthpiece and let the hot tears come. Out of the confusion of his mind he saw the gallant courage of his father. The eating in dingy restaurants, the sleeping in hot little rooming houses on the Grand Circuit. The fewer cigars. The old worn silks. The pinching and scraping and doing without to pay hospital bills. And all the while Rosalind his mainstay, his ray of hope. Rosalind whom he had bred. Rosalind whose ancestors he had marked. His father’s words came to him: “The trainer is the wind. He blows upon the sapling colt, bending it in the way he wants it to grow.”

  “He’s got to drive her!” The cry tore from him.

  For a long time he sat in the little booth while his sobs grew quieter and farther apart. Then he knuckled the tears away and, unburdened at last, opened the door and went out.

  • • •

  In the cab on the way to the station, he said to his father, “It’s good that Mr. Reynolds released you, Dad. You’re the best driver I know.”

  A hand reached over and gripped his knee, and after a while a voice said, “Son, it’s you who’ll drive Rosalind in the Hambletonian. Don’t you know a father’d rather see his son win than win himself?”

  The hand was withdrawn in an impatient gesture. “That Doc Mills!” the voice exploded. “Why in thunderation didn’t he tell me you could drive!”

  “Who did tell you, Dad?”

  “Nobody, really. I just got out my pry pole and pried it out of those boys little by little, without their knowing. Any donderhead could tell something was wrong with the whole passel of you.”

  “But, Dad—the new silks and all.”

  “Shucks, I’ve been needing new silks for a long time. Your mother’s been at me like a robin tugging a worm. Finally I just gave in.”

  Gibson expelled a great lungful of air. “Then, you want me to drive? You’re glad?”

  The car jolted to a sudden stop at the station. “By Jove, Son, Rosalind understands English better than you do. You can ask more fool questions than a four-year-old!”

  “You mean it?”

  Mr. White could see that the boy needed reassuring. He spoke seriously now. “When the doctor says you can drive, Gib, he says you are well! Do I mean it when I say I’m glad? Boy, oh boy, do I mean it!”

  He grabbed the heavy suitcase. “Come on, let’s go! The train’s coming.”

  Twenty-Three

  AT first glance the stables in Lexington seemed to Gibson unchanged, as if he had been away only days instead of years. Bear was there, wagging his stub t
ail and taking up with Gibson just where he had left off. And Guy Heasley hopping about spry-legged as ever. And the grooms sloshing leg bandages up and down in the suds. Only the faces that looked out of the stalls were different.

  Gibson stood in the wide entrance of the stable and suddenly he became afraid. Afraid to look to right or left. What if Rosalind didn’t live up to the promise of her pictures? What if she looked just like any other horse and he were to pass her by, still looking? He backed out, hesitating, stung by a moment’s shame. Then he made himself go forward, across the sill and through the wide door. He felt rather than knew it was his father behind him, ready to come at a word or ready to disappear, leaving him alone in the tunnel of the barn.

  Any other time Bear would have sensed Gibson’s destination and sniffed on ahead, but now he remained at heel, patiently waiting the boy’s next move.

  Then all in a moment Gibson saw her. In the third stall on the left. He knew so unmistakably it was Rosalind that he walked straight toward her, never a look at the other heads straining curiously at him. He knew her, even though the little round colt look was gone and in its place an air of nobility. How did he know? He wondered himself. It was like meeting an old, old friend at a railroad station—your father, perhaps. As you watched the stream of people walking up the concourse from the train, you didn’t have to say to yourself: one man among them will have a springiness in his walk and his eyes will be darkling blue and he’ll be wearing an old pork pie hat and hunting you with a smile. You just looked. And suddenly there he was. Unlike all the others.

  Just that quickly Gibson knew Rosalind. Among twenty heads there was hers. Rosalind stopping in the midst of grinding a bundle of hay, looking at him with the hay still wisped out like handlebar moustaches. For a long time she stood motionless, looking, not eating, then the wisps of hay began to teeter-totter, and then they were gone.

  Slowly, with trembling fingers, Gibson unbolted the door of her stall, and he and Bear went inside with her. And Rosalind was bending her head down so Bear could curl his tongue across her muzzle and she was fluting her nostrils and lipping him. But for Gibson she had only a look of wariness.

  His hand wanted to reach out to her, to stroke her neck gently as if in the mere touching she might come to be nis. But he stayed the impulse, knowing the touch would be more to comfort himself than her. He stood quiet, flattening himself against the planks of the stall, waiting.

  He had no oats to offer, no sugar. He wanted no cupboard love from Rosalind. She was no pet, no plaything. She was a magnificent creature of bone and brawn and satin, with years of trotting music bred in her. He wanted her only to accept him as part of the sights and sounds and smells of her life, to go on about her business aware of him but not wary.

  His eyes searched hers. Purple brown they were, with depths he could not plumb. And underlying the satin of her skin the network of veins ran like swollen rivers, and then branched out into threadlike tributaries. Some might say her tail was no plume of beauty, but it was long enough for a fly switch, and what else were tails for? What else?

  He smiled as she turned toward the hayrack and pulled out more hay. By that small gesture, she had let him come into her world. And in that moment she had rolled the hospital years away. Gibson was back with the trotters! Back home where he belonged. Living again. Living ahead. Only four months to tune Rosalind for the Hambletonian. Only four months!

  Gibson knew he had never been so happy. He made little trips into the woods for fresh green twigs. “Best kind of spring tonic for horses,” Guy Heasley agreed as they both watched Rosalind strip the tender bark and eat it as if she’d had a special hankering for the bitter-sweet taste.

  From the very beginning Gibson was allowed to spend the full morning at the track. “You be a railbird a while,” his father told him. “Then look out! One day you’ll be holding the reins over Rosalind.”

  And that was the way it happened. Appearing all of a sudden before him one day was Rosalind in harness, aloof and magnificent. And Guy Heasley was handing him the lines, grinning as if he, himself, had made this moment and the bigness of it. “Gib! Take over. It’s one trip around at a slow jog. Orders from the boss.”

  And then Gibson was in the sulky seat, and once again he was going the wrong way of the track because he was only jogging. But the wrong way was the right way with Rosalind!

  She was the biggest-going horse he’d ever seen. Alma Lee and Rocco seemed ponies by comparison. Yet her bigness was all rhythm and grace. For Gibson no one else on the track existed. He neither saw nor heard them. For him there were the two white feet and the two dark feet ticking in unison, like some highly wrought timepiece. And for him the electric touch of the reins, like twin messengers to her silk mouth.

  Blood beating in his temples, he memorized her way of going, memorized everything about her. Her ears never still—forking this way, that way, pulling in sounds up ahead, sounds from behind. Against the sky they were not small, but he liked them as they were. Nice and big and friendly. You could tell how she felt about things.

  He had to laugh at himself. He was just like William Rysdyk. Nothing wrong about his horse. Nothing. Her quarters, her hocks, her stride, her ears. Everything right. Exactly right.

  And then in a wink the mile was over. That was all he could do. But it was a start, and the way was cut out for him.

  Each morning now he jogged Rosalind before her workout. Each afternoon he slept in her stall. The straw bed was somewhat lumpy and somewhat prickly, but it was the best kind of cushion for sleeping and dreaming. Bear slipped into the stall too, snuggling himself into the hollow of Gibson’s shoulder, snoring softly down his neck. Rosalind, however, dozed in quiet dignity, her neck arched and crested as she delicately balanced her nose in the straw.

  As Gibson felt the squirming warmth of Bear and studied the beauty of Rosalind, he murmured Rysdyk’s words, “By golly, it ain’t only one kind of joy, it’s two!” Then he fell asleep to the drony songs of the grooms as they cleaned harness in the alley in front of the stall.

  By the middle of May Gibson was driving Rosalind both ways of the track.

  By June he was working her, holding the stop watch on her, helping prepare her for the Grand Circuit.

  By July he was on the Grand Circuit, watching her go her first race as a three-year-old. The day was July second. The town, North Randall, Ohio. He knew he would remember both always. For something happened to him there as he stood at the rail watching his father and Rosalind race together.

  There was something grand and majestic about their togetherness. Gibson suddenly felt himself an onlooker, seeing things as they really were. Rosalind and his father a matched pair. It was the teamwork that made them great. The speed in his father’s mind flowed through his hands into her mind. The two seemed even to think alike, often starting a heat with one plan, ending up with another.

  For Gibson the race itself became a three-act play, gathering speed with each act, working up to the climax. He watch-timed the first heat in 2:06, the second in 2:05, the third in 2:04, with Rosalind going the last quarter in 292/5 seconds to keep ahead of Ed Lasater. But it wasn’t the fury of time that struck Gibson, and it wasn’t the way the announcer paired the driver and horse—“Ladies and gentlemen, we congratulate the grand master of the turf and his flying filly”—it was the knowing that in her own eyes Rosalind belonged to his father. Always she would make the supreme effort for the hands and voice she knew so well.

  There at North Randall, with the hot July sun beating down on him and friends reaching out to congratulate him on the performance of his filly, Gibson suddenly knew she was not really his at all. But, strangely, he didn’t feel desolated in the least. He felt good and warm inside, as if the sun were within and without. A few years ago, or even a few months, he would have gone off like a hurt pup to whimper behind the barn because a bigger dog had taken his bone. But here he was, smiling and shaking hands, with a pride rising in him, pride for his father and for his fi
lly both.

  • • •

  Morning found him trying to tell his father. It was dawn and they were both up and dressing in a little hotel room near the North Randall track.

  “Dad,” Gibson began as he daubed wax on his boots, “a filly like Rosalind wants to win her races, doesn’t she?”

  In front of the washstand mirror Mr. White tilted his head to scrape the stubble from his chin. He mumbled an unintelligible answer.

  Gibson went on. “We’ve got to give her every chance to win the Hambletonian, haven’t we?” He paused, watching the hand with the razor sweep down, jerk up, sweep down. Then, “Will you drive her for me, Dad?”

  Mr. White kept on looking into the mirror, not at himself now but in the corner of the mirror at Gibson’s face. With his eyes fixed on the boy, he held the washcloth under the hot water for a long time, then he twisted the water out and pressed it against his face, trying to give himself time to think, reaching for big words to answer the bigness of his son’s understanding. But only puny words came.

  “You’re not feeling well?”

  Gibson’s eyes did not break away. “Never better, Dad.” His calm tone astonished himself. Yesterday it had been easy to think these things, today it was easy to say them. He was explaining now as if his father were the boy. “You see, Dad, I know what it means to want to win. I don’t want Rosalind ever to have the heart taken out of her by a driver who didn’t understand her.” He bent to his boots, polishing hard for a moment, then went on almost eagerly. “I’m still a stranger to her, you know. But for you she’ll make the supreme effort. In fairness to her you’ve got to drive.”

  The father wiped his face dry and reached up and turned off the light over the mirror. He put on his shirt and tied his plain black tie and pulled up his suspenders over his shoulders.

  “Yes,” he said shyly, “I see what you mean.” He went to the window and saw the sun tipping above the horizon. “You know, Gib, there are times when it’s easy to make a prayer.”