Horse Heaven

by Jane Smiley

  “And why do you think I would tell you?”

  Tiffany smiled mischievously. “Because I’m the last one around and we’re alone?”

  “I am a cross-grained woman and I never do what’s expected of me.”

  “You always say that, but I don’t see it, frankly. I think you’re sweet.”

  “Mother of God.” Deirdre crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I’ll never be able to hold my head up around this place again.”

  The horse, who had been eating some hay, lifted his head and put it over the stall guard and pricked his ears at her. He was a run-of-the-mill four-year-old chestnut with a run-of-the-mill white splotch on his forehead. She had claimed him for the owner about three weeks before and run him once since then. She would not have claimed him, but the owner was a faithful believer in form, graphs, numbers, and thought he was due for a bounce. He had lingered without bouncing, dwelling, as Deirdre told the owner, in his luster-less pedigree. He surely would not be one of the thirty-five hundred equines that Deirdre would remember. Even now she wasn’t quite sure of his name. And yet, though he was forgettable and she was burnt to a crisp with it all, the sight of those inquisitive eyes and those alert ears in that long face (A horse went into a bar; the bartender said to him, “Why the long face?” A horse went into a pub; the landlord said, “Why the long face?” This was a universal joke) tickled her.

  “What do you want to do?” said Tiffany.

  “Well, now, that’s the difficulty, isn’t it? I know what I don’t want to do, but I don’t quite know what I do want to do. But there’s the opportunity, isn’t it? Horses was what I wanted to do, and horses have made me …” Her voice trailed off.

  “With me,” said Tiffany, “the problem was knowing what there was to do.”

  “Ah, well. Now, I never learned to cook nor sew nor please a man nor please my teachers nor read a book nor watch television, so you see—Och, I’m going across to the cafeteria for a bite. You rub that horse again—I see a speck has landed upon him from above—and when the owner gets here, you practice your people skills upon him, because, darlin’, everything you know about the horses is for naught if you cannot make their owners feel important.”

  And she turned on her heel and walked away.

  IT WAS AMAZING how quickly it had all boiled away, those thirty-five hundred horses, those friends she had taken into her heart. This afternoon, with luck, it would all be gone, and by bedtime tonight she would be a forty-one-year-old woman with nothing to show for years of effort. All over the track, she knew, there were trainers going under. Trainers went under. That was part of their job description. You lost your barn of stakes and allowance horses at Belmont, and then you turned up a while later at Charlestown or Fingerlakes, and you had a horse or two, and you lived at the track and cooked on a hotplate. Where had you been all those months? Or you lost your own horses and went to work for someone else, rubbing their horses. If you were young enough and little enough, you rode their horses. Or, if you had some presentability, you went to Kentucky or New York or California and worked on a studfarm or a training farm. At least, thanks to the wonderful mare and her splendid filly, she was breaking even. That didn’t always happen. But Deirdre wasn’t mistaken about being finished. She was finished. George was right about her, she had taken it all too much to heart, and now what she couldn’t explain to Tiffany was that she couldn’t stand it anymore. The drama that still delighted others had worn her out.

  And, after thirty-five hundred horses, could there be another one who could get to her? Who could say, I am interesting enough for you? She dared him, or her, to come along. She dared him or her to seek her out in that retail-outlet mall or that office or that coffee shop or that car dealership where she, Deirdre Donohue, planned to renew her existence and seek her fortune.

  53 / MARVELOUS

  AFTER NEW YEAR’S, Residual came out of her layoff like a debutante swathed in golden tulle. She won the Artemis Stakes (G2). She had her picture in The Blood-Horse, galloping home alone on a hand ride. People stopped saying “Breeders’ Cup” and started saying “Kentucky Derby.” Buddy felt the old familiar surge of ambition, and he felt it in the old familiar way, as something soothing and accustomed, a nice on-ramp that the Lexus turned onto of its own accord, that led clearly and unequivocally to a named freeway and a known and desirable destination. He had a revelation—all the wrestling with his conscience, or with Jesus, or whatever, that he had been doing in the last year was something he could choose not to do. It was that simple. And then, of course, Deedee revealed her condition.

  Buddy knew perfectly well that Residual wasn’t the sort of filly who could get used to another exercise rider—Deedee, he thought, was a flake, but, horse-wise, an exceptionally tactful flake. Buddy took her aside, behind the barn, far out of the earshot of anyone, and he whispered to her in a very low voice, so low that perhaps even Jesus could not hear. Certainly Deedee could not hear. She said, “What?”

  Buddy murmured, “Have you considered terminating the pregnancy?”

  Deedee sniffed.

  “You and Leon are very young still.”

  Deedee looked off into the distance.

  “Kentucky Derby.”

  “I already told my mother.”

  That was that.

  So there was a delay with Residual while they tried to find another exercise rider she liked. The problem was subtle. She was never disagreeable or reluctant, but even when the rider liked her, and they all did, it was clear that she couldn’t find her rhythm the way she had with Deedee. Finally, Buddy persuaded the jockey to turn up every morning, but even he didn’t have quite the touch Deedee did. It was hard for him to put away the last little competitive bits and attend completely to the filly. He was good enough, though Buddy in general didn’t like jockeys’ exercising horses. When the jockey got on, that was meant to be a signal that something different was taking place, and Buddy thought it was confusing to a horse when the jockey got on in the morning. And then the jockey broke his wrist on some cheap claimer (to tell the truth, one of Buddy’s own cheap claimers) and was out two weeks. Buddy tried raiding the exercise staff of some of the other trainers, and that was when he understood that no one wanted to work for him, even to ride the fabulous filly.

  MARVELOUS MARTHA was in her fifties, anyway. No one knew where she came from, and she wasn’t saying. One rumor was that she had been married to the famous Jimmy Williams for a week or so at one time or another. Marvelous Martha wasn’t saying anything about that, either. But she was such a legend that, a long time ago, a guy had named a filly after her, and the filly had won several allowances and a stakes, and then gone on to produce nine foals, seven runners, six winners, and one stakes winner. Marvelous Martha lived in Berkeley and worked as a free-lance theatrical art director in the Bay Area in the afternoons and evenings. In the mornings, she exercised horses at Golden Gate. She had no other duties—she didn’t clean tack, she didn’t make conversation, she was paid in cash, and since she didn’t drive a car, a taxi had to be sent for her. She was expensive. Buddy flew up to San Francisco and went to her house in Berkeley, where she received him skeptically. He described his dilemma.

  “Mary Bacon rode until her baby was born. What’s wrong with this girl?”

  “She won’t do it.”

  “I hate L.A.” She poured a cup of chai and pushed it across the table to him.

  “I can move her out to Santa Anita for the duration.”

  “Put me up at the Ritz?” She got a twinkle in her eye.

  Buddy gulped.

  Marvelous Martha laughed. “That’s okay. A short-term lease on an apartment will do.”

  “You’ll come and try her?”

  “I always get along with the horse. I’m sure I’ll get along with the horse.”

  “Good, then—”

  “No bute, no steroids, no turndowns, no toegrabs. We work the first set every day. No press. I don’t talk to anyone at any time. And when I get off
, you have a glass of spinach-and-wheat-grass-and-carrot juice waiting for me. I go home every Saturday afternoon and come back Monday night. You pay. Including my taxi ride to and from the airport in Oakland.”

  What could he say? Besides, he would put it on the owner’s bill.

  And she was marvelous. Of course she had been married to Jimmy Williams; even at fifty-something, her look on a horse was sexy and magical. Residual looked happy and relaxed, and turned in a bullet work. Buddy nominated her for the Delilah Handicap (G1), to be run February 7, which would be, he thought, a nice warm-up for a race against the boys.

  The elderly owner kept saying, “Is this all right for her? Is this going to hurt her? She’s such a sweetheart. She doesn’t have to go to the Kentucky Derby at all, Buddy. I don’t care about that.”

  But Buddy did care about it. He had had several potential Derby horses over the years. None of them had gotten to the starting gate. This filly had as good a chance as any one of them. When he went to church with his wife—he still did that, he was keeping his doubts to himself—he promised that he would get back to Jesus when the Triple Crown was over.

  ———

  AND THEN the owner died. It was all over the papers when he woke up one morning. Azalea Warren, the last of the real Warrens, after whom mining towns all over California had been named, the great-granddaughter of Frederick Warren, the granddaughter of Senator Ezra Washington Warren, the daughter of, the cousin of, the sister of, the niece of. But not the mother of Miss Warren had no issue. A banker called him the very next day and told him that the horses were to be sold at auction. Buddy pointed out that the best auctions were months away. Could they, the banker asked, be mothballed, as it were?

  Buddy explained that a racehorse was a dynamic rather than a static asset. You had to keep it moving forward, both literally and in its training. In fact, he got rather eloquent, for him, expounding on the temporary and unpredictable nature of a racehorse’s value. He used Residual as an example. Here she was, hot as a firecracker, worth seven figures at least, but she could die tomorrow, and then she would be worth nothing, since Miss Warren had not believed in insuring her animals. The banker afforded Buddy a lengthy silence, during which Buddy stared out the window of his office. The blinds were open. Out in the barn aisle, horses came and went, exercise riders threw their tack over the tack bar and cleaned it, the vet Curtis Doheny walked by, two jockey agents approached, and then all the people and animals parted and Buddy saw her. The banker said, “How would I sell her, then, while she is still valuable?”

  “I can do that for you, for a standard ten-percent commission.”

  The banker understood the concept of standard commission quite well.

  Buddy tried to be helpful. “She would have to be appraised, of course.”

  “Who would do that?”

  “A horse agent.”

  “Do you have some names?”

  “I can supply you with two or three.”

  “Fine.”

  “Sir Michael Ordway is one.” As he gave Sir Michael’s number, Buddy continued to watch her come, sashaying down the aisle, sunglasses in her hand, cupidity in her face. Andrea Melanie Kingston. Buddy finished with the banker and hung up as the door to his office opened. When she came in, saying, “Oh, Buddy!,” he said, “Mrs. Kingston, today is your lucky day.” After that, it was too easy. He took Andrea Melanie to Residual’s stall. The filly was eating her hay. When Andrea Melanie said, “Oh, Buddy!,” the filly lifted her lovely head and turned her liquid eyes and looked deeply into Andrea Melanie’s countenance. When Buddy mentioned the words “ten-percent commission from the buyer,” Andrea Melanie nodded enthusiastically, as if such a thing would be a distinct privilege.

  ———

  THE SALE WAS COMPLETED two days before the race, and on the day of the race, Buddy thought, everybody acted like they were going to a wedding. Andrea Melanie wore a cream-colored suit and a shiny little hat. Jason Clark Kingston, now Residual’s owner, so recently relieved of $1.4 million, wore pinstripes. Marvelous Martha went home and turned up in this pink outfit. Leon had on a navy blazer, and Buddy himself had on his usual charcoal gray. And then, in the morning, Buddy’s wife called and said she was coming out, and here she came in robin’s-egg blue, with the shoes to match. Deedee decked the filly out with a couple of braids. The jockey wore burnt orange. It was a sunny day, and the filly looked gold-plated. When the jockey was put up and they followed the horses out of the walking ring, Buddy saw that fans were reaching out their hands toward her, saying, “Hey, filly! Hey, Residual! Hey, baby!” And then they shouted at him, “Good luck, Buddy!” “You gonna win, Buddy?” “Great filly, Buddy!”

  Buddy himself was not happy. It was like being at a party where they’d planned too long and spent too much money and they expected the fun to arrive any minute now. In fact, it was like being at a wedding. In fact, it was like being at every one of the weddings of his children. It was bad luck to plan like this. It closed the box. It left no room for the unexpected. The filly was carrying 117 pounds, but it might as well be two hundred, thought Buddy, with the weight of everyone’s expectations.

  He put on a happy face, held the hand of Andrea Melanie, looked deep into her eyes, reassured her of his faith in the filly, but even as he said the words, he felt himself get smaller and farther away. On the way up to the box, he veered off and placed his bets, and he placed his bets with confidence, but not with joy, sorrow, or fear. He said, “Give me a hundred dollars on number four across the board in the seventh race,” and then he knew he was having the worst moment of his life. He knew it was the worst moment of his life because all the other worst moments went over him in an avalanche—every time his father turned away from him, shaking his head in disappointment, all those moments when he waited to grow taller than five feet five and didn’t, all the times he realized that he was angry and his anger was expanding around him. Horses dying, breaking down, getting claimed or not claimed, owners leaving. You name it. If it was a bad moment, he relived it now, in the worst moment. And the way he knew it was the worst moment was that there was nothing wrong at all. Everything was as good as it could get in this world for him, and that told him that there would never be any relief. He took his ticket and moved away from the window. His ticket looked strange to him. The betting hall looked strange to him. All of the other bettors and race-goers swam around him and he had no energy left. He nearly sank down, but instead he put one foot in front of the other and managed to get to his box, where the wedding guests were watching the bride parade to the gate. He put his head in his hand and thought, “I don’t know what the fuck I am doing.”

  The race was a mile and an eighth, so the gate was at the top of the stretch. He saw the horses go in, he heard the bell clang, he saw the gate open and the horses break. They ran past. Residual was there with them, but it was meaningless. The horses headed into the first turn. Residual had moved up and taken the lead, but it was to no avail. Buddy didn’t think this filly, or any other horse, would ever get a rise out of him again.

  But of course he was wrong. As the horses entered the backstretch, it impressed itself upon him that there was something not right about the track, and then, a split-second later, he realized what it was. The gate had not moved, was not moving. It stood stationary across the width of the track, as if it had been built there. Buddy looked away from the horses, and came alive at the same moment everyone in the stands came alive, in time to watch the guy who normally drove the tractor that towed the gate off the track stand up and wave his arms. Right then, the announcer began shouting, “Jockeys! Hold your horses! Jockeys! Stop your horses!” Half the grandstand, half of Buddy’s companions, rose to their feet. The other half pushed themselves back in their chairs. It was a sunny day. The horses kept running. Residual was still in the lead, now by a length and half. They came into the second turn. The announcer was now screaming, “Jockeys! Heads up! Alex! Chris! Stop your horses!”

  Stop your hearts,
thought Buddy. He glanced at Andrea Melanie. Tears were pouring down her cheeks. Jason Clark Kingston was blanched to the roots of his hair. The horses were bunched and focused, the arrow had left the bow, the bullet had left the barrel of the gun. No turning back now. That was what everyone was thinking.

  But no. They were horses, not missiles. Through his binoculars, Buddy saw the filly’s head go up, and then the heads of the others, and then the smooth stream of speed broke up, eddied, spun this way and that, and then there were just individual riders and mounts scattered about the track; the race was over, the danger was past, the thought that something bad might happen was wrong, and nothing was lost except the betting pool.

  That night, Buddy knelt beside his bed, his habit, and he gave thanks, full-hearted thanks, not his habit, the way you do when you have seen a possibility that you never want to see again. The fact was, he felt a little saved again. Not inspiringly saved, but a little saved, the way he had felt as a boy when his father said, “I’ll give you one more chance.”

  FEBRUARY

  54 / EPISTEMOLOGY

  AND HERMENEUTICS

  AT BELMONT PARK, Epic Steam came to hand very quickly. Yes, in the barn he was surrounded by mares, all of whom were on progesterone and emphatically never in season. Yes, they used a stud chain on him, and whenever Luciano worked on him he was twitched, and Frankie came to Dick and asked him to pay for a big life-insurance policy for the duration, but there was no bolting, no rioting in the starting gate, no attacking other horses. Dick knew that the stewards were watching, and that the starter was really watching, but there was nothing the horse could be accused of. Dick was watching, too, watching insatiably. He couldn’t take his eyes off the horse. Every stride entranced him. Privately, Dick thought that he was seeing the return of Ribot or Nearco, both of whom appeared in his pedigree more than once, and both of whom had been unruly in their day. There was no petting the horse or making up to him. But you could watch him all day and never get enough. You had to keep him tired, though, just for safety’s sake. He worked three-quarters, seven-eighths. He galloped or trotted on his days off, and in fact, had no days off. When Herman Newman, having had unauthorized conversation with other owners who had their own opinions, questioned the program, Dick got a little firm with him. “Citation! You know Citation worked a mile! They had to work two horses with him, one at the beginning and one at the end, to keep him sharp! This is your first horse, Mr. Newman, so you don’t realize how remarkable he is, but he could be a legend!” And then Derby Derby Derby, just to keep the guy a little off balance. It was worth not going to Florida, changing his whole mode of operation, to keep the horse at Belmont and Aqueduct, where there was plenty of space, just to watch the animal.