C. Morgan - The Sport of Kings

* * *

Allmon. The word wound round a whole new, gut-wrenching desire, because the whole of life had changed in a day. Pale as paper and eyes full of unshed tears, Henrietta half ran to the stallion barn. She was almost desperate to see his face — or more, to feel the full length of his body against hers, not for sex, but for something more important: assent.

But there was no man, no lover, no father of her child in the barn. Not even the scent of him. God, that scent had been such a drug! It had caused her to strip herself bare, spread herself, and grasp tight the arrow. For a brief, wild moment, Henrietta felt undone by panic. Women invited death when they let men inside their bodies! Why did they do it? Love couldn’t possibly be worth it. All those dark morning meetings and the harmony she heard in their twined cries … that music was nothing but a meaningless ditty finches were singing from the tree of life.

And yet she wanted the whole of him more than she wanted air.

She saw the bedazzling horse before she saw Allmon — the pert power there was in the yearling’s body, gleaming like new silk, spirit unbroken despite the halter. Then she realized the filly was being guided toward a waiting trailer by Allmon’s hand.

“What are you doing?” she said, her voice sharp, her predicament suddenly secondary; Hell was still months shy of transfer to Mack’s training barns.

Allmon swung round with a guilty start, the lead shank swagging loose. He registered the pale face, the bold, fearless, almost otherworldly gaze, and nearly lost his sense of place, of time. Then he drew a curtain of reserve down across his own face, so Henrietta could read nothing there.

“Heading out,” he said cryptically.

Henrietta reared back in surprise. “What do you mean? You and Hell?”

“We’re going to the training center.” Allmon glanced nervously at the groom manning the truck; he could see the man’s concerned eyes trained on them in the side view.

“What?” Henrietta said, her voice rising against her will. “What are you talking about? I didn’t arrange for this.” She reached out now to grasp hold of the lead shank, but Allmon only redoubled his grasp and made his shoulder into a kind of blunt wall she couldn’t pass. Henrietta gasped audibly.

He wouldn’t look her in the eye. “I’m her groom now. I’m going with her.”

Stunned, Henrietta stared at his impassive, reserved, stony face. That withholding suddenly struck her as the worst thing she’d ever seen. “Why? You work here. Here. With me. ”

He turned his face away from her.

She pressed forward. “Who authorized this? What on earth is this about?”

Against the closing of his throat, Allmon said three simple words: “Ask your father.”

Henrietta stood there with a bewildered look on her face, trying to configure it in her mind. Then she reached forward, and with the strength of both hands grasped Allmon’s face and forced it toward her, so her gaze was inescapable. He might have come apart, might have yielded, but Hellsmouth skittered to the side, sensing wild woman’s energy loosed all around her like snakes coiling and weaving for a strike.

“I’m pregnant,” Henrietta said.

For a hundredth of a second, she saw pure, unadulterated wonder in Allmon’s eyes before he used his forearm like a cudgel to push her back or to push himself away, and blurted, “No, no, you ain’t, no.”

“What?” she said, stricken, the shock worse than any physical blow.

He was shaking his head, looking confused, then belligerent, then confused again. “No, my whole … I’m broke. No way … It’s too late.” He wasn’t making any sense.

“What’s too late?”

“No.”

“What do you mean?” she cried.

“It’s too late,” he said very simply, hopelessly.

Henrietta stared at him in absolute silence, as if he’d transformed before her eyes from something familiar to something ghastly. Then disbelief at his response loosened her hand, and she reached forward and slapped the left side of his face.

Now the driver, who’d been sitting nervously with his hand perched on the latch, came rounding out of the cab, crying, “Whoa, whoa, whoa there!” and Hell skittered and neighed, straining against the shank, her tender neck wrenched by her own attempted flight, so Allmon was forced to step off to the side with her. The driver stood to the other side with his hands up, unsure what to do now that he was there, his wary face an apology.

“I am pregnant with your child!”

He’d been desperate, looking for an out, something immediate, something sure. When he found it, a grotesque calm flooded him. He turned to her with one brow arched. “How do I even know it’s mine?”

“Holy shit,” said the driver, eyes wide, trying to look nowhere at all while reaching blindly for the lead shank.

Now her screws came loose, the nails clattered to the ground, the joints that held her joists weakened, and she fell upon Allmon’s person, beating his chest, his shoulders, reaching for his face, which he tried uselessly to shield with his one free hand. But the driver was scooping her up, banding her with work-strong arms and caging her.

She screamed, “You know what you are, Allmon Shaughnessy? You know what you are? A stereotype! Are you really going to walk away? You want to live your life like a goddamn fucking stereotype? Fuck you!” Then invective and senseless wounds flowing out her mouth and then that one vile word, coined long ago and wielded like a white man’s axe, so the groom holding her lifted her bodily from the ground, yelling over her, “Jesus Christ, lady! Hold up! Shut up! Just shut up!”

But Allmon didn’t respond visibly to the word; he crawled behind the hard wall of that old, familiar, stoic face, and her words hit that wall seemingly without a bruise. “You got what you wanted,” he said, but very quietly. To his own ears it sounded unsure.

“What? No!” Henrietta cried, “No, I didn’t!”

Allmon began to rush now. He guided Hellsmouth into her trailer, and when Henrietta realized there was nothing left except the small, intransigent life in her, which she would be growing alone, the fight went out of her, and she sagged back against the chest of the driver and said, “Why?” The question small, sad, girlish.

Allmon’s hands were shaking when he tied the horse, and he could barely get air into his lungs. But he had made his decision. No one had ever offered him any quarter, and he didn’t have any to offer. He turned to Henrietta, and though he couldn’t meet her eyes, he was honest with her once again like he’d never been with another person. “’Cause I’m out to win.”

Bewildered and exhausted, she said, “What could you possibly have to win?”

Allmon was done tying Hell. The trailer was closed, and he was walking to the cab on legs he couldn’t feel. He didn’t look over his shoulder when he offered up that old chestnut, which suddenly tasted rotten in his mouth: “It’s a black thing, you wouldn’t understand.”

* * *

Father, Father, Father—

She gathered herself up, her skeleton clattering painfully under her skin. She stumbled into the house, her lungs on fire and her tongue burning.

He was there, of course: Father and Lover. He was always there. He had given birth to this house, given birth to history. He had given birth to her.

She leaned against the kitchen door, her face blighted by pain. “I’m pregnant,” she choked.

“Good,” he said, and enfolded her in his arms — old man, still strong, still life giving, guiding, knowing, encroaching, forcing.

Her tongue was scooped out, the empty place filling with tears.

He said, “I’ll take care of you just like I’ve always taken care of you.”