C. Morgan - The Sport of Kings

Reuben leaned into Hell, nostrils widening as if inhaling the very stall-born essence of the horse. He said, “Oh, I’m trickier by half.”

Mack just ignored him. “Post assignment to good advantage. Four.”

The jock’s carved face finally cracked a brittle grin of surprise. “Four! ’Twas ever thus!”

“No time for superstition, Reuben,” Mack muttered, but his brows drew tight as if to secure his eyes against the explosive pressure of his nerves. “Just keep your head in the game, and don’t bring her back here without the mile.”

With a mock salute, Reuben said, “Me and little gal, we’ll make a mockery of their bestest efforts,” and Allmon led off horse and rider under the ivied clubhouse into the shadowy tunnel. At the far end, the track loomed like a handicapper’s heaven, lit by a sun just now punching through rarefying clouds and turning the hoof-churned track to silver. Allmon’s blood quickened, his stomach a fist of fear. One wrong step on that track, one hard bump, and his whole life would break down with the horse. He swallowed hard to keep his lunch from flipping.

As the first mount emerged from the tunnel, a terrifying rumble rushed slowly through the grandstand, gathering force as it went — the sound of a thousand ships shattering at once, louder than God — so the horses danced in distress, pulling left and right or cantering forward, with only Hellsmouth displaying no signs of alarm. She raised her head and worked her capricious mouth, taking the crowd in round. Vox populi vox Dei.

Against the roar and against orders, Allmon suddenly blurted, “Look, this horse, she’s got a sensitive mouth. See her talking around her bit? She’s always been like that, even when there’s nothing stressing her. Lay off her mouth much as you can.”

His lashes fluttering, Reuben leaned down with a hard note of surprise. “And hark! I did hear the prattling of the American youth.”

Allmon ignored him. “No need to crop her. Every jock’ll tell you the same thing — she runs hard when she wants to run and if you hit her, you just piss her off. She don’t need pain to run hard.”

A grin, but Reuben’s eyes narrowed to slats. “Where exactly are you from, little catfish?”

Allmon looked straight at Hell’s billet strap, said quietly, “Cincinnati.”

“Of course!” the jock said. “I can hear the river in your mouth! It sounds just like the South.”

“Cincinnati ain’t the South,” Allmon said briskly.

Reuben returned upright on his slip of a saddle and cackled to the crowd. “Not the South, folks! Not the South!” A slicing glance: “It’s all the South, son.”

Then he winked and with a flick of his hand, he and Hell were parading to the gate on the far backstretch, a stolid palomino pony leading the way. It was only when Allmon and Mack stood aside so the next horses could pass that, suddenly released from the severe focus the Thoroughbred required, Allmon realized something was amiss.

“Where’s Forge at?” he said. But he didn’t really want to know. The sight of the man elicited a surge of feeling so complicated, it didn’t have a name. And the thought of Henrietta was a one-two combo: desire and repulsion.

Mack, his eyes trained on the post parade, waited for the bleating of the bugler to quit. Then he placed his thick fists on his hips. He didn’t look back at Allmon when he said, “I track the man’s checks, not his whereabouts.”

Across the field, as mounts were slotted one by one into their stalls and while Reuben was drawing down his goggles, Hellsmouth skittered back with a violent shake of the head and a fractious cry. She wasn’t some bird content with its cage, some laboratory rat. She was one thousand pounds of propulsive muscle, suddenly shadowboxing the sky and scattering her handlers like pins. Reuben was quick, he poured himself across her neck and rode the bucker as ably as any ropey rodeo kid from Cody or Cheyenne. When the green-jacketed handlers regained their feet and dusted themselves off, they placed all hands on her ass and shoved her into the metal stall. The crewman held her head with both hands and smiled nervously at Reuben. “Now you’re in a tight spot,” he said.

Reuben ignored him, perched and ready for an emergency scramble to the side bars. The reins in a cross, he turned left and right, surveying the ranks: Peru, Guatemala, and Mexico; Colombia, Argentina, more Mexico. “Why, it’s a brown battle royale!” he muttered, then tucked his face against Hell’s neck, and the gate sprang.

Breaking from the four hole, Hell slopped and thrashed into the race like an overexcited dog, then settled straight away into a loopy, loping, embarrassing last. Even as the field began to jostle and strategize along the rail and the far outside, the filly couldn’t be bothered and expended no run at all. Hell was smoking in the ladies’ room and didn’t give a damn.

On the far side of the track, Mack placed a hand over his heart and muttered, “So help me Christ, this horse is gonna kill me.”

Heeding instruction, Reuben rode calm, rump high, head low, a silhouette of hardboiled patience. At the quarter-mile pole, Hell had overtaken only one contender — and that a mere matter of chance as a gray pulled up favoring a leg — and was just beginning to angle wide. Reuben clenched his crop, flipped his filthy goggles, and growled once, “Come on, sister woman.”

But Hell just rolled along on her lovely little pleasure cruise. The air was fine with the lushest of breezes, the waters glassy and dotted with befruited islands—

“Goddammit!” Mack hollered from the rail. “Fucking graze for all I care! I fucking bought this pasture for you, asshole!”

It was a fast half mile when the pack passed the pole at just over 0:45. Angelshare, a rangy Runnymede colt, led by two lengths on the inside as Hellsmouth eased her way into ninth along the rump of Play Some Music. Boomie Racz, the curly, blonde up-and-comer, stooped over Music and whipped him when she suddenly sensed Hell at her heels. She flipped her goggles and doubled down, straining for a path through the traffic.

Now the school of horses swung around the turn as if caught in a sweep net, Angelshare faltering off his pace for a moment as he changed leads and Scintilla charging to overtake him with Chief Contender hot as breath on his neck. Only now, as if realizing suddenly that she was hungry and food awaited, Hellsmouth began to stretch out under Reuben and reach for sunlight as she curved around the field. Wary and shrewd, Racz stayed so close that Play Some Music bumped Hellsmouth, shoulder against shoulder, not once but twice. Reuben snarled and shoved and battened down the hatches just as the group emptied into the stretch for the final quarter mile, the four leads now charging neck and neck.

Reuben was done waiting. With an electric strike, he flung back his crop, and with a single stinging lash made contact with the filly’s rump. Her muscles leaping beneath her skin, Hellsmouth exploded out of her gait with such vicious power, her first free stride made the previous three-quarters of a mile seem nothing but a lark. As she shot forward she bore in toward the rail and delivered one fast, teeth-rattling bump to Play Some Music. While Racz cropped and corrected her faltering bay, Hellsmouth drove to the wire with a stride so long and self-assured, so dazzlingly late, that the grandstand rose as a single entity, driven up by a surge of energy that seemed to come from the very center of the earth. Farmers three miles distant heard the cry when, fully extended with her limbs threatening the limits of form, Hell shot under the wire. Play Some Music followed in two solid lengths, but as the crowd threatened to deafen man and animal alike, Mack was already clutching his skull at the sidelines.