C. Morgan - The Sport of Kings

“Don’t fuck me, history!” he cried. “I’m too old for this!”

The inquiry sign began to flash.

“No! No! No! No!” His fists were uncorked grenades, the crazy in his eyes unleashed. “NoNoNoNONONONONONONONOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Reuben and Racz were off their mounts in a second, hustling, then running, and now sliding through the office door of the stewards, side by side, panting and pointing.

“He bumped me hard on the straight!”

“She bumped me twice in the turn!”

“We’ll watch again,” said the steward from the Jockey Club.

“We barely touched him on the turn!”

“I can’t prevent a lead switch!”

“Hold on,” said the steward from the Racing Association.

“It’s a miracle Hellsmouth even stayed up!”

“I couldn’t take down your filly with a bulldozer!”

“Ruling stands,” said the steward from the Gaming Commission.

Aboveground, the lights stopped flashing and the crowd lost its mind.

Which is how Reuben came to be photographed victorious atop Hellsmouth in the winner’s circle at Belmont, Allmon at her halter. In the photograph, Allmon looks taller than he is, chin high and proud, but eyes like dark wounds, peering through the camera, past the trainers, the jocks, the drunks, the bettors, the stoopers, the stewards, to a woman he can’t see, but whose details can’t be erased. He shakes his head, so the image is blurred.

“Just like 1972,” Mack mutters. “I thought history had us by the short hairs.”

Reuben puffs out his bird chest and stares down his nose. “I don’t repeat history,” he says, “I make history, and I’m never riding the bitch that easy again.”

* * *

There’s the front of the house, and there’s the backstretch, and never the twain shall meet. Allmon was no more than a migrant worker, no different from the Guatemalans and the Peruvians he groomed with, moving from track to track, following the racing season, following Mack. Like all the rest, he slept in unventilated cinder-block dorms with dingy, mold-streaked walls and sputtering lights, quarters where you couldn’t run an air conditioner, because the barns weren’t set up for the voltage, so you sweated in the swampy ninety-degree nights and watched the other grooms swoon and puke from the heat. You drew flies like any other animal. A couple of the skinnier guys ended up with dysentery. There were track doctors, but they basically dispensed Vicodin and sent you on your way, and unless you were dying, you didn’t get a day off. So you slept in your sweat, bought your food at the 7-Eleven or some Mexican dive, and you worked.

The filly was winning stakes races, but that didn’t change Allmon’s four o’clock mornings at the barn, going round on a carousel of tack and groom: bandage work, leg checks, scrubbing off poultice wrappings, taking temps and mucking, filling waterers and haynets, laying down fresh hay. He passed mounts to exercise riders, tidied the shed row, washed and groomed again, iced and rewrapped million-dollar legs. If it was race day, that meant rounds after lunch. Otherwise, the vets came in and doped the horses from their grab bag of steroids, then there was more schooling and walking and feeding, and when evening rolled around, Allmon draped them with blankets nicer than any he’d ever owned. For doing this, he made $350 a week, maybe a hundred extra when Hell placed. He spent his first paycheck on a sleeping bag and a.45 1911 automatic he bought off a guy at the track who used to be a marine, just something cheap he could keep close. You couldn’t trust anybody anywhere anytime; he knew that. Though sometimes he also knew in the subterranean passages of his heart that he was the least trustworthy of all.

“Hey, kid. Decent job today.” Mack was standing there in the stall door, arms folded across his chest, his white Stetson cocked back. Allmon looked up, startled, from where he’d been staring down at his own hands in mystification, lost in thought. He said the first words that came to mind: “My hands feel broke.” As soon as he said it, he wished he could reel the words back in.

“Your hands, huh?” Mack’s eyes narrowed and he cocked his head. “Okay, listen. I’ve seen you doing your work around here for a couple months, and that’s real good. I mean it. So I’m gonna give you some advice, but don’t ask for it again.”

Allmon with side eye: “I ain’t even asked for it this time.”

“Which is why it’s amazing I’m giving it to you for free.” Mack cleared his throat. “Kid, you know what possum and pepper pot is?”

Allmon didn’t bother to shake his head.

“Of course not. See, I grew up in the mountains. Crapalachia. I didn’t have two nickels to rub together, and the only roses I ever saw were coffin roses. Never even heard of the Derby till I was thirteen. Somebody once said to me that if you weren’t born into money, you couldn’t ever be truly wealthy. Do you think I gave a fuck?”

“I’m guessing you didn’t give a fuck.”

“I didn’t give a fuck.” Mack recrossed his thick arms. “You ever wonder why horses like me?”

Allmon shook his head.

“They don’t, so don’t worry about it. There’s a lot of things in this world not worth worrying about.” Mack peered carefully at Allmon. “So, I noticed you don’t drink.”

“Nah.” Allmon shrugged. “Not really.”

“Well, that’s interesting,” Mack went on. “Every black old-timer I ever knew, and I knew a whole mess of them when I was coming up on the track, they could drink you under the fucking table. Well, go ahead and drink if you want. No law against.” He gestured out toward the broader barn. “You think I don’t know these banditos put tequila in their coffee every morning? You think I don’t know that? Only one rule.” Mack held up a single finger. “Don’t ever let a horse get hurt under your watch. Or I’ll make it my personal mission to put a bullet in your hide.”

Grown impatient, it was Allmon’s turn to interject. “See, you don’t know me,” he said. “Or you’d know I don’t intend to fuck up. Ain’t no horse gonna get hurt under my watch. I lost everything; I don’t intend to lose this.”

Mack was quiet a moment, took stock of him; he set his legs apart and appraised this young man who — goddammit — he had to admit, reminded him of his own younger, hungrier self. “What have you lost, kid? I know you were in Blackburn.”

Allmon lowered his chin; his eyes burned holes through Mack’s face. “I. Lost. Every. Thing.” And it was God’s own truth. There were tears at the back of his voice, the place where Henrietta’s name lived.

“Huh,” said Mack, nodding, and crossed his arms. “Well, let me tell you something. I’m nothing. I’m nobody. From nowhere. I’m not even going to tell you the name of the town I grew up in, because you’d think I was shitting you. Who the hell am I to be a millionaire five times over? In the hunter jumper world and all that fancy boondoggle bullshit, you can’t rise. But here — in this world, in the blood horse world? Sky’s the limit. We don’t care who you are. We don’t care if your daddy hit you, who raped you, who you sleep with, what prison you came from, understand? All you got to do is work. I want you to remember that.”

Allmon held wide his arms, affronted. “I been working since I was twelve. I know how to fucking work.”

“Well, then, here’s my advice.”

“I thought you just gave me your advi—”

“Number one!” Mack snapped. “Don’t smoke pot; it makes you stupid. Number two, cut your hair; they’re looking for reasons to hate you.”

Allmon sighed, swagging his head.

“And number three,” Mack bulled over his objection, “don’t ever loan out your sleeping bag.”