C. Morgan - The Sport of Kings

Henry noted the red and black game board on the kitchen table, its checkers scattered and glinting under the porcelain table lamp. “Checkers…,” he said blankly, as he shifted Samuel from his right to his left arm.

Ginnie cocked her head to one side. “Checkers,” she said slowly, then she and Roger exchanged a swift glance. She cleared her throat. “Do you … not know how to play?”

Henry stared very gravely at the board. “I don’t believe I do. My father started me off with chess.”

“Oh!” said Ginnie with a decisive nod of her head. “Well … it’s never too late to learn. Just sit yourself down right here.” She gestured him into one of the well-worn tavern chairs and went to swoop Samuel from his arms and into her own, but restrained herself; their reunion was something to see. Samuel’s face had turned bright at the sight of his grandfather, and now he cooed under his chin, busy pressing into Henry’s hollow cheeks with his soft, chubby hand. He was making a new sound that was very much like a laugh, his delight filling the room.

“Well,” Roger said, moving toward the hall, which led to the back recesses of the house, “I shall leave you to it. I’ll just be taking this tea with me to bed.”

“Why don’t you leave it out here,” Ginnie said with a wave of her hand, “and save me the trip of bringing it back. It’s not like you ever drink it.”

“I often drink it,” Roger corrected her.

Ginnie looked up. “Never once have you drunk your evening tea. Not once.”

Arc of a gray brow. “Woman, you do not know me.”

Ginnie snorted, but before she could utter a retort well honed from decades of use, Roger leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “Good night,” he said, and, “Good night, Henry. We enjoyed having Samuel. The Corgis especially. They love children.”

As he disappeared around the doorjamb, Ginnie called out, “Don’t forget to leave the hall light on. You always forget, and you know the night-light’s been burned out since forever.”

“I will not forget, woman.”

“Okay,” said Ginnie, then quietly so only Henry could hear: “He always forgets.” She settled back into her chair, scooping all the discs to the center of the board before she began to sort them with two fingers. “Henry, you’ll be black, and I’ll be red, the goal being to advance across the board, capture the other’s discs, and make it to the opposite side first.”

But Henry was barely listening. With Samuel cradled against his chest, he had turned to watch Roger’s retreat down the frame-lined hall to the back of the house. When he came slowly right, he said, “You seem to … suit each other very well.”

“Who? Me and Roger?” Ginnie looked at him in surprise, as though he had said the most absurdly obvious thing. Then she shrugged. “The annoyance of my days and the love of my life.”

Henry smiled sadly and clutched Samuel.

Ginnie noted that smile as she arranged the checkers and said, “Did you have a great love in your life, Henry? Someone who gave you a reason to live when the going got rough?”

The question startled him visibly. He blinked and then a chaos of feeling washed over his features, so that he didn’t know where to look — at the game board, around the room, or at the boy in his arms. Suddenly, Samuel yawned with all his might, and his entire body shook, including the fists he drew to his wobbling chin. Then he smiled.

“I just can’t wait,” Ginnie said softly, freeing Henry from the burden of answering, “to see who Samuel will grow up to be. I have a feeling he’s going to be extraordinary.” She glanced at Henry, lamplight in her eyes. “But then we all are, aren’t we, each in our own way?”

* * *

In the morning, Hellsmouth seemed healthy as — God, sorry — a horse, so they wrapped her limbs in white cotton traveling bandages, loaded her into the custom Turnbow, and headed for home. While she swayed, dreaming her bluegrass cockcrow crooktree dreams, Allmon’s companion smoked and chattered on for twelve hours straight. Trying not to puke, Allmon just leaned his tender head against the window and slept a liquor-thrummed sleep, his sleep the thinnest veil over the horror of the new reality. Not his? How was it possible? The way she had clung to him in their lovemaking — and it had been that, he knew it had. Or he had known. He drifted on waves of sleepy fright. He saw a baby’s chubby hands reaching out to grasp hills like tits that rose across a shimmering river, water waving like the flag of conquerors. The baby looked just like him.

Wake up! the Reverend whispered. Human love ain’t nothing but a halfway house, where we prepare our criminal nature for the love of God.

AMEN!

NO! His eyes snapped open. She had cheated, cuckolded him, lied through her thin, white-girl lips. Never forget.

The road had led them back to Kentucky and Mack’s training center, where Hellsmouth would overwinter in her own paddock, undapple her mottled black, and rest easy. The driver shifted down on the sunny side of the broodmare barn to unload their half-ton cargo, but Allmon never made it to the back of the trailer. He had only the briefest moment to note the dull ache in his hips and knees — surely the result of too much alcohol and lack of sleep or his fresh horror — before his legs collapsed and he slumped to the ground, appearing like a man who’d slipped out the door into a deep pool of water. The man came sputtering out of the driver’s side, hand tracing the nose of the truck as he doubled over with laughter, trying to wipe his eyes even as he was hauling Allmon to his feet. “Oh shit!” he cried, not even trying to rein in his amusement. “Oh shit, man! You all right?” But Allmon wasn’t laughing. Pain was poking mean fun in the joints of his legs and hands. There was the briefest moment when panic came bobbing up, but he tamped it down. You could not think of your life in time — or your mother’s. He took Hell’s lead and moved forward, his eye trained resolutely on the horizon beyond the barn, a vain trick to foreclose on the near.

But in the stall, he sensed it, a subtle but sure shift in the space, like a ghost in the room. He looked at Hell, at her mouth and into her vitreous globe eye, and pressed his aching, hungover hands to the flat plains of her jaw. Her pupils mere millimeters wider than placid; a whisper of too-warm heat drifted from her flanks. Suddenly, undeniably, she was idling high.

Allmon didn’t have to be told what to do; he limped, then ran, beelining past the farm manager, and barreled straight into Mack’s office. Mack was only a half hour home from Newark, leaning over his desk, peering at his winter colt list, when Allmon skidded across the threshold. Two words: “She’s off,” and Mack was barking like a Doberman into his cell, so not fifteen minutes later his eighteen-year home vet, Don Patrick, was striding down the shed row, chin tucked into his neck, gear bag in one hand, silver La Boit case in the other.

Mack was utterly useless before illness; he could do nothing but pace the row, sweating pungent sweat, muttering at his second-tier fillies, doing what he never, ever did: praying to the clerk of the course, the patron saint of the horse, and various other minor gods, Take any filly you want, but not this fucking one.

“Her temp’s a little high,” said Don. “She break funny up in Camden? Finish funny? Go off her feed?”

Allmon shook his head, confused.

“Nothing?”

Mack said, “Reuben said he felt something at the wire, but she touched cool and looked good.”

Don sighed. “They’re like cats, these horses. They’d rather die than let you know when they’re hurt. Let’s start with distal extremities, lower left first. Let’s just get some shots.”