C. Morgan - The Sport of Kings

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Ever the good doer, Hellsmouth downed three quarts of oats and snatched at two proffered carrots on the morning of the Wood Memorial. She traced her rounds and lay heavily down in the stall to rise knuckering four times — nothing out of the ordinary, her usual race-day routine. But as Allmon stood there at the stall door watching her rise like a black wave for the fourth time to level him with the watery burn of her lucent eyes, what he found was only a flat, uninviting darkness, interminable night sky between stars that had flamed out; in the place of her personality, there was nothing.

His own body was on fire in every joint, his hands woolly and too warm as he slipped into the stall, patted from the bunched shoulder to the coronet of the hoof. He was nearly disabled by fatigue but could tell the leg seemed good and cold; they’d drawn out the heat with an old-time poultice of bran, Epsom salts, and clay. Now painkillers coursed along her ropy veins, pulsing through each chamber of her overlarge heart, sloping down her gaskins, softening the tips of her ears.

Though something was rubbing her soul against the grain, all he said as he stared into those altered eyes was a dull, blunt, “You’ll be fine.”

When Mack turned down the row, Allmon made a sharp, beckoning gesture and said under his breath, as though the filly could hear and understand, “She’s not happy.”

“Who the hell is?” Mack snapped, but he squatted and turned his own hands down the length of the leg. “She’s cold,” he said from his stoop. “I’m getting nothing here.” He leaned back on his haunches then, braced on one ruddy hand in the hay and peering up along the steep, sloped band of her nose. He sighed. “Give her some scotch. That’ll turn her up.”

Tucked behind posts draped with saddle blankets and a row of black velvety riding helmets, a smoky bottle of Caol Ila was kept on a shelf for just such a purpose. But when Allmon poured the scotch into the trembling scoop of his palm, which seemed so hot it would boil the liquor away, Hell just swung her head wide, and the tinkling of her stall bridle, very faint, was like Christmas sleigh bells without cheer.

“You’ll be fine,” he said again, but he didn’t know whether he was talking to himself or the horse. All he knew was he didn’t believe it.

Then Reuben; he sensed it in the saddling paddock when he was hoisted onto her gleaming back. Slipping his boots into the irons, he stopped suddenly as though listening for the faint beating of his own heart, then stooped in the irons, gazing bug-eyed down both sides of Hell’s long face as she stared straight ahead, blinking sedately and swishing her tail once. He detected the pulse in her articulated runner’s veins, then turned to Mack, his eyes narrowed. “What ails my black beauty?”

“She’s cold,” said Mack, but his brow was puckered. “She walked easy. You saw her.”

Fraction by fraction, Reuben eased down, reassuming his wary spot on the saddle. “Oh girl, this ain’t the time,” he whispered. The diaphragm of his eyes constricted, so the nervous colts and that worser animal — the ungovernable crowd — faded to a blur. He said nary a mischievous word as Allmon led them away. Reuben looked nowhere but down, his eyes bending pencils of light as they emerged from the tunnel, so he took in only the shortest field — Hell’s tented ears, and the gathering and releasing of her shoulders with each step. She came along sure, she came steady, but she wasn’t a horse who was born to just come along.

Reuben’s mouth was dry with determination, his hands clamped on the reins, his heart slowing: visions of paralysis, of death on the track under half-ton horses, his spalled flesh ground into the very fibers of the racing world. But then he straightened up. Whatever. His horse wasn’t right, that was for sure, but one minute on a half-well Hell was worth ten years on these other hacks. His grin bared his teeth.

The bell clanged, and for a moment, fresh out of the gate, all concern seemed unfounded: Hellsmouth rocketed from post position, instantly strong and upright; she broke with stomach-flipping loft in her three-year-old stride, her newly elongated signature. Inside of four strides, she separated herself from the field just as the bettors had banked on, as the oddsmakers had predicted. She was the fulfillment of every Saturday promise — inevitability itself — so the stands didn’t wait for her to roll into that first turn; they rose headily, drunkenly in advance of their sure thing, their cries rolling out across the infield like thunder before the storm. At the sound of their jubilation, Reuben, already tight with the hope of victory and plastered over her withers, twitched the crop back and delivered a perfunctory tap to Hell’s flanks just as they angled into the turn. Now the rude truth reasserted itself. Hell took the crop with a gathering of her muscle and a straining of the head, but her body delivered no burst of speed. She didn’t advance through the turn as she always did, the filly braggart who could walk on water as lesser horses slipped under the waves, the filly who rolled effortlessly around a curve on the strength of personality alone. And not only did she take the crop without a surge, but when she switched leads on her bruiser’s legs, she faltered. The tectonics shifted.

Stop the Music pressed past Angelshare and Loop de Loop, crabbing out of the curve so his bulky ass moved up on Hell’s right shoulder. Another second into the straight, and there commenced a violent bumping and jolting as the other colts circled their wagons, boxing in Hellsmouth, so Reuben was forced to wield the whip again to spur her into any possible pocket, real or imagined. He snapped her flanks, then he bashed her flanks, calling out encouragement and demand, the crop suddenly electric as any cattle prod, but though she tried and tried, she couldn’t advance. Neither left nor right, the colts left her no avenue. Now her effort became an ugly thing to see; blood spurted from her nostrils despite the Lasix, the proud flesh on her chest pulsed white against her black.

“Haw, little bitch! Bring it home!”

How she strained and lunged under Reuben on the straightaway, slinging saliva back onto his shoulders and face, digging deeper than deep, but her pace was a sickening diminuendo, a single discordant instrument in the orchestra. When the wire approached, despite the desperation in her limbs and the agonized shearing of her lungs, there was nothing left to muster. She came in third after Stop the Music, her archrival, and Possum, a fat-nosed allowance horse born on a Tuscaloosa farm with a plastic spoon in his mouth, a colt with no fashion in his pedigree whatsoever, not a single placer in his line.

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Jeff Burrow: Well, the 2006 season is no longer a done deal, a fixed race between perfection and a middling field. The almighty Hellsmouth, a filly all but guaranteed to wrap up the Derby in a rose-red ribbon, is no longer a sure thing. Horses lose every day in this sport, but there was something different in the air after Hell’s defeat on Saturday. Her loss seems to have peeled back the layers to reveal an unspoken truth just under the surface of this testosterone-fueled industry. Hellsmouth has never been just another equine athlete. In a sport overrun with huge colts and powerhouse geldings, she’s a filly, and a tremendous one at that, and that makes her unique. If, despite this loss, she manages to conquer the Derby’s mile and a quarter, it won’t just be a win for Hellsmouth, but a testament to the power and potential of her sex in the sport. In a world that downplays the accomplishments of women at every possible turn, a great female athlete is representative, whether she likes it or not. They change their sport and public opinion. So when May sixth rolls around, let’s not forget the much larger truth at play on the dirt track at Churchill Downs: this big filly runs for all fillies, and the distinction still matters.