C. Morgan - The Sport of Kings

Pour it out, Allmon, don’t swallow it down anymore.

Pour it out so that light may shine in the darkness.

Bring me my child.

Allmon’s blood begins to boil over flames of regret and fury, and now he’s moving more quickly, jogging down the front staircase, and swinging around the carved newel with one can of gas remaining. He’s getting close, but so is she. She’s almost on him, and to his relief, he realizes he no longer has an out, or a choice. The moment has come. But he doesn’t find Henry in the foyer with the gas-splashed clock, or in the parlor with its two divans huddled together and begging to burn, or in the formal dining room with its damask chairs now dark with stains, or in the second sitting room, where Allmon rips the drapes from the windows and heaps them for a pyre. Now there is only one room left unexplored, the old back study by the kitchen, the office where Forge keeps the books and ledgers, where Allmon signed the deal, where the devil snatched his soul. The door is wide open. In his hastiness, Allmon had passed it on his walk up the back stairs. Now he stands silently at the threshold. Inside on the long Chesterfield, his body curled around the form of Allmon’s child, Henry Forge is asleep. A fan whirs. A bottle of bourbon rests on the desk.

Allmon steps into the room and raises the gun, but then realizes he hasn’t cocked it. He pulls the hammer back with the thumb of his free hand, there is an audible click, and Henry’s head rises from the pillow of his arm with a start. He turns confusedly toward the light in the doorway and sees the hard shadow standing there.

A startled, strangled sound escapes his lips.

“Get away from my child.”

It takes Henry a moment to realize that this dream is not a dream, so at first there’s only the relief of suspended time, wherein anything might happen, or nothing at all. The sheer unreality of it offers a brief chance at salvation. Then Allmon takes two steps into the room, aiming the gun at Henry’s head with the advantage of the light behind him. Henry can’t see the gun in the dark, but he knows it’s there. Instead of rising and following orders, he half slides and half tumbles to his knees beside the sofa, and with his back to Allmon reaches his arms around Samuel, who is startled out of sleep but not yet crying.

“Don’t hurt him!” Henry cries. Despite his age, his arms are like iron bands around the child. “Kill me — but don’t hurt him!”

Words won’t save you now, Henry Forge, the old language is dead.

Allmon’s voice is steady, steely. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do. Now get the fuck up.”

Suddenly Samuel is hauling air, shrieking up at the ceiling and flinging his chubby arms out to the sides, and Henry refuses to remove the shield of his body from his grandson.

Startled by the sound, a sudden rage threatens to shatter Allmon’s composure. He realizes he can’t handle the gun and the baby at the same time. “Pick him up!” he barks, suddenly confused. “Pick him up right now!”

It takes Henry a moment to realize he’s being offered a reprieve, then he clumsily sweeps Samuel against his chest, Samuel who is struggling in fright, pummeling the air with his fists, his eyes wide.

“Walk outside. Now!”

Henry does as he is told; he carries Samuel straight out of the study, straight through the blindingly bright kitchen and into the swallowing dark of the Kentucky night.

“Straight back!”

Henry moves as hastily as he can without dropping his grandson, stumbling back toward the garden with all of its geometric, fragrant rows, which he arranged in hope of a future. Its order seems an absurdity now.

Allmon looks wildly about, and when he sees the scarecrow, he points. “Right there, right there.” His body has instinctively led them to this place. “Put him down!” he orders.

“No.” It sounds like a one-word answer, but then Henry says, “You’ll have to kill me first.”

Now rage overtakes him. “I AM GOING TO KILL YOU!” Allmon heads him with the butt of the gun, not hard enough to knock him out, just hard enough to bring the older man to his knees. Samuel spills out of his arms like a sack of kittens and rolls facedown in the dirt, screaming, and in the light that shines from the kitchen door, in the finely carved lineaments of Henry’s face, Allmon sees Henrietta staring up at him, blood trickling down one temple.

He rears back and gasps for air as Henry swoons, then reaches down and draws Samuel toward him, panic rising that he’s hurt his child. Samuel’s little white T-shirt separates from his diaper and twists up around his neck. His cries are ear-piercing, but he’s unhurt when Allmon lifts him from the dirt with his free hand, clutching him desperately against his abdomen so the child is struggling and flopping sideways and screaming as the soil on his face mixes with tears.

Still on his knees, Henry says, “Careful with his neck.”

Allmon turns on him, his eyes furious. “This is my son! You stole my son!” He can’t control the sound of anguish, which echoes across the fenced fields.

Though dazed and broken, Henry’s voice is almost absurdly calm, and from the calm emerges his eternal refrain, “He is my…” But he can’t finish; he chokes on it. New words rise with a will all their own, and he can’t withhold them. “I am sorry.” He feels their truth like another blow.

Allmon almost spits on him when he stares him down and blurts, “You ain’t sorry; you ain’t nothing!” But his son is struggling in his arms, and he doesn’t know how to do this, he’s never held a baby before. He lets Samuel slide awkwardly down his leg to drop unceremoniously to the ground again about six feet from Henry, upon whom Allmon now advances. His body is lethal, pure menace, and when Henry looks up at him, squinting through blood that oozes from a cut above his right eye, the fear on his face is clear as day.

The fear there startles Allmon, but his words are unrelenting. “Take off your belt!”

Henry does as he’s told, and Allmon snatches it out of his hands so it whips and snaps like a snake. His motions are growing wild now. If he can move quicker, stoke more anger, maybe he can stave off what’s rising, some change he senses. He shoves the older man backward, then kicks at him to get him moving, so Henry scrambles back until he runs into the old post on which the scarecrow hangs. Henry’s eyes are locked on Samuel as he’s bound to the post with his own belt.

It won’t hold, it’s not enough, so Allmon whips off his own belt and cinches it lower, around Henry’s abdomen. Now he’s tied like a beast for slaughter. Still, Henry’s eyes are on Samuel.

“I’m taking my child,” Allmon snarls, but it’s not until he returns to the baby, drawing him clumsily to his chest once again and moving away, that a sound rises up from Henry. It’s the sound of a mother howling, a woman wailing at the foot of the cross. The wail rises and encircles the farm, it grips Allmon’s head round. It travels the rolling pastures, wends through boughs of trees, swings over the old graves and the heads of the dark, startled horses. But Allmon has lived for so long, for more than six lifetimes, he thinks he can move steadily through it. He advances ten paces before he discovers he can go no farther and stops. He removes the bottle from his pocket and has to put the child down yet again. Henrietta’s child. He had a chance to learn love with her, but he destroyed it. He goes pale with the knowledge.

It’s too late, it can’t matter. He’s taking what’s his — his son and his revenge. When the lady publishes her book, the whole world will understand what this justice means. They’ll finally know. He fumbles for the lighter now. He knows the bottle will do its work and blow the house to kingdom come. There’s a steady breeze tonight to turn a smoky flame into a conflagration. Allmon winds up and lunges forward like a seasoned pitcher and hurls the bottle through the back door straight to the front wall of the kitchen, where it shatters and lands in bright bits on a spattering of gasoline. So it starts. A swift, softly blooming fire line races up the back staircase until it diverges at the landing, traveling into the separate rooms where the beds and sofas, each in their turn, ignite. From outside, it looks as if gentle, flickering lights have come on in every room. Presently, the drapes go up with a willowing motion as if the fire itself is waving for help. Not a moment later, the bathrooms burst open like fireworks.