C. Morgan - The Sport of Kings

“Yes, sir.” The polite words were alloyed by a stingy metal in his voice. John Henry turned fully and looked into the ever-increasing mystery of his son’s face, as if to determine whether this was sarcasm or straight, and the indecision in those aging eyes was a tiny glory to behold. He said, “Leave the ladder, and drag that branch back to the yard, where it can be chopped.”

Would his insolence get off so easy? He had only moved ten feet, when John Henry intoned three words: “And young man.” When Henry glanced back over his shoulder, John Henry’s right hand, that clamp, wrench, hold, vise, that old beater, was pointing at him: “I’ve been watching you.”

A depth charge shook the boy, and the whole of his sexual misdeeds were laid out in that moment, as if his father had been there in the tack room as Loretta had sucked on his tongue and worked her salivaed hand between his legs until he shuddered wretchedly and gasped, and instantly, in his father’s presence, before he said anything else, Henry’s mind was on fire with shame.

John Henry stared directly into his son’s guilty eyes. “Don’t chase after just any bitch in heat.”

“No, sir.” His mouth was sandy.

“You’re better than that.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t believe I need to waste any more breath on this conversation.”

“No, sir.”

“Manage yourself.”

Henry stared down at the ground, conquered.

“Or I will manage you.”

* * *

John Henry: Son, what is desire in a strong man? Do you remember what I told you?

Henry: Desire is a draft horse, harnessed by tradition, working in service of the line.

John Henry: And desire in a weak man?

Henry: A Thoroughbred, wild and dangerous.

John Henry: And eros?

Henry: A blindfolded youth.

John Henry: Which results in mania.

Henry: Yes, but

Oh, Father, you hypocrite! Enfeebled and blind! Your Argument from Authority fails! Choke to death on your words — Mania transforms! It makes the cuckold the lover again, it makes the blind man see, it ripens the fruits that reason can only plant! Madness lays waste to shame! Even Socrates hid his face over his stupid speeches! Hide your own!

* * *

Paulette carried trays piled with pineapple-glazed ham with mint garnish, corn pudding, and dusky dinner rolls; chardonnay for the adults, virgin mint juleps for the children. But Henry’s silver cup sat sweaty and untouched, finely engraved with its curlicued F . Lonely Lavinia tried to catch his eye, and Loretta grinned her grin full of secrets, but Henry had eyes only for his father: how his straight spine formed the axis of the room, around which the entire earth revolved. How, once again, the men inclined their heads toward each other, speaking in a fraternal enclosure that excluded the bustling table of children, which unjustly included Henry. But he wasn’t cowed. His shoulders were as square as his jaw. He had grown to his full six feet one this summer and could look Uncle Mason in the eye. He was strong as new rope.

John Henry said, “We’ve rarely seen a worse drought, but I have faith it will rain soon.”

“We’re feeling the effects as far south as Florida,” said Uncle Mason. “I don’t believe it’s rained in twenty-seven days now.”

“Is that right?”

“But you’re worse off, to be sure. Much worse.”

“There has been some talk of families leaving the area,” said his father, but then he shrugged. “Many of these men have mishandled their black years, so my sympathies are limited to say the least.”

“Well, I’d hate to see that,” said Uncle Mason. “When an uneducated man leaves the only thing he knows—”

“There are lateral moves to be made into manufacturing. Not to mention there’s security in the factories that these farmers can only dream of,” said John Henry.

Loretta glanced up suddenly from her food. “They should move to Florida if they need work,” she said. “There’s a lot of work there, isn’t that right, Daddy? I always see men standing on the side of the road when I go to school.”

John Henry stared at her, blinking, and her mother hissed, “Loretta.”

“What?” she said, swiveling toward her with a blank look. “It’s true.”

Uncle Mason cleared his throat and glanced at his brother. “Well, Kentucky’s always been a corn deficit state. Are they bringing down surplus from Ohio?”

John Henry shook his head. “Even Ohio is baling corn this summer.”

“It’s like when we were kids all over again.”

“Yes,” John Henry said, and now he eyed the table round, his look a warning, as if they all should remember, though no one else could, except Lavinia, who watched him and nodded, sensing a strange energy in the room, but unable to parse it.

“Well, you have to wonder how many of these family farms can hang on,” said Uncle Mason. “What did Grandfather always say? All you need is a good gun, a good horse, and a good wife? It’s not enough these days, apparently. Still, it’s a sorry sight to watch farms go under.”

“Well,” said Loretta brightly, “when Henry’s raising horses here you won’t have to worry about any of that ever again.” She grinned at them all, but the table plummeted into silence around her; then something stilled in her eyes, her broad smile contracting slowly to a line of poised alertness. She glanced at Henry, but he was not looking at her; he simply took another bite of ham as if by continuing to eat, as if by pretending he hadn’t heard, he could distend time and stave off what was to come.

“What did you say, young lady?” said John Henry. His voice was stony and low. Loretta looked at him, eyes wide, but said nothing at all into the raw, charged quiet of the table.

Then John Henry brought his utensils down to the tabletop, one in each hand, and it caused the table to rejolt with a crack like a branch breaking. “What did you say, young lady?” His voice was rising to a roar, and Loretta visibly started and cowered back into her chair, instinctively scooting against her mother. Mason laid a steadying hand on his brother’s upper arm, but that arm sprang loose from its cocked reserve, pointed out across the table at Henry, that hand the detonation, so the voice that followed was only a report. “I haven’t sacrificed everything so you could waste your goddamned life! I haven’t raised you to be an idiot!”

What other words were flung across the table at Henry he could not later reconstruct, not in their entirety. He simply rose up from the table with a strangely disembodied calm on his strong, new face, a face built for the future. Lavinia whipped around in her seat, reaching for him, but she was too late.

“Don’t you dare leave my goddamn presence, boy! Not without my permission!”

But Henry did just that, passing out of the dining room, walking faster and faster until he was almost jogging, leaving the assembled family with their mouths gaping and John Henry storming up from his chair, so that he knocked the table, causing the china to dance violently and the younger girls to cry. Loretta had already fled into the kitchen when, freeing herself from a tangle of chair legs and crying girls, Lavinia chased after John Henry as he stalked to the front hall. When she grabbed at his shirtsleeve, he lashed out blindly behind himself, striking the fine flesh of her cheek with his Sewanee class ring, so that she was bleeding even before she sat down hard on her bottom on the polished floor.

Henry, who was just rounding the foot of the staircase, saw his mother fall, and he screamed out to his approaching father, “I hate you!”

“Get back down here,” John Henry warned, not running, but also losing no ground as he followed his son, who was skipping stairs now in his haste to reach the second floor.