C. Morgan - The Sport of Kings

Barlow looked up, found the arrivals sign, checked his watch again. He stood now, but he didn’t spring up; he weighted his knees first before his hips followed and his chest found its center. It was time to retire, whether or not Deena was ill. His arthritis was a misery.

He saw the girl then; she emerged from the tunnel gripping a backpack and a yellow blanket he’d not seen before, something she must have got from a stewardess on the plane. He watched how she scanned the crowd of people, and realized she was a lot skinnier now than she’d been when she left, just skin and bone. Everyone passed her as she stood there like a lone rock in a stream. She would be looking for Mr. Forge, he thought, so he raised one arm, the arm that wouldn’t open all the way anymore after it took a kick, and she saw him and for a second looked disappointed, and old as he was, about-to-retire-seen-it-all-tried-it-all-survived-it-all as he was, it hurt his feelings just a little bit. He had to smile at himself and when she saw him smile, she half ran to him and stood before him, looking like the mostly grown thing that she was, though still curveless as a boy and probably always would be, poor thing, and she tucked her chin and leaned her head into his chest. She didn’t hug anybody full body anymore. It was a mystifying and sad thing to watch little girls grow up.

“Hey, darlin’,” he said.

“Hi.” She gazed up into his face. “Your hair looks funny. Where’s Daddy?”

“Well, he planned on picking you up, but … he’s kinda under the weather.” He looked over her head as he ran his fingers through his hair and he saw the open mouth of the tunnel that led back to the plane, thought maybe there was a chance he would never be on a plane again. It wasn’t the worst thing he could think of.

“Is he sick?”

“Well, no, he ain’t ill exactly. He’s in a foul mood is all. He got some bad news. Everybody got some bad news today.” He didn’t say that he’d seen Mr. Forge blow up, or tell her some of the things he’d said, the whole emotion of the business embarrassed him when you got right down to it. But maybe he just couldn’t understand, maybe he just never cared for horses that way, what did he know? He was a pretty simple guy.

“What bad news?”

“Big Red expired today — Secretariat expired.”

Henrietta’s eyes grew wide. “What? How?” The horse had only been nineteen.

“Laminitis. It just started to rot up his leg and they had to put him down today.”

“Oh shit,” she said.

“Well, no need for slang,” he said. Then: “Yeah, he made a real good horse with that one.” He was undertalking, of course; the horse had been the best thing he’d ever seen in his life, and he’d seen some marvelous horseflesh in his time.

She said, “I guess Daddy’s really upset?”

“Aw, kind of. He’ll be fine. Thought I’d better pick you up, though.” He smiled.

She sighed then, and he patted her on the shoulder. They made their way to the baggage claim and they were standing side by side when she said, suddenly, “I guess it’s a good thing Hellcat’s pregnant.”

“Suppose so.”

“But what if it’s a filly? Daddy’s praying for a colt.”

“Well,” said Barlow, and then he said something he wouldn’t normally have ever said, seeing as it might read as criticism. “Your daddy ought not to pray for a thing like that. With people sick and dying and all. You ought to be happy with whatever life gives you.” But then he thought immediately of Deena, of her crying on that day fifteen days ago, and he thought, Well, I’m probably wrong, you also ought not to cast stones at your employer, even if it is your last day on the job.

“Daddy has to have a colt,” Henrietta insisted. “If he doesn’t, he’ll never leave me alone about it.”

“How come’s that?”

“Oh,” she said, “when Daddy gets worked up, he gets mad if I spend too much time away from him. You know, taking walks and reading science stuff or whatever.”

“Well, it’s your life,” Barlow said suddenly before he could stop himself, his tongue apparently just doing whatever it wanted today.

“I guess…,” Henrietta said slowly.

“Honey, you just go on and do what you want. You can grow on up to be anything you want to be.” Now he actually laughed out loud for a moment, and then he coughed so that she turned to watch him strangely. Lord Jesus, he thought, shut my mouth. Barlow the evangelist. I’m getting old and sassy. Time to retire, indeed.

“I’m like Zeno’s arrow,” she said.

“You’re too smart for me,” Barlow said, shaking his head, and then the older man put his arm around her and looked as though he were helping this younger girl through the airport to the truck, as if she were the doddering one with the ruined hips and knees and not he.

As they left the airport, they both gazed out at Keeneland as they passed, at the vast green pastures, the tracks, the fences, the shattering blue of the sky overhead. Cars streamed from the acreage following the afternoon races.

“I’m missing the fall meet,” Henrietta said, but Barlow didn’t reply, concentrating on reaching 64 to avoid the city, the traffic, and all the changes that had occurred there in his lifetime, things he didn’t care to see today. He cleared his throat, pictured again that big, beautiful red horse, dead now, and then shook his head. He was like a fish today, like a fish that kept getting reeled back in. He’d get cleaned and cooked soon enough.

The girl beside him closed her eyes and seemed to sleep and he looked over at her occasionally and he thought kind thoughts about her and he drove her most of the way home in silence.

When they reached the farside outskirts of Paris, she yawned and stretched and opened her eyes.

Old Barlow said, “I ever tell you about the best night of my life?”

“I don’t think so.” She yawned again.

“Well,” he said, and he paused, because the onset of the memory felt good. And also because he thought, Well, my wedding night ought to have been the best night of my life or the births of the boys, and those were almost the best, but this was really the best, and that was just the truth. “Well,” he said, “when I was about your age, I was still living with the McCourys, they raised me up. My folks weren’t dead, but the McCourys raised me. Kind of complicated, but never mind that. Anyhow, one night, one summer night, they had to get thirty head of cattle to Mount Sterling to sell at the market there. They lived just a couple miles from your all’s place. So me and one of the older boys, we saddled up two horses — they had quarter horses — and we drove that thirty head of beef to Mount Sterling. It took us from just after sundown till morning.” Then Barlow paused.

“Did something fun happen?” Henrietta said.

He looked over at her in surprise and slowed just slightly, downshifting as he tried to think. It sounded like almost nothing when he put words to it. “Well, I don’t know,” he said. “I guess what I’m saying is … Well, the moon was pretty full, so it was light and it was the summertime, so it felt pretty nice out. And those cattle didn’t give us any trouble at all. The other boy rode along the middle and I brought up the rear and we ran them right up the middle of the road. Nobody passed us the whole night. I guess it was kind of like breaking the rules. It felt pretty good.”

“Did somebody pick you up when you got there?” Henrietta asked politely.

“Nope, I guess we just rode on back. It didn’t take too long without the cattle.”

“You must have been tired.”

“I suppose so. I don’t really remember that part.”

They were pulling into the drive, and he was downshifting in earnest now and the horses were gazing at them and old Barlow thought, here I come for the last time. He looked over the spread of the farm, where he had spent the last twenty years of his adult life. Now he would go home to his wife, who was passing.