C. Morgan - The Sport of Kings

Do you understand me?

Force of habit prised Henrietta’s teeth apart: “I do.”

* * *

It’s strange. One day you’re a child of six with the taste of grass in your mouth, and the next you appear an adult with your father’s face on your face but a child’s heart in your chest, however stupefied, however late to waking. You can’t decide whether to climb back onto his lap or crack the black letters of your name. No one in the world speaks to you but he, father and king. Because there never was a world beyond the white plank fencing, not really, just a quick, brutish struggle for existence. So you run in circles on your tiny allowance of earth, a species artificially selected and fenced, and open your horse mouth to say, This is the kingdom come and it is his, I am his, I become his, Regnum meum est , I become It.

* * *

The three men arrived one after the other in the sunny late morning. All three smelled of tobacco, bore cheerful, local faces, and were reasonably capable with a horse, good workers with solid records from decent farms. But by noon, with the interviews complete, Henrietta had to employ some effort to distinguish among them. Which had been at Three Chimneys with Silver Charm? Which had been at Clairborne for two years? She was exhausted, her thinking a moil, and she was flipping back through the résumés at the kitchen table when footsteps approached on the cupped planks of the el porch. They stopped and a low voice, an unmistakably black voice, said, “I’m here for a interview.”

With a swiftness that looked distinctly like alarm, she turned to face the man who was just a dark outline, featureless against the day as startlingly bright as shattered crystal behind him.

Blinking rapidly against the light, she said, “Come in.”

When the man stepped slowly into the kitchen, she saw first the middle brown of his skin, and the surprise of it registered, stumbling on the heels of that low voice. Then she could look at nothing but his face, which surprised her with its burden of deep seriousness. Or perhaps something different — anger? Stopping as he did directly beneath the hanging light, his eyes were shadowed under the ledge of his heavy brow.

“You are?” she said, embarrassed by the hesitation in her voice. She cleared her throat.

“Allmon Shaughnessy.”

With an abrupt motion, she fanned the résumés with her fingertips, as if for some purpose he would be unable to detect. With a name like Shaughnessy, she’d been expecting an Irishman. As she stared down in consternation, she caught him sneaking a glance around the room as if he couldn’t resist its luxury, its stamp of wealth. But he did resist. He appeared to catch himself, and with the tiniest start of his head looked at her instead. When she reached out to shake, his hand was slick with sweat. That also surprised her.

“I’m Henrietta Forge,” she said. “Thanks for coming out.”

His heavy brows drew together, and he looked almost comically from side to side, as if for someone else.

“My father’s out of the state on business today,” she said, and as she looked at his skull-cropped hair, his shirt not buttoned to the top, that dark face, she couldn’t help but think, And that is a good thing for you, my friend.

“Make yourself comfortable,” she said, gesturing toward a kitchen chair. As he sat, she took quick, momentary stock of his body. He was perhaps her height or taller, boxy through the shoulder, the rest of his form hard to detect under the voluminous cut of his clothing. He was neither thin nor thick, and she would have found him an unremarkable thing and not noticeable in a crowd, except for the severe and unfriendly cut of his cheekbones jutting from the grieved hollows of his cheeks, sharp enough to cut glass. They sapped the possibility of softness from the rest of his face.

“Which position are you applying for?” she asked.

He placed his oversized hands on his knees and breathed deep once and said, “Night watchman, or stallion barn. Either one, both. I never worked with yearlings. I’m good with tough animals, the mean ones. I’m good with stallions.”

“Either, both?” She had to laugh. “If we were to offer you both positions, you’d be working around the clock. We’re not trying to kill anyone.”

Now it was his turn to clear his throat and shift in his chair. As he did, her first sense of the body proper — his shape, his fitness — emerged from behind the shield of clothing. She could detect it without her eyes ever really leaving his face, and, as if he sensed this, his own eyes found the soft middle distance between their knees.

“Well,” Henrietta said, “we don’t need any stallion grooms at present. Though if we hired you and my father liked you”—her mind laughed at this, and it sparked something in her, so a tiny light was lit—“you certainly could be moved to stallions when a position opens. We have a normal turnover.”

He nodded once, curt, without looking up. He was three feet away from her in the chair, but the distance seemed great. The quiet grew heavier and more distinct.

Though the information was right before her, she said, “And how long have you been working with horses?”

“Three years.”

“That’s not terribly long. What do you have to recommend you beyond your limited experience?”

“I’m good,” he said simply.

The briefest smile from her. But he remained serious, intent, unaltered, muted. Still refusing her direct access to his eyes.

“That’s very confident of you,” she said.

He shrugged.

“Well,” she said. “It says here that you were with Blackburn the entire three years.”

He shifted again in his seat. She saw one foot in a black gym shoe press down on the toe of its brother.

“Blackburn…,” she said. “I don’t believe I’m familiar with that operation.”

“It’s a vocational program,” he said.

“Vocational program…”

“Yeah.” His voice was husky. “Yes.”

“Where? In Kentucky?”

“Lexington,” he said. “Blackburn Penitentiary.” He looked up now from where he had been staring with a gaze so direct and penetrating, she had to resist the urge to lean back.

“Oh,” she said quickly. “So why were you there?”

“I am not obligated to divulge that information,” he said, his voice so formal suddenly, it was clearly something he had memorized. When Henrietta’s eyebrows rose in disdain, disdain he sensed before her face even changed, because that change in register is felt more than seen, he suddenly blurted, “Give me a chance. I’m good with horses. Really good.” He brought a large hand down over his knee with a hard, deliberate motion, and she saw something both plaintive and coiled in him, something that she would not ever be able to precisely name but that her body misnamed: erotic.

“Where are you from?” she said.

“Cincinnati.”

“I’m sorry,” she said as a joke, but when he did not smile in response, she said: “Interesting topography up there. A lot of Ordovician outcrops … Well, anyway, welcome to the Commonwealth.”

But even as she spoke, she thought, Has there ever been a black man in this kitchen before? In their house? Some memory was rattling around in her mind, but it wouldn’t stand still. She thought of her tall, copper-headed father with his linen shirts, his bourbon, his horses. She thought, What paradox are you willing to live for greatness? She looked at this man, at the breadth of his shoulders, the size of his hands, the face annealed and hardened. She fought the urge to smile but couldn’t check herself. While the cat’s away …

She sat up straight suddenly and said, “All of your references are from Blackburn?”

“Yes,” he said.