C. Morgan: The Sport of Kings

He said nothing, it would only encourage her.

“I’ll throw more!” Ginnie cried with the passion of young love, which had grown positively anguished as winter warmed under a restless trade wind. When Henry didn’t look back or even acknowledge her, she came charging out of the barn with more manure in her hands, but was stymied by snow melting into mud. Dirty remnants of winter remained draped like old, tattered white cloth all about the farm.

“Henry!” she called, as he was moving steadily down the lane peeling off his hat and coat and breaking a spring sweat. The air was raucous and thick with birdsong, the afternoon’s light refracted through a veil of pollen. In the field to their left, which bordered the road, the male calves were now cattle, sturdy on their legs and fattening. They chewed their cud with the resignation of age.

Ginnie was panting along behind Henry. “You know what’s next for them? You know what’s next, Henry Forge?”

Henry risked a glance back and, grinning madly, Ginnie drew a finger across her throat, her eyes wide.

He rolled his eyes. “I have to go, Ginnie. I have lessons with Father in five minutes.” The sun was blistering his already red neck.

“Well, my daddy says your daddy thinks his shit doesn’t stink! And I think your lessons are boring and stupid!” Ginnie was falling behind now, attempting to scrape ashy, sun-dried manure from the instep of one boot. There were sweat beads on her upper lip, and she was flushed the color of a strawberry.

Henry turned on her. “Stupid? I study Latin and Greek, math, philosophy—”

“Yeah, I know,” she said.

“Yeah, you don’t even know what that is.”

Henry Forge left Ginnie on the side of the road in defeat. She watched as a late Indian summer sun slung his shadow out before him, and just as his feet touched the far side of the country road that separated their farms as surely as any fence, just as Henry turned eleven, she cried out, “Henry Forge, don’t you ever have any fun?”

* * *

John Henry: Close the door, son.

Henry: Yes, sir.

John Henry: All the way.

Henry: Yes, sir.

John Henry: Have you brought your translation?

Henry: I have, but … I was trying to figure out a word, and I—

John Henry: A simple yes or no will suffice.

Henry: Yes.

John Henry: Did you translate like an automaton, or did you actually use your mind?

Henry: I did.

John Henry: You did what?

Henry: I did use my mind.

John Henry: So, tell me — is man the measure of all things?

Henry:

John Henry: Since you’re never at a loss for words, I have to assume that you’ve come unprepared. Henry, these works can’t be read like your modern claptrap. They’re valuable only insofar as your mind is engaged. Novel thought to those who think there’s value in a pretty phrase that means absolutely nothing. Can you define “aesthete”?

Henry: No, sir.

John Henry: The fool who finds value in the merely pretty.

Henry: Mother likes pretty things.

John Henry: I love your mother, but I’ve never met a truly educated woman. Now, I’ll ask you one more time — is man the measure of all things?

Henry: Socrates says no …

John Henry: And why is that?

Henry: Because, the wind can’t be cold and hot at the same time?

John Henry: Because it is impossible to determine anything absolutely based on one man’s perceptions, which are subjective. Tell me more.

Henry: And if some men are mad …

John Henry: If man was the measure of all things, then the perceptions of madmen would necessarily be true, and that’s nonsense. So, tell me, what would result if an individual man thought he was the final arbiter of all things?

Henry: Chaos?

John Henry: Yes. Sanity begins with knowing your place.

Henry: But if people wrote all these books, then they made up all the ideas. Doesn’t that make them the measure of everything they’re saying they’re not the measure of?

John Henry: Don’t interrupt me, Henry. I swear, your mouth is a millstone around your neck.

Henry: That doesn’t make sen—

John Henry: Stay on point!

Henry: Well, I like it when he says dreamers are the best kind of men.

John Henry: Why does that not surprise me? Henry, you spend too much time in your mind. Do you want to wallow in daydreams, or do you actually want to understand the order established by minds greater than your own?

Henry: But great men cut new paths. They think outside the box.

John Henry: No — great men pursue excellence, but the standards of excellence were established by those who came before them. You have no knowledge not granted to you by others. Henry, you’re always hijacking a principled conversation with nonsense and daydreams, and it’s a result of spending so much goddamned time with your mother. She coddles you too much.

Henry: I just want to know how to know.

John Henry: Then I’ll share with you what my tutor would have said to me if I’d had the impertinence to pester him. Real knowledge begins with knowing your place in the world. Now, you are neither nigger, nor woman, nor stupid. You are a young man born into a very long, distinguished line. That confers responsibility, so stay focused on your learning. And as far as your imagination is concerned, it should be relegated to secondary status. You’ll never have an original thought, never be great, never invent anything truly new, and this shouldn’t bother you one bit. There’s nothing new under the sun. You just need to know your place. It’s unexciting, but the truth is often unexciting.

Henry: And what exactly is my place?

John Henry: Your place is as my son.

Henry: But … what if …

John Henry: Goddammit, Henry, don’t be indirect.

Henry: But what if I have an opinion that’s different from your opinion?

John Henry: Then we can’t both be right, and one of us must be wrong. And who would that be?

Henry: Me?

John Henry: The first stage of wisdom.

Henry:

* * *

Two weeks later, his father taught him to drive.

They were running errands on an October afternoon strangely stagnant and thick under a slant sun the color of ripe tomatoes. By the time they reached the tracks by the Paris depot, their shirts were suckered to their backs, the black hood of the sedan turned into a boiling plate. The air was dusty with the scent of old leaves and the faint cloying scent of a decaying animal somewhere close by.

When his father killed the engine, Henry asked him a question that had been bothering him for a long while. “Father, what made you want to go into the legislature?”

John Henry considered the approach of the train before replying. “It was a natural progression,” he said. “There are so few well-educated men, we’re all but obligated to serve the public. The world is nearly overrun by idiots these days. There are more white niggers in this world than one can know what to do with.”

“Are there any women in the legislature?”

John Henry scoffed. “A few. But the core of femininity is a softness of resolve and mind; reason is not their strong suit.”

The train interrupted. Henry watched in silence as the gray and canary-yellow coal cars clacked by, coal heaped above the open tops of the cars, the black nubs glossy in the sunlight. The train, as it rolled against the rails, raised a great clanging noise and the slenderest breeze.

His voice loud against the clattering, John Henry said, “What you don’t yet comprehend about women, Henry, is a great deal.” He stared at the cars as they flipped past. “I wouldn’t say that they’re naturally intellectually inferior, as the Negroes are. They’re not unintelligent. In fact, I’ve always found little girls to be as intelligent as little boys, perhaps even more so. But women live a life of the body. It chains them to material things — children and home — and prevents them from striving toward loftier pursuits.”