C. Morgan - The Sport of Kings

“Well, I wouldn’t want to be born a woman,” Henry said.

His father just laughed, and for a moment, Henry found himself unwillingly laughing along. But he stopped suddenly, wary. He distrusted his father’s laugh and its magnetic draw, how it always seemed to bubble up out of a secret his father possessed, one that might be at Henry’s expense.

With a sudden cessation of noise, the train’s caboose tailed into the trees, snaking into Fayette County, and John Henry said, “It’s time you learned to drive.”

“It’s against the law,” Henry objected. He was only thirteen.

“I trust I can keep you out of federal prison,” John Henry said, his brow arched. “Filip wastes untold time and money chasing after your mother’s every whim, and I can’t be bothered to keep her entertained. I’m certainly not going to hire her a driver. No need when there’s a young man in the house.”

Nodding, Henry said, “Yes, sir.”

“But don’t ever touch the vehicle unless your mother asks you.”

“Yes, sir.”

The older man exited the automobile, stretched briefly with a growling sound of a bear come out of hibernation, and walked around to the passenger side.

With nerves wicking his mouth dry, Henry slid into his father’s spot, perched on the front springs of the seat, gripping the wheel and toeing about beneath the dash with both feet.

“First, second, third, fourth,” said John Henry, pointing. “Off the gas while on the clutch, shift, on the gas again. It’s not difficult.”

Henry grasped the stick.

“Depress the clutch, turn the ignition.” He did this.

“Clutch down, first.” He did this too.

“Gas, and slow off the clutch.” The car moved forward on a halting stream of fuel as if it were shy, and they crossed the tracks with an uneven rattle.

“More gasoline.”

Henry pressed, but the car emitted a wounded screech, then barked and quit. For a moment there was only quiet, but Henry could feel the temperature in the car rising, then his father snapped, “Henry — this isn’t that difficult.”

One more attempt, barely breathing as they crept haltingly down the road, closer to where the town evanesced house by house into the rural district.

“Faster.” He pressed the gas and the engine sang. They drove for one mile, Henry barely blinking and his eyes stinging, accosted by the late sun.

“I’m considering taking you out of school,” said John Henry suddenly.

“What!” He hazarded a glance at his father. “Why?”

“Because your school is mediocre. The students are mediocre.” A curt wave of one hand, then John Henry crossed his arms over his chest. “And things are happening right now in the courts. There are changes in the air, changes I don’t want you exposed to. I swear the Negroes seem intent on delivering themselves to hell.” He passed a hand over his heavy brow. “These men who always seek to improve things rarely know much about human nature. One smart monkey can find his way out of the cage, but that doesn’t make him any less a monkey. And, naturally, the other monkeys follow suit. They never realize until they leave the cage that they were warm and well fed in the cage.”

Henry had no idea what his father was talking about. “You’re not going to send me to school in Atlanta, are you?” he said, his stomach creeping up around his heart. He’d long dreaded the thought of boarding school, of separation from his mother for an excellence whose grammar he could not yet parse, that he was just beginning to speak.

John Henry said, “Your mother has never wanted that. And I’ve considered her request, because I pity her predicament. You’ll be her only child, you know that. I’ve been considering a tutor instead.”

“But you already tutor me.”

“I’m not truly qualified. You’re not a child anymore. Your mother can prepare a decent meal, but we have Maryleen because Lavinia isn’t a cook. It’s no different.”

At the edge of a tobacco field the car stalled out, snapping them forward in their seats. John Henry sighed, but louder this time, and Henry flinched hard under the whip of judgment. God, how he hated his father, loved him, hated him — regardless, all the tangled roots of his inherited heart grew forever in the same direction: I am his.

The boy stuttered out into first again and the car juddered and spun its tires as it progressed. John Henry finally reached for the wheel, but Henry blurted out, “No, I’ve got it, I’ve got it!”

“ Facta non verba ,” his father said, and the boy looked at him and thought — not for the first time — that his pronunciation was not all it could be. And then he stalled again.

“Pull over, Henry,” said his father, and they switched places yet again. John Henry was releasing the parking brake when, suddenly, in a tone from which all irritation was wiped, he said, “All I really want is to be proud of you.” Then, with uncharacteristic hesitation, as if testing the words on his tongue: “There’s nothing more vulnerable than a man with everything to lose. Don’t disappoint me.”

* * *

A man reasons his way to irrational numbers. It was a strange paradox. Mother’s beauty was never-ending, thus never-repeating, it went on and on and on, an irrationality. Her face was a beautiful math, a womanly number without equivalent fraction: the depth of her brown eyes, which were cavernous in her silence; the sublime distance between pupils, a neat third of the width from cheek to cheek; the plucked half-shell brows, each hair articulate and precise against pale, powdered skin, which was lineless; a nose subtly dished with a bridge as delicate as the handle on a teacup; the philtrum, just a gentle scoop over bowed lips the color of Easter silk, lips that even Plato would have kissed. Perfect.

But they couldn’t speak, and the fact never failed to startle. Her physical debility was like a gash across a masterwork, never more plain than when she spoke with her hands, her face contorting with agonized efforts to make herself known — the brow reaching, the eyes bright as solariums, the lips wrenched up. Then her face embarrassed Henry; it became the hysterical face of an actor without any vanity and not the placid face one would want from a mother.

Mr. Osbourne.

He snapped alert from his daydream. “What, Mother?”

Drive me to Osbourne? She signed. Maryleen made lunch for them.

Dean Osbourne was their neighbor across the bowl, a short, black-haired man who’d long despaired of the farm he’d inherited, making day wages as a police officer until he became deputy sheriff, farming only at night and on weekends. But he’d been shot one year ago at the First County Bank, and just when the town was collecting half-dollars to pay for a mahogany casket and a flag, he’d rallied and survived. But he’d never gone back to his fields. Now there was talk of morphine and erratic behavior, and the seedman at the store said there’d been no winter order. Someone mentioned Thoroughbred horses.

It was a short drive down the frontage road to the lane that curved around the bowl to the Osbourne place. As Henry fanned his hands over the wheel and scanned the road, Lavinia sat easily beside him, her hands a gentle, quiet knot in her lap. Henry had barely enough time to feel familiar at the wheel before they were parked in front of the Italianate cottage, Lavinia slipping from the car, picnic basket in hand.

But her drop of the iron knocker drew no reply. Henry stepped around her and rapped up and down the door. After half a minute’s pause, he turned the knob and pressed the old door as his mother bent behind him, so two light heads peered samely round the jamb. The house was cool in the shade of the porch balcony, the remnants of night still present in the day. But in the quiet, there was some vibration adrift. Lavinia felt it with the soles of her small feet.