C. Morgan - The Sport of Kings

This time it’s you who rears back, open surprise written on your face.

The man lowers his chin, eyes unblinking. When he speaks, his voice is harsh but low and not unkind. “Allmon, whatever you had to do to get by inside — leave it inside. Don’t ever breathe a word of it to anyone. Accept that you have to be a devil to fight the devil in hell. But you’re not in hell anymore, kid. You’re in Kentucky. They’re already going to call you nigger; don’t give them a reason to call you devil too.”

You’re still trying to comprehend how this slight man survived inside, then you comprehend his words, let them sink like a rock into your stomach. You nod finally. “Yeah.” And exhale audibly. “Yeah.”

The air clears, the man smiles almost ruefully. “So, you’ve got real talent. I take it you want to be on a good farm under someone with real ambition, not just some dilettante.”

“That’s right.” Gladiator words, but shame enflames your cheek; you have no idea what dilettante means.

“Well, I know just the place. Forge Run Farm is hiring. Their star is on the rise.”

Now that— that— is what you wanted to hear.

* * *

Because Memory is a faculty of Mind, and Mind is what most consider the man.

Which is why the wandering radical said, Die unto yourself. Love me more than your father, mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters — even more than your own life.

And why the acolyte went to the master and said, my mind is troubling me, and the master said, I can fix it if you will just hand me your mind, but when the acolyte went to give him his mind, he couldn’t find it and was enlightened. But that night, when he lay down to sleep, the acolyte felt a great love for his mother, and he lost his enlightenment, and said good riddance, got up the next morning and went to market.

Because the path — well, it’s as difficult to find the words as it is the path.

* * *

The foal knew nothing but milk and play. It lolled and scratched its new ear with the soft bundle of its leaf-layered foot, it flung itself through timothy grass in fits of exuberance, darting beside its dam and nipping at her long tail and forelegs. It knickered its fresh song at everything.

But it wouldn’t let Henry come near.

When he approached, the foal first stood warily apart, its ears pert and sharp as two attenuated thorns, and when he reached out his hand in the gesture of every man who ever offered an animal food and then tamed it, it sprung loose from its trance, spindly spider legs carrying it away. Then, as if aware of a new game, it would slow and turn at the center of the paddock and watch Henry with a kind of evil delight. It stood there, so fine and full of itself, it robbed Henry of his breath.

So: “Henrietta!”

That seemed to be the refrain of his living these days. It’s what made the world go round — men chasing women. He was always chasing his.

He stalked the shed row, empty now, the broodmare band all turned out in the southern paddock, tracing maternal circles around their foals. The stalls were redolent with the musk of horseflesh and sunlight heating once-living grasses and old, oiled leather. The place was quiet, no grooms, no business, no daughter.

“Henri—”

They came face-to-face, he and the man who’d been haunting his barn these four months. They’d never spoken; he was the cause of a row such as there’d never been before in the Forge house. Henry would be the first to say he was no longer imprisoned by the hotblood hate he’d felt in his youth, but he objected to this new world of unequal opportunity, a man hired being a man unfireable. In his father’s time, under the old dominion …

“Where’s my daughter?”

“I’m Allmon Shaughnessy.”

Henry simply turned from that tough face, all overhanging brow and unblinking eye, and hollered “Henrietta!” under the open blue sky. Allmon used the moment to size him up. The rich tan, feathery copper brows, box jaw. A blue linen shirt casually wrinkled, a brown leather jacket, belted khakis. Wearing good clothes around animals. Like money was water and there was an unlimited supply.

“What do you need?” Allmon said, an edge in his voice that scraped at Henry’s patience.

“I don’t need your help,” was the acid response. “I’ve got a jumpy foal I need haltered — I’m looking for my daughter.”

He stalked off in the direction of the broodmare barn, but his heart was galling his throat. He couldn’t stand the man’s city voice. It was as though his daughter had taken a marker and drawn a black line down the center of his farm.

He didn’t find her, and when he came rounding back along the side of the broodmare barn again, his tongue curling her name in his mouth, he stopped abruptly. At first, he thought that the man was hurting his foal, cinching her in a stranglehold. But then his disconcerted mind knocked right, and he realized Allmon was cradling her in his arms as if just waiting for the bridler. Textbook.

“I got your foal,” Allmon said needlessly. Slowly, Henry slipped back into the paddock, the bridle dangling at his side. His eyes were on the man’s enormous hands, which caged the gangly foal without any gentling whatsoever, just even pressure, so the foal was easy, quiescent.

Henry’s eyes narrowed. “Have you ever worked with foals?”

Allmon shook his head.

“Well, they’re infants, not just tiny horses.” Now Henry stepped in, so there ensued a small contest of bodies and their shadows tangled, but Allmon did not retreat, maintaining his hold on the horse and taking the bridle right out of Henry’s hand. “I got this.”

“You need two sets of hands.”

“I got this.”

And he did. He let loose the foal, but instead of running it stood still, a soft, volitionless statue. Allmon slipped the nylon straps over the long, narrow bones of the nose, under the velvetine jaw, and secured the buckle behind the skull. The filly stood, curious, and after the cinch was checked with the width of one finger, it shook its head as if to test the permanence of its new restraint, and then sprang off, its mane snapping like a flag in the breeze.

Allmon straightened up, his face unmistakably triumphant, almost smug. Henry crossed his own shaking arms over his chest and said, his voice slung low with anger, “I want you to look at that horse, young man.”

He turned slowly, casually with a kind of cool disregard in his body, but he turned nonetheless.

“That horse you’re looking at is two hundred and fifty years old.”

Allmon’s brow contracted, and Henry went on. “That horse came over the Wilderness Road when it was a death trail, it broke the ground you’re standing on, it built that house I live in, and it bred itself. It’s entitled — do you understand me— entitled to exist in its own flesh, because of its history. And if you ever so much as look at my two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old horse again without my permission, you can kiss this job goodbye. Do you understand me?”

If he was looking for fear, for a cowed spirit, Henry didn’t find it. There was only a deepening concentration, as though the man was memorizing his words for some purpose invisible to Henry.

That made his voice pitch up with irritation. “Do you understand me?”

“Yeah, sure.” Insouciant.

Henry’s voice was steely. “Let me be very clear. My daughter hired you. I would not have. I’m not interested in having convicts on my property.”

No change on that stoic face.

Now Henry smiled a hard smile. His words were clipped, surly. “Why are you even here anyway? What do you want?”

With an almost imperceptible tilt of the head, as if he was honestly surprised by the question, Allmon said, “I want what you got.”