C. Morgan - The Sport of Kings

She doesn’t know the history in his words, what that means to a man like him. His arms, his defenders, his weapons just reached out and pushed her back into the chaffy wood of the tack wall, and the wind went all out of her in an audible woof. From up there, hissing: Don’t hurt the woman, the house, the horse, your chances. Then the little white woman was up in his face, her words whipping him. “You know what the problem is with people like you?” she spat. “Self-pity. It’s always someone else’s fault.”

“People like me?” he said, rearing back, incredulous. “Like what — like black? Well, you know what’s wrong with people like you? You’re all spoiled inbred racist motherfuckers, but you don’t even know it! You’re so blind, you can’t tell when the person standing in front of you is half-white! Which I am!”

She scoffed. “I’m sorry, but if you don’t look white, you’re not white. At least in the real fucking world.”

You know what rage is like? It’s like a fire that blooms from your feet to the crown of your head in an instant. He knew what rage could do — she had no idea. He lowered his head like a bull and stared her down. When he intoned, “Fuck you,” it wasn’t a roar, it wasn’t chaos, it was a deep, mortal hatred that rolled up from the center of him. Unmistakable. It caused her to shrink back like physical violence never would have, her face suddenly stripped of its anger and recast with fear. Regret was instant on his tongue. “Shit!” He said, “Henrietta,” and reached out for her, because he needed this in a thousand different ways. But it was too late. She’d already turned on her heel, a complicated roil of feeling growing like sickness in her stomach, alongside a determination not to touch him again. And she didn’t, not for many months.

* * *

It was summer on the wheel again, and Henrietta and Allmon were tasked with driving a pair of two-year-olds to the training center the day before the yearling sale. It was a wet Friday morning with continual, sourceless mist obscuring the lineaments of the buildings, so that the horses and grooms and riders seemed to traverse here and there behind a damp and billowing veil. They were quiet as librarians in the haze, shushed by the soft weather. This was a sly rain, never hard, yet insinuating itself until everything was saturated. The sideways, gossamer weather made continual inroads against the indoors — moisture seeping through dykes of hay to dampen the earthen floors, concrete slickened and made dangerous, tiny runnels steering around bits of straw and manure toward cracks in the doors and stall walls. The grooms shivered in their work, though the day was not cold. The horses smelled like wet dogs.

Outside, the world was a headlong green, a green that weighted the trees, the leaves heavy on the boughs like mossy green coins gathered dangling and dripping in suspended nets. It called to mind Irish days Henrietta had seen when she traveled to Coolmore Stud on prospecting trips with her father. Everyone spoke of the incomparable green of Ireland, but it was no more green than Kentucky. It was a color to crack the code of life.

When they reached the center, Allmon unloaded the fillies one by one, he and Henrietta speaking no unnecessary words. They had long maintained a terse working space in which nothing warm grew — glances dropped before eyes met, conversation withered on the vine. If Henrietta’s desire wasn’t dead, it was dormant, and familiarity had dulled the sharp edges of their history.

She waited for Allmon beside the truck until the mist began to form fat droplets that threatened a downpour. Just as she was stepping onto the runner, about to swing herself up into the driver’s seat to restart the engine, a hesitant voice caught her. “Miss Forge?”

She turned and eyed a slim man of indeterminate age, his face marked and lined by a lifetime of working with horses in the elements. Raffish blond hair fell forward over thick brows but did nothing to obscure the nervousness in his worried eyes.

“Yes?” she said sharply.

“I, uh — I…” He edged forward into her airspace. “I’m wondering if I might could show you something. I’m Tony. I’ve worked with some of your horses.”

“What do you want to show me?”

He shoved his hands down into his jean pockets then and indicated with his head. “On the other side of the training center. It’ll only take a second.”

“The other side of the—” she said. “What is this? I’m busy.”

Allmon’s voice interrupted them. “What’s going on?”

“Oh.” Tony looked surprised, discomfited by this other presence. His eyes swung between the two of them, hesitating briefly, but then he continued on down the path he had chosen. “Listen,” he said. “I got to tell somebody who can do something about this … situation. A woman, you know.”

Henrietta found herself pinned by the severity of this man’s gaze amidst the bustle and business all around them. “Well…” She glanced briefly at Allmon, who shrugged blankly. “I guess,” she said, “but we only have a minute.”

He nodded. “Meet me at the utility entrance on Rand Road in ten minutes.”

Two minutes later, they were idling on the far side of the training center, eyeing culverts converted to streambeds choked with hairy grasses and leaves. A heavy mist moved slowly forward and back as if the air itself were breathing. Light escaped the clouds and found the wet on everything and sparked off each blade of grass. Just as Allmon was beginning to shift around impatiently in the silence, the man appeared, his face flush with color, his pant legs soaked from running across the acreage. He stood there huffing while Henrietta cut her engine and Allmon slipped from the passenger seat with his brows raised.

Tony popped his ball cap once and wiped his forehead. “I got to show y’all a horse.”

Henrietta made a face. “A horse?”

“A beat horse.”

“Do what?” said Allmon. The hair prickled at the back of his neck.

The man nodded. “You know that new trainer under Mack? That dude they brought out from California with the horn-rimmed glasses? Well, he beat the shit out of a horse yesterday. Tiny Tim. We couldn’t get him to work the gate and he was biting all the handlers. Well, this dude fucking took this bat thing and beat the everloving shit out of him. Cracked him over his head, right between his eyes. I saw it myself, I mean I was standing right there, just standing there. I guess I was in shock, you know?”

Incredulous, Henrietta said nothing, so the man gestured toward Allmon, who started forward immediately, and the three of them moved toward the outbuildings on the rear of the property.

“It was nuts,” the man continued. “The dude bit his ears when he went down.”

“What?” Henrietta laughed an awkward, disembodied laugh, and Allmon cut her a hard look. The laugh made him sick to his stomach.

“You don’t know that old trick? To get a colicky horse to stand up? You tug on their ears. Well, he bit him.”

Now they were standing at the side of a small white stone stable Henrietta and Allmon had never seen before, far beyond the concentric dirt tracks of the training center, past the hay and grain storage. It was clearly never used, with ragged sheets of old white paint peeling from the grimy stone walls and soggy, blackened hay scattered down the aisle. Tony made an abrupt, rotating turn on his heel, glancing furtively in all directions, then led them into the dank and shadowy barn. It smelled of old, wet wood and housed four stalls, three unoccupied. The fourth contained the horse. Quietly, carefully, they approached. At the sound of their feet, the massive creature whined and struggled to press his enormous, quivering bulk into the far corner of the stall. His rear legs bent as if he were trying to force himself into a box half his size. He appeared ready to sink down into the straw.