Dante of the Maury River (13 page)

“I’ll make a call,” Mrs. Eden said. “No promises.”

And so ended my career as a racehorse. The pedigree needed champions to win and stallions to breed. I was neither.

T
he bloodlines granted me two last favors that day at the track. First, Filipia had showed up. She was still living in Virginia and had read I’d be racing. Second, she had succeeded in persuading Mrs. Eden to call up a nearby Thoroughbred retirement program. They had room to spare and were already on their way to the track for two fillies.

Though it was tempting to get down in the jowls about being all used up at age five, I knew life could have turned down a much harder road.

Why, just that very evening along the backside they’d had to put down the winner of the state derby. She was a horse in the wrong place at the wrong time. She’d hardly cooled down from her race when the fireworks finale went up and scared the lights out of that big bay filly. She reared, and it was a grotesque sight to witness her strike a pole with her head, then twist and turn and injure herself to the point of no return. Life quickly drained out of her, and though her trainer eased her suffering in the final moments, her ending was a sad and sorry shame. They say she was on her way to becoming a true champion. A gal that could run with the boys. A tragic ending, for sure. God love that filly. Her racing career ended that day, and her life did, too.

Somehow, though, I’d been spared. I had been blessed early and often, showed my backside to destiny, yet the second chance shifted my way because Filipia loved me.

We had very little time for good-byes. Mrs. Eden and Gary were visibly relieved to let me go.

With tears in her eyes, Filipia walked me to the trailer. “Melon always says that God’s greatest act was to make one day follow another. Tomorrow is a new day, Monkey.”

Straight from the track in Virginia, three of us worn-down racehorses rode away together. The other two passengers, both fillies, were at least a hand smaller than I was and quieter, too. The bay one resembled Marey. The red was all red and not a spot of white. She took after Covert.

Neither filly touched their hay. Not a bite. They couldn’t hardly lift their heads to look out the window, much less pull hay. There wasn’t much to see out on the road, anyway. Not a mountain in sight. Nor a hill that could make me think of home.

As we didn’t have a terrible far distance to travel, I got to smelling their hay, and it seemed a shame to let it all go stale, especially since both the fillies’ nets were within my easy reach.

Neither one put up a lick of fuss at sharing. That’s how I knew they were in a world of hurt. I could only hope that the place we were headed would look kindly upon all three of us.

Long about dusk, the trailer stopped, and we unloaded. I was downright stunned to find that the entire farm was enclosed by a tall barbed-wire fence. Nobody would be breaking out of there.

The handlers led us to a brick barn with cement floors. Our hooves struck the ground in alternating beats and set off a welcoming chain of whinnies and nickers down the lane. There must have been twenty Thoroughbreds, all former racers, already living in that big barn.

They led me to a stall at the very end on the corner, next to a chestnut about my size who had his nose to the wall and his rear toward the door. The bay filly was placed across the aisle. She was even dimmer in the eyes than at the start of our trip. As soon as she took her first couple of steps, I could see that she was off. Lame.

The night men tossed a flake of hay in each of our stalls and filled up two buckets each with water. “Welcome to Riverside Maximum Security Correctional Center,” said the man leading me. “Also known as prison.”

I
n the daylight, the new place was full of horses and men. The men they called offenders all wore the same type of denim britches, and they worked under the watchful eyes of other men called guards, who carried guns, so I tried hard to be good.

We retirees in the program had seen everything there was to see. Seen glory and agony. On the track, when a horse broke down a stride or two ahead of you, what choice was there but to go over, under, or around. I’d seen a whole lot worse, too. Things no man or horse should ever have to see.

And yet, there I was. Standing on four feet. Breathing in fresh air and trying to fathom finding a second chance and wondering what on earth I might do with my remaining years if not race. And wondering if I could ever learn to do anything else.

I saw plainly that Mrs. Eden had sent me to retire on a Virginia prison farm where, it seemed to me, fallen horses and fallen men landed with a thud. Everybody inside needed some kind of fixing or correcting or rehabilitating. Somewhere along the way, somebody had gotten the idea that we could help one another.

The purpose of bringing second-chance hopefuls like myself into the prison environment was to test out this idea that, maybe somehow, broken men could help broken horses, and vice versa. Take my situation. Pretty simple. I needed a place to live and someone to care for me. The men confined to the prison farm had time to learn and time to give.

Now, the main elements of the retirement program included (1) make a good match between a man and a Thoroughbred, (2) teach the man how to care for and understand horses, and (3) help the ex-racehorse just be a horse. I didn’t reckon the fourth goal would ever apply to me: adopt out the ex-racehorses into forever homes, where we could live out the last, oh, twenty-five or so years of our lives.

The success of this whole experiment turned on the idea that friendship and structure would put the horses and the men back together. Rebuild confidence and make us whole again.

Right away, I started learning and unlearning. The woman in charge, Miss Bet, said the main thing I needed to figure out was how to be a horse. She recommended that after all I’d been through, what I deserved was time off my toes, grazing in the sunshine. Experiencing what it felt like to nuzzle and nicker and stand and graze.

Don’t know that I deserved anything but what I had gotten, especially for not holding up my end of the bargain and being unable to keep my promise to Marey. My siblings were out there winning, doing their part, and, I supposed, Grandfather Dante was helping them along, the way he had tried to help me.

About every week somebody or another would come visit the prison program, shopping for a horse with good bloodlines to adopt. Folks came by seeking a mare that might make a fine hunter or even emerge into a good jumper. Other visitors were in the market for a Thoroughbred to make their pasture look more beautiful. I turned a few heads, but nobody called me in from the paddock.

Miss Bet had some preplanned messages that she liked to deliver to potential new owners. I liked listening to her lay down the law of the off-the-track Thoroughbred like only Miss Bet could do.

“I don’t need to tell you that these horses are highly specialized. Everything in their breeding, their upbringing, and their training is oriented to a life on the track. I know we’re at the dawn of the Thoroughbred revolution, but you can’t expect to throw a saddle on an OTTB and put them to work. That’s a risky venture for all involved, especially the horse.” She’d often start with something along those lines.

“I know,” visitors would typically say. “I’m ready for a more advanced horse.”

“Is that right? Stall number twenty literally bit off Ralph’s thumb last Friday. Well, almost took it off. He doesn’t like pitchforks. Care to imagine why?”

“Oh, I can imagine. That’s why I’m here.”

Then, if her guest flashed a glance toward me, and they often did, because what can I say, people like black horses, she’d warn them off. “You noticed the black gelding behind you? He’d as soon kick your ankles from under your knees as wait for you to set his grain bucket down.”

Oh, I knew my future read bleak as far as any hope for getting adopted from the program.

Now, Miss Bet and some nice volunteers from the community trained the men to work at a high level directly with us track retirees. Every horse had a man assigned, and they all received training, but something about my propensity to kick, charge, and threaten made Miss Bet think I needed a different type of handler. Lucky for me, such a man had made his own mistakes and landed himself at Riverside and right outside my stall door.

First time I met John the Farrier, he stood at my door just staring at me. Not talking up a blue streak. Not holding a feed bucket. Looking directly at me.

I found his overall demeanor on the threatening side. Lucky for him, he kept on his side of the stall door. Had he stepped into my personal space, staring me down as he was, my snaking head would have only been the start of his troubles.

I figured I’d best send a clear and swift signal to this fellow so if he ever did get a mind to enter my space, he’d think twice. I wasted no time. I spun on my haunches and kicked the holy Hades out of the door, with him standing right there.
Bam-bam-bam
. I just slammed my two back hooves up against that door till it rattled. Then I reloaded and fired off another quick round. John the Farrier jumped back like a grasshopper.

Enough said, I figured, so I gave him my backside and enjoyed myself some hay. Hardly any ways into my peace, here he came back again. Looking directly at me, again.

What he did next surprised the fierce right out of me. John cleared his throat and started up with a song. Crooning at the top of his lungs to me about walking on through wind and rain and all sorts of trouble.

His voice was terrible. In a sort of involuntary protest, my back leg raised up to kick out whenever his notes went sharp. Creaking and cracking and pitching up and down, he sang on. Loud. Sure. And right to me.

Every time his voice wavered I could feel the struggle in him. A kind of inside suffering that was familiar to me. The determined lyrics and his melancholy tone spoke to my heart. Maybe even woke up a part of my heart that I had stomped down. I recognized in John some of the same voices that lived deep in me.

Not good enough.

Not wanted.

A failure and a disappointment.

I recognized something else, too. There was a big difference between that broken man and this broken horse. John the Farrier was trying. I had already given up.

I nodded my head and, awful as those rancid notes sounded, I hoped he’d keep singing, because John revealing himself to me and not caring if he was perfect or even good enough sounded like an invitation and a promise. When he finished, the two of us stood still. Watching each other. I curled my nostrils toward him. Sure enough, from somewhere on his person wafted the aroma of peppermint.

I nickered.

“May I come in now?” he asked me.

I prided myself on having cultivated the habit of showing respect when it was first shown me, so I stepped back, and so began our good partnership.

Before he found trouble, John had worked around the region as a farrier, shoeing and trimming ponies and horses. In addition to working on our feet, one of his main jobs inside the prison was to reeducate us about being under saddle.

In racing, I had used one gait predominantly: fast. With a pocket full of peppermints and a repertoire packed with praise, John managed to get me tacked up and himself perched in the saddle. I had my reservations about John. Being a good farrier does not a good rider make, necessarily. John could ride about as well as he could sing. The tension in his jaw let on that he had some reservations about me, too.

Miss Bet had tried to warn him. “He’ll have better focus if you longe him before work. To help him soften up,” she said, but he ignored her advice.

I tried to oblige him, but every time I’d pick up the pace, he’d lose his balance, pitch forward on my neck, and then pull back tight in my mouth.

He cooed soft sounds, trying to fend off impending disaster, which I believe he knew was coming. “Good boy, good boy. That’s it. Relax,” John said.

But when he pressed his bony ankle into my side, I bucked him right off. I’ve never liked pointy things. Not needles. Not ankles.