Dante of the Maury River (14 page)

A
whole year passed. Different Thoroughbreds arrived and others found homes. Some became jumpers. Some learned to hunt. One old gentleman adopted four OTTBs merely to decorate his hills.

John and I worked every day, helping each other toss out old habits and build up new ones. Much as I loved my friend the farrier, I knew that one day he would earn his way free, and I would be left at Riverside without him.

Until then, with nothing but time on his hands, John set himself to learning how to ride. Miss Bet instructed us almost every day. She also encouraged John to spend as much time with me on the ground as in the saddle.

“Try this,” Miss Bet suggested. “Get out in the field with Dante. Experiment in his world. Stand beside him as he grazes and do what he does. When he steps forward, you step with him. If he picks up his left foot, you pick up yours. Pretty soon you’ll start to feel his center of gravity shift. Awareness, John. Of your body and his. Of your mind and his.”

The farrier was a good student and did exactly as he was told. One day he waltzed into my pasture without a halter and without a single peppermint in his pocket that I could detect. I had come to expect my candy, no getting around that fact. At first, when I didn’t get what I wanted, I stomped my foot. Then I gave John a knock in the shoulder with my head.

“Buddy, I’m empty-handed today. All I’ve got is the gift of time and friendship. If you stop acting so spoiled, maybe a story or a song.”

He reached his hand up to pet my muzzle, and my lips tickled his fingers, still searching for something sweet that was not there. I was about to get real fussy with him when he lightly scratched between my ears at the top of my poll. The place I had the dangedest time reaching myself. At that instant, my overwhelming desire for peppermint surrendered to the good feeling of standing beside my friend in the broad sunshine, listening to him tell me about his family and his mistakes.

“I guess I’m more like you than I thought, Dante. My whole life I’ve lived at two speeds: fast and faster. The fact that I can now walk you around in circles without getting bored or bouncing off the sky, that’s a miracle. I’m talking about a miracle in me, not you. When my mama came to visit me last week, know what she said?”

I sure did want to hear that, and John was going to tell me either way, so I just nodded and kept right on grazing and flicking the flies away with my tail. I let him tell his story at his own pace.

“She told me I looked good and sounded better, calmer, and smarter than I had in all my life. ‘Prison agrees with you, son.’ ”

He laughed and shook his head. “I said, ‘Nah, Mama, working with that black Thoroughbred agrees with me. Seeing him try so darn hard to change his ways makes me try, too. Watching him start to trust me has changed my whole world.’ That’s what I told her, buddy.”

On such bright days, a sense of hope managed to survive in me, but sometimes, when it was cold or gray outside, a cloudy regret hunkered down over me, for no one had shown any real interest in giving me a forever home. It was that kind of a day when John came to the barn, all dressed up, clean smelling, and with his hair fixed up and no dirt under his fingernails. The only thing about him that smelled right was the peppermint in his pants pocket.

“Hey, buddy,” he said, and offered me the candy.

John very likely didn’t even realize how he made a habit of delivering bad news with his next two words.

“Sorry, boy,” he said. “I’m leaving today. One thing’s for sure. I’ll miss ya. I can’t thank you enough for all you done for me. You might not even know the whole of it.” He squinted his eyes even though the sun was hiding behind those dense, smoky clouds. “Never in a million years would I have thought that a horse would help me quit and start and be a better man. But you did. And I thank you.”

Naturally, a part of me wanted to pen him to the wall and keep him there. But I knew the deal. Prison wasn’t supposed to be a forever home for John. Not for me, either. Riverside was intended to be a place where, if we worked on all those parts of us that needed quitting and starting, if we opened our hearts to new possibilities, both of us might possibly get a second chance. If John was leaving for his, well, good for him.

“Chin up, boy. I’ll be around a few more hours. This isn’t our last good-bye. Miss Bet wants to interview me and close out my file.”

As it happened, on the very day of John’s graduation from the school of second chances, a Mrs. Isbell Maiden, from outside of Lexington, Virginia, not Kentucky, visited the retirement program with one of her students, a girl named Ashley.

“Always good to see you, Isbell.” Miss Bet extended her hand to the tall, slender woman. “A little surprised, though. You’ve come an awfully long way and, maybe, to the wrong place if you’re looking for a school horse.”

“Not exactly. Looking for more of a project horse that we can work with over time.”

Everybody that came there wanted a project horse, it seemed to me.

“I’ve got twenty projects for you to choose from. Anybody catch your eye on the way in?”

Miss Bet enlisted John to stick around and help show them three chestnuts — two geldings and a mare. I had raced and beat each of them. Pummeled the geldings. The mare gave me a chase, though. Now, here these three redheads were beating me to another chance.

Not a one of us would be racing again, that’s for sure. Oh, no. In fact, we were all busy undoing everything that we had paid so dearly to learn.

My knees were as straight as the wood planks in my stall. They’d been broken, scraped, and reset to perfection. I had one letter and five numbers tattooed to the inside of my upper lip. Tail to withers, my spine liked to hurt all day and all night. And for what?

For the opportunity to ride around in circles? To be some lady’s project? No, thank you.

Outside, the chestnut with a blaze down the front of his face and withers that sloped like mountains entered the round pen with Miss Bet. I turned one ear toward him. Whenever Miss Bet said “whoa,” he twitched his ears to show her he was listening, and he stopped on a dime.

He’s a good horse
, I thought.
Someone will want him
.

Tacking up that guy didn’t require the same rigmarole as it did for me. When I raised my head again, the girl was in the saddle.

“Try a sitting trot,” Mrs. Maiden called out. The girl bumped along, and the chestnut never broke his stride.

She asked if she could try the chestnut at the canter. I don’t know if the two women saw him flinch, but I sure did. A little tremor ran the length of the red gelding’s back. Hesitation is its own sort of warning.

“You know what? That’s okay, Bet,” Mrs. Maiden said. “Don’t worry about it. We don’t need to see him canter today.” So she had noticed his engine switch on when he heard the word
canter
. One thing’s for sure, OTTBs like speed. We’re bred for nothing but.

Ashley dismounted, and as good as he was at attempting to ignore the itch to keep moving, the chestnut started prancing to the side before the girl could touch her feet to the ground. Miss Bet and Mrs. Maiden had to hold him for her to safely dismount.

“He’s nice,” Ashley said, smiling. “I like him.”

They walked back through the barn, and Miss Bet turned up the sales pitch. She reeled off his statistics: wins, starts, and, of course, dollars.

I didn’t figure I had even earned a look, though my raven coat was showing signs of returning to its former gleam and my weight felt about right. The horse under discussion was not as flashy as I was, but he was better mannered. I lowered my head to find my hay, regretful I had let myself even get interested in this lady and her student.

While Miss Bet and Mrs. Maiden talked, Ashley, who appeared bright and bouncy like Filipia but younger, skipped down the aisle, visiting with each horse. Watching Ashley address each of us with such affection, and observing each horse try so hard, made me happy. For some reason, the old competitive spirit rose up. My ears stood at attention and my heart beat double time. Shoot, I wanted every fine one of us to make a good home. I surely did, but for some reason, I had taken a shine to the girl right away.

My stall was last on the row, and I estimated she’d never reach me. She cooed and kissed at each orphaned horse and read their names and their winnings from the plaques outside the stall doors. ’Course it’s not like the size of our purses mattered a whole heck of a lot anymore, but big winnings never failed to impress. That’s about the only way any of us really had of showing that we had ever been worth anything.

Some of the horses tried to nuzzle her through the bars. Others turned away and put their noses in the corner. Even though I was last on the end, I listened and waited.

“Look how long your ears are,” she said to the dark bay mare.

“Mrs. Maiden, this one has dainty little feet,” she said. “So small and sweet.” The brown gelding nickered.

Finally, she did approach my stall, but one of the guards warned her from coming any closer.

“Look but don’t touch,” he said. “Dante’s not ready for adoption. Might not ever be.” I saw him circle his finger around and around his temple. “Head case.”

The woman, Mrs. Maiden, looked alarmed when she heard that. “Ashley, come back over here by me.”

Everyone has a label, and, I suppose, I don’t really like labels. To me, a man is a man until he is a monster. And a horse is a horse until he’s not.

The girl looked back over her shoulder at me, but I turned away.

“
D
ante?” Ashley broke away from her trainer and ignored the previous warning.

My eye met Ashley’s. A sure look of recognition came over her face as she read my nameplate.

“Dante’s Inferno. I thought so!”

Ashley tilted her head like she already knew me. I had the sensation of wanting to know her, too. The black curly hair and thick eyebrows and dark, lively eyes with a sparkle in them made me recall Filipia.

Ashley ran back to where John, Miss Bet, and Mrs. Maiden were standing, across the aisle. He’s a grandson of Dante’s Paradiso, right?” Miss Bet nodded. “When I was little, I watched him race on TV,” Ashley said.

“Did he win?” Mrs. Maiden asked.

“No, he came in last. But, see, he had a new jockey who didn’t understand him.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because I watched him. I could tell that Dante wanted to stop and look at the track and all the horses, but his jockey whipped him to make him go on. Then Dante started bucking and rearing. He was so lathered by the time they got him to the gate, he didn’t have anything left. I felt sorry for him. I just have always thought that if they had only let him look around until he was ready . . . he would have won.”

“He sounds like a bit of a handful!” Mrs. Maiden said.

“But couldn’t we give him another chance? You’ve been saying that we need a fancy horse who could make it all the way to the A-shows someday.”

“I thought you liked the chestnut.”

“I do, a lot. But everybody has a chestnut. Dante is all black. He’s so gorgeous. I just know he’ll be great.”

Mrs. Maiden returned to give me a closer look. At first, I backed up into the corner and pawed the ground, but then Mrs. Maiden spoke softly, like she meant no harm.

Miss Bet helped me out. “He’s skittish. Not very trusting, at first. I hate to imagine why. But watch this.” Miss Bet unwrapped a peppermint — she always kept one or two in her pocket. Just a whiff soothed me.

“See how daintily he takes the candy?”

Ashley pressed her face to my stall. I lifted my nose to hers. “Oh, Dante! You can learn to be a riding horse, can’t you? A hunter or, maybe, one day a jumper? And we have trails, too! Well, Mrs. Maiden does. She’s my teacher.”

Despite myself, truly, I nickered. That took Miss Bet by surprise and made John laugh. The girl giggled, which made me nicker again. And before I knew it, Ashley was standing in my stall, pressing her nose to mine asking was I happy. Then offering to trade breaths with me.

“Let me scratch your ears,” she said in the kindest way.

“He loves that,” John said. “You might just make a new friend if you keep it up.”

When I didn’t drop my head straightaway, Ashley peered down into me and revived the one single human word that all at once could make me happy and sad and assured and relaxed.

“Monkey,” she said, “you’re twitching your ears like crazy. Everything’s okay.” She combed her fingers through my forelock. “That’s what my mom always calls me, only she’s away right now.”

Ashley called me Monkey. I dropped my head and leaned into her hands.

“That’s a good sign,” Mrs. Maiden said.

“Like I said, the issue with Dante is trust. With time, he could be incredible. I’ll be honest. He’s a big question mark, but he is a gorgeous mover, for sure. If you have the time, I’d love to show him to you.”

Though I’m sure he was ready to leave prison behind, my good friend John didn’t let me down. Despite him being all cleaned up and dressed in street attire, he didn’t hesitate when Miss Bet pressed him into service one last time. He tacked me up and led me out to the small riding ring, then longed me first, as had become our routine and part of his cue for me to settle down.