Dante of the Maury River (26 page)

“All sevens and eights and even one nine. Listen to this. The judge wrote, ‘Exuberant and joyful. Very athletic. Lovely horse; keep him forever,’ ” Claire read. “You’re going to win!”

Napoleon let out the loudest whinny I’d ever heard.

I returned the favor.

John clapped his hands together three times fast. “The ponies are talking to each other. You tell him, Napoleon. Go fast, Dante!” I saw Mrs. Maiden glare at him. “But not too fast.”

Ashley gave me leg, and as we were about to enter the starting box, Dana shrieked, “Wait!”

She came running up to us, waving something in her hand.

“You forgot this. Here.”

Without Ashley’s medical armband, we may not have been allowed on course. The protective vest and the band were easy to ignore, but they served as important reminders that riding cross-country could be dangerous. One slip, one fall, one crash, was all it would take for one or the other of us to get badly hurt. An ambulance and medics were parked right off course, within eyesight, a reminder to me to take every care to bring the girl right back around to home.

With her medical information affixed to her arm, Ashley said, “Thanks, Mom. Love you.”

“Me too, you. Hey, have fun.”

Ashley nodded. She started back toward the course, but then veered off again. “Whoa.”

Her heartbeat and breathing felt normal. I couldn’t figure out what might be wrong. Ashley took a big swallow of air and sighed it out long. “Dante, I just want to say thanks.”

I sensed some hesitation in her voice.

“See home, way off in the distance?” Something had changed in her. There on the hilltop, it was Ashley who had the look of eagles.

From where we stood, the whole world reflected nothing but mountains in a perfect circle around us. Ashley was right. Due west of where we were standing was the unmistakable double-peaked top of Saddle Mountain, looking every bit like nature’s tree-lined expression of a dressage saddle. Just knowing that our hodgepodge of a herd was on the other side, grazing and, I hoped, thinking of us, well, that surely helped to build my confidence.

“Almost every day of my whole life I have seen Saddle Mountain,” Ashley said. “I don’t know what I’d do without it. Whenever Mom’s gone, I miss her so bad. Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night and look out my window and ask the mountain to keep her safe. That doesn’t make any sense, does it?”

Made perfect sense to me. I myself had taken to doing much the same thing. Wasn’t hard to find inspiration and take a lift from all the life in and around the mountain on days when I was feeling too tired and too sore to do much but eat, drink, and rest.

“Anyway, I’m riding for home today, Dante. For all of us. Who are you going for, Monkey?”

She hadn’t called me Monkey since the day we met. The affection in her voice circled me up and the moment suspended, as time had on the icy February night of my birth. No fog rolled in and no starry path materialized on the horizon.

But in my knowing eye I saw Marey, Grandfather Dante, Melody, and Filipia. All of them loving me and believing in me. At last, my grandfather’s words made sense to me. All of this learning and unlearning and relearning had led me right to three great tests after all: dressage, stadium jumping, and cross-country.

“Sixty seconds,” the timekeeper at the starting box said, giving Ashley a warning.

She picked up the reins, and we turned toward the start. Her heart was racing now and mine was following. The cross-country course looked so much bigger than our measly-weasly one at home. The jumps not only looked taller but the terrain was steep and the distance farther than I had gone in a long little while. I danced around and came up off my front feet just a touch. For a jiffy, I panicked. Ashley would be the one who could see the whole course, not me. I’d have to trust her more than I had even trusted Filipia.

“Thirty seconds!” the timekeeper shouted.

Ashley bent forward and whispered to me, “There’s a little creek down there for us. Let’s go play in the water, Dante.”

One mile. Fourteen jumps. Two splashes through water and the entire course unfolding alongside the Maury River, surrounded by our blue mountains.

“Ten, nine, eight!”

It was our time to show up, and our time to win, but I froze.

Now, the Belgian would have thundered down the first hill like a charger into battle. Gwen would’ve bided her time, set herself up for each obstacle in its right time. Daisy? For sure, she would’ve paused first to recall an ancient tale about a Celtic pony who flew like an angel over the rough and dangerous landscape. And Napoleon. The little guy would have powered through the course like his life depended on it.

“Seven, six, five, four!”

What would a racehorse do?
I asked myself.
Will this OTTB traverse over wide-open land at full throttle just to get through it, come the devil or high water? Or will I give myself over to a full partnership with Ashley?

“Three, two, one, zero!”

And we were off.

Like I did in my very first race, I stumbled out of the start box. My two front knees grazed the grass, but Ashley lifted my head with the reins and raised herself slightly out of the saddle. “Up, up, up, Dante. Here we go.”

She wouldn’t let me canter, at first, but posted right purposefully to keep me at the trot. I heard Mrs. Maiden yell, “Good girl, Ashley. Let him settle.”

She was riding smart, and I was glad, otherwise my natural inclination would’ve whirled us around and raced us back to the trailer.

“Log jump first. Just like home,” Ashley said, and we sailed. “Nice.” She almost sounded surprised.

We cantered to the rolltop and took it with ease, then Ashley brought me back to the trot again.

As we neared the bottom of the first hill, I caught sight of a brushy spread. Problem was, I couldn’t judge how deep it was, and I thought I might fall into a powerful-strong state of colic. A little part of me considered that perhaps if I refused then, maybe Ashley would quit, give up, and we could go home. But I was more afraid to face Daisy than to give it a try.

I had quit on the track many, many times. I wasn’t going to quit on Ashley. We might crash the jump, but I was going.

Napoleon whinnied his little heart out. “Lift and hurl, Dante!”

On the approach, Ashley picked up the canter and began counting. “One, two. One, two.”

She kept both legs on me, and in the right perfect spot she rose into her two-point.

“Got it! Good boy! Almost to the creek.”

With every jump my confidence was growing. I could feel that Ashley’s was, too.

We trotted into a cool, shadowy narrow strip of pines, flushing small birds and rabbits as we passed through. As we exited the woodsy part of the course, my eyes needed time to adjust back to the sunshine. Ashley slowed down a bit. Up ahead, I saw the next obstacle: log jump–two strides–log jump. Ashley finally asked for the canter, and she was smiling. I knew why: because I was cantering not galloping, just like she’d asked.

I took a long spot over the first of the two logs in the combination, and Ashley lost a stirrup. She managed to stay on, and we got over the second one clean. She picked up her stirrup and let me run across the flat stretch toward the creek.

“Let’s play, Dante! Are you ready?” Ashley dialed me down from a canter to a forward trot through the creek. I flicked my feet to make the water splash us both and I whinnied for more water, but before I could even attempt to misbehave, she flashed her crop.

Once out of the water, the scariest obstacle yet, a stone wall, presented itself on the course. “Nailed it,” Ashley said as we popped right over and cantered away.

We rolled back, picked up two more easy fences, and headed toward the creek for our last pass through. This time, I snorted as we got close because I was so happy and the water felt so good.

“Dante, you’re crazy.” Ashley started grinning and kept on smiling over a brick wall, a variety of brushy verticals, log jumps, and one last combination.

Off in the distance, up near the start, our Maury River Stables family looked small and far away, but I could still hear Napoleon’s voice and the cheers of our people, calling our names.

By then, I could feel that Ashley’s smile was about to come off her face it was so broad. I got a good spot over the last jump, and we had one thing left to do to finish.

“Run, Dante,” Ashley said. “We made it. We’re home free.”

Ashley didn’t need to tell me what to do then. Something shifted in me. Out there with her, everything was open and natural and free, and I was a part of everything. Nothing could stop us, and nothing did.

We crossed the finish line to cheering and jumping and hooting and hollering — the sound of my people feeling happy. Noise I had come to love. Maybe, finally, I had figured out what it means to use your heart.

O
r, maybe I hadn’t figured out anything at all.

Oh, for sure, over the next two years Ashley and I went on to achieve more than anyone could have expected or even imagined. We rode our way to High-Point Horse and Rider at the Tamworth Springs jumper series. We returned, with confidence and joy, to the Horse Center many a time.

Kentucky Bloodlines
even ran a story on OTTBs, featuring yours truly, Dante’s Inferno, son of Dante’s Beatrice, grandson of Dante’s Paradiso. They sent a reporter all the way to Saddle Mountain to meet and photograph me. That picture, all framed and pretty, now hangs inside Mrs. Maiden’s office with a golden plaque bearing my name.

Heck, we even caravanned to Riverside once when they held an OTTB festival to raise funds for the retired racehorse program. My friend John did not join us, but he asked me all about it later.

Life was, as they say, good.

Success must be a funny, fickle prize. When you think you’ve got it, well, that’s exactly when you don’t. The year I turned ten was the year I learned that as far as I had come, I had that much farther to go.

The real test of my life arrived then. A new horse.

No, not a new horse. An old one. An old, broken-down, going-blind, half-starved all-white Appaloosa without spots showed up to the Maury River Stables in a trailer.

His name was Take-A-Chance; Chancey, they called him. And that’s what Mrs. Maiden decided to do. She hadn’t the heart to send him away, which is exactly what I would have done.

I thought he was too far gone to be of any use or any good to anybody. For two seasons prior, Chancey had been abandoned in a field with no hay, no shelter but for cedar trees, and no water in his tub. Left to die or survive on his own, it seemed. Struggling through barbed wire to reach the Maury River he had cut up his face and legs and entire body. His ribs protruded and his eyes hollowed.

And I, the horse with the largest of hearts, couldn’t stand to look at him. Couldn’t stomach his aging smell or tolerate his feeble voice.

To me, Chancey was no longer a horse. He was a ghost. A lingering reminder that no horse is truly his own horse, and every horse is a dependent.

Chancey was not a testament to trust but to fear, the great fear stored away deep inside each equine: that we will become too much of a burden for our people to carry. That our people will, in the end, forsake us.

If Chancey thought life before the Maury River Stables was hard, life was about to get harder.

Because of his weak blue eyes and the damage that the sun did to his pale pink skin, Mrs. Maiden instructed that on turnout Chancey should always wear a fly mask for protection. Napoleon panicked at the thought of the old horse walking around in the dark. He took to pulling the mask off, and I let him.

The boarders chased the App around the field, much as they had chased me when I first came. As they did Mac, when he arrived, too. But Chancey wasn’t young like the two of us were. Wasn’t strong like us.

When they chased him and bit him and kicked him, Chancey squealed and whinnied for help, but no help came.

The truth is, not only the boarders treated him cruelly and wanted him gone.

I confess.

I admit.

I ask forgiveness, for I participated. I have no excuse save that his condition and his presence frightened me, because he could have been me or Macadoo or any one of us, mares or geldings.

Looking back, I imagine there were times Chancey wished that he had been left alone in his field after all. Except, I imagine wrongly.

Despite my own abhorrence of Chancey, Claire loved him with all her heart. And he loved her back. In time, Gwen and Macadoo came to Chancey’s defense, too, in a way that no horse had ever come to mine. Add jealousy to my sins against him.

What they saw in him, what Claire and Mrs. Maiden saw in him, I did not see.

He had no papers. He was vacant. He hadn’t grace or beauty or speed. He did nothing but take up space and eat our hay.

When Mrs. Maiden rearranged our stalls and situated Chancey beside me, I protested the decision mightily all through the first night — and the second. I kicked our shared wall nonstop, so that I wouldn’t have to listen to Chancey’s labored breathing, reminiscent of the lame mare who had arrived at Riverside with me and was gone by morning. I kicked out so that I wouldn’t have to watch him wince and pace as so many I had met in my racing days, those for whom pain and suffering was a way of life till there was no more life.