The Sport of Kings (84 page)

It's when he moves out again into the moon-addled night, where the stars are slowly waking and stretching, that he sees her. She seems only slightly more real than the shadows around her, a flicker of blacker black in one of the paddocks. He knows it's her; she's unmistakable. Allmon is there in an instant, unlocking the gate and swinging it wide, stepping inside onto the soft carpet of pasture grass. He moves with unshakable resolve toward his decision, he can actually feel the revolving of the earth grating against the steadiness of his own body. But he realizes suddenly how light he must appear in the darkness, still wearing his gray Snyder Barns polo under the bright May moon with its mock shock face, how Hell is almost certainly watching him. No sooner does he realize this than he hears gladiator breath and her hooves on the ground, thudding a syncopation that coalesces to a duple rhythm, her war beat rising, rising until it's almost upon him, and he raises a blindman's pistol, committed, absolutely committed, but when he fires at her left leg, she keeps coming wounded or not, and he throws himself to the ground, so she thunders by him or over him, he doesn't know which, but he feels the heavy, fluttering weight of her passage as powerful as anything he's ever felt, and now she's gone, beating her drum across the brick chip lane and down the manicured lawn until she finds the concrete of the road, where she beats her drum out into the wider, waiting world.

Shaken, Allmon picks himself up off the ground with bits of timothy grass clinging to his clothing, gun still in his hand. Everything's all right, it's all right, whether Hell is wounded or not.
F
is for failure but it's not failure if she's free, and now he's halfway through his labors. He carefully eases the hammer forward and slides the piece into his pocket, moving out of the paddock with renewed focus, no trembling in his hands. He knows what he has to do.
F
is for felony, and felony is for fire. All he needs is an accelerant.

The sheds, the outbuildings, yes. He slips into the first and nudges the switch with a calloused thumb—no, this is hay storage, how could he have forgotten so quickly? It's in the second, the one immediately next door, yes, here, the building with the mowers and the old Ford diesel truck and the gasoline along the wall in bright red plastic cans. He looks around with cold calculation for an old jar, a bottle, something—or this, an empty glass juice bottle flung into a recycling bin. He tears a rag from his own shirt, soaks it with gasoline, twisting and pressing it into the bottle, using one of his own shoelaces for a wick. Now, revolver in one ass pocket, bottle in the other, and a gas can in each hand, Allmon is on his way out the door, unrelenting passage through the night, back along the barns, toward the rear of the house. But before he reaches his destination, he's suddenly stalled by a yawning sense of the unfamiliar, of something known once but now forgotten. The ground beneath him is spongy and forgiving, newly so. Didn't there used to be a windbreak here? Confused, he stops in the garden by the slight movements of a ragged, sun-bleached scarecrow. He realizes he's trampling new growth, all lined out in flowering order at his feet. Allmon stands in the perfectly arranged, greening rows. To his right he detects the familiar dark orchard, all the tender boughs swelling with potential. Something heavy hangs in the air like the scent of musk or myrrh. Summer is near.

Before him, the first story of the house spills a golden light so warm, he can almost feel it on his skin. It's like a gold dessert cup, in which the rest of the house rests. He thinks, they're so rich, they live their lives in that beautiful golden cup, but I never got to drink from that cup. All I ever got to drink was their spit.

The cool, seductive silence of the garden pulls him backward. Nothing bad can happen in this dark, amniotic space between bursts of sun. Do I have to go ahead, do I really have to go in there?

His mind reels back in time, fumbling for the moment when it all went askew, when his feet wandered from the path, when his world was wholly upended.

Why me, Reverend? Why now?

Because if they can't see color in the night, you got to light up the dark.

Be not afraid.

When Allmon moves forward, his whole being is a prayer for strength. He places one gas can on the limestone steps and reaches out in the darkness for the knob on the back door.

Henry Forge, you are hereby sentenced to death.

He's prepared to jigger the lock or break the glass, but it's unlocked. Disgust overwhelms him. They're so confident, so entitled, they steal your child and then leave their mansions unlocked. They're so ignorant, they don't realize they're gambling even when they toss down the dice on the goddamn baize. He walks straight into the narrow back el of the kitchen, straight into the room where he first met Henrietta. He's almost swamped by the memory of her against him, open under him, of her presence accepting him into her. They were as real as life together, as real as children. But he presses her back violently, just as he did in life. And she's dead again.

The house is utterly still, even though the lights are on. They must be asleep upstairs, Henry Forge and Allmon's son. He pours gas as he walks right up the slave staircase that rises narrowly to the second floor. He won't bother with the attic. The second floor will rise up to kiss all the dry and dusty combustibles that lie just beneath the roof. Henry's stored treasures will make for perfect kindling.

Everywhere, everywhere the markings of wealth appear as he begins his work, splashing gas onto the waxed hardwood floors, careful to avoid the wool rugs that won't ignite as quickly. Big dressers to the ceilings and cabinets with lavish knickknacks hold no meaning for him, velvet drapes and old indigo coverlets, curvy cherry furniture that gleams dry but positively dances under gasoline. While one gas can waits impatiently in the hall, he enters every room with his revolver in hand, seeking that most precious antique, Henry Forge, and splashing gasoline everywhere he is not found. But he only encounters Henrietta in these private spaces. Here is a woman's bedroom with silk blankets. Here is a child's room, perhaps once her room, now their child's—oh God, for a moment he can barely believe the child is truly his—but the crib is empty. A mobile dangles above it. He was once that child; so was she; they made one of two. Against rising anguish, Allmon splashes gas across the past and then takes care to pour extra in the bathrooms, where the acetone and mouthwash and rubbing alcohol will pop their bottles like little bombs. Burn down this world. Burn down what I did to her—

Pour it out, Allmon, don't swallow it down anymore.

Pour it out so that light may shine in the darkness.

Bring me my child.

Allmon's blood begins to boil over flames of regret and fury, and now he's moving more quickly, jogging down the front staircase, and swinging around the carved newel with one can of gas remaining. He's getting close, but so is she. She's almost on him, and to his relief, he realizes he no longer has an out, or a choice. The moment has come. But he doesn't find Henry in the foyer with the gas-splashed clock, or in the parlor with its two divans huddled together and begging to burn, or in the formal dining room with its damask chairs now dark with stains, or in the second sitting room, where Allmon rips the drapes from the windows and heaps them for a pyre. Now there is only one room left unexplored, the old back study by the kitchen, the office where Forge keeps the books and ledgers, where Allmon signed the deal, where the devil snatched his soul. The door is wide open. In his hastiness, Allmon had passed it on his walk up the back stairs. Now he stands silently at the threshold. Inside on the long Chesterfield, his body curled around the form of Allmon's child, Henry Forge is asleep. A fan whirs. A bottle of bourbon rests on the desk.

Allmon steps into the room and raises the gun, but then realizes he hasn't cocked it. He pulls the hammer back with the thumb of his free hand, there is an audible click, and Henry's head rises from the pillow of his arm with a start. He turns confusedly toward the light in the doorway and sees the hard shadow standing there.

A startled, strangled sound escapes his lips.

“Get away from my child.”

It takes Henry a moment to realize that this dream is not a dream, so at first there's only the relief of suspended time, wherein anything might happen, or nothing at all. The sheer unreality of it offers a brief chance at salvation. Then Allmon takes two steps into the room, aiming the gun at Henry's head with the advantage of the light behind him. Henry can't see the gun in the dark, but he knows it's there. Instead of rising and following orders, he half slides and half tumbles to his knees beside the sofa, and with his back to Allmon reaches his arms around Samuel, who is startled out of sleep but not yet crying.

“Don't hurt him!” Henry cries. Despite his age, his arms are like iron bands around the child. “Kill me—but don't hurt him!”

Words won't save you now, Henry Forge, the old language is dead.

Allmon's voice is steady, steely. “That's exactly what I'm going to do. Now get the fuck up.”

Suddenly Samuel is hauling air, shrieking up at the ceiling and flinging his chubby arms out to the sides, and Henry refuses to remove the shield of his body from his grandson.

Startled by the sound, a sudden rage threatens to shatter Allmon's composure. He realizes he can't handle the gun and the baby at the same time. “Pick him up!” he barks, suddenly confused. “Pick him up right now!”

It takes Henry a moment to realize he's being offered a reprieve, then he clumsily sweeps Samuel against his chest, Samuel who is struggling in fright, pummeling the air with his fists, his eyes wide.

“Walk outside. Now!”

Henry does as he is told; he carries Samuel straight out of the study, straight through the blindingly bright kitchen and into the swallowing dark of the Kentucky night.

“Straight back!”

Henry moves as hastily as he can without dropping his grandson, stumbling back toward the garden with all of its geometric, fragrant rows, which he arranged in hope of a future. Its order seems an absurdity now.

Allmon looks wildly about, and when he sees the scarecrow, he points. “Right there, right there.” His body has instinctively led them to this place. “Put him down!” he orders.

“No.” It sounds like a one-word answer, but then Henry says, “You'll have to kill me first.”

Now rage overtakes him. “I AM GOING TO KILL YOU!” Allmon heads him with the butt of the gun, not hard enough to knock him out, just hard enough to bring the older man to his knees. Samuel spills out of his arms like a sack of kittens and rolls facedown in the dirt, screaming, and in the light that shines from the kitchen door, in the finely carved lineaments of Henry's face, Allmon sees Henrietta staring up at him, blood trickling down one temple.

He rears back and gasps for air as Henry swoons, then reaches down and draws Samuel toward him, panic rising that he's hurt his child. Samuel's little white T-shirt separates from his diaper and twists up around his neck. His cries are ear-piercing, but he's unhurt when Allmon lifts him from the dirt with his free hand, clutching him desperately against his abdomen so the child is struggling and flopping sideways and screaming as the soil on his face mixes with tears.

Still on his knees, Henry says, “Careful with his neck.”

Allmon turns on him, his eyes furious. “This is my son! You stole my son!” He can't control the sound of anguish, which echoes across the fenced fields.

Though dazed and broken, Henry's voice is almost absurdly calm, and from the calm emerges his eternal refrain, “He is my…” But he can't finish; he chokes on it. New words rise with a will all their own, and he can't withhold them. “I am sorry.” He feels their truth like another blow.

Allmon almost spits on him when he stares him down and blurts, “You ain't sorry; you ain't nothing!” But his son is struggling in his arms, and he doesn't know how to do this, he's never held a baby before. He lets Samuel slide awkwardly down his leg to drop unceremoniously to the ground again about six feet from Henry, upon whom Allmon now advances. His body is lethal, pure menace, and when Henry looks up at him, squinting through blood that oozes from a cut above his right eye, the fear on his face is clear as day.

The fear there startles Allmon, but his words are unrelenting. “Take off your belt!”

Henry does as he's told, and Allmon snatches it out of his hands so it whips and snaps like a snake. His motions are growing wild now. If he can move quicker, stoke more anger, maybe he can stave off what's rising, some change he senses. He shoves the older man backward, then kicks at him to get him moving, so Henry scrambles back until he runs into the old post on which the scarecrow hangs. Henry's eyes are locked on Samuel as he's bound to the post with his own belt.

It won't hold, it's not enough, so Allmon whips off his own belt and cinches it lower, around Henry's abdomen. Now he's tied like a beast for slaughter. Still, Henry's eyes are on Samuel.

“I'm taking my child,” Allmon snarls, but it's not until he returns to the baby, drawing him clumsily to his chest once again and moving away, that a sound rises up from Henry. It's the sound of a mother howling, a woman wailing at the foot of the cross. The wail rises and encircles the farm, it grips Allmon's head round. It travels the rolling pastures, wends through boughs of trees, swings over the old graves and the heads of the dark, startled horses. But Allmon has lived for so long, for more than six lifetimes, he thinks he can move steadily through it. He advances ten paces before he discovers he can go no farther and stops. He removes the bottle from his pocket and has to put the child down yet again. Henrietta's child. He had a chance to learn love with her, but he destroyed it. He goes pale with the knowledge.

It's too late, it can't matter. He's taking what's his—his son and his revenge. When the lady publishes her book, the whole world will understand what this justice means. They'll finally know. He fumbles for the lighter now. He knows the bottle will do its work and blow the house to kingdom come. There's a steady breeze tonight to turn a smoky flame into a conflagration. Allmon winds up and lunges forward like a seasoned pitcher and hurls the bottle through the back door straight to the front wall of the kitchen, where it shatters and lands in bright bits on a spattering of gasoline. So it starts. A swift, softly blooming fire line races up the back staircase until it diverges at the landing, traveling into the separate rooms where the beds and sofas, each in their turn, ignite. From outside, it looks as if gentle, flickering lights have come on in every room. Presently, the drapes go up with a willowing motion as if the fire itself is waving for help. Not a moment later, the bathrooms burst open like fireworks.