A Good Horse Read online

  Jack was friendly—he walked right over and checked my hands, thinking I might have a carrot or a bit of bread. Lincoln came after him, thinking, I was sure, that if there was something, he had first dibs. I patted Jack and slipped the rope around his neck, then I asked him to back up a half step and lower his head, which he did quite agreeably. By the time Lincoln had arrived to nudge him out of the way, I had the training halter on him. I flicked the end of the rope at Lincoln, who tossed his head as if to say, Well, who cares, anyway? He wandered back to the last of the hay. I had Jack step over a couple of times to the right and then a couple of times to the left, just to make sure he wasn’t harboring any mischief. I also had him back up a step or two. He was fine. It was a warm day and he was full of hay. I turned and walked toward the gate, and Jack followed right along, not pushing ahead.

  Daddy and Raymond Matthews were watching us. I wasn’t sure what I wanted Jack to do. Maybe I wanted him to look weedy and small and unimpressive just so that Raymond Matthews would decide that Jack wasn’t worth his time and get in his car and drive away. But I was very used to being proud of his size and strength and grace and speed, and more than that, it wasn’t so much pride as love and amazement. If something was beautiful, you wanted it to keep being beautiful, no matter what. You just couldn’t help yourself.

  Daddy held out his hand, and I gave him the rope. He got Jack to stand up, all four feet flat on the ground and his body balanced over them. He lifted his head but wasn’t extra-alert or ready to bolt—he was just himself. Raymond Matthews walked around him the way Colonel Hawkins had walked around Black George, looking at him from every angle, taking in his haunches and his legs and his shoulder and his neck and head, then doing it from the other side. That’s what horsemen do—I knew all about it. You wanted every part to be right in itself and also to fit in properly with the other parts. For example, you want there to be the proper angle where the head comes into the neck, and you want the neck to taper there. If the neck doesn’t taper and the angle isn’t graceful, they say the horse is “hammerheaded.” The bad thing about being hammerheaded is that the horse has a harder time responding to the bit he’s carrying in his mouth because his neck is more inflexible. The other bad thing is that a hammerheaded horse is ugly, so beauty and grace amount to the same thing.

  And then you want him to have high withers (that’s the bump at the base of his neck, where the back begins), so that the saddle will sit properly on his back and not slide forward while you’re riding. If you trace a line from the withers forward to the most prominent bulge on the horse’s chest, you want that line to not be terribly steep, because the flatter that angle is, the more freely the front legs move. The same thing is true of the lines that run from the hip, which is where the hind leg attaches to the spine; to the point of the buttock, which is just below the base of the tail; to the stifle, which is the joint at the base of the belly; to the hock. These are a kind of spring that the horse uses to leap forward. If the angles in the spring are not too straight and not too acute, the horse moves better and lasts longer. Even the way the tail comes out of the horse’s back is important, because the tail is an extension of his spine and shows how his spine is constructed.

  And then there are legs. Legs are a whole subject of their own. They shouldn’t turn in and they shouldn’t turn out. The joints have to be big but not swollen. The bones have to be sturdy but not ugly. You don’t want any swellings anywhere, and you want the hooves to be big enough to make a secure base, but not wide and flat like plates. Whole books are written about how a horse should look, and how a horse should look was how Jack looked. There was no chance that Raymond Matthews wouldn’t like Jack. The thing I wanted was for Raymond Matthews to not recognize Jack.

  Jack whinnied, as he often did, just to say hi, and Raymond Matthews looked at him.

  He said, “No other colts to play with, huh?”

  Daddy said, “We had another horse here until a few days ago who was younger than these two, and willing to play. Also, Abby here works him three times a week. He’s getting plenty of activity. He works himself, really.”

  “Lots of get-up-and-go?” said Raymond Matthews.

  Daddy nodded. I looked in the other direction.

  Raymond Matthews kept walking around Jack, first one way, then the other. At one point, standing in front of him, he squatted down and stared. That was to make sure that both his knees and both his ankles and both his hooves pointed straight forward—neither knock-kneed nor bowlegged. In fact, he was just the slightest bit knock-kneed. I could see it while Raymond Matthews was looking at it. He stood up and pointed it out, then said, “But I like that in a colt. When the chest grows, the legs will turn outward. What’s important is that they’re symmetrical, and they are.”

  Oh, I thought.

  “May we trot him out? Better still, can we let him run around in that pen you have? I’d like to see him move.”

  It was like he was buying the horse.

  He said, “The mare had a distinct way of moving—very smooth and fluid. Quite often, animals in a certain line move in a similar way, and why not? Conformation and movement are very closely allied.”

  Daddy, Raymond Matthews, and Jack went out the gate ahead of me. It was my job to close it.

  Daddy put Jack in the pen, but Jack just walked around, so Daddy said, “Abby, why don’t you move him a bit for Mr. Matthews?”

  I climbed over the fence with the flag in my hand. As soon as Jack saw me, and it, he flicked his tail and tossed his head. By the time I got to the center of the pen, he was trotting. I heard Mr. Matthews say, “Jaipur, of course, is a beautiful mover. Huge stride. That’s why we bred the mare to him. She had no real conformation problems that had to be compensated for, and he was just a bigger, stronger version of her. Perfect match, really.”

  Jack was trotting around me now, his neck arched, his strides big and elegant. Who wouldn’t want him?

  Daddy said, “How did she do at the racetrack?”

  Mr. Matthews sniffed, then said, “Oh. She had no record at the racetrack.”

  Daddy said, “Really? That’s funny, since I saw that she had a tattoo. I never wrote it down, but I assumed that she—”

  “Oh, she went to the track, but she never raced. Anything can happen at the track. She just had a little accident. But it persuaded us not to risk her value as a broodmare by pushing her.”

  “What was the accident?” said Daddy.

  I was all ears.

  Jack snorted and kicked out.

  “Well, I hate to say it, but she stepped on a nail in her stall, ran it right up into the sole of the hoof and nicked the coffin bone. That kind of puncture wound can be very dangerous.”

  “Sure can,” said Daddy.

  “Took a while to get it right, and then she was always a little off, so we didn’t want to risk anything. And we were right—she was an excellent broodmare. Her four-year-old won again three weeks ago. And the two-year-old is about to have his first start. The trainer is very pleased with him. He’s at Churchill Downs.”

  Daddy said, “Shame the way those mares were treated after they were stolen.”

  “Yes,” said Raymond Matthews. “Terrible thing.”

  “Especially the one mare, the chestnut with the white foot—nice name, too. What was that?”

  Raymond Matthews hesitated a moment, then said, “Oh. Yes. Lucy. Lucy Lightfoot. Yes, terrible thing.” I looked at Daddy. Daddy was looking at Raymond Matthews. “But the other mares and foals?”

  “Oh, they’re fine.”

  “Thank the Lord for that,” said Daddy.

  “Yes, indeed,” said Raymond Matthews.

  “How many were there again?” said Daddy.

  “Four altogether, including Alabama Lady.”

  Daddy sniffed.

  By this time, Jack was trotting around very nicely, and then he lifted into a canter. He stayed to the outside of the pen and extended his stride a little, just for fun. We were all silent a
s we watched him.

  Daddy said, “Of course, a great-looking yearling doesn’t always become a good two-year-old.”

  “Don’t I know it! Sometimes, the ones who get to the races surprise you. Sometimes, the ones who don’t get to the races surprise you.”

  Jack turned as easy as you please and galloped the other direction, then whinnied. Effie and Lincoln whinnied back. I stood there. I felt like I was going to cry. Here we were. Ever since the first letter came, I had been trying to not think about this very moment, this moment when I looked at Raymond Matthews and saw that he saw in Jack just what I saw—a beautiful, strong, special colt. He put his elbows on the fence and stared. Daddy’s lips moved, so I knew he was praying for guidance. After a few moments, he said, “I think that’s enough for the little guy.”

  I stepped backward and Jack turned inward, his ears pricked. He trotted two strides and then stopped in front of me and put his head down. I raised my two forefingers to either side of his head and flicked them. He backed up like he couldn’t wait to do it. Raymond Matthews said, “Your daughter’s done a nice job with this colt.”

  Daddy said, “Yes, she has. She truly has. And the colt’s very fond of her.” No carrot. No stick. I looked at him, but he was staring at Raymond Matthews. Then he said, “Abby, why don’t you put him out now.”

  “Just a second,” said Raymond Matthews. “Do you mind standing him up here?”

  What could I do?

  I stood him up. This time, Raymond Matthews touched him. He went right up to his head and put his fingers in his forelock and felt the cowlick, then he ran his fingers down either side of his mane. Then he looked at his eyes and stepped back. He said, “Thank you.”

  I took Jack and put him in with Lincoln and Jefferson. By that time, they were ready for their hay, so I gave them hay and the mares hay. Daddy and Raymond Matthews went into the house. I went into the house, too. They had gone into Daddy’s office and closed the door. What I did was go upstairs, not to my room but to Daddy and Mom’s room, which was right above the office. I closed that door. I went to the window and opened it, but I couldn’t hear anything because it was cool outside and the windows downstairs were closed. I looked around for a moment, then I went over and knelt by the hot-air return vent in the corner. I could hear them perfectly.

  Raymond Matthews was talking. He said, “… means a lot to my father and me to have found the colt after losing the mare.”

  “But I still don’t see how you can be sure our colt is your colt.”

  “How could he not be? The mare you bought foaled out exactly when our mare was due. The colt looked like the mare and the sire, and has the same markings. Though the sire, of course, has a large white star—quite distinctive, actually.”

  “Our colt has no white markings.”

  “I’m looking at the cowlicks, not white marks. I realize that that makes it a bit more difficult, Mr. Lovitt, but of the brown mares sold by By Golly Sales in November of last year, one was pregnant, one gave birth, and that one came to you. She was our mare. She was stolen. We had paid the stud fee.”

  Now there was a long pause, and Daddy said, “How much was that?”

  “Mr. Lovitt, that was seven thousand five hundred dollars.”

  Daddy coughed, I suppose in preference to falling out of his chair. Me, I fell over next to the heating vent and started to cry. When you expect someone to say “a thousand dollars” and they say seven times that much and more, it’s quite a shock.

  But I couldn’t hear them talking, so I took a deep breath and sat up again. I don’t know what Daddy said when he heard that amount of money. I felt like running downstairs and looking for Mom, but I wanted to hear what would come next, so I stayed right where I was.

  Daddy said, “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, Mr. Matthews—”

  “Me? Mr. Lovitt, we had four mares stolen. We’ve spent a lot of money trying to find them and have them returned. Now, I understand that you would be suspicious. That’s completely as it should be. But I have my driver’s license, my racing license, and Jockey Club membership document, which I’ve shown you. I am who I say I am, and there’s no doubt who the horse is. I hate to have to repeat this to you, but the mare was the only pregnant mare at By Golly Horse Sales, and she gave birth when she was due, which was January.”

  He didn’t sound quite as agreeable as he had.

  “My daughter is very fond of the horse.”

  “And she’s done a good job with him.”

  Chairs were pushed back. There was coughing and heavy breathing, and then Raymond Matthews said, “Look, Mr. Lovitt, would it be possible for me to make a phone call? Long-distance?”

  “I suppose so.”

  Then they went out of the room.

  I lay there on the floor. I could have gone to the top of the stairs and listened in on the phone call, but it wasn’t easy to hide there, so I didn’t. In fact, though, I didn’t really want to hear the phone call. I wasn’t still crying. I felt too bad for that. Then I heard Mom calling up the stairs for me, “Honey? Abby?”

  So I opened the door really carefully, not making a sound, and called out, “I’m in the bathroom! Out in a minute!” Then I sat quietly in the hall until it was time to go down. As I went down the stairs, I saw Raymond Matthews talking, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying, since he had his hand over the receiver.

  Mom and Daddy were sitting at the kitchen table, and I guess Daddy had given Mom the news, because she looked up at me as I came into the kitchen, and she looked sad. Daddy was just staring at the table. He wouldn’t look at me at all. I had to remember that they thought I didn’t know what was going on, so I went over to the refrigerator and opened the door, and bent in as if I were searching for something. I straightened up with an apple in my hand when I thought I could manage to look ignorant.

  But I didn’t have to, because right then, Raymond Matthews came into the kitchen with a smile on his face. He said, “Well, I was lucky—I got hold of my dad and I told him about Abby here, and all you’ve done with the colt, and we talked about it. Sir, this is an animal with great potential, no two ways about that.”

  “You may say so,” said Daddy. “The horse business is always chancy, as you must know.”

  “It is, it is.” He cleared his throat. I sat down at the table, and Mom reached for my hand. Raymond Matthews went on, “Now, we fully understand that you bought the mare in good faith, Mr. Lovitt. What did you pay for her?”

  “Six-fifty,” said Daddy.

  “And you put something into her, shipping her here and taking care of her. So let’s call your investment eleven hundred, no, twelve hundred dollars. And we owe a sort of moral penalty for not being able to hold on to our own horses.” He chuckled. “So, let’s take twenty-five hundred dollars off the stud fee itself. My father is willing to allow you to keep the colt, and he is a valuable colt, and we can send you the papers as soon as he is registered, for five thousand dollars. A Jaipur colt was just sold at the Keeneland July sale for twenty thousand and a filly went for sixteen thousand, which is real money for a filly. Two were sold at Saratoga this year, as well, though I don’t have the prices they got at my fingertips, but—”

  “I understand it’s a valuable colt, Mr. Matthews. I’ll have to think about it.”

  Mr. Matthews sat back in his chair with a smile on his face. He said, “Yes, five thousand dollars is a lot of money.” He looked around the room, and you could see that he was thinking, How are these folks, with this old stove and this old refrigerator and these raggedy barn clothes hanging by the door, going to come up with five thousand dollars, enough for ten used cars or two new ones? Matthews looked at his watch. Then he said, “Of course you should think about it. I’ll be here until tomorrow morning, then I’m off to England again to look at a two-year-old who’s stabled at Newmarket. Nice bloodlines—half brother to Sea-Bird, who won the Epsom Derby in the spring and the Arc just a few weeks ago. Dam died, unfortunately, so this one i
s fairly precious.”

  “Lot of that going around,” said Daddy.

  I didn’t want to know how that mare died.

  “I can call you before I leave in the morning.”

  “Please do,” said Daddy.

  Everyone sat around the table for a few moments after that, the way grown-ups do, as if somehow they will start getting along if they just don’t stand up right away, even though they want to. Finally, we walked him to the white Cadillac. It took him a while to turn that car around, and then he gave us one of those one-finger waves good-bye. I walked to the gate and opened it and closed it for him.

  All the way back to the house, I thought how the hole in the gelding pasture would get as big as the universe once Jack was gone, at least as far as I was concerned. I went over to the gate to pat him, and he looked at me, but the geldings were busy eating their hay, so he didn’t come over to the gate.

  It took me a while to get into the house and hear the bad news.

  Mom was making pork chops for supper, with home-fried potatoes and green beans, all things that I liked. She had them on the table by the time I opened the door (I had stopped to pet Rusty for a while before I went in, and also to straighten the row of boots on the porch, and also to wind the hose by the side of the house—I would have raked the front walk if there had been a rake). I got some dishes and started setting out the plates without her telling me. I wasn’t trying to be good; I was just trying not to think about Jack getting on some van and heading off to Texas all by himself. Sure the farm was the lap of luxury, as Daddy would say. “Gold-handled faucets and silver-plated hay rakes.” Other colts to play with, too—that was good. Yeah, that was good.

  Mom said, “Abby, we’ve made up our minds about something.”

  I nodded.

  Daddy said, “Your mom and I talked about it before, and we talked about it again just now. The colt is expensive. I have to say that I had no idea what stud fees were for horses like Jaipur. It boggles the mind.”