Black Stallion and Satan (3 page)

Alec was leaving the tack room when the barn door opened and Henry came inside. Sebastian barked and ran to meet him.

“I saw the light and figured it was you, Alec. Anything wrong?”

“No. I was just checking up on Napoleon.”

Walking over to the old gray, Henry said, “I’m glad school is about over. Now you’ll be able to get to the track mornings with me.”

Alec stood beside Henry, his hand on Napoleon’s muzzle. “It seems so right to be in this barn, where everything started,” he said quietly. “I know we can’t keep Satan here, but I wish we could.”

Henry turned to him quickly, his face puzzled. But then he smiled and said, “Yeah, it’s different at the track all right. The photographers got me down today, too. But you’ll find it’s not so bad early mornings, Alec. ’Course there are always people around watchin’ every
move we make with Satan. But you’ll get used to it, an’ we got no right to expect anything else now.”

“No, we haven’t,” Alec said slowly. “And it’s what we wanted.”

Henry looked at Alec for a long while before asking, “And now you don’t want it?”

“I didn’t say that, Henry.”

“No, y’didn’t. But I got the idea that’s what you meant.” Henry paused. “Didn’t you?” he asked.

Alec turned away, and it was several minutes before he said, “I don’t know what I want anymore, Henry. I seem to be all mixed up.”

“Maybe you oughta talk about it, Alec. We always have. We’ve never kept anything from each other, have we?”

“No.”

“Well, then?”

Alec turned to him. “Sometimes, Henry, I think of myself as a baby who’s had his pet toy taken away from him,” he said angrily. “I guess I’m unhappy because I can’t have Satan to myself any longer. I tell myself to grow up, that I can’t make a pet of a champion. I put all the cards on the table. I say this is exactly what I wanted. I’m glad Satan is everything we thought he’d be. I knew from the very beginning that, if he was to be a champion, I’d have to share him with others. I knew his training would have to go on, even though I couldn’t always get to the track to ride him. I knew other fellows would be up on him when I wasn’t. Everything made sense … everything was just the way I’d figured it was going to be.” Alec paused, his gaze leaving Henry for Napoleon. “Yet I’m finding it
hard to take … much harder than I ever thought it would be.”

“Hasn’t riding Satan in the big classics made up for a lot, Alec?” Henry asked.

“No … not even that. I feel that I’m just a jockey, and I want to be more than that … much more.” He turned to Henry again, his eyes searching. “It’ll be different this summer, won’t it? I’ll stay with him all the time, and I’ll take care of him, too, Henry. We won’t need any grooms.… There’ll be just the two of us again, and it’ll be the way it was.”

Henry’s eyes studied Alec’s tense face. “Maybe I oughta tell you it will be the same for you,” he said, finally. “But I’m not goin’ to.” He ignored the startled look that came to the boy’s eyes. “You’ve been straightforward with me, an’ I aim to be the same with you,” he added.

“What are you driving at, Henry?” Alec’s words came fast.

“Something I been thinking about for a long time now, Alec. Something I got from just watchin’ you the last six months … that, and what you just said. An’ I want you to listen to what I have to say without flyin’ off the handle. I want you to think this out with me and see if maybe I’m not right about what’s botherin’ you most of all.”

Alec started to say something, changed his mind and waited for Henry to continue.

“When you talk about getting it back the way it was,” Henry began, choosing his words carefully, “I don’t really believe it’s Satan you’re thinking about at all. I think it’s the Black.”

He waited for the outburst from Alec he thought would come. But the boy was silent, so Henry went on, “And Satan or no other horse in the world is goin’ to give you what you had with him, Alec. You might as well accept that now, before you go through life waiting for somethin’ to take you back the way it was … somethin’ that’s never goin’ to happen.”

Napoleon nuzzled Henry’s coat sleeve, pulling it. But the man’s eyes never left Alec as he continued, his voice softer now: “I’m not meanin’ to beat you down. I’m only tryin’ to make you realize that what happened between you an’ the Black comes only once in a lifetime, if at all. He was no ordinary horse, Alec.… He was wild and never clear broke. Yet, for some reason that’s buried within that untamed heart of his, he took to you.

“Then let’s take a look at what you had,” Henry added hurriedly. “Here you were, just a kid, with a wild stallion only you could handle. Your love was bein’ returned by an animal who had love for no one else. The Black was yours, Alec … as much yours as anything could possibly be. Anybody in your shoes would have felt the same way you did. It set you on top of the world.”

“And it spoiled me for anything else. Is that what you mean, Henry?” Alec’s lips were drawn in a tight smile. “Even for Satan?”

“Maybe I do mean that,” Henry returned. “It pretty much depends on how you’re goin’ to look at things from now on.” He paused, shifting uneasily on his feet. “I think you oughta take stock of what you got right now an’ the future that’s lined up for you an’
Satan. He’s goin’ places an’ you’re goin’ along with him. But he’s no one-man horse, Alec, an’ you got no right to expect him to be. Satan can be handled by ‘most anybody. He’s been trained to do what’s expected of him. It’s the way it should be … the only way. And he’s a better horse for it … better than the Black, I mean. He’s got the Black’s speed yet he’s controllable, an’ that’s what makes him the champion he is.”

Taking Alec by the arm, he said, “C’mon down to the tack room a minute.” And, as they walked along, Henry added, “Y’got to realize, too, that Satan is giving you somethin’ the Black couldn’t give you. The Black never could be raced.… He was never meant to set foot on a track with other horses. He ran wild with you in that Chicago match race; you know that as well as I do. He’s no campaigner like Satan, for you’d never know what he might do from one race to another. He’s as apt to fight as run.”

They were at the door of the tack room when Henry stopped and turned to Alec. “And don’t you think for one moment Abu Ishak doesn’t know that, Alec. That’s why he didn’t send the Black over here to race as he said he was goin’ to do when we saw him last fall at the running of the Hopeful. Abu went back to Arabia and thought it over. An’ when he did, he knew darn well it just couldn’t be done. I’ll bet that’s why he hasn’t even answered your letters.”

Henry walked into the tack room, his hand on the boy’s arm. He came to a halt before the picture of the Black. “What I’d do, if I were you, Alec, would be to put this picture away an’ the Black along with it. I’d say
to myself, ‘It was good, but now it’s over. It’s all part of the past.… It’s done, finished.’ ” Henry shrugged his shoulders. “Well, that’s what I wanted to say. You know better’n me whether I been talkin’ through my hat or not. You got to decide for yourself now.”

Henry left Alec alone in the room.

For many minutes Alec looked steadily at the picture without moving; then, finally, he walked forward, lifting it from the wall. He carried it to the old chest and wrapped it carefully in a blanket before putting it inside and closing the lid; then he turned and walked away.

Henry was waiting for him outside the door.

“You were right, Henry,” he said in a low voice. “I’ve been thinking of him all along … wishing it could be the same with Satan as it was with him. I’ve put him away. It’s over, as you say.”

Henry placed his arm across Alec’s shoulders as they walked past the stalls. “We’ll go out to the track early tomorrow,” he said. “We won’t work Satan, but we’ll just hang around with him.”

“When’s the next race, Henry?”

“Not for a month, when we take him to Chicago. He’ll be running against older horses at Arlington Park, but I don’t think he’ll have any trouble if he goes as he did today.”

“He will,” Alec said. “He couldn’t run any other way.”

They had reached the barn door, and Henry had switched off the lights, when they heard footsteps coming up the driveway. Alec was the first to make out his father’s lanky figure in the darkness. “It’s Dad,” he told Henry, and the man turned on the lights again.

Seeing Alec, Mr. Ramsay said, “I’ve been waiting, Alec, but you were gone so long I thought I’d better bring …” He stopped as Henry appeared in the doorway behind Alec. “Oh, I didn’t know Henry was here with you.”

They stepped back into the barn as Mr. Ramsay entered, and their eyes were on the letter he held in his hand. “It’s from Arabia,” he was saying. “It was in the mailbox when we got home.”

“From Abu Ishak?” Henry asked quickly as Mr. Ramsay handed the letter to Alec.

Shaking his head, Mr. Ramsay said, “It seems to be from Tabari Ishak … at least that’s the name on the return address.”

“His daughter,” Henry said, turning to Alec.

The boy was holding the envelope without opening it.

“She could have addressed it for him,” Henry offered. His eyes remained on Alec’s face as the boy opened the envelope and withdrew the letter. Just as he’d told Alec, Henry didn’t think that Abu Ishak would send the Black here to race. But he could be wrong. And, if the Black came, it would change a lot of things … for him and for Alec; maybe even for Satan. So Henry watched with anxious eyes while Alec read.

He saw the ashen white rise, beating every bit of color from the boy’s face. He saw the flood of tears come swiftly and flow unchecked. He saw Alec’s eyes close and his fingers crush the letter within his hand.

It was Mr. Ramsay who took the letter from Alec and straightened it out for Henry to read with him.

It was more than a week since Alec had received Tabari’s letter, and he and Henry were sitting in the cab of their horse van, parked just off the field of the air cargo terminal in Newark, awaiting the Black.

Henry ran his hands over the steering wheel, then turned from Alec to the airport’s beacon light as it cut a wide arc through the night sky. A plane went down the runway, its engines rising to a high and thunderous pitch as it took off.

“I guess I was wrong about the Black bein’ a part of your past, Alec,” he said. “Wrong, all right.”

Alec said nothing.

“But what I said about his not bein’ meant to set foot on a track still goes,” Henry added, turning to the boy.

“I don’t intend to race him,” Alec said.

“You’ll still have to watch yourself with him. I’m rememberin’ y’never had much trouble. But you’ve
been away from him a long time. Things might have changed between you an’ him.”

“He’ll know me, Henry.”

“He knew Abu, too,” the man replied quietly.

A plane circled and came in. Eagerly they watched it until they saw that it was a passenger plane; then Henry glanced at his watch. “It’s near midnight,” he said. “Should be in any minute now.” Removing his hands from the steering wheel, he noticed that they were wet with perspiration, and he wiped them a little self-consciously on the sides of his pants legs.

Alec’s gaze turned to the sky; he was watching for the blinking lights of the plane, listening for the far-off drone of its engines and all the while thinking: The Black is mine again … this time for keeps!

But at the cost of Abu Ishak’s life
.

Alec closed his eyes, shutting out the darkened sky. He had told himself over and over again that Abu was an old man. A hard fall from
any
horse could have resulted in his death. It need not have been the Black. Tabari had given him none of the details. Abu could have struck his head when he fell; any number of things could have happened. Abu’s fall might even have been due to his own negligence. Perhaps the Black had stumbled while in full gallop; perhaps Abu hadn’t been ready for it.

But, then, why had Tabari planned to destroy the Black, if her father’s death had been accidental? Why?

The Black knew no master. Had Abu forgotten? Had he sought to dominate the fiery will of the stallion? Had he fought him and lost? Was that the reason Tabari would have the Black destroyed?

Alec opened his eyes. He didn’t want to know the answers. It was much better that he never know.

I must only remember, he thought, that the Black’s unlike any other horse in the world. If I remember that, I have nothing to fear. I can’t dominate his will, any more than Abu could do it. I must ask of him, never demand. He must do it of his own accord, because he wants to do what I ask of him. It’s not the way it should be, but it’s his way. No one could change him now.…

They heard the drone of the plane before they were able to distinguish its light from the stars. They watched it come in, dropping lower and lower toward the field.

“This could be it,” Henry said.

As the plane’s wheels touched the runway, Alec made out the company’s name, Trans-World, on its side. “This is it, Henry! He’s here!”