Dante of the Maury River (4 page)

I walked away to get out from under Marey’s gaze.

“Oh, glory.” Marey whickered after me. “Come back. I need for you to cooperate. The Eden family is judging me by you. You nearly died, and that’s on me.”

I spun around to face my dam. “Nearly? I did die! Mrs. Eden said so.”

“Whether you died or not, Edensway Farm is a business. Doctor Tom and Mrs. Eden have spent more time and money to get you here alive than either of us can understand. They fret over economics, those two. You and I, we are their future and their security.”

“Is that why Doctor Tom pulled me out of the ancestral plains?”

“Precisely why he wouldn’t give up on you, yes. And because he is a good man who loves horses.”

“A grouchy man who likes to bother me.”

“Have I not already said this? Get used to being bothered. Anyway, you return the favor and then some.” Marey sounded harsh.

“He’s the pest, not me. I only protect myself.”

I looked down at a spider crawling across my hoof; her legs tickled me.

“Isn’t that bug pesky?” Marey asked.

“She’s not hurting me.”

“Nor is she helping you. You don’t blow her across the paddock, yet you could. Why are you so angry with Doctor Tom? Have you ever seen me bite, kick, or head-slam anyone?”

She had a point there.

“Son, I want you to start imitating me. I’m not asking you; I am giving you a command.”

“Marey, I will try.”

No more coddling from Marey. “You’d better do more than try. With every action and every reaction we are borrowing against or building up our futures. Both of us must be successful in order to have good long lives. No choice.”

Marey snapped me with her tail. She had my full attention. “Listen to me. Your entire life was planned out for you before you were born, before you were even bred. Down to the amount of water you will drink and the kind of feed that goes into your bucket.”

“My whole life? Everything about me?”

“Everything. So you might want to wise up and get with the plan.”

I looked around the pasture. All the fences were painted white, and the fence lines were clear of brush and weedy plants. Even the empty fields were trimmed and neat.

“Marey, but I didn’t arrive as planned, did I?” I knew I was as right as the sun. “I was born different. So maybe I’m supposed to be a different kind of Thoroughbred. Did you ever think about that?”

Marey stood as square and stiff as the life-size statue of Grandfather Dante out front. “No,” she huffed. “The best thing for you, me, and this farm is for you to do as you’re told, so that you can be sold at the best September sale.”

I reckoned everything was running exactly according to the grand plan to get Edensway back on top. Everything except me.

O
ver the next few weeks, more fillies and colts were born. Mrs. Eden paid me regular visits to check on my progress. She spoke freely and with no shame about how there was money to be made and a reputation earned from selling the right foal to the right sheik, prince, or oil tycoon. The matriarch wanted the entire crew to know that any one of her new horses could end up worth millions. She also knew that any one of us could be worth nothing. Nothing’s exactly what she was scared of. I appreciated her honesty.

What I needed, if you’d have asked me, was to play with Marey and the foals of Kentucky on those graceful bluegrass hills outside the foaling barn without everybody watching me. With so much at stake, it was all eyes on the mamas and the babies, at all times.

Believe you me, Mrs. Eden was all business about getting us foals ready for September. I heard her and Doctor Tom discussing which ones of us they thought they might send to Lexington’s prestigious Thoroughbred foal sale. Every dam hoped her foal would represent there.

Mind you, if you pay attention to what all’s going on around you, you’ll hear an assortment of interesting facts. For example, I once heard Marey and the other dams remarking on how the barn doors needed painting, how the mats in the stalls could use replacing, and how few barnhands were left working at Edensway. “Not like when we were fillies,” they said.

The severity of money trouble meant that every hand available was needed. Even those of a child.

I was grateful for the mischievous presence of Doctor Tom’s daughter, Melody, who befriended me for the while that I lived at Edensway.

Melody resembled a miniature version of her father. Long and lean. Both of them redheaded. And with lots of it. Hair, that is. Doctor Tom had a bushy chin, and Melody, a choppy forelock that fell down past her eyes. Her father frequently brushed his hand across her face and teased, “You need a haircut.”

She’d swat him away. “I can see fine, Daddy.” Then she’d add, “You need a shave.” She was fiery like me, I remember.

I do believe the youngster liked hiding behind her hair. Same way as how I sometimes hid behind Marey or squeezed into the corner of our stall. Just to have a welcome minute to myself.

At nine years old, little Melody was one of the best handlers I’ve ever known. She had collected a lifetime of horsemanship skills by then. Observation being chief among her talents and one that is often both sorely absent and undervalued by grown men and women.

Now, if I sound harsh, just remember this: a horse is a prey animal. As such, we spend our entire lives observing. We’re not out there just eating grass, but always watching and wondering what’s next.

My point here is that Melody was not a prey animal but a predator — as are all humans — yet she proved herself to be a true friend of the horse. Skills learned at the knee of her grandmother, a legendary figure in Thoroughbred racing, and her father, too, I suppose. He is well respected by many humans and horses — though admittedly, I was a latecomer to the Doctor Tom fan club, and more of a junior member, anyhow.

One morning Melody plip-plopped herself onto the fence and started eating her apple, ignoring me like I was as natural a part of the landscape as the redbirds that liked to nest in the thick old clematis climbing up the back of the barn.

Though small and relatively new to this earth — compared to, say, Mrs. Eden — Melody possessed a good pedigree for horsemanship. But she could only handle me because I let her, and she helped her cause aplenty by not once in the entire span of time I knew her ever approaching me with a needle in her hand or anyplace on her person.

My first groom didn’t so much mind the switchover to Melody. Let’s just say that he and I were of opposing minds about how I should be treated. I observed that he was as scared of me as the field mouse is of the red-tailed hawk. No reason to get into all that, though. No sense in embarrassing a novice. I’m sure he went on to find success with a milder, calmer, slower Thoroughbred foal than myself at a different farm.

Melody, of course, never met a colt or a filly that frightened her. “We should keep him,” she suggested to Doctor Tom one day.

“There’s a lot more involved in that than what you might think,” he replied.

“You’re talking about money,” she said.

Wise child. Moolah and marigolds almost always drive these sorts of decisions.

What I didn’t quite comprehend, despite Marey telling me over and over, was that to whom much is given, of him much is required. An important lesson right there. One I wasn’t keen on learning, either.

J
ust when I was about ready to forgive Doctor Tom for inflicting every blasted procedure onto me, he outdid himself. I heard these frightful words resurrected from Red, one of the few remaining nonfamily employees: “Look how crooked them legs are, Tom.”

Marey snapped her head up fast, like thunder chasing after lightning. Then she caught herself and looked over at me with droopy eyes, acting cool and standing calm, as if nothing were wrong. She was faking it.

I thought the world had agreed that crooked legs were more about fashion than function, but apparently not.

“Just try to be good,” Marey said, because she knew a nightmare surely was headed my way. A halter. A trailer. And a long ride, but not to Lexington.

Sure enough, Doctor Tom had me carted away from Edensway without Marey and without Melody. All by my lonesome, I traveled to a clinic where I met dozens of colts and fillies, every last one of them with crooked-leg syndrome, like me. If it even really was a syndrome.

The lot of us was there to have our little foal legs broken and reset straight. Or if not broken, then every last bit of the crookedness scraped off. Either way, I could see it coming: a world of hurt.

Oh, I fought them. Yes, sir. Why, I had a reputation to uphold.

I kicked and bit at the white coats coming toward me. Struck out, twisted up, and went buck wild. I never considered, not even once, Marey’s plea to surrender.

Not a single man or woman succeeded in getting me down on their own. I gave them a wild and wondrous show of brawn and bravery, till a whole gang of them banded together.

They surrounded me. Some I could see, and others tucked themselves away into my blind spots. I kicked out sideways with all my might and all four of my feet.

No go. One of those rascals sprung out from nowhere and injected me with a tranquilizing serum as powerful as two bellies’ worth of milk.

Yes, my archenemy, the needle, brought me to the ground.

It packed a hullabaloo of a punch that right quickly taught me the whole, full, and true meaning of surrender. Down I went to my knees.

Some hours later, I awoke feeling puny, with my front legs wrapped tight and throbbing. No idea what they’d done to me or even how they did it.

Within a day, Doctor Tom reappeared and got me onto the trailer without any hassle. Of course, I was fuller of medication than I was of myself. That helped his cause, but only temporarily. I just hadn’t had a chance to reload. And the truth is I was glad to smell bluegrass hay in the trailer, same as the kind I loved at home. Home is where I wanted to go. Back to Marey and Melody.

The ride ended at Edensway, where one of Doctor Tom’s interns walked on the trailer to lead me back into the foaling barn. She tugged on my halter. “Here we go. Let’s get you back with Mama.” We walked slowly to the stall I shared with Marey. I could hear her whinnying for me.

A welcoming party of family and friends greeted me — Mrs. Eden, Melody, and the whole team, including Doctor Tom. I knew I needed to set Doctor Tom straight once and for all. Who knew what sinister plan he might concoct next?

My back legs being the only good ones available to me at the moment meant I had to lure him in close but not too near my backside. I lowered my head and feigned the thing everybody wanted from me: surrender. Doctor Tom took half a step, and I walloped him hard in the shin. No lie, I would’ve nailed his other leg, too, but he jumped out of the way.

“Holy crap,” he complained to the intern. “That really hurt. Here. Let me have him. This colt needs to learn his lesson.”

He took my lead from an assistant. His anger zipped along the rope, but I wasn’t scared of him.

“Dante!” Melody burst into my stall and threw her arms around my neck.

Doctor Tom lightened his grip.

“Poor colt,” she said, and stroked my neck, then nuzzled my face. “Oh, I missed you so much. I worried about you every day.” She looked up at Doctor Tom. “Will he be okay? When will the leg wraps come off?”

“He’s going to be just fine, sweetheart. You know how I know that?”

She nodded. “Because he’s happy to see me.”

“You got it. He wasn’t happy to see me, though. He kicked me!” Doctor Tom said.

Melody giggled.

“Not funny!” Then Doctor Tom’s callused hand rubbed my cheek.

“He sure likes you. And he trusts you. I think you can help this colt even more if you want to. Lord knows, if he’s going to have a good life, somebody has to help him figure it out.”

Mrs. Eden spoke up. “Tom, don’t be so melodramatic. You’ve seen plenty of good horses with bad attitudes. The great ones are worth it.”

Doctor Tom just nodded.

“You’re not letting me off the hook, are you?” he said to me.

He appeared to be waiting for something from me. I didn’t lower my head, but I didn’t go after him, either.