The Sport of Kings (4 page)

Ginnie, busy shoveling manure in a crib, seemed to have forgiven him and said, “Maybe you can stay late today, and we can play?” She eyed him with sneaky delight. “We can pretend your farm is a wicked kingdom, and you're a baby I save from the wicked king!”

“Ginnie, I'm too old to play.” Henry yanked a woolen cap down over his copper hair and was moving out the barn door when something was hurled against the back of his jacket. A cow patty.

He said nothing, it would only encourage her.

“I'll throw more!” Ginnie cried with the passion of young love, which had grown positively anguished as winter warmed under a restless trade wind. When Henry didn't look back or even acknowledge her, she came charging out of the barn with more manure in her hands, but was stymied by snow melting into mud. Dirty remnants of winter remained draped like old, tattered white cloth all about the farm.

“Henry!” she called, as he was moving steadily down the lane peeling off his hat and coat and breaking a spring sweat. The air was raucous and thick with birdsong, the afternoon's light refracted through a veil of pollen. In the field to their left, which bordered the road, the male calves were now cattle, sturdy on their legs and fattening. They chewed their cud with the resignation of age.

Ginnie was panting along behind Henry. “You know what's next for them? You know what's next, Henry Forge?”

Henry risked a glance back and, grinning madly, Ginnie drew a finger across her throat, her eyes wide.

He rolled his eyes. “I have to go, Ginnie. I have lessons with Father in five minutes.” The sun was blistering his already red neck.

“Well, my daddy says your daddy thinks his shit doesn't stink! And I think your lessons are boring and stupid!” Ginnie was falling behind now, attempting to scrape ashy, sun-dried manure from the instep of one boot. There were sweat beads on her upper lip, and she was flushed the color of a strawberry.

Henry turned on her. “Stupid? I study Latin and Greek, math, philosophy—”

“Yeah, I know,” she said.

“Yeah, you don't even know what that is.”

Henry Forge left Ginnie on the side of the road in defeat. She watched as a late Indian summer sun slung his shadow out before him, and just as his feet touched the far side of the country road that separated their farms as surely as any fence, just as Henry turned eleven, she cried out, “Henry Forge, don't you ever have any fun?”

*   *   *

John Henry: Close the door, son.

Henry: Yes, sir.

John Henry: All the way.

Henry: Yes, sir.

John Henry: Have you brought your translation?

Henry: I have, but … I was trying to figure out a word, and I—

John Henry: A simple yes or no will suffice.

Henry: Yes.

John Henry: Did you translate like an automaton, or did you actually use your mind?

Henry: I did.

John Henry: You did what?

Henry: I did use my mind.

John Henry: So, tell me—is man the measure of all things?

Henry:

John Henry: Since you're never at a loss for words, I have to assume that you've come unprepared. Henry, these works can't be read like your modern claptrap. They're valuable only insofar as your mind is engaged. Novel thought to those who think there's value in a pretty phrase that means absolutely nothing. Can you define “aesthete”?

Henry: No, sir.

John Henry: The fool who finds value in the merely pretty.

Henry: Mother likes pretty things.

John Henry: I love your mother, but I've never met a truly educated woman. Now, I'll ask you one more time—is man the measure of all things?

Henry: Socrates says no …

John Henry: And why is that?

Henry: Because, the wind can't be cold and hot at the same time?

John Henry: Because it is impossible to determine anything absolutely based on one man's perceptions, which are subjective. Tell me more.

Henry: And if some men are mad …

John Henry: If man was the measure of all things, then the perceptions of madmen would necessarily be true, and that's nonsense. So, tell me, what would result if an individual man thought he was the final arbiter of all things?

Henry: Chaos?

John Henry: Yes. Sanity begins with knowing your place.

Henry: But if people wrote all these books, then they made up all the ideas. Doesn't that make them the measure of everything they're saying they're not the measure of?

John Henry: Don't interrupt me, Henry. I swear, your mouth is a millstone around your neck.

Henry: That doesn't make sen—

John Henry: Stay on point!

Henry: Well, I like it when he says dreamers are the best kind of men.

John Henry: Why does that not surprise me? Henry, you spend too much time in your mind. Do you want to wallow in daydreams, or do you actually want to understand the order established by minds greater than your own?

Henry: But great men cut new paths. They think outside the box.

John Henry: No—great men pursue excellence, but the standards of excellence were established by those who came before them. You have no knowledge not granted to you by others. Henry, you're always hijacking a principled conversation with nonsense and daydreams, and it's a result of spending so much goddamned time with your mother. She coddles you too much.

Henry: I just want to know how to know.

John Henry: Then I'll share with you what my tutor would have said to me if I'd had the impertinence to pester him. Real knowledge begins with knowing your place in the world. Now, you are neither nigger, nor woman, nor stupid. You are a young man born into a very long, distinguished line. That confers responsibility, so stay focused on your learning. And as far as your imagination is concerned, it should be relegated to secondary status. You'll never have an original thought, never be great, never invent anything truly new, and this shouldn't bother you one bit. There's nothing new under the sun. You just need to know your place. It's unexciting, but the truth is often unexciting.

Henry: And what exactly is my place?

John Henry: Your place is as my son.

Henry: But … what if …

John Henry: Goddammit, Henry, don't be indirect.

Henry: But what if I have an opinion that's different from your opinion?

John Henry: Then we can't both be right, and one of us must be wrong. And who would that be?

Henry: Me?

John Henry: The first stage of wisdom.

Henry:

*   *   *

Two weeks later, his father taught him to drive.

They were running errands on an October afternoon strangely stagnant and thick under a slant sun the color of ripe tomatoes. By the time they reached the tracks by the Paris depot, their shirts were suckered to their backs, the black hood of the sedan turned into a boiling plate. The air was dusty with the scent of old leaves and the faint cloying scent of a decaying animal somewhere close by.

When his father killed the engine, Henry asked him a question that had been bothering him for a long while. “Father, what made you want to go into the legislature?”

John Henry considered the approach of the train before replying. “It was a natural progression,” he said. “There are so few well-educated men, we're all but obligated to serve the public. The world is nearly overrun by idiots these days. There are more white niggers in this world than one can know what to do with.”

“Are there any women in the legislature?”

John Henry scoffed. “A few. But the core of femininity is a softness of resolve and mind; reason is not their strong suit.”

The train interrupted. Henry watched in silence as the gray and canary-yellow coal cars clacked by, coal heaped above the open tops of the cars, the black nubs glossy in the sunlight. The train, as it rolled against the rails, raised a great clanging noise and the slenderest breeze.

His voice loud against the clattering, John Henry said, “What you don't yet comprehend about women, Henry, is a great deal.” He stared at the cars as they flipped past. “I wouldn't say that they're naturally intellectually inferior, as the Negroes are. They're not unintelligent. In fact, I've always found little girls to be as intelligent as little boys, perhaps even more so. But women live a life of the body. It chains them to material things—children and home—and prevents them from striving toward loftier pursuits.”

“Well, I wouldn't want to be born a woman,” Henry said.

His father just laughed, and for a moment, Henry found himself unwillingly laughing along. But he stopped suddenly, wary. He distrusted his father's laugh and its magnetic draw, how it always seemed to bubble up out of a secret his father possessed, one that might be at Henry's expense.

With a sudden cessation of noise, the train's caboose tailed into the trees, snaking into Fayette County, and John Henry said, “It's time you learned to drive.”

“It's against the law,” Henry objected. He was only thirteen.

“I trust I can keep you out of federal prison,” John Henry said, his brow arched. “Filip wastes untold time and money chasing after your mother's every whim, and I can't be bothered to keep her entertained. I'm certainly not going to hire her a driver. No need when there's a young man in the house.”

Nodding, Henry said, “Yes, sir.”

“But don't ever touch the vehicle unless your mother asks you.”

“Yes, sir.”

The older man exited the automobile, stretched briefly with a growling sound of a bear come out of hibernation, and walked around to the passenger side.

With nerves wicking his mouth dry, Henry slid into his father's spot, perched on the front springs of the seat, gripping the wheel and toeing about beneath the dash with both feet.

“First, second, third, fourth,” said John Henry, pointing. “Off the gas while on the clutch, shift, on the gas again. It's not difficult.”

Henry grasped the stick.

“Depress the clutch, turn the ignition.” He did this.

“Clutch down, first.” He did this too.

“Gas, and slow off the clutch.” The car moved forward on a halting stream of fuel as if it were shy, and they crossed the tracks with an uneven rattle.

“More gasoline.”

Henry pressed, but the car emitted a wounded screech, then barked and quit. For a moment there was only quiet, but Henry could feel the temperature in the car rising, then his father snapped, “Henry—this isn't that difficult.”

One more attempt, barely breathing as they crept haltingly down the road, closer to where the town evanesced house by house into the rural district.

“Faster.” He pressed the gas and the engine sang. They drove for one mile, Henry barely blinking and his eyes stinging, accosted by the late sun.

“I'm considering taking you out of school,” said John Henry suddenly.

“What!” He hazarded a glance at his father. “Why?”

“Because your school is mediocre. The students are mediocre.” A curt wave of one hand, then John Henry crossed his arms over his chest. “And things are happening right now in the courts. There are changes in the air, changes I don't want you exposed to. I swear the Negroes seem intent on delivering themselves to hell.” He passed a hand over his heavy brow. “These men who always seek to improve things rarely know much about human nature. One smart monkey can find his way out of the cage, but that doesn't make him any less a monkey. And, naturally, the other monkeys follow suit. They never realize until they leave the cage that they were warm and well fed in the cage.”

Henry had no idea what his father was talking about. “You're not going to send me to school in Atlanta, are you?” he said, his stomach creeping up around his heart. He'd long dreaded the thought of boarding school, of separation from his mother for an excellence whose grammar he could not yet parse, that he was just beginning to speak.

John Henry said, “Your mother has never wanted that. And I've considered her request, because I pity her predicament. You'll be her only child, you know that. I've been considering a tutor instead.”

“But you already tutor me.”

“I'm not truly qualified. You're not a child anymore. Your mother can prepare a decent meal, but we have Maryleen because Lavinia isn't a cook. It's no different.”

At the edge of a tobacco field the car stalled out, snapping them forward in their seats. John Henry sighed, but louder this time, and Henry flinched hard under the whip of judgment. God, how he hated his father, loved him, hated him—regardless, all the tangled roots of his inherited heart grew forever in the same direction: I am his.

The boy stuttered out into first again and the car juddered and spun its tires as it progressed. John Henry finally reached for the wheel, but Henry blurted out, “No, I've got it, I've got it!”

“
Facta non verba
,” his father said, and the boy looked at him and thought—not for the first time—that his pronunciation was not all it could be. And then he stalled again.

“Pull over, Henry,” said his father, and they switched places yet again. John Henry was releasing the parking brake when, suddenly, in a tone from which all irritation was wiped, he said, “All I really want is to be proud of you.” Then, with uncharacteristic hesitation, as if testing the words on his tongue: “There's nothing more vulnerable than a man with everything to lose. Don't disappoint me.”

*   *   *

A man reasons his way to irrational numbers. It was a strange paradox. Mother's beauty was never-ending, thus never-repeating, it went on and on and on, an irrationality. Her face was a beautiful math, a womanly number without equivalent fraction: the depth of her brown eyes, which were cavernous in her silence; the sublime distance between pupils, a neat third of the width from cheek to cheek; the plucked half-shell brows, each hair articulate and precise against pale, powdered skin, which was lineless; a nose subtly dished with a bridge as delicate as the handle on a teacup; the philtrum, just a gentle scoop over bowed lips the color of Easter silk, lips that even Plato would have kissed. Perfect.