Horse

by Geraldine Brooks

“Some folk hold with that foolishness. Racing folks do have a mighty faith in luck. You can use that, if you’re smart about it. Push odds up, push ’em down, all with some loose talk in the backstretch. My way of thinking, a good horse has no color. It’s what’s inside that’s worth the fret.”

all horses were handsome and good. You just had to find the right use for them.

His diplomat parents had instilled in him the value of face time: never write a memo if you can make a phone call, never make a phone call if you can meet in person.

His father suggested his own school, back in California, but Abiona wouldn’t hear of it. “An American school? Where they sit in a circle and discuss their feelings, instead of learning coding and calculus?” His father tried forlornly to make a case for creativity and self-expression, but he’d realized early in the marriage that arguing with Abiona was futile;

The school treasured its traditions, which meant frigid dorms and chilly relationships.

Lonely, ostracized, Theo gravitated to the stables. There, he found a tribe of pale-haired boys in Persil-whitened polo pants, possessing double-barreled names and homes that were old before Agincourt.

It was apparent that we had come into the garden of the state, where accumulation of wealth has evidently been easy. No more slovenly little farms, but manorial estates of cost and taste perched upon knolls and, at last!—my object, my muse—the elegant blood horses agraze on rich pastures.

“You are too kind, but I am not sufficiently established in my profession to entertain thoughts of marriage at this time.

Jarret averted his eyes and scuffed the turf with the toe of his boot. It wasn’t a good idea to speak without putting a deal of thought into it. Words could be snares. Less of them you laid out there, less likely they could trap you up.

Scott nodded. “ ‘All men are equal on the turf or under it’—that’s the saying. But the folk who own the horses, it’s much more, for them, than an exciting day out. Here’s the ground of it, as I see it: a racehorse is a mirror, and a man sees his own reflection there. He wants to think he’s from the best breeding. He wants to think himself brave. Can he win against all comers? And if not, does he have self-mastery to take a loss, stay cool in defeat, and try again undaunted? Those are the qualities of a great racehorse and a great gentleman.

“Maybe you don’t need to be no gentleman to feel like that,” he said. “That Darley foal. He makes me feel—hopeful. Like the future gone matter more than it did the day before he come.”

What having kids feels like

Still, he could see how a man like Scott might get confused at a place like the Meadows. Life looked well enough there. It was what you couldn’t see that rubbed your soul raw.

Much like Scottsdale. And really anything that looks shiny on the surface. Like this line a lot

He found a bench on the Mall and began to scribble notes. He wanted to get down his reactions to that painting, exactly what he’d noticed and his response to it. You never get a second chance to have a first impression.

Last line

With Beth in the house, Jarret and Harry no longer spent companionable evenings on the porch, going over bloodlines. Beth had first claim on Harry’s nights now, so to give them some privacy, Jarret took long walks.

He could waste an hour’s good sleep worrying and be no wiser for it.

All those hours in the pasture—those empty hours, most folk would call them—were paying back now in this bond.

The most important thing was to keep Darley willing every stride of the way. They would both love the work, Jarret would make sure of it. That, thought Jarret, as he eased into sleep, is how we will win.

Jess was happily lost in the letters between her nineteenth-century colleagues—struck, as she always was, by the elegant literary cadence of scientists in the age of Darwin.

“What happened?” “Nothing unusual. Nothing illegal. Just the business itself—racing horses before they should even be ridden, wrecking their bones before they’ve finished growing. I mean, back in the days we were talking about earlier—Eclipse, for instance, didn’t see a racetrack until he was five. But now we race them at two, and train them hard before that.

And he has one thing I’ll never have: the polish of privilege. His dress is immaculate but not flamboyant, typical of old money, which is what he comes from, one of the original Dutch families of New York: Revolutionary War staff officers on both sides.

his people cast him out, and he “went down the river,” as they say, to make his fortune. Ten years later, he turns up in the Crescent City, a chevalier d’industrie, rich enough to buy the best blood horses, and then winning enough with them to buy the very track they raced on. In short, he’s a man well used to getting what he wants. Old Warfield was no match for him.

She heard a swoosh of wings: an owl passing, close and silent. Then the cry of a small animal, quickly stifled. The strong and the weak, she thought. Predator, prey. Nature’s way. God’s way. Even the Bible patriarchs had slaves. Who is Jarret to stand against it in this headstrong fashion, when even his own father, who is most injured in the business, accepts it? Why should she sit and shiver in the dark on his account?

That is the world as it is. If you do not like it, join me in attempting to change it. Otherwise, keep your peace.

“There’s not a lot else regarding Scott, I’m afraid. Hasn’t been much scholarship on him.” Theo beamed. Just what an aspiring historian casting about for a PhD thesis wanted to hear.

Watch how you go there. Entirely too many boatmen with their pockets full of money, which means too many bars, gambling hells, and brothels. They say the only thing cheaper there than the body of a woman is the life of a man.

The heart will rule the head, it seems. Brilliant man, first in his class at Harvard. Handsome, a most active intellect, yet he has taken a cannonball and directed it at his own prospects.”

He hadn’t had thoughts like that before. Even as his world contracted and pressed in upon him, in equal measure his heart expanded.

The translucent skin rattled softly in the hot wind. Maybe this season was his shedding. He closed his sore hand around another bole and stuffed it in his sack. He resolved that he would make it so. He would leave the boy behind, discarded in the dust of this damnable field. He didn’t know how, but he had to find a way. He would go on in the world as a man.

Starting at "He would leave the boy behind..."

For the first time, he had some hours of his own, with no one telling him how to spend them. This left him time for reflection. As he thought back over the events that had brought him to Fatherland, his mind kept returning to the barber of Natchez, William Johnson, and the unaccustomed sight of a Black man with a crystal inkstand and a fine vellum journal. There was a power in knowing how to read and write, he’d always felt so, despite his father’s views.

Who gives the horse its strength or clothes his mane with thunder? Who makes him spring like a locust? His splendid snort is terror. He churns up the earth, rejoicing in his power, And charges towards the clash of arms. He laughs at fear, afraid of nothing; He does not shy away from the sword. Over him rattles the quiver, the glittering spear and blade. In frenzy he devours the ground; He cannot stand still when the trumpet sounds. At the blast of the trumpet he snorts, “Hurrah!” And from afar he scents the fray, Hears the clamor of the captains, the battle cry.

from Job 39:19-25

Jack then set about showing him how each of the letters on the page had sounds and how when you grouped some of the letters together, those sounds changed in certain ways. Jarret found it confusing, but Jack reassured him. “It gone come clear to you,” he said. “You don’t eat a whole loaf of cornbread all in just one mouthful. You got to break off and chew it one bite at a time.”

Still, he wasn’t sorry to have seen what he’d seen, and learned what he’d learned. Not just the book learning. He felt larger in spirit. There was a space in his soul for the suffering of people. He resolved to take account of their lives, the heavy burdens they carried.

Jarret wondered how it could be possible to have so much, just from gambling on cards and horses. If a man could win all this, then maybe he could lose it.

It was unlike Ten Broeck to waste so much time second-guessing his decisions. He was vexed with himself. He shrugged and shook off all thoughts of things that could not now be changed. He would put his faith in his own judgment. He had the best horse; he was sure of it. The rest would follow.

Because of the heavy track, the times had been unremarkable—over eight minutes in each heat—but

Words set down on a page, that was a different thing. You could take your own time with them, to glean the sense. And you could skip past the foolish ones. You couldn’t do that when someone was speaking nonsense right to your face.

And that right there is he argument for 6-pagers

He said it was the folk he came to know in the boardinghouse, every one of them with a powerful drive to work at some kind of trade, even if the task was hard, dirty, or thankless. You know why that was, Mr. Scott? he asked me. Tell me, I said. He stretched his hands out in front of him, his two palms facing up, and this, verbatim, is what he said: Their hands is their own. And that dollar that get put in those hands, that’s their own dollar.

“I’ve been reading up on the man who owned him. Turns out there’s quite an English angle to the story. Ten Broeck—strange name, Dutch, I think—the one who owned Lexington at the height of his racing career, went on to become quite a celebrity over here. He was the first to bring American horses; at the time the press called it ‘the American Invasion.’ He won some big races and palled about with the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh and miscellaneous European royals for about thirty years. Then he managed to lose his fortune entirely. Died alone and penniless in a bungalow in California. The man who found his body had come to buy his racing trophies—they were all he had left to sell, apparently.

What he giveth, he taketh away.

Alexander came across Jarret leaving the stallion barn and noticed that he was carrying a book. He waved Jarret over. “You can read?” He held out his hand for the battered volume. It was missing a cover and spine. “Where on earth did you get this?” “I found it in the kindling basket.” “You saved it?” “I don’t burn books.”

“Not just a horse, Annie. Lexington was the greatest thoroughbred stud sire in racing history. No horse has ever surpassed him. For sixteen years, his foals, when they came to race, won more prize money than any other horses that raced those years. I’m sure you’ve heard of some of them—Preakness was one. Even today, people pay thousands of dollars for horses in Lexington’s bloodline.

Kentucky, as you must know, was supposed to be neutral at that time. But secesh sympathy was strong and all over the state irregular guerrilla bands were forming to fight for Jeff Davis. The news of this emboldened that fool to dispatch his troops to seize the bluffs at Columbus. This galvanized those of uncertain opinion. There was rage at the violation of our supposed neutrality. As you will know, Kentucky voted then to join the Union cause and our orders came to march south.

“President Lincoln rides Cincinnati? That’s a fine thing to know.” Jarret wished he could tell his father that he’d bred a horse fit for a president. Harry Lewis would be proud.

We suffered enough on account of slavery already. I don’t plan on laying my life down to end it. You folk who made this mess, I reckon you owe us to clean it up.”

But after a time, he had stopped seeking such dialogue. They were, all of them, lost to a narrative untethered to anything he recognized as true. Their mad conception of Mr. Lincoln as some kind of cloven-hoofed devil’s scion, their complete disregard—denial—of the humanity of the enslaved, their fabulous notions of what evils the Federal government intended for them should their cause fail—all of it was ingrained so deep, beyond the reach of reasonable dialogue or evidence. Scott had become convinced that a total obliteration of their rebellion was the only way forward.

“I got a thousand dollars for writing the Smithsonian piece. I think that’s a pretty good return on something I picked up off the curb.

What was it—sixteen years he led the list?” “Yes,” said Jarret quietly. “Sixteen years as the top stud sire. Even topped the list again this past year.”

The strange sense of something passing through him as the stallion exhaled his last breath. Such a still, peaceful ending after so much speed, so much danger.

Restless humans. You’d never stop them traveling.

On onset of covid

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn’t. Mark Twain

Why i prefer non-fiction

As horse racing in America becomes increasingly scrutinized and controversial for its treatment of equines, it is important to appreciate its immense popularity in antebellum life.