Dante of the Maury River Read online

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE Just Breathe

  CHAPTER TWO Bloodlines

  CHAPTER THREE A Good Sign

  CHAPTER FOUR The Triple Crown

  CHAPTER FIVE The Grand Plan

  CHAPTER SIX Watching and Wondering

  CHAPTER SEVEN Crooked

  CHAPTER EIGHT Fresh Start

  CHAPTER NINE A Peace Offering

  CHAPTER TEN Great Expectations

  CHAPTER ELEVEN Time’s A-wasting

  CHAPTER TWELVE Stand and Watch

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN Training Camp

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN A Good Start

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN Work It Out

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN The Knowing Place

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN A Visitation

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Break in the River

  CHAPTER NINETEEN Get to Work

  CHAPTER TWENTY Race Day

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Best Laid Plans

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Seeing Both Sides

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Tumble Down

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Face the Truth

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Straight Off the Track

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Prison

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Chin Up

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT A Chance

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE Come Back

  CHAPTER THIRTY A River and a Mountain

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE Forever and a Day

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO Shadows and Light

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE A Word

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR Good Graces

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE Old Friend from Far Away

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX Show Me

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN Call Me Sweet

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT Fear the Night

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE Racing the Sun

  CHAPTER FORTY Crabbit

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE Lift and Hurl

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO Green

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE Something New

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR A Reckless Trip

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE The Ugly Word

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX Get On

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN Cute Pair!

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT Discipline

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE Be Yourself

  CHAPTER FIFTY The Three Tests

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE Open, Natural, and Free

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO Ghost Horse

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE A Thoroughbred Revolution

  “Come on. Breathe.”

  Those are the first words I heard in my life. I had been foaled just ahead of spring, in a deep freeze of winter. Arrived on a night when the world outside was encased in ice and the world inside was draped in dark.

  Most Thoroughbreds are born in April or May, after the snow has melted and the ground has thawed. But the truth is, birthdays don’t mean all that much to most horses.

  Oh, getting here early by a few months can give a racing colt or filly a boost during that first year. Early foals, like me, will likely be bigger, stronger, and faster than the later babies. After that, the actual date of birth matters not a hill of beans nor a field of hay. Nobody remembers, after a while, whether you were born in winter or spring or any other season, because once the New Year rolls in, we Thoroughbreds reset our birthdays to the first day of January.

  For the record, I came into the world during February. February fourteenth to be exact. Way early for foaling season, but there’s always an early one.

  I can still recall the pause between my first breath and the next. Quite a disruption, for sure. An entire universe of wonder and beauty between breathing in and breathing out. A full-on leave-it-all-on-the-dirt meeting between inspiration and expiration.

  “Breathe, breathe,” the man yelled at the moment of my entry into this world. To be honest, I didn’t understand a lick of what he was saying or have any inkling what he meant for me to do.

  I could feel his tired skin pressing against mine, and I felt his heavy breath hovering over me.

  “Let’s get his heart going,” he said, but I couldn’t figure out to who-all he might be speaking. Everything was dark.

  He kneaded my chest, then he jibbed and jabbed at my heart, and that hurt.

  Up till then, I had only ever known the warmth and protection of my dam, but now I felt an icy wind through the shed’s thin walls and it chilled me to the bone.

  I couldn’t figure out what was happening, but I got this much: something was going wrong.

  “Come on,” the man begged again. He crouched low and massaged my chest with his palm. Pounded on me hard. That hurt, too, but I was helpless.

  The man spoke directly to me. “Twenty-five years ago I attended a delivery on a night exactly like this one. A colt. Your grandfather, Dante’s Paradiso.”

  Marey stirred in the corner, but I was far from her in body and moving on in spirit. She whickered. “Please. Your family needs you. Don’t give up. Breathe. Give me one breath.”

  “Breathe” made sense when Marey said it.

  I took exactly one, just like Marey asked me to do. Then instead of grabbing for another, I turned around back from where I had come, searching for that sweet, lush limbo where nobody had to tell me what to do because there everything was open and natural and free. And there, I was part of everything.

  Though I had a powerful yearning to stay with Marey, I had an even stronger one to leave my body behind. Even before life was fully mine, I longed to go somewhere else.

  “Try,” Marey whispered toward me, motionless.

  I drifted away not because I didn’t love her but because I felt a stronger pull beckoning.

  “You are destined to follow your grandfather. Please, just try, son. Please.”

  She nickered softly.

  Then, I expired. Let it all go.

  I bounced between light and dark, cold and heat. A golden net lit up the barn and wrapped me in its folds. My spirit hovered above the foaling floor, watching the effort to revive my body below. Steam curled up from that new little black colt lying on the cold ground. Groping hands reached out to rub life into me. The man bent over my chest, but not even his sharp breath could pierce the cold pall around my heart.

  The distant sound of hoofbeats lured me from the cold foaling shed. Along a broad, starlit pathway that stretched out at my feet, Thoroughbreds from my bloodlines across the ages surrounded me. Upon my word and honor, I testify that I knew each one by scent and sound even though we had never met. These ancestors warmed me with their own breaths and led me through land and water and sky.

  Honest to thunder, I didn’t even consider staying in that hard frozen place. I stood happily among my pedigree, amid a brilliant rolling landscape far beyond the foaling barn back in Kentucky.

  Now, some might say I’m getting a tad carried away in my imagination, but consider this: we all possess ancestral memory. Every one of us knows and remembers places, faces, words, and triumphs of spirit and flesh that we have not lived but that, somehow, we know to be true. Knowledge and memory come to us through our bloodlines. And that’s a fact.

  I had left my dam and my body behind, refused to take that second breath, and, in doing so, transitioned from a dim place to a brilliant one. While the vet worked to revive my body, and while my dam rested in the corner nickering quiet encouragement, I walked alongside my dam’s father, my grandfather, the first Dante. Dante’s Paradiso.

  “Why am I here?” I asked the stallion.

  “You’ve arrived now because the pedigree needs you,” Grandfather Dante replied. “The breed needs you. This is the time for a new kind of champion, but you must conquer three great tests. We’re all counting on you.”

  “What if I fail?”

  Grandfather Dante snapped his tail against my barrel. Then he to
uched his nose to mine, and my heart twitched. The smell of damp grass on his muzzle made me remember Marey.

  The horizon in his world was swathed in emerald and violet-gray grass. Grandfather Dante and I, both as black as night, stood together under the golden stars. “I don’t want to go back,” I confessed.

  “You are precious to me,” he said, “but now you must return to Kentucky. You have important work to do for our breed. Return through the bloodlines whenever you need me.”

  “But how? How do I get back to Marey, and how do I come here again?” I asked.

  “Use your heart” was all he said.

  “Wait! How will I know what to do?” I pleaded. “What are the three great tests?”

  He nuzzled me once more, and I thought I might break open from loving my grandfather so much. Then, he was gone. The sky turned black, and I heard a whinny, then a nicker.

  I opened my eyes. My nostrils closed shut, then surged open wide. Pushing, shoving, rubbing, coming from every which away.

  “Open your eyes!” the same man as before yelled.

  I refused.

  I tried to turn back, but Grandfather Dante was gone.

  “Breathe!” Marey exhaled, and I breathed her in.

  Before I could even attempt to stand, someone pinned me down. Others jammed my hind with needles.

  I thrashed around and kicked out into a chorus of “Ow. Ouch. Wow, he’s strong.”

  “Had enough?” the man asked me.

  Oh, I kept kicking. Believe me, even as a newborn I was strong enough to inflict mild suffering on unfriendly hands.

  “I’ll tell Mother we should call this one Dante’s Inferno.” The man half laughed. “Okay, fill him up with milk. Fill that little belly up till this guy drops off into la-la land.”

  While they held me down, I whinnied for Marey, and when I did, one of them pried open my mouth.

  “Outstanding work, everyone. Now, pay up. Each of you owes me twenty-five dollars. If you check the date in our live-foal pool, you’ll see that I had today, February fourteenth, as the date we’d see our first live birth.”

  “What?”

  “Are you for real, Doc?”

  “Oh, I’m for real. Pay up.”

  “You’re actually going to make us cover you?”

  “Absolutely. You do realize that your employer breeds Thoroughbred racehorses, right? Betting and winning. That’s the name of the game.”

  “But he hasn’t stood yet.”

  “Was that the bet?”

  The young woman with the bottle stroked my cheek. “Don’t worry, little guy. You’ll wake up near Mama. Shhh . . . close your eyes.”

  For sure, I was born a horse in conflict, and conflicted I would stay for a mighty long time.

  My expedition to the ancestral plains and back — whether real or imagined — surely did wipe me out. All my kicking and fighting; plus, the milk that got poured into me didn’t exactly help to rouse me, either. When I finally came to, it was morning and Marey was standing over me, nibbling behind my ear and whispering, “Son. Son. Wake up, now.”

  I opened my eyes, and realizing exactly where I was and where I wasn’t, I closed them again. I was desperate to be grazing in the golden field alongside Grandfather Dante. Instead, there I lay on a soft bed of shavings, the sunlight pouring in the stall window, and a cloud of Marey’s sweet breath rolling over me. Some colts would’ve thought they’d died and gone to heaven. I had already done exactly that, though, so I knew the difference.

  “Can you stand yet?” Marey asked me. “Rise to your feet. You must be standing square, with your legs straight, and moving around when Mrs. Eden comes.”

  I’ve learned that mares love to boss other horses, people, or any living being in their vicinity. Can’t help it; they’re born that way. They’re only trying to pass along knowledge and learning as fast as they can, because a broodmare never really knows when her foal-rearing job will end. Here one day, not the next. But that’s the way of all horses.

  In bossiness, Marey was no different from any other mother. Every time she opened her muzzle it seemed like she aimed to set me straight with some dire, critical wisdom about something I’d need to know sooner or later.

  I only wish I had listened.

  “Up, up, up,” Marey said.

  The truth is, exhausted from being born, checking out, then coming back, I didn’t much want to stand. But, from the way Marey was nudging at me, I didn’t figure I had much choice, either.

  Shoot, I figured if I couldn’t go back to the brilliant green fields to graze and run with Grandfather Dante, I was as happy as a snail right where I was. The sun washed softly over me, and tiny flecks of dust and shavings swirled in the air around me, almost like stars.

  “Who is Mrs. Eden?” I played for time.

  “The fine horsewoman who runs Edensway Farm, our home. She cares for all of us. She’s the one who bred your grandfather, my father, Dante’s Paradiso.”

  My dam lectured on about my being an Edensway foal. “The whole world is yours, all waiting to see how the grandson of Dante’s Paradiso will go. How far? How fast? And how high? To get anywhere, however, you must first stand. Now.”

  Marey was the boss of me, so I got to my feet.

  Somehow, I managed to push myself up onto all fours, right as the matriarch herself entered the barn.

  “Good morning, everyone! Thank you for your efforts last night.” She greeted the interns and staff in the foaling barn. Unbelievably, she actually thanked them for the mounds of pain they had inflicted on me. “I hear from Doctor Tom that you saved the colt’s life. Thank you. Thank you all.”

  She came closer, and instinctively, I backed myself into a corner. With not so much as a knock or a greeting or a peek, she burst into the stall and held her hand out toward me. “Come on. Stand beside me.”

  Funny thing is, half of me wanted to obey without question. But the other half won. I shook out my mane. Wobbly though I was, I pawed the floor. A warning.

  Go over there so they can hold me down? I thought. Force another cold, hard tube down my throat? Never would I let that happen again.

  “Well, look at you,” Mrs. Eden said. “My gracious, holding a grudge? A beautiful attitude it is, too. I’m thrilled as can be to live to see this day.” She reached her hand toward my cheek like she owned me. I reckon she did. I snaked my head left and right. The fine horse lady just stood there, waiting for me to stop flailing.

  “There, there. You’re fine,” she said. “No more worries. The worst is over. By far.”

  Then Doctor Tom showed up, and so I reared up.

  No lie to say I wanted revenge on that one. Not only had he poked and prodded and beat my heart to life when I was perfectly happy elsewhere, he had ordered a whole group of his underlings to force-feed me till I passed out. The man couldn’t be trusted. I wedged myself into the corner, looking for protection.

  “See what I mean, Mother? Mean as a snake.”

  “And gorgeous. Who does he look like, Tom?”

  “You know who. Spitting image of Dante’s Paradiso.”

  All their attention made me nervous, but my dam stood right next to me, nickering and nuzzling me.

  Mrs. Eden spoke again. “Come on, little one. Let me see you. You’re a gorgeous boy. That I can tell.”

  Marey stepped toward the lady, and she urged me to follow along beside her.

  “Good boy,” Mrs. Eden cooed. “My son, Tom, here, is the one you ought to worry about, not me.”

  “Gee, thanks a lot,” Doctor Tom said. “He and I got off to a swell start last night.”

  Then Mrs. Eden stepped directly into my space, but before I could warn her away, she tickled my chin right where it itched. Then she rubbed my itchy-twitchy nose in exactly the same way that my dam had been all morning. And so, for a moment, I closed my eyes.

  “Mister, my son saved your life last night. Did you know that? You left us for a few good minutes, but your doctor wouldn’t give up. Partly bec
ause he wanted to win the live-foal pool, but mostly for me.”

  “For you and for me, Mother. I know how you loved Dante’s Paradiso. He’s the first horse I remember. I loved him, too.”

  A little bitty person came running into my stall. I tried to pull away from Mrs. Eden’s hold, but she was as strong as a fence.

  “Hi, Ya-Ya!” the child said. “No school today because of the storm. I can help in the barn!”

  “Well, good, Melody.” Mrs. Eden offered her cheek toward the child. “Kiss, please.” Straightaway, the girl kissed her grandmother, then me.

  “Daddy, is this the foal you told me about at breakfast? You were right. He looks like the painting of Dante in Ya-Ya’s study and the statue in the driveway.”

  “Yes, indeed. This guy acts more like Dante’s Inferno than Dante’s Paradiso though. Ya-Ya’s trying to make friends with him. Think you could help? He seems to like you.”

  I did like Melody already. She was smaller than the other people and newer. She sparkled when she saw me, and she smelled sweet, like nothing I had known before.

  Melody turned her back to me and pulled a shimmery-shiny something out of her pocket. I had to see exactly what the girl was fiddling with, so I walked right up to her shoulder and peered over.

  “He’s curious,” said Mrs. Eden. “That’s a good sign. He’s interested in Melody’s chewing gum wrapper.”

  Doctor Tom made a face. “Oh, he’s got a spirit of inquiry, no doubt. Got it in spades.”

  Mrs. Eden smacked him lightly with the back of her hand. Had she popped him good and hard, I’d have made her my friend for life.

  “You know what I mean, Tom? He’s bright. He’s paying attention. He’s confident; the look of eagles, I’d say.”

  “Uh-huh, and his legs are crooked,” said Doctor Tom. “Oh, joy. More money.”

  I had angled my head to the right to keep watch over these new people. Mrs. Eden’s eyes traveled down my chest to my legs. I thought of trying to kick her, only as a warning. To make it known, if I hadn’t already, that I didn’t really care to be messed with. Not even by a fine old horsewoman.

  I remembered what the helpers said the night before while I was kicking them. “Strong. Powerful. Fiery.” Nobody had said “crooked.”