Dante of the Maury River

by Gigi Amateau

  With his face all contorted, Gary flapped and honked like a goose. He blurted out, “You’re reflecting badly on Edensway. On your mama, too, for that matter. I’ll tell you what, Dante. That’s a crying shame because she’s a great horse. You think her foals will be much in demand if you’re a fiasco at the track? The legacy rests on your shoulders, my friend.” Then for added dramatic effect, he threw his hands up. “Here’s the deal. I got nobody else willing to even try to break you. Nobody.”

  Filipia stirred behind me.

  “Excuse me, sir, Gary,” she said from the corner of my stall. “I can do it.”

  Sour-faced Gary and me, we both whipped our heads around right fast. Neither of us could believe what we’d heard.

  Filipia stood well within my field of vision and paused her hand on my rear end, a good sign of respect. She wanted me to be one hundred percent certain of her location. There was nothing in her hand or heartbeat or her breath to make me think she was anything other than what she purported to be. A girl who loved horses like crazy.

  “You? I doubt that,” said my trainer.

  She insisted. “Dante knows me. He likes me, and I like him. I’m in here every day. I can get a saddle and bridle on him with ease.”

  “What’s your name again?”

  “Filipia,” she responded, with more than a touch of annoyance. I thought about popping Gary hard with my tail, but I didn’t want to undermine whatever case the girl was about to make.

  “You can doubt me if you want to, but I know I can ride him. Back home, on the island where I grew up, I worked with horses all the time. My brothers used to doubt me, too. But not anymore.”

  “How old are you?” Gary asked.

  Oh, glory. Did I ever feel her heart skip and her breath stop just then. A little quiver, hardly detectable to a less sensitive being, but an indisputable tremor.

  I’ve never been able to tell a person’s age — probably because I’ve never really gotten a good look at their teeth. Filipia did look fairly, what I’d call . . . youthsome.

  “Nineteen,” she finally said. She shrank back against me.

  All I could see of her was the toe of a cracked, worn-out black paddock boot beside my hoof. Now, Gary could see her the whole time.

  With those two steely, predatory eyes in the front of his head, he peered into her. Then he barked, “I’ll ask you again. How old are you? The truth this time.”

  She wrapped her hand around my tail, anchoring herself to me. “Eighteen. I just turned eighteen, sir.”

  Gary grunted. He spun on his heels and shut himself up in the office for a good little bit. Filipia let out a big sigh. Her breathing returned to normal, and she kept on with cleaning out my stall.

  A few minutes later, though, who’s standing at my door but Gary. That’s right.

  “I don’t know what to say. This is the craziest idea I’ve ever heard. What’s even crazier is that I’m seriously considering a yes,” Gary said.

  Back he stomped to his office to hole himself up.

  Filipia squealed and jumped up and down. Nobody who knew me a little would have had the courage or stupidity to make such an unruly high-pitched sound as that. Nobody who knew me a bit would have made such a fuss and explosion with their arms and legs all flying around. But Filipia knew me a lot.

  By grain the next morning, it was decided. I overheard Gary talking to his assistant. “You should see her with him is all I’m saying.”

  No sound at all came from either man except for the shuffling of papers on that clipboard that was permanently attached to Gary’s hand.

  “Come on. We gotta do something.” He was trying his best to recruit an accomplice, it seemed to me. That way, if this radical experiment with Filipia went south, there’d be at least one other person to blame.

  Sounded to me like old Gary had run out of big ideas and reasonable options.

  Even before they gave us the official word, Filipia knew. She came bouncing into my stall. “Hey, Monkey! How are you today, Mister Racehorse?” She tugged a bit of my mane. I stomped for her to quit it. “Come on, we’re a team now. Right?” Filipia lowered her head and put her nose to mine, like Marey and Melody used to do.

  “You’re okay, Monkey, and we’re gonna be great together. Do you want to know how I can be so sure? It’s like my grandma — my brothers and I call her Melon — like Melon used to tell me: ‘My darling, a good beginning is half the work done.’ You and I had a good beginning, Dante. Don’t you think?”

  Like always, whenever she was working around me, Filipia started to tell me a story about her family and her island. Like always, her voice put me at ease. “You probably want to know why I call you Monkey,” she said.

  She emptied a pitchfork full of soiled shavings into a wheelbarrow parked at my stall’s entrance. “See, I remember when I was five, the day my daddy left, Monkey. I loved him like the stars love the moon. He cried so hard, and we all cried so hard that I worried our little house would fill up with water and float out to sea with all of us. Daddy stretched out on the orange sofa, holding his head with his hands, and I was beside him. The night was so hot inside that my legs stuck to the plastic cushions. He begged Mama, ‘Please don’t make me leave. I’ll be a better man.’ She was frying bacon, ignoring his tears and mine, too.”

  Nose to nose, she took my breath. How I wished I had a little something more than breath to offer her. But then again, breath is life, so I hoped maybe there was enough in our sharing that would keep her there and talking to me.

  Filipia kissed the soft part of my nose. “Now, you might think that if I remember all that, my good monkey, that I remember all the bad things Daddy did to make Mama hurt enough to let loose a hailstorm from her heart. But I don’t remember those things. Not all of them.”

  She turned silent for a good little bit. She stopped her story from growing any bigger and kept on mucking my stall. Filipia was the only one brave enough to do the work with me standing beside her.

  I’ll say it again: she was good. She took her work seriously. She’d hunt down every wet stain, every bit of dung, any particle that might draw flies. So in return, I tried hard to do all my business in one spot. More or less.

  As she was finishing up spreading fresh shavings in my stall, she set down the rake and picked up her story. “I bet you wonder why I told you all that about my family. Okay, here’s why. After Daddy left, Mama started to call me Monkey. She told me, ‘You’re my only daughter. You and me, Monkey, we’re a team now.’ So, Dante, you see what I’m saying, don’t you? You’re my only friend here. Not a single bad thing from before matters, Monkey. We get a new start. You and me.”

  She turned away, disappeared without a word or breath or good-bye.

  At Edensway, my water filled up on demand. On my demand. I’d simply press my nose to a big old button and, whammo-blammo, my bucket would fill up with fresh cold water. But at the training barn, I relied on Filipia. I got used to her being gone, then back in a quickstep, ducking under the gate with the green hose folded tight in her hand.

  “Ha! My monkey thought I’d left without a good-bye. Never! Here, you need fresh water. Drink up.”

  She leaned way over, balancing on one leg while pulling the hose to reach my bucket. Just the sound of the water curling and whirling around made me thirsty. Filipia started to wobble, and I stood right there behind her to steady my partner. I pressed my muzzle into her shoulders, very lightly, just enough to tilt her upright.

  “Aw, Monkey! You love me like crazy,” she said.

  I nickered because, well, she was right.

  Miraculously, Gary had indeed consented to give me one more chance. An even bigger miracle? He agreed to give Filipia exactly one chance. Just one. Desperate, I reckon.

  She took it; I took it. And I’ll brag right now: those crusty horsemen stood back and learned something from an eighteen-year-old girl. A tiny, baby-faced girl.

  “Two days,” Gary barked at her one morning, about the middle of May.
“That’s it. I’ll allow you forty-eight hours to make this happen. We’ve got to make up some time. All my other horses are doing baby two-year-old races already.”

  I glanced up from my hay, a mouthful of it dangling from my lips. As much as I wanted that little old girl to show them up and prove herself, the fact was not lost on me that her goal was to break me.

  They’d already broken my knees and set them back straight when I was shy of a month old. This breaking that Gary kept talking about involved something else. Something even more precious than my bones or muscles or any other parts at all.

  Gary was negotiating with Filipia about breaking my spirit.

  Even though I liked the friendship that had been developing between us, well, I don’t imagine there is a horse or human or any living thing who is eager to have their spirit broken.

  Because without my spirit, what am I? Just a big tangle of skin and hair and a crazy mess of bones. All mane and tail with no swish or swag.

  Such thoughts raced through my mind. At least something in me was racing.

  Similar thoughts must have been rolling around in Filipia’s head, too. Now, she didn’t have a wild spray of hay dangling between her teeth, but her eyes showed every bit as white as mine.

  Gary finally snapped his fingers in front of her face. “Tick. Tock. You get where I’m coming from?” he said, then turned to walk away.

  “Sir, Gary?” Filipia called after him. She swallowed a gulp of air, and I’ll tell you what, I figured she was about to give up on me before she’d even started. Part of me was relieved.

  Relieved I might never have to prove myself. Relieved I might not ever fail at the three tests. You can’t fail if you never start.

  Then Filipia surprised me.

  “Sir, Gary? I won’t break him. Just so you get where I’m coming from.”

  I thought Gary was going to blow himself right out of his boots. He turned so dark in the face from heating up on the inside. I just knew Filipia’s next task would be mucking a mess of melted Gary up off the floor of my stall.

  But she didn’t let his fuse burn all the way down. She offered up what amounted to a cool bucket of water.

  “Oh, he’ll accept the saddle when we’re done. He already responds to my voice. But he won’t be broke. No way. What good would he be to you if I broke him? Fire isn’t always a bad thing. Especially in a racehorse.”

  Believe you me, when I heard those words I pretty near fell to my knees and invited her to hop aboard. And I mean then and there. I tried so hard to make my mouth utter some kind of sound she might understand. My effort to say thank you came out like it always does. In a whicker.

  “You’ll start tomorrow,” Gary said.

  Off he went to his office, as was his habit. This time, though, he stopped and spun around. “Let me ask you something,” he barked. “When you say he responds to your voice, are you speaking Spanish to him?”

  Filipia made a face as sour as any face I ever saw. “Of course not,” she snapped.

  Gary looked surprised. “Oh, why not?”

  “Duh, because he speaks English.” Then she couldn’t help but smile. “But sometimes I sing to him in Spanish. Everybody understands the language of music.”

  To say I was excited would be an understatement. Still, I knew I’d have to find a whole other gear, as they say.

  Now, when we in the racing world talk about gears, we’re talking about speed and power, but I mean something else entirely here. I knew I’d need to find a deeper, braver place than I had ever been to, except maybe the night I was born.

  Filipia gently placed her palm in the broad space between my eyes, and when she did, a charge rolled from her right into me.

  “Here,” she said. “This is the place, Monkey. See from here, and you’ll have everything you need.”

  I jerked awake — as if a starting gun had gone off — and stepped back.

  “Yeah, you feel that, Monkey? Good.”

  She lifted her hand, let it hover, then tugged on my forelock. “Whatever bad things you’ve learned till now I want you to forget. We’re alike, you and I. We’re talented and beautiful, and we have to take care of our mamas.”

  I nickered.

  “Oh, speak for myself, eh? I will tell you another secret about me. I feel a lot of pressure to work hard and to ride and to win.”

  Believe you me, I understood exactly what Filipia meant. I could never shake Marey’s last words to me or the desperate look in her eye when she begged me to be a better colt. Or the way she sparkled like a sunbeam on Doctor Tom whenever he came into the barn. She’d pivot her ears toward his voice. She wanted to please the Edens and wanted me to do the same.

  Now, here was brave Filipia saying pretty much what everybody else had been saying for my whole life.

  “Here’s the truth, Monkey.” She leaned in close to me and breathed in my coat. “Okay, here’s part of the truth. My mother and my grandmother need my help. And that means I need yours. They sent me here to live with my oldest brother and his wife and their baby. My brother sends money home, and I do, too, but he has a family now. It’s really up to me. Exercising, grooming, cleaning stalls? I like the work, but it’s taking me too long to earn money. I need to race. That’s where you come in.”

  She picked up a currycomb and began to rub it over my barrel. “How do you manage to get so dirty, even when I cover you up at night?”

  She touched her own forehead in the space between her eyes. “Right here,” she said. “All the knowledge and wisdom and vision we need is right here. Melon calls this the knowing place, or the wisdom place. Like a place that stores up everything in the past, present, and future. Like a kaleidoscope of every bit of wisdom in the universe. So, Monkey, when I asked myself the question, How can I get the chance to race? I saw you and me at the track. You with a carpet of flowers draped across your withers. Me wearing silks. Dirty, muddy silks from running and winning.”

  I can admit now that I was anxious. Not so much from a fear of being broke but from the unanswered question of my life. Would I be able to deliver?

  What Filipia wanted from me was the thing I had yet to wholly offer to either human or horse. Trust.

  Up till then, we two did pretty well together, but this idea of racing together would mean turning over control to a miniature creature who, fact is, kind as she was, had those small, predatory eyes in the front of her head. I knew if I was going to succeed with Filipia, I’d have to do something else first.

  Surrender. Trust her so much that whatever she asked of me, I’d gladly do, even if I was afraid. Even if I couldn’t see ahead.

  Somehow or another, between nightfall and sunup, I’d have to travel all the ledges and ravines inside myself and come back out willing and able to trust Filipia. One. Hundred. Percent.

  That evening after Filipia left, and after the sun went down and the stars came up, all was quiet in the training barn. Besides the occasional clanging of an empty bucket against the stall wall or the soft murmur of tired two-year-olds up and down the lane, I found myself feeling flat-out lonesome.

  A soft rain started up, striking the tin roof of the barn. Almost imperceptibly at first. Listening to that hypnotic plip-plop lulled me away off into those as-yet-unexplored places of myself.

  Let me confirm right here and now: horses do dream.

  We dream in the daytime, while we’re awake, and at night, while we sleep. Sometimes, a dream is nothing more than a strong or subtle memory ushered in on a smell. Like how the scent of rubbing alcohol always makes a replay of Doctor Tom and his needles.

  Sometimes a so-called dream is like a visit. A visit with a friend or, in my case, an ancestor.

  Right when I needed him most, Grandfather Dante visited me in such a dream. Now, whether this was a waking or sleeping dream, a visit or a mirage, I can’t say for sure. Whatever it was felt as real as the raindrops plinking and plunking overhead.

  A visitation, let’s call it.

  Gary had gone on hom
e; he lived in a cabin up at the top of the property. On his way out, he had turned off the radio and shut off all the lights, except for the one hanging from the ceiling outside his office. The air was as still and thick as a board, the usual way summer handles itself in Virginia. All the feed buckets had been licked clean, and all the horses had finally bored themselves into slumber. Nothing but cicadas and hoot owls tending to the night.

  What happened next, I expect, is that I nodded off, because there I stood at the edge of a starlit path. A return invitation I had been anticipating since the night I was born.

  I stepped out, this time more certain of where I was headed. Sure enough, I followed the starry trail to the bloodlines through the salty call of the sea and into a foggy wall of the hills. I grazed there until Grandfather Dante came up beside me.

  Here’s what the great Thoroughbred champion Dante’s Paradiso told me: “Go toward the water.”

  That stallion liked to keep an air of mystery about him, for sure. I hadn’t an inkling or a notion of what he meant.

  I whickered, but Grandfather Dante left me standing right back in my stall. Or, I woke up.

  No more stars. No more fog. Just a barn full of dozing fillies and colts and Gary’s hanging lamp, squeaking and swaying back and forth in the breeze now blowing through the barn. By that time, a hard rain pelted in through my window. I most surely did not want to go toward the water.

  Turns out, Grandfather Dante knew exactly what he was talking about. Going toward the water was the essential part of Filipia’s plan. Heck, the water was pretty much the entire plan.

  If I’ve failed to mention there was a small river called the Willis that ran right behind Gary’s training compound, well, that’s because I didn’t know a thing about a body of water being back there. Had no reason to until time came for Filipia to show her stuff to Gary, who protested her technique mightily.

  “What in the devil’s hills are you doing coming up here in shorts, a T-shirt, and flip-flops?” he demanded.