Spirit of the Horse

by William Shatner

  “Then he pushes McKeever into a six-and-half furlong race on the following day. He stations about twenty or twenty-five rail birds, all of ’em stable boys out of a job, in the infield, and hands them out their yelling instructions. McKeever is up against one of the best fields of sprinters at the track, and he goes to the post at 30 to 1 and sticks at that. His owner puts a large number of his pals next to what’s going to happen, and not a man of them plays the good thing at the track. They have their coin telegraphed in bundles to the poolrooms all over the country. McKeever gets out in front, and he hasn’t made more than a dozen jumps before one of the kids inside the rail throws a whoop that makes the people in the stand put their hands to their ears. McKeever gives a swerve and a side step, and away he goes like the Empire State express. A hundred feet further, when he’s four lengths in the lead, and the others, including the even money shot, nowhere, a couple more rail birds shoot out another double-jointed yell, and McKeever jumps out again like an ice-yacht. He gets the holler at every 100 feet of his journey, the rail birds not taking any chances on his stopping, although after the first furlong he is six lengths to the good, and the result is that McKeever simply buck-jumps in, pulled double, with eight lengths of open daylight between him and the even money shot. The owner looks sad, like a man who hasn’t put a dollar down, and says real hard things to McKeever when the horse is being led to his stable. When he gets him inside his stall, though, the hugs and loaf sugar that fall McKeever’s way are a heap. The old-time poolroom people will tell you yet how they had to turn the box, a good many of ’em, the day that McKeever was hollered home at old Alexander Island.

  “And, talking about Alexander Island, there were some funny ones yanked off over there, sure enough, some of them almost as funny as a few that happened over in New York at the legit tracks this passing season. Without hurling out any names, I’ll just tell you of how a plunger who has been a good deal talked about this year, on account of his big winnings, got the dump-and-the-ditch at the hands of a poor-but-honest-not owner at Alexander Island in the same year of 1895. This plunger wasn’t such a calcined tamale in those days as he is now, but he was some few, and he generally had enough up his sleeve in order to keep him in cigarettes and peanuts; which is to say that he had a winning way about him, and access to everything that was doing at that outlaw track. He dealt in jockeys quite a lot, giving them their figure with a slight scaling down, according to his own idea of what was coming to them for being kind to him. He was wise and he was haughty, and toward the wind-up of that Alexander Island season he fell into the notion, apparently, that things had to be done his way or the kickers fade out of the game.

  “This poor owner that I’m talking about went on to Alexander Island with an ordinary bunch of sprinters, all except one filly, that was real good, but a bit high in flesh, and not ripe. It was a filly that could as a matter of fact beat anything at the track, being right and on edge, and she had the additional advantage of not being known all about. The poor owner has his own boy along with him, and he’s pretty hard up. He sticks this filly in a six-furlong event, with the idea of really going after the purse, which he requires for expenses. He knows that the filly isn’t right, but he dopes it that she can beat the lot pitted against her, anyhow, and he really means her to win. He tells his boy to take her right out in front and get as good a lead as he can, so that in case her flesh stops her the rest’ll never be able to get near her. That’s the arrangement right up until post time. The filly—well, suppose we call her Juliet—is not very well known at Alexander Island, and she has 5 to 1 against her.

  “Now, it happens that this plunger knows all about Juliet being, as I say, a pretty fast proposition, but he doesn’t think she can win in her condition, and, anyhow, he has something doing on another one in the race; he has so much doing in the race, in fact, that all the rest of ’em, except Juliet, are dead to the one he has picked to play. The plunger digs up the owner of Juliet and says to him:

  “‘My son, your baby won’t do to-day.’

  “‘She’ll make a stab, though,’ said the owner. ‘I need the cush, being several shy of paying my feed bills. The game has been throwing me lately. She’s going to try.’

  “‘You need the purse, hey?’ said the plunger. ‘That’s not much money. Only $200, ain’t it? How’d $500 do?’

  “‘Spot coin?’ asks the impecunious owner.

  “‘Spot coin after my weanling gets the money.’

  “‘You’re on,’ says the poor-but-honest-not owner. ‘I’m not any more phony than my neighbors, but it’s a case of real dig with me just now. Juliet’ll finish in the ruck. Are you cinchy about the one you’ve got turning the trick?’

  “‘It’s like getting money in a letter,’ says the plunger.

  “‘All right,’ says the poor owner, ‘you can walk around to my stall and push me the five centuries after they’re in.’

  “The poor owner saw his boy, and Juliet’s head was yanked off, with the boy’s toes tickling her ears. She could have won in a walk, short of work as she was, but the boy had a biceps, and he held her down so that the plunger’s good thing went through all right.

  “After the race the plunger, who had made a great big thing out of it, hunted up the poor owner and beefed about the $500. He said that he hadn’t been able to get as much money on his good one as he had expected and asked the poor owner to compromise for $300. The plunger’s poor mouth doesn’t tickle the poor owner a little bit, but he is a pretty foxy piece of work himself, and he takes the three hundred without letting on a particle that he thinks it a cheap gag. The plunger goes away thinking he has the poor owner on his staff for good, and the poor owner makes sundry and divers resolutions within himself, to the general effect that the next time he does business with that plunger he’ll know it.

  “Well, the poor owner doesn’t race his good filly again for a couple of weeks, and all the time she’s getting good. He gives her her work at about 3 o’clock every morning, in the dreamy dawn, so that nobody gets onto it just how good she is getting. He shoots her in about two weeks after he has been dickered down by the plunger. He knows that she’s going to win, and with his other skates he has picked up nearly a thousand wherewith to play the Juliet girl to win. On the day before the race the plunger comes to him again.

  “‘I see you’ve got that nice little girl of yours in to-morrow,’ he says. ‘How good is she?’

  “‘She’s got a show for the big end of it,’ says the poor owner.

  “‘Um,’ says the plunger. ‘Well, she’ll only be at 5 to 1, whereas I’ve got a cinch in that that’ll be as good as 15 to 1. Do you think we can do a little business?’

  “‘On a strictly pay-in-advance basis, yes,’ says the poor owner, chewing a straw. ‘Maybe I’ll be able to see my way to delivering the goods for a thousand down. Otherwise I win.’

  “The plunger made a terrific beef, and tried persuasiveness, oiliness, bull-dozing the whole works, with the poor owner.

  “‘Why,’ he says, ‘I can buy all the Juliets from here to Kentucky and back for a thousand.’

  “‘Yes,’ says the poor owner, ‘but you can’t shove a 15 to 1 shot through every day, either. Let’s not talk about it any more. You’ve got my terms. Thousand down, right now, and Juliet will also run. No thousand, Juliet walks, and I’ll get the coin anyhow by betting on her.’

  “He got the thousand two hours before the race was run. The poor owner looked Juliet over, and called his boy into a dark corner of the stable.

  “‘Take her out in front, son,’ he said, ‘and tow-rope them. Don’t let ’em get within a block of you. I’ll send your mother a couple o’ hundred after you fetch her home.’

  “‘She’d win with a dummy on her,’ says the kid.

  “Then the poor-but-honest-not owner takes the thousand he already has in his kick, and the thousand the beefing plunger has given him, and spraddles it all over the United States on Juliet at from 5 to 7 to 1.

 
“Juliet wins by fourteen lengths, and the plunger, with his mouth twitching, hunts up the owner of Juliet. All he gets is a line of chile con carne conversation, and, finally, a puck in the eye.

  “‘Do others or they’ll do you’ isn’t the way they used to teach it when I went to Sunday-school,” concluded the old-time trainer, “but there are occasions when the rule just has to be twisted that way.”

  THE SPIRITUALITY OF THE HORSE

  Those of us who remember 1974 were all aware of this story at the time. That was when farmers working in the Lintong District, Xi’an, Shaanxi province of China, uncovered what turned out to be an army of terra-cotta sculptures representing the military might of Qin Shi Huang, who was the first emperor of a unified China during 221–210 BCE. The purpose of this funerary was to guard the leader in the afterlife.

  By the time excavations were completed, archaeologists had uncovered sculptures in three pits filled with in excess of 8,000 soldiers, as well as 520 horses and another 150 cavalry horses, plus chariots as well as other figures from acrobats to musicians.

  I understand, now, that the horses were there not just to provide power and mobility to the troops of the afterlife. They were there for the courage, the heroic spirit they themselves represented. And let me tell you: you look into the eyes of those figures and those horses seem alive.

  Whatever your religious beliefs, there is no question that every living thing on the planet—indeed, in the universe—is connected. How attuned each of us is to that fact varies; but it doesn’t alter that reality.

  As with clergy, as with shamans, as with tai chi and kung fu masters, there is a connection that takes place which enriches all of the participants. This connection triggers a spiritual and energetic exchange, a positive zeitgeist that can impact not just the participants but, passively, any observers. At its most powerful, that bond can cause energetic and physical healing. Think of a simple, everyday example of a sick child and a puppy.

  Many people say—not incorrectly—that they ascribe good health to a positive mental outlook, and a positive mental outlook to general satisfaction with their work, their family, their prospects. I certainly have been blessed with a job that challenges and thrills me every new day, a family that is close and loving, and a passion for horses.

  For years, I have ascribed my health, this energy that I have, day after day, to the horses. That isn’t to say the other parts of my life don’t enrich me; they do, of course. But the horse has an ancient soul, and I mean not just the strands of them that go back to LUCA but the ones that evolved from the eohippus, or “dawn horse,” a foot-tall forebear that inhabited North America some sixty million years ago. Back then, humans were still basically lemurs. The prehorse vegetarians, which fed on leaves, grasses, and shrubs, had to learn to run, and run fast, because they were prey. Think about it: we are talking about animals with instincts and senses that have been constantly refined for sixty million years.

  We who ride are the beneficiaries of that unbroken chain of energy.

  I have a business manager who used to caution me that owning horses was simply not cost-effective. He has stopped saying that. But he also looks at me and says, “It’s all worthwhile.” And it is. The horses have given me my health and energy, which is the basis of everything I do. It’s the basis of what everybody does. And if you don’t have your health, you won’t have vitality, that inner energy, and you won’t have your life.

  Which is not to say, by the way, that one can only get this from horses. Actors know this well: we can, and should, get it from each other. Unfortunately, our world often puts us in adversarial positions with each other, which makes this difficult. Even our recreations become unhappily competitive. Sports, which put us in contact with vast amounts of energy, tend to be less about healthy competition than about winning. Boardrooms, where people should be pursuing a common goal, frequently become battlegrounds. Travel and you are increasingly apt to look over your shoulder rather than to open up and bond with another people or cultures. Encouraged by the Internet, we tend to form pockets of “us vs. them,” whoever those pronouns may be.

  Humans require healthy engagement and I am seeing less and less of that in the world around me.

  It’s both sad and funny that people and horses can usually settle their differences with relative ease. This morning I got out of my car when I was at the farm where I do most of my riding now, and one of my beautiful horses was tied up at a pole, and I went over, and I hugged the horse, and we had three minutes of communion in which I am holding this giant animal. It must be what a little child feels holding their father or a giant football player. I’m holding this horse, who is resting against me, and my whole being, my whole soul, is invested in the horse, and I can feel the breath of the horse, and I can feel the soul of the horse entering mine and mine entering it. It is a spiritual experience to be with those horses. And that’s as invigorating, as inspiring as actually mounting the horse and doing some fun tricks on it.

  This bonding is not just intimate, it’s expansive. It’s a shock wave but a healthy one that reaches out, and it lingers.

  There’s a country road that I take to get into this particular farm. It’s a left-hand turn, and then there’s a hundred-yard dirt road with a couple of houses to the left, and paddocks to the right with the horses in them. And the moment I make that left turn onto that dirt road, my spirit has already begun to become a horse. That doesn’t mean I start acting equine. It means that power, rooted in prehistory, starts to fill my body, my soul. And when I drive up to the stable, which is the farthest end of this particular swath of land, I’m seeing my horses being readied for me. To my left, in a 300-by-600-foot arena, a huge arena, with the best footing possible, a clay base with sand and dirt on top, I’m seeing a couple of riders training my horses. And then my horse is ready for me. I don’t have anything to do but walk from my car, a little stiff from the hour’s ride, mount my horse, and move into that arena and join my friends and companions, some of whom are humans, most of whom are horses.

  The stiffness is gone. Everything negative that might be lingering, hiding in body or mind is gone.

  In this highly energized state, you have to be aware that you are open to negativity as well. The people who are there, in any arena—in any life situation—will put out emotion, exhaustion, unhappiness that may break the spell. There was a woman this morning who was really intruding in my connection. She was riding her horse over to Danny Gerardi, a genius trainer I mentioned earlier, and her hands were bad. And the horse’s head was in the air, and she was so unhappy about herself and her horse that it filled the arena. And you want to tell her, “Be more gentle,” but it’s difficult. As much as one senses a ready bond, one also is sensitized to someone who is not, will not be open to any kind of camaraderie. You just have to redouble your efforts to remain open to your horse.

  That is not too usual, even among professionals who ride with me. It might be like veteran actors who are doing the job, though they have lost the thrill of acting. They’re performers, that’s what they do to earn a living. And that’s what some horse trainers are. I’ve always thought it would be interesting to find out how many people who ride horses think in terms of what I’ve just described. It’s very private; even talking about it here I wonder how people will take what I’m saying.

  It just occurred to me that if the crew of the Enterprise had encountered a planet where some ancient ascetic said he was “one” with his world, there would have been a wide spectrum of reactions. If we’d been there to tell him his planet was doomed, Kirk would have had to be convinced to let him stay so his released energy could join the exploded world as a small nebula or some such. We would, of course, have evacuated his exotic daughter.

  I mention that because my own discoveries have been evolutionary. They have evolved from a feeling, to research, to increased understanding, to reading the books of Linda Kohanov and her teaching about the power of the herd and the spirituality of the horse, to my co
ming to this realization about this powerful, powerful transfer of energy at a submolecular, intangible level.

  I don’t know what stage of spiritualism I have reached. It’s like religion, where you keep searching—or perhaps, more correctly, you don’t so much search as remain open to subtle vibrations, to new connections. I truly don’t know whether I’m at an end state and you don’t go any further because here, in this world, a horse is an entity, a living entity, with its own biological needs and distractions. It has empathy and it has intelligence and it has a spirit with which you want to make a connection, but I cannot say whether “that’s it” for now or whether this goes further and you realize that you can connect to whatever the horse is bonded with. We do that with our loved ones, to a degree; we feel what they feel, even if they aren’t articulating it. We feel it very, very vaguely, through genetic memory, with our ancestors. The fight-or-flight reaction, for example.