Horse Heaven

by Jane Smiley

  When he got back to Farley’s office, Farley was sitting there in his chair, gazing up at the ceiling and tapping a pencil on the edge of his desk. Seeing Oliver brought him to. He stood up and picked up his briefcase, glancing at his watch. He said, “Still have time for a nap, if I leave now.”

  “What was that all about? Did he accuse you of jinxing him again?”

  “Nope.”

  “He didn’t have anyone with him.”

  “Nope.”

  “Well?”

  “Walk me to my car.”

  They walked through the quiet, sunlit repose of the backside at noon, the day’s work done, racing not yet begun. The horses who weren’t sleeping deep in their fresh beds of straw were dozing over their hay.

  It wasn’t until they were out in the open that Farley said, “Well, he said I didn’t jinx him after all, that that horse broke down because, uh, Jesus required it.”

  Owing to his upbringing, Oliver was not unfamiliar with this line of reasoning. He said, “To open his eyes?”

  “That seems to be the case. Horse didn’t die. That seems to be part of his reasoning. Jesus required injury but not death, that’s a sign of God’s mercy, and the horse is recovering beautifully, for which Buddy is grateful.”

  “Grateful? Anyway, Buddy’s had two other horses break down since that one.”

  “Yes, but no one gave him the warning on those. I gave him the warning on that one in the fall, which is another sign of Jesus’ mercy, and so those others count as a kind of emphasis. I called him to account, and he paid no heed. That’s how he said it. He came over to thank me for calling him to account, and to ask my forgiveness for his heedlessness. He also said he would stop claiming all my horses.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said that every trainer here has horses on his conscience, myself included.”

  Oliver wondered.

  Farley responded without being asked. “About seven years ago, I had a gelding who was blind in the right eye. I ran him maybe six times, but I always scratched him if he drew an inside position, because he got nervous when horses came up on his blind side, and he was good enough to run the long way around and make some money. The owner loved him. Anyway, one time he drew the number-two spot. I was all ready to scratch him, but he was so fit and ready to run that I didn’t. I didn’t decide not to, I just let it slide. Every race I’d run him in, he’d broken in front, so I told the jockey to try and get a good jump, and if he didn’t, just let the horse drop back and go around. Plan A and plan B. Well, what happened was, the gate opened, and the number-three horse got bumped by the number-four horse and knocked right into this horse and put him over the rail. Broke his neck. I knew if he could’ve seen them he was quick enough to get out of the way, or if I’d scratched him he wouldn’t’ve been there in the first place. Jockey broke his shoulder and was out for two months. And then, because they didn’t have any money coming in, the jockey’s wife didn’t take one of the kids to the doctor, and she got pneumonia.” He glanced at Oliver. “She recovered, though, for which I was more thankful than I can say.”

  “You can’t—”

  “Blame myself? I don’t blame myself for the accident. Accidents happen all the time. But what happened was, I let myself go ahead and see what might happen. It was a funny feeling, like the feeling of any other sort of temptation. I regret toying around with that feeling.”

  “You can’t take responsibility for every little feeling.”

  “You have to, though. You can’t but you have to, anyway. You are not able, but you are obliged to.”

  This idea made Oliver feel suddenly exhausted. He sighed. Farley glanced at him and grinned his marvelous grin and said, “Don’t worry. You already do.”

  “I do?”

  “You do.” They walked a few more steps. “Anyway, Buddy said that, when he was at the farm this weekend, Jesus presented to him, one by one, all the cripples he’s made, two-year-olds, three-year-olds, four-year-olds, and up, hobbling around in paddocks, big knees, big hocks, you name it. He said they were lit as if by halos. That guy he trains for, you know, he’s got thousands of acres up there. He lets ’em come back to the farm and hang around when they’re done at the track, so I guess there was quite a selection.”

  “Well, so what,” said Oliver, anger shooting like a rocket out of his exhaustion. “It’s fine for him to be saved. What about them? That’s what I never understood about my folks’ church back home. They always seemed to be extending the hand of welcome to the returning sinner, but the effects of his sins were still right there for everyone to see, this black eye and that broken arm and these kids going without food and all that. I finally just thought that the sinner was more interesting to everyone than the consequences of the sins, so what happened was, they all gathered around him, or her, for that matter, and to hell with the rest of it. Somebody being saved was the easy part. Cleaning up the mess was the hard part.”

  Farley didn’t respond. They went through the parking-lot gate, and came to Farley’s car. He unlocked it, opened the door, and threw in his briefcase. Finally, he said, “I’ll tell you what I think. I think it’s not our job to forgive him. We’re not the ones whom he’s injured in any real way, or at least, we’re not at the top of the list. But I guess I’m just going to see what happens. That’s always the best part, anyway, seeing what happens.”

  This was the strangest thing about Farley, Oliver thought, this way he had of seeming to stand back, ready and alert, waiting to see what happened. It was consistent. It didn’t interfere with his willingness to help or even to take charge, but it was cold, wasn’t it? Right next to his liking for you was this other thing, his interest in what might happen to you.

  Farley slammed his door and Oliver backed away from the car. He had a few more things to do before he headed home himself. Farley waved, and drove out the gate.

  When he came back to the parking lot, an hour later, there, of course, was Buddy Crawford. He had the trunk of his Lexus open and was bending over, peering inside. Once again, he was alone. Oliver scurried to his car with his head down, but it was no use. He had his key out and was poking it into the lock when he heard the fatal footstep and felt the fatal hand on his shoulder. “Son,” said Buddy.

  Buddy was a good deal shorter than Oliver. When Oliver looked down at him, Buddy took his hand down. Oliver said, “Hey, Buddy. How are you doing?”

  “Well, son, that’s a wonderful question, and I’m happy to answer it, because I’m doing better than I’ve ever done in my life.”

  In order to preempt the confession, Oliver smiled and said, “I was just talking to Farley.”

  “Well, it’s fucking good news, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, I guess it is, Buddy.”

  “You want to hear how it happened?”

  “I’m kind of late, actually—”

  “Son, you’re never too late for the Lord.”

  “I suppose not.” In the end, Oliver still did not have the fortitude to stand up to Buddy. While Buddy was relating the details of his conversion, which had something to do with his cousin’s wife and a high-school basketball game and a fellow he met from England who had racehorses, in France, but also raised sheep for Muslim sects that still performed ritual sacrifices, Oliver found himself unable to pay attention or follow the line of the story. Instead, he stood looking into Buddy’s face and remembering what it was like to work for him. Incidents that had been hazy in his mind now replayed themselves in crisp detail. He had been working there for about a week, it must have been, when Buddy had called him a shithead for the first time. He had said it in a normal tone of voice, instead of “Hey, Oliver, look at this colt’s fucking knee,” he had said, “Hey, shithead, look at this colt’s fucking knee.” Oliver had thought he’d said the wrong name, like Skinner or Lincoln or something, but then he’d caught the eye of the groom, who had nodded. Hey, shithead. Some two or three weeks after that was when Buddy instituted his 3:00 a.m. policy—Oliver w
as to get to the barn by 3:00, not by 4:00, as he had been doing, and fax Buddy by 4:00 about the condition of the horses. Checking the legs of a hundred horses in an hour was impossible, so of course he didn’t ever get the fax in before 4:30, and this led to perennial complaints. “I’m waiting for you. You fucking think I want to sit up and wait for you?” But he hadn’t reacted at the time. The abuse was like a heavy rain or a cascade of something. Some people actually professed to like Buddy—he was earthy, honest, lively, sometimes funny, and always, always, always, what you saw was what you got. Lots of people considered this a virtue. It was supposed to elicit its complementary virtue—being able to take it. While he was working there, Oliver had accepted that this was part of the learning curve at the racetrack—being able to take it was a general quality that would stand him in good stead. When he quit, he had felt some shame at not being able to take it.

  Now he felt the anger that he hadn’t felt then, or since. It was the conversion that did it, Buddy’s beaming face, his evident joy. And it was joy. Buddy always won and often won big. He had sent horses to every major stakes in America and won quite a few of them. What you would see in his face then was not this same thing, triumph or vindication or whatever. Now, as Buddy wound up his story, his expression was totally un-self-conscious. His smile passed through his features as through a veil, revealing his inner self as truly, Oliver suddenly realized, as all the abuse had also revealed his inner self. It was true with Buddy that what you saw was what you got, and you could see something else now, something entirely new that had not been there before. It was what his mother and aunts would call a God-given miracle, and Oliver, who was well trained to recognize such things, recognized it.

  That didn’t mean he accepted it. What was that parable, the one that showed God’s perfect grace? The guy went out and hired workers for his vineyard, and paid those who worked an hour the same as those who worked all day. Those who had worked all day got annoyed at that, but the master had no sympathy. Not only did he hold them to the letter of their contracts, he set the latecomers ahead of them, and corrected the complainers. How many times had Oliver heard this parable in his life? Maybe a hundred. How many times had he nodded and understood it? Maybe a hundred. But, looking into Buddy’s beaming face, he found himself wondering about justice and deserving and a hundred horses here and at Hollywood Park who could barely walk but were made to run every five days, week after week, month after month.

  He saw that Buddy expected him to say something.

  He said, “Gotta go, Buddy. Congratulations. I really mean it.”

  He got in his car and drove off.

  FEBRUARY

  15 / PASSION

  ONE THING Rosalind Maybrick realized about hopeless affairs, now that she had committed herself to one, was that they were certainly enlightening. She knew more about herself, Al, Dick, Louisa, life, love, and horses than she had ever known before, and probably more than it was healthy to know. Of course she should have settled for knowing about fine collectibles. Al’s children would have joked for the rest of her life about how shallow and empty she was, and she would have gone to her grave and disappeared without leaving a trace, even for herself, but that opportunity was past now. She seemed to herself to leave traces everywhere, streaks of light when her hands moved through the air, afterimages when she turned her head, phosphorescent footprints wherever she walked, an aura of herself upon the air when she moved from place to place. These latest lovemakings she and Dick were having shone with a terrible light that pressed against her eyelids no matter how tightly she shut them. When he asked her why there were tears in her eyes she couldn’t tell the truth—that the light was blinding her. She could only say something about how dry her eyes had been lately. He, of course, thought she was crying—he said that: Why was she crying? What was wrong?

  Oh, she was a seer now, a fortune-teller, a prophetess, and a witch. Had not every second-sighted woman since Medea been hopelessly in love with a man who could not see the light all around them? Who had his mind on something else—for example, the sea; for example, the mountain; for example, the finish line? Hopelessness was something every seer paid in order to see, and not voluntarily, either. No one in her right mind would want to see any of this at all. Most nights in New York she saw Al. Here he was, getting up from the dinner table, glancing over at the empty liquor cabinet, feeling his pockets for the cigarettes he hadn’t smoked in ten years. Here he was, scratching his ass. Here he was, pushing his hair back. Here he was, hitching up his pants. Here he was, glancing at her. He had been a prepossessing man once, years before she knew him, but years of success had imprinted him. He had forgotten how to watch out for the eyes of others, and if he saw someone looking at him, you could see the thought “Fuck ’em” cross his face. Of course, he didn’t treat her in that way. He was always kind to her. But you couldn’t think, “Fuck ’em,” about almost everyone and not have a “Fuck ’em” way of being. But if it were only that, or purely that, Rosalind would have left Al long ago. Superimposed over his present self, though, was another and another. There was the guy who was sorry for who he was, who knew he offended others and drove them away, and did whatever he could to stop doing whatever it was that he was doing that he didn’t understand that he was doing that drove people away, and in that also drove people away. This was the man Rosalind was committed to, the one she had vowed not to be driven away from. This was the man she caught looking at her from time to time, such deep longing and bewilderment in his eyes that she knew it was coming up from way beneath marriage, way beneath love, way beneath manhood or fatherhood. She could see that look as she had never seen it before she became a seer, and it struck her to stone. Superimposed over that man was still another, a sixty-four-year-old mortal truly in need of a miracle, whose inner contradictions had finally hardened so completely that they brought him to an impasse. Aggressiveness had gotten Al out of Schenectady, New York, a life like his father’s as a bricklayer. Flouting authority had made him inventive and innovative in his approach to business. Eagerness to get things done had brought him not only money but tolerant children, houses, winning horses, lovely surroundings at every turn. His vast energy had allowed, and even demanded, hard work, and he had enjoyed the effort of it, and the bragging rights, too. Time was when these qualities of Al’s just appeared on Rosalind’s radar screen as random thoughts she had about him. Now, though, she saw the whole package, saw that it was a package, and it made her hopeless for him and for herself. She could not leave him, and he could not change. Where was love in there? Rosalind didn’t know, because, now that she had had her face pressed into love for eight weeks, she knew even less about what love was than she had before, when she’d been in the habit of sitting around with her women friends and discussing everyone’s affairs.

  Rosalind could see herself as clearly as she could see Al. Love had broken her into parts. There was the psychotherapeutic part, all about her father and mother and sisters. Her mother attentive and perfect, her father taciturn, the two of them fighting (frequently? infrequently?). There was the social-class part, all about moving from middle-class Appleton to upper-class Manhattan. She knew she was a newcomer, and even if those around her didn’t expect her to act with perfect propriety, and, in fact, saw the perfect propriety as Appletonian, and the perfect propriety that she took refuge in was the very thing that prevented her from having any relief, giving that up was too great a cost for getting relief, rather like being disemboweled, she thought. There was the temperament part. Stubborn she was, stubborn she had been, stubborn she had been labeled. These qualities were said to be inbred. There was the feminine part. She knew Dick didn’t love her as much as she loved him, if he loved her at all. Any woman in such an undignified situation had only her dignity to protect her. Then there was the part about being an arrogant fool, which she had been when she thought that day on the plane that there was some little thing she needed, and then she had reached out and taken it, and it had been more than she c
ould handle, and so she had made her bed, and now it was just that she had to lie in it. Then there was the part about being vulnerable for the first time in her life. The fact was, she was rather a nicer person these days than she had ever been. People smiled at her in a genuine way. She herself was warmer. She got touched more often, addressed with endearments more often, complimented more often on things other than clothes. She got thanked and thanked others more sincerely. Several of her friends told her she had unbent; a couple of the ruder ones told her they liked her more and that others liked her more, too. Then there was the part about the great sex. The sex was great. She was transported, Dick was full of compliments. She recognized compliments as compensation for lack of love, and their recent increase in number as a way for Dick to try to persuade himself that there was something in this for him after all, but Al wasn’t much of a complimenter, so the compliments were delicious to her.

  Well, she saw Dick, too, dissected and labeled. His job terrified him. Once in a while, when they spent a night together, he was as likely to wake up with a nightmare as not—horses breaking down, horses trapped in the starting gate, horses on top of jockeys and the jockeys screaming underneath the bulk, incapable of being found. Once he woke up in the morning, a real morning, the morning of his day off, so after sunrise, and told her that he dreamt that every horse in the barn had been X-rayed and found to have four broken legs, even though they were all standing peacefully in their stalls. The track officials had come around and insisted they be euthanized on the spot, and he had awakened just as he had agreed to do this. He had awakened with a cry, and said to her, “Now I’m sure they all have stress fractures.” He felt isolated from his wife, and unable to help her. He had no friends that Rosalind would recognize as friends, except her. And he talked to her only, it seemed, under duress, when he couldn’t hold it in any longer. He was some twenty years younger than Al, and so he didn’t seem so locked against himself, but he did seem impossible to save. She had discovered the limit of her powers with him—at most she could distract him from a little anxiety from time to time. At the worst, her presence gave him anxiety, and she became who neither of them could bear for her to become, a source of discomfort for him and a reason to get away.