“She’s a fighter. And I don’t know.” He straightened his tie again while, above it, his Adam’s apple bobbed preposterously. “I have a hunch you’d know what to do with her.”
He was referring to my success years before with D’s horse, Ringleader, who’d had a similar injury. I’d trained him on the shores of Elmenteita, and he’d come back to run and win. But there hadn’t been the urgency then, and my career wasn’t at stake. “I don’t want to make crazy promises,” I said. “The truth is she might never live up to her potential now, let alone win classics. But the chance is there.”
“You’ll take her then?”
“I’ll try. It’s all I can do.”
The next day, Wise Child came to us with her soft lovely muzzle and her fighter’s spirit and those legs that nearly broke my heart. She’d been done terrible wrong and needed painstaking care now. Over the next twelve weeks, we couldn’t make the smallest mistake with her.
Like Elmenteita, Lake Nakuru had a rich and muddy fringe at its edge, which gave well. That’s where we brought Wise Child to run her paces. Sometimes Ruta rode her and sometimes I did—easing her from a trot to a canter to a gallop. A rose-pink tide of flamingos startled around us, making their wooden sound. Tens of thousands of birds climbed as one and then receded, settling with a clamour only to startle again. They became our timekeepers. They alone saw a kind of magic begin to happen as Wise Child grew stronger and surer of herself. She had been wounded, nearly broken. You could still see her fear each morning as she tested those first few steps gingerly, as if the mud might hold knives. But she had a warrior’s courage. When she opened up now, we could see trust and willingness in her, and something more than speed.
“This muscle,” Ruta said in her stall, as he groomed her silky and compact bay body. “This muscle can move a mountain.”
“I think you’re right, Ruta, but it also scares me. She’s in top shape. She’ll never be more ready, but even so it would take almost nothing for those legs to fail. It could happen on race day. It could happen tomorrow.”
Ruta continued his grooming, the dandy brush skimming her gleaming, liquid-looking coat. “All this is true, but God is inside her. Her heart is like a spear. Like a leopard.”
I smiled at him. “Which one is it, Ruta? A spear or a leopard? You know, sometimes you sound just like you did when we were children, boasting how much higher you could jump than me.”
“I still can jump, Beru.” He laughed. “Even today.”
“I believe you, my friend. Have I told you lately how very glad I am that you’re here?”
I knew Ruta and I would be together always, until the very end. But no matter how close loyalty or God or magic crept into the weeks we trained Wise Child, human frailty and fear were stronger. Three days before the race, Eric came to see me. His wife had seen our heads pressed a little too close together at the club one evening, talking of Wise Child and her possibilities, and now she had given him an ultimatum.
“It’s you or her,” he said, in a near-strangled way, clutching at that tie until I wanted to rip it from his neck.
“But there’s nothing going on between us! Can’t you tell her that?”
“It won’t matter. She’s got to mean more than the horse, or anything else.”
“Don’t be stupid! We’re nearly there. Pull her after the race if you must.”
He shook his head, swallowing. “You don’t know my wife.”
“This is going to ruin me, Eric. I’ve killed myself for your horse. This is my race. You damned well know you owe me that.”
He went red to the tips of his ears, and then slunk away like a coward, muttering words of remorse.
—
When Sonny Bumpus came with a groom later that morning to take Wise Child, I was beside myself. I’d used Sonny as a jockey before, and we’d known each other since we were children, all the way back to my terrible years at boarding school in town. We’d lined up desks to play at steeplechasing then. Now he was one of the best riders in the colony, and it didn’t take much work to guess that Eric had asked him to ride Wise Child, and that both Sonny and my horse were being handed cleanly over to the new trainer.
“Tell me why this is happening, Sonny. You know how hard I’ve worked.”
“It’s the worst sort of shame, Beryl. If I had any choice, I wouldn’t take her. I was all set to ride Wrack, but now he’s broken down. He’ll run again, but not this time.”
“Wrack’s out?”
“For now, yes.”
“Then Wise Child’s sure to win. Goddamn it, Sonny. I have to have this!”