Born to Trot Page 4
A great sigh of relief escaped Mr. White. “I’ll do it, Doc! Fact of the matter is, I’ve wanted to all along.” He thought a moment. “Yes, I’m sure the boy needs a strong dose of horse medicine. A stronger dose than can come in a letter.”
“Horse medicine? Oh, well,” Dr. Mills laughed a little wistfully, “there was a time I wanted to be a veterinarian, anyway. But seriously, Ben, what are you driving at?”
“Just this. One of the owners I train for gave me a high-strung filly by the name of Alma Lee.”
“Yes?”
“And last year I bred her to the stallion Scotland.”
“Yes, yes, go on.”
“And day before yesterday, May fifth it was, she dropped a little brown foal.” Now the words came out in a torrent. “And I’ve come to ask if you don’t think this foal’d make a good dose of horse medicine for Gib. If I give her to Gib, I could train her for him and whatever he wanted done with her I’d do. No trainer would ever work harder to please an owner than I’d try to please him.”
Dr. Mills blasted away on his horn. He pressed his foot on the accelerator even though they were going around a curve. “Why, that little tyke’ll do more for the boy than fifty doctors,” he crowed. “Great guns, what are we waiting for!”
Seven
GIBSON lay staring at the empty space between the windows when suddenly an old pork-pie hat came sailing into his room. Then a familiar figure strode joyously after it.
“Gib!” The father’s eyes found the boy’s, then wrenched away. There was a wild-bird look in them as if he’d broken a wing and now came flapping for help.
A quick hand thrust itself out from the covers. It was thin as any bird-claw, but Mr. White felt heartened a little by the firmness of its clasp. I’ve mended broken wings on birds and chicks, he thought, I can do it for my own. He picked up his hat and hung it on the chair, then sat on Gibson’s bed.
Gibson sniffed. Ever so faintly the aroma of horse came to him. He sniffed again, smiling.
Mr. White took a long deep breath. “Shucks,” he chuckled, “there’s so much to tell you I hardly know where to begin. And we got to talk fast because I can’t stay long.”
“Busy, Dad?” asked Gibson, fighting his homesickness. “Lots of horses to train?”
“Busy!” Mr. White echoed. “So busy I was telling Guy only yesterday I’ll be glad when you’re ready to team in training with me.”
Gibson’s eyes looked full at his father. Behind the dark irises the yellow light searched him, pleading, thirsting, like shafts of sun reaching for water from the sea.
“It’s the colts,” Mr. White was saying. “Every time I see a little newborn I think of the flying potential in those long, slender legs.”
They were quiet for a time, Mr. White not knowing how to go on. He walked over to the windows and looked out. “Pretty view,” he said.
“Not bad,” Gibson replied, “but too lonely. Needs some horses kicking up their heels.”
Mr. White slapped his thigh. “By George!” He turned around, laughing. “It would be a sight fairer with a few brood mares and sucklings, chestnut and bay against the green.”
He cleared his throat. “By the way, Gib, there’s a . . .” He paused a second, then ventured, “There was a new foal born to Alma Lee just two days ago. I should be buckling a halter on it right now.”
Horse talk! This was more like it! Gibson got out of bed, shuffled his feet into his slippers, and curled himself into the wing chair. He turned his face close to the old felt hat. “I’d been figuring it was about time, Dad.” He took the hat in his hands, feeling of it. “A horse colt?”
“No. A filly.”
“Is she little and fine like Alma Lee or big and rugged like Scotland?”
“My guess is she’ll be big,” Mr. White said. “Not coarse, you understand, just big-going like Scotland.”
Excitement began to work into Gibson. He poked a finger under the crown of the hat and twirled it, the hat nodding and dipping as it spun. “With Alma Lee and Scotland for parents she ought to be something sharp.”
“Yes. Royal ancestry.”
Gibson felt good. This was almost like sitting out in front of the stables at dusk. All the work done. Just the talk, the soft-voiced talk. He let one arm dangle over the side of the chair, half expecting Bear’s wet nose pushing into it, half hearing his tail thumping on the ground.
“You drove Scotland to his record, didn’t you, Dad?” Gibson asked, trying to hold onto the moments.
Mr. White nodded. “A funny thing about him, Gib. That stallion’d never take dirt.”
“You mean he’d always go around and never through the pack?”
“I do. Figure he saved my life once.” Mr. White began remembering. “Scotland and I were in a race. A big one. And coming down the stretch one horse stumbled and fell and all those behind piled up in a heap. Tom Berry was one of the luckier ones. He got out with only a broken leg.”
“And what about you, Dad?”
“Scotland traveled the big route and came on to win.” Mr. White reached for the watch in his pocket.
Gibson rummaged in his mind for more questions. He couldn’t let his father go. He wanted to hang onto him like a small boy grasping a coattail. “Who was Scotland’s sire?” he asked quickly.
“He was Peter Scott. And he by Peter the Great.” Mr. White began winding his watch.
“Did you know them?” Gibson hurried the questions, wanting to hear the answers but wanting more to string out the togetherness.
“I knew Peter Scott well,” answered Mr. White. “A great friend of mine raced him—Thomas Murphy. That horse started in eighteen races and won seventeen.”
Mr. White caught the ticking of the alarm clock and turned around to compare time.
“What about Alma Lee’s side of the family?” Gibson blurted, then sighed in relief when he saw his father liked the question.
“I knew Alma Lee’s father when he was just a little foal,” Mr. White began fondly, rocking back and forth on his heels. “Drove him and his father, Lee Axworthy, too. He was the first two-minute trotting stallion in the whole world.” The contented rocking and the words to match went on. “For my say-so, Lee Axworthy was the most wonderful horse ever looked through a bridle. From the time he was a three-year-old he broke from a trot only once, and that when another horse collided with him. And his son, Lee Worthy,” Mr. White chuckled, “was something, too! When we’d score for the word ‘Go’ that horse’d look out the tail of his eye, wait for the other horses to come alongside, then zzt—he was off!”
Gibson’s face was alert with interest. “I can remember when I was a little boy and picked some marigolds growing on his grave in the centerfield of the Lexington track.”
Mr. White chuckled. “Your mother didn’t think they were quite so pretty when she found out where you’d picked them. But I didn’t come to talk pedigrees,” he hurried on. “I’ll tell you about just one more of the foal’s ancestors and then I really must go. Volga, Alma Lee’s granddam, was the world’s champion filly. Never lost a race! Not one. And when you were a little knee-breech boy tutoring with Miss Branham, this Volga threw her into a tailspin.”
“You mean Miss Branham actually drove Volga and got spilled?”
“No, no,” laughed Mr. White. “This was the way of it. While she tutored, you used to hold the stop watch on her.”
“Why, Dad, I didn’t even own one.”
“ ’Course not. But you had a little old wrist watch and you made sure the lesson ended on time. One day, however, she was talking about the rivers of Russia and mentioned the Volga, and for the first time she had your whole attention. She figured it was a turning point and you were suddenly getting to like school. But when the lesson was over and she wanted to know why you were so attentive, do you know what you said?”
“No, what?”
“ ‘My father drives a horse by the name of Volga.’ ”
A knock on the door broke into the laughter, and a nurse came in bringing two glasses of orange juice. She offered one to Mr. White and put the other on Gibson’s bedside table. She reached for the thermometer in a glass on the dresser, then changed her mind, straightened the pillows on the bed, and turned back the coverlet. Without saying a word, she moved her eyes from Gibson to the bed and back to Gibson again.
With a sigh, he hung the old hat on the wing of the chair and climbed into bed. The nurse nodded and left the room.
Before her footsteps died away, Mr. White had emptied the glass of orange juice and waited while Gibson drank his. Then he came around to the foot of the bed, standing there, holding onto the rail. He wondered why he was so slow getting to the point. I act as if it were bad news instead of good, he told himself.
“Gib,” he said, looking straight at the boy, “you’ve got to direct the training of Alma Lee’s filly because”—his words were no longer slow and methodical—“because,” he almost shouted, “she’s yours!”
Suddenly the bed seemed narrower to Gibson than any sulky. He gripped the mattress, hanging onto it in dizzy insecurity. He felt ashamed at once, as if he had dropped the reins in a race and were clutching the sulky frame. He made his hands let go.
“A baby trotter to train!” his voice started low, then cracked like a girl’s. “Oh, Dad!”
Mr. White looked at his watch in earnest, not because time mattered. It could have stood still for all he cared. But because he could not meet Gibson’s look. “Before I go back, Gib,” he said, clearing his throat, “I’d like to have you name your filly so I can have her registered.”
Gibson laughed out. “Why, how can I name her without seeing her?”
“Hmm. Hadn’t thought of that. Guess I’ll have to see her for you. Let me think,” Mr. White paced up and down in the little space between the bed and the windows. “She’s red bay and her little switch tail is black and she wears white coronets on her right forefoot and her left hind.”
“White coronets on alternate feet.” Gibson’s eyes were set afar off, seeing the slender legs twinking through the grass. “When she trots, her white feet will be going in unison, won’t they?”
“So they will!”
“How high does she stand, Dad?”
Mr. White closed his eyes to remember. He began measuring, placing his hand first at his bottom vest button, then up a little and a little more. “Her ears’d come about high as your heart, I’d say.”
“That’s it, Dad! That’s it!”
Mr. White waited, not understanding.
“Don’t you remember in Shakespeare’s As You Like It?”
“Pshaw, Son. You know I’m not one to do a lot of reading. You tell me.”
“Well, I forget just how it was, but I think Jaques was the one who said to Orlando, ‘What stature is Rosalind?’ and Orlando said, ‘Just as high as my heart.’ So what would you think if we named the new foal Rosalind?”
Mr. White’s eyebrows went up. “Sounds highborn, like the filly she is. Anyhow, as trainer and not owner, I’d say Rosalind it is! And a good name. If I’m not mistaken, she’ll have heart enough for anything.”
The silence that followed had a nice sound. Mr. White’s slow, even breathing. The whisper of footsteps in the hall. And outside the window a wren sputtering. Now there was no scrabbling around for things to say. Questions could be put as they came.
“Owners have to pay for board and training for their horses, don’t they, Dad?”
“I’ve been thinking about that, Gib. And I have so much faith in a colt by Scotland out of Alma Lee that I’m willing to stand the cost of hay and oats until she’s a two-year-old. Then she can begin earning and you can pay me from her earnings.”
“Okay, Dad. I’ll buy a notebook and enter all the costs in it, starting with her first halter and her registration fee, right on until she’s entered in the Hambletonian.”
“There’s only one thing I have to ask, Son.”
Gibson looked at his father and his eyes were all sunlight now. “Ask anything, Dad.”
Mr. White grew almost bashful, but his eyes did not break away. “When I’m in a race,” he said softly, “and I call on a colt for the supreme effort, he seldom fails me. You, Gib—?”
Gibson winked at his father. And suddenly the fevered look, the pleading-bird look, seemed gone. There was determination behind that wink and both Mr. White and his son knew it. They were in a conspiracy together.
Eight
NOW, for Gibson, Time acted reasonable and right-minded again. The sun and the moon settled back into their old routine, traveling their orbits with business and dispatch. And the round-faced clock on the dresser ticked and tocked with dignified decorum.
Scarcely had Mr. White closed the door behind him than Gibson had something important to do. He suddenly remembered you couldn’t name a colt just any name that occurred to you. It had to have a certain number of letters in it. So he wrote to the American Trotting Association, special delivery air mail, asking for the rules and regulations. Then he wrote his father, telling him not to apply for the certificate until he heard.
But in his own mind he would always call her Rosalind. There was no changing a name once it fitted.
The very same day of Mr. White’s visit, Gibson ordered a black notebook from the hospital commissary and spent nearly all of one month’s allowance for a fountain pen. This record of his filly had to be permanent. His first entry read: Rosalind (temporary name) foaled May 5th, by Scotland out of Alma Lee. Color, bright bay. Markings, two white coronets. Trainer, Benjamin Franklin White. Owner, Gibson White.
Then he began listing the items his father would need:
1 halter
1 lead strap
No hay yet
No straw
Foal is still sharing mare’s stall. Eating off her.
Sleep was a long time coming that night of May seventh. When it did come, a big-going filly ran away with Gibson’s dreams. She had wings growing out of her withers and she took off over fences and cliffs and mountaintops; yet, no matter how high her leap, she never broke from her trot. Gibson woke with a flash of joy over her way of going.
One morning a week later, Dr. Mills came again to see Gibson. Over his arm he carried two saddlebags. “These,” he said with a show of pride, “belonged to my great-grandfather Samuel Mills. I spent nearly all of last night saddle-soaping them and splicing a piece onto the strap that joins them.”
He came over to show Gibson. “See what a good job I did. Now whisk out of bed,” he directed. “I’ve made the strap long enough to throw across your bedspring. Now you’ll have one saddlebag at your right hand and one at your left—one for incoming mail, one for outgoing.”
Gibson was out of bed, helping Dr. Mills lay the strap flat under his mattress, helping tuck the sheets back in place. He felt of the smooth leather, wishing he could sling the bags over Rosalind and trot around the Big Apple with just oats and a clean shirt in the pouches. But aloud he said, “Mail’s going to be worth saving now.”
“I’ve got another surprise, too.” Dr. Mills started for the door. In a moment he was back again, this time carrying a big bulletin board. With hammer and nails from his pocket he hung it opposite the bed in the space between the windows.
“This won’t be vacant long,” he said, standing off and eyeing it with approval. “Here are some thumbtacks. I’ll lay them beside your clock on the dresser. Whenever you have a picture or a clipping you want to hang on your bulletin board, you can get out of bed and do it yourself.”
A sudden smile wreathed Gibson’s face. “Isn’t it—isn’t it good, that of all doctors we found you!”
Dr. Mills looked pleased. He stood with hands in pockets, glancing from the bulletin board to the mail pouches and back again. “I’m going home to Orange County tomorrow,” he said, “and the first free minute I have I’ll rummage around in my attic there. I think I’ve a book about a great American trotter you’ll like. Especially,” his voice rolled out strong, “now you’re an owner.”
When Dr. Mills left, Gibson plunged his hands into the pockets of the saddlebags. They were good and deep, deep enough for whole packets of letters. Books, too.
Nine
THE saddlebags were not long empty. At noon that day plump Miss Kierksted, whom everyone called Tante, came in waving two pieces of mail. “A letter for you, Gibchen, and the other looks like a picture.” She smiled, showing little white teeth that reminded Gibson of a pet mouse he once had. “My, my!” she exclaimed, inspecting the new saddlebags, “aren’t we fancied up! If my mail gets any heavier, I’ll come in to borrow your pouches.”
The minute the door closed, Gibson ripped open the bigger envelope. A slow grin spread over his face as he took out a tinted photograph of his father holding Rosalind in his arms as if she were a pup instead of a foal. And beside them stood Bear, looking up so lifelike Gibson half expected a yelp of joy. He studied the picture a long time, first at close range, then at arm’s length, excitement growing within him. He rang for a nurse. Rosalind was too good to keep to himself. He had to spread the news. How curious yet trusting she was! How sure of her place in the world! How big-eyed!
“Gibson White! Answer me!” a laughing voice said. “I’ve been standing here two minutes.”
Gibson looked up from his trance, then smiled in embarrassment. He handed the picture to the young nurse. “I just wanted you to see a picture of my new filly.”
When he let the picture go, he saw it even more clearly. The up-headed little colt with the switch tail no longer than a whisk broom. The peppery look about her. And the deep pride in his father’s face. He wondered if Alma Lee were half as proud of her foal as he was.
“Isn’t she tiny!” the nurse exclaimed.
Gibson laughed aloud. “Why, she’s going to be big and husky. She’ll be sixteen hands when she’s full grown.”