THE CROW AND THE DWARF
by Inge Moore
Copyright 2012 Inge Moore
Published by Inge Moore on Smashwords
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Cover design by Tatiana Vila.
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THE CROW AND THE DWARF
My horse has a hoof of striped agate
His fetlock is a fine eagle plumed arrow
His tail is a trailing black cloud.
From poetry of the Navajo
Outside, it is still and dark. I move to my window, look past the lawn and across the street to the barns, see lights glinting in a few: like the wide-spaced stars of early evening. Pulling on my tight, clean-smelling boots, I steal out of the door, closing it softly behind me.
As I crunch down the gravel driveway, I hear a dog woof low in his sleep. It is just past five, and so still that miles away, I can hear the river breathe. Around me the air lies dark and damp. The quick solid thud of my heels on the pavement drives me on down the dark and silent street. In front of me, obscuring the gate and veiling the guard’s hut in a golden haze, there rests a light fog.
The guard wants to see the pass for which I was photographed and fingerprinted yesterday morning. As I flash it, I note the traces of black ink remaining on the tips of two fingers and my thumb. In one corner of the laminated pass, below my photo, sits my thumbprint. It looks criminal. It looks as if I’ve finally been caught.
The track is not so quiet as it seemed from a distance. Ahead, I hear voices raised in dispute, muffled as though behind a closed door, then suddenly from behind me, the flurry of shod hoofs spitting gravel; and the sharp cry, “Loose horse! Loose horse!”
I turn, too late – he’s past. But when I whistle he hesitates, turning his flying head, long leather shank streaming back across his dark flank like the tail of a kite as he flies. There are suddenly people in front and across the road, waving arms, whistling, and he jerks to a stop and is caught. I continue to the race track kitchen.
There is plenty of room. I get my own table by the windowed wall, and set down my tray of bran and juice and boiled egg. As I eat I watch the other people: it is safe from a distance. They are all men, old and young. I amuse myself by guessing from their appearance, what they do.
The smallest, bent over a racing form, is a jockey. The tall thin one gallops. The muscular one with the beard might be a groom, but he is wearing a helmet – he is a pony boy. The old ragged ones, grey and raw-boned and stirring, stirring their coffees are grooms. The gangling kid walks hots. The ones wearing dress pants and sporty jackets are the trainers, They are the worried ones, with wrinkles in their eyes, who can’t afford to sit and stare: they gulp and run. I look out the window. The one getting out of the Cadillac is a vet.
We are all here for the same reason. We are all here for the horses.
At our barn there is a light falling from one stall. I walk up and lean into the doorway to find Robbie brushing Control Her. “Got a walker for you,” he says without turning like he knew I’d be early. Does he never take off that cap?
“Fine,” I say and the chestnut, who was looking the other way, turns to stare at me with his foolish white face.
Robbie slips the chain of the shank through the stallion’s mouth and snaps it to his halter. “I think he’ll be good for you, but he hates the east corner,” Robbie tells me. “And he bites.”
“I remember,” I say, rubbing my right arm, on which he’s left at least three sets of bruises, and then snapping open the stall’s webbing. I take the shank from Robbie, who is holding it up in both hands like a child giving me his fresh-crayoned picture. I smile – I’ve almost told him what a good job he’s done, how fine a colour the horse’s coat shines.
“Just try it today,” I warn Control as I guide him along the shed row. “I’m wise to you now.” The brute rolls his eye. He sees me watching him and understands.
They are all more difficult on the days they aren’t ridden, on the days they only walk. At the east corner, he rears and I step aside, his bulk churning above me, then shank him down. He’s a tall horse, his withers clearing the top of my head; in fact, I think he is the tallest horse I’ve handled. If he rears when we are actually in the shed row, beneath the roof beams, he’ll crack his head.
The leather of the shank feels smooth beneath my fingers. Control is walking quickly but he responds to the chain, his neck arching to the pressure, and he doesn’t try to drag me, a relief because my muscles are sore from yesterday: it’s been months since I walked a horse. But I never take my eyes off him, or he’ll strike out fast as a snake and grab me, then jerk away before I can counter. I find that keeping up my guard is easier today.
I sigh when I walk past Format Kiss’s now empty stall. She had run her heart out yesterday, literally. These horses lead pampered lives but can also meet sad sudden deaths.
Over and over we pass Robbie who is mucking out the stall. Methodically, he piles manure and soiled straw onto an empty, outspread feed sack, when it is full enough pulling the corners of the rough brown cloth together, compressing the contents. Then he hefts the bulging mass onto his shoulder and carries it across the ditch and to the manure pile where he dumps it. Each time I pass him I wonder what he is thinking about, I wonder if he is bored and if he ever wanted to do this or if he simply must.
For although he is small, it is clear that he could never ride a race. He is a dwarf and a dwarf is something ugly: deformed, de-formed, twisted in its form. Not a perfect miniature man, like the jockeys are but instead, a monster.
There was an assistant at my foster father’s clinic who was pudgy and clumsy and made mistakes so Abu called him Terato and this poor man never knew why, but I did because Solona told me: it came from the Greek, teras, which meant monster, and was made into the English word teratogenesis – the production of monstrous fetuses.
But something was forgotten and suddenly I remember it, the other meaning of teras, the marvel. Monster … marvel … monster. Robbie would have loved Format Kiss even if she’d never won a race, he told me so himself, because she had heart and heart is something very separate from form or speed. I don’t know exactly what it is but I could feel it in her too – the marvel.
People have started to arrive at the barn; there is laughter and bustle, and rain is pouring from the still-dark sky. By the time I have put one of Robbie’s horses in its stall, another has come off the track and I hold it while he washes off the mud and sweat with buckets of warm water that smell of pine disinfectant, which is what these horses smell like – pine – not like animals at all.
Wet to the skin, I am cold, cramped and a headache is creeping up my spine and closing in on the back of my skull. There will be no racing this afternoon; soon I can go back home, shower, and crawl into my bed. I hold this thought ahead of me like a beacon to keep me swimming: I have never been so tired. Once Robbie’s horses are all finished, I go to a stall into which I have just seen a horse and rider walk. When I arrive, the rider is down and has pulled off his saddle. The groom hands him the bridle and I step aside to let him pass, his white teeth flashing an astonishing smile out of a mud-pie face.
“I’ll take him for you,” I say to the groom who has now haltered the horse. Looking me up and down, he grunts an affirmation. He is tall and muscular in a spare sort of way and his slick, blue-black hair falls to his shoulders. All he is wearing above his tight jeans is a grey undershirt, badly torn.
I lead the mud-caked horse out of the shed to the wash bucket the groom has prepared. I note that beneath the mud, the horse is black. “What’s his name?” I ask when the groom arrives.
He plucks a sponge from a steaming bucket. “Leprosy,” he says against the horse’s neck. I can smell the whiskey from where I stand.