The Sport of Kings Read Online Free Page B

out the clean air as smoke fills a burning room. God, he hated the cows with everything in him. He shuddered when he first gripped the swollen teats, extruding streams of warm milk that whined in the bottom of a tin bucket. He refused to rest his cheek on the hide of the cow as the farmer’s three girls did while they milked, but craned his neck to the side to keep from brushing against the distressing mass of the animal. He endured this indignity every day.
    On a September afternoon, when the calves’ seventy days of nursing were through, it was finally time for weaning. The youngest Miller showed him how it was done—a girl of seven with violently red hair, a face mottled with freckles, and knees as fat as pickle jars. She stuck her little fingers into the mouth of a skinny black calf and looked up at Henry, her own mouth a small O of delight. “This is my favorite part,” she said. “I wish I could stick my whole arm in there.” She motioned with her free hand for him to do the same. His calf took his fingers into its urgent mouth, and Henry fought the desire to snatch his hand back, but let it stay, worked and pulled by that alien, suckling muscle.
    â€œPull them down,” said the little girl, whose name was Ginnie. They guided the calves to their waiting buckets until their hands and the calves’ mouths were bent into new milk. Then Henry slipped his fingers free, and the calf sputtered the white milk, foaming it. This was repeated again and again until the calves finally drank willingly from the bucket. Henry wiped the slime and milk onto his jeans and stared at the foam-spattered face of the calf. It was pathetic how the teatlorn creature so easily traded its mother for a bucket.
    â€œThe only thing better than cows,” sighed Ginnie, “is Corgis. The big ones. With tails.”
    Henry just moved on to the next calf. The Holstein’s baby black turned a glossy red as a chilling evening light slanted into the crib, casting sudden, severe black shadows across the barn floor. Late autumn brought these shadows early now. The lemony light of summer was done, the fruits were overripe or rotten, the leaves sapped to ocher. The corn stalks were knived and soon, in the fields, the first frost would stiffen any forgotten remainders, encasing them in ice. Staring at this light, Henry turned ten.
    Ginnie said, “Henry, are you gonna get married?”
    Henry made a face. “Someday, maybe, I don’t know.”
    â€œLet’s you and me get married!”
    â€œYou? No way, you’re ugly.”
    â€œI am not!”
    Henry sighed. “When I get married, I’m going to marry a beautiful woman. My father says not to waste energy on ugly girls.”
    Great dollop tears formed in Ginnie’s eyes. “A pretty girl won’t be half as fun as me!” she whined, but Henry was distracted by the blooms of his breath in the suddenly icy barn air.
    â€œWhen did it get so cold in here?” he said, jogging to the tack wall, where his winter coat hung from a shaker peg. Through a keyhole knot in a wallboard, he fisheyed the farm, which was now a snowglobe of white interrupted by the dark shape of the calves grown tall. Not so long ago, they had gamboled alongside their mothers, but now stood in staggered, snowy groups. As Henry watched, the dark of the winter wasteland crept over them.
    Ginnie, busy shoveling manure in a crib, seemed to have forgiven him and said, “Maybe you can stay late today, and we can play?” She eyed him with sneaky delight. “We can pretend your farm is a wicked kingdom, and you’re a baby I save from the wicked king!”
    â€œGinnie, I’m too old to play.” Henry yanked a woolen cap down over his copper hair and was moving out the barn door when something was hurled against the back of his jacket. A cow patty.
    He said nothing, it would only encourage her.
    â€œI’ll throw more!” Ginnie cried