1993 Winner: The Hanging in the Foaling Barn

by Susan Star Richards

HERE it was three-thirty in the morning.

Between foaling mares and nursing sick foals, Luther hadn't slept more than three hours straight in the last two weeks. Tonight, at last, everything looked quiet, and he had gotten to bed with the prospect of being able to stay there all night for a change.

And then the night man called up to tell Luther he was going to hang himself in the foaling barn.

Luther sat there a minute, thinking something serious was happening-a mare was ready to go, a foal had a fever. "Tell you what, Maurice," he said at last. "If you want to die so damn much, why don't you just go in Brownie's stall and stand behind her and touch her once on the butt? You'd get your picture took in a hurry."

"Why Luther-" intoned Maurice's vague, startled voice-"She might just hurt me."

Luther smiled sweetly at the telephone. "That's true. You probably wouldn't stand anywhere near the right spot, and she'd probably just kick you someplace internal, and you'd crawl out into the hallway and lay there all night turning blue, and I'd have to fight all the mares past you in the morning before I could even turn out."

Luther took a big breath. He thought about it. "All right," he said. "All right. Only for God's sake don't hang yourself in front of the foaling stall. Wiggy's been snorting and starting there every evening, still looking for that dead meadowlark the cat left in the corner last week. She won't go in, and then she keeps looking in all the corners and snorting that way. And in the morning she runs over top of you trying to get out. She'll never relax enough to have that foal. And if she does, she'll probably think it's a dead meadowlark, she's so dumb."

"Not as dumb as you are, though, Maurice. You got to call up and want to kill yourself here in the middle of May. Couldn't you wait till June, at least, when foaling season's over?"

He slammed the phone down. Then sighed.

WHEN Luther had first known him, Maurice was leading apprentice at River Downs. He?d ridden a lot of winners for Luther over two summers there. Back in those days he had yellow hair like bright wheat straw, and those tall slender girls that always love jockeys leaning all over him. A strut to go with it, and a flat back in the saddle. And a way of waiting on a horse most bug boys had no knowledge of, sitting still till it told him to move, and then only moving to disappear into it as it ran, till it was all one beast, man and horse, running together at the wire. Luther had believed Maurice had a chance to make it at the real races.

But even then he was drinking, and then the weight got to him. He was an exercise rider for a while, and then a groom, and then Luther lost track of him entirely. When at last he showed up working at a gas station in town, still talking horses all the time, Luther had given him the night job for old time?s sake. He still drank, of course, but then most night men did. He didn?t smoke, at least, so he wasn?t likely to burn the barn down. And he claimed to have nightmares so bad that he never would sleep at night. It might even been true-in eleven years of foaling, he?d never missed a mare.

The only trouble was, toward the end of every foaling season, Maurice started considering suicide. Of course, that just made him normal. Everybody started thinking about killing themselves, or someone else, this time of the year. But Maurice would get into ways and means. One night he tried to drown himself by driving into the farm pond, but since it was only four feet deep, he?d only managed to drown his Chevrolet truck. Luther bought him an old car to replace it, and then the next spring he tried to ram the car into the big oak by the driveway. His aim wasn?t too good, so he made several passes at it, and by the time he gave up, he?d taken out about a quarter of a mile of fairly new plank fencing and let the barren mares loose all over the farm.

But he?d never tried to kill himself in the foaling barn. Luther found himself not just irritated but indignant at this. The foaling barn was where the heavy-in-foal mares came swinging in every day with their huge bellies swaying rhythmically, and the new foals staggered up on their feet for the first time and tried to kick somebody right away. Everything there wanted to live so much, was so full of life. That was why you always felt so bad when sometimes they didn?t make it. To try to kill yourself in the foaling barn, Luther believed, was sacrilegious.

Of course, he never thought for a minute that Maurice had any real intention of doing it. But he?s fool enough that he might just accidentally get it done," he said to himself.

He sighed again. His clothes were right there by the telephone, ready, waiting for some mare to call him up and say she was foaling, waiting for life to call him up, instead of some dummy saying he wanted to kill himself. "Hang on, Maurice," he said. Then laughed out loud, once.

A BRANCH came out and slapped at Luther?s arm as he jerked the truck around the corner by the woods. Luther slapped back at it. The yearling colts came swirling up, blazing white-and-green-eyed in the headlights, racing the truck down the fence at a dead run, sliding on their butts like baseball players to stop in a scramble half an inch short of ramming through the gate for the second time this week. "That?s right," he said. "You all keep trying to kill yourselves, too."

The lights were on in the barn hallway, a big floating square of light with the dark trees outside touching the roof. Grids of shadows in the squared-off reaches above. The mares looked up, big-eyed, interested, some of them speaking to him, ever-hopeful of extra grain rations. The tackroom was empty. He called. No answer. But he heard a little shifting noise up in the loft, like something afraid to move and afraid to sit still. Maurice was up there, all right. He was sitting in the hay bales. Luther could just make out the top of his hair, which didn?t look like wheat straw any more-more like old grass hay, by now.

Luther went in the foaling stall to check on Wiggy. "She do any more digging?" he called up to Maurice.

Maurice didn?t answer for awhile. "Been real quiet," he said at last. "Don?t worry," he added, in his sing-song, mournful voice. "You ain?t going to need me tonight."

"What about that new baby? You see him pee yet?"

"I done wrote you a note about that."

There it was, on the clipboard by the door, written in Maurice?s own edifying style: "The colt?s kidney acted."

"Be with you in a minute, Maurice," Luther said. "My kidney?s about to act." He went into Twinkle?s stall to pee. There she was, talking to her little sick baby, so happy to see it on its feet again and nursing on its own. Not a bit happier than he was, though, after getting the foal up every two hours for the last two days.

Luther calmed down some as he stood there, listening to the foal slurp its milk. All around him were the mares, munching slow and peaceful in their stalls, and some lying down and talking in their sleep to their new foals that hadn?t been born yet, the way they do toward the end, having baby dreams. And here it all was in the middle of green fields stretching out in the dark, and the fireflies outside going on-off, on-off, and the air smelling like a grape popsicle the way it always did down by the woods this time of year.

And there was Maurice hiding up in the loft, wanting to kill himself. Talk about racehorses being crazy. At least if a horse killed itself, it was because it was trying to do something else, playing or fighting or just running.

Luther started climbing up the ladder, cursing silently as he maneuvered himself up over the top. He did not like heights-not even the twelve-foot height of the loft.

A rag-tag rope made of a bunch of shanks tied together looped up to the central two-by-eight above the hallway. At the other end of it was Maurice, huddled up on a hay bale like some stray cat waiting to be kicked, holding a makeshift noose in his hands. "Look at you," Luther said. "Forty-one years old. Still healthy, in spite of all the alcohol you?ve put in your system. Sitting up here on a hay bale wanting to hang yourself with a lead shank. Couldn?t you just kindly wait awhile? We ain?t always going to be alive, you know."

Maurice said in a pitiful voice, "I waited long enough. I?m just doing what I should?ve done a long time ago."

"That?s the truth," Luther said. "At least you sure should?ve done it before three-thirty in the morning. How come you didn?t want to hang yourself just after supper? I had about twenty minutes then. I could?ve worked you in."

Maurice was silent. The mares chewed, stopped, thought about it, chewed again. A foal whinnied in its sleep, jumped to its feet, its mama spoke to it softly. Maurice glanced out into the middle of the space above the hallway, as if he saw something there.

Luther didn?t like that look. It reminded him a little of Crazy Harry, a horse that saw things-spooks-and no matter how many times you told him, "There ain?t nothing there," he wouldn?t believe you. He was always so sure there was something just up ahead of him that was going to jump on him that he would almost get you to believing it. Harry would freeze, and snort, and arch his neck, and bug his eyes, and start looking both ways to decide which way to bolt, till you?d find yourself saying, "What the hell is it? Where is it? What?s it going to do?" You just couldn?t pay attention to Harry at all, or he?d convince you the world really looked like he thought it did. What you had to do, Luther reminded himself, was to give him something else to think about.

"Suppose you get it done," he said, nodding at the rope, settling himself on the bale opposite Maurice. "Then what? How do you know you won?t come right back again? How would you like that?"

Maurice stared at him kind of cock-eyed, the way he did. "Come back as a ghost, you mean? Ghosts can?t feel nothing."

"But you?d remember feeling things. How it feels to be hanging in the middle of the barn, for example, with your head ripped loose from your body." Maurice hunched up a little bit more on his bale. Luther sank back on his. It was beginning to feel soft already.

He tried to calculate what he could do that would get him back home and to sleep quickest. He could hit Maurice on the head and tie him up with the shanks and leave him here until morning. Or he could leave him alone and let him jump. But that rope probably wouldn?t hold, and he?d wind up just breaking his leg, and then Luther would have to do something with him in the morning. And anyway, Luther was against things breaking their legs in his barn. Even humans. Even Maurice.

"If only they hadn?t taken me off of He?s No Angel," Maurice said.

"Hell. They took you off that horse twenty years ago. And they didn?t even take you off. You only rode him the once, remember? When that other boy had days?"

Maurice nodded dreamily. "He win by twenty. I never asked him for a thing. If I?d just stayed with him, I?d be riding in New York today."

Luther shut his eyes, feeling sleep right there behind his eyelids, dark and soft. "Yeah, and if things were different, I?d be breeder of the year. But I ain?t planning to hang myself about it. What you need to do is to cool out a little. Life ain?t all that serious to be worth killing yourself about."

Maurice was silent again for awhile. Then, "You remember that time I win on Circus Cat?" he said.

Luther grinned, reluctantly. This was one Maurice could always get him in on. Circus Cat was one of Luther?s all-time favorite horses-not the best he?d ever bred, but probably the bravest-a tiny little filly who ran against the older horses at marathon distances on the local tracks, sometimes fifty lengths out of it in the backstretch, always hopelessly beaten going into the turn, and more often than not on top at the wire. In the race Maurice was talking about, even the winner?s circle photographer had been faked out-she was still second when he took the picture of them all running at the end. Luther himself had turned away, saying, "Not this time," sure she was second, till he heard the shout as they put her number up.

"You remember what that guy said about her afterward?"

They recited it together, as wondering and staccato as the trainer of the second horse had said it after the race, shaking his head in disbelief. "That-sucker-came-from-freaking-Tennessee!"

"She did, too," Maurice said. "I can still feel it."

Luther could still see it, himself-the filly still trailing the field clearly when she came out of the final turn, then burrowing into the pack until she was almost invisible, just an impression of speed, a bay shadow, slipping sketchily through all those great, big, solid horses that seemed twice her size, to emerge third as the two leaders ran for the win. Then disappearing again between those two, then suddenly there, diving like a demon for the wire. "She was a wonderful little filly," he said softly. "You suited her down to the ground, too, Maurice. I have to say that."

Maurice nodded. His eyes had dropped to the rope again. "She was the last winner I was ever on. You put me on. When nobody else would. You was always good to me, Luther. And I let you down. I let everybody down. But I?m going to make it all up to you now. You ain?t never going to have to worry with me no more."

Luther leaned back against the bales, nodding. "Whatever you think, Maurice. I wouldn?t want to tell a man his business. But all I want is to get back in the bed." He closed his eyes once, nodded, opened them again. He wasn?t sure how long it had been. But Maurice had stood up, and he had the noose around his neck. He turned away vaguely toward the edge of the loft, holding his arms out from his sides, as if he might explode. The rope lifted up a little around his neck; he tugged at it daintily with one finger. But he didn?t move. "Standing tied," Luther said to himself.

Maurice straightened his shoulders. "I?m going now," he said in a loud voice. "I want to go. It?s now or never." Then he stood there, as if he were waiting for something to happen.

"Looks like never to me," Luther said.

Maurice glanced over at Luther. "Life don?t make no sense," he said, in a cracked, inspired voice. Like he?d finally figured it out. "At least, my life don?t. You think your life makes sense, Luther?"

Luther thought. "Not this part of it. Here I am sitting in a barn loft at four in the morning discussing life with a party who?s ready to kill himself. What do you care?"

"That?s right," Maurice said. He took a deep breath. He wiggled the rope around his neck, once, like straightening a necktie. Then he started walking toward the edge of the loft. He was taking baby steps, but he was heading that way.

Luther growled. He got up and took two big steps and caught up with him. "Give me that," he said, reaching out to snag the noose. Maurice walked faster. "No. Stop, I tell you."

He grabbed Maurice, turned him around. Maurice backed up. The rope pulled tight. Luther grabbed the rope. Maurice grabbed Luther. A slow waltz, Luther stepping forward, Maurice backward.

"Stop, now, what are you pulling on me for?" Luther said.

"I ain?t pulling. You?re pushing. I want to do it. Just let me go on and jump."

"You ain?t jumping. You?re hanging on to me. Give me this rope, I tell you."

They swung toward the edge of the loft together, their shadows huge, flapping against the light.

"Take that thing off your neck, now." Luther was breaking a sweat. "Here. Don?t crowd me, you crazy booger. I ain?t going to jump with you. This ain?t no lover?s leap." He was on the edge with his back to it, the space opening dizzily in the back of his head. They teetered forward together, and for a moment he was sure they were going over flat-out, heading for a great big double belly-whopper on the floor of the barn. Then they teetered back again.

Luther lunged forward, swung Maurice around with one big jerk of his arms. His heart was pounding wildly.

Now Maurice stood with his back to the opening. He still had a stranglehold on Luther. His eyes, close up, were blood-red, filling Luther?s vision, like the eyes of a horse that had been in the stall too long and was fighting you to get out, banging on the walls, climbing all over you. Luther wrestled himself loose and stepped back.

But then it was as if all that red had gotten in his own eyes. He saw Maurice crouched before him, looking strange, black lines running all over his face like it was a cup about to crack. Talking in a funny, screechy voice, saying "Don?t, Luther," or "No, Luther," or "Whoa, Luther" over and over again. Behind him was the great complex orderly opening above the hallway. Luther could feel the push coming all the way from his heels, could see Maurice rocketing off into the clean space behind him.

But then there was a big blow in Luther?s middle, like he?d been kicked. And he was sitting on the floor, alone in the loft. And the rope was holding. It was swinging back and forth like a pendulum, while Luther watched it in disbelief, certain that Maurice had to be the weight at the other end of it, since nothing else could be, but trying hard to think of some other explanation.

The rope started swinging and started jiggling, twitching, like someone was fishing with it. There was an unfamiliar noise, coming with the twitches, grunts of effort it sounded like. The rope?s motions got tighter and tighter, the grunts got louder and louder. His breath knocked out, sucking for air himself, Luther listened respectfully. Was it that much work-hanging?

Then the whole barn seemed to shift, get up and crawl a little under him. Maurice?s hay-colored hair, sticking straight up, was reappearing over the strawy edge of the loft.

Now, when he had discussed the possibility of Maurice coming back from the dead with him a few minutes before, it had never occurred to Luther that he might really do it. The rope was still taut. It still held his weight, clearly, it still twitched and wiggled. But Maurice?s hair was not down there at the end of it where it should have been. It was, somehow, bobbing or floating or flying back up toward the loft again, back toward Luther.

And there was Maurice?s whole head, staring at Luther over the edge. It opened its mouth several times to speak, but there was just a gurgle. At last it said, in a surprised, interested voice, "This mare?s foaling." There was a little whistling sound, and the head disappeared again.

Luther sat there staring. Maurice had just come back form the dead to tell him his mare was foaling. Then he said, "What?" He jumped up and ran over to the edge. There was Maurice, all of him, head and arms and legs, wrapped around the rope, grinning up at Luther, looking livelier than Luther had seen him in years. "Hell, Maurice," Luther said. "You?re going to have to do better than this. You ain?t anywhere near dead." He grabbed hold of the rope and hauled Maurice in hand-over-hand, like a big fish, and they both scrambled back down the ladder.

And there was Wiggy, the silver birth-sack already sticking out of her like a great big light bulb. A front foot already visible in it. Luther walked in and looked at it. "Big foot," he said, looking at Maurice. "Real big foot."

And she was a little mare. They pulled, she pushed. She got up and she lay down. The head was hard. "Pull, Maurice," Luther said. "He just winked at me." The chest was harder. "Come on, baby," Luther said to Wiggy. "You?re getting it." The hips were impossible, it seemed. "We?ve got to rock him," Luther said. They grabbed the forelegs of the foal and swung them in half-circles. "Like twisting the cork out of a bottle," Luther said, ginning at Maurice. "You ought to be good at this." The foal thrashed, throwing them around. "Hold on, boy," Maurice said. "You?re about there." At last the mare gave a huge groan, and the whole thing came squirting out with a big rush.

Then there was all the navel-painting and cleaning up and rubbing on the colt and talking to him and getting him up to nurse, which took forever because he was so big. At last they sat at the end of the stall full of clean new straw, one in each corner, while Wiggy took her ease at the other end, with her new colt beside her. Not yet gray or bay or brown, his soft, mysterious, undersea color, indefinable, silky, shining from within, his beautiful neck arched as he rested, nose on the ground. He had a great big white star, just like his mama did.

Luther had seen that star in a lot of winner?s circle pictures. Wiggy had been a good racemare, but she hadn?t become the broodmare he had meant for her to be. She?d had some nice horses for him though-the best he?d bred, in fact. And he still believed in her, unlike some of the mares he?d kept. And last year, because she?d foaled so late, he?d gotten her to a better horse than he?d ever dreamed of being able to breed to. It was more money than he?d wanted to spend. "But you?ve got to keep gambling," he said to himself, "to keep your mind limber."

Still, Luther had always been amazed by how much class his horses lost just in the process of growing up. When they were born they were all Derby or Oaks winners. As weanlings, they won major stakes. When they were yearlings, it was just minor stakes. And when they went off to the races, he just hoped for a good solid $7,500 claimer.

But that?s the way it is with all of us, I guess, he thought. Look at Maurice-riding high at seventeen, then retiring early, as they say in the Form. Wanting to hang himself at forty-one. And here he himself was. He?s made a little splash early on, raised some nice horses, sold some high-priced yearlings. But the champions he?d known he was raising when he was young had somehow become just horses. He was still just a small breeder. He still mucked his own stalls and rubbed his own yearlings. And he still had his hand on every one of his horses, every day, and he knew by now that was what he did it for.

But he looked now at the foal in the straw before him, his quick breathing and perfect little head and the complex of bones that would round out into sweet, smooth horseflesh and carry him to his fate. And he saw that white star getting larger and larger, coming down the lane at him like the engine light on a fast freight train, while the other in the field rattled along, behind forever.

"He could be any kind," Maurice said, startling him, reading his thoughts. And then doing it again, speaking softly, kindly, almost laughing, "You was trying to kill me. Wasn?t you?"

Luther grinned at Maurice. "For a minute there I thought I might have to," he said. "You can kill yourself all you want, " he added, "but you ain?t doing it in my foaling barn." He knew all that didn?t make any sense. But Maurice nodded, as if he understood it perfectly. Luther rubbed his sore middle. "What did you hit me with, anyway?"

Maurice grinned back at him. "My head. I rammed you so hard I went over backwards."

"That figures," Luther said, nodding. "I thought you was a goner. But you grabbed onto the rope, didn?t you, when you went off? And then you climbed right back up it, like a bobcat on a leash." He shook his head. "I should?ve tied your hands back behind you, you know. Like they do in the cowboy movies. Do a job, do it right."

"Don?t worry about it," Maurice said, quietly, drowsily, watching the foal. "It don?t matter."

Luther groaned and pulled himself upright, ready at last to go home to bed. But he stood there a minute, listening to the meadowlarks outside singing their high, sweet songs, the sound reaching out to the edge of hearing and beyond, till it seemed to him, as he listened that the whole world was just one great, big, green meadow starred with dandelions and full of racehorses, their long silhouettes sliding along fluid and silent, their reverent, long necks bowed to the earth. He glanced over at Maurice, wondering if he could understand that, too.

But Maurice was asleep, his face looking softer and younger in the coming light, delivered from his nightmares into morning dreams, as they had both been delivered back into their innocence by the neat, smooth, strapping, velvet fellow they had just helped into the world. His mama was up now and eating around him in a circle, her nose turned always to him as if she were tethered. Around them, in the foaling barn, all the other mares were standing quiet in their stalls, looking out the windows at the rising sun.

About the author

Susan Starr Richards was born in Florida and educated there and the University of Washington. She became interested in Thoroughbreds in 1961 when she found them living ten feet from her back door. At the time, she was teaching at the University of Kentucky. She and her husband, Dick Richards, had rented a house on a horse farm in Fayette County. They learned from the ground up, and eventually found their way into market breeding, in partnerships with Alex Campbell and with Johnnie Griggs. In 1975, they began breeding strictly to race, raising horses at their farms in Harrison and Scott counties. They have gone from a one-horse stable to a nine-horse stable back to a one-horse stable. They have had the stakes winners Raw Power Patty, Mahalia, and Pattypower. She has published stories in various periodicals, including one anthologized in New Stories from the South-The Best of 1992. She has been a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Fiction, and her book Horse Fables is in its second printing. She is working on a novel.