Free The Sport of Kings by C. E. Morgan Page A

knew you had to make your own heaven—a place where, when your mother said she loved you above all others, it meant that she loved you more than a lover, more than God. He was newly sick to his stomach. Was church the wrong place to pray for the death of a man?
    The ride back to Forge Run was an exercise in strained silence, his father concentrating on the road, Henry turned mulishly to the passing fields. The theater of razed greenery was fading before their eyes under the blue autumn sky, death hatching a mottled dun on the withering shocks. Their dying bored him to death. Easy come, easy go. His eyes slashed the back of his father’s head, and his tongue felt perverse. Loose. He could not latch it to his better sense, which was silence. He said, “I can’t stand to listen to all that preaching about rules.” His voice felt like breaking something.
    There was no immediate response. His father seemed determined to teach him the rudest of life lessons: there is nothing worse than being ignored.
    â€œI’m tired of rules for no reasons.” This time his belligerence was barely contained.
    Without turning his head, John Henry said, “That you don’t understand the reason for a rule is no indication of its absence.”
    Henry sulked, his shoulders crouching down around his spine. Then he reached forward suddenly and pressed on his mother’s shoulder until she turned.
    â€œDo you believe God answers prayers?”
    She raised her brows, her pretty mouth puckered, and they both inclined their heads in mutual misunderstanding like confused dancers curtsying.
    â€œYes or no?” he said, impatient.
    â€œLeave your mother be,” said John Henry, but the boy was staring at his mother angrily and frowning.
    Do you understand me? he signed.
    She nodded.
    Do you understand the preacher? he signed with terse, pithy gestures.
    She smiled a smile like an apology.
    â€œYou mean you don’t understand him?” He said this out loud.
    She shrugged.
    â€œFather!” he cried accusingly. “She doesn’t even understand what the preacher’s saying! I always thought she was reading his lips!”
    John Henry said nothing.
    â€œThen why even bother going to church?” he spat, but his mother was swiveling away from him to face forward. He tapped her on her shoulder, hard, and he said, “Why even go, then?” And then she turned and brushed at his hand as if it were a fly and not her own son, and he had never seen her do that. He sat back in surprise.
    â€œBe quiet, Henry,” said his father, one slate eye to the rearview mirror.
    Henry seethed, clenched his jaw, and locked eyes with John Henry. His mother ignored them both and gazed out her window, refusing them. Henry fairly boiled with irritation all the way home, but when they reached the house, John Henry didn’t cut the purring motor as expected, or pull alongside the house. Instead, he idled on the circular drive that traced the front of the estate. He gestured to his wife to go on in without them, so she slid from her seat and stood awkwardly on the drive. Henry refused to look at her, only assumed her place slump-shouldered, and John Henry eased down the lane again. No one looked back to see Lavinia standing still where she had been, a solitary figure with a bright yellow clutch tight in her hands, her face cast in shadow by her half veil.
    Henry wanted to ask where they were going, but he refused to speak, so they drove in silence, two men hard and unbending with thirty-five years between them. Henry wrapped his arms around himself, though it was warm enough in the car, closing his eyes and feigning disinterest. When he opened them, he didn’t know where they were and recognized none of the farms on either side of the road.
    He finally buckled. “Where are we going?”
    â€œI want to show you something,” said John Henry, “because of your recent concerns.”
    â€œAbout