Free Dante of the Maury River by Gigi Amateau

burn all the way down. She offered up what amounted to a cool bucket of water.
    “Oh, he’ll accept the saddle when we’re done. He already responds to my voice. But he won’t be broke. No way. What good would he be to you if I broke him? Fire isn’t always a bad thing. Especially in a racehorse.”
    Believe you me, when I heard those words I pretty near fell to my knees and invited her to hop aboard. And I mean then and there. I tried so hard to make my mouth utter some kind of sound she might understand. My effort to say thank you came out like it always does. In a whicker.
    “You’ll start tomorrow,” Gary said.
    Off he went to his office, as was his habit. This time, though, he stopped and spun around. “Let me ask you something,” he barked. “When you say he responds to your voice, are you speaking Spanish to him?”
    Filipia made a face as sour as any face I ever saw. “Of course not,” she snapped.
    Gary looked surprised. “Oh, why not?”
    “Duh, because he speaks English.” Then she couldn’t help but smile. “But sometimes I sing to him in Spanish. Everybody understands the language of music.”
    To say I was excited would be an understatement. Still, I knew I’d have to find a whole other gear, as they say.
    Now, when we in the racing world talk about gears, we’re talking about speed and power, but I mean something else entirely here. I knew I’d need to find a deeper, braver place than I had ever been to, except maybe the night I was born.
    Filipia gently placed her palm in the broad space between my eyes, and when she did, a charge rolled from her right into me.
    “Here,” she said. “This is the place, Monkey. See from here, and you’ll have everything you need.”
    I jerked awake — as if a starting gun had gone off — and stepped back.
    “Yeah, you feel that, Monkey? Good.”
    She lifted her hand, let it hover, then tugged on my forelock. “Whatever bad things you’ve learned till now I want you to forget. We’re alike, you and I. We’re talented and beautiful, and we have to take care of our mamas.”
    I nickered.
    “Oh, speak for myself, eh? I will tell you another secret about me. I feel a lot of pressure to work hard and to ride and to win.”
    Believe you me, I understood exactly what Filipia meant. I could never shake Marey’s last words to me or the desperate look in her eye when she begged me to be a better colt. Or the way she sparkled like a sunbeam on Doctor Tom whenever he came into the barn. She’d pivot her ears toward his voice. She wanted to please the Edens and wanted me to do the same.
    Now, here was brave Filipia saying pretty much what everybody else had been saying for my whole life.
    “Here’s the truth, Monkey.” She leaned in close to me and breathed in my coat. “Okay, here’s part of the truth. My mother and my grandmother need my help. And that means I need yours. They sent me here to live with my oldest brother and his wife and their baby. My brother sends money home, and I do, too, but he has a family now. It’s really up to me. Exercising, grooming, cleaning stalls? I like the work, but it’s taking me too long to earn money. I need to race. That’s where you come in.”
    She picked up a currycomb and began to rub it over my barrel. “How do you manage to get so dirty, even when I cover you up at night?”
    She touched her own forehead in the space between her eyes. “Right here,” she said. “All the knowledge and wisdom and vision we need is right here. Melon calls this the knowing place, or the wisdom place. Like a place that stores up everything in the past, present, and future. Like a kaleidoscope of every bit of wisdom in the universe. So, Monkey, when I asked myself the question, How can I get the chance to race? I saw you and me at the track. You with a carpet of flowers draped across your withers. Me wearing silks. Dirty, muddy silks from running and winning.”

I can admit now that I was anxious. Not so much from a fear