Free Dante of the Maury River by Gigi Amateau Page A

of being broke but from the unanswered question of my life. Would I be able to deliver?
    What Filipia wanted from me was the thing I had yet to wholly offer to either human or horse. Trust.
    Up till then, we two did pretty well together, but this idea of racing together would mean turning over control to a miniature creature who, fact is, kind as she was, had those small, predatory eyes in the front of her head. I knew if I was going to succeed with Filipia, I’d have to do something else first.
    Surrender. Trust her so much that whatever she asked of me, I’d gladly do, even if I was afraid. Even if I couldn’t see ahead.
    Somehow or another, between nightfall and sunup, I’d have to travel all the ledges and ravines inside myself and come back out willing and able to trust Filipia. One. Hundred. Percent.
    That evening after Filipia left, and after the sun went down and the stars came up, all was quiet in the training barn. Besides the occasional clanging of an empty bucket against the stall wall or the soft murmur of tired two-year-olds up and down the lane, I found myself feeling flat-out lonesome.
    A soft rain started up, striking the tin roof of the barn. Almost imperceptibly at first. Listening to that hypnotic
plip-plop
lulled me away off into those as-yet-unexplored places of myself.
    Let me confirm right here and now: horses do dream.
    We dream in the daytime, while we’re awake, and at night, while we sleep. Sometimes, a dream is nothing more than a strong or subtle memory ushered in on a smell. Like how the scent of rubbing alcohol always makes a replay of Doctor Tom and his needles.
    Sometimes a so-called dream is like a visit. A visit with a friend or, in my case, an ancestor.
    Right when I needed him most, Grandfather Dante visited me in such a dream. Now, whether this was a waking or sleeping dream, a visit or a mirage, I can’t say for sure. Whatever it was felt as real as the raindrops plinking and plunking overhead.
    A visitation, let’s call it.
    Gary had gone on home; he lived in a cabin up at the top of the property. On his way out, he had turned off the radio and shut off all the lights, except for the one hanging from the ceiling outside his office. The air was as still and thick as a board, the usual way summer handles itself in Virginia. All the feed buckets had been licked clean, and all the horses had finally bored themselves into slumber. Nothing but cicadas and hoot owls tending to the night.
    What happened next, I expect, is that I nodded off, because there I stood at the edge of a starlit path. A return invitation I had been anticipating since the night I was born.
    I stepped out, this time more certain of where I was headed. Sure enough, I followed the starry trail to the bloodlines through the salty call of the sea and into a foggy wall of the hills. I grazed there until Grandfather Dante came up beside me.
    Here’s what the great Thoroughbred champion Dante’s Paradiso told me: “Go toward the water.”
    That stallion liked to keep an air of mystery about him, for sure. I hadn’t an inkling or a notion of what he meant.
    I whickered, but Grandfather Dante left me standing right back in my stall. Or, I woke up.
    No more stars. No more fog. Just a barn full of dozing fillies and colts and Gary’s hanging lamp, squeaking and swaying back and forth in the breeze now blowing through the barn. By that time, a hard rain pelted in through my window. I most surely did not want to go toward the water.

T urns out, Grandfather Dante knew exactly what he was talking about. Going toward the water was the essential part of Filipia’s plan. Heck, the water was pretty much the entire plan.
    If I’ve failed to mention there was a small river called the Willis that ran right behind Gary’s training compound, well, that’s because I didn’t know a thing about a body of water being back there. Had no reason to until time came for Filipia to show her stuff to Gary, who protested her technique