Poor Richard’s Almanac

Our friend Ben is going to try to rise to the level needed to elegize a great horse, the filly Eight Belles, who was destroyed on the track of Churchill Downs on Saturday after a magnificent run in the Kentucky Derby. Please don’t hold it against me if I fail to rise high enough; I know it’s going to be very hard to do. But Silence Dogood has asked me to try, and try I shall, problematic as it is, painful as it is, inadequate as any tribute must be.

As you know if you love horse racing, Eight Belles came in second in the Derby after the magnificent stallion Big Brown. Big Brown is an exceptional thoroughbred, and our friend Ben and Silence by no means wish to diminish the glory of his victory. But had he not been in the race, the filly Eight Belles would have won, only the fourth filly ever to have done so, only the 39th filly ever to have raced in the Derby in its 132-year history, defeating a field of fullblooded stallions to claim her victory.

Her performance was exceptional. Her performance was extraordinary. But it was not altogether unexpected, given her descent from Northern Dancer, given her three-for-three previous wins, one by 13 1/2 lengths over another field of stallions. If “heart” were a precious metal, Eight Belles would be the gold standard. What was unexpected was that after crossing the finish line, in the cool-down segment of the track, Eight Belles would collapse, both front ankles shattered, and that the track vet would euthanize her where she lay.

Sic transit gloria mundi. God damn them!!! Silence is sitting beside me weeping as I write. Why, you might ask: Wasn’t it just a horse? Not to us, no, not “just” an anything. How can I put you in the picture? Perhaps a montage of images:

* Our friend Ben’s Kentucky clan, grandparents on down, gathered annually for the big day, Derby Day, clustered around the television with mint juleps for the adults and iced tea with fresh mint sprigs and simple syrup for the youthful Ben and siblings, eagerly discussing the horses, tracing their histories, discussing the triumphs of their ancestors and of their jockeys, the excitement building hour by hour until the starting gates crashed open.

* The girl Silence, tears streaming down her face, not because she was sorry for the horses but because the pure beauty of their running, like the beauty of pure soprano singing or the violin or ballet or any great art, was more than she could bear.

* The adult Silence, refusing to go with our friend Ben to friends’ houses to watch the Derby because she knew she would weep again at its beauty, and also knew the friends would never understand.

* Our friend Ben, speaking to every horse on every country drive, knowing them all by sight, appreciating their uniqueness, their colors, their configuration.

* Our friend Ben and Silence, rejoicing in the book Horse, Follow Closely by GaWaNi Pony Boy with its joyous communion of horse and human and its glorious photos celebrating that communion.

* Our friend Ben ruefully recounting how successful my ancestors were at mule-breeding and what dismal failures they were at breeding thoroughbreds. (Many humorous and humiliating tales to tell there! We should have stuck with mules.)

* Silence recalling how, as a girl at summer horse camp, she was riding a good-natured horse named Beauty when a novice camp counsellor, thinking that Beauty wasn’t going fast enough, came up behind the horse and brought her crop down hard against her flank. Silence coming to on the ground with Beauty reared up above her so she wouldn’t crush her by coming down.

* Our friend Ben recalling the first time riding a horse and letting it run, really run, out of a canter, out of a gallop, into a straight-out run, where horse and rider and wind and ground merged into something unlike any other experience there is.

Horses. They are the wind’s gift to man, the wind made flesh. We can never deserve them, we can only be grateful. We can only accept a gift unlooked for, a gift we can never repay.

And thus we come back to Eight Belles, that great heart, that great horse. Our friend Ben and Silence would have been devastated by her fate in any case. But then one of those synchronicities happened again. Silence received, at about the same time, one of those feel-good e-mails about a pony who’d damaged its front leg. There was no way to save the leg, and the vets considered euthanasia. But instead, they and the pony’s owners felt that this friendly creature deserved a second chance at a happy life. They amputated the lower leg, but replaced it with a prosthesis. Not only has the pony adjusted beautifully, but it’s now a poster horse for human therapy, using animals to put the heart back into gravely ill adults and children and nursing-home residents who often don’t receive a lot in the way of love and touch.

Well and well. If even an anonymous pony could be given a second chance, couldn’t Eight Belles? True, she would never have run again. True, she would never have made her syndicate owners bazillion dollars pumping out foals. But hadn’t she already earned her right to what was left of a good life? What horse, against such unbelievable odds, could possibly have done more?

I sing you the song of Eight Belles. I sing you the song of a filly, who, against all odds, put her heart out and made that great heart fly. I sing you the song of a horse who rose to meet the expectations of men. Of the men who considered her disposable, I do not sing. My own heart cannot bear the thought of it.