THE RIGHT moment took another week of wavering and agonizing to arrive, but finally, on the evening before the halfway point of their association, Destin took his pride in his hands and asked Tonio if he enjoyed trail riding.
“Sure,” Tonio replied. “Is there somewhere around here to ride?”
“Yes. There’s a state park just beyond Paris, where we went for dinner that time. The park’s called Sky Meadows. Do you want to give Sam a day’s rest and trailer the riding horses over there?”
Tonio cocked his head and gave Destin one of those long, inscrutable looks. Just about the time sweat began popping out on Destin’s forehead, Tonio gave a brisk nod. “Sounds fun,” he said. “When do you want to leave?”
They met in the house early the next morning while the mist still hung heavy over the dew pond down in the pasture and the tang of fireplace smoke flavored the crackling-cold air. Tonio showed up in the kitchen in a flannel shirt, puffy vest, and fleece-lined riding breeches with neoprene no-slip patches inside the knees.
“You aren’t going to be too hot in those?” Destin asked, indicating Tonio’s pants with the piece of toast in his hand. The double entendre hit him as the words left his mouth. Tonio was hot in those pants. Really hot.
“Nah. I’m from Florida, remember?” Tonio said. “This is like a freezing-cold winter day where I come from.”
“Okay, if you’re comfortable.”
The riding horses seemed to know something was up. They stretched their necks over their stall doors when Destin and Tonio came in, and Destin’s father’s horse, a splashy bay appaloosa gelding, neighed loudly.
“That’ll be your horse,” Destin said, pointing to the appaloosa. “Dad usually rode Spot with a Western saddle, but if you prefer English….”
“Spot? His name is Spot?”
“No, that’s just his barn name. He’s registered, so his real name is Bar Doc Something Something Spottiswoode. I don’t really remember.”
“Western’s fine.”
“Spot’s a good saddle horse. Dad rode him drunk half the time, and he always came back safe.”
It wasn’t until they were some way down the road, horses loaded and peering out between the bars of the trailer windows, that Destin realized he probably shouldn’t have given Tonio that particular nugget of information.
Sky Meadows was always one of Destin’s favorite places to ride. Not in the summer so much, when the brush along the trails crawled with ticks. The best time was autumn, when the trails through the woods turned from green tunnels to cathedral aisles made entirely of stained glass, and a few sharp frosts put the tick problem to bed for the winter.
He pulled the truck and trailer into the parking lot beside the old barn at the trailhead and stopped beside the only other rig there. The nearly empty lot promised a certain amount of solitude. Destin’s buckskin, Butternut, tossed his head and pawed while Destin tacked him up, eager to be on his way, and even the normally phlegmatic Spot pricked his ears, snuffing the mountain air as Tonio tried to tighten his girth.
Tonio swung into his saddle. Destin mounted Butternut, and they started down the trailhead exit. The first leg took them on an old gravel road bed, hemmed in on one side by thick shrubbery and by fencing on the other, including a length of the ubiquitous drystone. They rode single file to avoid the grabbing, slapping branches and leaves, but Tonio pulled up next to Destin as the trail opened out onto the flat grass of pasture land.
“So did you want to powwow about Sam now or save it for after the ride?” Tonio asked.
Destin gave a guilty twitch. “We don’t have to talk about Sam at all unless you want to.”
“Well, we’re halfway through my contract. If I were you, I’d want a progress report about now.”
“All right.”
“So here’s the verdict.” Tonio stood up in the stirrups, readjusted his position in the saddle, and sat down again. “I have no idea what’s going on with that horse. There’s nothing wrong with him physically. He’s great. Strong, sound, coordinated, athletic—everything you could want in a jumper. He’s smart too. The whole time we’re going around the practice course, I can hear his brain whirring away. When I line up for a jump, Sam’s ahead of me with everything all figured out. He is a….” Tonio tipped his head back and squeezed his eyes shut, apparently straining for some elusive superlative. “Superhorse,” he finished with an emphatic nod.
“So why isn’t he finishing the course?”
“I don’t know. Because he doesn’t want to, I guess.”
“Why not?”
Tonio spread his arms in a wide shrug. “Dunno. If he liked, he could run through a course like all the obstacles were one foot high and his tail was on fire. He just isn’t feeling it.”
“Oh, great. So you’re telling me the best jumper Bellmeade ever owned is a total head case who won’t jump fences because he doesn’t feel like it.”
“Pretty much.”
“And basically I’m paying you to be a horse psychiatrist.”
“If you wanna put it that way, yeah. Exactly.”
Destin pressed his lips together and didn’t reply. The terrain began to slope upward as they rode, not sharply but steadily, and he concentrated on his riding. The tree line of the wooded part of the trail loomed up ahead, the frost-kissed reds and oranges of sumac and sassafras leaves glowing like a nest of embers beneath the yellow of the forest canopy. The trail skirted the trees and brought them to a creek, which they splashed through. Spot stopped in the middle to drink before he moved on, and Tonio made no move to hurry him.
“Are we actually going up that mountain?” Tonio asked as they moved into a long-abandoned meadow choked with brush and thorny tangles of dewberry.
Destin looked up at the slopes of Lost Mountain. “It’s not as steep as it looks,” he said. “When you reach the top, there’s a view over Crooked Run Valley that’s worth the trip. I thought we could eat our lunch there.”
“Cool. I never get to ride in the mountains.”
Where do you ride?
Destin wished he could ask him. For a short minute, Destin imagined them talking together. Really talking, not just business talk. Would he like what he heard? Maybe or maybe not, but whatever came out of Tonio’s mouth was sure to be colorful. And honest. Tonio might have flaws, but lying wasn’t one of them. Destin found he appreciated that quality—once the sting wore off, anyway.
“We’re going right,” Destin said, indicating a yellow-striped post beside the trail. “The trail turns into a narrow track once we get into the trees, so we’ll have to go single file. You want to lead or follow?”
“You’ve done this before, so you better lead.” Tonio pulled Spot’s reins and fell back. Destin and Butternut passed under the first branches and dove into the tunnel of yellow and orange arching over the thin ribbon of trail, with Tonio and Spot right behind them.
The trail continued to climb once they entered the trees. Spot tended to be a bit of a plodder, while Butternut, with his long legs, liked to push ahead. He didn’t like the forest track, though, and it slowed him down to a pace Spot was more comfortable with. Instead of disappearing in Destin’s figurative dust, Tonio stayed right on his tail.
“This is a gorgeous park,” Tonio said as they rounded a curve and stepped under an arcade of golden beeches.
“I know,” Destin replied. “We used to come here a lot when I was a kid. To hike too, not just ride. Once you get up there on the ridge, the view is spectacular. It makes a great day trip, and at the end, we used to cook out. Burned hot dogs, mm-mmm.”
“Sounds cool.” Tonio’s enthusiasm sounded oddly flat. “I went to Weeki Wachee Springs once to see the mermaids, but we never went hiking. You’re lucky. You’re so fucking lucky to have all this. Not just the park, but Bellmeade too.”
Destin frowned, though he was careful to keep it aimed forward between Butternut’s ears. “Lucky? I don’t know about that. It was nice growing up around here, but people expect so much. They expect you to keep everything going just the way it has been for the last couple of centuries, even when things have changed so much.”
“Yeah, that is a lot to handle.”
“Bellmeade’s not that big. We never kept more than three stallions and maybe twenty mares, even back when we bred hunters instead of show jumpers.”
“I didn’t mean ‘a lot’ as in acreage or herd numbers,” Tonio said. “I meant in reputation. Quality.”
Destin sighed. “You’re right. Bellmeade used to mean something, in the show ring and the sales arena too.”
“It still does. And if you push a little and don’t let things fall apart, Bellmeade could stay big.”
Destin coughed out a humorless laugh.
“No, seriously.” Tonio urged Spot right up on Butternut’s flank. Butternut flattened his ears and showed the whites of his eyes, but Spot, who, like Destin’s father, never recognized personal boundaries, kept crowding. “You’ve really got something here. You got tradition. You got roots.”
Destin sighed. “I wish I had your business smarts. And your optimism. Maybe I should have grown up your way. All I got growing up Bellingham was book smarts.”
“No. Seriously. You did not want to grow up my way.”
“Why? What was so terrible about it?” Destin wished they could ride side by side. Tonio sounded vehement. Destin wondered if he looked that way as well.
“Nothing terrible. It was just, I dunno, the way you grow up around racetracks. My dad was a small-time trainer. You know the kind. Never got anywhere near the Kentucky Derby. The best he ever did was a few low-level stakes races. Mostly it was just allowance races and claimers. Low-money stuff. That meant Dad hustled 24-7. He put off the feed guy to pay the vet and put off the farrier to pay the feed guy. Hired the old washed-up jockeys with drinking problems to exercise the horses because he couldn’t afford the good riders, and they wouldn’t ride his crap horses anyway. Then we had to pack up and move when the track season ended and another one started somewhere else. Live in an apartment, live in a trailer park, live in the car sometimes if things got really bad. Hustle and deal, man, all the time.”
“Is your dad still alive?” Destin asked.
“Yeah, and still workin’ the tracks.”
“At least you didn’t have to inherit his training business.”
Tonio gave a bitter snort. “You think he didn’t try? He had me working as his exercise boy at eight years old. I was his future. He was gonna deal his way up, horse by horse, and build his training stable into something great. He might not live long enough to run a horse in the Derby, but he was gonna make me the next Bob Baffert.”
“So why aren’t you the next Bob Baffert?” Destin asked. “Why are you riding jumpers?”
“Short answer, ’cause I’m gay.”
“What?” Destin longed to turn around in his saddle and look back, but on such a narrow trail he didn’t dare.
“You can’t build a dynasty if your son isn’t going to get married and give you grandkids, so why bother?” Tonio didn’t sound rancorous. “Lucky for me my sister stepped up. She’s a better trainer than Dad ever was anyway, and she just had her first baby last year. A son. Dad’s over the moon.
“Me, I wasn’t born with stars in my eyes. You can’t deal your way up from twenty-five-hundred-dollar claimers to the Kentucky Derby. You gotta have talent and an eye for rough horses with potential. Dad couldn’t see potential if it slugged him in the face. All he could see was what was already there, so nothing he trained ever got better. It was like being trapped in a fucking hamster wheel, so I started making things more interesting for myself. I used to ride one of Dad’s horses that couldn’t run for shit, but she didn’t mind jumping. I’d take her out away from the track and put her over this cobbled-up jump course I made out of old fencing. That was great till Dad found out.”
“Your dad got upset, I take it,” Destin said. He tried to keep his tone light, hoping Tonio would laugh off the memory as a joke.
Tonio laughed, all right, but there was nothing humorous about it.
“Livid. Furious. I got busted by one of the shedrow snitches. It was all over the track before my dad could do damage control, and nobody wanted me anywhere near their racehorses after that. It took Dad a few days to come down off the ceiling, but when he did, that’s when he called his friend with the jumpers.”
“So it worked out after all.”
“Yeah. I hated flat racing, but it’s hard to tell your dad you don’t want to work at the family trade, you know?”
“No, I don’t know.” Destin reached down and smoothed a lock of Butternut’s mane from the left side of his neck to the right. “My dad died before I ever had the chance.”
“You don’t miss him much, do you?” Tonio asked. It wasn’t really a question.
Destin wished again he could see Tonio’s face. “I do. I mean….” Destin stopped and sifted the tumble of thoughts in his head. “I loved my dad. He was a great dad, especially when I was younger. It was hard not to love my father because he was that kind of guy.”
“Yeah. I love my dad too. He’s proud of me. He comes to watch me ride when I’m in Florida and he can get away from the track.” Tonio paused, and in that silence, Destin could sense both pride and sorrow. “So when did you come out to your dad?”
Destin grimaced. “I didn’t. He walked in on me and my boyfriend. I don’t think what we were doing required much explanation.”
“Ouch. That’s the bad way. How long did it take for him to get over it?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t really talk about it, and a few weeks later I left for college anyway.”
“Huh.” Tonio rode in silence for a little while. “I’m sorry your dad is gone,” he said at last. “I didn’t know him personally, and I know he had problems, but people liked him. Yeah, he gave away the farm, but he blew your inheritance on a lot of good causes along with the Maseratis and Swedish hookers.”
“Well, I guess that’s good to know,” Destin said with an inward, bitter laugh.
“Get a sense of humor, and you could be the better version of your old man.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“From where I’m standing, you’re a pretty decent guy.” Tonio sounded matter-of-fact, but Destin’s cheeks grew warm. “People on the circuit don’t know you yet. Nobody’s really met you. They’re gonna like you when they do, though.”
“Are you sure?”
Tonio laughed, a free and honest sound. “Hell yeah. You’re smart, you got class, and you dress like James Bond. And even with the mess your dad left, you didn’t give up and stick a For Sale sign on Bellmeade. That says a lot. Your dad would be proud of you.”