“How young?” Latin Hustle was still at his side.
They were on the street. A black woman passed by them with her children in tow—a boy and an older girl. Latin Hustle caught Fabian glancing at the girl. “That’s one pretty girl,” he announced.
“Hardly a girl, almost a young lady,” Fabian countered.
“I know what you mean.” Latin Hustle shifted into a thoughtful mood. “Would you like to father one like that?”
Fabian laughed. “Father her? Isn’t it a bit late? She already has a father.”
“But what if she doesn’t? Would you want to become her foster father?”
“Let’s say I wouldn’t mind having her for a stepdaughter,” Fabian said warily. “Why?”
“I can take you to a place where kids like her are given to foster parents like you every day.”
“How legal is that?” Fabian asked.
“As legal as the sky,” Latin Hustle declared grandly. “These kids are orphans. Abandoned. Thrown out by a mom and pop who can’t or won’t support them or who starve and beat them up.”
“What’s in it for you?”
“My usual, a finder’s fee—that’s all.”
“From the kids?”
“Are you kidding, Mr. Wildlife? These kids own nothing. The foster pop pays. But it’s worth it—it’s fun to have a kid.”
“Let’s go,” Fabian said abruptly.
“Be my guest,” Latin Hustle replied.
They took again to the teeming city streets, Latin Hustle slowing his car to a pace that would allow the VanHome to keep up. He signaled Fabian to stop in front of a sprawling building, shabby but with the air of once having been an official structure. They climbed to the top floor, where Fabian found himself with four other men in a large, anonymous waiting room. Latin Hustle disappeared into one of the two cubicles separated from the room by makeshift plywood walls. The other men were in their forties and fifties. Their faces, pale and sagging, wore an identical enigmatic expression.
No one broke the silence. Latin Hustle reappeared and gestured to Fabian to follow him.
In the cubicle, a short, balding man with glasses sat behind a desk. He stood up and introduced himself to Fabian as a lawyer, pointing to the neatly framed diplomas in Latin and Spanish.
Fabian sat down across from him, while Latin Hustle pulled up a chair beside the desk, like a mediator.
The lawyer looked Fabian in the eye. His formality softened in a polite smile.
“Rubens tells me you’re the owner of a horse stable from out of town.”
“I am,” Fabian said.
“And that you travel with some of your own horses in a custom-made rig.”
“Yes, I do.”
The lawyer leaned across the desk. His smile deepened. “You are, then, a man of certain means.”
Fabian nodded.
“Excellent,” the lawyer said with satisfaction. “And Rubens has suggested that, as a man of means, you might be in the market for—” he broke off at the phrase to correct himself—“you might be considered as a foster parent for a child of a certain age, a child with no means to support itself.”
“To support herself,” Latin Hustle threw in.
The lawyer reprimanded him with a glare, then picked up a pencil and a sheet of paper. He turned to Fabian.
“Are you married, sir?” he asked, suddenly a census taker.
“I am not.”
“Divorced?”
“A widower,” Fabian said.
“Excellent,” the lawyer said. “So sorry to hear that,” he added quickly. “And your wife died of—?”
“Cancer,” Fabian said. “She died in a hospital.”
“Cancer,” the lawyer noted. “In the hospital. And how many children of your own do you have?” he continued.
“No children,” Fabian said.
“Lucky lady, your wife,” the lawyer said philosophically. “Leaving no orphans, no one but her husband to mourn her, alone.” He paused. “Do you plan to marry again?” The question was an afterthought.
“Not now,” Fabian replied.
The lawyer sighed as if the most exacting phase of his ordeal had passed. “And a girl—” Again he hesitated, correcting himself. “A child of what age would interest you most?” The pencil hovered. “For foster parenthood,” he added pointedly.
Fabian hesitated.
“School age. Almost a young lady,” Latin Hustle said.
The lawyer made a note. “And would you prefer to send the child to school or to have her reared at home?”
“To have her reared.” Latin Hustle grinned.
“I would provide for her to be schooled,” Fabian said.
The lawyer seemed to want to stress what he was about to say. He took off his glasses and laid them in front of him.
“Let me be candid with you,” he said formally. “Do you prefer to be the original foster parent, the first adopter—or would you consider being a consecutive one?”
“I don’t understand,” Fabian said.
“The original foster parent is the one who adopts the child for the first time,” he explained.
“Like original sin,” Latin Hustle interposed.
The lawyer ignored him. “A consecutive adopter is one who replaces—or succeeds—a previous one.”
The lawyer waited for it to sink in. “Most young ladies of the age you require have already been foster children—with several different foster parents in their history.” He tapped the desk with his pencil. “Some gentlemen, married or not, with their own children or without them, like to offer a home to a foster child of a certain age and keep her only for a certain period of time, two years, let’s say, even three. When she gets too old for them—hardly a girl now, if you know what I mean,” he broke into a slight smirk, the first Fabian had noticed, “the young lady again needs a foster home. Her last adopter now starts looking for another child—girl—of the age he is most at home with—if you know what I mean?” His smirk glided into a leer.
“I think I know what you mean,” Fabian said.
“There is, of course, a greater demand for white girls,” the lawyer said, his official manner returning. “Finding a girl up for her first adoption is usually more expensive,” he added in a cautionary tone.
“Not yet a lady,” Latin Hustle crooned half to himself.
“But after two or three adoptions, the welfare people get more cooperative, and the girl gets cheaper,” the lawyer reassured Fabian.
“Not a lady anymore,” Latin Hustle cut in.
“And what is the cost of adopting an average foster child?” Fabian asked.
“That would depend, of course, on the child, her color, her background, her looks, et cetera,” the lawyer said speculatively, making some calculations.
“The et cetera adds to the price,” said Latin Hustle.
“But I daresay a little girl could fulfill all your expectations for no more than you might pay for a pleasure-riding pony,” the lawyer concluded.
“Pleasure-riding it is!” Latin Hustle erupted.
As if the matter were settled, the lawyer quickly placed in front of Fabian a large portfolio of neatly mounted photographs of boys and girls. “They’re all here,” he said. “Unfortunately, some pictures are of inferior quality.”
“But fortunately, the girls are not.” Latin Hustle winked.
“Vital statistics—age, body size, height, weight, et cetera—are noted under each picture,” the lawyer said briskly. “The initials refer to the file we keep on each child—family records, church, school and foster-care agency affiliations, prior accidents. . . .”
“Arrests for vagrancy.” Latin Hustle was growing bolder.
The lawyer tried hopelessly to wither him with a stare. “Vagrancy is a hazard with adventurous children,” he said coldly. Then, anxious to regain lost ground with Fabian, he hastened to add: “To protect the adopter from unwarranted legal surveillance, we never fail to provide him with statements from certain
welfare caseworkers, among others, who certify that the foster child has had a history of insinuating—even inventing—that her new father has shown her the wrong kind of affection. In other words, we try to make it legally clear that she is susceptible to flights of fancy.”
“Is there a lot of paperwork involved in such an adoption?” Fabian asked.
The lawyer waved his hand. “There is. But, as I said, those we do business with are most enlightened, and they’re our friends.”
“What if the girl turns out to be a disappointment?” Fabian asked.
“She might be helped to run away,” Latin Hustle suggested.
“As I said, we can put her up for adoption again,” the lawyer said, a shade testily. “You might then want to adopt another child, older, or perhaps younger,” he went on.
“A real professional father.” Delight could be heard in Latin Hustle’s voice.
The lawyer stood up, his business at an end. “Please feel free to take your time with this,” he said, depositing the heavy album in his client’s trust. Latin Hustle ushered Fabian ceremoniously out of the cubicle, settled him on a bench in the waiting room and again disappeared behind one of the plywood walls. Three men remained in the room. No flicker of curiosity disturbed them as Fabian turned the thick, glossy pages of the portfolio; the book held no surprises for them.
Most of the photographs had been taken with a Polaroid camera or in an automatic booth at some amusement park or bus station. Several bore traces of having been torn out of a family album, or from a newspaper or magazine illustrating the more blatant or lurid cases of child abuse. Every photograph pictured a girl or boy of school age, some smiling with naive seduction, some staring blandly, others frowning, as if annoyed, frightened or suspicious.
Fabian’s eyes stopped at the photograph of a girl, perhaps fourteen, frail, her eyes expressive, her lips full in a face of Latin intensity. Her black hair, long and gleaming, hung loosely draped over her shoulders; an oversized robe, cinched like a monk’s habit around her boyish waist, shrouded her; a towel dangled over one arm.
For a moment, Fabian felt the impulse to note down the number and the initials underneath the photograph, and to embark on the road of fatherhood.
In that moment, he acknowledged he had neither the energy nor the means to follow through. He weighed the page, then reluctantly turned it over. Sliding, it joined the ones that had gone before.
He drove through the city’s financial district, almost deserted at the close of business, until he found a large, empty parking lot wedged in between skyscrapers mirroring, in the neat rows of spaces, the buildings’ infinity of identical windows. Fabian parked his VanHome so as to block entirely the entrance to the lot. He had now created a field for his horses and his polo. Lowering the rear platform of the VanHome, he drew the two mares out, Gaited Amble briskly sniffing the air, Big Lick capering and prancing, eager for movement.
Gaited Amble was an American Saddle horse, creamy white with a flat face and small, slender ears. It stood something over five feet at the shoulder, or sixteen hands, as horsemen liked to put it, the neck arching gracefully at a curve not common to any other breed. When Gaited Amble stood motionless, its short back gave the impression of having been abandoned by a heedless or impatient sculptor. Big Lick, a Tennessee Walking horse, was a sharp contrast, just under fifteen hands and jet black, with a patrician muzzle and short, round ears well set on a thick, sturdy neck, its ribs well sprung, giving way to broad, muscular hindquarters.
Professional polo players, who rode swifter, bolder and more agile Thoroughbreds, were open in their ridicule of Fabian’s ponies. They pointed out that the long curving neck of Gaited Amble obstructed its rider’s view and made hitting the ball, particularly underneath the horse’s neck, difficult. And occasionally when Big Lick broke into a canter or gallop, its old show habits recurred, and it bobbed up and down or swayed to and fro like a wooden horse on a carousel. Fabian took his critics’ disdainful ridicule as casually as did his ponies.
He had acquired each for a third of their market value only because they repeatedly had failed as show horses. He had retrained them for polo himself, and to keep them accustomed to the speed and rough-and-tumble of the game, rode them whenever he was invited to play.
But he continued to school them in the gaits they had learned, omitting only the excesses to which they had been subjected in training for show. Gaited Amble, for example, like most other American Saddle horses, had been drilled repeatedly in performing the gaits its breed was celebrated for—a fancy caper, a distinguished trot and its famous amble, that broken, slow pace in which the hoofs hit the ground at predetermined intervals.
The elegant carriage of the mare had been contrived by cutting the depressor muscles at the base of its tail. The horse had been fitted with a harness that forced the tail to be erect and would not permit the severed muscles to heal; before each show or display the harness was removed and, to enhance even further the pluming jet of the tail, a galling powder was inserted into the anus of the animal. The tail rose to still more exalted height.
Even after Fabian had come into possession of Gaited Amble and had abandoned the harness, the tail did not soon return to its normal mobility. To protect the horse from flies each time it was let out, Fabian had had to spray it with insect repellent.
In its poised and harmoniously composed stance, the taut slimness of its body, Big Lick, like Gaited Amble, was a triumph of the labor and persistence of its previous owner. As with most Tennessee Walkers, the three special gaits that were its trademark had been cultivated by a unique regimen. The horse had been shod with elevated pads and heavy wedges, unevenly angled, that strained its muscles and ligaments into an altered stride. Its forelimbs had been smeared just above the hoofs with a potent chemical lubricant, then cinched with chains near the joint and encased in weighted boots. The chemical, together with habitual movement of the chains and boots, had created sores so inflamed that they often ate two or three inches into the flesh. Precariously balanced in its altered gait, the horse, to relieve the burning lesions, would resort to the exaggerated prancing for which it was prized. Foremost among these was the running walk, a gait crowned by the “big lick,” in which the horse’s foreleg was raised to its peak. At the same time the hind leg would cleave the air, overstepping the track of the front leg by as much as fifty inches.
To slim the line of its belly, Big Lick had been fed a special diet; to trim the neck and shoulders, it had been forced to sweat for months under a plastic hood. Even the exaggerated arch of the mare’s neck was the result of years of pressure from a gradually tightened checkrein.
In the parking lot, Fabian put rubber boots on his horses’ hoofs for protection against the asphalt, then rode each horse around and across the lot, allowing it to sense the unfamiliar air, explore the unknown landscape.
He began to feel the grip of that peculiar elation that came over him when he was about to challenge a horse’s might with the precision and command of his own performance. Fabian knew that the beauty, allure and menace of the horse rested solely in its anatomy and not in a complex intelligence: the union of rider and mount was, at base, a duel of human brain and animal physiology. He had a repertoire of images for this elusive and mysterious essence of the horse. Sometimes he thought of it as a self-propelled crane, with the animal’s back as the cab and its arching neck as the boom, now raising and lowering the bucket which was its head. Then a horse would seem to him a mobile suspension bridge, its legs the pylons, its muscles the cables; or as a kind of autonomous spring mechanism that would catapult itself up and forward through space, then return to earth unshaken, ready to rebound.
But just as those sophisticated devices were vulnerable to misuse, so, too, any horse, however skillfully trained, might, when pushed beyond the limits of its physiology by a rider’s will, collapse without a flutter of warning; the most bitter penalty for any polo player was to have his pony violently give way under him during a game.
>
Fabian had once heard, perhaps at one of those fire-and-brim-stone revival meetings he sometimes came upon in his travels, that if God wished truly to lay a man low, he would take from him the sacred flame. Fabian knew that his only fire was polo, his only art the power, mounted and in motion, to strike a moving ball, his only craft the guile to place that ball where he would within the field, undaunted by the presence of other players—he astride the horse at full gallop, his polo stick a lance at the ready, his brain a compressing present, past, future in a single act, matchless, without flaw. Within the compass of this briefest, most incandescent of life’s occasions, he was possessed by bliss, surprised by joy, a pioneer beyond the realm of known condition and circumstance, a god in a perfect moment of existence.
After moving both horses at a brisk trot around the empty lot, Fabian picked up a mallet, threw a ball out into the darkening silence and mounted Gaited Amble. He used occasions such as this to practice what professional polo players called stick-and-ball—riding out to strike the ball over and over again, in solitude, away from the heady turbulence of the game, where, unexpectedly, from any quarter, the ball might come rushing at one headlong.
Besides maintaining his aim and coordination, stick-and-ball kept his ponies accustomed to the swing of the mallet and alert to the game’s jostling and collision. He had constructed a rig which harnessed them together in a combination of bridle and surcingle. Now, astride Gaited Amble, he was still able to lead both horses with his left hand. With his right he was free to strike the ball from either side of the horse; sometimes his mallet inadvertently flew out and harshly whipped Big Lick, dragged about haphazardly by the rig. Slipping and stumbling on the lot’s pitted, uneven surface, the horses sometimes crashed brutally into each other, rearing up, bucking, their shoulders and flanks in a steady, nervous scrimmage.
With Gaited Amble primed and ready, it was Big Lick’s turn, and, mallet in hand, without losing momentum, Fabian vaulted onto the saddle.
At once, free of his weight, Gaited Amble picked up speed, sprinting and trotting as much as the harness would allow. The mare now became the target for some of Fabian’s flaring strokes, but still did not shy from them, keeping its pace. Once again, Fabian reflected, his ponies had demonstrated their acquiescence to his will, had justified his reliance on them in the game.