The Eighty-Dollar Champion - Elizabeth Letts [117]
Back in St. James, by this time of night, Snowman would be hanging his head over his stall door, his belly full of hay, looking at the stars in the dark countryside sky. Instead, the gray horse was about to face a difficult and highly demanding challenge. Harry gathered up the reins, squeezed his horse around the barrel with his calves, and whispered a word of encouragement. Now or never.
Snowman stretched his neck out and bounded toward the fences with an evident joy. Up in the stands, the crowd went with him as he soared over each fence, unbound from gravity, unbound from his past and from the plow that had once weighed him down. Twelve times he flew, clearing the fences with room to spare. Twelve perfect fences. No faults. For the first time, the blue ribbon at the National Horse Show belonged to the big gray gelding, the lesson horse from the Knox School.
Returning to the center of the ring to receive his prize, Snowman ambled along behind Harry, seemingly unaware of the ruckus that surrounded his victory. Up in the stands, thousands of people—families with children, shopkeepers, police officers, and secretaries—looked down from their perch high up in “heaven,” clapping wildly and uproariously cheering, smitten by the horse who seemed to fly without wings and yet was so firmly anchored to the ground. This horse knew how to steal hearts. That he had already stolen the heart of the handsome young man who rode him was apparent for all to see. Harry led the horse around the arena for a victory lap. The affection between the two could not be missed.
That night, the de Leyers hung a blue ribbon next to their horse’s stall, and for the first time, a little bit of Garden magic settled over their corner of the stables.
But the show was hardly over. The open jumper competition was not one contest but a series of contests. Each day brought a new series of grueling jump-offs and tiring courses. The opportunities for mistakes were everywhere. The courses demanded that the horses perform flawlessly, time after time. The following day, First Chance pulled ahead again, beating out Snowman.
The two horses were neck and neck for the championship.
Up in “heaven,” under blue clouds of cigarette smoke, munching on hot dogs doused in mustard, the ordinary folk held their breath, spellbound, every time Harry trotted into the ring. Harry smiled and waved to them after each clean round, raising his eyes up above the boxes to take in the entire crowd, and Snowman always followed suit. The competition was fierce. Every horse in the show had talent—but stamina would win in the end.
For Harry, the week passed in a blur. Caring for the horses and keeping them in show shape in the cramped basement of the Garden was almost a round-the-clock affair. The jumper classes sometimes did not start until ten p.m. The jump-offs could stretch until one or two in the morning. After each class, Harry had to get the horses hot-walked and rubbed down, fed and groomed, and then the routine started up again in the predawn hours. The world outside the Garden receded, and the smoky, dusty, cramped confines of the basement stables became the world.
One competitor referred to the week at the Garden as being akin to life aboard ship on a long cruise. But by 1958, the cruise that the Garden represented was like the voyage of the Titanic, a final gasp of a privileged way of life. The jubilant, chaotic, disorganized private spectacle of the rich at play would soon start on a course of changes that would come to seem inevitable, and as ordinary folk crossed paths with society swells on their way through the turnstiles, it was a giddy,