On this Kentucky Derby weekend, Byliner has made available to Dish readers Elizabeth Mitchell’s The Fire Horse, the remarkable account of Boyd Martin and an unwanted racehorse, Neville Bardos. A particularly gripping part of the story involves Martin’s stable catching on fire, endangering the horses he kept there:
He tugged his T-shirt over his head, took the deepest breath he could manage, and barreled in.
Inside, the blackness was almost impenetrable. The straw storage above the first third of the barn had been consumed by fire, and dark brown hay smoke churned like factory effulgence blasting down the breezeway. Martin couldn’t see well, but he could certainly hear the roar of flames eating through the wood and hay, the beams creaking, people outside hollering, the sirens screaming.
He came upon a horse’s body in the breezeway, probably the poor animal they had seen on fire, but in the blackness, Martin couldn’t tell which horse it was.
Here and there, the roof started caving, dropping beams. Martin felt along the wall, reading his way. Soon he was touching the metal screen on the side of the tack room, then the wash stall. And then in the blind darkness, he came to the opening of the first stall. He could hear a gurgling inside. Walking closer, he realized the choking sound was coming from the far corner. A horse.
For the next 48 hours, you can read the rest here. You also can purchase it as a Kindle Single here.
The Dish 