Fast and Harsh, Slow and Sorrowful

Heinz’s “Death of a Racehorse” and Jones’ “The Things That Carried Him” are quite different in structure. The former is a story told in real-time action, with an ironic twist on the element of suspense. The later narrative is grouped in snapshots of action, laid out to beckon a lingering, expansive reflective mood.

In Heinz’s work, the horse “Air Lift” is part of a structure set within the larger narrative structure: his lineage, the champion bloodline of winners of by-gone races designates his presence as one of importance and expectation. “Air Lift” was onward-and-upward bound in every sense at the start of this, his very first race, especially in the imaginations of the racing community. He was until he became “a horse stopping”, as quickly as it all began.

There is very little use of scene here, or physical/personality descriptors of any man or horse involved. “Air Lift” is teeming with potentiality, then he is nothing more than a casualty. The only stalling of narrative pace is found in the thin-strung dialogue after the injury, between stable hands and veterinarians and owners and trainers. A reader thinks there may, indeed, still be hope. There is foggy indecision, a reluctance to accept the hopeful’s terrible fate; in the imaginations, again, the horse’s prospects momentarily outran the reality of his injury.

 Thunder and lightning appear as the natural forbearers of solemnity that they often stand for. The downpours upon “Air Lift’s” still body conclude the sorrow, along with the eerie, ringing reminder of where and who he came from.

Jones’ article, by contrast, is laboriously dense with detail. The narrative’s structure is broken into a trilogy, each section crawling backwards in a reverse chronology. Jones hooks a reader slowly, layering vivid and intimate character portraits throughout, enlivening them through their own actions and reactions, until the reader is almost unconsciously invested in that character’s future.

Pacing is often intentionally agonizingly slow, as in the long procession down the highway, or the flag folding, or the work of the pallbearers. Charged, slowed moments make up the greater long, long journey of Sergeant Montgomery back home.