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Description

One-Horse Town
By Terence Fleethoof, staff correspondent
Appeared in Furballer Magazine, August 2015

Van Buren, Maine, is remote. Three hours from the nearest airport in Bangor, it’s just about as far north as you can go on the East Coast and still be in America; the opposite bank of the St. John River is Canada. I even heard a bit of French spoken, but as I never studied Quebecois French back in high school, my rusty skills were little help when my ears flicked back to eavesdrop.

It’s also small: barely over 3,000 furs, mainly horses. While many are descended from French coldblood stock that crossed the Atlantic over a hundred years ago, in the past few decades a number of warmblood families from Kentucky and Tennessee have relocated here seeking a quieter pace of life—trot instead of gallop—and, for some, paydirt in ecotourism. Steve La Selle, the tender of the single local sports bar, informed me that tensions once ran high between the two communities, facing off like the towns astraddle the St. John. But now, and especially among the second generation of the warmblood transplants and their coldblood peers, a local son turned hero has dissipated the friction: FBA champion and erstwhile movie star Lance Cheval.

Before it was removed, the single traffic light in Van Buren was outnumbered by signs commemorating Cheval’s feats. They read “Home of 2013 FBA All-Star Lance Cheval.” Upon overhearing my conversation with Mr. La Selle, one warmblood customer said that they were already printing the replacements, which will add the words “and 2015 FBA Champion.” His smile exuded unblemished pride.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. La Selle seems to have forgone wallpaper in his bar, using instead Lance Cheval promotional material. Framed posters, magazine covers, trading cards, from the Thrust and the Spectrums, fill every cranny of wall space.

“It cost a small fortune,” explains La Selle, with a guilty chuckle. “But he’s what brings people here to watch games. Even after Bangor got its team. The Tides, they’d be. I like to say we’re an island of Spectrums fans cut off by the Tides.”

There’s another place in town with Cheval merchandise on prominent display: the single-screen cinema, just a block from La Selle’s. This was one place that the 2005 action flick The Horse with No Name sold out for all four weekends before it was pulled from theaters. A poster of the critically panned film still hangs, somewhat faded, in the tiny lobby alongside the butter-encrusted popcorn machine. In corner of the poster, described in golden swooshes, is the signature of Lance Cheval. The theater owner purchased the poster in an internet auction in 2005 for about $25.

Across the lobby is another poster: The Last Rodeo. Outside of Van Buren, only the most diehard of IMDB fans know that this movie, a box office and critical success, kicked off Lance Cheval’s ill-fated Furrywood career: he was on the screen for a split second with a single line. In black Sharpie this poster, among the signatures of all the locals recruited to be extras in the film, bore the autograph of a teenage Cheval, noticeably less practiced.

Not far away—it’s easy to be nearby in a town like Van Buren—sits the high school. The district’s superintendent, a bay with a white snip named Philippe Lamoureux, welcomed me at the door. He informs me that he served as the principal of the high school throughout Lance’s childhood and still remembers the Percheron’s performance.

“Even back then I knew—we knew—he was headed for great things,” Lamoureux says, leading me over to a showcase of trophies the school basketball team, the Knights, won while Cheval was here. “And it wasn’t money that did it, buying him greatness. It was his heart and good ol’ drafter hard work. Got that from his parents, I’d say. There’s nobility in those bloodlines.”

Nevertheless, amid his reverie he releases a nickered sigh. “You know, I’ve actually invited him to come back to speak to our graduates. Several times. He’s the biggest horse to ever come out of Van Buren, after all, and the kids love him. But I’ve never gotten a response, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard him mention Maine, let alone our little town. I don’t suppose, being an FBA champion now and all, that he’ll make a trip back here to speak with the schools, but there’s always hope!”

***

“Now, Percher Cheval there”—pointing a hoof to a nineteenth-century silhouette portrait of a Roman-nosed stallion hung over the railroad-tie mantle—”he fought in the Napoleonic wars. Made it all the way to Moscow and back. It was lucky for me that he did. If he hadn’t gotten back, I wouldn’t be here: my great-great-great-great-great grandsire was born after he returned.”

I’m speaking with Percival Cheval, father of Lance, in his farmhouse outside of Van Buren proper. (Don’t worry; I too found the names a little like tongue-twisters.) The land has been in the Cheval family for over a century, Percival explains, since Percher crossed the ocean to avoid troubles occasioned by Napoleon’s fall. His Old World martial genealogy is a major point of pride for him. True to Mr. Lamoureux’s commentary, Percival tells me he can trace his ancestry back to the medieval destriers and chevaliers, and based on the length of the genealogical tree he rolls out for me on the hardwood kitchen table, I don’t doubt it. It’s this heritage that gave his sons their names: Lance, of course, from the jousting weapon, and Beau Cheval, a wordplay on Bucephalus, Alexander the Great’s renowned equine aide de camp.

I ask him whether he or Beau served in a war. (Everyone knows Lance didn’t.) “No,” he says, flatly. “No place for a drafter in war today. They replaced us with machines a century ago. At least as a farmer I can use the body God gave me. My grandfather, who actually was in WWI, said it was all part of turning swords into plowshares, and I suppose I believe him. So Beau and I work the land.”

This seems a natural place to segue to the son whose portrait, in full Spectrums regalia, hangs above the living room couch. “So, how about Lance?”

Percival sits down at the table. His wife, Emilie, entered the room while he was talking and takes the seat next to him. After a trade of glances, it’s she who speaks. But she doesn’t comment on basketball first.

“His interest in acting… well, it confused us at first.” Percival nods his head in concurrence as Emilie continues. “When that movie came to town—The Last Rodeo, you know—it was all he could talk about. We’d find him up in the bathroom past his bedtime, talking to himself in the mirror and arranging his mane, currying the dust from his hide. He didn’t think we noticed, but we noticed he was eating less. Probably trying to look more like a warmblood, we figured. But he got the part, and they put up that poster in the cinema. The film crews never came back, and Lance turned to basketball. We figured that’d get him a good scholarship somewhere, and it did. He ran off to California. And… well, he never came back.”

It’s unspoken common knowledge that the vague stories Lance tells about his urban past are fabrications. A quick internet search will reveal his true origins, in part because Van Buren claims him eagerly on their municipality’s webpage. But I had figured that he may have returned at least once, even if surreptitiously, to visit family, even if he didn’t reciprocate his hometown’s pride. Apparently not.

Percival leans in over the table to speak. “Don’t get us wrong. He calls from time to time, and he’s helped us out once or twice when there’s been an early frost. And we’re genuinely happy for his success. How many parents can say they have a son who’s a professional athlete? Not many. And even less can boast of an FBA champion. And the people here? Everyone loves him. Every time the Spectrums come to play Bangor they get a van of furs together to drive down to the game, and La Selle’s is packed.”

He traces a bit of the table’s wood grain with a hooved finger. “And it is nice to see a drafter receive some recognition, even if it’s in an unusual field. We know it’s still work that gets you there, and”—he pokes the table with his finger for emphasis—“draft horses always work hard.”

***

Beau Cheval, when I first called ahead to ask for an interview, declined to speak to me. But hearing from his parents that he lived with his family on a plot down the road, where he ran a hydroponics operation that supplied organic produce to restaurants throughout the state, I decided to hoof it there and pay a visit.

I caught him emerging from his hydroponics shed. It was immediately apparent that he was Lance’s brother: if he hadn’t cropped his mane short and let his stomach protrude over his belt, they may have been twins. He stiffened when I introduced myself, but said that I could stick around so long as I didn’t interrupt his work. I didn’t even have to ask my questions. He had evidently been rehearsing what he would say in his head since I called the previous week.

“So, you want to talk about Lance,” Beau said, inspecting a batch of lettuce floating in a trough. “Let me tell you a story, then. I make weekly deliveries to restaurants in Bangor and Portland. Sometimes Bar Harbor, given all the people who come up from New York and want to buy local, organic, et cetera. It’s a good business.

“When the Bantams came to Bangor, my folks knew Santa Ana would come to play in Maine sometime and saved up for the tickets. First chance was in late 2012. We were as close to the court as we could get, right in the middle. They made signs: ‘Our Son 51’ and such. And I drove us all down to Bangor, made the deliveries, and stayed for the game.”

By this point, Beau had interrupted his own work: he was solely focused on telling the story.

“My parents were so excited. Not only had they never been to a professional sports game, they were also happy to see their younger son for the first time in… what, nearly 20 years?, and happy to provide a surprise for him.

“So Lance comes out of the tunnel for the game, shaking his mane and flashing his teeth in that grin we see everywhere around town. My parents go wild, waving their signs. And Lance sees them.”

Beau, gripping the edge of the lettuce trough, leaned over toward me. Over me.

“They didn’t see it, but I did. For a split second, his eyes got wide and his smile relaxed. That was shock, not excitement. The face you make when your stomach drops out from under you. And he never looked our way for the rest of the game.”

He stood up straight. “But that’s Lance for you. Since the beginning. Denies where he came from, even though they all love him. Even family. Like this lettuce: roots without soil, grown for his city folk who think dirt under your hooves is a sin. I don’t think he’ll come back here. And that’s all I’ve got to say.”

***

On my drive back through Van Buren, I see that sign again: “Home of 2013 FBA All-Star Lance Cheval.”

It strikes me then that, like my ancestors, Lance left home and went into the mythical west to seek his fortune and, unlike many who made the same journey, he’d succeeded. In some fundamental way, he completed the Atlantic crossing. His dreams were American ones: a proper American stallion, self-made and willing to uproot himself to achieve.

But there’s still something from my visit that disquiets me. Despite all indications to the contrary, I don’t quite harbor Beau’s certainty that Lance abandoned this place and his heritage forever. I remember Quilla Cather’s line: “There are only two or three stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.” One of those stories, I think, is that of the Fatted Calf, also about a son wandering from his home… but who returned.

Scrounging for evidence for this hunch, my brain reminded me where I’d heard one of Percival Cheval’s lines before. My family had endlessly repeated it with proper equine pride back after the 2013 All-Star Game. Back then, though, we’d ascribed it to Lance Cheval.

“What can I say?” he said then, cameras and grin flashing. “Horses always work hard.”

Description

One-Horse Town
By Terence Fleethoof, staff correspondent
Appeared in Furballer Magazine, August 2015

Van Buren, Maine, is remote. Three hours from the nearest airport in Bangor, it’s just about as far north as you can go on the East Coast and still be in America; the opposite bank of the St. John River is Canada. I even heard a bit of French spoken, but as I never studied Quebecois French back in high school, my rusty skills were little help when my ears flicked back to eavesdrop.

It’s also small: barely over 3,000 furs, mainly horses. While many are descended from French coldblood stock that crossed the Atlantic over a hundred years ago, in the past few decades a number of warmblood families from Kentucky and Tennessee have relocated here seeking a quieter pace of life—trot instead of gallop—and, for some, paydirt in ecotourism. Steve La Selle, the tender of the single local sports bar, informed me that tensions once ran high between the two communities, facing off like the towns astraddle the St. John. But now, and especially among the second generation of the warmblood transplants and their coldblood peers, a local son turned hero has dissipated the friction: FBA champion and erstwhile movie star Lance Cheval.

Before it was removed, the single traffic light in Van Buren was outnumbered by signs commemorating Cheval’s feats. They read “Home of 2013 FBA All-Star Lance Cheval.” Upon overhearing my conversation with Mr. La Selle, one warmblood customer said that they were already printing the replacements, which will add the words “and 2015 FBA Champion.” His smile exuded unblemished pride.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. La Selle seems to have forgone wallpaper in his bar, using instead Lance Cheval promotional material. Framed posters, magazine covers, trading cards, from the Thrust and the Spectrums, fill every cranny of wall space.

“It cost a small fortune,” explains La Selle, with a guilty chuckle. “But he’s what brings people here to watch games. Even after Bangor got its team. The Tides, they’d be. I like to say we’re an island of Spectrums fans cut off by the Tides.”

There’s another place in town with Cheval merchandise on prominent display: the single-screen cinema, just a block from La Selle’s. This was one place that the 2005 action flick The Horse with No Name sold out for all four weekends before it was pulled from theaters. A poster of the critically panned film still hangs, somewhat faded, in the tiny lobby alongside the butter-encrusted popcorn machine. In corner of the poster, described in golden swooshes, is the signature of Lance Cheval. The theater owner purchased the poster in an internet auction in 2005 for about $25.

Across the lobby is another poster: The Last Rodeo. Outside of Van Buren, only the most diehard of IMDB fans know that this movie, a box office and critical success, kicked off Lance Cheval’s ill-fated Furrywood career: he was on the screen for a split second with a single line. In black Sharpie this poster, among the signatures of all the locals recruited to be extras in the film, bore the autograph of a teenage Cheval, noticeably less practiced.

Not far away—it’s easy to be nearby in a town like Van Buren—sits the high school. The district’s superintendent, a bay with a white snip named Philippe Lamoureux, welcomed me at the door. He informs me that he served as the principal of the high school throughout Lance’s childhood and still remembers the Percheron’s performance.

“Even back then I knew—we knew—he was headed for great things,” Lamoureux says, leading me over to a showcase of trophies the school basketball team, the Knights, won while Cheval was here. “And it wasn’t money that did it, buying him greatness. It was his heart and good ol’ drafter hard work. Got that from his parents, I’d say. There’s nobility in those bloodlines.”

Nevertheless, amid his reverie he releases a nickered sigh. “You know, I’ve actually invited him to come back to speak to our graduates. Several times. He’s the biggest horse to ever come out of Van Buren, after all, and the kids love him. But I’ve never gotten a response, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard him mention Maine, let alone our little town. I don’t suppose, being an FBA champion now and all, that he’ll make a trip back here to speak with the schools, but there’s always hope!”

***

“Now, Percher Cheval there”—pointing a hoof to a nineteenth-century silhouette portrait of a Roman-nosed stallion hung over the railroad-tie mantle—”he fought in the Napoleonic wars. Made it all the way to Moscow and back. It was lucky for me that he did. If he hadn’t gotten back, I wouldn’t be here: my great-great-great-great-great grandsire was born after he returned.”

I’m speaking with Percival Cheval, father of Lance, in his farmhouse outside of Van Buren proper. (Don’t worry; I too found the names a little like tongue-twisters.) The land has been in the Cheval family for over a century, Percival explains, since Percher crossed the ocean to avoid troubles occasioned by Napoleon’s fall. His Old World martial genealogy is a major point of pride for him. True to Mr. Lamoureux’s commentary, Percival tells me he can trace his ancestry back to the medieval destriers and chevaliers, and based on the length of the genealogical tree he rolls out for me on the hardwood kitchen table, I don’t doubt it. It’s this heritage that gave his sons their names: Lance, of course, from the jousting weapon, and Beau Cheval, a wordplay on Bucephalus, Alexander the Great’s renowned equine aide de camp.

I ask him whether he or Beau served in a war. (Everyone knows Lance didn’t.) “No,” he says, flatly. “No place for a drafter in war today. They replaced us with machines a century ago. At least as a farmer I can use the body God gave me. My grandfather, who actually was in WWI, said it was all part of turning swords into plowshares, and I suppose I believe him. So Beau and I work the land.”

This seems a natural place to segue to the son whose portrait, in full Spectrums regalia, hangs above the living room couch. “So, how about Lance?”

Percival sits down at the table. His wife, Emilie, entered the room while he was talking and takes the seat next to him. After a trade of glances, it’s she who speaks. But she doesn’t comment on basketball first.

“His interest in acting… well, it confused us at first.” Percival nods his head in concurrence as Emilie continues. “When that movie came to town—The Last Rodeo, you know—it was all he could talk about. We’d find him up in the bathroom past his bedtime, talking to himself in the mirror and arranging his mane, currying the dust from his hide. He didn’t think we noticed, but we noticed he was eating less. Probably trying to look more like a warmblood, we figured. But he got the part, and they put up that poster in the cinema. The film crews never came back, and Lance turned to basketball. We figured that’d get him a good scholarship somewhere, and it did. He ran off to California. And… well, he never came back.”

It’s unspoken common knowledge that the vague stories Lance tells about his urban past are fabrications. A quick internet search will reveal his true origins, in part because Van Buren claims him eagerly on their municipality’s webpage. But I had figured that he may have returned at least once, even if surreptitiously, to visit family, even if he didn’t reciprocate his hometown’s pride. Apparently not.

Percival leans in over the table to speak. “Don’t get us wrong. He calls from time to time, and he’s helped us out once or twice when there’s been an early frost. And we’re genuinely happy for his success. How many parents can say they have a son who’s a professional athlete? Not many. And even less can boast of an FBA champion. And the people here? Everyone loves him. Every time the Spectrums come to play Bangor they get a van of furs together to drive down to the game, and La Selle’s is packed.”

He traces a bit of the table’s wood grain with a hooved finger. “And it is nice to see a drafter receive some recognition, even if it’s in an unusual field. We know it’s still work that gets you there, and”—he pokes the table with his finger for emphasis—“draft horses always work hard.”

***

Beau Cheval, when I first called ahead to ask for an interview, declined to speak to me. But hearing from his parents that he lived with his family on a plot down the road, where he ran a hydroponics operation that supplied organic produce to restaurants throughout the state, I decided to hoof it there and pay a visit.

I caught him emerging from his hydroponics shed. It was immediately apparent that he was Lance’s brother: if he hadn’t cropped his mane short and let his stomach protrude over his belt, they may have been twins. He stiffened when I introduced myself, but said that I could stick around so long as I didn’t interrupt his work. I didn’t even have to ask my questions. He had evidently been rehearsing what he would say in his head since I called the previous week.

“So, you want to talk about Lance,” Beau said, inspecting a batch of lettuce floating in a trough. “Let me tell you a story, then. I make weekly deliveries to restaurants in Bangor and Portland. Sometimes Bar Harbor, given all the people who come up from New York and want to buy local, organic, et cetera. It’s a good business.

“When the Bantams came to Bangor, my folks knew Santa Ana would come to play in Maine sometime and saved up for the tickets. First chance was in late 2012. We were as close to the court as we could get, right in the middle. They made signs: ‘Our Son 51’ and such. And I drove us all down to Bangor, made the deliveries, and stayed for the game.”

By this point, Beau had interrupted his own work: he was solely focused on telling the story.

“My parents were so excited. Not only had they never been to a professional sports game, they were also happy to see their younger son for the first time in… what, nearly 20 years?, and happy to provide a surprise for him.

“So Lance comes out of the tunnel for the game, shaking his mane and flashing his teeth in that grin we see everywhere around town. My parents go wild, waving their signs. And Lance sees them.”

Beau, gripping the edge of the lettuce trough, leaned over toward me. Over me.

“They didn’t see it, but I did. For a split second, his eyes got wide and his smile relaxed. That was shock, not excitement. The face you make when your stomach drops out from under you. And he never looked our way for the rest of the game.”

He stood up straight. “But that’s Lance for you. Since the beginning. Denies where he came from, even though they all love him. Even family. Like this lettuce: roots without soil, grown for his city folk who think dirt under your hooves is a sin. I don’t think he’ll come back here. And that’s all I’ve got to say.”

***

On my drive back through Van Buren, I see that sign again: “Home of 2013 FBA All-Star Lance Cheval.”

It strikes me then that, like my ancestors, Lance left home and went into the mythical west to seek his fortune and, unlike many who made the same journey, he’d succeeded. In some fundamental way, he completed the Atlantic crossing. His dreams were American ones: a proper American stallion, self-made and willing to uproot himself to achieve.

But there’s still something from my visit that disquiets me. Despite all indications to the contrary, I don’t quite harbor Beau’s certainty that Lance abandoned this place and his heritage forever. I remember Quilla Cather’s line: “There are only two or three stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.” One of those stories, I think, is that of the Fatted Calf, also about a son wandering from his home… but who returned.

Scrounging for evidence for this hunch, my brain reminded me where I’d heard one of Percival Cheval’s lines before. My family had endlessly repeated it with proper equine pride back after the 2013 All-Star Game. Back then, though, we’d ascribed it to Lance Cheval.

“What can I say?” he said then, cameras and grin flashing. “Horses always work hard.”